Krebs went to the front from Methodist College in Kansas. There is a photograph in which he stands among fellow students, and they are all wearing collars of exactly the same style and height. He enlisted in the Navy in 1917 and returned to the States only after the Second Division was withdrawn from the Rhine in the summer of 1919.
There is a photograph of him and another corporal somewhere on the Rhine with two German girls. The uniforms on Krebs and his friend seem too tight. Girls are ugly. Rein is not visible in the photo.
By the time Krebs returned to his hometown in Oklahoma, heroes are no longer celebrated. He returned too late. All residents of the city who had been to the war were given a solemn meeting. There was a lot of war hysteria in this. And now the reaction has come. Everyone seemed to think it was funny to return so late, several years after the end of the war.
At first, Krebs, who had visited Belleau Soissons, Champagne, Saint-Miguel and the Argonne Forest, did not want to talk about the war at all. Then he felt the need to talk, but no one wanted to listen anymore. The city had heard so many stories about German atrocities that actual events no longer made an impression. Krebs realized that you need to lie in order to be listened to. And, having lied twice, I felt disgusted with the war and talking about it. The disgust for everything that he often felt at the front again took possession of him because he had to lie. That time, remembering which he felt inner peace and clarity, that distant time when he did the only thing a man should do, did it easily and without coercion, first lost everything that was valuable in him, and then itself was forgotten.
He lied harmlessly, attributing to himself what others did, saw and heard, and passing off as the truth the fantastic rumors circulating among the soldiers. But in the billiard room these inventions were not successful. His acquaintances, who had heard detailed stories about German women chained to machine guns in the Ardennes Forest, were not interested in the unchained German machine gunners as patriots and were indifferent to his stories.
Krebs became disgusted with exaggerating and inventing, and when he met with a real front-line soldier, after talking with him for several minutes in the smoking room on dance party, he fell into the familiar tone of a seasoned soldier among other soldiers: at the front, he supposedly felt only one thing all the time - incessant, sickening fear. So he lost the last one.
Summer was coming to an end, and all this time he got up late, went to the library to change books, had breakfast at home, read, sitting on the porch until he got tired, and then went into town to spend the hottest hours in the cool darkness of the billiard room. He loved to play billiards.
In the evenings he practiced the clarinet, walked around the city, read and went to bed. To his two younger sisters, he was still a hero. His mother would serve him breakfast in bed if he demanded it. She often came to him when he was lying in bed and asked him to tell her about the war, but she listened inattentively. His father was taciturn.
Before Krebs went to the front, he was never allowed to take his father's car. His father was a real estate agent, and he could need a car every minute to take clients out of town for inspections. land plots. The car was always parked in front of the First national bank, where his father’s office was located on the second floor. And now, after the war, the car was still the same.
Nothing has changed in the city, only the girls have become grown-up girls. But they lived in such a complex world of long-established friendships and fleeting quarrels that Krebs had neither the energy nor the courage to enter this world. But he loved looking at them. There was so much beautiful girls! Almost all of them had haircuts. When he left, only little girls had their hair cut, and only the most lively of the girls. They all wore jumpers and blouses with round collars. That was the fashion. He loved to watch from the porch as they walked along the other side of the street. He loved to watch them walk in the shade of the trees. He liked the round collars that came out from under his jumpers. He liked silk stockings and flat shoes. I liked their cropped hair and their gait.
When he saw them in the city center, they did not seem so attractive to him. He just didn't like them at the Greek patisserie. In fact, he didn't need them. They were too difficult for him. There was something else here too. He vaguely felt the need for a woman. He needed a woman, but was too lazy to pursue her. He was not averse to having a woman, but did not want to pursue her for a long time. I didn’t want any tricks or tricks. He didn't want to waste time courting. I didn't want to lie anymore. It wasn't worth it.
He didn't want to tie himself down. He didn't want to be tied down anymore. He wanted to live without tying himself to anything. And he didn’t really need a woman. The army taught him to live without it. It was customary to pretend that you couldn’t do without a woman. Almost everyone said that. But this was not true. The woman was not needed at all. That was the funniest part. At first the man boasted that women meant nothing to him, that he never thought about them, that they didn’t bother him. Then he boasted that he could not do without women, that he could not live a day without them, that he could not sleep without a woman.
It was all a lie. Both were lies. A woman is not needed at all until you start thinking about her. He learned this in the army. And then you find her, sooner or later. When the time comes, there is always a woman. And you don't need to worry. Sooner or later it will come on its own. He learned this in the army.
Now he would not mind having a woman, but only so that she would come to him herself and so that he would not have to talk. But here it was all too complicated. He knew he couldn't do everything he was supposed to do. It wasn't worth it. That's what French and German women were good at. None of this talk. It was difficult to talk a lot, and there was no point. Everything was very simple and did not prevent them from remaining friends. He thought about France and then began to think about Germany. In general, he liked Germany more. He didn't want to leave Germany. I didn't want to return home. And yet he returned. And he sat on the front porch.
He liked the girls who walked along the other side of the street. In appearance, he liked them much more than French and German women, but the world in which they lived was not the same world in which he lived. He would like one of them to be with him. But it wasn't worth it. They were so attractive. He liked this guy. It worried him. But he didn't want to waste time talking. He didn't really need a woman. It wasn't worth it. In any case, not now, when life was just beginning to get better.
He was sitting on the steps, reading a book. It was the history of the war, and he read about all the battles in which he had to participate. Until now he had never come across a book more interesting than this one. He regretted that there were few maps in it, and looked forward to the pleasure with which he would read all the really good books about the war, when they were published with good ones, detailed maps. Only now did he truly learn about the war. It turns out he was a good soldier. This is a completely different matter.
One morning, after he had been at home for about a month, his mother came into his bedroom and sat down on his bed. Smoothing out the wrinkles on her apron, she said:
“I talked to my father last night, Harold. He allowed you to take the car in the evenings.
- Yes? – said Krebs, not yet fully awake. - Should I take the car?
“Father has been suggesting for a long time that you take the car in the evenings whenever you want, but we only agreed on this yesterday.”
“That’s right, you made him do it,” Krebs said.
- No. The father himself spoke about this.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 - American writer, journalist, laureate Nobel Prize in literature in 1954, author of “A Farewell to Arms!”, “For Whom the Bell Tolls?”, “A Holiday That Is Always With You,” “The Old Man and the Sea” and many others. the site recalls the most interesting and unexpected facts about a writer who turned his life into an adventure novel with a tragic ending.
Ernest Hemingway was born into a family of a doctor and a housewife in a privileged suburb of Chicago. He grew up as a stubborn boy and did only what he wanted. He did not become a musician, as his mother wanted, and did not go to university. Instead, immediately after school, he moved in with his uncle and got a job as a journalist at a local newspaper. On the very first day, Hemingway got a story about a fire - the result was an excellent report and a burnt suit.
When the First World War began, Hemingway really wanted to go to the front, but due to poor eyesight he was not accepted into the army. Then the young man signed up as a volunteer Red Cross driver - and so he ended up at the front in Italy. On the very first day of his stay in Milan, Hemingway and other volunteers were sent to clear the territory of an exploded ammunition factory. We had to carry out corpses - including women and children. Hemingway distinguished himself in the war by pulling an Italian sniper out from under fire. At the same time, he himself received more than two hundred wounds, from which fragments were pulled out for a long time in the hospital.
Hemingway's favorite city was always Paris. The writer first came there with his first wife in 1921. The newlyweds lived more than modestly, if not poorly. However, Hemingway wrote a lot and met many interesting people: writers Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, poet Ezra Pound and so on. The happy time spent in Paris was later embodied in a book of memories“A holiday that is always with you” (1964).
Ernest Hemingway was popular with women, but at the same time he did not like to have affairs on the side. Another new hobby often ended in marriage. Thus, the writer was married four times. He had three sons from his first two wives.
While writing his works, Hemingway most often ate peanut butter and onion sandwiches. In general, he loved to eat delicious food and knew how to cook. Hemingway once published a recipe for apple pie in his newspaper column. Today, in the writer's museum in Florida, you can see his other recipes, for example, hamburger.
There is a popular story about how Hemingway once bet that he could write the most moving story with just a few words. And he won the argument by writing:“Children's shoes for sale. Unworn". Quoteinvestigator.com investigated to find out if this is true or not. It turned out that this phrase first appeared in 1917 in an article by William R. Kane, and modern version phrase appeared in 1991.
One day, Hemingway stole a urinal from his favorite bar. The writer stated that he “squandered” enough money in this bar that he has the right to own it. The urinal was installed in Hemingway's house.
Hemingway took an active part in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on the side of the Republicans fighting General Franco. He went to Madrid as a journalist with a film crew to film the documentary Land of Spain, for which he wrote the script. At the very hard days During the war, Hemingway did not leave the city, which was besieged by the Nazis. Impressions from the war formed the basis of one of the most famous novels author -"For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940).
In 1941, Hemingway purchased a boat, which he took to Cuba. He became interested in sea fishing, and to protect his catch from sharks, he installed a machine gun on the boat. Hemingway broke the world record by catching seven marlin in one day. The boat was also used for other purposes - from the summer of 1942 to the end of 1943, Hemingway used it to hunt for German submarines (here, in addition to a machine gun, he needed hand grenades).
Hemingway loved to hunt and once took himself on a long safari in East Africa, the impressions from which formed the basis of the book"Green Hills of Africa" . Among the writer's major trophies are three lions, twenty-seven antelopes and a buffalo.
Throughout his life, Hemingway felt as if he was surrounded by a cloud of misfortune. His father, sister and younger brother committed suicide. Mistress Jane Mason and Parisian friend, writer Scott Fitzgerald, tried to commit suicide. One of the writer's first biographers jumped out of a window.
During his life, Hemingway suffered from anthrax, malaria, skin cancer and pneumonia. He survived diabetes, two plane crashes, a ruptured kidney and spleen, hepatitis, a skull fracture and a shattered spine, and hypertension. But he died by his own hands.
Hemingway was a KGB agent - this became known thanks to a KGB officer who gained access to Stalin-era archives in the 90s. The writer was recruited in 1941 and received the agent name "Argo". During the 1940s, Hemingway met with Soviet agents in Havana and London and "expressed an active desire to help." However, in the end, his benefit to the KGB turned out to be small, since the writer could not provide any politically important information. He never "participated in practical work." By the 50s, the Argo agent was no longer in contact with Soviet agents.
IN last years Throughout his life, Hemingway was obsessed with growing paranoia - the writer was convinced that the FBI was watching him. This fear especially grew at the Mayo Psychiatric Clinic in Rodchester, where the writer was “treated” with electric shock. He even called his friend from the phone in the clinic and reported bugs placed in it. Nobody believed Hemingway back then. Only fifty years after the writer's death, thanks to the new Freedom of Information Act, could a request be made to the FBI. Then it turned out that, by order of Hoover, Hemingway was indeed under surveillance and wiretapping. Including in that psychiatric clinic.
On July 2, 1961, a few days after being discharged from the Mayo Clinic, Hemingway shot himself with his favorite gun, leaving no suicide note. The model of this Vincenzo Bernardelli double-barreled shotgun is now called "Hemingway".
Ernest Hemingway had a favorite cat, Snowball, with six toes, which was given to him by a ship captain he knew. Today, at least fifty descendants of Snowball live in the Hemingway Museum in Florida (half of them were six-fingered). To this day, multi-toed cats are called “Hemingway cats.”
There is a society of men who look like Ernest Hemingway. Every year the society holds a competition to choose the most similar participant from among its number.
In 2000, a domestic cartoon based on Hemingway's story"The Old Man and the Sea" , received an Oscar. Its creator, Russian animator Alexander Petrov, used a special technique of “revived painting” (painting with oil paints on glass). This is a very beautiful cartoon and really worth seeing.
So much has been written about the outstanding American writer, Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, that adding something new can only be done through painstaking research. But the writer’s talent, the activity of his life and creative position, and finally, the charm of his personality still attract the attention of publicists, journalists, and filmmakers to him.
Famous journalist and writer I.A. Mikhailov had the opportunity to learn a lot about Hemingway, visit places associated with his life and work, and get acquainted with previously unknown documents and evidence, in particular, with the writer’s recently declassified dossier from the FBI archives.
Recently, the publishing house “Foreign Literature” published a book by I.A. Mikhailov "A Novel with the Life of Ernest Hemingway". It contains new details of the biography of the writer, who appeared against the broad background of socio-political events that determined the appearance of the 20th century. However, the biographer's special luck is that the image of Hemingway - a fearless warrior, tireless traveler and conqueror of hearts - is inseparable from reflections on the very nature of his work.
There are two paths for a writer. You can invent a story and make people believe it with the power of your imagination. Or you can not invent anything - write only about what you have experienced, felt and know very well. Hemingway chose the second path - the main thing for him was the harsh truth of life. He considered only such literature worthy of his contemporary reader. But, resorting to his personal experience, he looked at himself and the events of his life through the magic crystal of art. AND undoubted dignity The book is that the biographer, showing his hero in all the diversity and complexity of his life connections, makes one feel the writer’s sense of purpose and uncompromisingness, integral to civic honor and conscience.
We present to our readers one of the chapters of the book.
THE LAST YEARS of E. Hemingway's life and his tragic departure left many questions and secrets. So, even today it is not entirely clear what the writer was sick with. The question remains: how could the activities of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) influence the conclusions of medical specialists and the treatment of the writer?
The entire sequence of actions of doctors in Ketchum, wife Mary, psychiatrists in New York and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester convinces us that none of them wanted to treat the patient’s condition systematically and comprehensively. Neither Mary, nor many of Hemingway's friends, nor the doctors tried to hear Hemingway, to compare the problems that worried and worried the writer in 1960-1961. But, in fairness, it should be admitted that it was very difficult to make an accurate diagnosis - the doctors’ conclusions were directly or indirectly influenced by the activities of a powerful, but not a medical organization...
20 years after the writer’s death, the FBI leadership opened an archival file that had been opened against him back in 1942. It is also known that Ernest Hemingway, starting from the Spanish Civil War, was under close attention US intelligence agencies.
From acquaintance with archival materials, it became known that the powerful FBI director John Edgar Hoover, who headed it for 50 years, regularly personally received confidential and secret messages about the activities of E. Hemingway and his entourage. Even during the writer’s lifetime, there were rumors that Hoover was not a fan of the writer’s work, was very skeptical about the activities and political statements of E. Hemingway, who more than once expressed sympathy for the activities of the communists, cooperation with the USSR during the Second World War, supported the victory of the revolution in Cuba in 1959...
But Hemingway, having learned about the actions of the American intelligence service against US volunteers returning after the Spanish Civil War, called the FBI in 1940 “the American Gestapo.”
Despite the fatal role of the FBI in the fate of E. Hemingway, archives enable researchers today to better understand some of the writer’s decisions, his conclusions and the atmosphere around him. So, one of the agents in 1942 sent John E. Hoover a message saying that ex-wife writer Pauline Pfeiffer and her Native sister Virginia repeatedly expressed sympathy for the German fascists and their order. They declared that America needed a leader like A. Hitler. This message confirms the fact that the FBI was monitoring not only the writer, but also Hemingway’s loved ones. These facts also complement the arguments in understanding the reasons for the writer’s divorce from his second wife. It is difficult to imagine that E. Hemingway, with his consistent and open anti-fascist position, could put up with such reasoning and his own wife’s sympathy for fascism.
The FBI conducted especially intense surveillance of E. Hemingway's activities during World War II. This was the period when he, while in Cuba, organized his “Rogue Factory.” Information about his activities in searching for German submarines and German agents, members of his “team” was sent from Havana by the US Embassy legal attache Raymond Aeddi.
As a special agent of the FBI, he was ordered to inform the Agency's leadership in the most detailed way about the activities of the world. famous writer. When Gustavo Duran, a friend of Hemingway and former general Spanish Republican Army, secret messages were sent to Washington about his collaboration with the writer’s “team,” which included many Spanish Republicans. This continued when Duran was invited to work at the American embassy in Havana. In 1943, on the initiative of E. Hoover, the activities of Hemingway and his comrades in tracking down German submarines and agents were stopped.
In 1971 the former American Ambassador In Cuba, Spruill Braden wrote the book Diplomats and Demagogues. In it, he especially noted that Hemingway created a pro-Red organization during the war that actively helped the US Embassy and the American command...
The FBI file even contains detailed information from the agent about the writer's treatment at the Mayo Clinic in 1961 in Rochester. The agent reported to his superiors that Hemingway was in medical center under the name George Savier. The report notes that the writer is being treated with electric shock. From this it follows that among Hemingway's doctors there were informants and, possibly, FBI employees. The methods of treatment and the burden on the patient were known to the experts of the special service. They could not help but understand that Hemingway's health was suffering catastrophic damage.
It is unknown when the writer discovered surveillance of him. A review of declassified documents suggests that Hemingway began talking about this shortly after World War II. And his suspicions turned out to be correct. There was no mania for persecution, but targeted FBI surveillance of the writer’s life and activities. During this period, the Congressional Commission to Investigate Un-American Activities was active in the United States. Anyone suspected of being a member of the Communist Party or sympathizing with the ideas of socialism was dismissed from civil service and pursued...
IN THOSE YEARS the world-famous theater director B. Brecht, the brilliant actor Charles Chaplin did not want to put up with such a situation, moving to Switzerland. Thousands of Americans endured humiliating interrogations, firings, hardships and imprisonment. Perhaps due to the fact that Hemingway lived in Cuba, because of his open position the writer was not included in the commission’s “black lists”. But the fact that FBI agents continued to monitor him until his death testifies to how the US authorities feared the activities and views of the great writer.
It is surprising that his wife Mary, who always listened to her husband’s assessments and conclusions, did not want to analyze his arguments and the conviction that the intelligence services were persistently interested in him. Moreover, she was convinced without a shadow of a doubt that Hemingway’s suspicions were obsessive, manic ideas, and she conveyed this conviction to the attending physicians.
If we analyze everything that objectively worried Hemingway, it turns out that, in addition to hypertension, problems with the liver and kidneys after plane crashes, the writer for a long time experienced strong age-related hormonal changes in the body. This condition is called andropause, or in everyday life - male menopause. Caused by age-related androgen deficiency, this condition is often accompanied by fears, visions, depression, insomnia, headaches... everything that the writer suffered from.
The drug reserpine, which Hemingway was prescribed by doctors, he took for many years. This drug, according to experts, could aggravate his condition. Reserpine was later banned in many countries.
Age-related changes and Hemingway’s conviction that FBI agents were watching him coincided in time. The doctors, without bothering with analysis or additional research, made an unequivocal verdict: the patient has manic-depressive syndrome. Consultations with experienced endocrinologists and the involvement of famous psychiatrists in treatment could have helped Hemingway cope with the difficult state of hormonal changes, but this was not done. The Mayo Clinic psychiatrists were not the best in their field in the United States.
But even with the diagnosis, the writer’s treatment caused and continues to cause bewilderment and surprise to many doctors today. The decision of Mayo Clinic doctors to use electric shock, given the statistics that these procedures are fatal in ten percent of patients, cannot but surprise. In the 1960s there already existed medical supplies, who could cope with the conditions of such patients without causing much harm to the functioning of the brain.
During the “treatment” at the Mayo Clinic, eleven procedures and later two more were carried out, which led to Hemingway’s permanent loss of memory and loss of the ability to engage in creativity. These procedures were stopped only after a decisive demand from E. Hemingway himself. One can only be surprised that Mary, knowing how painfully her husband endured the electroshock sessions (he lost more than 20 kilograms), having an idea of their serious consequences, allowed such barbaric treatment to be carried out.
In jurisprudence there is a concept: incitement to suicide. If Mary herself did not understand the scale of the threat of electroshock treatment, then FBI Director John E. Hoover and his assistants, who received information from the Mayo Clinic, were well aware of what such “treatment” threatened the world-famous writer. They understood, but did not stop the doctors...
Deprived of memory and the ability to create, Hemingway was doomed to constant depression. Statistics say that patients are looking for the most tragic way out of this situation. Having studied the writer’s character, the FBI could easily calculate that he could find only one solution for himself - to commit suicide. And this happened on the morning of July 2, 1961.
Initially, Mary convinced police officers, journalists and acquaintances that her husband died accidentally, having been shot while cleaning a gun. And only after months it became clear that the writer committed suicide.
But the FBI continued to try to settle scores with Hemingway after his death. The dossier on the writer contains an article by journalist and critic V. Pedler dated July 17, 1961, published in Journal American. A journalist working under the auspices of E. Hoover wrote less than two weeks after the death of the great writer, Nobel Prize winner, that he, Pedler, considered E. Hemingway one of the worst literary figures who wrote in English...
In the USA there were many critics who continued attacks on the work of the great writer after his death: Dwight MacDonald assured in his articles that Hemingway was only successful in stories, John Thompson from New York, in his critical research, came to the conclusion that the writer was only successful in the novel “ And the Sun Rises”, as well as several stories. He didn’t even notice the story-parable “The Old Man and the Sea”. Leslie Fiedler wrote that Hemingway glorified only death and emptiness...
The purpose of his detractors in literature and Hemingway's enemies in the FBI is absolutely clear. A writer, as we know, can die twice: physically and when his work and books are consigned to oblivion.
Without seeking to understand his intentions, his creative philosophy and the peculiarities of his style, these critics did everything to distort and belittle Hemingway's work. In June 1967, journalist and literary critic Malcolm Cowley published an article in Exwire magazine entitled “The Pope and the Parricides.” In it, in particular, he noted: “... we see a picture in which a dead lion was surrounded by a flock of jackals.” Truly, those who are accustomed to catching minnows cannot understand the one who caught marlins!
Hemingway's ill-wishers, both during his life and after his death, haunted him Political Views, when he spoke out in the United States for the war against fascism, when he openly criticized Senator McCarthy and the persecution of people in America...
But the struggle with Hemingway continues to this day. In 2009, Yale University Press published a voluminous book “Spies. The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America." Its authors are two Americans: John Haynes, Harvey Clair, as well as former KGB officer and defector Alexander Vasiliev. It follows from it that the latter, having at one time access to the archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service, found out that the writer allegedly collaborated with the KGB under the pseudonym Argo. Vasiliev claimed that Hemingway himself more than once made proposals for cooperation to Soviet agents in Havana and London. He states that the writer first became close to the communists during the Spanish Civil War, and his trip to China with M. Gellhorn aroused great interest among Soviet station agents, who recruited him...
The logic of the authors of this multi-page work is clearly not in order. Indeed, Hemingway published in communist magazines in America, including during the period when the Congressional Un-American Activities Commission was in effect, when words of sympathy towards the Communist Party could easily land you in prison. It turns out that the KGB leadership allowed its agent to take such risks and expose himself? The authors' assertion that Argo collaborated with the NKVD - KGB means that Hoover and his henchmen clearly “slept through” the recruitment of the world famous American writer, who was closely monitored...
These statements cannot but cause irony also because the question arises: for what purpose did the KGB need the agent-writer Argo? He had no connections in the military-industrial complex, nor access to state secrets. If Soviet agents in the United States were able to steal the secrets of the American Atomic Project, then everything that is attributed to connections with Argo-Hemingway could be easily found out in Moscow from many other sources. Without the participation of E. Hemingway. The authors clearly underestimate the capabilities of Soviet intelligence...
TODAY, only the FBI dossier on the writer has been declassified, containing many censorship marks and clippings. But it gives a general idea of the activities of the US intelligence service in relation to the world famous writer. In fairness, it should be noted that similar dossiers were opened on all Nobel Prize winners in literature, Hemingway’s contemporaries: Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. But this did not lead to a tragic death for any of them...
Despite enormous expense and best efforts, the FBI and other intelligence agencies were unable to bring charges against any of the writers under surveillance.
Years will pass, the dossiers will be declassified by the CIA and US military intelligence, I will not be surprised that over time it will become clear: the accusation of E. Hemingway in collaboration with the KGB is a dirty concoction, specially born in the bowels of the FBI, which never managed to slander the great writer and later consign his name to oblivion.
Ernest Hemingway continues his battle even after death. His main weapon is an honest and open, eventful, surprisingly rich life and the wonderful books created by the writer, which, like soldiers, guard his memory and stand on our bookshelves.
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Margot Hemingway committed suicide on July 1, 1996.
Ernest Miller Hemingway (Hemingway, Ernest Miller), American writer, was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, near Chicago.
Margot tried to fight. She even performed in television program about people returning to normal life. Looking into the camera, Margot uttered several banal phrases, but suddenly fell silent and... burst into tears. And then she said through tears: “I’ve been to hell and now I’m coming back. And if I can’t, then I will always have suicide in reserve. Sometimes it seems to me that this is not the worst way out...” From the mouth of a man whose great-grandfather , grandfather and his brother committed suicide, it sounded more than just a figure of speech...
Clarence Edmonds Hemingway was a completely decent man, typical representative that decorous era, which was later called “Victorian” after its queen. He lived in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, a place where the antics of gangsters were condemned more fiercely than anywhere else in the world - so much so that they even refused to acknowledge their geographical proximity to this city. “You want to know where the border between Oak Park and Chicago lies?” local wits used to say. “It’s very simple! The border is where the brothels end and the churches begin, that’s all!”
Moreover, Clarence Hemingway lived on the most respectable street in this respectable town. And his future wife Grace lived on the same street. So, when they got married, it was a worthy marriage in all respects, in which both husband and wife were assigned well-learned roles: loving each other tenderly, giving birth to children and resting in God's bed in their bed, surrounded by a brood of adorable grandchildren...
So what if in his youth Clarence Hemingway spent one summer in South Dakota, hunting with the Sioux Indians and studying their methods of treating malaria, and then dreamed of becoming a missionary doctor and leaving Oak Park for the island of Guam, or Greenland, or anywhere to hell?.. So what if Grace, before becoming Mrs. Hemingway, managed to perform at New York's Madison Square Garden and demonstrated her rare contralto voice in such a way that the critics gasped with delight?.. She was even offered a contract at the Metropolitan Opera, but she was already engaged to a decent young man from Oak Park and returned. And he didn’t become a missionary either, he just married her. After all, mistakes are common to every youth.
As a result, Clarence became simply a good doctor, and compensated for his longing for the prairies and Indians by hunting birds in the vicinity of Oak Park. And Grace compensated for her longing for the stage by singing in the church choir and nagging her husband day and night for hanging around with a gun and not helping her with the housework. However, this did not stop them from having five children - three girls and two boys.
Hemingway family. 1906
The second child was named Ernest.
Ernest Miller Hemingway, December 1899
When he grew up, his father began to introduce him to bird hunting and fishing, and his mother began to play music on the cello. Ernest hated the cello for the rest of his life and fell in love with hunting and fishing. (Read - he fell in love with his father and hated his mother. Then many were surprised: he spoke mockingly and disdainfully about her, even when he had completely grown up. It seems that he was able to forgive Grace only after her death.)
Wedding of Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway.
In the end, Hadley was a very devoted wife: she meekly endured his passion for literature, when it had not yet brought in a penny, and meekly wore dresses that had long gone out of fashion (and this at the age of 20, and this in Paris!), ate potatoes with onions for breakfast and lunch, I could easily do without dinner...
Ernest, Hadley and Bambi Hemingway. 1926
And he fell in love with Pauline, who never wore dresses from last season, because, firstly, she was rich, and secondly, she was filming for Vogue. And moreover, he forced Hadley to demonstrate free-thinking and open-mindedness, that is, he simply lived with both of them for some time, inviting the women to decide for themselves which of them was the odd one out. In general, the whole of Paris was talking about the breakup of this marriage: in the famous Rotunda cafe, and in the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, and in the salon of Gertrude Stein.
Ernest and Paulina Hemingway, Paris, 1927
Those who did not like Ham, and those who envied him, said that all these trips to bullfights and safaris, carefully examining the convulsions of a matador or bull, all this cockiness, ostentatious reticence and boyish delight before the war - nothing more than reverse side the panic fear that Big Daddy experiences before death. And the words that he must study death properly in order to then describe it properly are just excuses.
Ernest Hemingway really spent his whole life testing his courage (or killing his father's cowardice?) wherever the opportunity presented itself. And if an opportunity did not present itself for a long time, he found it himself.
Hemingway fighting a bull, 1925
And he also loved desperate women. One of his lovers (almost the only one who did not later become his wife), Jane Mason, a beauty with a good pedigree, a rich husband and flawless skin, climbed into his hotel room through a drainpipe - Jane was absolutely not afraid of heights and had a magnificent vestibular apparatus. Once in the cockpit of a sports plane, she bet with the pilot that he could perform any aerobatic maneuvers and she wouldn’t get sick. Jane won the argument.
For the same reason, she never suffered from seasickness and long hikes she endured the yacht better than many of Hemingway’s friends. Jane never denied herself a good dose of liquor, and this delighted Hemingway. (He was not afraid of brave women - only respectable ones. And among respectable ones - especially those who in their youth had a dream of singing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.) Ernest and Jane (usually after a fair amount of daiquiris) amused themselves by racing off-road in her a small sports car. It was a game: who would be the first to shout “Careful!” or “Slow down!”, he lost.
Carlos Gutierrez and Jane Manson aboard the Anita, 1933
This gambling affair, as always, took place in front of Hemingway’s next wife. (Thank God, at least Dad didn’t force her to be open-minded and be friends with his mistress.) And friends, who were also traditionally involved in Ham’s love affairs, noticed that he and Jane had a lot in common. Both in him and in her lived two mutually exclusive principles - to self-affirmation and to self-destruction. But if in her fate both of these principles completely extinguished each other (Jane died only in 1980, having neither created nor destroyed anything), then Hemingway brought them to their logical conclusion.
Hemingway's third wife, for whom he nevertheless left Pauline, was a war journalist. Martha Gellhorn, like himself, was drawn to the very thick of the Spanish war. She, like him, wrote about the course of military operations, hated fascism and the people who are afraid of it. She, like him, spent days climbing on foot along the rocky slopes of the Spanish mountains, making her way in trucks along the newly laid front road and did not complain when there was nothing to eat. They slept in the back of the same truck, covered with soldiers' blankets.
Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with unidentified Chinese military officers, Chungking, China, 1941.
Martha did not complain, and Ernest realized that in his novels he had described just such a woman. As wedding gift he gave her a house in Cuba. He hoped that soon she would get tired of climbing mountains and sleeping in trucks.
However, Martha turned out to be even more of an adventurer than Dad. After spending a couple of months in the new house, she tried to get another journalistic assignment and went to Hong Kong, where further political troubles were brewing and Japanese bombers were flying... Reluctantly Ham followed her, beginning to understand that family life with Martha may turn out to be a much more dangerous adventure than war.
Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn during the Spanish Civil War. Exact date photo is unknown. 1937-1938
Moreover, she did not know pity not only for herself (which, from his point of view, was very healthy), but also for him - which was unforgivable. Once in London, after drinking too much alcohol at dinner, Ham and his friends got into a car accident and ended up in hospital with a head injury. When Martha saw him, she suddenly began to laugh. She thought it was very funny: the invulnerable Pope with a bandaged head, and a scraggly beard emerging from the bandages... Ernest was terribly offended. The women in his novels worried about wounded men, and did not laugh like crazy. Besides the only kind The irony that Pope couldn't stand was when people laughed at him. Whenever anyone tried to make him the butt of a joke, he would simply become furious.
There, in London, barely recovering from his injury, Ham proposed to his last wife, Mary Welsh. She was also pretty, she was also a journalist and, it seems, she also wasn’t particularly afraid of cockroaches, mice and bombings. On the eighth day of meeting him, he told her: “I want you to become my wife. I want to become your husband.”
Ernest and Mary Hemingway aboard the ship en route to France. June 1953
She loved Hemingway, women in general loved him. They very soon realized that, despite the tube, thick beard and chopped phrases, you can take care of him like a child, and - moreover - this is precisely the care he is waiting for. The Pope himself could not seriously care about anyone except his own literary heroes, and chose just such women for himself: independent, strong and courageous, not waiting for help, but capable of protecting. None of his wives were weak and delicate creatures dreaming of a bath with champagne. And not one was respectable in the sense that the residents of his home village of Oak Park put into this word.
So why did he commit suicide anyway?
Ham was not very old, but very sick. The pressure was jumping, old wounds and scars received in wars and accidents increasingly reminded of themselves. Numerous head injuries affected his vision. Now he could only read the first ten minutes, then the letters spread out into hieroglyphs, paintings by artists that he had once loved so much. But what was worse was that he could no longer write. It was not even possible to dictate his texts - not only letters, but even words and thoughts spread out, turned into mush, and he could not stand the mush of words: Hemingway spent his whole life on making his words firm and his phrases precise... .
And he became scared.
Fear driven inside during for long years, blossomed into persecution mania - Ham began to fear some FBI agents, or Martians, or financial collapse. Mary Welsh could not understand what he was more afraid of; the doctor honestly made a diagnosis, and this diagnosis was also terrible; paranoia. Dad, of course, was told that pressure was to blame for everything...
One day, Mary caught him doing something nasty: sitting in his office, Ham was intently inserting two cartridges into his gun. “This is unworthy,” she told him calmly. “You have been a courageous man all your life!” (She deliberately did not say “tried to be.”) Then Mary called the doctor. They carefully took the gun away from Dad and decided to put him back in the Mayo mental health clinic. Of course, under a pseudonym, of course, with the observance of secrecy and all precautions, of course, the ubiquitous FBI agents will never get there... of course, they treat blood pressure there.
Hemingway seemed to agree to go to the hospital. He said that he would collect everything he needed himself and headed to the room where his guns were kept. They stopped him again, again took away his cartridges, again explained that real men don’t behave like that.
Hemingway at his home in Cuba. Last photo.
Once upon a time, shortly after the death of his father and long before his own death, his mother suddenly sent him a parcel. It contained a chocolate cake, her own paintings and the gun with which her father shot himself. No one could understand why she did this, and then they completely forgot about it.
Lester Hemingway idolized his older brother from childhood: Ernie was big, strong, then he became famous, then he became famous, then he became an American idol. Lester was 16 years younger than Ernie and tried his best to follow his example. He also became interested in boxing, forced himself to love hunting, fishing, journalism and even war. Lester, perhaps, remained the only relative who could come to visit Ernest, listen to stories and drink wine...
In 1944 in London, while he was serving in the US Army war chronicle film group, Lester met Ernie and his new passion, Mary Welsh. He liked Mary. However, Lester liked absolutely all of his brother’s women, absolutely all of his actions and absolutely all of his novels, stories and tales. About our own novels he, unfortunately, could not say this. Lester's most significant work was undoubtedly his memoir, My Brother, Ernest Hemingway, published in 1962, a year after Ernie's suicide. These memoirs have long served as the main source for biographers, and Lester willingly answered their questions - it was clear that he imitated his older brother even after his death.
When Lester Hemingway committed suicide in 1982 (he also shot himself), the American press noted that, apparently, suicide was becoming a persistent habit in this family. And I was not mistaken...
Fourteen years later, Margot Hemingway died... She had not communicated with her parents for a long time, she divorced both husbands, and she had no children ready to mourn her stupid life. Friend concerned that Margot is not responding to phone calls, climbed up the ladder through the window and saw a body on the bed, already so decomposed that for final identification it was necessary to turn to dentists' records. And then in Margot’s room they found an empty package of powerful sleeping pills. The newspapers got away with stating the fact: not too famous actress, a not very successful fashion model, a not very respectable middle-aged woman who had an all too obvious weakness for alcohol, died. Possibly due to an overdose. But perhaps not.
Margot Hemingway showed promise and her prospects were bright. Even her childhood was not ignored: partly due to the fact that she was the granddaughter of the nation's idol, partly because of her ability to ride a bicycle without arms. “Margot is the only child we know of,” wrote the local newspaper, “who can ride a two-wheeled bicycle with her feet on the handlebars, holding an ice cream in one hand and waving to everyone passing by with the other.” She fished, climbed mountains and was very similar to her grandfather... Only unlike him, she loved tennis. At the age of 16, Margot dropped out of school and worked a wide variety of, sometimes very exotic, jobs, and then went to New York and became a model. This required a diet and intense training, but the efforts were rewarded: a photo on the covers of Vogue and Time, where they wrote about her that she was the “golden girl.” At the age of 20, Margot became the highest paid model and received $1 million for advertising a new fragrance from Faberge. She later admitted: “I hated the stench, but my face became one of the most recognizable in America.”
Producer Dino de Laurentiis decided to make her a star and gave Margot main role in film " Lipstick". The film failed miserably, and her performance was rated from “terrible” to “ever worse.” It didn’t help that the role of Margot’s younger sister was played by her own younger sister Mariel, for whom this film was a good start: after 3 years she got the role of Woody Allen's lover in the film "Manhattan". And Margot began to drink heavily, her marriage broke up, the divorce was finalized only in 1978, but by that time she had eloped with the French director Bernard Fouche. In 1980 they got married. lived in Paris, and Margot once again appeared on the covers of fashion magazines.
She defended her grandfather with all her might and guarded his memory. They say that Margot once beat Françoise Sagan when she carelessly called Hemingway a “third-rate writer.” Recovering on the floor after a terrible blow, Sagan changed her mind and said: “Your grandfather was a great writer.” Fouché also wanted to film documentary about Hemingway, in which Margot would have to travel around Europe and America and interview everyone who knew the writer. But their marriage was already on the verge of collapse, and this project was never realized.
Then Margot became interested in Buddhism and magic American Indians, indulged in lonely drinking, gained 24 kilos in weight and by the age of 88 looked like an absolute wreck.
In the fall of 1990, she was taken to the Betty Ford Clinic with a nervous breakdown due to alcoholism. After undergoing a course of treatment using strong psychotropic drugs, she was discharged. However, a few months later, bulimia was added to the list of her diseases - alcoholism and epilepsy, when a person can eat as much as he wants and does not feel that he is full.
About ten years before her death, she went to a bullfight for the only time in her life, specifically choosing Pamplona, where Ernest Hemingway admired this spectacle. And she was horrified. The dying bull rushed around the arena, blood gushing from his nostrils. “It seemed to me that all this was happening to me,” Margot said then, for the first time diverging in taste from her grandfather.
She did not like blood and chose her own, more accurate way to take her own life. But she remained faithful to this dark and strange “habit” of the Hemingways. After all, habits - science has already proven - are inherited by each new generation, like hair or eye color. And the distant great-grandson, without knowing it, shades his eyes from the sun with his palm or lights a cigarette, exactly as his great-grandfather did a hundred years ago. And he scratches the tip of his nose with his little finger, and walks quickly from corner to corner in excitement. And in one fell swoop it solves all problems when it begins to seem that there is no way out.
His father also taught him to whistle when it hurts. One day he was running to get milk from a neighboring farm - he had a duty to bring milk home in the morning, he tripped and fell. And he pierced his throat with the stick he was holding in his hand. Blood gushed from his throat, frightened and dirty, in tears and blood, the boy somehow made it home. It's good that dad was a doctor. He stopped the bleeding and told his son: “Don’t cry!” - “But it hurts!” - “Don’t cry anyway!” - “What should I do?!” - “Whistle,” said dad. “Just whistle. When you’re in so much pain that you can’t hold back your tears, start whistling and they’ll roll back.” My throat hurt for a long time afterwards. Ernie whistled a lot afterwards. By the way, he noticed then: sometimes mom and dad lock themselves in the room and argue about something. It’s impossible to make out what it’s about. Mom does most of the talking. Or it just seems so, because she has a well-trained voice. And the next day dad hardly talks at all, he just whistles something under his breath.
When Ernest turned 12, his grandfather gave him his first gun - a single-shot, 20-caliber gun. Ernie was happy: his gun! The present!.. The third act was still very far away, and Ernest Hemingway’s grandfather, of course, had never read the Russian writer Chekhov. He was just an old warrior and believed that a real man must have his own gun.
Probably, then Ernie decided that he would become a real man. He will hunt and fish like dad. But he will never allow himself to be subjugated by anyone. Not like dad.
Young fisherman. Ernest Hemingway, 1904
Ernie's older sister, Marcelina Hemingway Sanford, and his younger brother, Lester Hemingway, note in their memoirs that as children, Ernie and his father were very friendly. However, this did not stop Ernest from later behaving in such a way that his father and mother acted as a united front against him. For example, the parents were unanimous that after finishing school Ernie should go to some decent university and master some decent profession. Then they decided that one of his offenses could not be forgiven, and they literally kicked him out of the house. (Ernest was then 21 years old, and the offense consisted of refusing to help his mother with housework.) And finally, when he sent his first long-awaited book of stories to his parents from Paris, a real scandal broke out at home - however, without the direct participation of the main actor, that is, the most
Hemingway with his sister Marsalina and friends, 1920
Ernest. His sister Marcelina recalled that, having become acquainted with the work of the future Nobel laureate, his parents behaved as if they had thrown a dead cat into their house: dad walked around gloomy, and mom sobbed, constantly raising her hands to the ceiling and asking the Lord why such did her sins make her son such a disgusting person?.. The Lord, apparently, did not give a clear answer. Then my father took all six copies of the book, carefully packaged it and sent it to Paris to the publisher’s address. After which he informed Ernest in writing that he did not want to see either such abomination or himself in his house. And the whole point is that, describing the events of the past war and his first love, Ernest allowed the heroes to speak not in literary language, but to use words and expressions that seemed more appropriate to them.
Agnes von Kurowski and Ernest Hemingway. Milan, 1918
The father was especially furious when he main character his son turned out to be sick with gonorrhea. He wrote to Ernest: “It seemed to me that with all my upbringing I made you understand that decent people do not discuss their venereal diseases anywhere except in the doctor’s office. Apparently, I was mistaken, and cruelly mistaken...”
Since then, Ernest stopped informing his parents about his literary successes. Moreover, for several years he did not write home at all. He lived in Paris, went to a bullfight in Pamplona, on a safari in Africa, to a war in Madrid... got married, got divorced, had children, got divorced again and got married again, and every year he wrote better and better. Then he grew a beard, became famous, and with his whole life seemed to prove to his father that real men do not spend their whole lives in Oak Park under the watchful eye of a wife with a good contralto voice.
But my father was getting old and hunting less often and not so well. The creativity of his eldest son still did not please him. He read the novel “The Sun Also Rises,” with difficulty overcoming disgust, and did not call it anything other than “this book.” He was a little over fifty, but Clarence already felt like an ancient old man. He was plagued by diabetes and financial problems. The thought was tormented that life had passed, and although he had become a very respected doctor in Oak Park, he had never learned the secrets of Indian traditional medicine. His wife, in whom it was no longer possible to recognize a failed stage star, suddenly began to show concern and persistently advise him to finally take care of his health: “Darling, you have angina pectoris! Darling, you must go to bed!” He brushed it off and didn’t tell her that angina pectoris was nothing compared to the pain in his legs that he experienced in Lately. As a doctor, Clarence could not help but know the cause of these pains: diabetes gave a complication - gangrene of the feet, and gangrene is incurable.
Clarence spared his family these medical details, but became irritable and gloomy. He locked himself in his office for a long time and kept the drawers of his desk locked. And for some unknown reason, he refused to take his grandchildren with him in the car (they only realized later: the grandfather did not want to risk the children - he was afraid that at some point the pain would become unbearable and he would let go of the steering wheel). The wife was offended, angry, worried, wrote letters to her daughter: “It would be nice if you came to stay with us again and brought dear little Carol with you. Dad loves her so much. Maybe when he sees his granddaughter, he will cheer up...”
One day - it was the very beginning of December, but it was already beginning to smell like Christmas, tangerines and geese - Clarence Hemingway returned home after visiting his patients a little earlier than usual and was a little paler than usual (however, this was noticed after the fact). He took off his hat and coat and inquired about his health. youngest son Lester, who was lying around with a cold. The wife replied that he was already better. “Okay,” said Clarence, “then I’ll lie down until lunch.”
He went up to his office. Grace noticed that he was somehow leaning particularly heavily on the staircase railing, and thought: after all, we need to force him to rest... She didn’t even immediately understand what kind of roar was heard upstairs, in the office...
Ernest found out that his father had shot himself on the train: he was traveling with his five-year-old son John from New York to Key West when they brought him a telegram; “Dad committed suicide. Come urgently...” He told John that his grandfather was seriously ill, handed him over to a black conductor and boarded a train going to Chicago.
The funeral was magnificent. The Oak Leaves newspaper published an obituary stating that Clarence Hemingway had relieved the suffering of hundreds of people over the years.
And Ernest Hemingway, walking behind the coffin and supporting his mother, thought that his father could not alleviate his own suffering, or, more precisely, choose a fate in which this suffering would not be present. He didn't talk about it very often with his friends and never talked about it with the journalists who interviewed him. And only once, in a circle of close friends, Ernest could not stand it: “Perhaps he was chickening out... He was sick... there were debts... And once again he was afraid of his mother - this bitch always had to command everyone, do everything her own way! " - and, as if having come to his senses, he immediately turned the conversation to another topic. Although in general he loved to talk about suicide and, as a rule, spoke out sharply negatively in this sense, as if he was still continuing to prove his father wrong. Only 20 years later, preparing for the release of the next reissue of the novel “A Farewell to Arms!”, Hemingway wrote in the preface: “It always seemed to me that my father was in a hurry, but perhaps he could not stand it anymore. make no judgments."
After this happened, Ernest continued to live as he lived - that is, cheerfully and cheerfully. I wrote about bullfighting, about lion hunting, about the Spanish War. He was involved in five accidents and seven disasters, often surviving only by pure chance. He gave affectionate nicknames to all women and children: the eldest son was Bambi, the middle one was the Mexican Mouse, the youngest was either the Crocodile or the Irish Jew (no one understood what the Irish Jew had to do with it). On the very first evening they met, he asked permission to call his last, fourth wife Cucumber. She didn't mind. Everyone called Hemingway himself "Papa" - briefly, clearly and respectfully.
The Pope's relationships with women developed according to a surprisingly similar scenario: he rarely had affairs, but often fell in love seriously, and when he fell in love seriously, he considered it his duty to get married. Moreover, the presence of a previous wife confused him only the first time, when he divorced Hadley and married Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway was really worried, felt guilty before the Nimble Kitty (that was Hadley’s nickname) and baby Bambi. He suffered, even thought about suicide (however, he was only in his early 20s at the time and his father had not yet committed suicide, so these thoughts can easily be attributed to growing pains).
110 years ago, the legendary writer, warrior, traveler, hunter Ernest Hemingway was born. He lived a short, but full of adventures life, and left behind many unsolved mysteries, the main of which to this day remains the mystery of the writer’s death. A strange craving for suicide, which did not escape either the writer himself or his relatives, was called by biographers the “curse of the Hemingways.”
First gun
The author of the novel “A Farewell to Arms” received his first gun when he was twelve years old. From childhood, his father tried to instill in Ernest a love of sports, hunting and fishing. However, over time it became clear that in addition to sports success, his son could boast of literary talent. Ernest's stories and poems began to appear in the school newspaper.
It is not surprising that after graduating from school, the talented young man was immediately accepted into one of the Kansas newspapers as a correspondent. He worked here for a short time: he wrote mainly about fires, accidents, and murders.
Six months later, Hemingway volunteered for war in Europe. In Italy, he got a job as a driver for the American Red Cross and soon demanded to be transferred to the front line. The first serious injury brought Hemingway to the hospital, where he met an American nurse. Later, this love story and the writer’s war experience will form the basis of the novel “A Farewell to Arms,” writes n-t.ru.
Father and son
Returning home, Hemingway soon comes to the conclusion that life in the suburbs of Chicago is rather boring for an adventurer. His parents tried to force him to go to university, but instead Ernest decides to go to Europe again, this time to Paris.
The writer took his first wife with him, Hadley Richardson. For the first few years, their relationship was almost perfect. A meeting with Pauline Pfeiffer, a columnist for the fashionable Parisian magazine Vogue, became fatal for the writer.
Soon, Hemingway committed, in his words, the main sin in his life - he divorced Richardson and married Pfeiffer, writes peoples.ru.
The writer sent his first book of stories to his parents. However, after familiarizing themselves with the work of the future Nobel laureate, they said that they no longer wanted to see such abomination in their home. Ernest's father, Clarence, was outraged that his son allowed the heroes to speak not in a literary language, but to use rude words and expressions. The impression of the book was strengthened by the fact that the main character turned out to be sick with gonorrhea.
In his city, Clarence Hemingway was a respected doctor, and he preferred not to talk about his illnesses - diabetes and gangrene - even with his relatives. For a long time, relatives did not know what torment the father experienced while sitting in his office. However, one winter day the city was shocked by terrible news - Clarence Hemingway committed suicide.
Ernest hardly discussed his father’s death with anyone. Only twenty years later did he give his assessment of what happened in the preface of the book “A Farewell to Arms!” “It always seemed to me that my father was in a hurry, but perhaps he could not stand it any longer. I loved my father very much and therefore I do not want to express any judgment,” he wrote.
There was always a place for risk in Ernest's life. He traveled a lot, hunted, survived five accidents and seven disasters, but always remained alive. The writer always condemned suicide.
The only concern was the strange package Ernest received after his father's death. His mother suddenly sent him her own paintings and the gun with which his father shot himself. No one then could understand why she did it.
Exceptional Marlene
Each time he fell in love seriously, Hemingway considered it his duty to get married. The only exception was Marlene Dietrich. For many years, the relationship between the writer and actress was platonic, writes americaru.com.
They met on board the French ocean liner Ile de France in 1934. And, according to the writer, it was love at first sight. A few years later, a correspondence began between them, which continued until Hemingway’s suicide in 1961.
“Marlene, I love you so passionately that this love will forever be my curse,” Hemingway wrote in 1950. Dietrich answered no less passionately. "I think it's time to tell you that I think about you constantly. I read your letters again and again and talk about you only with chosen people", - newsru.com website quotes lines from the actress’s letter.
They were never destined to link their destinies. Hemingway explained it this way: “When my heart was free, then Nemochka was just experiencing romantic suffering. When Dietrich with her magical searching eyes floated on the surface, then I was immersed.” Dietrich’s place in the writer’s heart was never taken by any of the writer’s four wives.
"The Curse of the Hemingways"
Hemingway traveled a lot throughout his life, and this helped him find the ideal place to live. Cuba turned out to be such a place. Having visited here once, in 1928, Hemingway began to return here again and again and, in the end, decided not to part with the island, writes letun.ru.
For twenty years he lived in his Cuban villa Finca Vigia. It was here that the writer felt inspired to create the main work of his life - “The Old Man and the Sea”.
His last wife, the young and beautiful Times magazine correspondent Mary Welsh, lived with Hemingway in Cuba. This marriage is called the most successful in the writer’s life. Mary treated her husband with reverence and often turned a blind eye to his flirtations with other women.
When Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, Hemingway had to leave his beloved farm and return to America. After this, the writer began to experience severe depression. In addition, the wounds and scars left after the war began to remind themselves more often. But most of all the writer was tormented by a problem with his vision: he could no longer write, and could only read for the first ten minutes.
Hemingway's wife managed to prevent his first suicide attempt. She insisted that he be admitted to a clinic for nervous disorders. Hemingway underwent electroshock therapy twice. However, the treatment ended with the writer shooting himself two days after returning from the clinic.
Ernest Hemingway passed away on July 2, 1961. He became the second victim of the Hemingway curse, and the writer's younger brother Lester Hemingway became the third.
Lester tried to follow the example of his older brother all his life. He also became a journalist, also engaged in boxing and hunting. However, in none of these hobbies was he able to realize himself to the same extent as his brother.
A year after the writer’s death, he wrote a book of memoirs about Ernest, and thirty years later he followed his example, committing suicide.
The “fatal” inheritance was also passed on to Hemingway’s granddaughter, Margot. In her character she was very reminiscent of her grandfather. She left her family early and began making a living by filming in fashion magazines. Margot's dreams of becoming an actress failed, and her personal life did not work out either. In 1990, the former model took a lethal dose of sleeping pills.
The material was prepared by the editors of rian.ru based on information from RIA Novosti