হেমিংওয়ে

There is no left and right in writing. There is only good and bad writing.

These little punks who have never seen men street fighting, let alone a revolution, writing and saying how can you be indifferent to great political etc. etc. I refer to an outfit in, I believe, Davenport, Iowa. Listen—they never even heard of the events that produced the heat of rage, hatred, indignation, and disillusion that formed or forged what they call indifference.

I’m no goddamned patriot nor will I swing to left or right.

I’ve seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry.

…don’t let them suck you in to start writing about the proletariat, if you don’t come from the proletariat, just to please the recently politically enlightened critics. In a little while these critics will be something else. I’ve seen them be a lot of things and none of them was pretty. Write about what you know and write truly and tell them all where they can place it…. Books should be about the people you know, that you love and hate, not about the people you study about.

Now a writer can make himself a nice career while he is alive by espousing a politcal cause, working for it, making a profession of believing in it, and if it wins he will be very well placed. All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later. A man can be a Fascist or a Communist and if his outfit gets in he can get to be an ambassador or have a million copies of his books printed by the Government or any of the other rewards the boys dream about. Because the literary revolution boys are all ambitious. I have been living for some time where revolutions have gotten past the parlor or publishers’ tea and light picketing stage and I know. A lot of my friends have gotten excellent jobs and some others are in jail. But none of this will help the writer as a writer unless he finds something new to add to human knowledge while he is writing. Otherwise he will stink like any other writer when they bury him; except, since he has had political affiliations, they will send more flowers at the time and later he will stink a little more.

সূত্রঃ Larry W. Phillips সম্পাদিত 'Ernest Hemingway on Wrinting'। হেমিংওয়ের বিভিন্ন চিঠিপত্র, প্রবন্ধ থেকে লেখালিখিসংক্রান্ত মতামত জড়ো করে বইটি তৈরি। ওপরের উক্তিগুলো সবই বইটির 'On Politics' খণ্ড থেকে নেওয়া।