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| Hemingway, Ernest Miller
Hemingway, Ernest Miller
Spezialgebiet
Unterrichtsfach: Englisch
Lehrer: Prof. Mag. Renate Bartenstein
Schüler: Carl Rauch
Klasse: 8.a
Jahr meiner Matura: 2000
Ernest Miller Hemingway
List of contends
His youth
His childhood
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21st, 1899 in Oak Park.
Oak Park is a very wealthy suburb in the west of Chicago. He is the second out
of six children, his older sister’s name is Marcelline and his younger
sister’s names are Ursula, Madelaine and Carol. His youngest brother was
called Leicster. His mother Grace Hemingway, born as Grace Hall, was feministic
and talented in music, so she organised a chorus and her husband cooked. His
name is Eduard Hemingway and he worked as a doctor. He showed his son the beauty
of free nature and taught him how to fish and hunt. In the short story
“Fathers and Sons” Hemingway describes the relation to his father:
Hunting this country for quail as his father had taught him, Nicholas Adams
started thinking about his father. When he first thought about him it was always
the eyes. The big frame, the quick movements, the wide shoulders, the hooked
hawk nose, the beard that covered the weak chin, you never thought about –
it was always the eyes. They were protected in his head by the formation of the
brows; set deep as though a special protection had been devised for some very
valuable instrument. They saw much farther and much quicker than the human eye
sees and they were the great gift his father had.
And later: Nick was very grateful to him for two things; fishing and
shooting. His father was as sound on those two things as he was unsound on sex,
for instance, and Nick was glad that it had been that way; for some one has to
give you your first gun or the opportunity to get it and use it(...) he loved to
fish and to shoot exactly as much as when he first had gone with his father. It
was a passion that had never slackened and he was very grateful to his father
for bringing him to know it.
Ernest Miller Hemingway attented high-school in the Oak Park High, where he
graduated as the best of 150 scholars. In his final exam he had As in all
subjects, in History, Chemistry, English and Latin. As a consequence he got the
nickname “Hemingstein”, that he didn’t loose till he died. In
school he wrote for the newspaper and participated in the football, in the cross
country and in the swimming teams, later he took boxing lessons. Furthermore he
was member of the discussion group “ The Burke Club” and he belonged
to the rifle association and to the school orchestra. There he played the cello.
He was so impressed by a story by Richard Harding Davis that as a consequence he
decided to become a journalist against the will of his father and his
grandfather. They wanted him to join a university as they and his sisters did to
hold the academic tradition.
After finishing high school he was planning to start work as a journalist
at the “Kansas City Star” after the summer break. His family spent
their holidays at Wallon Lake as they did every summer for Ernest’s whole
life.
First job and military service
When he started to work for the Kansas City Star in 1917, his subjects were
the police, the hospital and the station and these topics would influence his
whole poetry. Another journalist there had just returned from France, so
Hemingway wanted to get there too, but he wasn’t taken for the military
service because of bad eyes. So he joined the ambulance. On April
30th, 1918 he left the newspaper after only seven months. The
atmosphere there was captured in the stories “A pursue” and
“In our time”.
In May he was sent to Europe. He arrived in Bordeaux and passing Paris he
was sent to Mailand. There they had to help Italy after its defeat in Caporetto.
He worked in Schio in the East of Lake Locarno and after three weeks he chose to
help in a kitchen close to the frontline. He described his work in Italy later
in the book “A Farewell to Arms”: In the late summer of that year
we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to
the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the
channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised
powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the
leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops, arching along the road and
the dust rising and afterward the road bare and white except for the
leaves............
On July 8th, 1918 he was seriously wounded by a grenade.
Although his leg was hurt, he was able to carry another injured person to the
ambulance, later he was awarded two medals, the “Croce di Guerra”
and the “Medaglia d’Argento al Valore”, which was one of the
highest possible medals. But first he had to cure his leg in hospital in
Mailand. Later on he will tell somebody that there had been 227 metall splinters
in his leg. In Mailand he fell in love with the nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, who
was seven years older than him. In autumn she was transferred to Treviso, but
they went on writing letters. He returned to the United States in 1919 and they
agreed that he should find work and then she would follow him and they would get
married. But before he had found a suitable job, she wrote that she had fallen
in love with an Italian and that she wanted to marry this other man. Hemingway
wrote about her in “A very short story” and in the “A farewell
to arms”.
A farewell to arms
Ten years after he had left the frontline and Italy, he treated the war
theme in this book. The main character is Fredric Henry, a young American who
works for the ambulance voluntarily. After being wounded he returns to the front
exactly when the Austrians had won the battle at Caporetto. He is accused of
desertion and is to be shot, but he was can flee to Switzerland. In a hospital
he gets to know the English nurse Catherine Barkley and they fall in love. After
fleeing together they enjoy only a short time together. She dies in child-birth.
Fredric Henry has become a symbol for a real man who is defeated several times,
in the war and in his love, but who still goes on and doesn’t give up.
Many people of that generation recognised themselves in the main character. The
first edition in 1929 was sold more than 90.000 times.
Paris
Living in Paris
After Ernest Miller Hemingway returned to the United States in
February1919, he was celebrated as a hero. But after receiving the
divorce-letter from Agnes von Kurowsky, he got deeply depressed. He started to
quarrel with his mother. He moved to friends in Toronto and worked for the
“Toronto Star” and then for the “Cooperative
Commonwealth” in Chicago. Meanwhile he started to write his short stories.
In Chicago he fell in love with Hadley Richardson. She was eight years
older than he and she was a passionate piano player.
After a couple of months they got married on September 3rd, 1921
in a small church in Horton Bay in Michigan. He was 22 years and she 30 years
old. Two months later they moved to France, hoping that the cultural climate
would be more open minded there. The author Sherwood Andersoon had persuaded
them to leave the U.S. and had given them letters of recommendation to Gertrude
Stein, James Joyce and Sylvia Beach.
They arrived in Paris on December 21st, 1921, three months after
their wedding. They lived in a small flat, during the days he sat in a small
cafe to work or to discuss news. He was an employee for European news of the
Toronto Star. They had enough money to spend their holidays at the Riviera.
They spend some winters in Vorarlberg to go skiing until 1924, because it was so
cheap. They lived in Hotel Taube in Schruns, drank beer, went skiing and Ernest
wrote the most difficult parts of his books.
In August 1923 the couple lived in Toronto for a short time to have their
child “Bumby” be born there, but they returned after four months to
Paris. The full name of this child was John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. One of his
godparents was Gertrude Stein.
Back in Paris they moved into a better quarter close to Gertrude
Stein’s salon and got in contact with many important artists. Hemingway
hoped to have his “Short Stories” published, but found no editor.
Young poets usually gained some reputation by publishing their pieces in one of
the small newspapers. There were some in Paris: The “Little Review”,
“Transatlantic Review” or “This Quarter”. They worked on
a little budget and could afford hardly any wages, but they helped to get known.
Before being popular enough to be published, Ernest wrote a lot of stories for
these small newspapers.
As a reporter for the “Toronto Star” he travelled through the
whole of Europe. He wrote articles from Genua, an interview with Benito
Mussolini in Mailand, about the Greek-Turkish war from Istanbul or about a peace
conference in Lausanne. We get the impression that he describes the experiences
there not only in his articles but also in his books.
In January 1927 Hadley and Ernest divorced because he fell in love with
Pauline Pfeiffer, his wife’s best friend.
Friends and supporters
Sherwood Anderson: Anderson had persuaded the Hemingways to leave
the United States and to move to Paris. He had given them letters of
recommendation to his friends in the cultural world. There Hemingway was
sometimes compared to Sherwood Anderson’s style and so he once wrote a
parody on one of his friend’s pieces. He later tried to excuse this by
saying that he had wanted to improve his friend’s style. Anyway, Anderson
was very angry at Ernest.
Josephine Baker: She was a well known dancer in the night clubs. One
evening Hemingway saw her in a club without knowing her and he asked her for a
dance. They danced for the whole evening and only in the end he learned her
name.
Gertrude Stein: She also came from the United States and she gave
advice to many young poets and painters. She supported Picasso right from the
beginning and also gave some useful advice to Hemingway. Her house was
frequented by all the cultural society of Paris. He even used to visit her when
he was better known than she had ever been.
Sylvia Beach: She had come to Europe as a member of Red Cross as
Hemingway did, but she didn’t return. She founded a meeting point for
artist and a book shop called “Shakespeare and Company”. She helped
young poets in publishing their pieces and in paying their bills and she was a
good friend of Ernest Hemingway’s.
Ezra Pound: He was a Professor for romanistic languages and he was a
supporter of young poets. He helped James Joyce to become famous and also Ernest
Hemingway. Pound had some of Hemingway’s texts printed and he found a job
for Ernest as a reporter for the “Transatlantic Review”. Pound later
moved to Italy and worked for the radio there, but in pronouncing slogans
against America and against Jews, he lost his good reputation.
James Joyce: He was born in Dublin, came to Paris, returned to
Dublin and married Nora Barnacle. Then he got a job as an English teacher in
Triest. Then he came back to Paris and met Ernest in Sylvia Beach’s
bookshop. They became good friends and shared the hobby of drinking. Hemingway
helped him in publishing his book “Ulysses”.
Wyndham Lewis: He came to Paris as a friend of Ezra Pound’s,
but in opposite to his teacher he couldn’t stand Ernest Hemingway. They
criticised each other, both wanting to gain attention of the publishers.
Ford Madox Ford: He was the editor of a newspaper and employed
Hemingway. He even allowed Ernest to take care of the paper while he was away.
When Hemingway published mean critics and a boring story, nobody wanted to buy
it any more, so the newspaper had to close down.
Robert McAlmon: He owned a small publishing house and was wealthy
enough to publish new authors. So he was the first to print a book by Ernest
Hemingway, “Three Stories and Ten Poems” and he was the first
important critic to praise Hemingway.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: They didn’t really like each other, but
they had a common interest in litterature. Fitzgerald didn’t hold one
liquor well and Hemingway disliked his face. They shared some friends and met
sometimes, but were the complete opposite to each other. One was rich, but not
very disciplined in working, the other was poor, but a hard worker. Scott
Fitzgerald recommended Hemingway at Scribner’s publishing house and they
took over “The sun also rises” in 1926.
Gerald and Sarah Murphy
They were a very rich couple with a lot of important friends and also
supporters of modern art. They knew Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and
together they went skiing or visited the Riviera. They introduced Hemingway in
bullfighting and from that time on he went to Spain every year, where he also
met his second wife Pauline Pfeiffer. He learned the bullfight slang and soon
became well known in the Spanish population. The books “The sun also
rises” and “In our time” reflect on these journeys.
In the cafes he got to know some famous artists like Joan Miró,
Pablo Picasso, Matisse, Braque or Claude Monet and he was fascinated by modern
art. He even bought a picture of Joan Miró, “The farm”, and
gave it as a gift to his wife Hadley.
The sun also rises
The book is about the U.S. Journalist Jake Barnes, who was wounded in the
war and became impotent. He frequently meets with some friends in Paris to find
out how to live without problems, but he falls in love with the English Lady
Ashley. They stay together although he cannot satisfy her sexual demands.
Robert John is another character in the book, another American to live in
Paris. But he has never been accepted by local society. The three of them travel
together to Spain to see some bullfighting. After getting to know the torero
Romero, Lady Ashley stops her affair with John and he returns to Paris in
madness. She also leaves the torero soon to prevent him from being spoiled by
her. In the end she and Jake come together again.
Death in the afternoon
This book was printed in 1932. The story takes place in Spain and describes
the way a bullfight works, the functions of the single participants, of the
torero, the matador, the picadero or the banderillos. To Hemingway bullfighting
is more a sport than a show, a game with death. For him a torero is a
“real” man when he keeps completely cool although he plays with his
life.
Key West
Whitehead Street 907
In the year 1927 Ernest Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer, who was four
years older. She came from a very wealthy family. She had learned journalism in
school and was reporting about fashion for the newspaper “Vogue”,
when his first books were printed and he started gaining some reputation as a
poet. She completely changed his way of living: They didn’t ski in cheap
Schruns but in fashionable Gstaad, they hunted lions in Africa. They
didn’t spend time watching bike-competitions any longer, but waiting for
fish in Key West, where they had moved in 1928. Ernest Hemingway wanted to
rediscover the United States. Key West is the island that is situated in the
very South of the peninsula of Florida. To get there in those days they had to
get on a ferry boat. The island was inhabited by a couple of poor Spanish
inhabitants and some rich, who had their own ships. It was a perfect place to go
fishing, swimming or diving and Hemingway got very passionate for these new
hobbies.
Their first child Patrick was born on the 27th of June 1928 and
their second one Gregory on the 12th of November 1931.
They lived in Key West for twelve years and he wrote most of his successful
pieces there: “Death in the afternoon”, “To have and have
not”, “The green hills of Africa”, “The fifth
column”, “For whom the bell tolls” and the two short stories
“The snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The short happy life of
Francis Macomber”.
The family bought an old house and renovated it very expensively. They
created a wonderful place, Hemingway called it “the most beautiful piece
of land where I have ever been!”. They invited all their friends and many
came. One of them was Max Perkins, the lector of Hemingway’s books. He
proved a very good friend, even when all the newspapers criticised his work.
The Hemingways also got to know some neighbours, the captain Bra Saunders,
who taught him professional fishing, the docker Jim Sullivan, who became
godfather of Hemingway’s third child, or the alcohol smuggler Joe Russell.
They gave him the insight for the book “The old man and the sea”,
which was published far later in 1956:
The old man and the sea
The old man Santiago has been fishing for weeks without success. He has
been sailing out into the sea every day without catching a single fish. After
eighty-four unlucky days he drives far out again. A huge swordfish, longer than
his boat, swallows the bait and struggles on the line. The combat lasts two days
and two nights. The fisher man speaks to himself and uses all his energy and
experience to beat the fish which nevertheless pulls the boat further and
further out into the ocean. Finally the fish gives up and dies. Santiago fastens
the fish on one side of the boat and starts his return. But sharks discover the
fresh meat and attack. The old man tries to defend his booty, but arriving in
the harbour, there is nothing left but fishbone.
In his true life Hemingway had gone through one very similar situation. He
had caught two tuna, one with 140 kilogram, the other with even more, but they
were attacked by sharks. He used a machine gun to drive them away and so won the
fight against nature other than the old man.
In the holidays
In summer they used to travel to Wyoming to a small ranch to escape from
the heat and danger of thunderstorms in Florida. There they lived in the
L-Bar-T-Ranch close to the Yellowstone National Park. There he wrote
“Death in the afternoon”, which I already mentioned before.
In 1933 Ernest and Pauline Hemingway and Charles Thompson, a friend from
Key West, took a ship to Mombasa in Kenia. In Kenia they hired Philip Percival
as a guide. He taught them how to hunt. Ernest was infected with dysentery. A
small aeroplane picked him up to bring him to Nairobi, where he was soon cured.
In his short novel “Snows under Kilimanjaro” one passage surely
refers to this flight: The boys picked up the cot and carried it around the
green tents and down along the rock and out onto the plain and along past the
smudges that were burning brightly now, the grass all consumed, and the wind
fanning the fire, to the little plane. It was difficult getting him in, but once
in he lay back the leather seat, and the leg was stuck straight out to one side
of the seat where Compton sat. Compton started the motor and got in. He waved to
Helen and to the boys and, as the clatter moved into the old familiar roar, they
swung around with Compie watching for wart-hog holes and roared, bumping, along
the stretch between the fires and with the last bump rose and he saw them all
standing below, waving, and the camp beside the hill, flattening now, and the
plain spreading, clumps of trees, and the bush flattening, while the game trails
ran now smoothly to the dry waterholes, and there was a new water that he had
never known of.
Hemingway returned soon and went on hunting. We find his feelings and
impressions about this Africa trip in his book “The green hills of
Africa”.
The green hills of Africa
He published the book in 1935 and it gives us a report of his African hunt
in 1933. In thirteen chapters members of the tour and some local hunters discuss
about family, life and literature, but most of the time they stand up early and
hunt. It is an autobiography and mentions many themes which touch
Hemingway’s life, for instance violence, envy, courage and the will to
survive.
The snows of Kilimanjaro
This book was printed in 1936, one year after “The green hills of
Africa”. Poet Harry gets ill because of an injured leg. He didn’t
notice before, and so the gangrene was able to spread out. Waiting for the
rescue aeroplane, he keeps talking with his wife. She is sure that the plane
will arrive in time, but he already believes in his death. Close to death he
remembers many topics he had wanted to write about during his life. In the end
he mixes up reality and dreams, one of them describing very realisticly how the
plane arrives to take him away. Next morning his wife will find him dead.
The short and happy life of Francis Macomber
Francis Macomber, a good-natured man, and his wife Margaret make a safari
through Africa seeking adventure. Although their relationship is not all that
happy any more, they are still together. Partly she is too old to find another
rich man, and she is too pretty to be left by her husband. They hire the English
guide Wilson and hunt animals. One day they are attacked by a hurt lion. Francis
runs away, but Wilson keeps cool and shoots the animal. Francis` wife is
disappointed by her nervous husband, criticises him and even spends the night
with Wilson. Reacting, the next day Francis suddenly abandons all his fears.
When a buffalo runs right his way, he doesn’t escape, but stands still and
aims on the animal with his rifle. Realising that with his new courage he would
leave her soon, Margaret shoots him.
Ships
Hemingway crossed the Atlantic more than thirty times. He enjoyed those big
ocean liners. His first transports over the Atlantic were with the
“Chicago” into the First World War and then back to the United
States. This was an army transporter and not very comfortable. Later he took the
“Normandie” and the “Ile-de-France”, and these were big
and beautiful ships. In 1934 he got to know Marlene Dietrich on such a trip.
Their friendship should last for 27 years.
Coming back from Africa, he bought a boat in Brooklyn docks. He wanted to
discover the world of ocean fishing with his own boat. It was 12 metres long,
and had a range of 750 kilometres. He called it “Pilar” after a
nickname of Pauline. This boat and the experiences he made with it led him to
the ideas for his books “To have and have not” and “The old
man and the sea”, which I have already mentioned above. Living in Key West
he spent some hours every day on the boat working or fishing. He and his sons
sometimes drove out for several days and he taught them how to handle big fish
and how to survive in nature, as he had learned from his father years before.
Later he used the boat as a hideout for love affairs. One of them was with Jane
Mason. She was a very rich and feministic woman and lived in Havanna. Maybe he
had bought the boat in order to be able to visit her more often. They were in
love for about five years, but Pauline didn’t object and Jane’s
husband didn’t even notice.
In 1940 Hemingway armed the boat, so he could search for German
submarines.
To have and have not
In 1937 he wrote a story about Harry Morgan. Harry Morgan lives in Key West
and earns his money renting a motor yacht to rich fishermen. He is physically
handicapped because a customs investigator once shot his arm. One customer
destroys his fishing equipment. Then he transports illegal immigrants from Cuba
to Florida and murders someone. When the customs office investigates on him
smuggling alcoholics, they confiscated his boat. Finally four Cubans who want to
support the revolution in Cuba highjack his boat and shoot his shipmate. Then
they force him to drive his yacht to Cuba. He tries to kill his customers, but
he is hurt deadly in his stomach, too.
Spain
Martha Gellhorn
When the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer
didn’t work so well any more and when the affair with Jane Mason was over,
Hemingway was looking for another woman. Martha Gellhorn had once come into
“Sloppy’s Joe” bar where Hemingway was a regular customer.
They started a relationship, but in 1936 she moved to Germany. She soon left to
Spain to warn the Spanish of Hitler. There she would meet again with Ernest
Hemingway.
The Spanish Civil War
On July 17th, 1936 the Spanish Civil War began. General Franco
and the army in Morocco revolted against the Republican government in Madrid.
Franco was supported by Hitler Germany and Mussolini Italy, while the Soviet
Union supported the Spanish government.
Ernst Hemingway was asked to report from this war by the North American
Newspaper Alliance. In February 1937 he left New York to travel to Spain, as he
did for many times during the following two years. He supported the Socialists
and collected money for the film about this war “The Spanish Earth”.
It turned out a big success, and with the money he earned he bought some
ambulance cars for Spain.
When the Republicans won the battle of Teruel, he marched into the captured
city with the troops. He followed the troops till only Barcelona and Madrid were
in their hands. Then the newspaper quit their assignment, because the complete
victory of Franco was only a matter of time. He returned in November 1938
together with Marlene Dietrich.
For whom the bell tolls
Two years later he publishes the book about the Civil War. The first
sentence is: No man is an island. And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Robert Jordan, who teaches Spanish in the United States, voluntarily joins
the Republican forces in Spain. He receives the order to destroy an important
bridge with the help of the partisans. He spends three days and three nights
there. Pablo the leader is a very passionate socialist. Realising that his party
would loose the war, he strives to survive the war by all means. Then there is
his wife Pilar. She believes in the Republic system and holds the group
together. She especially cares for young Maria, who was raped by the fascists
after her parents had been killed.
Jordan and this young girl fall in love, but they both know that it will
not last for a long time.
Being surrounded by hostile forces on the land and in the air, they
fullfill the order to destroy the bridge. But Jordan is wounded and cannot
escape any more. Waiting for his death, he tries to help his friends by holding
up the followers.
Before the war
When Hemingway’s book “For whom the bell tolls” came out,
Second World War had already started, but Ernest went on with his life as usual.
Martha, he and his three sons moved into the “Finca Vigia” near
Havana. It was surrounded by a swimmingpool, the sea, a tennis court and a big
garden. The couple employed seven servants. They still owned the
“Pilar”. Sometimes they drove to Havana to see baseball games or to
attend the “Floridita”, Hemingway’s favourite bar.
World War II
The war in China
In January 1941 the couple travelled to China. She had to write a story for
“Collier’s” and he was to find out about the consequences of
the war for U.S. economic interests for the “PM” newspaper. They
travelled around a lot by aeroplane, truck, car, boat or horse and saw the poor
life of the Chinese. They also met a Chinese general. While Martha visited
Singapore and Java, he went back to the United States via Hongkong. In these
years their relationship suffered from Martha not being at home while she
reported from many different places in the world.
World war II
While Martha travelled through Europe, Hemingway helped the U.S.. He
organised a spy ring in Cuba to defend it against German or Japanese spies. He
engaged six full-time agents and more than twenty helpers. This ring observed
supporters of Hitler and Franco from 1942 until 1943. Next he converted his boat
“Pilar” into a spy boat to follow German submarines in the golf of
Mexico.
But Hemingway wanted to work at the front, too. He was engaged by
“Collier’s” as chief correspondent, instead of his wife. She
was angry at him and moved into another hotel. In the meantime he fell in love
with Mary Welsh, a reporter for “Time-magazine”.
Although Hemingway was wounded in a car accident, he flew with aeroplanes
and he watched D-Day from a bomber. His wife Martha even landed with the troops
on an ambulance ship. Hemingway came to France soon after and followed the
22nd regiment. This regiment first arrived in Paris, destroyed the
“Siegfried-line” and defended their position successfully during the
German attack in the Ardennes.
Years later he would narrate that arriving in Paris he directly drove to
the hotel “Ritz” to drink something at the bar. In Paris he had
always lived in the “Ritz”, there was a kind of association:
Ritz-Paris, Paris-Ritz.
He got wounded during a German attack, and for some days he was governor of
Rambouillet.
He questioned prisoners, collected weapons and watched for German
positions, but he was almost sent back to the United States because of his
behaviour. He considered the battle of “Hürtenwald” as the
highlight of the war. This battle was so hard that he himself took a weapon
– against the convention of Genf – and shot German soldiers.
They got divorced in 1945 and immediately he tried to convince Mary Welsh
to marry him.
Cuba, Venice and his last days
Mary Welsh
Mary Welsh was born in 1908 in Minnesota. She studied journalism at the
“Northwestern University”, but stopped her education to work for
“The American Florist”. Later she got a job for “Daily
Express”. During World War II Mary worked for “Time-magazine”.
She married Ernest Hemingway in 1946. Both were passionate hunters, skiers and
fishers and spent days on the “Pilar”. She was able to drink as much
as he did, still their lives were neither quiet nor peaceful. They often
quarrelled, he had some other girlfriends, but they never divorced.
Venice
In 1948 the couple spent their winter in Venice instead of Cortina. They
lived in the noble hotel “Gritti Palace” and visited Venice’s
society. That is where Ernest got to know Adriana Ivancich. She was 18 years old
and quite pretty. They dated almost every day in Venice. In the book
“Across the river and into the trees” he uses her character for the
main person.
The Hemingways never went to Venice in the summer, because Ernest
didn’t like the stones of Venice in the hot sun.
In 1953 he came to Venice again after a plane accident. In Africa his plane
had crashed into the earth and the rescue machine had also had an accident.
Ernest was injured, but fortunately not seriously. In Venice, after a couple of
days, he got dizzy and broke down in a fire. He received some burns and lost
almost all his hair.
Across the river and into the trees
In this short book he describes the last three days in the life of Richard
Cantwell, who is a fifty year old army colonel. He and his driver travel to
Venice to hunt ducks and to meet the very young Renata. Richard spends two days
in Venice and on the hunt’s day he dies because of heart attack, but his
driver doesn’t notice.
The Nobel price
On October 28th, 1954 the Swedish academy decided to award the
Nobel price to Ernest Hemingway because of his powerful and modern style and his
idealism for male brave and principles. He didn’t travel to Stockholm
himself claiming to be wounded after a plain crash in Africa, but he wrote a
speech to be read by the U.S ambassador John M. Cabot.
Ketchum
After the revolution in Cuba under Fidel Castro Hemingway looked for
another place to live. The government in Cuba was against the United States. In
1959 they moved to Ketchum, which is situated close to Sun Valley. They bought a
small house there. The countryside was beautiful around the house.
He got old, searched for quarrels and became mentally confused. He tried
to commit suicide several times without success and was sent to a clinic, but
even that didn’t help. On July 2nd, 1961, two days after
leaving the hospital, he shot himself.
Sources
Kindlers Literatur Lexikon, München 1974
A. E. Hotchner, Hemingway und seine Welt, München 1989
Philip Young, Ernest Hemingway, United States 1952
Ernest Hemingway, A farewell to arms, United States 1995
Ernest Hemingway, The snows of Kilimanjaro, London 1994
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