Ernest Miller Hemingway ( Chicago , July 21 , 1899 – Idaho , July 2 , 1961 ). American writer and journalist whose work, already considered a classic in 20th century literature, has exerted a notable influence both for the sobriety of his style and for the tragic elements and the portrait of an era that it represents. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
Passionate about hunting , fishing and adventure, he lived in Cuba for twenty years. Because of his love for this island , a marina and a fishing tournament in Havana bear his name.
Biographical summary
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in the Oak Park district, a suburb of Chicago, 14.5&nbsn;km west of the city center. He was the son of Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, a physician, and Grace Hall.
His childhood was marked by the upbringing of a domineering mother and a father with a tendency to depression. According to his biographers, he did not have a very happy childhood, as it was marked by the conflictive relationship with his father, who committed suicide in 1928. At the age of fifteen, he left home, but returned shortly after to finish his studies.
He excelled as a football player and boxer during his college days. In 1917 he finished his studies but left the University to work for a few months at the Kansas City Star as a reporter. From his youth he felt an excessive addiction to boxing and hunting, sports that, together with the practice of journalism, made him a globetrotter and a student of human nature. The writer traveled through different countries in Europe and Africa .
Hemingway began as a reporter for the Kansas City Star and soon after volunteered to drive ambulances in Italy during World War I. He was later transferred to the Italian army and was seriously wounded. After the war he worked as a correspondent for the Toronto Star until his departure for Paris . From 1927 he spent long periods in Key West, Florida, Spain and Africa . He returned to Spain during the Civil War as a war correspondent. Later he was a reporter for the First United States Army . Although he was not a soldier, he participated in several battles. After the war, Hemingway settled in Cuba , near Havana , and in 1958 in Ketchum, Idaho.
Hemingway drew on his experiences as a fisherman, hunter and bullfighter in his works. Near death in the Spanish Civil War when bombs exploded in his hotel room, in World War II when he crashed into a taxi during wartime blackouts, and in 1954 when his plane crashed in Africa , he finally died in Ketchum on July 2, 1961 , shooting himself with a shotgun amid frequent bouts of madness, insomnia and memory loss.
His participation in the Wars
World War I
World War I had broken out. The United States entered the war in 1917 , and the then very young Ernest wanted to emulate other greats of the so-called Lost Generation such as John Dos Passos , William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald .
But he was not accepted as a soldier, but rather as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross . He landed in Bordeaux at the end of 1918 and joined the front in Italy . When he was seriously wounded when the ambulance he was driving was hit by a shell, he carried the Italian soldier he was transporting on his shoulder and brought him safely to safety, earning the Silver Medal for Bravery.
He was confined to a hospital in Milan , where he met a young nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky , with whom he had a romance, a relationship that was frustrated but which the narrator translated to another level when he wrote A Farewell to Arms , after working as a journalist at the Toronto Star and the Cooperative Commonwealth.
Spanish Civil War
His presence in Spain as a correspondent during the Civil War and as a combatant in the trenches of the Republic inspired one of his most important novels. There he participated in the filming of La tierra española (Spanish Land); he denounced the death of hundreds of former American combatants in the Matecumbe Keys, and returned to journalism after ten years.
Second World War
During World War II in the Far East he reported on the Sino-Japanese conflict, in Europe he was a war correspondent, participated in air missions and took part in the Normandy landings . Upon returning to Cuba , he became involved in an anti-fascist operations agency. With his staff at Finca Vigía , once the “Pilar” was armed.
Camouflaged as a vessel engaged in scientific studies of the marine fauna of the Gulf of Mexico , the yacht was armed and had a crew of up to eight men, some of them members of the Republican brigades participating in the Spanish Civil War , who together with Hemingway sailed the waters of the Caribbean Sea with the purpose of discovering and informing the Cuban and American navies about the presence of German submarines that were raiding the Gulf with the aim of torpedoing merchant ships and oil tankers leaving America to supply the Allied side.
In May 1943, on his yacht Pilar he patrolled the northern keys of Camaguey province , following the sinking of a small tanker and the ship Niberliver by a German submarine east of Nuevitas . Hemingway and his crew visited Cayo Sabinal , Cayo Confites , where he planted seven pine trees; the Paredón Grande Lighthouse , the Maternillos Lighthouse and Cayo Romano . In the latter they stocked up on crabs, which they ate raw with lemon. These places are described in his book Islands in the Gulf .
Cuban Revolution
Although Hemingway did not participate directly in the Cuban Revolution , it is a fact that he sympathized with it and with many of its leaders. He modestly and discreetly provided his collaboration at the local level of Finca Vigía, which is why the US government forced him to leave the country.
In January 1959 , Hemingway had made some statements to the American press in favor of the Revolution (he was in North America at the time), in which he expressed his hope for what was happening on the Island and supported the execution of the henchmen of the Batista tyranny . He had the experience of having a dog killed on the farm during a search that was carried out in 1957 .
In 1959, while in Europe , he publicly declared his satisfaction at the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. On November 4, he returned. A reckless gesture betrayed his deep love: he kissed the Cuban flag and refused to repeat it for the “media.”
It was thought that Hemingway arrived on November 4, but René Villarreal , his butler, in the book El hijo cubano de Hemingway, states that it was in March. In addition, notes were found on one of the bathroom walls, which show that he was in Vigía on that date. His body weight in March and April is recorded there.
But these were not the only statements he made about the Cuban revolutionary process. “On the occasion of the visit made to him on February 4, 1960 by Anastas Mikoyan , the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, Hemingway told the newspaper Pravda – this was later reproduced by Time magazine – that the Cuban Revolution is indestructible and fabulous. You can imagine how those words must have gone down with the US government.” On May 15 of that same year during the awards ceremony for the marlin fishing tournament.
Commander in Chief Fidel Castro had won several individual awards and they talked a lot that day. They shared and were widely photographed. Shortly afterwards they came to his house and told him that if he remained in Cuba he would be considered a traitor. Hemingway never had any problems with the Cuban government. While in the United States he contacted some friends to inquire about his possible return and they assured him that he could do so whenever he wanted. In one of his books a bracelet of the 26th of July movement was found and bonds of the Popular Socialist Party of Guanabacoa , to which he contributed money.
Leonardo Depestre tells in his book “One Hundred Famous People in Havana” that at the José Martí International Airport he was received by a large group of friends and neighbors from the small town of San Francisco de Paula , who gave him a Cuban flag. The author then adds that on that occasion Hemingway told a reporter: “I feel very happy to be here again, because I consider myself just another Cuban. I have not believed any of the information published against Cuba abroad. I sympathize with the Cuban government and with all its difficulties.
Hemingway expressed his confidence in the revolutionary process when he stated in a letter to General Charles T. Lanham , dated Ketchum, January 12 , 1960:
“To say that you are not an imperialist Yankee but a boy from Old San Francisco de Paula, the shantytown where you have lived for the last 20 years, is not to renounce your citizenship. I am a good American and I have been fighting for my country as much as possible, without pay and without ambition. But I completely believe in the historical necessity of the Cuban Revolution…”
Hemingway in Havana
It was not love at first sight. Nor was it the only one, even on this island that he once described as “long, beautiful and unhappy.” But Ernest Hemingway and Havana have always remained united in universal memory through literature, the recounting of the era, and through deeper and more intangible relationships.
Their first meeting was in 1928 and seemed to have no significance. He was 29 years old. He had been a precocious writer, with poems, chronicles and books published; married for the second time, he had a son born and another yet to be born. He lived in Key West, and loved the sea above all things. He was then travelling with his wife Pauline and on their way back he stopped in this unknown but much talked about Caribbean city.
The City had been maturing languidly for four centuries; it was mixed, heterogeneous; it was full – in equal parts – of riches and misery. The sea overflowed it on all sides. Hemingway had other interests at the time. However, shortly after that visit to Cuba, he made his first explorations in the Gulf Stream and met Gregorio Fuentes , skipper of the famous yacht “Pilar”. In December of that same year, he suffered the suicide of his father. Seen in retrospect, all this could seem like a premonition.
The great success of A Farewell to Arms, the attraction -this time immediate- to Spain, an accident and the birth of his third son, kept him away from Cuba until 1932 , when he decided to use the Hotel Ambos Mundos as a base of operations for his fisheries in Cuban waters. This would be a new knot in the noose that would irremediably tie him to the City.
His passion for Havana
It was not until 1940 that Hemingway decided to settle in Havana, but from 1928 onwards he would continue to visit it intermittently – sometimes for more or less long periods – and would always return to his room at the Ambos Mundos.
From a distance he recalls this city and its climatic virtues , saying in a chronicle written for Esquire in August 1934 :
«Havana is cooler than most cities in the northern hemisphere during these months, because the trade winds blow from ten in the morning until four or five the next day…»
He evokes its spaces, as in the foreshortening with which he begins the story “A Crossing” (published in Cosmopolitan, April 1934), which will be the first part of his novel To Have and Have Not :
«Do you know what Havana is like in the early morning, when the homeless people are still sleeping against the walls of the houses and the ice carts that bring ice to the bars don’t even come by, right? Well, we were coming from the port and we crossed the square to have coffee at the café La Perla de San Francisco. In the square there was only one beggar awake, drinking water from the fountain…
The satisfaction of the senses, the sensuality of living and the pleasure of his stay on the Island still make him exclaim:
«…and have you ever been to Sans Souci in Havana on a Saturday night, dancing in the courtyard under the royal palms? They are grey and rise like columns. And you spend the whole night in the shade, play dice or roulette and drive to Jaimanitas for breakfast at dawn. And everyone knows everyone else and everything is happy and pleasant.»
The references to the city and his house are only descriptive fragments. The subjective load is so great that it is difficult to find very extensive references. They can be single phrases: “…in the bar of Cojímar , built on the edge of the rocks that dominated the port…” or “…through the open terrace, he looked at the sea, a deep blue and with white crests, crisscrossed by the fishing boats that trolled in search of dorados.”
Sometimes the allusion is like a glance in passing: “…one evening, when I had gone out at dusk to walk and observe the flight of the blackbirds (sic) that were going to Havana, where they flew every night from the countryside to the south and east, converging in long flocks, to perch, noisily, on the laurels of the Prado.”
Sometimes, the nervous and contradictory reflex of thinking seems to take over: “There wouldn’t be many people at the Floridita with this cold . But it will be nice to go there again.” He didn’t know whether to eat there or at the Pacific, he thought. But I’ll take a sweater and a coat, sheltered by the wall, which is out of the wind.”
There is only one, but very important, exception: the long, very long description of the journey, the actual route, that Thomas Hudson makes from Finca Vigía to Floridita. Written using the well-known technique of the “iceberg”, fragmented, this passage is narrated in the manner of a “stream of consciousness” or inner monologue of the protagonist who, immersed in the suffering of the death of one of his children, has hidden his misfortune from everyone.
Particularly imbued with nostalgia for the good old days and the terrible breath of loneliness, these “Cuban” texts will establish a deeper understanding (and also a more dramatic vision) of the human and social reality of the city that has welcomed him as its own.
Once again in Both Worlds, he wrote his best novel: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1939) , and the only story of his that takes place in Cuba: Nobody Ever Dies. That year, at the request of his future third wife Martha Gellhorn , he rented the Finca Vigía .
Hotel Both Worlds
The Hotel Ambos Mundos is a solid, square, five-story building that, in an eclectic turn-of-the-century style, was erected on the site of an old manor house, previously demolished, on the corner of Obispo and Mercaderes.
The room where Hemingway initially spent the night—and which would become his home, place of study and work for almost ten years—opens onto three points of the city through two large windows: one, facing north, looks out onto Obispo Street; another, further east, onto Mercaderes Street; and the third, located between the first two, on the corner. Through these windows, when he was left alone, Havana suddenly gave itself to the writer.
Hemingway stayed in room 511 of the Hotel Ambos Mundos.
In an early article published in the fall of 1933 by Esquire magazine, Hemingway describes the view that opens before his eyes from this room. But beyond what he described there, surely the first day he looked out at his beloved Obispo, he noticed—perhaps attracted by the ringing of some bells—the ancient building of the old University, which was still standing at that time.
Behind the bell tower, the uneven and equally resonant bell towers of the Cathedral Church could be seen, and, a little further away, the parks of Avenida del Puerto and the reflection of the sun on the water of the canal leading into the bay. To the left, he saw the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro with its streetlight, and then only the sea as it flows out towards the Gulf of Mexico , the great blue river.
On Mercaderes Street, his gaze must have passed over the numerous tiled roofs and, interrupted by the mass of the building that was then the United States Embassy, turned to the right to see the tower of the Convent of San Francisco , which he had already known since his first encounter. And if he looked a little further to the left, he could see — opposite the Plaza de Armas — the Santa Isabel hotel , behind which the city proudly displays its inland sea and the towns on the other shore.
He does not seem to have immediately noticed the Palace of the Captains General , which rises up abruptly from below when the central window opens. But above it, in perspective, he must have seen La Giraldilla on top of the Castillo de la Fuerza , and even more distantly —on the other side of the canal and between the trees— the promontory dominated by the fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña .
But it was not, ultimately, the baroque monumentality, nor the colonial charm, nor the urban design of the city that seduced the writer and the man.
The Watchman Estate
In 1940 , the writer bought Finca Vigía with the money received from the rights to For Whom the Bell Tolls , and made it his home.
By 1945 , at Finca Vigía, he began writing two new drafts. One of them would be his novel The Garden of Eden, published many years after his death in a controversial editorial version. The other would be titled The Sea Book, but his writing was interrupted several times and he would never manage to finish it. From here came the definitive version—as an independent novel—of The Old Man and the Sea; the rest of that manuscript would see the light after his death with the title Islands in the Gulf 1970 .
Last years in Cuba
Hemingway receives the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea and makes his first return to Spain after the Civil War. He goes hunting big game in Africa again. He suffers new accidents that feed the worldly myth that has accompanied him for a long time. For a few hours, the planet shudders at the false news of his death. Finally, in 1954 , the year in which he receives the Nobel Prize , he returns to Havana .
Like old Santiago when he lost his battle, “he saw the reflected glow of the city lights at about ten o’clock at night. At first they were perceptible only as the light in the sky before the moon rose. Then they were seen steadily across the sea which was now choppy due to the crescent moon. He steered towards the centre of the glow and thought that now he would soon reach the edge of the stream.” And he presented the Cuban people and especially the fishermen of Cojímar , in the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre , with the golden medal of the Prize.
In 1956 , his permanent pilgrimage took him to France and back to Spain. On September 4, by ironic coincidence, Look magazine published his last chronicle on Cuba, already significantly sombre in its title: “A report on the situation.”
He stayed at Finca Vigía until the summer of 1960 , and met Fidel Castro during the fishing competition that had been named after him since its inception. At Finca Vigía he finished writing Paris Was a Party , a nostalgic recollection of his happiest days: his first marriage, his first child and his first book . The emotional imbalance that plagued him and its after-effects harassed him and hurt him in the most sensitive places.
In the midst of the crisis between the United States and Cuba, during an airport transit, Argentine journalist and writer Rodolfo Walsh manages a brief exchange with him, partly in Spanish , partly in English . In the hubbub of farewells and reunions at the airport, fragments of the dialogue remain floating:
“We Cubans will win…” says Hemingway.
And he adds:
«I am not a Yankee, you know?»
In November he entered psychiatric treatment for the first time. In April 1961 he was admitted again. He was subjected to electroshock sessions. On July 2 he committed suicide.
In 1962 , The Old Man and the Sea was published in a Cuban edition as a tribute to its author and everyone knew the story of the old man who fished alone in his boat in the Gulf Stream, after eighty-four days without catching a fish. The story ended the afternoon when a group of tourists arrived at La Terraza and, looking down at the water , among the empty beer cans and dead snails, a woman saw a large white spine with an immense tail that rose and swayed with the tide while the east wind raised a strong and continuous swell at the entrance to the port.
Since then, Ernest Hemingway has been one of the historic inhabitants of Havana. His ethical code is, in a way, also that of Cubans, although it cannot be said who originally wrote it: because man can be destroyed, but never defeated.
The writer’s legacy continues to be of interest despite the passing of time. In Cuba in particular, one of the places that had the greatest relevance in his life and work, that legacy has continued to be preserved.
On May 29, 2024 , the National Council of Cultural Heritage (CNPC) of this country signed a memorandum of understanding in Havana with the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum of the American University of Arkansas . The objective was to strengthen ties precisely with the Ernest Hemingway Museum in the Cuban capital.
The Ministry of Culture of the Caribbean country said that an important step had been taken to strengthen academic collaboration between a foreign institution and the museum dedicated to preserving Hemingway’s heritage in Cuba.
Signing of the Agreement (2024)
Adam Long, executive director of the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum, thanked the Cuban authorities for their hospitality during the signing of the agreement and recalled that during a previous visit in 2013 he had been able to see the work carried out by the Cuban museum, for which he expressed his admiration.
The agreement included research, training and cooperation activities in academic disciplines of mutual interest and benefit, as well as exchanges between professors and students. It also served as a platform to promote the Ernest Hemingway International Colloquium , which takes place in Havana and in which the results of his research could be presented.
Virgen Pérez, in her capacity as President of the CNPC, reported that the most relevant aspect was the creation of a new opportunity for collaboration between Cuba and the United States, with the main objective of preserving the work and historical legacy of the writer. [1]