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Definition of Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to emphasize a point... read full definition
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations... read full definition
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements... read full definition
Paris Sketches: Ezra Pound and His Bel Esprit
Explanation and Analysis—Shackled in the Bank:
In Paris Sketches: Ezra Pound and His Bel Esprit, Hemingway recounts his part in Ezra Pound's "Bel Esprit," a writers' collective that aimed to fund T.S. Eliot's writing career. Hemingway uses a hyperbolic metaphor to describe his youthful devotion to this cause:
As a member of Bel Esprit I campaigned energetically and my happiest dreams in those days were of seeing the Major stride out of the bank a free man.
"The Major" is Hemingway's tongue-in-cheek nickname for Eliot, who was never in the military. Despite this joke, Hemingway takes Eliot's freedom to write full time very seriously. Eliot does not have a military pension or enough money to support himself without a dependable, paying job, and so he works at a bank. This means that he must fit his writing into the hours when he is not at work. Spending all day writing in cafés and walking around Paris is so integral to Hemingway's own writing process that he compares the bank, hyperbolically, to a prison from which he and the rest of the Bel Esprit are trying to liberate Eliot. Only when Eliot is "free" will he have the chance to build a true career as a writer.
Hemingway's metaphor may be over-the-top, but it is a window into his mindset at this time in his life. For him, the bank represents more than competition for Eliot's time. It also represents capitalism itself, which Hemingway has always felt is a threat to creativity. Hemingway is constantly worried about becoming a sellout and losing his creative edge; he hates the idea of writing stories according to a formula he knows will sell, as F. Scott Fitzgerald does. He is always facing the tension between his desire to support his family with his writing and his commitment to intellectual freedom and the life of the starving artist. The collective effort to spring Eliot out of the bank where he is "imprisoned" provides social reinforcement for Hemingway's belief that writers should not be beholden to capitalism. If he and his friends can free Eliot, there is hope that all writers might be freed from capitalism.
In retrospect, Hemingway seems affectionate for this former, optimistic version of himself, but he also seems to think that his dreams were too hopeful. The Bel Esprit was disbanded when a single wealthy patron funded Eliot, leading to Eliot's prolific and successful career but cutting short the dream of the writers' collective to support itself. Hemingway also recalls the anxiety he felt as a young man who often struggled to feed himself and his family. Freedom from capitalism turned out to be an impossible goal, even when he could write all day in the Parisian cafés.
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