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Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 - July 2, 1961) was an American author with a troubled, chaotic life. Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois. He committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho.

In later life, he was mentored by Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound.

Awards:

• Silver Medal of Military Valor (medaglia d'argento) in World War I
• Pulitzer Prize in 1953 (for The Old Man and the Sea)
• Nobel Prize in literature in 1954 (also partly for The Old Man and the Sea)

Biography

He starting writing for the Kansas City Star and adopted as his personal standand the main directives of newspaper's stylebook: "Brevity, a reconciliation of vigour with smoothness, the positive approach".

In 1918 he left the Star to travel overseas. Against his father's wishes, he tried to join the United States Army but failed the medical examination. Later, he enlisted in the Ambulance Corps and left for Italy. On July 8, 1918, at the Italian front he was wounded by machine gun fire, ending his career as an ambulance driver. After being discharged from the Army, Hemingway returned home and iun 1920, he took a job in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Toronto Star as a freelancer, staff writer, and foreign correspondent.

In 1921 he married Hadley Richardson and moved to Paris, France. There he became a correspondent for the Toronto Star covering the Greco-Turkish War. In 1923, his last year at the Star, his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems, was published in Paris by Robert McAlmon. In the same year, his first son, John, was born. Busy supporting a family, he became bored with the Toronto Star, and on January 1, 1924, resigned.

Sherwood Anderson gave him a letter of recommendation to Gertrude Stein. She became his mentor and opened the door to the Parisian Modern Movement happening in Montparnasse Quarter. His other mentor was Ezra Pound, the founder of Imagism. In retrospective, Hemingway once said about them: "Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it. Gertrude was always right." (to John Peale Bishop; Cowley (4.), p. xiii). He even considered giving Mr. Pound the Nobel Prize gold medal. At the same time, he became a close friend of James Joyce whose "Ulysses" with its stream-of-consciousness techniques had a tremendous impact on the literary scene. These authors and many others met at Sylvia Beach's bookshop, Shakespeare & Co., at 18 Rue de l'Odéon, Paris.

In Montparnasse, Hemingways favorite restaurant was La Closerie des Lilas. On the terrace of La Closerie des Lilas, over just six weeks, Hemingway wrote the entire novel The Sun Also Rises.

But the last impulse he required came in an unsuspected and painful way. His manuscripts, among them "A Farewell to Arms" were stolen at Gare de Lyon when his wife Hadley wanted to bring them along to Lausanne to meet him. This loss was a big gain after all, because by re-writing the novel he had also time to reconsider, thus improving it. The second version was a great deal less flowery, stripped of all decoration, reduced to the bare essentials, matter-of-factly, concentrated and compressed.

During this peaceful life among friends, he was able to develop his literary skills; in times of war, inspired by death, he would use them.

Anti-fascism and experiences in Spain (1937-1938)

In the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway supported the Spanish Loyalists -- Communists, socialists and anarchists -- because they were opposed to the fascist Rebels.

After being involved in the Loyalist propaganda film Spain in Flames (?), he and John Dos Passos went to Spain and founded the Contemporary Historians, Inc. which produced another film called The Spanish Earth (directed by Joris Ivens).

In addition to that, Hemingway became war correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) and so he saw much of the fighting and could collect experiences for a new novel. While he was in Spain, his second marriage went to pieces. A liaison with Martha Gellhorn was revealed when a Rebel shell hit the hot-water boiler of the correspondents' hotel "Florida".

After The Spanish Earth was boxed and shipped, he left with the promise to propagandize for the Loyalists' cause; he spoke out in Shakespeare & Co. and addressed the Writers' Congress in New York on the June 4, 1937. In his speech he stressed he was anti-fascist, not pro-Communist (Writer As Artist (7.), p. 224)

There is only one form of government that cannot produce good writers, and that system is fascism. For fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live and work fascism.

Due to his reputation, The Spanish Earth was even shown in the White House and his article "Fascism is a Lie" was published in New Masses. Furthermore, he established an ambulance fund and financed it by collecting money at Hollywood parties.

He returned to see the fascist rebel General Franco control two thirds of Spain, but the Loyalists still fighting on. The Fifth Column was finished just before the taking of Teruel in January 1938. He wrote it, according to the preface, under constant bombardment in the Hotel Florida; it appears as though he had again needed the thrilling aura of death to inspire him.

After short stays in Paris due to liver troubles and in Key West, he came back to Spain to see Loyalists retreating on all fronts, then returned to America to organize the experiences he gathered into a novel, the narrations of the different characters clearly originate here.

For information on Hemingway only, you might skip the sections on Frederic Henry and Robert Jordan. For a quick read, you can start at Young and Innocent

The sources of quotes are noted in the bibliography section. For easier reading, this text is split in several sections.

You can get an all-in-one HTML version at , or another version of the same document at

Grace Under Pressure
Death and Violence in Ernest Hemingway's Life and Work

Introduction

Death and violence were the two great constants in Hemingway's troubled, chaotic life. As an infant, he joined his father on hunting trips. At ten, he got his first shotgun. Fifty-one years later, he used a gun to kill himself. In the meantime, he had hurt many and many had hurt him. He was a tough, strong man with strong principles.

Hemingway "believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could only have one end", yet he was blessed with talent and drive. That may have made it harder for him to admit his failures and correct them.

Books and Beyond

Famous at Twenty-Five: Thirty a Master

The Hemingway style rocked the literary scene when it first arrived. It seemed simple on the surface, but was a revolution in a time when Victorian writing with neo-Gothic decorations still governed the literary world.

And beneath the surface of this "simple" style lie allegorical structures of real complexity. Hemingway's style was no natural gift. It was the reward for his immense hurts and efforts and it was, and still is, the epitome of the modern movement. In the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France, many authors lent the young Hemingway a helping hand, and helped shape his style.

After marrying, the Hemingways decided to live abroad for a while, and, following the advice of Sherwood Anderson, they picked Paris, where Ernest could develop his literary skills better than anywhere else. His first professional influence had been his time as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. The Kansas City Star Style Book, which was a guideline the newspaper had established, had lain the foundations for his later art. "Brevity, a reconciliation of vigour with smoothness, the positive approach"(Burgess (9.), p. 19) were its main directives and the young Ernest was willing to adopt them as his personal standard.

Sherwood Anderson wrote him a letter of recommendation to Gertrude Stein. She became his mentor and opened the door for him to the Parisian Modern Movement. His other mentor was Ezra Pound, the founder of Imagism. In retrospective, Hemingway once said about them: "Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it. Gertrude was always right."(to John Peale Bishop; Cowley (4.), p. xiii). He even considered giving Mr. Pound the Nobel Prize gold medal. At the same time, he became a close friend of James Joyce whose "Ulysses" with its stream-of-consciousness techniques had a tremendous impact on the literary scene. These authors and many others met at Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Co., bookshop at 18 Rue de l'Odéon, Paris.

But the last impulse he required came in an unsuspected and painful way. His manuscripts, among them "A Farewell to Arms" were stolen at Gare de Lyon when his wife wanted to bring them along to Lausanne to meet him. This loss was a big gain after all, because by re-writing the novel he had also time to reconsider, thus improving it. The second version was a great deal less flowery, stripped of all decoration, reduced to the bare essentials, matter-of-factly, concentrated and compressed.

During this peaceful life among friends, he was able to develop his literary skills, in times of war, inspired by death, he would use them.

From Boy to Man: Hemingway's First World War

Hemingway once wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald: "We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get a damned hurt use it - don't cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist"(Lynn (13.), p. 10). Hemingway's first hurts were so grave it took him nearly ten years to write them down in a novel.

When he arrived in Europe, he was just another young hotshot out for adventure. En route to the Italian front, he stopped in Paris. The city was under constant bombardment from German siege guns. Instead of staying in the relative safety of the Hotel Florida, Ernest asked the cab driver to bring him to the place where the shells were falling. He wouldn't stop looking for enemy fire until one shell was tearing apart the facade of a church at the Place de la Madelaine nearby. He later said: "I was an awful dope when I went to the last war. I can remember just thinking that we were the home team and the Austrians were the visiting team" (Barron's Book Notes (8.), p. 2).

But gruesome reality caught up with him. On his first day of duty, an ammunition factory exploded in the countryside near Milan. He had to pick up bodies and pieces of bodies, mostly of women working there. This first and extremely cruel encounter with human death left him shaken. The soldiers he met later didn't lighten this horror. Eric Dorman-Smith quoted Shakespeare's Henry IV Part Two: "By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe god a death . . . and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next"(Burgess (9.), p. 24). A 50-year-old soldier, to whom he said "You're troppo vecchio for this war, pop." replied "I can die as well as any man."(Burgess (9.), p. 24).

Still, he wanted to come even closer to the action, and was wounded at midnight on the eighth of July while bicycling to a forward command post to deliver chocolate. The exact details remain mysterious but two things we know for sure: A trench mortar shell hit him leaving fragments in both legs, and he got the Silver Medal of Military Valor (medaglia d'argento) from the Italian government. He may have saved another soldier's life by carrying him on his back.

Convalescing in the Ospedale Croce Rossa Americana, Via Alessandro Manzoni in Milan, he met Sister Hannah Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse from Washington, DC. and one of eighteen nurses looking after just four patients. He fell for her, but they never were together. Soon after his departure, she fell in love with another man.

Hemingway's metaphysical movement in this early period was a shift from juvenile life in Oak Park to the horrors of a full scale war. He waded deeper and deeper into violence until he stood face to face with death.

• From Reality to Fiction A Farewell to Arms
• The Time in Between
• Spain in Flames
• For Whom the Bell Tolls

Robert Jordan and Frederic Henry: Two Facets of Hemingway

• Frederic Henry

Background

Character

Development

Catherine: A vehicle for the women in Hemingway?s life

• Robert Jordan

Background

Character

Development

Pablo

Hemingway Up Close and Personal

• Young and Innocent
• Things Turn Sour
• The Endless Dark Nothingness
• Sure Shots The Second World War
• The Downward Spiral

Conclusion

• Violence and Redemption
• Why It Went Wrong

Appendix

• Bibliography

Miscellany

• Image of letter from Hemingway's typewriter

Yes and yes. There is obviously a need to restructure the whole text, biographic information should be separated from information on the two particular books, and a trivia section should be included. I will make some of those changes myself, but help is really welcome. -- SoniC