It is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
—The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway in his critically acclaimed novella The Old Man and the Sea says, “A man is never lost at sea...” However, a man can very well be lost ashore when he tries to wade into unfamiliar territory as a local politician recently discovered. For JVP Propaganda Secretary, Wimal Weerawansa, a faux pas in a speech he made at the State Literary Festival recently, has resisted all attempts at being swept under the carpet.
In his speech, Weerawansa confused the author of the novella The Old Man and the Sea with none other than French novelist and short story writer, Guy de Maupassant, opening himself up to a great deal of debate and controversy. For a politician whose trademark has always been ridiculing opponents and detractors, the Hemingway-Maupassant muddle has proved a bitter pill to swallow. Fuelling the fire, Weerawansa has refused to apologise for his error or clarify the matter. Naturally, a mistake of this magnitude, made on a platform raised to honour literature cannot go uncommented upon, but space for that more political debate has been created elsewhere. So in these pages this week, The Nation strives to shed some light on the two Western writers, their inspiration, work and differences, for the benefit of our readers and ‘leaders’. May we never confuse the two again.

Who wrote The Old Man and the Sea?

The Old Man and the Sea was written by the American author Ernest Hemingway, published in 1952 to wide critical acclaim. It also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
It is a deceivingly simple story of an old Cuban fisherman who undergoes the most difficult struggle of his life. Despite being a relatively short work, the novella is filled not only with drama but with the parable of one man’s perseverance through the hardest of times. In the title character, Santiago, Hemingway depicts one of the most distinguished examples in American Literature of an individual looking deep within to summon the courage necessary to get through the triumphs and tragedies that life, represented by the sea, presents.
It is also known as an intensely capitalist work as the themes he exploits, fraternalism, paternalism and pride are commonly tied with capitalism and the capitalist endeavour.
The novel first appeared, as part of the September 1, 1952 edition of Life magazine. Around five million copies of that issue were sold within two days. The majority of concurrent criticism was extravagantly positive, while a streak of dissenting criticism has since emerged.
Interestingly, the title was misprinted on the cover of an early edition as The Old Men and the Sea, but the author’s name, Ernest Hemingway was printed accurately. It seems that the printers blundered only when printing ‘Men’ instead of ‘Man.’

Where angels fear to tread

By Vindya Amaranayake
It has only been a week since the conclusion of the state literary month. Throughout the month of September, there had been a fever of attention towards books, exhibitions and literary festivals. One particular event, however, drew unprecedented attention of the literary circles and the public in general towards literature and its significance in the world stoday.
The State Literary Festival has always been a controversial event; accused of being overly politicised, there had always been disagreements about the presentations of awards. This year, however, it drew a lot of media and public attention, not particularly because of the awards but because of the main speaker at the event. For the first time in the history of the festival, a propaganda secretary of a political party and not a member of the academia had been invited by the Cultural Affairs Ministry to deliver the keynote address.
One could argue, why not? Does the speech have to be delivered by a professor? Why cannot a lay person express her opinion on the status of literature in the country, as she sees it, after all literature is about humans and human relationships? But then, there are certain standards that are expected from the person who delivers the most important address at the literary event of the year, sponsored by the State. If the public cannot expect a mind blowing argument, then we would at least expect it to be accurate, factually, for the sake of the future generation.
Although the initial announcement of the chief guest raised many eyebrows, it was the speech made by him that earned the focus of the media and the literary world.
Propaganda Secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Wimal Weerawansa at the State Literary Festival said, “When I read The Old Man and the Sea written by Guy de Maupassant, I was totally enchanted by it that the text is still in my mind, even today.”
This was clearly a mistake, and as anybody would say, it is only human to make mistakes. Some were sympathetic about the blunder, saying that it is wrongful to pinpoint the mistake while the speech as a whole was relevant and timely. Others were less sympathetic because of the legendary arrogance of the speaker.
However, this blunder brought to the focus of the media two of the most prominent figures in the world literary scenario, Guy de Maupassant and Ernest Hemingway. Much was discussed about the blunder, but no one, not the speaker or the organisers of the State Literary Festival ventured to clarify who actually wrote ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’
Therefore, for the sake of the younger generation and for the organisers of the state literary festival who were obviously confused about politics and literature and finally for the attention of Wimal Weerawansa who never clarified the blunder he made, The Nation decided to run a Who’s Who about Hemingway and Maupassant and The Old Man and the Sea. We thought we owed it to the nation.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)

Generally known as the greatest French short story writer, Guy de Maupassant was born in 1850 at the Château de Miromesnil, near Dieppe in the Seine-Maritime department. Born into an old Lorraine family who had settled in Normandy in the middle of the 18th century, he became greatly influenced by some of the greatest individuals of world literature.
It was Gustave Flaubert that guided Maupassant in his literary and journalistic career. It was at Flaubert’s home he met Émile Zola and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, as well as many of the protagonists of the realist and naturalist schools.
It seems that his high-Realist and fantastic writings are much influenced by the works of Balzac.
In 1880 he published his first masterpiece, Boule de Suif, which met with an instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterised it as ‘a masterpiece that will endure.’ This was Maupassant’s first piece of short fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War, and was followed by short stories such as Deux Amies, Mother Savage, and Mademoiselle Fifi.
With a natural aversion to society, he loved retirement, solitude, and meditation. He travelled extensively in Europe cruising on his private yacht ‘Bel-Ami,’ named after his earlier novel. This feverish lifestyle allowed him to make friends with literary geniuses of his time including Alexandre Dumas, Taine and Goncourts.
In his later years he developed an exaggerated love for solitude, a penchant for self-preservation, and a constant fear of death and mania of persecution was haunting him. He was also compounded by the syphilis he had contracted in his early days. Considered insane in 1891, he died two years later, a month short of his 43rd birthday, on July 6, 1893.
Guy de Maupassant is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

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Not so similar

I took the book from him reverently, and I gazed at these forms incomprehensible to me, but which revealed the immortal thoughts of the greatest shatterer of dreams who had ever dwelt on earth. —Guy de Maupassant

Apart from the fundamental socio-cultural difference between the two authors Maupassant and Hemingway, there are many ideological differences between the two. Born on the either sides of the Atlantic, they are hailed for their different literary traditions.
Guy de Maupassant belongs to the Naturalist or high-Realist schools. His works implicitly highlight the then burgeoning discipline of psychiatry. Most of his works deal with the inner workings of human mind, the influence of solitude and the misery of human life. There is always a tinge of the supernatural in some of his works and this is regarded by many critics as a manifestation of a troubled human mind.
Hemingway, on the other hand, belongs to the literary tradition popularly known as The Lost Generation. In Sri Lanka, authors like Ediriweera Sachchandra and Siri Gunasinghe are believed to be followers of this tradition. The Lost Generation that Hemingway belonged to were said to be disillusioned by the large number of casualties of the First World War, cynical and disdainful of Victorian notions of morality and propriety of their elders and ambivalent about Victorian gender ideals.
It is understood that it was somewhat common among members of this group to complain that American artistic culture lacked the breadth of European work, which led many members to spend large amounts of time in Europe. This selfsame period saw an explosion in American literature and in art, which is now often considered to include some of the greatest literary classics produced by American writers. This generation also produced the first flowering of jazz music, arguably the first distinctly American art form.
It is not only impossible to mistake these two authors who belong to two entirely different generations and also different schools of thought, it can be considered a grave insult committed to their memory and work. If it was difficult to distinguish the two timeframes that they belonged to, it would not have been a difficult task to distinguish the distinctly French flavour of Maupassant’s name. But then, one would have been able to differentiate this simple fact, if only one had known that The Old Man and the Sea was not a French short story but an American novella.