User:MonicaLee1996/True at First Light 1

Bookcover showing a photograph of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background and a green plain in the foreground

《曙光示真》的第一版封面，出版于199年

《曙光示真》是美国小说家 欧内斯特·海明威的作品，记录了海明威与第四任妻子玛丽于1953-1954年间在东亚的旅行，该书在海明威的百年诞辰1999年出版。 大众媒体对这本书的评价并不理想，甚至在文学界激起了争论，争论有关于作家逝世后他的作品是否应该被重新编撰并发表。 与大众媒体中评论家不同的是，研究海明威的学者普遍认为，《曙光示真》 是一本内容丰富的作品，同时是海明威后期作品中的杰出代表。

1954年1月，海明威和玛丽在非洲丛林中两天内遭遇了两次坠机。 在他抵达恩德培接受记者采访时，国际媒体报道称他已经死亡。直到几个月后海明威回到欧洲，他的伤势才为大众所知。 在接下来的两年里，海明威在哈瓦那度过了大部分时间，在那里他修改并撰写了那本被他称之为'有关非洲的书'，这本书在他1961年7月自杀时仍未完成。 在20世纪70年代，玛丽把它和海明威的其他手稿一起捐赠给约翰 · f · 肯尼迪图书馆。 这份手稿于20世纪90年代中期被海明威的儿子帕特里克发行。 帕特里克将这部作品缩减为原稿的一半，以强化故事情节并突出其小说色彩。 最终这本书成为了一部同时带有传记和小说色彩的作品。

在书中，海明威探讨了婚姻里的冲突，在非洲欧洲文化与当地文化之间的冲突，以及当一位作家面临瓶颈期时的恐惧感。 本书涵括了他对早期与其他作家间友谊的描写和对写作本质的阐释。

写作背景

海明威曾与第二任妻子波琳在1933年去过非洲旅行，他一直有再去一趟的打算。 那次旅程激发了海明威创作《乞力馬扎羅山的雪》的灵感，该短篇小说被收录在了《非洲的青山》中，这本书是海明威杰出作品中重要的一部分。 二十年后，1953年，在完成《老人与海》的写作后，海明威打算去坦噶尼喀探望他的儿子帕特里克。 美国杂志《展望》表示愿意为他的旅行提供1万5千美元的资金支持，并出资1万美元邀请他撰写一篇3500字的关于此次旅行的文章，同时派Earl Theisen作为摄影师随行，听到这些后海明威很快答应了。 海明威和妻子玛丽在六月离开了古巴，首先到了欧洲为接下来的旅程稍作安排，几个月后他们从威尼斯出发前往坦噶尼喀。 他们于八月抵达，海明威很激动能成为一名荣誉监督官，在信中他写道，”这都是肯尼亚危机导致的“。海明威旅途中的向导Philip Percival，在1933年加入了这对夫妇为期四个月的探险；他们沿着肯尼亚撒冷盖的堤岸出发，在那里摄影师Earl Theisen捕捉下了海明威与象群的合影， 随后他们来到了基马纳沼泽，裂谷 ，最后前往坦噶尼喀探望海明威的儿子帕特里克。在拜访了帕特里克的农场后，他们在乞力马扎罗山的北坡处安顿了两个多月。 在此期间，向导珀西瓦尔离开了他们的营地回到帕特里克的农场，留下海明威担任狩猎监督官的职位，当地的守卫会定期像他汇报。海明威很自豪可以担任此职位，同时他相信：根据这期间的经验，他可以完成一本书的写作。

In the early 1970s, portions of the manuscript had been serialized in Sports Illustrated and anthologized. Mary Hemingway approved the segments published by Sports Illustrated: segments described by Patrick Hemingway as a "straight account of a shooting safari". In a 1999 talk presented at the annual Oak Park Hemingway Society dinner, Patrick Hemingway admitted ownership of Ernest Hemingway's manuscripts had "a rather tortuous history". Access to the Africa manuscript—and to other Hemingway material—required a lawsuit and an eventual agreement with the Hemingway Society.

Scribner's requested a book of fewer than 100,000 words. Patrick Hemingway worked for two years with the 200,000-word manuscript—initially converting to an electronic format, and then editing out superfluous material. He strengthened the storyline, and eliminated long descriptive passages with disparaging remarks about family members and living persons. He explains the manuscript was a draft lacking "ordinary housekeeping chores" such as character names. The cuts made, he said, maintained the integrity of the story and "the reader is not deprived of the essential quality of the book".

Genre

In Africa a thing is true at first light and a lie by noon and you have no more respect for it than for the lovely, perfect weed-fringed lake you see across the sun-baked salt plain. You have walked across that plain in the morning and you know that no such lake is there. But now it is there, absolutely true, beautiful and believable.

—Ernest Hemingway's epigraph for True at First Light

s a travel journal that became a "fanciful memoir" and then a novel of sorts. Patrick Hemingway believed adamantly the manuscript was more than a journal. He emphasized the storyline because, as he explains, "the essential quality of the book is an action with a love interest". He tightened the hunting scenes, and to honor his father's statement to the reader that "where I go, you go" he emphasized the mid-20th century Africa scenes and "the real relation between people ... on that continent". Although he fictionalized the storyline, Patrick Hemingway said of the characters, "I knew every single one ... very well indeed". Hemingway scholar Robert Fleming (who reworked the manuscript as Under Kilimanjaro) considers Patrick Hemingway's editing essentially to be correct because he believes the work shows evidence of an author unable to "turn off the mechanism that produces fiction". The marital conflict is where Fleming believes the book took "a metafictional turn". The published book is marketed as fiction.

Fleming considers True at First Light similar to Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa and A Moveable Feast—a book that presents a primary topic as a backdrop interspersed with internal dialogue. Unlike the other two books, True at First Light is without a preface "indicating the intentions of the author or dictating how he intended to have the book read". Fleming thinks Hemingway regarded Green Hills of Africa as experimental and A Moveable Feast as fiction. Rose Marie Burwell, author of Hemingway: The Postwar Years and the Posthumous Novels, believes Hemingway enjoyed writing the "strange combination of memoir and fiction". She thinks in the fictional aspects of True at First Light he is free to imagine a second wife and to jettison his Protestant background.

主题

海明威是"最肯定的假期"，在 真实的，在第一个光 写弗莱明; 和伯韦尔看到的是一个提交人是谁愿意和愉快地享受的假期，行为幼稚的，无所不知的效果，他的行为有关成员的营地。 给人的印象是一个人寻求深入研究文化的非洲冲突，这需要一个虚构的转Debba的故事情节。 玛丽是其特征为一个唠叨而角色的作家提出的作为"宁静的、成熟和充满爱"，沉浸在自己的本土文化。

Reception

Hemingway with a Cape buffalo in Africa in 1953. The publication of True at First Light began to shift critics emphasis away from the image of the "white man with a gun" in his works.

Although it was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list, the book received poor reviews from the popular press, although better reviews from Hemingway scholars. In a pre-publication review for The New York Times, Ralph Blumenthal said that True at First Light was not as good as Hemingway's earlier autobiographical fiction, and he questioned whether Hemingway would have wanted his "reputation and last printed words entrusted solely to any editor, even a son". Blumenthal wondered about the autobiographical aspects of the work: the relationship between Hemingway and Debba; the background of the Look magazine photoshoot; the safari itself; and the subsequent plane accidents. In the 1999 The New York Times review, James Wood claimed Hemingway knew True at First Light was not a novel though the editors billed it as one. He believes Hemingway's later work became a parody of the earlier work. True at First Light represents the worst of Hemingway's work according to a review in The Guardian.

Christopher Ondaatje writes in The Independent that the existence of a Hemingway industry tends to overshadow his posthumous work. He considers Hemingway's African stories to be among his best although the posthumous work about Africa has been disregarded or overlooked. In her piece for Nation, Brenda Wineapple describes the book as "poignant but not particularly good". However, she points out that it "reminds us of Hemingway's writing at its most touching, acute and beautiful best". The review in Publishers Weekly is much the same saying the "old Hemingway magic flashes sporadically, like lightning, but not often enough".

Hemingway scholars think the work is more complicated and important than a cursory read suggests. With the publication of True at First Light critics saw a more humane and empathetic Hemingway, and began to shift their emphasis away from the image of the "white man with a gun." Robert Fleming considers True at First Light to be part of the Hemingway canon declaring, "This is a more complicated book than it appears to be, and Hemingway deserves far more credit for it than the reviewers of the popular press have given it. Serious critics dealing with the late works would be advised not to ignore it". Gadjusek praises the prose style, which he says is a new direction in Hemingway's writing; he also believes, despite the editing, the book is cohesive and whole with well-ordered themes. Burwell considers the edits to the manuscript generally well-done, though she laments losses that she thinks contribute to some of the subtexts in the book. Biographer Kenneth Lynn criticized Hemingway's sons for editing the manuscript but of Hemingway he says the "memoirist is being totally, indeed helplessly honest," and Gray concedes the publication of the book "underscores Hemingway's courage as a writer". Despite what he considers poor workmanship in the book, Wood considers Hemingway even at his worst a compelling writer and he says the literary estate should be left alone to save the literary influence.

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参考文献

[[Category:1999年書籍]]