tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/ernest-hemingway-18939/articlesErnest Hemingway – The Conversation2023-06-28T14:56:45Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2085282023-06-28T14:56:45Z2023-06-28T14:56:45ZHow Ernest Hemingway transformed Pamplona and the Sanfermines<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534251/original/file-20230627-28-mq1dy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C757%2C526&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pamplona, Spain, summer 1926. L-R (at table): Gerald Murphy, Sara Murphy, Pauline Pfeiffer, Ernest Hemingway and Hadley Hemingway.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Murphys,_Pauline_Pfeiffer,_and_the_Hemingways,_Spain,_1926.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Jake Barnes is an American newspaper correspondent working in Paris in 1922. Cohn, a friend who wanders around. Brett, the beautiful divorcee who has turned the French capital into a platform between two trains. Mike, the promise of a husband she has procured in the meantime. And Bill, a friend of Jake’s who only seems to think about fishing.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover showing a woman sitting crestfallen beside a tree" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=872&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533775/original/file-20230623-2432-8bzn3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1096&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cover of the first English edition of <em>The Sun Also Rises</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:The_Sun_Also_Rises_(1st_ed._cover).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Ernest Hemingway brings together all of them, and the bullfighter Pedro Romero, a transcript of the Niño de la Palma, in the Pamplona of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Sun-Also-Rises"><em>The Sun Also Rises</em></a> (1926).</p>
<p>The novel unfolds amid the Sanfermines, the legendary <em>fiesta</em> that celebrates the co-patron saint of Navarre, Saint Fermín, son of Firmo, a Roman officer Christianised around the 3rd century by Saint Saturninus, Bishop of Toulouse. According to legend, Fermín settled in Amiens and died a martyr’s death, his throat slit. Oral sources declare that the red <em>pañuelico</em> (scarf) worn around the neck on feast days is reminiscent of his fate.</p>
<h2>Origin and history of Sanfermines</h2>
<p>The history of the Sanfermines would take too long to recount. Over the centuries it has undergone many changes. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, there was a change of dates so that celebrations that once took place in the autumn were rescheduled for the solstices and finally moved to the summer. The ritual of the <em>txupinazo</em>, the explosion of a rocket that starts the <em>fiesta</em>, was devised at midday on the 6th of July 1939.</p>
<p>The best-known part of the feasts is the <em>encierro</em>, the 8 a.m. journey taken by the six bulls that are going to take part in the afternoon bullfight. This starts at the stable and ends at the bullring, crossing the old quarter of Pamplona. In the olden days, the bulls were led by the ranchers. The current tradition of running in front of the animals until they reach their destination has been preserved from this custom.</p>
<p>But this isn’t the only tradition that occurs during the Sanfermines. Among the many traditions that surround them are the mass and procession of Saint Fermín, patron saint of Pamplona and Navarre, the <em>encierrillo</em> – in which every day at 10 p.m., the bulls that will take part in the <em>encierro</em> the following morning are taken to the stable – or the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/es/title/955346910"><em>riau riau</em></a>, a popular celebration in which the citizens sing and dance a 19th-century waltz, occupying the streets of the centre and blocking the way of the municipal corporation. The riau riau has been absent from official celebrations for several years, although it continues to be performed unofficially.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A narrow street crowded with people partying while more people watch from the balconies of the buildings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=684&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533763/original/file-20230623-29-6np9vj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Photograph of a street in the old quarter of Navarre during the Sanfermines.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/es/fotos/YNlDe1XTCgQ">Unsplash</a></span>
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<p>The Sanfermines are an amalgam of Christianity and paganism. Hemingway was able to see that instantly. The bullfight, he states in his novel, is “a tragedy in three acts”. Later, however, he observes that “San Fermín is also a religious festival”.</p>
<p>In fact, it can be said that it is precisely Hemingway’s literary recreation of the Sanfermines that shaped what we know today. A glance at the novel is enough to prove it.</p>
<h2>Pamplona was a moveable feast</h2>
<p>There are several themes in <em>The Sun Also Rises</em>. The first is Jake’s drama: his impotence, caused by a war wound, is underlined by the irony of Brett’s preference for him among the men who want her (Mike, Romero, Cohn) and by the exaltation of virility that the bullfighting festival represents.</p>
<p>Another underlying theme is the mood, which makes <em>The Sun Also Rises</em> an emblem of <a href="https://books.google.es/books?id=OYYNMqtvj7EC&redir_esc=y">what Gertrude Stein called the “lost generation”</a>, traumatised by the First World War. In fact, it was Stein who advised Hemingway to visit the Sanfermines.</p>
<p>Jake’s wound thus invites a symbolic reading, and points to an evil that is not exclusive to him. The book suggests that, like Ulysses, this group of Americans are reluctant to return to their homeland after the conclusion of a war that has overturned all their certainties. Behind the visible hunger for action lurks ennui.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A bullfighter fights a bull in a crowded bullring" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533761/original/file-20230623-23-c4qk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A bullfighter in Pamplona, Spain. Ernest Hemingway attended the event as part of the San Fermín Fiesta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/EHPH/003/EHPH-003-026">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum</a></span>
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<p>A third theme has to do with Hemingway’s personality. The writer was someone who not only wrote about adventure but turned writing itself into it, someone who liked to hunt crocodiles in Florida, fish for tuna in Cuba or shoot wild beasts in Africa.</p>
<p>That is what the characters seek, a binge of adventure and exoticism with three obvious manifestations: the aforementioned sexual tension, bullfighting and drinking. It should not be forgotten that <em>The Sun Also Rises</em> is written during Prohibition and that the author comes from Chicago, a city that has become the centre of the illegal liquor trade.</p>
<p>In contrast to that dilemma between abstinence and drunkenness, between illegality and puritanism, what these North Americans find in the Sanfermines is a festive and joyous experience. They drink publicly, without remorse and with joy.</p>
<h2>Hemingway and the Sanfermines</h2>
<p><em>The Sun Also Rises</em> wasn’t the only thing that Hemingway wrote about Pamplona. In October 1923, he had published the article “Pamplona in July” in Toronto’s <em>Star Weekly</em>, after his first visit of an eventual ten. He would later mention the fiestas in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Death-in-the-Afternoon"><em>Death in the Afternoon</em></a>, 1932, his book on bullfighting. It was, however, <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-rises.html">his consecration as a writer</a>… and the universal consecration of the Sanfermines (despite the fact that most of the novel <em>does not</em> have this <em>fiesta</em>, but Paris, San Sebastian, Bayonne and Madrid, as its setting).</p>
<p>Hemingway was able to see this for himself after a long hiatus. During the 1940s he was unable to visit Pamplona (he had spoken out in favour of the Republic and written <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/For-Whom-the-Bell-Tolls-novel-by-Hemingway"><em>For Whom the Bell Tolls</em></a>, a plea against the policy of non-intervention), but when diplomatic relations between the United States and Spain were re-established, he did not have time to take the plane. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="In front of Café Iruña, four men and a woman talk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533760/original/file-20230623-25-fqvcib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tyrone Power, Eddie Albert, Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner and Mel Ferrer in the adaptation of Henry King’s <em>Fiesta</em>, 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051028/mediaviewer/rm3259585280?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_sf_6">IMDB</a></span>
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<p>What he found was something of a <em>boomerang</em>: instead of the local party in a small town, he now saw the cosmopolitan tumult brought about by the popularity of his own novel (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051028/">and of the 1957 film adaptation made in Mexico by Henry King</a>).</p>
<p>In short, life imitated art: the feast was now a crowd of foreigners eager to emulate the adventures of Jake, Mike and Brett in a sort of theme park. The local population, meanwhile, had added to the traditional red <em>pañuelico</em>, with a uniform of white shirt and trousers that was only really seen in King’s film – the kitsch logic of those who wish to confirm a postcard peculiarity for the outsider. And, of course, the more pagan side was beginning to prevail over the religious.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.eunateediciones.com/libro/hemingway-en-los-sanfermines_118014/">He didn’t like it, they say</a>
.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriel Insausti Herrero-Velarde no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.</span></em></p>The Sanfermines were a popular but local Spanish fiesta… until Hemingway arrived.Gabriel Insausti Herrero-Velarde, Filología. Literatura moderna, Universidad de NavarraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1789762022-03-17T12:12:12Z2022-03-17T12:12:12ZUkraine’s foreign fighters have little in common with those who signed up to fight in the Spanish Civil War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452241/original/file-20220315-27-f7uz43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4037%2C3088&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman hugs a Polish volunteer before he crosses the border to go and fight against Russian forces.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PolandUkraineInvasion/c6f8da8c6dc449bf83ef64b729a3ec6e/photo?Query=volunteer%20fight%20ukraine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=now-30d&totalCount=57&currentItemNo=41">AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When an aging <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg&t=3s">Abe Osheroff recalled</a> why, as a 21-year-old kid from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, he had volunteered to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he framed it as a personal, ethical decision.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Some of my friends were already going over. Some of them had been killed and wounded. … Then I began to see pictures of what was going on. … Bombardments, civilians getting plastered all over the place. … I knew that if I didn’t go, I’d be ashamed all my life.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, his words seem to echo those of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">individuals from around the world</a> who are willing to risk their lives to help Ukraine in its desperate struggle against the Russian invasion.</p>
<p>“Sitting by and doing nothing? I had to do that when Afghanistan fell apart, and it weighed heavily on me. I had to act,” a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">U.S. veteran confessed</a> to a New York Times reporter before he headed east. </p>
<p>Encouraged by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">volunteers are signing up</a> – according to some reports, by the thousands – to join the ranks of what <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/11/ukraine-russia-war-foreign-fighters-volunteers">The Guardian has called</a> “the most significant international brigade since the Spanish civil war.”</p>
<p>The Guardian is not the first to draw an analogy between 1930s Spain and today’s Ukraine. But tempting as it is to compare the two, doing so does more to obscure than to explain either of the conflicts.</p>
<p>In some instances, I see the analogy relying on distorted frames inherited from the Cold War; in others, it seems to be driven by blatant opportunism. </p>
<h2>Surface-level similarities</h2>
<p>The Spanish Civil War <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/scw/simpletimeline2/">broke out in the summer of 1936</a> after an attempted military coup, led by Gen. Francisco Franco, failed to overthrow the government of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10618-9_6">the Popular Front</a>, a liberal-progressive coalition that had been democratically elected to lead the Second Spanish Republic. But while the Republican government managed to hold on to Spain’s largest cities and about half of the national territory, the right-wing rebels took control of the other half. They proceeded to wage a bloody war.</p>
<p>Republican forces faced a well-equipped rebel army that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260240">had supplied with soldiers, planes, weapons and tanks</a>. By contrast, other democracies left the republic to fend for itself, with more than two dozen countries signing a <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822037844834&view=1up&seq=1">nonintervention pact</a>. The republic was also shut out of the international arms market, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/177867/the-spanish-civil-war-by-hugh-thomas/">leaving only the Soviet Union and Mexico as sources of military support</a>. After the republic’s defeat in 1939, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/oct/17/spain">a repressive military dictatorship</a> headed by Franco ruled Spain for the next 36 years.</p>
<p>Osheroff was one of roughly <a href="https://alba-valb.org/who-we-are/faqs/">2,800 U.S. volunteers</a> – <a href="https://www.history.com/news/spanish-civil-war-foreign-nationals-volunteer">and more than 35,000 from around the world</a> – who flocked to Spain to help fight fascism. These foreign fighters were largely recruited through communist organizations, although many were not communists. What they had in common was their <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-brigades-9781408853986/">staunch opposition to everything fascism stood for</a>. Upon arriving in Spain, the volunteers became fully integrated members of the Spanish Republican Army, where most of them served in one of five International Brigades. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of men in suits pose on a ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452238/original/file-20220315-15-qh453h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the American contingent of the International Brigade that fought for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, on their way home from Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/veterans-of-the-abraham-lincoln-brigade-the-american-news-photo/3435272?adppopup=true">Keystone/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LngKgQEAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar of the Spanish Civil War and its legacy</a>, I can see why many people would be tempted to read the war in Ukraine through a Spanish lens. </p>
<p>Much as in civil war Spain, Ukrainian cities are being bombarded and civilians are dying, while those attacked are putting up an unexpectedly persistent defense against a much stronger enemy. As in Spain, the war <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/opinion/ukraine-refugees-europe.html">is producing seemingly unending streams of refugees</a>. And, as in Spain, the war seems to reflect an unusual degree of moral clarity – “It’s a conflict that has a clear good and bad side,” one U.S. veteran <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">told The New York Times</a> – while the fate of the world seems to hang in the balance.</p>
<h2>Motivated by class solidarity</h2>
<p>Yet historical analogies are never perfect, rarely useful and often misleading. For one thing, the geopolitics of today has little connection to the 1930s. In 1936 there was no NATO, only a weak and ineffectual <a href="https://www.ungeneva.org/en/history/league-of-nations">League of Nations</a>, and no threat of nuclear war.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the volunteers who joined the International Brigades in 1936 from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia have little in common with the combat veterans and Ukrainian nationalists who are signing up today, and whose politics, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084113728/a-closer-look-at-the-volunteers-who-are-signing-up-to-fight-the-russians?t=1647154946037">as NPR has reported</a>, are vague and may skew to the right or far right. While the Russian invasion clearly violates Ukrainian sovereignty, those defending Ukraine represent ideologies that cover the entire political spectrum. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man in military fatigues walks through parking lot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452259/original/file-20220315-17-1xlqrt5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A British combat volunteer heads toward the Ukrainian border from Poland to fight the invading Russian army in March 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-combat-volunteer-who-did-not-want-to-be-identified-news-photo/1382495979?adppopup=true">Sean Gallup/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, very few of the volunteers in Spain had military training or experience. And if Osheroff knew that the Spanish war was also his to fight, it was, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg&t=3s">as he explained</a>, because he’d grown up steeped in progressive politics.</p>
<p>He and his fellow brigaders were driven by the internationalist solidarity that’s the bedrock of the labor movement, but they also knew they had a personal stake in the struggle. <a href="https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/american-jews-spanish-civil-war/about-the-project/">Many of them were Jews and immigrants</a>; they belonged to a generation that, as the historian <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/they-went-to-spain">Helen Graham has written</a>, was resisting “attempts, by fascism, either alone or in coalition, violently to impose ethnic and class hierarchies both old and new across the whole continent.” </p>
<p>The analogy falters in other ways as well. The half-million Spanish refugees who fled Spain in the last months of the war were not welcomed with open arms. The French government put them in <a href="https://archive.org/details/surveygraphic28survrich/page/678/mode/2up">concentration camps</a>, while most countries around the world closed their borders, with some notable exceptions, such as Mexico. During Germany’s occupation of France, as many as 15,000 of the Spanish Republicans interned in France were deported to <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487521318/spaniards-in-mauthausen/">Nazi camps</a>, where some 5,000 died.</p>
<p>And yet in 1945, as Europe was liberated from fascism, the Allies decided to leave Franco alone and let him retain his grip on Spain. By the 1950s, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jan-04-op-meisler4-story.html">Franco had become a U.S. ally in the Cold War</a>. </p>
<h2>Distorting history</h2>
<p>That same Cold War reshaped how the story of the Spanish Civil War was told. In the U.S., it became common to paint the anti-fascist volunteers as communist dupes. In 1984, U.S. President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/10/world/remark-by-reagan-on-lincoln-brigade-prompts-ire-in-spain.html">Ronald Reagan famously said</a> the Americans in Spain had joined the wrong side. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Prompted by the Ukraine war, some of these Cold War clichés are slipping back into mainstream journalism. The New York Times reporter covering Zelenskyy’s international fighters, for instance, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/us/american-veterans-volunteer-ukraine-russia.html">wrote that the adventure of the Americans in Spain</a>, “often romanticized as a valiant prelude to the fight against the Nazis,” had “ended badly.” In reality, many of those who fought fascism in Spain went on to join the Allied armies in World War II. Others <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/international-brigades-9781408853986/">formed the backbone</a> of the resistance movements in Nazi- and fascist-occupied territories.</p>
<p>Invoking the Spanish Civil War to frame the invasion of Ukraine as a clash between fascism and anti-fascism, moreover, plays into the Kremlin’s narrative, which seeks to portray the “special military operation” as an effort to “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/01/1083677765/putin-denazify-ukraine-russia-history">denazify</a>” its western neighbor. </p>
<p>Ironically, one of the most opportunistic invocations of the historical analogy occurred in Spain itself. In early March 2022, when Spain’s progressive governing coalition decided to send arms to the Zelenskyy government, the country’s largest newspaper, <a href="https://elpais.com/opinion/2022-03-03/la-legitimidad-de-las-armas.html">El País, ran a supportive editorial</a> stating: “Today, the weapons to defend Ukraine are the weapons that the Second Spanish Republic did not have 80 years ago.” In fact, the controversial decision to provide arms was dividing the governing coalition; the paper’s heartstrings-tugging invocation of the embattled Spanish Republic was an obvious attempt to end the debate.</p>
<p>If there is one way in which the Ukrainian analogy with Spain applies, it is the tragic way the country is being used as a proxy <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/3/5/22955197/russia-ukraine-war-europe-america-world-war-3">in a battle between the world’s great powers</a>.</p>
<p>In July 1937, Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, journalist Martha Gellhorn and novelist Ernest Hemingway visited the White House to screen “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8q6VAyTi8">The Spanish Earth</a>,” Ivens’ documentary about the war. Gellhorn recalled <a href="https://alba-valb.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Gellhorn_Letter.pdf">in a 1938 letter</a> that after President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the film, he remarked, “Spain is a vicarious sacrifice for us all.” </p>
<p>The same terrible fate seems to be reserved for Ukraine and its people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastiaan Faber chairs the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, an educational nonprofit based in New York.</span></em></p>According to some reports, thousands of people from around the world are signing up to fight on behalf of Ukraine. But comparisons to the Spanish Civil War’s International Brigades are misguided.Sebastiaan Faber, Professor of Hispanic Studies, Oberlin College and ConservatoryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1522642020-12-22T17:56:16Z2020-12-22T17:56:16ZHow Ernest Hemingway really responded to the Spanish flu pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376424/original/file-20201222-23-ue7nac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ernest Hemingway, July 1918, American Red Cross Hospital, Milan, Italy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Hemingway,_1918,_American_Red_Cross_Hospital.jpg">Buckley, Peter, Ernest, Dial Press, New York, 1978</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Earlier this year, as the world came to terms with the coronavirus pandemic, a letter purporting to have been written by F Scott Fitzgerald in the midst of the 1918 flu pandemic did the rounds on the internet. It was, of course, a <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/this-side-of-paradise-a-letter-from-f-scott-fitzgerald-quarantined-in-the-south-of-france">parody</a>, but the writing style and notes to his pal Ernest Hemingway meant the letter – unless you’re a Fitzgerald expert – was pretty convincing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Its real author, Nick Farriella, had expertly muddied the tone of Fitzgerald’s language with, some contemporary 21st century concerns, and a dash of the clichéd image of the character we’ve come to know as “Hemingway” – something of a macho bore, brawler and liar. </p>
<p>It’s an unfortunate, but sometimes well-deserved, persona, as I have come to know intimately whilst doing research for a new book examining his often ignored, shadowy time spent in London and Europe before and after D-Day. </p>
<p>This was an arguably defining time in his life and career, when he was possibly the best known living writer in the world and something of a one-man global commercial brand. Even then, I have discovered that when he was in the company of undercover spies and well-known authors (sometimes, like his friend Roald Dahl) he could be, by turns, thoughtful, loving, brilliant, brave, embarrassing, abusive and downright nasty. </p>
<p>For some, the tone of the parody pandemic letter was a brief moment of entertainment because it was the return of the cartoonish wild-eyed and comical version of Hemingway from Woody Allen’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADwLBOQRmI0">Midnight in Paris</a>. For others, who knew a little more about Hemingway, it was yet another simplistic attempt to besmirch his deeply complex legacy – fake news, you might say.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ADwLBOQRmI0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<h2>Hemingway and the facts</h2>
<p>In fact, Hemingway’s response to the pandemic of 1918-19 – and later waves too – was very different from the parody. The truth is effortlessly stranger and more enigmatic than any fiction. Of course Hemingway was guilty of hyping facts to meet his mantra that fiction could be truer than the truth. But that didn’t change his basic respect for scientific facts and the natural world. </p>
<p>He was, after all, the dutiful son of a doctor from Oak Park, Illinois who’d witnessed first-hand his father’s work and used the experiences in his later fictional works. The Hemingway scholar <a href="https://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2020/the-hemingway-society-reprints-love-in-the-time-of-influenza-hemingway-and-the-1918-pandemic/">Susan Beegel</a> has shown how serious illness, disease, sudden and prolonged death were nothing new to him. He was aware, in humans and animals, of the fragility of life. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A formal picture of a family." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376179/original/file-20201221-17-1u9p675.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An early picture of Ernest Hemingway with his family, 1905. Ernest stands at the far right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ernest_Hemingway_Photograph_Collection_at_the_John_F._Kennedy_Presidential_Library_and_Museum#/media/File:Ernest_Hemingway_with_Family,_1905.png">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The GP’s son later had his own appalling experiences in the first world war, when he volunteered for the Red Cross. Bad eyesight meant normal duty was out of the question, but a determined Hemingway used the Red Cross to get to the Italian front line instead.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A man in army uniform stands on crutches." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376181/original/file-20201221-17-1uvy4rk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=968&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernest Hemingway recuperates from wounds in Milan, 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ernest_Hemingway_Photograph_Collection_at_the_John_F._Kennedy_Presidential_Library_and_Museum#/media/File:Ernest_Hemingway_with_Family,_1905.png">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within hours of arriving in Italy, Hemingway was tasked with cleaning up the body parts of victims of shelling, a sight he recounted in his controversial short work “<a href="http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Hemingway-A-Natural-History-oft-he-Dead-24grammata.com_.pdf">A Natural History of the Dead</a>”, that both fascinated and horrified him. Within weeks he would be pulled off a battlefield himself, a bloodied wreck more dead than alive, with 228 pieces of shrapnel embedded in his legs. Long days and painful nights of touch-and-go recuperation followed.</p>
<p>Yet later, after shadowing Red Cross nurses, Hemingway <a href="http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Hemingway-A-Natural-History-oft-he-Dead-24grammata.com_.pdf">wrote</a> about the worst death he ever saw. It hadn’t been from a bomb or a bullet: “The only natural death I’ve ever seen […] was death from the Spanish influenza. In this you drown in mucus, choking, and how you know the patient is dead is; at the end he shits the bed.”</p>
<p>This horrendous scene was common amidst a global pandemic which had claimed, by December 1919, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html">50 million</a> people. There was no coordinated national and international research as we would know it, no effective treatment, and certainly no vaccine on the way. Soldiers and volunteers like Hemingway were literally swimming in the virus.</p>
<h2>Dodging disease</h2>
<p>Yet Hemingway dodged the peaks of the 1918-19 pandemic waves by weeks, sometimes days, as he convalesced in Italy, and then returned to the US. Once home, he discovered family and friends had perished from it. Despite youthful public insouciance, all these experiences privately scarred him, and that dying soldier in Italy was never far from his mind. </p>
<p>According to as his masterful biographer <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hemingway-American-Homecoming-Reynolds-1992-12-01/dp/B01K3KFR8G">Michael Reynolds</a>, Hemingway’s superstition about death meant that “the slightest possibility of flu often sent him scurrying for healthier conditions, for he had a particular horror of drowning in his own fluids”. Consequently, by 1926 and now living in Paris, when his son Jack, nicknamed “Bumby”, developed a “hacking cough”, Hemingway immediately sent him and his wife Hadley off to the clean air and sunshine of the Riviera to recover, while he went solo to Spain to work.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white picture of parents and a child." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376174/original/file-20201221-13-4nd83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernest, Hadley and Bumby Hemingway, 1926.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hadley and Bumby Hemingway arrived at Antibes on May 26 1926, and the child was immediately diagnosed with the infectious – and potentially fatal – whooping cough. Quarantine was called for, so both were summarily housed by their hosts, the ever-generous patrons of the arts Sara and Gerald Murphy, in a small dwelling near their own 14-roomed Villa America. </p>
<p>One week later they were moved again, under quarantine conditions, to a hastily vacated Villa Paquita at Juan les Pins, previously inhabited by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, who had zipped off to the safety of another coastal retreat. To complicate matters, Hemingway’s mistress Pauline Pfeiffer, a chic Paris-based editor at Vogue magazine, arrived from Paris, and within 48 hours, they were joined fresh from Madrid by the central figure in this peculiar set-up, Hemingway himself.</p>
<p>For a while, quarantining was all very jolly. By day, Hemingway dedicated himself to editing corrections to his soon-to-be bestseller <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/22/100-best-novels-sun-also-rises-ernest-hemingway-robert-mccrum">The Sun Also Rises</a>. By evening, everyone gathered for socially-distanced cocktails with the Murphys and Fitzgeralds, who stayed outside the garden fence. Empty bottles, drained and upended, were mounted like heads on the spiked fence. Each one marked another day of quarantine for the Hemingway child.</p>
<p>It worked – to an extent.</p>
<p>Quarantine ended when his son got better, though as a precaution he and his nanny were housed nearby, leaving Hemingway in a nice hotel with the two women. He pretended he was happy but inevitably, the post-lockdown arrangement slid into emotional anarchy. Hadley Hemingway and he argued, while Pfeiffer hung on for the prize she wanted most – Hemingway himself. It stayed that way as everyone decamped from the Riviera to Pamplona, Spain for the annual fiesta.</p>
<p>Within a year of that quarantined summer, the Hemingways were divorced.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A couple." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/376177/original/file-20201221-57996-4lxjw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernest and Pauline Hemingway, Paris 1927.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ernest_Hemingway_Photograph_Collection_at_the_John_F._Kennedy_Presidential_Library_and_Museum#/media/File:Ernest_and_Pauline_Hemingway,_Paris,_1927.jpg">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1937, 11 years later, despite quarantining in Saranac Lake, Upstate New York, the Murphy’s 16-year-old son Patrick died from tuberculosis.</p>
<p>Hemingway rose at dawn on July 2 1961 in Idaho and took his own life.</p>
<p>The child who had the whooping cough in 1926, Jack “Bumby” Hemingway, had a happier outcome than most in his family. He became a decorated second world war veteran who survived capture and imprisonment after parachuting into Nazi Germany, and died peacefully in 2000.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eamonn O'Neill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hemingway’s response to death and disease was very different from the parody that circulated earlier this year.Eamonn O'Neill, Associate Professor in Journalism, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1398012020-06-17T17:01:37Z2020-06-17T17:01:37ZHow Hemingway felt about fatherhood<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342225/original/file-20200616-23227-1wkfsek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=445%2C226%2C2255%2C1814&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hemingway and his eldest son, Bumby, pose in Havana harbor in 1933.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection of David Meeker</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ernest Hemingway was affectionately called “Papa,” but what kind of dad was he? </p>
<p>In my role as Associate Editor of the <a href="https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/hemingway-letters-project">Hemingway Letters Project</a>, I spend my time investigating the approximately 6,000 letters sent by Hemingway, 85% of which are now being published for the first time in a multivolume series. <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/literary-texts/letters-ernest-hemingway-19321934-volume-5?format=HB&isbn=9780521897372">The latest volume</a> – the fifth – spans his letters from January 1932 through May 1934 and gives us an intimate look into Hemingway’s daily life, not only as a writer and a sportsman, but also as a father.</p>
<p>During this period, Hemingway explored the emotional depths of fatherhood in his fiction. But his letters show that parenting could be a distraction from what mattered most to him: his writing. </p>
<h2>‘No alibis’ in the writing business</h2>
<p>Hemingway had three sons. His oldest, John – nicknamed “Bumby” – was born to Ernest and his first wife, Hadley, when Ernest was 24 years old. He had Patrick and Gregory with his second wife, Pauline.</p>
<p>Hemingway initially approached fatherhood with some ambivalence. In her 1933 memoir “<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608711.txt">The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas</a>,” Gertrude Stein recalls that one evening Hemingway came to visit and “announced…with great bitterness” that he was “too young to be a father.” </p>
<p>As the fifth volume of letters opens in January 1932, Hemingway is trying to finish “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Death_in_the_Afternoon.html?id=Wn69QsdwDlQC">Death in the Afternoon</a>,” his nonfiction account of bullfighting, in a household with a six-week-old baby, a three-year-old who ingests ant poison and nearly dies, a wife still recovering from a C-section, along with all the quotidian problems of home ownership, from a leaky roof to faulty wiring.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342233/original/file-20200616-23227-ywfum4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernest Hemingway and Pauline Pfeiffer Hemingway, with Gregory, Patrick and Bumby in Key West, 1933.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Princeton University Library</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hemingway explained to his mother-in-law, Mary Pfeiffer, that if his latest book fell short, he couldn’t simply take readers aside and say, “But you ought to see what a big boy Gregory is…and you ought to see our wonderful water-work system and I go to church every Sunday and am a good father to my family or as good as I can be.” </p>
<p>There are “no alibis” in the writing business, Hemingway continued, and “a man is a fool” to allow anything, even family, to interrupt his work. “Taking refuge in domestic successes,” he added, “is merely a form of quitting.”</p>
<p>For Hemingway, work didn’t simply entail sitting at a desk and writing. It also included the various adventures he was famous for – the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Hemingway-on-Fishing/Ernest-Hemingway/9781476716411">fishing</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/africa.html">hunting</a>, traveling and socializing with the people he met along the way. Though he would teach the boys to fish and shoot when they were older, when they were very young he didn’t hesitate to leave them with nannies or extended family for long stretches of time.</p>
<p>This separation was <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-hemingway/strange-tribe/">particularly hard</a> on the youngest, Gregory, who, from a very young age, was left for months in the care of Ada Stern, a governess who lived up to her last name. Patrick sometimes joined his parents on their travels or stayed with other relatives. Bumby, the oldest, divided his time between his father and his mother in Paris. The children’s lives were so peripatetic that at the Letters Project we maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of their whereabouts at any given time. </p>
<h2>‘Papa’ explores fathers and sons in his fiction</h2>
<p>However, it would not be accurate to say that Hemingway did not care about his children. In the latest volume of letters, three are addressed to Patrick, two of them decorated with circled dots, a Hemingway family tradition called “toosies,” which represented kisses. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=103&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=103&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=103&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342482/original/file-20200617-94044-1rk64fc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In his letters to his kids, Hemingway would sometimes draw dots called ‘toosies,’ which represented kisses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Princeton University Library</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Hemingway’s fiction, we can see the depth of that paternal feeling, and in his letters, the domestic moments that inspired him.</p>
<p>In November 1932, with his two youngest sons ill with whooping cough and being cared for by their mother at their grandparents’ home in Arkansas, Hemingway postponed a trip to New York to stay in Key West with Bumby. </p>
<p>“He is a good kid and a good companion,” Hemingway wrote his editor, Maxwell Perkins, “but I do not want to drag him around the speakies [bars] too much.” </p>
<p>That same month Hemingway worked on the story of a father and son traveling together that would become “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_and_Sons_(short_story)">Fathers and Sons</a>” in the collection “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Winner_Take_Nothing.html?id=Bc8C0Hb9B5YC">Winner Take Nothing</a>.” It’s one of the only stories in which Nick Adams – a semi-autobiographical recurring character – is portrayed as a parent, and the reflective, melancholy piece was written just three years after Hemingway’s own father <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2926355?seq=1">had died by suicide</a>. </p>
<p>In the story, Nick is driving along a stretch of highway in the countryside with “his son asleep on the seat by his side” when he starts thinking about his father.</p>
<p>Nick recalls many details about him: his eyesight, good; his body odor, bad; his advice on hunting, wise; his advice about sex, unsound. He reflects on viewing his father’s face after the undertaker had made “certain dashingly executed repairs of doubtful artistic merit.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/342235/original/file-20200616-23227-bgrmf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clarence Edmonds Hemingway and Ernest Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois, circa 1917-1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park/Oak Park Public Library, Oak Park, Illinois.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nick is surprised when his son starts to speak to him because he “had felt quite alone” even though “this boy had been with him.” As if reading his father’s thoughts, the boy wonders, “What was it like, Papa, when you were a little boy and used to hunt with the Indians?’” </p>
<p>Hemingway’s letters show that another story in the collection, “<a href="http://crmsl.weebly.com/uploads/6/3/1/4/63143381/a_day%E2%80%99s_wait_by_ernest_hemingway.pdf">A Day’s Wait</a>,” was inspired by Bumby’s bout with influenza in the fall of 1932. It is a seemingly lighthearted story about a young boy’s misunderstanding of the differences between the centigrade and Fahrenheit scales of temperature. Like Bumby, the protagonist, “Schatz” – one of Bumby’s other nicknames, a term of endearment in German – attends school in France but is staying with his father when he becomes ill. Schatz had learned at school that no one can survive a temperature of 44 Celsius, so, unbeknownst to his father, he spends the day waiting to die of his fever of 102 Fahrenheit. </p>
<p>But there is more to this story than the twist. “You don’t have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you,” the boy tells him. “It doesn’t bother me,” his father replies. He unwittingly leaves his son to believe, for an entire day, not only that the boy is going to die, but that his death is of no importance to his father. </p>
<p>In this slight story – one of those stories he told Perkins was written “absolutely as they happen” – we find an unexpected Hemingway hero in the form of a nine-year-old boy who bravely faces death alone.</p>
<p>Though he once wrote that he wanted “Winner Take Nothing” to make “a picture of the whole world,” Hemingway also seemed to understand that no one ever truly knows the subjective experience of another, not even a father and son.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139801/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Verna Kale works for the Hemingway Letters Project. The Hemingway Letters Project receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>While the man the world knows as ‘Papa’ balanced the demands of parenting with his work, his letters and fiction offer a window into the depth of his paternal feeling.Verna Kale, Associate Editor, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Assistant Research Professor of English, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1137222019-04-02T10:41:53Z2019-04-02T10:41:53ZDid a censored female writer inspire Hemingway’s famous style?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266179/original/file-20190327-139374-14kkvab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photograph of Ellen N. La Motte soon after completing 'The Backwash of War' in 1916.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the National Archives, College Park, Maryland</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Virtually everyone has heard of Ernest Hemingway. But you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who knows of Ellen N. La Motte.</p>
<p>People should. </p>
<p>She is the extraordinary World War I nurse who wrote like Hemingway before Hemingway. She was arguably the originator of his famous style – the first to write about World War I using spare, understated, declarative prose.</p>
<p>Long before Hemingway published “A Farewell to Arms” in 1929 – long before he even graduated high school and left home to volunteer as an ambulance driver in Italy – La Motte wrote a collection of interrelated stories titled “The Backwash of War.” </p>
<p>Published in the fall of 1916, as the war advanced into its third year, the book is based upon La Motte’s experience working at a French field hospital on the Western Front. </p>
<p>“There are many people to write you of the noble side, the heroic side, the exalted side of war,” she wrote. “I must write you of what I have seen, the other side, the backwash.”</p>
<p>“The Backwash of War” was immediately banned in England and France for its criticism of the ongoing war. Two years and multiple printings later – after being hailed as “<a href="http://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses069/30">immortal</a>” and America’s greatest work of war writing – it was deemed damaging to morale and also censored in wartime America. </p>
<p>For nearly a century, it languished in obscurity. But now, an expanded version of this lost classic that I’ve edited has just been published. Featuring the first biography of La Motte, it will hopefully give La Motte the attention she deserves.</p>
<h2>Horrors, not heroes</h2>
<p>In its time, “The Backwash of War” was, simply put, incendiary. </p>
<p>As one admiring reader explained in July 1918, “There is a corner of my book-shelves which I call my ‘T N T’ library. Here are all the literary high explosives I can lay my hands on. So far there are only five of them.” “The Backwash of War” was the only one by a woman and also the only one by an American.</p>
<p>In most of the era’s wartime works, men willingly fought and died for their cause. The characters were brave, the combat romanticized.</p>
<p>Not so in La Motte’s stories. Rather than focus on World War I’s heroes, she emphasized its horrors. And the wounded soldiers and civilians she presents in “The Backwash of War” are fearful of death and fretful in life. </p>
<p>Filling the beds of the field hospital, they are at once grotesque and pathetic. There is a soldier slowly dying from gas gangrene. Another suffers from syphilis, while one patient sobs and sobs because he does not want to die. A 10-year-old Belgian boy is fatally shot through the abdomen by a fragment of German artillery shell and bawls for his mother.</p>
<p>War, to La Motte, is repugnant, repulsive and nonsensical. </p>
<p>The volume’s first story immediately sets the tone: “When he could stand it no longer,” it begins, “he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it.” The soldier is transported, “cursing and screaming,” to the field hospital. There, through surgery, his life is saved but only so that he can later be court-martialed for his suicide attempt and killed by a firing squad. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264467/original/file-20190318-28479-xevje3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A postcard of the French field hospital where La Motte worked.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cynthia Wachtell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After “The Backwash of War” was published, readers quickly recognized that La Motte had invented a bold new way of writing about war and its horrors. The New York Times <a href="https://newspaperarchive.com/new-york-times-oct-15-1916-p-86/">reported</a> that her stories were “told in sharp, quick sentences” that bore no resemblance to conventional “literary style” and delivered a “stern, strong preachment against war.” </p>
<p>The Detroit Journal <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/backwash-war">noted</a> she was the first to draw “the real portrait of the ravaging beast.” And the Los Angeles Times <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lg-GDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=%22has+been+written:+it+is+the+first+realistic+glimpse+behind+the+battle+lines%22&source=bl&ots=34CknA3_PV&sig=ACfU3U0TO70o8P-giODqB_4Pj_h6NKrmHQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB8pak96ThAhVOnOAKHav5Db0Q6AEwAHoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22has%20been%20written%3A%20it%20is%20the%20first%20realistic%20glimpse%20behind%20the%20battle%20lines%22&f=false">gushed</a>, “Nothing like [it] has been written: it is the first realistic glimpse behind the battle lines… Miss La Motte has described war – not merely war in France – but war itself.”</p>
<h2>La Motte and Gertrude Stein</h2>
<p>Together with the famous avant-garde writer <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gertrude-stein">Gertrude Stein</a>, La Motte seems to have influenced what we now think of as Hemingway’s signature style – his spare, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nh5fDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA168&dq=hemingway's+%22masculine+prose%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj14Yf6hpbhAhWOiOAKHZ2hDlQQ6AEIRzAF#v=onepage&q=hemingway's%20%22masculine%20prose%22&f=false">masculine</a>” prose. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266185/original/file-20190327-139356-143ln7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gertrude Stein – who would go on to mentor Hemingway – was close friends with La Motte.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gertrude_Stein_1935-01-04.jpg">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>La Motte and Stein – both middle-aged American women, writers and lesbians – were already friends at the start of the war. Their friendship deepened during the first winter of the conflict, when they were both living in Paris. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that they each had a romantic partner, Stein seems to have fallen for La Motte. She even wrote a “little novelette” in early 1915 about La Motte, titled “<a href="http://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=1&poet=39&poem=1052">How Could They Marry Her?</a>” It repeatedly mentions La Motte’s plan to be a war nurse, possibly in Serbia, and includes revealing lines such as “Seeing her makes passion plain.” </p>
<p>Without a doubt Stein read her beloved friend’s book; in fact, her personal copy of “The Backwash of War” is presently archived at Yale University.</p>
<h2>Hemingway writes war</h2>
<p>Ernest Hemingway wouldn’t meet Stein until after the war. But he, like La Motte, found a way to make it to the front lines.</p>
<p>In 1918, Hemingway volunteered as an ambulance driver and shortly before his 19th birthday was seriously injured by a mortar explosion. He spent five days in a field hospital and then many months in a Red Cross hospital, where he fell in love with an American nurse.</p>
<p>After the war, Hemingway worked as a journalist in Canada and America. Then, determined to become a serious writer, he moved to Paris in late 1921. </p>
<p>In the early 1920s Gertrude Stein’s literary salon attracted many of the emerging postwar writers, whom she famously labeled the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Generation">Lost Generation</a>.” </p>
<p>Among those who most eagerly sought Stein’s advice was Hemingway, whose style she significantly influenced. </p>
<p>“Gertrude Stein was always right,” <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/101300/homage-hemingway">Hemingway once told a friend</a>. She served as his mentor and became godmother to his son.</p>
<p>Much of Hemingway’s early writing focused on the recent war. </p>
<p>“Cut out words. Cut everything out,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Stein_and_Hemingway.html?id=tR6LmAEACAAJ">Stein counseled him</a>, “except what you saw, what happened.” </p>
<p>Very likely, Stein showed Hemingway her copy of “The Backwash of War” as an example of admirable war writing. At the very least, she passed along what she had learned from reading La Motte’s work. </p>
<p>Whatever the case, the similarity between La Motte’s and Hemingway’s styles is plainly evident. Consider the following passage from the story “Alone,” in which La Motte strings together declarative sentences, neutral in tone, and lets the underlying horror speak for itself.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“They could not operate on Rochard and amputate his leg, as they wanted to do. The infection was so high, into the hip, it could not be done. Moreover, Rochard had a fractured skull as well. Another piece of shell had pierced his ear, and broken into his brain, and lodged there. Either wound would have been fatal, but it was the gas gangrene in his torn-out thigh that would kill him first. The wound stank. It was foul.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now consider these opening lines from a chapter of Hemingway’s 1925 collection “In Our Time”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to be clear of machine-gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awkwardly. He had been hit in the spine. His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big backed, his equipment sprawling, lay face downward against the wall. Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly…. Two Austrian dead lay in the rubble in the shade of the house. Up the street were other dead.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hemingway’s declarative sentences and emotionally uninflected style strikingly resemble La Motte’s.</p>
<p>So why did Hemingway receive all of the accolades, <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1954/summary/">culminating in a Nobel Prize in 1954</a> for the “influence he exerted on contemporary style,” while La Motte was lost to literary oblivion? </p>
<p>Was it the lasting impact of wartime censorship? Was it the prevalent sexism of the postwar era, which viewed war writing as the purview of men? </p>
<p>Whether due to censorship, sexism or a toxic combination of the two, La Motte was silenced and forgotten. It’s time to return “The Backwash of War” to its proper perch as a seminal example of war writing.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248894/original/file-20181204-133095-1p2xxs2.png?w=128&h=128">
<div>
<header>Cynthia Wachtell is the editor of a new edition of:</header>
<p><a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/backwash-war">The Backwash of War: An Extraordinary American Nurse in World War I</a></p>
<footer>Johns Hopkins University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
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</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cynthia Wachtell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ellen N. La Motte’s ‘The Backwash of War’ was praised for its clear-eyed portrayal of war, but was swiftly banned. Yet the similarities between her spare prose and Hemingway’s are unmistakable.Cynthia Wachtell, Research Associate Professor of American Studies & Director of the S. Daniel Abrham Honors Program, Yeshiva UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/860372017-11-13T02:54:07Z2017-11-13T02:54:07ZHow a young Ernest Hemingway dealt with his first taste of fame<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193821/original/file-20171108-14209-gtd35o.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ernest Hemingway with a bull near Pamplona, Spain in 1927, two years before 'A Farewell to Arms' would be published.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Ernest_Hemingway_with_a_bull%2C_Spain%2C_1927.jpg">Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When he published “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=hoOMCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA287&dq=the+sun+also+rises&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6qIeU-6LXAhVnw4MKHZMPBmcQ6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q=the%20sun%20also%20rises&f=false">The Sun Also Rises</a>” in 1926, Ernest Hemingway was well-known among the expatriate literati of Paris and to cosmopolitan literary circles in New York and Chicago. But it was “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=N-_6oQEACAAJ&dq=a+farewell+to+arms&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGgrjgi6PXAhVB04MKHfw4AzAQ6AEIKDAA">A Farewell to Arms</a>,” published in October 1929, that made him a celebrity. </p>
<p>With this newfound fame, Hemingway learned, came fan mail. Lots of it. And he wasn’t really sure how to deal with the attention. </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/hemingway-letters-project">Hemingway Letters Project</a>, I’ve had the privilege of working with Hemingway’s approximately 6,000 outgoing letters. “<a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/literary-texts/letters-ernest-hemingway-volume-4?format=HB#4FxeadZU37JpH5RF.97">The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volume 4 (1929-1931)</a>” – edited by Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel – brought to light 430 annotated letters, 85 percent of which were published for the first time. They offer a glimpse at how Hemingway handled his growing celebrity, shedding new light on the author’s influences and his relationships with other writers. </p>
<h2>Mutual admiration</h2>
<p>The success of “A Farewell to Arms” surprised even Hemingway’s own publisher. Robert W. Trogdon, a Hemingway scholar and member of the Letters Project’s editorial team, <a href="http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2011/the-lousy-racket/">traces the author’s relationship with Scribner’s</a> and notes that while it ordered an initial printing of over 31,000 copies – six times as many as the first printing of “The Sun Also Rises” – the publisher still underestimated the demand for the book. </p>
<p>Additional print runs brought the total edition to over 101,000 copies before the year was out – and that was after the devastating 1929 stock market crash. </p>
<p>In response to the many fan letters he received, Hemingway was typically gracious. Sometimes he offered writerly advice, and even went so far as to send – upon request and at his own expense – several of his books to a prisoner at St. Quentin.</p>
<p>At the same time, writing to novelist <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-21829409">Hugh Walpole</a> in December 1929, Hemingway lamented the amount of effort – and postage – required to answer all those letters:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When ‘The Sun Also Rises’ came out there were only letters from a few old ladies who wanted to make a home for me and said my disability would be no drawback and drunks who claimed we had met places. ‘Men Without Women’ brought no letters at all. What are you supposed to do when you really start to get letters?” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Among the fan mail he received was a letter from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/bloomsburys-outsider-a-life-of-david-garnett-sarah-knights-review-biography">David Garnett</a>, an English novelist from a literary family with connections to the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bloomsbury/lifestyle-lives-and-legacy-bloomsbury-group">Bloomsbury Group</a>, a network of writers, artists and intellectuals that included Virginia Woolf. </p>
<p>Though we don’t have Garnett’s letter to Hemingway, Garnett appears to have predicted, rightly, that “A Farewell to Arms” would be more than a fleeting success. </p>
<p>“I hope to god what you say about the book will be true,” Hemingway replies, “though how we are to know whether they last I don’t know – But anyway you were fine to say it would.” </p>
<p>He then goes on to praise Garnett’s 1925 novel, “The Sailor’s Return”:</p>
<p>“…all I did was to go around wishing to god I could have written it. It is still the only book I would like to have written of all the books since our father’s and mother’s times.” (Garnett was seven years older than Hemingway; Hemingway greatly admired the translations of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy by Constance Garnett, David’s mother.)</p>
<h2>An overlooked influence</h2>
<p>Hemingway’s response to Garnett – written the same day as his letter to Walpole – is notable for several reasons. </p>
<p>First, it complicates the popular portrait of Hemingway as an antagonist to other writers. </p>
<p>It’s a reputation that’s not entirely undeserved – after all, one of Hemingway’s earliest publications was a tribute to Joseph Conrad in which Hemingway expressed a desire to run T.S. Eliot through a sausage grinder. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Torrents_of_Spring">The Torrents of Spring</a>” (1926), his first published novel, was a parody of his own mentors, Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein and “all the rest of the pretensious [sic] faking bastards,” as he put it in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/american-literature/letters-ernest-hemingway-volume-2?format=HB#iiFH3pBCSRDeWzCm.97">a 1925 letter</a> to Ezra Pound.</p>
<p>But in the letter to Garnett we see another side of Hemingway: an avid reader overcome with boyish excitement. </p>
<p>“You have meant very much to me as a writer,” he declares, “and now that you have written me that letter I should feel very fine – But instead all that happens is I don’t believe it.”</p>
<p>The letter also suggests that Garnett has been overlooked as one of Hemingway’s influences.</p>
<p>It’s easy to see why Hemingway liked “The Sailor’s Return” (so well, it appears, that he checked it out from Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Co. lending library <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/The-Ernest-Hemingway-Collection/%7E/media/143FD43007D14DB89A4CE973C2EAC3F5.pdf">and never returned it</a>). </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.powys-society.org/Llewelyn%20Powys%20review%20of%20The%20Sailor's%20Return.htm">reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune</a> praised Garnett’s “simple but extremely lucid English” and his “power of making fiction appear to be fact,” qualities that are the hallmark of Hemingway’s own distinctive style. The book also has a certain understated wit – <a href="http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/literary-criticism/8935121/whats-funny-in-sun-also-rises">as do</a> “The Sun Also Rises” and “A Farewell to Arms.” </p>
<p>Garnett’s book would have appealed to Hemingway on a personal level as well. Though it’s set entirely in England, the portrait of Africa that exists in the background is the same sort of exotic wilderness that captured the imagination of Hemingway the boy and that Hemingway the young man still longed explore. </p>
<h2>Imagining Africa</h2>
<p>But Hemingway’s praise of Garnett leads to other, unsettling questions. </p>
<p>From its frontispiece to its devastating conclusion, Garnett’s book relies on racial stereotypes of an exoticized, infantilized Other. Its main character, an African woman, brought to England by her white husband, is meant to command the reader’s sympathy – indeed, the choice she makes in the end, to send her mixed-race child back to his African family, hearkens to an earlier era of sentimental literature and decries the parochial prejudices of English society. </p>
<p>However, that message is drowned out by the narrator’s assumptions about inherent differences between the races. Garnett’s biographer Sarah Knights <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsburys-outsider-9781448215447/">suggests</a> that Garnett was “neither susceptible to casual racism nor prone to imperialist arrogance,” yet Garnett’s 1933 introduction to the Cape edition of Hemingway’s “The Torrents of Spring” claims “it is the privilege of civilized town-dwellers to sentimentalize primitive peoples.” In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-spring.html">“The Torrents of Spring</a>,” Hemingway mocked the primitivism of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Laughter">Sherwood Anderson</a> (cringe-worthy even by 1925 standards), but as Garnett’s comment indicates, Hemingway imitated Anderson’s reliance on racial stereotypes as much as he criticized it.</p>
<p>What, then, can we glean about Hemingway’s views on race from his exuberant praise of “The Sailor’s Return”? Hemingway had a lifelong fascination with Africa, and his letters show that in 1929 he was already making plans for an African safari. He would take the trip in 1933 and publish his nonfiction memoir, “Green Hills of Africa,” in 1935. The work is experimental and modernistic, but the local people are secondary to Hemingway’s descriptions of “country.”</p>
<p>Late in life, however, Hemingway’s views on Africa would shift, and his second safari, in 1953-4, brought what scholar of American literature and African diaspora studies <a href="http://www2.tulane.edu/liberal-arts/english/faculty/nghana-lewis.cfm">Nghana tamu Lewis</a> <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ernest-hemingway-in-context/9A493C28173A68BD3D54322E2DDFD7FB">describes</a> as “a crisis of consciousness” that “engendered a new commitment to understanding African peoples’ struggles against oppression as part, rather than in isolation, of changing ecological conditions.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193844/original/file-20171108-14215-jzn4zc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hemingway went to Africa in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Hemingway_on_safari,_1934.jpg">John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But back in 1929, when Hemingway was wondering what to do with an ever-growing pile of mail, that trip – along with another world war, a Nobel Prize and <a href="https://www.sc.edu/uscpress/books/2017/7742.html">the debilitating effects of his strenuous life</a> – were part of an unknowable future. </p>
<p>In “The Letters 1929-1931” we see a younger Hemingway, his social conscience yet to mature, trying to figure out his new role as professional author and celebrity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Verna Kale works for the Hemingway Letters Project. The Hemingway Letters Project receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.</span></em></p>A newly published batch of Ernest Hemingway’s letters could change the way we think about the author’s influences, relationships with other writers and views on race.Verna Kale, Associate Editor, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Assistant Research Professor of English, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/749742017-03-31T19:28:27Z2017-03-31T19:28:27ZHow World War I sparked the artistic movement that transformed Black America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163361/original/image-20170330-4551-1tsqipp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/treasures/items/show/170">Aaron Douglas. "Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction." Oil on canvas, 1934. The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Though we often discuss World War I through the lens of history, we occasionally do it through literature. When we do, we’ll invariably go to the famous trilogy of Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald – the authors most representative of America’s iconic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Generation">Lost Generation</a>. Their work is said to reflect a mood that emerged from the ashes of a war that, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I">with its trail of carnage</a>, left survivors around the world with a despairing vision of life, self and nation. </p>
<p>The anxiety and hopelessness of the Lost Generation has become embedded in literary and cultural history. But for black artists, writers and thinkers, the war meant something entirely different: It spawned a transformation of the way African-Americans imagined themselves, their past and their future. </p>
<p>With Africa as a source of inspiration, a “New Negro” emerged out of the ruins of the Great War – not broken and disenchanted, but possessed with a new sense of self, one shaped from bold, unapologetically black models. </p>
<h2>Denying an African legacy</h2>
<p>Before World War I, African-American literature depicted stoic, but constrained, black protagonists. They emulated European codes of class and respectability while rejecting any sort of African legacy or inheritance. In other words, they talked like white people, dressed like white people and accepted the narrative that white men were the source of America’s greatness.</p>
<p>From the most well-known 19th-century African-American writer, Frederick Douglass, to his less remembered contemporary, Alexander Crummell, literary black advocacy or racial uplift too often rested on this approach.</p>
<p>Still, in the years leading up to World War I, there were rumblings of the “New Negro” archetype. For example, in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5uUKAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=sport+of+the+gods&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4of3T0fnSAhVL7CYKHVVGANkQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">1902 novel</a> “The Sport of the Gods” and Pauline Hopkins’ <a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hopkins/hagar/hagar.html">serialized novel</a> “Hagar’s Daughter,” we see restless, dissatisfied young people who have no desire to become shuffling, servile second-class citizens. </p>
<p>This defiance, however, would not become widespread in African-American literature until the end of the war.</p>
<h2>A ‘New Negro’ emerges</h2>
<p>Black soldiers abroad during World War I <a href="http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-world-war-i.html">experienced a type of freedom and mobility</a> unattainable back home. In cities from London to Paris, many, for the first time, could travel without the worry of being denied equal lodging accommodations or admission to entertainment venues. </p>
<p>Once they returned stateside, they became increasingly impatient with Jim Crow laws and codes of racial discrimination. Life, they realized, didn’t have to be this way. In a nation that was now half a century beyond slavery, the fever spread among a new generation of blacks. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163363/original/image-20170330-4551-10d7ehk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A group of soldiers pose from the 93rd Division’s 369th Infantry Regiment, which was nicknamed the ‘Harlem Hellfighters.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:369th_15th_New_York.jpg">US National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the war’s aftermath, racial tensions heightened – a reflection of this mood. The summer of 1919 was known as the “<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_red.html">Red Summer</a>” for the number of race riots that erupted around the country, with <a href="http://homicide.northwestern.edu/crimes/raceriot/">one of the worst in Chicago</a>, where 38 people died. </p>
<p>And in black literature, African-American characters no longer looked to the white man – or his nations – as models of civilization. In his 1925 anthology entitled “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Pd1wBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+new+negro+alain+locke&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij5JP7-v7SAhUC4GMKHfGwBvQQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">The New Negro</a>,” writer, philosopher and Howard University professor Alain Locke has been credited with marshaling in the era we now know as the Harlem Renaissance. Locke, in his text, called on a generation of emerging black writers, artists and activists to look to Africa and to black folk culture in the United States and the Americas as a way to mine and explore a new strand of humanity. </p>
<p>We see this in Langston Hughes’ poetry; in “<a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/negro-speaks-rivers">The Negro Speaks of Rivers</a>,” he heralds Africa as source of creativity and cultural grounding:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> I built my hut by the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
</code></pre>
<h2>Two Jakes – one black, one white</h2>
<p>Unlike the emerging literati of the Lost Generation, blacks, for the most part, weren’t angst-ridden over a post-war world devoid of meaning: they had never internalized <a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/winthrop.htm">the myth of America</a> as a shining “city upon a hill.” For them, the war brought no end or loss, no disillusionment or void. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163367/original/image-20170330-4561-sf67b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Claude McKay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mackey.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We see this difference if we compare Hemingway’s protagonist Jake in “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-OBSAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+sun+also+rises&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK35OvhfrSAhWERiYKHRuzA_UQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Sun Also Rises</a>” (1926) to Claude McKay’s protagonist in “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vsSTlDHJcssC&printsec=frontcover&dq=home+to+harlem&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc1uu-g_rSAhXKTSYKHRpYD6UQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q&f=false">Home to Harlem</a>” (1928), also named Jake. Unlike Hemingway’s lost, sullen and impotent hero who can’t find his way home, McKay’s Jake happily traverses Europe for a period after the war until he realizes he yearns for home. </p>
<p>While life is still a struggle and racism persists, McKay’s hero looks to the future with hope; he returns to Harlem where he relishes the many shades of black and brown beauties that he missed in Europe. McKay’s Jake immerses himself in a black world of love and laughter – a place that loudly celebrates life. He becomes inspired not by the readings and ideals of white thinkers and writers, but through black prototypes in and beyond America. His West Indian co-worker introduces him to Toussaint L'Ouverture and Jean-Jaques Dessalines, the black heroes of <a href="http://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/san_domingo_revolution/revolution.html">the Haitian Revolution</a>, and to the history of great African empires dating back to antiquity. </p>
<p>In the literary works of black women, a new ethos also emerged. In Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_0GCRtuk63EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Their+Eyes+Were+Watching+God&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjnuKggv_SAhUNzWMKHZZFCB0Q6AEILjAD#v=onepage&q&f=false">Their Eyes Were Watching God</a>,” the main character, Janie, is daring in her quest for freedom: She leaves the confines of her restrictive community to take up with a younger man.</p>
<p>Black musicians, artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance are celebrated as leaders of this transformative era in black history. But Harlem wasn’t alone. Cities such as Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Harlem-Renaissance-American-literature-and-art">also became hubs of black cosmopolitanism</a>. </p>
<p>Above all, the African-American literary works born out of the ashes of World War I went on to spur the bold spirit of resistance of the African-American protest movement into the 21st century. </p>
<p>We also see that American literature is not a monolith of interpretation and experiences: In the case of post-World War I literature, even though one generation was lost, another was found.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74974/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth J. West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many associate post-World War I culture with Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s Lost Generation. But for black artists, writers and thinkers, the war changed the way they saw their past and their future.Elizabeth J. West, Professor of English, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/624642016-07-20T19:58:33Z2016-07-20T19:58:33ZSpain’s Civil War and the Americans who fought in it: a convoluted legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131278/original/image-20160720-31117-16v9rmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Lincoln Brigade Memorial in San Francisco.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_Brigade_Memorial_San_Francisco.jpg#/media/File:Lincoln_Brigade_Memorial_San_Francisco.jpg">Tom Hilton</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Eighty years ago this week, in the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla, a group of right-wing generals staged a military coup, aimed at overthrowing Spain’s democratically elected government. </p>
<p>The July 1936 uprising unleashed what would come to be known – somewhat inaccurately – as the Spanish Civil War, a horrific conflagration that lasted almost three years. </p>
<p>The general consensus is that the war sent about a half-million Spaniards into exile, and another 500,000 to their deaths. Still today, more than <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13800&LangID=S">100,000 Spaniards</a> lie in hundreds of <a href="http://mapadefosas.mjusticia.es/exovi_externo/CargarMapaFosas.htm">unmarked mass graves</a> strewn all over the Iberian peninsula.</p>
<p>Those mass graves still haunt contemporary Spain, and the question of how the Spanish Civil War ought to be commemorated is still far from buried, not only in Spain, but also in the U.S.</p>
<p>Just two weeks ago, when President Obama visited Spain, <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/07/11/inenglish/1468224007_858914.html">the gift he received</a> from Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the upstart left-wing political party Podemos, generated controversy. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"752152021105537024"}"></div></p>
<p>The present was a copy of the book <a href="http://zinnedproject.org/materials/the-lincoln-brigade/">“The Abraham Lincoln Brigade: A Picture History,”</a> and in it, Iglesias penned a dedication to President Obama: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The first Americans who came to Europe to fight against fascism were the men and women of the Lincoln Brigade. Please convey to the American people the gratitude felt by Spanish democrats for the antifascist example provided by these heroes.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To understand the symbolism and the controversial nature of this gift, we must examine the convoluted legacy of that war whose 80th anniversary is commemorated this week. </p>
<h2>International war</h2>
<p>Pablo Iglesias’ inscription points to why the term “Civil War” is a misnomer when applied to Spain, 1936.</p>
<p>Though the Spanish war did pit Spaniard against Spaniard, the conflict quickly became international. Within days of the onset of the coup, Hitler and Mussolini intervened on the side of the insurgent generals. Before long, the Soviet Union would come to the aid of the Loyalists, also known as the Republican forces, who supported the government. </p>
<p>To the chagrin of Spain’s elected government, the U.K., France and the U.S., in full appeasement mode, decided to remain neutral. They even imposed – and enforced – <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-spanish-civil-war-a-very-short-introduction-9780192803771?cc=es&lang=en&">an embargo on the sale of arms to the Republic</a>. </p>
<p>Despite – or perhaps because of – that embargo, for the duration of the war, Spain would be on almost everybody’s mind in the U.S., whether they liked it or not. </p>
<p>Moviegoers, for example, eager to see newly released movies such as Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” or Walt Disney’s “Snow White,” had to sit through newsreels depicting the new form of modern warfare being premiered in Spain. With melodramatic music swirling and swelling in the background, audiences would hear foreboding <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOUQIwDaQjc">newsreel narrators exclaiming</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“hundreds of thousands of noncombatants suffer the indescribable horrors of a continuous nightmare of fear and destruction.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FOUQIwDaQjc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Second Year of Spain’s Civil War’ at 1'30"</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new medium of photojournalism – <a href="http://time.com/3638051/capas-falling-soldier-the-modest-birth-of-an-iconic-picture/">Life Magazine</a> began circulation in 1936 – would bring fresh and horrifying images of the faraway conflict into the living rooms of average Americans. </p>
<p>Indeed, the war in Spain was felt with such immediacy in the U.S. that in an unprecedented display of international solidarity, some <a href="http://www.alba-valb.org/about-us/faqs/">2,800 American men and women</a> risked life and limb to travel to Spain and join the International Brigades: the 35,000 volunteers from 50 nations who were recruited and organized by the Communist International to defend Spain’s Republic. </p>
<p>The first contingent of Americans arrived to Spain in January of 1937, and they called themselves the “Abraham Lincoln Battalion,” invoking the leader who had successfully presided over a Civil War in their own country. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131163/original/image-20160719-8005-1dt4rlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. volunteers in Spain, spring 1938.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">New York University's Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ernest Hemingway’s portrait of Robert Jordan in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-forwhom.html">“For Whom The Bell Tolls”</a> would become the iconic image of an American volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. But if Hemingway’s protagonist was a solitary and rugged WASP from Montana, most of the nonfiction volunteers emerged from vast, politically active communities, which were decidedly <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2509">urban, working-class and ethnic</a>. </p>
<p>The closest thing to a rifle that most of the volunteers had ever handled before Spain was probably a picket sign. Unlike Hemingway’s outdoorsman, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUkRP_9o8Hg">real-life volunteers</a> were likely to have had more experience sleeping on tenement fire escapes than in field tents.</p>
<p>And for each individual who made the ultimate sacrifice of taking up arms in Spain, there were thousands of Loyalist sympathizers who stayed behind. <a href="http://www.mcny.org/exhibition/facing-fascism">They raised funds</a> to send medical supplies to the besieged government. They urged the FDR government to <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=00wEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=Life+the+embargo+against+loyalist+spain&source=bl&ots=g38tFEOA6J&sig=wKBwhFnBc9BbfS7VkHFQ2I9qtSc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI24rX9P_NAhWG4yYKHR2XD1YQ6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=Life%20the%20embargo%20against%20loyalist%20spain&f=false">“Lift the embargo Against Loyalist Spain.”</a> They did their bit, as the popular slogan went, <a href="http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront/oso.html">“to make Madrid the tomb of fascism.”</a> </p>
<h2>Anti-fascist war</h2>
<p>The Republic, hamstrung by the embargo, and splintered by internal differences, eventually fell. Franco’s troops marched into Madrid in April of 1939. Exactly six months later, Hitler invaded Poland and, <a href="http://time.com/3194657/world-war-ii-anniversary/">according to most standard accounts</a>, World War II was officially underway. </p>
<p>The horrors of that war help explain why the memory of Spain was subsequently eclipsed and almost forgotten. But there were other forces at work that would contribute to the transformation of how Spain would be remembered. </p>
<p>The fact is that, at the time, for many contemporary observers, the war in Spain was of a piece with the war against Hitler. </p>
<p>For starters, the Lincoln volunteers frequently depicted themselves as soldiers attempting to stave off another world war. In November, 1937, for example, volunteer <a href="http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/lessons/document-library/letter-from-hyman-katz-to-his-mother">Hy Katz</a> would write home to his mom:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If we sit by and let them grow stronger by taking Spain, they will move on to France and will not stop there; and it won’t be long before they get to America. Realizing this, can I sit by and wait until the beasts get to my very door – until it is too late, and there is no one I can call on for help? And would I even deserve help from others when the trouble comes upon me, if I were to refuse help to those who need it today? If I permitted such a time to come – as a Jew and a progressive, I would be among the first to fall under the axe of the fascists; – all I could do then would be to curse myself and say, ‘Why didn’t I wake up when the alarm-clock rang?’”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131147/original/image-20160719-8014-1a674yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">First National Conference of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade n 1938. Robert Raven, in the middle, lost his eyesight while fighting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_National_Conference_of_the_Veterans_of_the_Abraham_Lincoln_Brigade.jpg#/media/File:First_National_Conference_of_the_Veterans_of_the_Abraham_Lincoln_Brigade.jpg">Harris&Ewing, Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>In March of 1945, President Roosevelt himself, in a <a href="http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/02/wikileaks-avant-la-wiki-fdr-on-franco-in-1945/">missive</a> to a diplomat, would characterize the continuity he perceived between the Spanish war and WWII, between the Axis and Franco’s regime:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Having been helped to power by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and having patterned itself along totalitarian lines, the present regime in Spain is naturally the subject of distrust by a great many American citizens […] Most certainly we do not forget Spain’s official position with and assistance to our Axis enemies at a time when the fortunes of war were less favorable to us, nor can we disregard the activities, aims, organizations, and public utterances of the Falange [Spain’s Fascist party], both past and present.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even a publication like “Stars and Stripes,” a semi-official organ of the U.S. Armed Forces, would, in its European edition of July 1945, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ALBAclassroom/photos/a.1546264042353855.1073741828.1543596215953971/1558352301145029/?type=3&theater">unhesitatingly affirm</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Nine years ago last week, the first blow was struck in World War II. On July 17, 1936, in the picturesque garrison town of Melilla, in Spanish Morocco, a Spanish general and his Moroccan regiments proclaimed civil war against the infant, five-year-old Republic and its government…” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1945, the general contours of how the Spanish Civil War was likely to be remembered into the future were quite clear: as part and parcel of the long struggle against international fascism, perhaps even as the opening salvo of World War II. </p>
<p>But a funny thing happened on the way to the fifties…</p>
<h2>Cold War</h2>
<p>Between 1945 and 1955, Francisco Franco managed to refashion himself completely. No longer an ally of the Axis – in fact, he claimed that he had never been such a thing. Franco repackaged himself as a stalwart anti-communist, ruling over a strategic land mass at the corner of Africa and Europe. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Franco-Biography-Paul-Preston/dp/0465025153">And it worked</a>.</p>
<p>If, for FDR, Franco had been an illegitimate ruler, for Truman and Eisenhower, the generalissimo would become a crucial partner in the war between “freedom” and “communism.” Truman and <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1243&dat=19591219&id=5DtYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XPcDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1234,6171957&hl=en">Eisenhower</a> helped end the Franco regime’s post-war diplomatic ostracism. In exchange, the U.S. got to build <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/sp1953.asp">an archipelago of Cold War military bases</a> on Spanish soil. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/131150/original/image-20160719-7906-1oxpwlr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">General Franco and President Eisenhower in Madrid in 1959.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Franco_eisenhower_1959_madrid.jpg">US National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As Franco morphed from “Adolph’s Man in Madrid” to “Ike’s Man in Madrid,” and as the Spanish Civil War came to be viewed more and more through the retrospective lens of the Cold War, much history would get rewritten, on both sides of the Atlantic. </p>
<p>Franco actively <a href="http://www.albavolunteer.org/2011/02/the-resynchronization-of-a-regime-1940-1950/">destroyed or altered evidence</a> of his dalliance with the Axis. And in the U.S., as historian <a href="http://www.kentstateuniversitypress.com/2014/from-guernica-to-human-rights/">Peter Carroll reminds us</a>, it was precisely in anti-communist crusader <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/joseph-mccarthy">Joseph McCarthy’s</a> 1950s that George Orwell’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Homage-Catalonia-George-Orwell/dp/0156421178">“Homage to Catalonia”</a> became a fixture of the Cold War canon. Orwell’s book was a powerful indictment of the Communist Party’s ruthless behavior in the war, and it was used to cast a shadow over the experiences and motivations of the Lincoln Brigade. </p>
<p>Before long, in both Spain and the U.S., the Spanish Civil War would be talked about not so much as an early battle of the anti-fascist World War II, but rather as a <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1812421-wolfftestimony.html">chapter in the annals of communist mischief and perfidy</a>. </p>
<p>The actions of American volunteers, rather than being seen as heroic and prescient, would become suspect. And that is why, even 80 years on, Iglesias’s gift to Obama could still seem laden with symbolism and wrapped in controversy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James D. Fernandez is Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA).</span></em></p>For many contemporary observers, the Spanish Civil War was seen as very much of a piece with the war against Hitler and Mussolini. But then things changed. Why?James D. Fernandez, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Vice-President, Board of Governors, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/523292015-12-17T04:47:33Z2015-12-17T04:47:33ZFrom Hemingway to Blixen: why Africa still attracts hunters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106067/original/image-20151215-23202-1cnzp2u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hunting for game at the Iwamanzi Game Reserve in South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Africa is known as one of the best safari destinations <a href="https://www.mobal.com/blog/travel-talk/best-of-guides/the-worlds-best-hunting-destinations/">in the world</a>. Its vast grass plains, forests, deserts, mountains, big lakes and beautiful coastlines make it hugely attractive.</p>
<p>What makes it even more appealing is the abundance of game, such as elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, buffalo, giraffe and plentiful antelope species like gemsbok, kudu, eland and wildebeest. All have a certain allure for those wanting just to see them in their natural habitat, as well as those interested in hunting.</p>
<p>The main reason hunters hunt is not to kill animals, but to experience the thrill of hunting and nature. Nevertheless, hunting remains a <a href="https://theconversation.com/hunting-in-africa-to-ban-or-not-to-ban-is-the-question-44269">controversial pastime</a>. This has not diminished its appeal. In fact a number of countries use it to their advantage.</p>
<p>Funds generated by hunting in some countries are used for <a href="https://theconversation.com/trophy-hunting-is-not-poaching-and-can-help-conserve-wildlife-29938">conservation</a> and empower local communities. And if an economic value is placed on game, owners and communities are more likely to want them <a href="http://www.natshoot.co.za/uploads/documents/Hunt=Conserve%20SAHGCA2013.pdf">conserved</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa and Namibia are cases in point. Both countries <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-killing-lions-like-cecil-may-actually-be-good-for-conservation-45400">recorded growth</a> in their game populations in the last 20 to 25 years as a result of hunting and good conservation practices by government and the private sector.</p>
<h2>Europeans and Americans going back 200 years</h2>
<p>Africa’s variety of wildlife has been attracting great hunters from Europe and America since the early 1800s. This includes the likes of <a href="http://www.rhodesia.nl/nimrod.htm">Frederick Selous</a>, <a href="http://www.chuckhawks.com/bell_elephants.htm">William Bell</a> (later known as Karamojo Bell), <a href="http://www.africahunting.com/threads/baron-bror-blixen-1886-1946.3196/">Bror von Blixen-Finecke</a> (married to Out of Africa author Karen Blixen), <a href="http://www.africahunting.com/threads/william-charles-baldwin-1826-1903-big-game-hunter.3535/">William Charles Baldwin</a>, <a href="http://www.africahunting.com/threads/roualeyn-george-gordon-cumming-1820-1866-the-lion-hunter.3267/">Gordon Cumming</a>, <a href="http://www.booksofzimbabwe.com/ahrs3.html">William Finaughty</a>, <a href="http://www.africahunting.com/threads/john-alexander-hunter-1887-1963.3120/">JA Hunter</a>, <a href="http://www.ernesthemingwaycollection.com/about-hemingway/ernest-hemingway-in-africa">Ernest Hemingway</a> and even former US president <a href="http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/site/c.elKSIdOWIiJ8H/b.8344379/k.2B69/The_Hunter.htm">Theodore Roosevelt</a> to name a few.</p>
<p>Selous was a British officer and a good friend of both Roosevelt and Cecil John Rhodes. The well-known <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/199">Selous Game Reserve</a> in Tanzania is named after him. </p>
<p>Bell was named “Karamojo” due to his hunting in Karamojo in Uganda. He became famous for his ability to place the perfect headshot on elephants. He is reported to have hunted more than 1000.</p>
<p>Cumming, a Scotsman who hunted mainly in South Africa, was known as “lion hunter”. On returning to England, his trophies were shown at the <a href="http://www.africahunting.com/threads/roualeyn-george-gordon-cumming-1820-1866-the-lion-hunter.3267/">Great Exhibition</a> in London, weighing more than 27 metric tonnes.</p>
<p>Most kept a diary of their hunting experiences in Africa. These later became novels portraying their hunting safaris and expeditions <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-green.html">on the continent</a>, further fuelling its attraction.</p>
<p>The most popular hunting destinations between 1800 and 1950 were Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Portuguese West Africa (Angola), South West Africa (Namibia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique), Bechuanaland (Botswana) and South Africa.</p>
<p>Not all are still open to hunters. And countries that still allow hunting are becoming fewer. The main destinations today are Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia.</p>
<h2>Prime attractions</h2>
<p>Namibia gives hunters the <a href="http://www.smj-safaris.com/bigfivehunting.htm">opportunity</a> to hunt the <a href="http://big5.southafrica.net/#intro">big five</a> – elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo. There is also the opportunity to hunt various plains game like gemsbok, oryx, springbok and eland – of which gemsbok is the most famous among hunters.</p>
<p>Namibia’s hunting land varies. Sometimes hunters use private land which can vary from a few thousand hectares to millions of hectares. They also use state-owned hunting concession areas the <a href="http://www.huntersnamibia.com/an-overview-of-hunting-in-namibia/">country’s north</a>.</p>
<p>Zimbabwe and Zambia recently <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2735902/Zambia-lifts-ban-safari-hunting-attract-tourists-wildlife-authority-pushes-allow-lions-leopards-killed-cash.html">re-allowed hunting</a>. Both have vast game reserves, concessions and national parks. These still provide hunters with the challenge of hunting game in open, unfenced areas. Most encompass thousands of hectares of land where hunters still primarily hunt on foot. </p>
<p>Game is plentiful. And <a href="http://www.huntinginzimbabwe.com/">Zimbabwe</a> is home to the big five.</p>
<p>Zimbabwe and Zambia provide hunters with relatively easy access and good infrastructure. Hunting lodges have well-maintained camps. Accommodation in most cases is in luxury bush camps, called fly camps, erected for the <a href="http://www.safarisdemozambique.com/#!karambenda/c1zwn">hunting season only</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106004/original/image-20151215-23186-6clf8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Game lodges in South Africa give hunters a true African experience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>South Africa also offers hunters the big five. What makes it particularly attractive is that it has more than 40 <a href="http://www.safaribwana.com/COUNTRIES/South%20Africa/sapages/sahunt.htm">different species to hunt</a>. The country is easily accessible and has better infrastructure than most competitors in Africa.</p>
<p>Accommodation ranges from rustic bush camps to five-star permanent hunting lodges. Hunting takes place mainly on privately owned land where game is well managed. Because game is privately owned, it has a value for owners. This has led to tremendous increases in numbers during the <a href="http://www.natshoot.co.za/uploads/documents/Hunt=Conserve%20SAHGCA2013.pdf">last 20 years</a>.</p>
<p>As in Zimbabwe and Zambia, hunting in Mozambique is conducted in state-owned concession areas. Mozambique nearly faced the extinction of some game species after its long civil war, but has shown some promising <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/gorongosa-park/wilson-text">recovery</a>. Traditional hunting areas near Beira were hit the hardest.</p>
<p>Today the best hunting areas are found in more remote areas, near Tanzania and close to Zimbabwe. Wildlife includes a variety of species, but sables can be hunted in most areas, giving Mozambique an advantage over other hunting destinations. Sables are one of the most sought-after animals for hunters.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peet Van Der Merwe receives funding from the NRF.</span></em></p>Hunting remains a controversial pastime. But that hasn’t stopped it attracting hunters wanting to track Africa’s wide array of wild animals.Peet Van Der Merwe, Professor in Tourism, North-West UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/451752015-07-24T13:43:23Z2015-07-24T13:43:23ZThe forgotten story of American writers on the frontline of World War I<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89627/original/image-20150724-7573-1216qoa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henry James renounced his American citizenship in 1915 in response to his country's inaction</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James#/media/File:Henry_James_by_John_Singer_Sargent_cleaned.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was a very public gesture for a very private man. On July 26 1915, the novelist Henry James gave up his American nationality and became a British citizen. He placed a notice in The Times <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_2zbBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=%22desire+to+throw+his+weight+and+personal+allegiance,+for+whatever+they+may+be+worth,+into+the+scale+of+the+contending+nation%E2%80%99s+present+and+future+fortune%22&source=bl&ots=tQtULMhUcC&sig=kyu3pCDC8kM33zinM9Jtc7fqDFk&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22desire%20to%20throw%20his%20weight%20and%20personal%20allegiance%2C%20for%20whatever%20they%20may%20be%20worth%2C%20into%20the%20scale%20of%20the%20contending%20nation%E2%80%99s%20present%20and%20future%20fortune%22&f=false">explaining why</a>. </p>
<p>He had lived in England for almost 40 years, he said, and had formed many “long friendships and associations”, but it was the war raging in Europe that had cemented his “desire to throw his weight and personal allegiance, for whatever they may be worth, into the scale of the contending nation’s present and future fortune”. </p>
<p>To intensify public interest, James asked H H Asquith, the British prime minister, to sign as one of his personal sponsors – each of whom had to testify that this celebrated author of some 20 novels and 100 short stories was capable of “speaking and writing English decently”. Even in the dark days of 1915, that must have raised a smile. </p>
<p>James was quite serious, however. For him, as for many Americans, the war in Europe was much more than a local squabble about geopolitical boundaries or a struggle for influence in the colonies. He called it the “crash of civilization”. To a post-evolution generation, brought up to believe that the biological world and social structures were all programmed to progress towards perfection, this vast and brutal conflict meant the collapse of an entire world view.</p>
<p>It was, James <a href="https://archive.org/stream/lettersofhenryja02jamerich#page/402/mode/2up">wrote to</a> a friend, as if they had all been drifting placidly along to the edge of some “grand Niagara”. He was bewildered that the US government seemed willing to sit back and observe, especially after the <a href="http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snpwwi2.htm">sinking of the Lusitania</a> in May 1915 by a German U-boat with the loss of 124 American lives.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89628/original/image-20150724-7612-1h4t6zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sinking of the Lusitania greatly strengthened the case for getting involved in the war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sinking_of_the_Lusitania_London_Illus_News.jpg#/media/File:Sinking_of_the_Lusitania_London_Illus_News.jpg">Wikimeda</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Americans filling the breach</h2>
<p>James was not alone in feeling that America had a role to play. Although the US government would not officially join the war until April 1917, thousands of American citizens, perhaps as many as half a million, travelled to Europe to enlist with European armies – on both sides of the fighting. In 1914 around one in four Americans was of recent German descent; many mid-western communities were German-speaking. Conversely the east-coast bourgeoisie, many of whom had travelled in France or Britain, leaned towards the Allied cause. </p>
<p>No wonder president Woodrow Wilson hesitated to get involved. Many such volunteers did not come back. The poet <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alan-seeger">Alan Seeger</a> died fighting with the French foreign legion, for example. But military action was not the only way of taking part, as Wall Street banks, farming collectives and munitions firms quickly discovered. By supplying the Allies with cash loans, wheat and arms, these businesses prolonged the war beyond the limits of British and French resources, and established America as the dominant world economy. This was not exactly the kind of intervention James had imagined. </p>
<p>Other Americans, including many writers, responded to the humanitarian demands of the war. James’s close friend Edith Wharton organised a refugee agency for Belgians in Paris. She also toured the Front for Scribner’s magazine, producing a vivid series of essays published as <a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/wharton/france/france.html">Fighting France</a> in 1915. The novelist Mary Borden ran a field hospital for the French army, largely funded from her own fortune, and came to very bleak conclusions about the purpose and methods of the war – as voiced in her haunting memoir <a href="http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/Borden2/fz.html">The Forbidden Zone (1929)</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile Ellen La Motte, who nursed at Borden’s hospital, wrote <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26884/26884-h/26884-h.htm">The Backwash of War (1916)</a>. It was the first book to set the ironic and anti-idealistic tone that so many war texts would follow. Her opening chapter, “Heroes”, contrasts the selfish and petty wounded soldiers in her ward, the supposed heroes of the battlefield, with the dignity and courage of an attempted-suicide case. </p>
<p>Foiled in his attempt to shoot himself by the skill of the hospital surgeons, this soldier tears off his bandages night after night, determined to take death on his own terms. Tellingly, La Motte’s book was silenced by publishing restrictions after the US declared war in 1917. </p>
<h2>Ambulances, literally</h2>
<p>James’s own chance to do something concrete came when the archaeologist Richard Norton asked him to be honorary president of the American Volunteer Motor-Ambulance Corps, later known as the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tZAJFEcDEz8C&pg=PA249&lpg=PA249&dq=Norton-Harjes+Unit&source=bl&ots=5wSKkAS9IF&sig=Ad_qrhpJVmaOytUZrUY-tg0PcoQ&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Norton-Harjes%20Unit&f=false">Norton-Harjes Unit</a>. Norton recruited his drivers mostly from Ivy-League universities. Such young men were more likely to speak French, meet their own expenses, and have driving skills – or better still to own a car that could be shipped to France and converted into an ambulance.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89629/original/image-20150724-7593-ywix5r.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Norton-Harjes Unit in 1917 with photographer Julien Bryan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFS_Intercultural_Programs#/media/File:Julien_Bryan_-_Ambulance_646_-_34.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As “gentleman volunteers” they were attached to no army and carried no weapons. Their sole brief was to transport the wounded to field hospitals such as Borden’s. James, increasingly horrified at the scale of the violence, felt this was a cause he could endorse. <a href="https://archive.org/stream/withintherim00jamerich#page/62/mode/2up/search/ambulance">He wrote</a> an open letter to the American press appealing for donations. </p>
<p>There was, he felt, something apt about the presence of “the university man” at the Front. These young graduates were able not just to offer practical help but also to understand “the palpable social result” of the war. In 1915 no one could have guessed how right James was. Over the course of the war, the Norton-Harjes Unit and operations like it <a href="http://www.ourstory.info/library/2-ww1/DosPassos.html">would turn out</a> some of the finest American writers of the post-war era, including Ernest Hemingway, E E Cummings, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Dashiell Hammett and Malcolm Cowley. One critic later called Norton-Harjes “the most distinguished of the lost generation’s finishing schools”.</p>
<p>Like La Motte, these new writers had little use for the language of the past. In a newspaper interview in 1915, James had said: “The war has used up words; they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor-car tires”. It was a shrewd judgement about the impact of the war on the literature of the future. James would not write that literature; after a series of strokes, he died in February 1916. </p>
<p>But those men and women who observed the war would find new words and new ways to express what they had witnessed. They would also find ways to challenge the idea of what it meant to be American. Like James, these writers knew that sometimes the best way to serve your country is to tell it when it is wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Hutchison is a former President of the Henry James Society. Her book The War That Used Up Words: American Writers and the First World War is published by Yale University Press. The project received funding from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland</span></em></p>When Henry James renounced his American citizenship in 1915 in response to his country’s inaction, he spearheaded a movement of writers who refused to sit on the sidelines amid turmoil in Europe.Hazel Hutchison, Senior Lecturer, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.