INTERVIEWER
Who would you say are your literary forebears—those you have learned the most from?
HEMINGWAY
Mark Twain, Flaubert, Stendhal, Bach,
Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Andrew Marvell, John Donne,
Maupassant, the good Kipling, Thoreau, Captain Marryat, Shakespeare,
Mozart, Quevedo, Dante, Virgil, Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel,
Patinir, Goya, Giotto, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, San Juan de la Cruz,
Góngora—it would take a day to remember everyone. Then it would sound as
though I were claiming an erudition I did not possess instead of trying
to remember all the people who have been an influence on my life and
work. This isn’t an old dull question. It is a very good but a solemn
question and requires an examination of conscience. I put in painters,
or started to, because I learn as much from painters about how to write
as from writers. You ask how this is done? It would take another day of
explaining. I should think what one learns from composers and from the
study of harmony and counterpoint would be obvious.
Labels:
Cultural Studies,
Notes,
Thoreau
