"It seems to me that the beauties of all Chicago are like a glass of Carlo corn syrup compared to a glass of Burgundy red wine from 83 years old."
This is a letter hemingway wrote with a friend during World War I, and this sentence is Hemingway's description of a beautiful nurse named Agnes.
Hemingway fell in love with her at first sight and compared her to the most beautiful woman in the world.
After that, he exclaimed, "I love her more than anyone or anything in this world, including the world itself." ”
But the woman who made Hemingway love her more than the whole world didn't love him, and even abandoned him.
Hello everyone, today I want to bring you a book about reminiscing about Hemingway's life, called "Hemingway's Life Scrapbook".
Who was Hemingway? In the eyes of the public, Hemingway is the writer who wrote "The Old Man and the Sea". But does Hemingway have only one identity as a writer? Not really.
Those familiar with him know that Hemingway was still a soldier, because he participated in two world wars and witnessed the cruelty of two world wars.
In addition to the soldiers, adventurers, exiles are also his labels, but even if we know hemingway's identity, his real life is still a mystery.
So, what was Hemingway's life like?
Based on this question, the book "Scrapbook of Hemingway's Life" presents an extremely vivid Hemingway for everyone.
Hemingway did not have the habit of keeping a diary, but in his lifetime he wrote six or seven thousand letters to his relatives and friends, and these massive letters can be described as a "mobile diary".
Hemingway in this book is real and vivid, and the life from childhood to old age is condensed in words.
So when we flip the paper with our fingers, Hemingway's real life is instantly revealed to our eyes.
On July 21, 1899, Ernest Hemingway was born in a suburb called Oak Park.
This suburb is mostly inhabited by middle-class upper-class Protestants. Hemingway's father, Clarence, was a doctor, and Hemingway's mother, Grace, was a musician.
Because Hemingway's father loved the outdoors, Hemingway's childhood was always full of dreams, with small animals, boats, hunting, and swimming.
By 1913, on the eve of the upheaval of the century, Hemingway had become a student at Oak Park High School, a model student who was also very good at boxing and soccer.
In the second year of his high school, world war I broke out. At the same time, Hemingway fell in love with writing at this time.
In two years, he relied on his literary talents to become the editor of the school newspaper.
As a teenager, Hemingway's blood boiled, and after graduating in 1917, he began his career as a journalist as a boy scout in the Kansas City Star.
On July 8, 1918, an ambulance arrived at the junction of Italy and Austria, and a young man leaped down from the ambulance.
Just then, a shell came from afar, the sound of machine guns began to rise and fall, a soldier on the battlefield at the junction suddenly fell to the ground, and the young man was shot in the leg in order to save the soldier.
And the hero who helped the soldiers was Hemingway, who joined the First World War with enthusiasm to help.
Hemingway was also awarded the Order of the War Cross and the Silver Medal of Courage by Italy for this incident, and the award speech mentioned him:
"Annotated for courage and self-sacrifice, showing admirable brotherhood."
In addition, Hemingway also met the woman he loved the most in his life.
Hemingway was injured and sent to the Red Cross hospital in Milan, where Hemingway fell in love with Agnes, the nurse in charge of his care, and then fell in love with her uncontrollably.
Agnes was the daughter of a count of Poland, seven years older than Hemingway. The couple became engaged, and Agnes made a promise to Hemingway that she would return to the United States with Hemingway after the war.
On 7 March 1919, however, Hemingway received an envelope from Agnes canceling the engagement.
Hemingway met Agnes, just as the desert met the sea, and Hemingway got hope from it and disappointment from it.
A few years later, Hemingway still could not forget his first love, and wrote "Farewell, Weapon" with a stroke of his pen;
The story takes place in World War I Italy, the hero Henry is a Red Cross ambulance driver, the heroine Catherine is a nurse,
Henry, wounded by a shell while on a mission at the front, returns to the hospital in Milan for treatment, where the two protagonists fall in love and have a happy time.
Catherine was also pregnant at this time, but Henry had healed from his wounds and was now returning to the front, where they had been scattered ever since.
During the war, Henry survived with his ingenuity, and he found Catherine in a small town on the border.
Happiness may have a deadline, and Henry and Catherine were still experiencing the joy of reunion, but it wasn't long before Catherine died of dystocia.
Only Henry survived alone. At the end of the book, Hemingway said:
"The story ends here, Catherine is dead, and you and I will die. That alone I can assure you. ”
You should also be able to see that the protagonists in "Farewell, Weapon" are the epitome of Hemingway and Agnes, and hemingway's sentence at the end also contains endless meaning.
Perhaps, he was saying goodbye to that period of youth, perhaps, he felt that the end of people was death.
The emotional wounds that Agnes brought to him made him unforgettable for a long time, and also made him anxious to find a safe haven, so he met his first wife, Hadley.
The relationship between Hemingway and Hadley is not the feeling of mutual giving, when Hadley faces Hemingway, Hadley will never say a "no",
Hemingway was going to Paris, Hadley went to Paris with Hemingway, Hemingway was going to Spain, Hadley went to Spain with Hemingway,
In this relationship, Hemingway never thought about paying anything for Hadley. At that time, Hemingway only wanted to immerse himself in his own work.
In 1925, Hemingway entered the most important stage of his life, and his short stories received unprecedented popularity.
It was also in that year that Hemingway met a third woman he liked, named Paulina.
Paulina is a rich lady who has a strange look that moves Hemingway to her, she likes Hemingway, and she doesn't mind sharing Hemingway with Hadley, and even buys pajamas for Hadley.
But Hadley minded, so Hadley and Hemingway showed off their cards.
Hemingway was unable to choose between two men and defended his infidelity romantically in "A Flowing Feast":
"I know it must be silly, but if you really fall in love with two women at the same time, and each one is deeply in love, there is nothing more devastating and bad for a man, and both women will accuse you of not treating them as true love at the same time, but you know, you really love these two women." 」
In 1927, Hadley and Hemingway filed for divorce, and Hemingway gave Hadley the rights to the Sun Also Rise that he had written at the time as compensation, because Hemingway knew that Hadley was the best woman for him.
In a letter to Hadley, he wrote:
"If it weren't for marrying you, with your company, and your selfless dedication, and the inspiration that came out of you, including all the love you gave me—and of course, the financial support—I would never have been able to complete 'The Sun Also Rises.'"
In the same year, Hemingway and Paulina married, but the marriage was about to end because Hemingway fell in love with someone else.
After Hemingway and Paulina married, they moved to Key West. There began a new life of writing, drinking, and basking in the sun.
In 1928, it was bright for the United States, but it was dark for Hemingway, when Hemingway's father suddenly committed suicide, his friend swallowed a gun and committed suicide, and when his second son was born, Paulina almost left this world because of difficult childbirth.
In the face of these life pressures, Hemingway chose to bury his head in writing and wrote "Farewell, Weapon".
What people did not expect was that "Farewell, Weapon" was a big hit, and Hemingway got a large amount of money. Hemingway's life also slowly came out of the darkness.
Hemingway and Paulina began to travel together to relax and live happily.
Their love broke off in 1936, when Hemingway met a woman named Martha while drinking at the "Sloppy Joe" bar.
In 1937, Hemingway was commissioned to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War, and he witnessed the beginnings of fascism and wrote many articles about the war.
His love suddenly grew in this extreme environment, and he met Martha, an American female journalist, during this war. At this time, Hemingway was struck in the heart by Martha, a bold and fearless new woman.
Remembering Paulina's humble appearance, he suddenly wanted to end his last marriage.
So, in 1940, Hemingway and Paulina divorced, captured Martha's heart, and married in Cuba. It was also at this time that Hemingway wrote the "Death Knell for You and Me" "For Whom the Death Knell Rings".
After Hemingway and Martha married, in order to report on the Japanese invasion of China, with Martha came to the East, the love between them flashed, and within a few years, Hemingway fell in love with a woman named Mary.
The reason is probably because of Martha's "masculinity that women should not have" in World War II.
In his letter, he angrily spoke of Martha's "great change of personality" and that she was "no longer cute." But when he spoke of Mary in his letter, the words seemed extremely gentle.
Mary was met by Hemingway while traveling to Europe as a war correspondent.
Hemingway was injured, and Mary was always by his side to take care of him, Mary was always thin and weak, so that Hemingway only wanted to put her in his pocket, he described Mary as "a very good girl".
In 1945, Hemingway divorced Martha, married Mary, and settled in Cuba.
After this, Hemingway was like "Jiang Lang's talent", and he could no longer write the works that the public expected.
In 1947, he met an Italian girl thirty years younger than him, and he fell in love with the girl at first sight and wrote "Crossing the River into the Forest", but everyone thought that Hemingway's talent was disconnected early.
It wasn't until the appearance of "The Old Man and the Sea" in 1952 that Hemingway pulled back a round.
"The Old Man and the Sea" is like a surprise, but also like a turning point, the world evaluates "The Old Man and the Sea" is Hemingway's most widely circulated, the most vital work.
In 1952, Hemingway published this "The Old Man and the Sea", and the story of this book is actually very well summarized.
The protagonist, Santiago, is an elderly fisherman, and those who go fishing with him can finally return with a full load, but this protagonist has no such luck.
One day, Santiago finally caught a huge fish in the sea, and he tied the big fish to the boat,
Then he returned home, but the shark that came to the fisherman with the smell of blood blocked his way, and Sandiago fought desperately with the shark, and everyone hoped that Sandiage would win.
However, he was not Superman, he could not defeat the shark, and after working so hard for so long, in the end, only the skeleton of the big fish was left on Santiago's ship.
The ending of The Old Man and the Sea has a kind of "emptiness and sadness brought about by the uselessness of victory." ”
This ending seemed to foreshadow something, until 1961, when Hemingway took a pistol in the front hall of his home and personally ended his life, he suddenly found that Hemingway was heralding his own death.
As he said in his interpretation of The Old Man and the Sea:
"A man can be destroyed, not defeated."
Hemingway's suicide also proved the meaning of this sentence for the world.
Before he died, Hemingway went on one last safari in Africa, in fact, since then, his health has deteriorated a lot.
In Mary's view, Hemingway's anxiety increased with time, and even some mental abnormalities occurred.
When Hemingway wrote to a friend during this time, he would always write a sentence on the letter:
"Because of the brain damage, I would often be speechless, and I couldn't control it completely, which was just too bad."
In 1960, Mary took Hemingway to the hospital to treat his paranoia and depression, but Hemingway's state was always repetitive.
Mary probably didn't know that on the morning of July 1, 1961, Hemingway would have committed suicide, because on the night before that, Hemingway was still shouting at her loudly, "Good night, my kitten." ”
How warm, who would have thought that this warm moment and a sad moment are only a few hours apart.
"Hemingway's Life Scrapbook" records many hemingway photos that the world has never seen before, and these photos seem to tell us how unusual Hemingway's life is.
From the beginning of his childhood, to his glorious wounding in World War I, to his hunting on the west coast of East Africa and the United States, personally experiencing the Spanish Civil War and the heavy battles of "World War II",
Hemingway's life experience is simply rich to the extreme, he will also mention his own experience in his works, he called on people not to miss a sunrise,
I think you should agree with me after reading this book, Hemingway is a very life-conscious person.