Ernest Hemingway revising the typescript of For Whom The Bell Tolls, Sun Valley, Idaho, November 1940. Robert Capa © International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos.
In July 1918, at the tender age of 18, Ernest Hemingway was a Red Cross serving on the Italian Front during World War I when he was seriously wounded by mortar fire. Later he would write, “When you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you … Then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it can happen.”
Near-death experiences can alter the course of human life. For Hemingway, this was particularly true, as he experienced a tremendously fertile period from 1918 through the aftermath of World War II, with a recurring theme of confronting the fullness of life and the finality of death with grace and courage.
Ernest Hemingway at the wheel of his boat, Pilar, with Carlos Gutierrez, 1934. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
“Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars”, now on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through January 31, 2016, is the first museum exhibition devoted to the life and writings of Hemingway. His direct, spare style influenced successive generations of writers and readers around the world, drawing them deep inside novels including The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea.
Organized in partnership with Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the exhibition utilizes almost one hundred rarely exhibited manuscripts and letters, photographs, drafts and typescripts of stories, first editions, and artifacts from the author’s life, to reveal the man behind the myth, his struggles and triumphs.
Agnes von Kurowsky and Ernest Hemingway, Milan, 1918. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The exhibition is organized into six sections, starting with “The Class Prophet.” Here we see a young Hemingway right on the brink, his early days before enlisting in the Red Cross. The second section, “World War I” takes us inside the war, and the way it shaped Hemingway for a life of conflict and drama. “Paris”, the third section, finds s along side Hemingway during the 1920s when Hemingway was among a celebrated expatriate literary circle.
The fourth section finds Hemingway in Havana and Key West, where he lived throughout the 1930s as his literary fame grew. While Hemingway maintained his fierce commitment to literature, he also indulged his passions, and it proved to be a decade of diverse adventure and excitement for him. In 1937 he reported on the Spanish Civil War and drew upon his experiences in Spain for the novel that consolidated his literary reputation in 1940, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Hemingway’s 1923 passport (detail), 1923. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The fifth section focuses on World War II. His own first-hand knowledge of war, and its fatal dangers, did not keep Hemingway at home. In 1944, upon returning to Europe to report the war for Collier’s magazine, he explained his presence at the front line by saying “I got war fever like the measles.”
Titled “An Old Hunter Talking with Gods”, the sixth section reveals the beginning of a depression and deteriorating health that had begun to take its toll on his creativity, despite his winning the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea. “Writing well is impossibly difficult,” Hemingway told George Plimpton, and “the time to work is shorter all the time and if you waste it you feel you have committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness.” Such ominous words portend Hemingway’s fate, his life taken by his own hand in 1961.
“Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars”, is on view at the Morgan Library & Museum now through January 31, 2016.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
