Letters.

Hays, Peter L.

[The editor invites readers to submit letters of not more than 1,000 words commenting On Hemingway Review articles or other matters of concern to Hemingway studies. Authors of works discussed may be given an opportunity to reply. We reserve the right to reject or edit letters, and hope that this forum will foster constructive debate among Hemingway scholars.]

To the Editor:

In his article, "Partial Articulation: Word Play in A Farewell to Arms" (The Hemingway Review 20.2 [Spring 2001]: 59-75), Gary Harrington discusses the well-known source for the novel's title--George Peele's poem "Farewell to Arms"--and double meanings within the title and the novel. He discusses "arms," as one would expect, as both the military armaments Frederic Henry leaves behind and the arms of his love, Catherine Barkley. At one point, Harrington says that "the novel's title, derived from a poem celebrating both martial and patriotic virtue, suggests that epic military action may no longer be possible in the modern age" (65-66). May I suggest that Hemingway may also be referring to a second poem, an epic? Virgil's Aeneid begins "I sing of arms and the man," and, like the novel, concludes in Italy. Hemingway, in his anti-romanticism, leaves behind not only Peele's celebration of duty to a monarch, but also Virgil's paean to military virtues and an invented destiny.

Peter L. Hays
University of California, Davis