it was all a pleasant business: the historical context of “on the quai at smyrna” matthew stewart Boston University One of the keenest impressions which I brought away with me from Smyrna was a feeling of shame that I belonged to the human race. George Horton, U.S. Consul at Smyrna If these very simple things were to be made permanent, as, say, Goya tried to make them in Los Desastros de la Guerra, it could not be done with any shutting of the eyes. Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon “on the quai at smyrna” is one of four fictions of In Our Time whose topical context is the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22.Originally published under the title “Introduction by the Author” in the 1930 Scribner’s edition, the story stands as a vivid counter-example to the old canard about Hem- ingway’s supposed incapacity for fictionalizing anything that he had not seen first-hand. Smyrna (present-day Izmir) burned to the ground in a fire started on 13 September 1922. Only the Muslim and Jewish quarters of this cosmopolitan center of Anatolia were spared. Eventually 250,000 refugees— non-Turks all—crammed the waterfront and were forced to remain there under barbaric conditions for nearly two weeks, an event we shall shortly examine in more detail. Undertaking a difficult and potentially dangerous assignment, Hemingway arrived in Constantinople to cover the still un- folding story on 30 September, more than two weeks after the conflagration THE HEMINGWAY REVIEW, VOL. 23, NO. 1, FALL 2003. Copyright © 2003 The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Published by the University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. matthew stewart • 59 that gave rise to the refugee scene depicted in the story.1 While he did make his way to Thrace—the dreary scene of the Greek retreat fictionalized in “Chapter Two” of In Our Time—he never set foot in Smyrna itself (Meyers 97,Reynolds 71–72). The story-telling strategy chosen by Hemingway is neither straightfor- ward nor pat.“On the Quai” begins in medias res with the reader seemingly eavesdropping on one snippet from a war-story session, and thus having no larger context in which to frame the events. At the outset, the reader is con- fronted with a welter of antecedentless pronouns to sort out gradually. The story is shot through with various ironies and delivered by a storyteller who was a British officer at Smyrna. The narrator who frames the story (“The strange thing was, he said…”) remains anonymous, as does the “he” whose voice then proceeds to relate the events of the story (IOT 11). This speaker (the British “he”) implies that the framing narrator has shared some facets of his experience (“You remember the harbor”), reinforcing the impression of a conversation between two old war chums (IOT 12,Stewart 37). The sheer strangeness and the awful qualities of the events depicted command attention; nonetheless the storyteller himself remains of partic- ular fascination. Missing in the criticism of the story is a full elaboration of the historical context the speaker has lived through—and the effects of his experiences on the formulation of his narrative voice. Jeffrey Meyers’s use- ful summary of Hemingway’s experiences in Constantinople and Thrace stops short of explaining the particular historical aspects of the Smyrna af- fair that would have affected Hemingway’s storyteller. According to Hem- ingway’s well-known formulation of his iceberg technique, these elided aspects correspond to the “things” the author knew but omitted, for the story does not develop the historical background to the events narrated (or only alluded to) therein.2 Meyers concludes that Hemingway’s omissions are consistent with his interest in developing a “spotlight rather than a stage” in his Greco-Turkish fictions (98). This is true insofar as it describes the author’s aesthetic intent, but Meyers’ account does not reveal the full story of diplomatic deceitfulness, nor the magnitude of the horrors in- volved in the Smyrna debacle, nor does he state that Hemingway’s speaker would have been privy to this background as well as to the immediate events. This fuller history amounts to the dark backdrop without which the spotlight would not function as a spotlight. The speaker is speaking out of a deeper history than has been heretofore acknowledged. 60 • THE HEMINGWAY rEVIEW The story’s intriguing narrative voice is evidently British, laden with irony and sang-froid, which seem to be the key elements in a self-produced protective shell.3 The speaker gives the impression of having seen too much, of having experienced more than he can handle. And he has found himself powerless to mitigate a terrible situation even in the slightest. He needs to tell this story, but will not allow himself straightforwardly to confess the de- gree of horror he felt, nor to elaborate the particulars of his experience. Thus the horrible becomes “nice” in his recounting. That the historical events relating to “On the Quai at Smyrna” have grown dim after eight decades is inevitable. Although Hemingway was not present to see the Greek army’s retreat and evacuation from Smyrna, nor the massacre of Armenians and the razing of the city which followed hard on its re-occupation by the Turks, he was undoubtedly familiar with the outlines of the story before arriving in Constantinople, and had ample op- portunity to hear particulars since he stayed for over three weeks to cover the denouement to the catastrophe (Reynolds 73, 78). He spoke to journal- ists and as many other people in-the-know as he could find, including British liaison officers. As James R. Mellow has stated, it took only a few days for Hemingway to “pick up a knowledgeable vocabulary and widening background in Middle Eastern politics” that would allow him “to assume the voice of authority” often present in his journalism (196). With experi- ence of the Italian front in the First World War and of post-war Europe, he already had direct knowledge of modern warfare’s inhumane aspects. By 1922, the displacement of mass populations, the display of brutality towards civilian and military populations alike, and the extreme situations forced upon people by war (here, for example, the need to give birth in the dark hold of a ship), had become a familiar result of modern political-military conduct. Even though man’s industrialized inhumanity had already demonstrated itself in the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Smyrna disaster was nonetheless shocking, and remains so to this day. The events that transpired in Anatolia between the years 1919–1922 were momentous in the formation of modern Turkey and modern Greece alike. The destruction by fire of the lovely and cosmopolitan seaside city can be seen as a climax to a series of political and military misadventures begotten by the Great Powers upon a too-willing Greece. Catastrophic defeats (Gal- lipoli, the Alamo, Little Big Horn) can produce a special resonance in the public imagination, and Smyrna has achieved a quasi-mythic potency for matthew stewart • 61 Greeks. The Greco-Turkish war in general and the Smyrna debacle in par- ticular are events of such complexity that no article can articulate, let alone evaluate, every detail.4 However, several aspects of the affair hold a particu- lar relevance for Hemingway’s story. Greece had reason to expect British support in the autumn of 1922 when Mustafa Kemal launched a counter-of- fensive westward through Asia Minor towards Smyrna. Under the leader- ship of Eleutherios Venizelos, whom British Prime Minister David Lloyd George called (in an unfortunately worded but well-intended phrase) “the greatest statesman Greece had thrown up since the days of Pericles,” the Greeks had lent support to the Entente powers during the latter stages of the First World War (qtd. in Swallow 111). Thus the Greeks anticipated Al- lied support after the war. In light of Lloyd George’s openly expressed pro- Greek sentiments, his warm feelings for Venizelos, and his periodic official and quasi-official encouragement of Hellenic aspirations, these expecta- tions were not unreasonable. Foremost among the anticipated rewards was the return (as the Greeks saw the matter) to Greece of Anatolia and its gem city Smyrna after long years of Ottoman control; this restoration of Greek dominion in Asia Minor was of particular importance in the Venizelist po- litical agenda, a key feature of the so-called “Great Idea” propounded by his government. While there was a good-deal of territorial self-aggrandizement and even outright grasping inherent in the “Great Idea,” Smyrna could fairly be described as more Greek than Turkish in 1919. After long deliberation that did not produce a document abundant in fore- sight, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed on 10 August 1920 (but never imple- mented). This document outlined the Great Powers’ peace terms with Turkey (not covered by Versailles). It was produced in the wake of mutually exclusive Allied wartime promises—the same territories being pledged to both Italy and Greece—and fabricated in the mold of nationalistic self-seeking and diplo- matic intrigue that characterized such a large part of the victors’ agenda. The treaty left Anatolia nominally under Turkish sovereignty, but to be adminis- tered by Greece for a minimum of five years, after which a plebiscite would be held. This diplomatic prescription for confusion and resentment had been preceded by Greek military occupation of the area (begun 15 May 1919, and initially entailing 20,000 troops) achieved “under the protection of allied war- ships” and with the special approval of Lloyd George’s government (Clogg 113).