ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND THE SAN FERMINES

In For Whom  the Bell Tolls Hemingway wrote “There are no other countries like Spain…There is no other country in the world like Spain.” Did Hemingway help Spain become better known in the Anglophone world or did Spain help Hemingway become a writer?

Born in July, Hemingway died in July. His favorite Spanish festivity was Los Sanfermines, the 7^th of July. He visited Pamplona the 6^th of July, 1923, and was so much taken by the holidays, the bulls, the merriment and drinking that he returned eight more times, until 1959. July was a benchmark in his life and in his relationship with Spain.

“To me a heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats…” he wrote. (Ernest Hemingway : Selected Letters 1917-1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker.) His fixation with things Spanish, especially toros, corridas, and the festive atmosphere  around them made his blood boil, and helped him in his writing career. No doubt.

Los Sanfermines became known worldwide thanks to this American Nobel-winning writer who placed the city of Pamplona on the map when, in 1926, he wrote The Sun Also Rises, about some American and British folk who travel to that city to watch bullfights and the running of people on the streets, in front of bulls. He borrowed the title from the Bible, Ecclesiastes: “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” 

In 1933 Scribner’s Magazine published his famous masterpiece short story “A Clean Well-lighted Place,” about a Madrid Café, where he paraphrased: “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada.” James Joyce said this was the best short story ever written.

In 1935 Hemingway came up with another bullfighting novel, Death in the Afternoon, in which he explores the nature of fear and courage, the essence of bullfighting and the passion that it arouses in people, especially among foreigners. The initial run of 10,000 copies sold out in a few days. He made a lot of money with this novel also.

For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940, was the next novel Hemingway wrote about Spain. The Civil War (1936-39) was the plot of the novel. He started writing it in Cuba and it became a triumph for him, the first edition selling over 75,000  copies. It is set in the Guadarrama  Mountains near Segovia and Madrid. The title was taken from the well-known Meditation by John Donne, “No man is an island.” Most of Hemingway’s titles are memorable and confirm what Camilo José Cela always said, that titles are very important.  

In October 1956, Ernest Hemingway visited Spanish writer Pío Baroja in his deathbed. According to Time magazine he said: “Allow me to pay this small tribute to you who taught so much to those of us who wanted to be writers when we were young. I deplore the fact that you have not yet received a Nobel Prize, especially when it was given to so many who deserved it less, like me, who am only an adventurer.” (Picture at: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/bi8FkUqzskWOdUNICPmkAQ.aspx)

How much did Hemingway owe Spain and Cuba (The Old Man and the Sea)? Of course Cuba and Spain must be grateful to him, but would the great writer have gotten so much fame and so much international recognition without these two Hispanic countries and the themes and experiences he gleaned from them? He paid tribute to both, especially to Spain, recognized his debt and followed in the footsteps of Washington Irving, William Precott and Gerald Brenan  among others, who were taken by Hispanic culture.

Of all possible quotations from For Whom the Bell Tolls, I choose two: “If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life.” And from his Nobel acceptance speech: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” It is, indeed.