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Born close to Chicago, Ernest Hemingway left very soon his birth-place, considered very provincial by him, and started to travel in search of a place suitable for his soul (and maybe to escape from his mother's maney requests). At the age of 22 he married Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, and moved to Paris where he started his career as a journalist and as a writer. Even if deeply in love with Elizabeth, he had an affair with journalist Pauline Pfeiffer (who later became the second Mrs Hemingway) and divorced. |
With
Pauline he moved to Key West, an almost unknown spot at the time,
but very popular among intellectuals, and Hemingway liked a lot its
relaxed atmosphere. He could count on the economic support of Pauline's
family and had a second and third son from Pauline (after the first
from Elizabeth Hadley). He was a regular at the Sloppy Joe's bar and
attended many fishing-games; during one of this in the habana bay
(that lasted 4 months instead of 2 days) he fell in love with the
island. |
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He
first moved to the Ambos Mundos Hotel and started a relation with
journalist-writer Martha Gellhorn and moved to Spain with her, correspondents
fro the Spanish Civil War. After their return to Cuba Martha bought
the Finca Vigia, a farm where the new married couple moved in 1940.
Even if Cuba, in those years, was renowed for being the "brothel
of America", hemigway liked the idea of living in shorts and
t-shirt and was deeply in love with the fishing-hunts for the blue
marlin on his boat, the Pilar. |
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This kind of life
was not really the best for Martha, a very ambitious writer and journalist,
so she went to Europe to report aout the Second World War as a journalist.
Also Hemingway couldn't say no to his newspaper to go London and there
he met Mary Welsh, another journalist, who became the fourth Mrs Hemingway.
When they returned to Cuba, they witnessed the gain of power by the
Barbudos, but he didn't leave the island together with the other americans,
but, instead, he made his best whishes to the Comandante, whishes
appreciated by Castro.
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The old man and the sea, the novel that gave him the Nobel prize, was inspired by the life of Gregorio Fuentes (who died in 2001) a fisherman from the small village of Cojimar, where Hemingway used to keep his boat. The posthuomus novel Islands in the tide is a series of novel inspired by his Habana stay; the book is a declaration of his love for Cuba: he describes the cocks fights, the hunting games, the cool mornings in La Finca and the fishing-games in the Gulf that he used to call the Blu River. |
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| Hemingway
left Cuba in 1960, leaving the Finca Vigia to the Cuban people; today,
together with the boat Pilar, is the Hemingway Museum. He committed
suicide the year after, in Idhao. |
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