"The Revolutionist" is an
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
short story published in his first American volume of stories ''
In Our Time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
''. Originally written as a
vignette
Vignette may refer to:
* Vignette (entertainment), a sketch in a sketch comedy
* Vignette (graphic design), decorative designs in books (originally in the form of leaves and vines) to separate sections or chapters
* Vignette (literature), short, i ...
for his earlier Paris edition of the collection, titled ''in our time'', he rewrote and expanded the piece for the 1925 American edition published by
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Liv ...
. It is only one of two vignettes rewritten as short stories for the American edition.
The story is about a young Hungarian
magyar communist revolutionary fleeing the Hungarian
White Terror to Italy. There he visits museums, where he sees some
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
paintings he likes, while declaring his dislike for the painter
Mantegna.
"The Revolutionist" has received scant attention from literary critics with only a cursory examination of the art mentioned in the short story. Literary critics have speculated whether Hemingway's intended meaning in his allusion to Mantegna's ''
Dead Christ'' is meant to highlight the importance of realism as opposed to idealism, or whether it is a reminder of the character's pain and perhaps the pain suffered by an
entire generation.
Summary
In the story a
Magyar communist revolutionist travels by train through Italy visiting art galleries. He admires
Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto, was an List of Italian painters, Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the International Gothic, Gothic and Italian Ren ...
,
Masaccio
Masaccio (, ; ; December 21, 1401 – summer 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great List of Italian painters, Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaiss ...
, and
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca ( , ; ; ; – 12 October 1492) was an Italian Renaissance painter, Italian painter, mathematician and List of geometers, geometer of the Early Renaissance, nowadays chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is charact ...
, but not
Mantegna. He buys reproductions of the pieces he likes, which he wraps and stows carefully. When he reports to a second character, who acts as the story's narrator, the two take a train to
Romagna
Romagna () is an Italian historical region that approximately corresponds to the south-eastern portion of present-day Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy.
Etymology
The name ''Romagna'' originates from the Latin name ''Romania'', which originally ...
. The narrator then sends the young man on to
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
from where he is to cross to safety across the Alps into Switzerland via
Aosta
Aosta ( , , ; ; , or ; or ) is the principal city of the Aosta Valley, a bilingual Regions of Italy, region in the Italy, Italian Alps, north-northwest of Turin. It is situated near the Italian entrance of the Mont Blanc Tunnel and the G ...
. The narrator provides him with addresses for contacts in Milan and tells him about the Montegnas to be seen there—which the young Communist again explains he dislikes. The story ends with the narrator saying: "The last I heard of him the Swiss had him in a jail near
Sion."
[Hemingway (1925), 82]
Publication history and background

The piece was probably written in 1923 or 1924, when Hemingway lived in Paris with his first wife
Hadley Richardson. A year earlier all of his manuscripts were lost when Hadley packed them in a suitcase that was stolen. Acting on
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
's advice that he had lost no more than the time it took to write the pieces, Hemingway either recreated them or wrote new
vignette
Vignette may refer to:
* Vignette (entertainment), a sketch in a sketch comedy
* Vignette (graphic design), decorative designs in books (originally in the form of leaves and vines) to separate sections or chapters
* Vignette (literature), short, i ...
s and stories.
[Smith (1996), 40–42]
"The Revolutionist" was included as a vignette (Chapter 11) in the 1924 Paris edition of ''
in our time In Our Time may refer to:
* ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid
* ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema"
* ''In ...
'' published by
Bill Bird's Three Mountain's Press.
[Mellow (1992), 239] Of the 18 vignettes contained in the volume, only two were rewritten as short stories for the American edition, published in 1925 by
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Liv ...
. "The Revolutionist" was one; the other was "
A Very Short Story".
It has autobiographical allusions to
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
. In 1918, at age 19 Hemingway recuperated for six months at a hospital in Milan after suffering a mortar hit on the Italian front. There, Hemingway met and fell in love with Red Cross nurse
Agnes von Kurowsky.
Although seven years his senior, Hemingway loved her deeply and the two were to marry on his return to the US at the end of his recuperation.
[Meyers (1985), 37–42] However, after Hemingway went home, he was devastated when Kurowsky broke off the romance in a letter,
[Oliver (1999), 189-190] telling him of her engagement to an Italian officer.
The background of "The Revolutionist" is based on the 1919 Hungarian
White Terror, caused when Communist
iconoclasm
Iconoclasm ()From . ''Iconoclasm'' may also be considered as a back-formation from ''iconoclast'' (Greek: εἰκοκλάστης). The corresponding Greek word for iconoclasm is εἰκονοκλασία, ''eikonoklasia''. is the social belie ...
resulted in a bloody and violent backlash leading to a period of severe repression, from which the young Magyar revolutionist flees.
Style and themes
At barely over a page long, (no more than 400 words
) the piece is variously considered a vignette or a story. It lacks a plot, and seemingly does no more than capture a moment of time in the characters' lives. The piece is an early experiment in Hemingway's "theory of omission"—later to be known as the
Iceberg Theory—in which nonessential information is left out or barely hinted at.
[Oliver (1999), 279–280] The story has attracted little attention from literary critics and much of that examines the allusions to Renaissance painters.
[Sanderson (2006), 98] Early biographers such as
Carlos Baker dismissed the piece as a miniature, or a sketch.
Hemingway was an art lover. He said that "seeing pictures" was one of five things he cared about, going on to say, "And I could remember all the pictures."
[Johnston (1971), 86] Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the ...
caused a minor literary dispute when he made derisive remarks about Hemingway's allusion to the "bitter nail holes" of Mantegna's ''Dead Christ'' in ''
A Farewell to Arms
''A Farewell to Arms'' is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway, set during the Italian campaign of World War I. First published in 1929, it is a first-person account of an American, Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant () in the a ...
''; Hemingway shot back by saying that the characters the writer makes must genuinely be interested in the art, clearly explaining, "A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make the reader see he is formally educated, cultured and well-bred is merely a pop-in-jay."

Of the six references to Mantegna in the entire Hemingway canon, two occur in "The Revolutionist".
[Johnston (1971), 87] Mentioning Mantegna twice in such a very short story signals it is an important point; critics think Hemingway almost certainly meant Mantegna's c. 1501 ''Dead Christ'', which deviates greatly from Giotto and Masaccio and della Francesco in its use of perspective and realism.
[Tetlow, 132] The picture depicts Christ in death as a very human figure with a robust physiognomy in the days before resurrection and ascension. Critic Kenneth Johnston says that for a Renaissance viewer the painting would have a much different effect than for a young man of the
lost generation
The Lost Generation was the Demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort that reached early adulthood during World War I, and preceded the Greatest Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900, ...
"who would see ... an acute reminder that life if painful and painfully short."
Hemingway was fascinated by scenes of the crucifixion, according to Johnston, seeing it symbolic of sacrifice, "the ultimate in pain, suffering and courage",
writing that to Hemingway's young man in "The Revolutionist", "the bitter nail holes of Mantegna's Christ symbolize the painful price of sacrifice".
Hemingway scholar Charles Oliver speculates Mantegna's social rise from humble beginnings could be construed as offensive to the young communist's values.
Critics suggest the young Magyar's dislike of the artist means he rejects Mantegna's realism while conversely the narrator embraces Mantegna and his realism.
Johnston believes the young man has seen and experienced deep suffering and wishes to avoid the visual imagery of the "bitter nail holes" "for they would painfully recall the 'bad things' he and his comrades suffered in their revolutionary faith."
Critic Anthony Hunt thinks the artists and their works is unimportant to the story,
and the piece shows the revolutionist as an idealistic young man more attracted to the countryside of
Tuscany
Tuscany ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of 3,660,834 inhabitants as of 2025. The capital city is Florence.
Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, artistic legacy, and its in ...
and less to cities such as Milan; hence Mantegna merely symbolizes a place.
[Tetlow (1992), 132] Johnston disagrees. He believes the young man is a Hemingway archetype, a character whose idealism has been shattered, who has experienced the horrors of war, and who copes by ignoring or avoiding images and situations that remind him of his past. He has entered a state of "non-thinking".
Hunt finds it significant that the young man keeps the reproductions of artists rejected by the Communist party well-wrapped in ''
Avanti!
''Avanti!'' (; Italian interjection – 'come in!') is a 1972 comedy film produced and directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on Samuel A. Taylor's pla ...
'', the Italian socialist newspaper.
Hunt, furthermore, points out Milan is significant because in that city, where he was hospitalized after his wounding, Hemingway experienced his first romantic disappointment from Agnes von Kurowsky.
References
Sources
* Hemingway, Ernest (1925). ''In Our Time''. New York: Scribner.
* Mellow, James (1992). ''Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences''. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
* Meyers, Jeffrey (1985). ''Hemingway: A Biography''. New York: Macmillan.
* Oliver, Charles (1999). ''Ernest Hemingway A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work''. New York: Checkmark Publishing.
* Sanderson, Rena (2006). ''Hemingway's Italy: New Perspectives''. Louisiana State University Press
* Smith, Paul (1996). "1924: Hemingway's Luggage and the Miraculous Year". in Donaldson, Scott (ed). ''The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway''. New York: Cambridge UP.
* Tetlow, Wendolyn E. (1992). ''Hemingway's "In Our Time": Lyrical Dimensions''. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.
* Waldhorn, Arthur (2002 edition)
''A reader ́s guide to Ernest Hemingway'' Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
External links
Ernest Hemingway Collection, JFK Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Revolutionist
1925 short stories
Modernist short stories
Short stories by Ernest Hemingway
Short stories set in Italy