Maaja
23rd September 2002, 06:02
The Cuban government has agreed to allow access to a trove of Ernest
Hemingway's papers that experts say promises to illuminate the period
in which he wrote some of his most significant works.
The collection, deteriorating amid rifles and stuffed African game
heads in the basement of Hemingway's home outside Havana, includes
3,000 letters and documents, 3,000 photographs and 9,000 books, many
with his musings in the margins — what one biographer, A. Scott
Berg, called a "CAT scan of Hemingway's brain."
Those who helped persuade the Cubans to open the collection, ending
an impasse that has frustrated American scholars for 40 years, say
they have seen just a small fraction of it, but it already offers
hints of Hemingway's creative process: raw fragments of stories
scribbled on paper and book jackets, galleys and early drafts of
major works, and a poetry anthology in which he circled "No man is an
island," the line from John Donne that would serve as the epigraph
to "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
There is Hemingway's copy of the screenplay for "The Old Man and the
Sea," with his notations. There is a scrap of paper on which he
jotted a profanity-laced conversation from World War II, which he
apparently planned to use in a story, but then dismissed, writing
above it, "too frank." There is the start of an epilogue, later
rejected, to "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
The documents also reveal details of Hemingway's personal life: he
recorded his weight and blood pressure almost obsessively on the
inside cover of his copy of "Wuthering Heights." In a written
soliloquy dated June 1, 1953, he agonized about his conflicted
feelings for his fourth wife, Mary, wondering whether he should
accept her as a scold or "learn not to give a damn about her." He
then sent it to her with a cover letter asking her to read it when
she got a chance. There are directions to the servants on how to
prepare the Hemingways' favorite foods, and in what order to present
them. Another note instructs them not to disturb him while he is
writing. There are Michelin maps of Spain with names of people he met
and restaurants and hotels he visited.
[...]
Hemingway's papers that experts say promises to illuminate the period
in which he wrote some of his most significant works.
The collection, deteriorating amid rifles and stuffed African game
heads in the basement of Hemingway's home outside Havana, includes
3,000 letters and documents, 3,000 photographs and 9,000 books, many
with his musings in the margins — what one biographer, A. Scott
Berg, called a "CAT scan of Hemingway's brain."
Those who helped persuade the Cubans to open the collection, ending
an impasse that has frustrated American scholars for 40 years, say
they have seen just a small fraction of it, but it already offers
hints of Hemingway's creative process: raw fragments of stories
scribbled on paper and book jackets, galleys and early drafts of
major works, and a poetry anthology in which he circled "No man is an
island," the line from John Donne that would serve as the epigraph
to "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
There is Hemingway's copy of the screenplay for "The Old Man and the
Sea," with his notations. There is a scrap of paper on which he
jotted a profanity-laced conversation from World War II, which he
apparently planned to use in a story, but then dismissed, writing
above it, "too frank." There is the start of an epilogue, later
rejected, to "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
The documents also reveal details of Hemingway's personal life: he
recorded his weight and blood pressure almost obsessively on the
inside cover of his copy of "Wuthering Heights." In a written
soliloquy dated June 1, 1953, he agonized about his conflicted
feelings for his fourth wife, Mary, wondering whether he should
accept her as a scold or "learn not to give a damn about her." He
then sent it to her with a cover letter asking her to read it when
she got a chance. There are directions to the servants on how to
prepare the Hemingways' favorite foods, and in what order to present
them. Another note instructs them not to disturb him while he is
writing. There are Michelin maps of Spain with names of people he met
and restaurants and hotels he visited.
[...]