Analogues of the Deserter-in-the Gauertal incident: philoxenia in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro".

Anderson, David L.

The Gauertal incident in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" employs elements of an archetypal hospitality plot involving aid for a pursued man, a plot previously employed by lack London, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Victor Hugo, Homer, and others as well as by Hemingway himself. The essay locates these influences in short story collections recently found in the library of the Hemingway family's Windemere Cottage. Elucidation of the hospitality plot in Harry's reminiscences, particularly those of the secretaries in the snow, the attack on the Austrian officers' leave train, and the death of Williamson, aids in interpretation of the story's essential conundrums, the frozen leopard carcass and Harry's death flight to Kilimanjaro's summit.

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Two sentences from "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" constitute the Deserterin-the-Gauertal incident. It is the second of six incidents in the first group of the dying writer Harry's reminiscences. These two sentences outline an archetypal plot found in stories by Jack London, Joseph Conrad, Victor Hugo, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Homer, to name only canonical writers we can reasonably suspect Hemingway might have read. Analysis of this mythic plot and the use Hemingway and other writers make of it may provide a key to interpreting the meaning and function of some of the other incidents Harry recalls and also to interpreting the two conundrums that every reader of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" must confront--the leopard in the epigraph at the beginning of the story and Harry's majestic flight to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro at the end.

I

The Gauertal incident:

It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that year up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the woodcutter's house with the big square porcelain stove that filled half the room, and they slept on mattresses filled with beech leaves, the time the deserter came with his feet bloody in the snow. He said the police were right behind him and they gave him woolen socks and held the gendarmes talking until the tracks drifted over. (Snows 7)

Only five pages into "Snows of Kilimanjaro"--a story rich in incident--this episode is easy to forget. It is, however, the plot of an 1899 Klondike story by Jack London (1) entitled "To the Man on Trail."

London's story is Kiplingesque in its combination of sentimentality and rough masculine camaraderie. Malamute Kid, a miner and recurring London character, tells stories with his friends while making a vile Christmas punch--this story, like the Gauertal incident, takes place at Christmas and in the snow. Just as the Kid proposes a toast "to the man on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their legs; may his matches never miss fire" ("Man on the Trail" 291), a heavily armed traveler arrives, Jack Westondale, with whom Malamute Kid feels an immediate affinity: "Though they had never met, each had heard of the other, and the recognition was mutual. A sweeping introduction and a mug of punch were forced upon him before he could explain his errand" (291-292). And later: "As the young stranger ate of the rude fare, Malamute Kid attentively studied his face. Nor was he long in deciding that it was fair, honest, and open, and that he liked it" (292). After some more storytelling, the Kid offers Westondale a bunk, the latter asking to be awakened by four a.m. When the Kid wakes Westondale, fifteen minutes early, Westondale finds the Kid has already harnessed his dogs and fully provisioned his sled. Kid gives him advice on the provisions and on how to locate new dogs when his wear out. The last bit of advice he passes on is this: "Keep a-traveling up to twenty-five, but if it gets below that, build a fire and change your socks" (295). This statement raises the question of whether Hemingway included the gift of socks in his story to echo a detail he might have remembered from the London story. A few moments after Westondale leaves, a tired Mountie, accompanied by two guides, arrives in pursuit of Westondale, whom he reveals has robbed $40,000 from McFarland's, a Klondkie gambling joint. The Kid gives him a daunting account of how difficult it will be to overtake the rested and provisioned Westondale. He also, threatening violent resistance, refuses to give the Mountie aid, despite his attempt to requisition supplies "in the name of the Queen" (296).

So both stories take place at Christmas, both involve a temporary and unofficial sanctuary, aid, and gifts--including a specific reference to socks--all given to a fugitive on the run through the snow, and both involve delaying or impeding the pursuers. Only in London's story only are the archetypal elements of hospitality extended and accepted: food, drink, rest, and advice. (2) Two other contrasts with London's story must be mentioned: the immediate affinity that develops between the pursued and the host and the fact that Westondale is depicted as a righteous man. After Westondale leaves, Malamute Kid reveals this to his companions:

A whiter man than Jack Westondale never ate from the same pot nor stretched blanket with you or me. Last fall he gave his whole clean-up, forty thousand, to Joe Castrell, to buy in on Dominion. Today he'd be a millionaire. But while he stayed behind at Circle City, taking care of his partner with the scurvy, what does Castrell do? Goes into McFarland's, jumps the limit, and drops the whole sack. Found him dead in the snow the next day. And poor Jack laying his plans to go out this winter to his wife and boy he's never seen. You'll notice he took exactly what his partner lost--forty thousand. ("Man on the Trail" 297)

After Westondale leaves, the Kid and the assembled miners chant a veritable Greek chorus of their former toast, adding new elements:

   The Kid glanced round the circle of his judges, noted the softening
   of their faces, then raised his mug aloft. "So a health to the man
   on trail this night; may his grub hold out; may his dogs keep their
   legs; may his matches never miss fire. God prosper him; good luck
   go with him; and--"

   "Confusion to the Mounted Police!" cried Bettles, to the crash of
   the empty cups. (297)

This plot appears elsewhere under different guises, notably in Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" (1910), a story Hemingway almost certainly read (Reynolds item 645; Brasch and Sigman item 1449). It does not take place at Christmas, nor in the snow, nor does it mention socks. It is, however, a tale of aid to a fugitive, a seaman named Leggatt, a first mate who in a moment of crisis has killed a fatally poisonous crew member. The story is told by an unnamed sea captain who, unbeknownst to his officers and crew, offers the pursued Leggatt hospitality in the form of rest, clothing, and food; misleads Leggatt's captain when he comes aboard; gives the fugitive parting gifts (a hat and coins) and advice; and, finally, risks the safety of his own ship and crew in order to place Leggatt ashore at a favorable location. Conrad, however, makes much more of the relationship between Leggatt and the captain (who sounds suspiciously like Charlie Marlow, especially in his awkward efforts to avoid actually speaking an outright lie), making the relationship one of deep psychological affinity rather than London's somewhat simpler masculine camaraderie. The two men look the same, are the same size, and wear identical sleeping suits. Like Leggatt, the captain was recently a first mate--this being his first command. Further he refers to Leggatt as his "double" (seventeen times, by my count), as his "other self" (five times), and as his "second self" (five times).

Other versions (3) of the plot surface in Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night" and in the candlesticks episode of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, while King Priam's visit to the tent of Achilles in Book 24 of Homer's Iliad reminds us that Hemingway has employed plot elements of archetypal and mythic significance. A few words about the plots and details of these other analogues may help round out the archetype of hospitality for the pursued man, thereby letting us view some of the submerged parts of Hemingway's iceberg. What Hemingway worked to leave out of his stories is always important.

Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night" features a pursued man, Francois Villon, the famous medieval French poet, and a host, an old knight who takes him in for the night. In the story one of Villon's lowlife friends kills another of his lowlife friends. He then steals Villon's purse and sets fire to the house they are in. Villon flees through the snow-covered streets of Paris, worrying about the tracks he leaves, attempting to avoid the night watch, and finally ending the night comfortably in the randomly selected home of the old knight. Stevenson, ever the moralist, disapproved of Villon and feared romanticizing the actions of such a disreputable character. (4) Accordingly, Stevenson has Villon stay the night with his host; enjoy the hospitality, conversation, food, and wine; and cavalierly go his way the next morning. In effect, Villon exploits the spirit of the time-honored traditions of the guest/host relationship.

The first volume of Hemingway's letters includes a 23 December 1921 (almost Christmas!) letter to Sherwood and Tennessee Anderson suggesting that he had read the Stevenson story: "And when it's a cold night in the streets of Paris and we're walking home down the Rue Bonaparte we think of the way the wolves used to slink into the city and Francois Villon and the gallows at Montfaucon" (Letters 313). The editors provide this note: "In Robert Louis Stevenson's short story, 'A Lodging for the Night' (1877), the medieval French poet Villon muses that it was the kind of weather 'when wolves might take it into their heads to enter Paris again; [Stevenson, "Lodging" Complete 13] and he is haunted by the aspect of the gallows at Montfaucon, the 'great grisly Paris gibbet'[4]" (Letters 315, n 2). (5)

We would be remiss if we did not consider Villon's most famous line of verse, one of the most famous lines in the history of poetry, the haunting refrain from his "Ballade of Dead Ladies": "But where are the snows of yester year?" ("Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?) (trans. D. G. Rossetti, qtd. in Lewis 348-351; see also Oldsey 71 and Smith 357). Villon is evoked through Stevenson. Harry's reminiscences are contemplations of the snows of yesteryear, both literally and figuratively.

In Hugo's Les Miserables, Jean Valjean, released from prison but unable to find lodgings because of his status as a convict, is finally taken in by the bishop of Digne, from whom he steals items of silver plate. When Valjean is captured and brought back to the bishop's residence by gendarmes, the bishop, without hesitation, protests Valjean's innocence; indeed, he also gives him a gift, silver candlesticks, and advice, to live a good life. As we have seen, Jack Westondale is regarded highly by Malamute Kid, and Leggatt is regarded as a double by Conrad's ship captain. This is what the bishop tells Jean Valjean:

"I tell you, who are a traveler, that you are more at home here than I. Whatever is here is yours. What need have ! to know your name? Besides, before you told me, I knew it."

The man opened his eyes in astonishment:

"Really? You knew my name?"

"Yes," answered the bishop, "your name is my brother." (Hugo 67)

The brotherhood expressed here parallels that shown in "To the Man on Trail" and "The Secret Sharer."

In Greek myth the sacred laws of hospitality were overseen by Zeus, the father of the gods. Aid for the pursued thus takes on a mythic and religious significance. The Greeks actually had a word for it--philoxenia, love of the stranger, the antonym of xenophobia. In ancient myth the stranger is not always a pursued man. (6) Perhaps the best ancient example of philoxenia for the pursued man comes from Book 24 of Homer's Iliad, in which Achilles expresses admiration for the courage of Priam who has appeared in his tent to ask for the body of his son Hector. Achilles sees his own tragic father in Priam. Feeling this affinity with Priam and admiring his "heart of iron" (605), Achilles scrupulously obeys the ancient and sacred laws of hospitality, sharing food, wine, and rest with him; in addition, he relishes his own act of omission of not telling Agamemnon--a would-be pursuer--that Priam has entered the camp.

Finally, because the hosts we have seen so often identify with their visitors, sometimes very deeply, we must note that Hemingway identifies with Harry. After Hemingway returned from Africa in 1934, a wealthy would-be literary patroness offered to finance another trip to Africa for him. He declined the offer but years later wrote about it: "So I get down to Key West and I start to think what would happen to a character like me whose defects I know, if I had accepted that offer" (Hendrickson 83; Trogdon 316-317). Harry is Hemingway's double: "a character like me whose defects I know."

II

Application of the host/guest/double/brother/philoxenia themes illuminates some of the other reminiscences in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

Harry comes to Africa as a man on trail in search of his lost artistry. Appropriately in the very first of his reminiscences he recalls himself as a traveler: "Now in his mind he saw a railway station at Karagatch and he was standing with his pack and that was the headlight of the Simplon Orient cutting the dark now and he was leaving Thrace then after the retreat" (Snows 6). This is followed by a story of travelers who, like the leopard, die in the snow:

   That was one of the things he had saved to write ... looking out the
   window and seeing snow on the mountains in Bulgaria and Nansen's
   Secretary asking the old man if it were snow on the mountains and
   the old man saying, No, that's not snow. It's too early for snow.
   And the Secretary repeating to the other girls, No, you see. It's
   not snow and them all saying, It's not snow we were mistaken. But
   it was snow all right and he sent them on into it when he evolved
   exchange of populations. And it was snow they tramped along in
   until they died that winter. (7)

These are travelers betrayed, as are, in the fifth story of this group, the Austrian officers in the leave train, on Christmas Day as in the Gauertal episode, who are gunned down by a pilot named Barker whose own brother pilot calls him to his face, "You bloody murderous bastard" (Snows 8). The very next episode establishes a spirit of potential but now lost brotherhood with the slaughtered Austrian officers: "Those were the same Austrians they killed then that he skied with later. No not the same" (8). But they might well have been had Barker not slaughtered them. That is the point. They are men on trail; they are brothers; they are slaughtered. Harry joins in the condemnation. Harry's identification with the traveler, as well as the author's and the reader's, is a reaction to an ancient archetype with an emotional force bypassing the pursued man's status as outlaw or even enemy combatant. The vulnerability of the man on trail brings out this response in us, for in our race with death each of us is in some sense the pursued.

The final episode of Harry's reminiscences is about another brother officer, Williamson, who, like Harry dying in Africa, is a traveler caught between the land of life and the land of death:

He remembered long ago when Williamson, the bombing officer, had been hit by a stick bomb some one in a German patrol had thrown as he was coming in through the wire that night and, screaming, had begged every one to kill him. He was a fat man, very brave, and a good officer, although addicted to fantastic shows. But that night he was caught in the wire, with a flare lighting him up and his bowels spilled out into the wire, so when they brought him in, alive, they had to cut him loose. Shoot me, Harry. For Christ sake shoot me. They had had an argument one time about our lord never sending you anything you could not bear and some one's theory had been that meant that at a certain time the pain passed you out automatically. But he had always remembered Williamson, that night. Nothing passed out Williamson until he gave him all his morphine tablets he had always saved to use himself and then they did not work right away. (Snows 24-25)

Williamson is the pursued. Harry is the host. Harry does right by his guest, giving him all of his own morphine tablets, just as socks are given to the deserter in the Gauertal. The Williamson episode does not take place at Christmas, but note that Williamson says, "Shoot me, Harry. For Christ sake shoot me" Harry does the right thing in both cases.

III

The ultimate test of any discussion of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is whether it can explain one or both of the sphinx-like conundrums that every reader of the story must confront: the frozen leopard carcass at the beginning of the story and Harry's majestic flight to Kilimanjaro at the story's conclusion. In his article '"The Snows of Kilimanjaro': An African Purge," Kenneth G. Johnston has stated the problem of the flight rather well:

   It is an ending that cannot be supported by the narrative. Harry's
   few bitter regrets and remarks in his dying moments concerning his
   betrayal of craft and self do not atone for a wasted artistic life.
   Clearly he has not earned the flight to Mount Kilimanjaro. Perhaps
   the imagined flight was intended to reveal Harry's final illusion,
   but since the writer is already dead, the reader is left to
   struggle with the logic. (225)

Let us struggle now with Hemingway's aesthetic logic. The leopard and Mount Kilimanjaro are inextricably linked in the epigram. Also inextricably linked to "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is the leopard at the beginning of Dante's Cornmedia. While every leopard in literature does not necessarily echo Dante, Dante's leopard is so famous that the reader must pause and consider a connection. Such consideration must also apply to Hemingway's leopard, arguably the second most famous in literature. Dante's Paradise is reached only by ascending Mount Purgatory, just as the Masai Ngaje Ngai, the House of God, is found at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. In "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" then, we seem to see the ever-competitive Hemingway, eager to do his round in the ring with Dante, and this opens the question of sin and punishment.

A critical commonplace regarding Hemingway's short story is the appropriateness, Dantesque appropriateness if you will, of Harry's gangrene as emblematic of his desertion of his talent. Accordingly, one must then ask whether the horridly dramatic and painful death of Williamson, the fat man "addicted to fantastic shows" (Snows 24), is similarly emblematic and appropriate. The sanctimonious argument would be that the manner of his death is, in a Dantesque manner, appropriate punishment for his "fantastic shows," However, because it is clearly a fool's errand to try to out-Dante Dante in concocting the cruelly appropriate, (7) Hemingway counters by granting grace rather than inflicting some epic punishment, when Harry gives Williamson a pass in the form of his morphine tablets.

Harry has indeed neglected his talent, but he has been a righteous man in his treatment of the archetypal travelers he has encountered--both the deserter and Williamson. He has condemned the killing of other travelers--the secretaries in the snow and the Austrian officers on Christmas leave. He has obeyed the laws of Zeus and shown philoxenia; in the Christian tradition he has offered hospitality on Christmas day and "for Christ sake" Hemingway grants Harry the grace of a pass to the top of Kilimanjaro, to Ngaje Ngai, to the House of God, because he has done the right thing in life, if not in art. A writer does not consign his character to a grotesque, Dantesque hell because he has deserted his art. He does so when his character has deserted humanity--which Harry has not done. Harry's penalty for deserting his writing is inherent: his books are not published and nobody reads them.

Harry has earned his pass. He goes to Africa to "work the fat off his soul" (Snows 11), and--like the leopard--dies on trail. Harry is also Hemingway's double, "a character like me whose defects I know" Harry is to Hemingway as Jack Westondale is to Malamute Kid, as Leggatt is to Conrad's captain-narrator, (8) as Jean Valjean is to the bishop, as Villon is to the old Knight, as Priam is to Achilles, as the deserter, the slaughtered Austrian officers, and Williamson are to Harry himself. Harry is Hemingway's own man on trail, to whom he has shown philoxenia by granting him the beautiful death-flight to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

WORKS CITED

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DAVID L. ANDERSON

Butler County Community College

NOTES

The author would like to thank Ernest Hemingway Mainland, owner and resident of Windemere cottage, for hosting the tours of Windemere at the 2012 Hemingway Society International Conference. Thanks as well to Cecil and Charlotte Ponder, Conference Site Directors, for their role in arranging the tours. The Butler Community College Foundation and William Miller, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, provided support for this research. The author is also grateful to Eric Pedersen, Joy Walsh, Scott Campbell, Jean Shumway, and Renee Anderson for their thoughtful feedback.

(1.) See Hays for an overview of London's influence on Hemingway. Two other Klondike stories by London, "Love of Life" and "To Build a Fire" share narrative features with "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Both are tales of men isolated by extreme geography and stalked by death--the protagonist of "Love of Life" struggling across the Canadian Barrens and the protagonist of "To Build a Fire" trying to survive the "white silence" of an arctic cold spell. The latter is accompanied by a wolf-dog, and the former is stalked by a wolf, interesting parallels to Harry's hyena.

(2.) Another minor piece of evidence that suggests Hemingway's familiarity with "To the Man on Trail" is the opening line of "After the Storm," which also includes a reference to making punch: "It wasn't about anything, something about making punch ..." (3).

(3.) I have confined my analysis to analogues with some evidence suggesting that Hemingway might have read them. Other notable examples of this plot in modern literature include Thomas Hardy's "The Three Strangers" (1883) (see note 5 below) and Alexandr Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter" (1836), a notably complex iteration of the plot.

(4.) See Stevenson's "Francois Villon, Student, Poet, and Housebreaker," a biting, moralistic screed on the life and work of Villon, "[a] sinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his eye, and the loose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensual temperament. Certainly the sorriest figure on the rolls of fame" (179).

(5.) Hemingway's personal library included volumes by Stevenson (Reynolds item 2015; Brasch and Sigman item 6350) and Villon (Reynolds item 2168, Brasch and Sigman item 6861). But I would like to suggest a hitherto unrecognized source for Hemingway's acquaintance with Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night" This essay began as a presentation at the Hemingway Society's 2012 international conference, held in Petoskey and Bay View, Michigan. Windemere, the Hemingway family cottage on Walloon Lake in Ernest's day, remains in the family, but thanks to the gracious hospitality of Ernest H. Mainland, owner and resident, conference attendees were privileged to receive both a tour of the cottage and an invitation to examine the books on its shelves. The "Appendix: Library Lists" in Miller (162-163) reveals that in the cottage library in Ernest's day was a set of ten volumes entitled Stories by English Authors (1896). It remains there, though the contents of these ten volumes, as well as the companion ten-volume set of Stories by American Authors, have not, to my knowledge, been inventoried or published as part of any Hemingway study. Neither Reynolds nor Brasch and Sigman reference these volumes, nor would they realistically be expected to. Each volume of the English authors set is labeled with the name of the country in which its stories are set. In the volume labeled France, which I examined, Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Lodging for the Night" is the first story. Hemingway may have read the story from this very volume.

The England volume also contains stories about hospitality for the pursued man: Thomas Hardy's "The Three Strangers" (see note 3 above) as well as the lesser-known "Minions of the Moon" by F.W. Robinson. In addition, "The Brigand's Bride: A Tale of Southern Italy" by Laurence Oliphant develops the theme in the Italy volume, as does Harold Frederic's "Brother Sebastian's Friendship" in Stories by American Authors, Volume Six. While there is no proof that Hemingway read any of these stories, they were readily available to him from a very young age and at a place where, free of schoolwork, he could read at his leisure. In 1915, at about the time he might have read these stories, Ernest shot a heron, was pursued by a game warden, and briefly spent time on the run before surrendering and pleading guilty (Baker 20-21). This later became the basis for "The Last Good Country" which includes many of the elements discussed in this paper: the man on trail (Nick Adams), pursuers (game wardens), hospitality, a character (Littless) who identifies with the pursued and offers hospitality (food, drink, shelter, rest, advice), and characters who delay or resist the pursuers. Interestingly, Stevenson's Kidnapped, one of the books Nick and Littless take with them, features Alan Breck Stewart, an archetypal pursued man. Briefly experiencing life on the lam and reading at about the same time may have helped to fix the elements of this plot in Hemingway's mind.

Numerous instances of the philoxenia theme appear in works from antiquity: the visit of Jupiter and Mercury to the home of Baucis and Philemon (Ovid 8 [p.202]), of the angels to Lot (Gen. 11), of Joshua's spies to the Harlot Rahab before the siege of Jericho (Joshua 2), of Telemachus to the home of Nestor (Homer, Odyssey 3) and to the home of Menelaus and Helen (Homer, Odyssey 4), and of Odysseus to a variety of hosts and hostesses, most notably the Phaeacians. The visit of Priam to the tent of Achilles, however, best exemplifies the archetype of the pursued man, the man on trail.

Ovid's version of the tale of Baucis and Philemon includes a reference to goblets of beech ("fago pocula" Metamorphoses 8.669-70), perhaps echoed in the Gauertal incident's "mattresses filled with beech leaves." The Baucis and Philemon story is given an interesting update in Tolstoy's "What Men Live By."

(7.) Note the comment from Hemingway's Across the River and into the Trees on Dante's sense of justice:

"You sound like Dante," she [Renata] said sleepily.

"I am Mister Dante," he [Cantwell] said. "For the moment."

And for a while he was and he drew all the circles. They were as unjust as Dante's but he drew them. (246)

(8.) Like Hemingway's stirring flight to Kilimanjaro for Harry, and the Malamute Kid's crowd-rousing final toast to lack Westondale, Conrad's eloquent conclusion is full of high regard for the secret sharer and his fate:

   Walking to the taffrail, I was in time to make out, on the very
   edge of darkness thrown by a towering black mass like the very
   gateway of Erebus--yes, I was in time to catch an evanescent
   glimpse of my white hat left behind to mark the spot where the
   secret sharer of my cabin and of my thoughts, as though he were my
   second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his
   punishment: a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new
   destiny. (143)