Hemingway's Symbolism

It may be apocryphal: the exact quote is verified nowhere that I've looked for it: but it rings true with Hemingway's rejection of the "symbolism" critics found in his writing. Supposedly he once disgustedly told an earnest student who asked how he knew what symbols to put in his writing, and where: "If you write it right, the symbols put themselves in."

That's probably true of how any person perceives life/the world/reality, whether or not we go so far as to set it down in writing: if we perceive accurately, the "symbolism" is simply there to be found.

I don't much care for Hemingway's writing: but I share his disgust for the mentality that believes it must formulate and superadd its symbolism to reality. That seems to be a core feature of the "religious" mentality: as if God's creation were incomplete until humans' critical faculty had interpreted it.

That seems part of the problem with "Christian media." Even when the "symbols" it chooses are God's, and truly present in His creation: morality, Jesus, righteousness: being extraneously inserted there comes across as artificial. It's a false endeavor, and perceived so even though its falseness is worked by manipulation of what's true.