{"id":240886,"date":"2021-06-28T10:23:29","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T14:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=240886"},"modified":"2021-06-28T10:23:29","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T14:23:29","slug":"ernest-hemingway-from-key-west-to-havana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/culture\/literature\/ernest-hemingway-from-key-west-to-havana\/","title":{"rendered":"Ernest Hemingway from Key West to Havana"},"content":{"rendered":"

Curiously, one of writer Ernest Hemingway\u2019s favorite phrases was a French expression: <\/span>Il faut (d\u2019abord) durer<\/span><\/i>. Something like \u201cfirst of all, you have to endure.\u201d He used it frequently and wrote it in many of the books he dedicated to his friends.<\/span><\/p>\n

Six decades after his suicide in Idaho, the phrase was never more current than on the two shores of the Straits of Florida. In Key West, the southernmost city in the United States, and in San Francisco de Paula, a small town south of Havana.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway lived almost the entirety of his fruitful career as a writer and journalist in both places. In both he wrote his best works and in both he is widely admired and respected.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Ernest Hemingway. Photo: The Guardian.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Key West every year around this time there is a contest that awards the individual that most resembles the writer. There are three days of revelry, including a wooden bullfight, which recall the years when Papa lived in the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hemingway discovered Havana on a stopover on his way to Key West. He was returning from a trip to Europe, Spain included, and with a good part of the manuscript of <\/span>Farewell to Arms<\/span><\/i> under his arm, in April 1928, aboard the steamship <\/span>Orita<\/span><\/i>. He made a stopover of less than a day in the Cuban capital. No trace remains of that stop. From there he traveled to Key West, where an uncle of Pauline Pfeiffer, his second wife, bought a house that he gave to the couple for their wedding.<\/span><\/p>\n

In it, the writer had the only swimming pool that still exists in a Key West residence built, he installed his headquarters and began a stage in his life that led him as a foreign correspondent to the Spanish Civil War.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Cuban writer Norberto Fuentes in his book <\/span>Hemingway en Cuba<\/span><\/i>, Papa said that Key West was the \u201cSaint Tropez of the poor man,\u201d but \u201cit was in this place where his personality and his characters hardened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When he was not writing or traveling, Hemingway went fishing in the Gulf Stream. He used its waters to fish for marlin on board the yacht <\/span>Anita<\/span><\/i>. At that time, he started coming to Havana and stayed at the Ambos Mundos Hotel where, Fuentes says, he created a kind of operations center for these fishing trips.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today the Ambos Mundos is still a hotel. At the entrance there is a plaque that commemorates the passage of the writer, and his room is not used by anyone except as a place of worship for Hemingway fans.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The Ambos Mundos Hotel, in the background. Photo: Flickr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In one of those fishing trips in 1933, Hemingway was present in Havana at the beginning of the popular rebellion that culminated in the overthrow of dictator Gerardo Machado.<\/span><\/p>\n

When he returned from Europe in 1938, after his experience in the Spanish Civil War, already separated from Pauline and about to marry Martha Gellhorn, he settled forever in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Initially at the Ambos Mundos, where he began the final draft of <\/span>For Whom the Bell Tolls<\/span><\/i>, and later, at Finca Vig\u00eda, rented by Martha and which the couple ended up buying.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
In the dining room of Finca Vig\u00eda, Cuba. Photo: The Ernest Hemingway Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than the house in Key West, Finca Vig\u00eda, in San Francisco de Paula, was transformed into the grand residence of the writer. Until he abandoned it in 1960, the great glories of literature, art, cinema and sports passed through there. People like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn or Gary Cooper. Writers like the French Jean Paul Sartre despite the fact that, as Fuentes says, Hemingway was not his favorite person. There he received his friends, bullfighters Luis Miguel Domingu\u00edn and Antonio Ordo\u00f1ez, and boxing champion Rocky Marciano.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Reading on the \u201cPilar.\u201d Photo: The Ernest Hemingway Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ava Gardner used to bathe naked in the pool and, afterwards Hemingway invited his friends to take off their shoes and dip their feet in the water that had bathed the diva.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuba was the place where Hemingway faced his old age, which he detested, along with his last wife, Mary Welch. When the writer died and at his instructions, he left the estate to the Cuban government, which transformed it into a museum.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finca Vig\u00eda: Hemingway\u2019s Havana Paradise<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n