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Hemingway's Michigan landscapes.

Article Excerpt
Ernest Hemingway's descriptions of the terrain of northern Michigan recall his experience, describe Nature, imply his ecological beliefs--and reconstruct what he sees in terms of post-Impressionist landscape painting. It was widely understood in his lifetime that landscape was an imaginative version of a scene rather than its photographic reconstruction. The way in which a scene was depicted implied much about artistic beliefs and intentions. Hemingway was particularly indebted to Cezanne for his ideas about landscape, but he took many cues from other painters ancient and modern.

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IN A CLASSIC STUDY, Emily Stipes Watts pointed out that Hemingway turned to Cezanne "for techniques of describing landscapes" and was able to "transpose" those techniques "into verbal descriptions" (37)-Clearly, there is evidence for this--important references to Cezanne and landscape have been reprinted in Carlos Baker's Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story (85, 132, 268). And, in an interview with Lillian Ross in New York in 1949, Hemingway talked at length about the connection between writing and painting. Part of the interview took place in the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

After we reached the Cezannes and Degas and the other Impressionists, Hemingway became more and more excited, and discoursed on what each artist could do and how and what he had learned from each ... Hemingway spent several minutes looking at Cezanne's "Rocks--Forest of Fontainbleau." "This is what we try to do in writing, this and this, and the woods, and the rocks we have to climb over," he said. "Cezanne is my painter, after the early painters.... I can make a landscape like Mr. Paul Cezanne. I learned how to make a landscape from Mr. Paul Cezanne by walking through the Luxembourg Museum a thousand times" (Ross 36)

Hemingway was unclear and Ross, intellectually incurious, did not ask tactical questions about "what we try to do" between canvas and text. But it is possible to develop some of Hemingway's points by examining his work.

Any study of Hemingway and painting ought at least to begin with representation. The Michigan Hemingway Society's website identifies locations in Horton Bay, Walloon Lake, Petoskey, and Harbor Springs that figure in the Nick Adams stories (Marek). Routes, perspectives, even buildings associated with Hemingway are still extant, including the remains of the "Indian Camp" on Walloon Lake and the view across Lake Charlevoix from the Dilworth Resort at Horton Bay. A tourist website for Seney, Michigan reminds us that the East Branch of the Fox River, happily much closer to downtown, is the actual site of "Big Two-Hearted River" (Wood). The town fathers have it right: Hemingway rearranged the landscape of this story (S. Baker 150-159). It's been said that he enriched its geography (Bruccoli 26). There are reasons for that, principal among them that he understood the difference between location and landscape. The following is from an April 1919 letter inviting his friend James Gamble to visit his own part of the world:

This is a priceless place, Jim. Horton's Bay on Pine Lake about twelve miles from Charlevoix, about three hundred miles north of here. It is great northern air. Absolutely the best trout fishing in the country. No exaggeration. Fine country. Good color, good northern atmosphere. Absolute freedom, no summer resort stuff, and lots of paintable stuff. And if you want to do portraits. You shall do them.... It is beautiful country. (qtd. in Griffin 118)

We don't expect Hemingway to be an art expert in 1919; and there is nothing to suggest that he is thinking beyond the conventions of realism. He has picked up information about the importance of northern light. The passage is intellectually open, resting on interpretation. But Hemingway is already aware that certain things may not be worth recording, while others demand emphasis.

Sheridan Baker concludes that Hemingway "reported fact with journalistic accuracy" while simultaneously "insisting that it is all fiction" (157). However, Hemingway's 1924 letter to Gertrude Stein says of "Big Two-Hearted River," "I made it all up" (qtd. in S. Baker 157-158). The problem is not his indifference to fact. Landscape painting and writing are forms of translation. Michael Reynolds has written that "Indian Camp" is both more and less than an accurate rendition of place in time. It was written in Paris, influenced by Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, composed long after its moment, modeled on the story-telling tactics of James Joyce (Reynolds 164-167). It was understood in the 1920s--I am thinking particularly of Edmund Wilson and John Dewey--that literature did not have to be "reportorial and transcriptive" (Berman 64). Even history can't be described in those terms, at least as seen at the mid-20th century by Isaiah Berlin: "a mere recital of facts is not history, not even if scientifically testable hypotheses are added to them." On the contrary, any convincing work of history concerns "our normal daily experience as human beings in relation to each other-the whole intellectual, imaginative, moral, aesthetic, religious life of men." And yet, the intuitive part of history "may not pass the scrutiny of a purely fact-establishing enquiry" (Berlin 26-27).

Landscape is continually being reexamined, often in the terms set by Berlin's discussion of the recovery of history. Kenneth Clark's Landscape Into Art begins by stating that the natural scene is invariably "recreated ... in our imaginations" rather than reproduced (1). Painted landscape is symbolic and closely associated with our "memories and instincts." Even in modern times, the idea of landscape has moved away from that of "imitation" (Clark 230-231). These theories have been followed up--Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory explores the ways by which landscape becomes symbolic. He begins by reminding us that documentary photography is no guarantee of objectivity; there is the example of Ansel Adams who defined his view of Yosemite as "a religious idea" and...

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