Hemingway and "The Sun Also Rises": The Crafting of a Style by Frederic Joseph Svoboda (review)

106ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW Arline Reilein Standley. Auguste Comte. Boston: Twayne, G.K. Hall, 1981. 178p. The author employs an appropriate combination of sympathetic appreciation and critical objectivity in her analytical survey of the works of Comte. She tries to identify the underlying unity in the evolving ideas of a social philosopher often criticized for his inconsistencies. At the same time, she is quick to point out areas of his thought where important modifications did take place. The following is the principal exampleofsuch a shift: In his first major work, the Cours de philosophie positive (1830-1842), Comte celebrates the intellect as man's distinguishing faculty. He devotes the greater part of this work to tracing the progressive liberation of human intelligence as manifested in the development of the sciences. Having grown beyond the theological and metaphysical ways oflooking at reality, modern man is now ready, according to Comte, to enter the age of "positivism." He has the capacity to create a new world for himself based on social justice and humanitarian values. By means of the scientific investigation of facts, man can discover the laws governing the natural and social orders and thereby exercise control over their future development. However, in his Système de politique positive (1851-1854), written as a sequel to the earlier work, Comte states that the heart is the source of wisdom and that the feelings, especially love, must guide man in his pursuit of a better life for all people. Comte also proclaims the founding of a new "Religion of Humanity" whose "priests" (including scientists, philosophers, and artists) will educate public opinion. They will awaken in both workers and capitalists an awareness of social responsibility and of the necessity for the individual to submit his own destiny to the orderly progress of the community. Standley demonstrates convincingly how these apparently contradictory theories actually complement each other. She analyzes rare early texts by Comte to prove that from the very beginning of his career he felt that a kind of "spiritual power" (comparable to Medieval Catholicism but with no other-wordly elements) is necessary to impel people to put the positivist philosophy into action. The highly interesting final section deals with Comte's aesthetic philosophy and his influence on writers like Zola, George Eliot, and Shaw. This chapter can be considered the reader's reward for making it through Standley's painstaking study of the complexities of Comtean thought. Poetry was for him a means of propagating his principles. It bridges the gap between ideas and social action by inspiring an emotional dedication to certain ideals and the desire to put them into practice. As an instrument of the new religion, poetry thus has for Comte a truly "sacred" character, as it had earlier had for his mentor Saint-Simon. JAMES P. GILROY University of Denver Frederic Joseph Svoboda. Hemingway and "The Sun Also Rises": The Crafting of a Style. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1983. 148p. In July 1925 Ernest Hemingway sat down to write a fictional treatment of a young matador he had recently met, but the sketch that he tentatively entitled "Cayetano Ordoñez/'Niño de la Palma'" soon turned into the largest literary project he had yet attempted. Frederic Svoboda's Hemingway and "The Sun Also Rises" traces the process by which the short story grew into a manuscript novel, "Fiesta," and then into the final version of Hemingway's first novel. Book Reviews107 Svoboda's book is essentially a study of the manuscript versions ofthe novel that are housed in the Hemingway collection of the Kennedy Library and the University of Virginia Library. Hemingway scholars who have not yet seen the Kennedy collection will find a rich sampling of the manuscripts of The Sun Also Rises in the plates printed in Svoboda's book. Twenty-three plates reproduce pages of the holograph "Fiesta" manuscript and associated notes and false starts; thirteen plates picture typescript pages; and one plate shows the galley proofs of the beginning which Hemingway cut before publishing the novel. Other documents of interest to specialists are a transcription of the entire text of the nearly three galleys cut from the original setting of the novel...