For Whom the Bell Tolls

by Ernest Hemingway

“I appreciate your aid and your loyalty,” Robert Jordan said. “I appreciate the difficulty caused by the timing of the blowing of the bridge.” “Don’t talk of that,” El Sordo said. “We are here to do what we can do. But this is complicated.” “And on paper very simple,” Robert Jordan grinned. “On paper the bridge is blown at the moment the attack starts in order that nothing shall come up the road. It is very simple.” “That they should let us do something on paper,” El Sordo said. “That we should conceive and execute something on paper.” “ ‘Paper bleeds little,’ ” Robert Jordan quoted the proverb.

Bigotry is an odd thing. To be bigoted you have to be absolutely sure that you are right and nothing makes that surety and righteousness like continence. Continence is the foe of heresy.

So if your life trades its seventy years for seventy hours I have that value now and I am lucky enough to know it. And if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of your lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, why then now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it. Now, ahora, maintenant, heute. Now, it has a funny sound to be a whole world and your life. Esta noche, tonight, ce soir, heute abend. Life and wife, Vie and Mari. No it didn’t work out. The French turned it into husband. There was now and frau; but that did not prove anything either. Take dead, mort, muerto, and todt. Todt was the deadest of them all. War, guerre, guerra, and krieg. Krieg was the most like war, or was it? Or was it only that he knew German the least well? Sweetheart, chérie, prenda, and schatz. He would trade them all for Maria. There was a name.

How did it go about that cup? He’d either have to improve his memory or else never think of quotations because when you missed one it hung in your mind like a name you had forgotten and you could not get rid of it. How did it go about that cup?

“But are there not many fascists in your country?” “There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.” “But you cannot destroy them until they rebel?” “No,” Robert Jordan said. “We cannot destroy them. But we can educate the people so that they will fear fascism and recognize it as it appears and combat it.”

But an intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend his time with fools.”

If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die on it would not have cheered him any for, in the moment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has happened to other men in similar circumstances any more than a widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved husbands have died. Whether one has fear of it or not, one’s death is difficult to accept.

There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion.