At times, I fear the speed of my heartbeats more than the interim between them.
It feels like I'm living too fast, which is not to say that life's speeding up beside me. No. I am not worried about squandering my time, nor of it squandering my expectations. I'm just worried sometimes I'll burn two holes in my soles, and through them, my vitality will leak.
"He had loved too much, demanded too much, and he wore it all out."
Cheeky. To think I've got the gall to argue with a great man, greater than I'll ever be (then again, I've no hope of being a man). Literary critic Harold Bloom invites us to read Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro from an autobiographical standpoint. The story, published just after Hemingway's 37th birthday, offers a grim prediction of the author's fate. It gives us an insight into a dying writer's final days as infection overtakes him. Switches between past and present - the Parisian streets he so loved, and the present mistress, a good woman, he's too tired for.
"It was not her fault that when he went to her, he was already over."
Unlike Harry, Hemingway ended his life as a successful writer, though who can know for sure whether or not he harbored the same regrets? The stories he hadn't told and now never would, perhaps those lived inside Hemingway, also.
The best possible explanation I ever heard for Hemingway's final act came from my cousin, a very well-read boy and admirer of Hem's. He guessed perhaps the great man recognized that after all the injuries and accidents, all the alcohol and broken love, that he could not quite write anymore. That he'd lost that essential aspect of himself that so defined his genius. And realizing he had no more lines to deliver, Hemingway took it upon himself to exit stage left.
Of course, the story's protagonist is dying from infection, while Hemingway's fate was not sealed. But there is a familiar sense of resignation that permeates both writers' ends.
One can't argue Hemingway was not a great man. A brave man, one who took the bull by its horns. And if he could wear himself out, what hope have I of withstanding the speed of my own life?
"If you love too much,
I do.
and demand too much,
How can I demand less? I've such a brief time and the world is full of so many incredible delights.
then you, like Lear and Harry (and, at last, Hemingway), will wear it all out. Fantasy, for Harry, takes the place of art."
That's Bloom for you. Another great, brilliant man who lived his life well and to the fullest. And yet, just as I'm beginning to lose heart, I catch the hint of a wink behind his ellipses. The inclusion of Lear, a great personal literary hero of both Hemingway and Bloom, is not arbitrary. And while it's true the King also shares in this larger-than-life, demanding personality, no reader could ever argue that he has a choice in loving his Cordelia.
Could he?
Famously, King Lear dies inside a fantasy in which his favorite daughter is still alive, after his own impetuous, exorbitant nature has led to her death. Yes, arguably, he could've acted differently and avoided such a great loss. So could have Harry, and, no doubt, Hemingway.
But then, they would have lived lives untrue to themselves, and in doing so, would have lived in vain. King Lear would not be the brilliant tragedy it is, had Lear been a man who could love temperately. Nor would Hemingway have written the way he did (or gone down in history as he did), had he taken slow, measured, reasonable breaths. Steps careful not to disturb the ghosts.
And so, it is inevitable. To live and wear it all out, if your heart and nature demand it, is the only viable option. The only way by which Harry (or Lear) might've evaded their fates of wearing out their souls and their lives, would mean being in different stories.
You can't go through life wishing (or behaving as if) you were in a different story.
