Setting the Scene: What Hem Learned from Cezanne

Setting the Scene: What Hem Learned from Cezanne

• In talking about where he learned his ability to capture setting, Hemingway credited painters more often than he did other writers (Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were contemporaries of Hemingway)

• Paul Cezanne was the artist that Hemingway most often credited with influencing him.

• In A Moveable Feast Hemingway said “I was learning something from the painting of Cezanne that made writing simple, true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them.”

• Nick Adams, Hemingway’s reoccurring character, states in “Big Two-Hearted River,” he “wanted to write like Cezanne painted.”

"The room was long with windows on the right-hand side and a door at the far end that went into the dressing room. The row of beds that mine was in faced the windows and another row, under the windows, faced the wall. If you lay on your left side you could see the dressing-room door. There was another door at the far end that people sometimes came in by…"Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms

- Both works are simple in their elements, but complex in their entirety.-Both imply motion- Both focus on the elements that comprise a whole

“It was a hot afternoon in Wyoming; the mountains were a long way away and you could see the snow on their tops, but they made no shadow, and in the valley the grain-fields were yellow, the road was dusty with cars passing, and all the small wooden houses at the edge of town were baking in the sun. There was a tree made shade over Fontan’s back porch and I sat there at a table and Madame Fontan brought up cold beer from the cellar.”Hemingway, Ernest. “Wine of Wyoming”

- Both works have a top- down or widescreen to close up approach -(background personal, human)- Like the previous works, both focus on the elements that comprise a whole

“All right,” said the man. “What about it?”“No,” said the girl, “I can’t.”“You mean you won’t.”“I can’t,” said the girl. “That’s all that I mean.”“You mean that you won’t.”“All right,” said the girl. “You have it your own way.”“I don’t have it my own way. I wish to God I did.”“You did for a long time,” the girl said.

It was early, and there was no one in the cafe except the barman and these two who sat together at a table in the corner. It was the end of the summer and they were both tanned, so that they looked out of place in Paris. The girl wore a tweed suit, her skin was a smooth golden brown, her blonde hair was cut short and grew beautifully away from her forehead. The man looked at her.”

Hemingway, Ernest. “The Sea Change”

-Both works bring you into the middle of a scene, mid-action, then describe the setting- Simple, distinctive features associated with the characters