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Ernest Miller Hemingway is one of the most important American authors of the 20th century. He was born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois and passed away on July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho. Today we’ll take a look at his words and “his” stamps.
Ernest Hemingway took a similar path like many other well-known novelists like Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis did. He started as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. This engagement had a crucial influence on him and he used their guidelines throughout his work – “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.”
Czechoslovakia, 1968/11/18
1968 UNESCO - Cultural Personalities of the 20th Century in Caricature - Ernest Hemingway
part of the series - Ernest Hemingway, Karel Čapek, George Bernard Shaw, Maxim Gorky, Picasso, Taikan Yokoyama, Charlie Chaplin
During World War I, Ernest joined Red Cross and served as an ambulance driver. A few weeks after arriving at the front he got wounded, but despite his wounds he carried an Italian soldier to safety. He was awarded the Italian Silver Medal of Bravery. As a result of these events we got this quote:
"When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you."
We also got “A Very Short Story” (1919), published in 1924 as a part of “In Our Time”.
"I rewrote the ending to 'Farewell to Arms,' the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied."
VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPvBXsiA9Zs
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Hemingway went to Spain as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance. He supported the communist loyalists who in turn supported the democratically elected government. Eventually, the loyalist movement failed and the Franco-led rebels won the war and installed a dictatorial government in the spring of 1939. During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway sent reports directly from the front to let the world know what was going on. From his humanist point of view, he condemned the fascists for their inhumane crimes: bombing worker’s quarters; slaughtering the crowds concentrating in the square; and brutal slaughter of the common people. “…we saw the Fascist artillery doing murder in Madrid and you never see it without hatred and anger.”
From 1936 to 1939, he never stopped his work for the Republic in and out of Spain and he even fought side by side with the Loyalists in the Mountain area south of Madrid. His experience resulted in the famous novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
"'For Whom the Bell Tolls' was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote."
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."
Cuba, 1963/12/05
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self."
"From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality."
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."
"The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself."
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
This was his last major work of fiction. For this story, describing a struggle between old fisherman Santiago and large marlin, Hemingway got the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954). After all, he loved people and situations where they had to show courage and strength to deal with problems during rough times. And he did all of that in the simplest possible way.
"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."
Cuba, 1999/12/15
The 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961
Hemingway and Fisherman
"For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed."
"You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful."
Hemingway had no problems to help others, but also to clearly express what he thinks about other authors.
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."
"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
On the other hand, Hemingway got very disappointed with some of his friends, most notably Ezra Pound, disappointed for his support of the fascist regime.
"Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin."
A few more quotes about life itself
As always, when writing articles about great individuals, I love to let them conclude the article with their own words:
"I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen."
"I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down."
"When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write."
"A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men."
USA, 1989/07/17
"About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."
"All thinking men are atheists".
Ernest not only disbelieved in god but as well considered organized religion as a menace to human happiness.
Macedonia, 2011/10/17
The 50th Anniversary of the Death of Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1961
"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."
"There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
"The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."
