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The life of the writer (1899-1961), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was as tragic and bright as all the novels he wrote - “A Farewell to Arms!”, “To Have or Not to Have,” “A Holiday That Is Always With You” , “And the sun rises (Fiesta)”, “Beyond the river in the shade of the trees.”
2010 marked the 70th anniversary of the creation of one of his best works - the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
Duff Tweedsen and Pauline Pfeiffer, Jane Mason and Martha Gellhorn, Mary Welsh and Andriana Ivancic... are Ernest Hemingway's favorite women. What is their role in his life?
Why, for example, did he have sad memories associated with Agnes Kurowski, his first lover, because their feeling was mutual? Why did Agnes say that “she is not at all the perfect woman” that he thought she was?
What kind of relationship did the world famous writer have with Gertrude Stein? Was he really her student in his creative work?
The writer was 62 years old when he committed suicide. With his own hand, Ernest Hemingway put an end to the end of his life. Why did he do this?
Why did I always walk on the edge of the abyss, as if deliberately testing my luck? He was wounded several times, got into plane and car accidents, from which he miraculously emerged alive, but he still took risks - why?

...Question to men: have you ever been in love in Paris?

Not a casual acquaintance, but a woman who has just become your wife? Have you ever felt as rich as Croesus, even though the wind was blowing in your pockets because you didn’t even have a single franc lying around?
In Paris, Ernest Hemingway was young and ambitious, unknown and truly happy. Here, in the center of the bohemian life of the Old and New Worlds, in small cafes and literary salons, at vernissages and in the editorial offices of numerous newspapers and magazines one could meet Marc Chagall and Luis Buñuel, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, Pablo Picasso and Ilya Ehrenburg.
Here, a young talented writer played at the races, was fond of boxing, met with friends in the evenings, and wrote in the mornings, sitting in the Rotunda cafe, believing that soon, very soon, he would conquer not only Paris, but the whole world...
And here he passionately loved his wife Hadley...

He met the aspiring pianist Hadley Richardson, a native of St. Louis, in Chicago. The girl had just lost her mother and felt immensely lonely. Tall, slender, red-haired Hadley, distinguished by a calm, balanced character, was his first wife, but not his first love.

Goodbye baby!...

Ernest met a pretty American woman of Polish origin in a Milan hospital, where he ended up with 227 shrapnel stuck in his body after being wounded on the Italian-Austrian front in 1918.

Bloody and in bandages, he woke up at night, when the unbearable pain that had constrained his whole body subsided. Opening his eyes slightly, he saw the face of a pretty girl above him. The beautiful nurse, Agnes von Kurowski, was on duty that night.
The feeling that flared up instantly turned out to be mutual. The charming Polish woman spent her days at the bedside of the wounded, and her nights in the bed of Ernest Hemingway, the driver of an ambulance of the 3rd Red Cross detachment.
Exhausted from wounds and love, the young American fell asleep at dawn, and Agnes quietly slipped out from under the blanket and went into the neighboring rooms to look after the other wounded. During the day, Hemingway wrote her love notes.

The lovely nurse was born into an intelligent family. After her father's death, shortly after turning 18, she decided to study medicine, secretly dreaming that someday she would be able to go to Europe to the front. She was eight years older than Ernest, but the age difference did not bother either Agnes, who was in love, or the ardent “tenete” (junior lieutenant).
He was only 19, and she was already 27. He was young, brave and courageous. She is damn beautiful, independent and free. He asked her to become his wife on his birthday, when the whole ward noisily celebrated this holiday. She smiled sadly and refused, although she had strong feelings for him.

But the refusal did not become a reason for separation. She also came to his room and stayed at night. At the beginning of November 1918, the nurse was sent to a hospital in Florence. Frightened of losing his beloved, Hemingway persistently demanded that the girl consent to marriage. But she only remained silent in response. Before she had time to leave the city, Ernest began to bombard her with love letters. She replied that she “missed her, was terribly hungry for her beloved and could not forget those sweet nights in Milan.”
The young writer experienced the pangs of love - he was jealous, flew into a rage, could not find a place for himself and... could not do anything; He dreamed of Agnes at night, the dreams were beautiful and crazy, the morning came, and life again turned into a living hell.
Soon Kurowski found herself passing through Milan. The lovers, clasping their hands, sat for two hours at the station, unable to part with each other. Finally, he put her on the train.
In January 1919, Ernest Hemingway left the hospital and went to America. The war was over, but love for Agnes remained a fragment in his soul... He wrote her tender, passionate and desperate letters. He begged me to come to him and become his wife. He was possessed by only one idea, which is called the “fix idea” - an idea from which one could free oneself only by bringing it to life.
And she mercilessly answered: “You shouldn’t write to me so much...” And then she wrote: “I’m not at all the perfect woman you think I am... I’m confident in you. You have an amazing career ahead of you that someone like you deserves... Goodbye, baby. Do not be angry…"
In the same letter, she reported that she had become engaged to a wealthy Italian aristocrat and intended to connect her future life with him.
Young Ernest began to think about suicide for the first time and lay in bed for several days, overcome by terrible attacks of fever.
The further fate of Agnes was not very happy. His marriage to Domenico Carracciolo was upset by his traditional Italian family. She opposed her relative’s decision, considering this marriage an ordinary misalliance. And Agnes was left with nothing.

"In Love and War" film with Sandra Bullock.

And the young Hemingway began to write prose and wrote about his passion “A Very Short Story,” as short as their sudden love that flared up and ended just as quickly.
Much later, he would give the features of his first lover, Katherine Buckley, the heroine of the novel A Farewell to Arms! Already a mature writer will talk about dirt and violence - the inevitable companions of war, about the fear and loneliness that haunt a person, and about pure sublime love, which alone can withstand this hell.
The hero of the novel, “Tenet” Henry, reminiscent of Hemingway himself in his youth, says to Katherine: “I knew many women, but I always remained lonely when I was with them, and this is the worst loneliness. But... we never felt lonely and we never felt afraid when we were together.”

What more does a man need?

And then Hadley appeared in his life. Red-haired, long-legged and narrow-hipped Hadley. Art-savvy, literature-savvy, musically gifted Hadley Richardson.

She was several years older than Hemingway, and all she needed was marriage and love. But she lived in St. Louis, and his life took him to Chicago. And then, in the circumstances, he does what he knows how to do best in life - he writes letters to her, talks about himself, about his complex character, about the fact that he is preparing to be a writer, and that there is no more important thing for him in life than to write.
A correspondence begins, Hadley becomes the first person to whom he trusts himself, to whom his inner life, creative quests, and artistic quests are close.
Smart and patient Hadley, yearning for love and dreaming of family life, not only understands Ernest, but also agrees to put up with all his shortcomings. She dissolves in him, subordinating herself to him in absentia. And he can no longer imagine himself without this woman...

Hadley was not a beauty like Agnes, but the young writer was captivated by her generosity and the attention she showed him. A year after breaking up with Agness, a traditional, prim American wedding was held - Hadley came from a wealthy family. They spent their honeymoon in passion and love.

A year later, Hadley gave birth to her first son, and in 1921 they went to Paris, where world fame awaited him. In this city, which remained his favorite for the rest of his life, they visit boxing, which was becoming fashionable, and play at the horse races.

They try to spend every winter in Switzerland, where they go skiing. In the summer they go to bullfights in Spain.

Hemingway fighting a bull, 1925

But the main thing for Hemingway is still literature. In 1924, a collection of stories “In Our Time” appeared, in 1926 - the novel “The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)”, and in 1929 - “A Farewell to Arms!”, in which he finally said goodbye to the war and said goodbye to Agnes.

Hemingway's passport, 1923

I know what love is...

No matter what Hemingway wrote about, two themes are invariably present in his work - love and death. Because, according to the deep conviction of the author, only these two main categories should be explored by a real writer.

He himself constantly walked along the edge of the abyss, as if deliberately testing his luck. He was wounded several times, got into plane and car accidents, from which he miraculously emerged alive, but he still took risks, not imagining his life without danger. Throughout his life and work, he seemed to confirm that a real man must be courageous, must be able to hunt and fish, drink a lot and love women.

In Africa, Ernest Hemingway hunts lions and rhinoceroses, and catches trout in the cold rivers of Michigan. He practices boxing and attends bullfights. He participates in two world wars and one civil war, which split his beloved Spain in two.

And he continues to write - about love and death, changeable and multifaceted, like the world. Death in his stories and novels is cruel and terrible, like life itself, and love...
Love can turn into a rough underside of an already joyless existence, as in the novel “To Have or to Have Not,” when one of its heroines, tired of lies and injustice, shouts to her husband, who caught her in bed with another:
“Love is just a vile lie. Love is ergoapol pills, because you were afraid to have a child... Love is the vileness of the abortions that you sent me to. Love is my mangled insides. These are catheters mixed with douching. I know what love is. Love is always hanging in the bathtub outside the door. She smells like diesel. Fuck love."
But at the same time, this feeling can be tender and bright, the same as the other heroes of the same novel love, despite all the hardships of an unpredictable life...

Duff Tweedsen and Pauline Pfeiffer,
or
Everything truly bad begins with the most innocent...

In Paris, Hemingway became interested in the Englishwoman Duff Tweedsen. She enjoyed success with both men and women, drank constantly, was beautiful and reckless.

There was something about Duff that irresistibly attracted everyone who knew her to her. She spent her life with some kind of frantic pleasure, often behaved defiantly and did not care about the opinions of those around her. The relationship between Hemingway and Duff turned out to be short, but not banal - there was something more behind their strange relationship at first glance, but at some point both managed to stop.

In 1922, Polina Pfeiffer, the daughter of a wealthy owner of one of the Arkansas companies, appears in Hemingway’s life. Polina worked for the Vogue magazine, published in the French capital.

Always tastefully dressed, as if she had stepped off the glossy cover of a fashion magazine, and able to carry on small talk, the charming Mademoiselle Pfeiffer clearly outperformed the conservative Hadley, who was always preoccupied with worries about her family’s well-being.

Hemingway himself wrote about how everything happened in his autobiographical work “A Holiday That Is Always With You”:

“... A young unmarried woman temporarily becomes the friend of a young married woman, comes to stay with her husband and wife, and then imperceptibly, innocently and inexorably does everything to marry her husband to herself... All truly bad things begin with the most innocent ... You lie, and it’s disgusting to you, and every day threatens more and more danger, but you live only in the present day, as in war.”

Ernest's hobby, meanwhile, turned into passion. Polina was envied. Evil tongues claimed that she specially came to Paris to find herself a worthy husband. But Hemingway did not want a divorce from Hadley.
“I myself went to the breaking point when everything had already healed,” she recalled. “I didn’t have time to keep up with him.” And besides, I was eight years older. I felt tired all the time and I think that was the main reason... Everything developed slowly, and Ernest had a hard time with it. He took everything very deeply."
Hemingway only blamed himself for what happened. When asked by one of his friends why he was getting a divorce, he answered briefly: “Because I’m a son of a bitch.”
Many years later, in a frank conversation with General Lanham, he would blame himself for all his divorces, except for the divorce with Martha Gellhorn.
In 1927, his marriage to Hadley was officially dissolved. Immediately after the divorce, a wedding took place with Polina. Polina was also several years older than her husband, but, unlike Hadley, she was not particularly flexible.

In America, where they moved shortly after the birth of their two sons, as in Paris, she was haunted by thoughts about her own career. And Hemingway tried to persuade his wife to quit her job, but he never persuaded her.

Jane Mason, or Common Interests

A few years later in New York, the writer, who has already received recognition in his homeland, meets the seemingly prosperous Mason couple. Friendly relations are established between them. Hemingway, however, prefers Grant's wife, Jane, who is only 22 years old.

Jane Manson aboard the Anita, 1933

Just like him, the young, rich, ex-centric American woman loves hunting and fishing, plays sports and has an artistic nature. They spend a lot of time together, making plans for joint travel. The marriage with Polina is crumbling before our eyes. Moreover, Hemingway has long been dissatisfied with his sex life with his wife...

But, in spite of everything, Polina managed that time not to give her husband to the charming high-society lioness. She managed to keep him, but family life still did not go well.

Martha Gellhorn, or the Other Side of Emancipation

And soon Martha Gellhorn appeared on the horizon, a famous and influential journalist, the author of two books in which Hemingway’s influence was clearly discernible. Now Martha accompanies him on all his trips, and they do not hide their relationship.

Ernest with Martha Gellhorn during a pheasant hunt in Sun Valley. 1940

In 1940, in the town of Key West in Florida, he created one of his masterpieces - the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which brought him long-awaited world fame.

In the same 1940, he officially broke up with Polina Pfeiffer and married Martha Gellhorn. But this marriage does not bring happiness to Hemingway either.
Emancipated and independent Martha is too independent in her decisions and actions. He prefers obedience and admiration, which a woman with an independent and independent character cannot give him. Ernest is furious.

Novels of the twentieth century. Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway

Even little things like her excessive cleanliness begin to irritate him.
Of course, two such people could not stay in the same boat - a breakup was inevitable.

And they part, very dissatisfied with each other...

Man-made myth

There was always a lot of gossip and rumors around Hemingway, especially after he became famous.

Gertrude Stein, who considered him her student after he developed his original, unique style of writing and freed himself from the influence of contemporary writers, being a lesbian herself, for a long time tried to convince all mutual acquaintances that he was secret homosexual.
But the owner of the famous fashionable literary salon, where all the cream of Parisian bohemia gathered, had no evidence. Apparently, Stein, with her characteristic imagination, came to this conclusion after a conversation with Ernest, who once told her that once in a hospital in Milan an old man approached him with a similar proposal.

Remembering Gertrude Stein, Hemingway admitted: “I always wanted to sleep with her, and she knew it.” But this never happened.
After the publication of the novel “The Sun Also Rises,” many began to identify its author with the main character, Jake Barnes, who was seriously injured in the war and lost the ability to love physically. The feelings of the main characters of the novel were mutual, but happiness turned out to be impossible due to Jake's injury...
Hallie, once answering a question about her husband’s relationships with women, said: “...There were all sorts of cases, but, in general, these women were crazy about him.”
Hemingway wrote in one of his letters to the famous American writer Thornton Wilder that in his youth he could make love several times a day. To another addressee - that during a safari he slept with a whole harem of African beauties.
He himself, like any extraordinary person, created a myth about himself, where it was sometimes difficult to distinguish fiction from reality. By the way, the sharp-tongued Gellhorn is also known to have said that, apart from the ability to write, he could do nothing else...
In turn, Hemingway will call his marriage to Martha the biggest mistake he ever made in his life.
Critic Malcolm Cowley said of his friend:
“He is a romantic by nature, and he falls in love like a huge pine tree crushing a small forest. In addition, he has a puritanical streak that keeps him from flirting over cocktails. When he falls in love, he wants to get married and live in marriage, and he perceives the end of the marriage as a personal defeat.” But, despite all the insults and defeats, women in Hemingway’s life always remained a holiday “that is always with you”...

Fourth wife - Mary Welsh

He met Mary a year before the end of World War II in London, where he arrived as a war correspondent. Everyone was waiting for Allied troops to land on the English Channel. The entire writing fraternity gathered in the White Tower tavern. They were introduced to each other by the aspiring writer Irwin Shaw.
The famous Hemingway was 45 years old. The magazine sheet of Mary Welsh is 36. The affair lasted a whole year and ended after the end of the war. He proposed to her, and she accepted him, knowing full well what kind of person she was connecting her life with.
All subsequent years, Mary patiently bore the burden of this difficult love. She forgave him a lot, including his incessant infatuation with women. Mary Welsh was the last, fourth wife of Ernest Hemingway, but not his last love.

Ernest and Mary Hemingway in Sun Valley, 1947

Andriana Ivancic - "daddy's girl" and source of inspiration

In Italy, in Cortino de Ampezzo, a charming 19-year-old Italian of Yugoslav origin, Andriana Ivancic, falls into the orbit of attraction of an aging famous writer.

Hemingway was 50 years old. Andriana's youth, beauty and artistic talent (she painted and wrote poetry) fascinated Ernest. It was a strange relationship that lasted six years. Hemingway felt tender, almost fatherly feelings towards her. He called her “daughter”, she, like everyone close to him, called him “dad”.
After the writer’s death, Andriana admitted that at first she was bored next to this elderly man who had seen and experienced so much; she was not always able to understand him. But she felt that Ernest enjoyed their time together, and gave “dad” this innocent pleasure.

Andriana had no idea that she helped Hemingway overcome his creative crisis and write a new novel, to the heroine of which he gave many of her features. In this beautiful and charming southern woman, the writer again found a source of inspiration, which he had so lacked lately.

The heroine of the new work - “Across the River in the Shade of the Trees” - Countess Renata was based on an attractive Italian woman. An American colonel, Catwell, who is disillusioned with life, falls in love with the countess.
He is fifty years old, he, like Hemingway himself, has seen and experienced a lot in his lifetime and does not expect anything good from the future. But an unexpected outbreak of love transforms this courageous man. In Renata he finds what he tried in vain to find in other women - the ability to understand and sympathize.
However, the ending of this Hemingway piece is tragic. Having seemingly found the meaning of existence in love for the young Italian beauty countess, the colonel dies of a heart attack in a car rushing along the road to Trieste...

He dedicated “The Old Man and the Sea” to Andriana Ivancic. By the way, the writer received the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1952.

Ernest Hemingway. "The Being of the World"

"Biblical story". The story of the creation of the novel "The Old Man and the Sea", for which Hemingway received the Nobel Prize. It is based on Psalm 103 of David, which is called “On worldly existence.” Faulkner, having read it, said: "His best work. Perhaps time will show that this is the best of all that we - his and my contemporaries - have written. This time he has found God, the Creator."

As always with Hemingway, love and death walk side by side...

The fate of Andriana, the prototype of the novel, was very sad. She got married twice, and was not happy in either marriage. At the age of 53, she committed suicide by hanging herself out of despair in her garden.

Last point.

Ernest Hemingway, Bobby Peterson and Harry Cooper, Silver Creek, Idaho. January 1959

Back in Spain... Twenty years later... 1959

Ernest Hemingway's last years were marred by depressions that came in waves. He was tired, often irritated over trifles, and he showed signs of mental illness - persecution mania.
In 1960, he went to the Mayo Clinic in Minn. The doctors' diagnosis was disappointing - depression coupled with a mental disorder. He was treated with electric shock.

After leaving the hospital, exhausted and tired, Hemingway returned to Idaho. He understood that his spiritual strength was exhausted, that, in the end, madness loomed ahead. Attacks of melancholy, despair and powerlessness constantly rolled in. He tried to fight them, but nothing worked.
On July 2, 1961, he got up early, with a heavy head and a clouded mind. He left the bedroom and carefully began to make his way to the dark room where Mary hid the gun from him. The dry floorboards of the old wooden house creaked loudly. Mary, who had swallowed sleeping pills, did not even move in her sleep.
He took the gun off the wall and walked onto the veranda. He hammered in a cartridge, held the gun between his knees and slowly cocked the hammer. His time passed, like sand through his fingers - everything was lived, experienced, everything turned to dust, ashes. Everything he knew about life, love and death, he said long ago in his novels. There was nothing more to write about and no need to write. And in general, he had not been able to write a single line for a long time. And writing for him meant living...
Mary did not let him put the last point in April. Today he will untie all the knots of existence...
He peered into the pupil of the gun - there was only cold and emptiness. All that was left was to pull the trigger...
The sharp sound of a shot woke Mary up. In a ridiculously wrinkled nightgown, she rushed out of the bedroom. One thought was beating in her head: she was late, nothing could be done!
...The husband’s prostrate body lay near the chair he had firmly put together. Blood slowly poured onto his naked gray hairy chest...
Nobel Prize winner in literature Ernest Hemingway committed suicide, just like his father, who also suffered from depression. With his own hand, he put an end to the end of his life, and his life was as tragic and bright as all the novels he wrote. He was about to turn 62 years old.

There are no graves, but there is memory, multiplied by the love of those who were lucky enough to be the muses of the great writer.

Oak Park High School football team, 1915

Hemingway with his sister Marsalina and friends, 1920

Ernest and Hadley Hemingway. Winter 1922

Hemingway, Paris, 1924

John "Bambi" Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, in Paris

Hemingway in a cafe. Pamplona, ​​Spain, 1925

Pauline Pfeiffer and Ernes Hemingway, 1926, Murphys

Paris, March 1928

Ernest and Paulina Hemingway at a bullfight. Pamplona, ​​1928

Hemingway, Ilya Ehrenburg and Gustav Regler in Spain during the Civil War. 1937

General Enrique Lister and Ernest Hemingway at the Ebro front. 1938

Ernest and Mary Hemingway on safari.

Piazza San Marco, Venice. 1954

With Titty Koechler. Cortina, Italy. winter 1948-49

Hemingway in Cuba. 1953

Ernest Hemingway is an American writer and journalist. In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It is interesting that he became popular all over the world not only thanks to his works, but also thanks to his difficult life, which was full of various adventures.

So, in front of you short biography of Ernest Hemingway.

Biography of Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in the small town of Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up in an intelligent and wealthy family.

His father, Clarence Edmont Hemingway, was a doctor, and his mother, Grace Hall, was a famous opera singer. In addition to Ernest, they had 5 more children.

Childhood and youth

Until the age of 4, Ernest Hemingway's mother dressed him up in girls' clothes. She did this because for a long time she dreamed of having a girl. It is worth noting that in addition to dresses, the mother also put white bows on her son’s head.

Hemingway's father was an avid fisherman, so he often took little Ernest with him fishing. He even made a small fishing rod for him to make it easier for the boy to catch small fish.

Mom dressed Ernest Hemingway as a girl

In addition, the father taught his son to hunt and. Later, all the impressions experienced in childhood will be reflected in the writer’s works.

Despite the fact that his parents were not interested in literature, Ernest Hemingway himself loved to read. For this he sacrificed playing with the kids in the yard.

Having started studying at school, for the first time in his biography he tried to write articles on various everyday and sports topics. Soon his works began to be published in the local newspaper.

After this, Hemingway tried to describe various beautiful places that he was able to visit during his summer holidays. In 1916, a story about the hunt “Sepi Zhingan” came out from his pen.

At the same time, Hemingway was actively interested in. He enjoyed playing and swimming.

Then Ernest became seriously interested in boxing, which, in fact, made him disabled. During one of the fights, his opponent inflicted a severe head injury on him.

As a result, Ernest Hemingway practically stopped seeing with his left eye and hearing with his left ear. Due to this, for a long time he could not pass a medical examination for military service.

Hemingway's 1923 passport photo

On the eve of graduation, Hemingway told his parents that he wanted to become a writer, which caused indignation among them.

His father dreamed that Ernest would be a doctor, and his mother wanted him to be a talented musician. In this regard, she forced her son to play the cello for hours, which in the future the writer simply hated.

After graduating from school, Ernest, disobeying his parents, began working as a journalist in one of the publishing houses in Kansas.

Since he was a police reporter, he had to talk with representatives of the underworld and witness various dangerous situations.

This profession seriously influenced Hemingway's biography.

She helped him see various social problems and problems in practice. In the future, this will help the writer describe his characters in colors.

Creative biography of Hemingway

In 1914, with the outbreak of World War I, Hemingway wanted to volunteer for the front, but he was unfit due to the physical disabilities discussed earlier.

Hemingway in Milan in 1918

At the beginning of 1918, he still managed to become the best man of an ambulance in Italy. Soon Ernest was seriously wounded and after lengthy treatment was demobilized.

In 1919, he headed to, where he continued to engage in journalistic activities. The future Nobel laureate begins working for the Toronto Star newspaper.

After 3 years, Hemingway moved to, where he had long dreamed of visiting.

There he was able to meet some influential people who helped him get a job and realize himself as a writer.

In particular, he became friends with the famous writer Gertrude Stein, who seriously influenced the level of Hemingway's writing.

Hemingway's works

Feeling confident in his abilities, he wrote another novel, “A Farewell to Arms!”, which received many positive reviews from both critics and ordinary readers.

An interesting fact is that in many countries this work is included in the compulsory school curriculum.

In 1928, a tragic event occurred in Hemingway's biography: he received a telegram informing him that his father had committed suicide. It is reliably known that Hemingway Sr. had financial difficulties, and Ernest wrote to him not to worry about it. However, the letter arrived after the suicide.

After this tragic event, Hemingway said: “I’ll probably go the same way.” These words turned out to be prophetic.

In 1933, a collection of short stories by Hemingway, “The Winner Takes Nothing,” was published, written on various topics. And again success!

3 years later he writes the work “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, in which the main character is in search of the meaning of life. Almost immediately after this, one of the most famous novels in Hemingway’s biography, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” was published.

In 1949, the writer moved to live in Cuba, where he continued to be actively engaged in creative activities.

In 1952, Ernest Hemingway wrote the famous story “The Old Man and the Sea,” which told about the fate of old man Santiago. For this work he was awarded the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes.

Personal life

In fairness, it must be said that by nature Hemingway was a strong and courageous man who managed to live a very interesting and eventful life.

In modern terms, he can safely be called an extreme sportsman, which is confirmed by many facts from his biography. There are known cases when he participated in bullfights in his youth, and was also repeatedly left alone with lions.

At the same time, Ernest Hemingway’s true weakness was always the fair sex. He was a real Casanova of his time, which he did not hide and which he was even proud of.

In Hemingway's biography there were four women with whom he was officially married. Let's take a quick look at each marriage.

Hemingway's first wife was Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. She supported her husband in every possible way and even gave him a typewriter for his work.

Having legalized the relationship, they moved to Paris, where they initially experienced serious financial difficulties. From this marriage they had a boy, John Hadley Nicanor, whom they nicknamed “Bumby.”

In 1927, Ernest became infatuated with his wife's friend, Pauline Pfeiffer, as a result of which he filed for divorce.

He married Paulina, but was not happy in his marriage with her, and even later admitted that the divorce from Elizabeth was the main mistake of his life. From Pfeiffer he had 2 boys: Patrick and Gregory.

The third wife in Hemingway's biography was Martha Gellhorn, who worked as a reporter. In many ways, Martha was interesting to the writer because she was not afraid of difficulties and was also fond of hunting.

However, this marriage also ended in divorce. Ernest could not withstand his wife’s domineering character and constant control over himself.

For the fourth time he married Mary Welsh, who strongly supported him in his work and was a reliable support for him. Later she became his personal secretary.

Soon, 48-year-old Ernest Hemingway became interested in young Adriana Ivancic, who was barely 18 years old.

And although the writer did everything possible to win over the girl, she perceived him as a father. It is interesting that Mary knew about her husband’s new hobby, but deliberately ignored it, because she was afraid of losing her husband.

Ernest Hemingway with his 4th wife Mary Welsh

In general, the biography of Ernest Hemingway was full of many interesting and even dangerous adventures and incidents in which he could have died more than once.

Hemingway survived 5 accidents and 7 disasters! During his life he received a lot of bruises, fractures and concussions. In addition, he suffered from anthrax, malaria and skin cancer.

Death

In the last years of his life, Hemingway suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes. Moreover, relatives began to notice a serious deterioration in his mental health.

According to his last wife, Mary, Hemingway became the complete opposite of who he used to be. From a sociable, full of life man with overflowing energy, he turned into a withdrawn and silent old man.

Hemingway with his last wife

He was soon admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, but the writer’s condition continued to deteriorate. He began to suffer from paranoia, thinking that FBI agents were following him everywhere.

Wherever he was, it seemed to him that they were listening to him and wanted to kill him. In every person Ernest saw an intelligence agent pursuing him.

Falling into deep depression, he often thought about suicide.

On July 2, 1961, after being discharged from the clinic, Ernest Hemingway shot himself with a gun in his home in Ketchum. He died at the age of 61 without leaving a suicide note.

Finally, it is worth noting that the writer's younger brother, Lester Hemingway, was also a writer, and also committed suicide in a similar manner to his father and older brother.

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The life Hemingway lived has been called a "continuous rebellion" against his petty-bourgeois background and upbringing. Hemingway was the son of a doctor and raised in the Chicago suburbs in a female-dominated family, including his four sisters, a nanny, and a cook. For several years, Hemingway's mother forced him to wear clothes that he inherited from his older sisters. She even sent her daughter Marcelina to school a year later, so that they would go to Ernest's first grade together as twins. At the age of 15, Ernest ran away from home but returned to finish school. After the First World War, in which Hemingway took part as an ambulance driver, he went to Paris as a journalist. It was there that Hemingway developed his literary style and achieved his first success and literary recognition. Finding himself in the public spotlight, Hemingway made a lot of effort to first create and then maintain everyone's impression of himself as a soldier and war correspondent, a courageous man, eager for adventure, a lover of boxing, hunting, fishing and bullfighting. When Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1960, Hemingway moved to Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway suffered the loss of his Cuban farm painfully. He suffered from severe depression and practically stopped writing. He received electroconvulsive therapy twice at the Mayo Clinic. Two days after returning from this clinic, Hemingway shot himself.

Hemingway always tried to do everything to maintain and strengthen his image as a great lover. He told Thornton Wilder, for example, that in his youth in Paris his sexual desires were so great that he made love three times a day. In addition, he specifically used sedatives. At the same time, Hemingway's parents said that he began dating girls quite late, in high school. Hemingway once compared sexual relations to riding a bicycle, saying that the more a person does it, the better he gets at it. Hemingway loved to command his women, believing that a man should “control” the development of sexual relationships. Three of his four wives seem to have shared his views, with Hemingway's third wife, Martha Jellhorn, being an exception. She later said that "Papa" Hemingway had no good qualities other than his ability to write. Hemingway later called their marriage his “biggest mistake.”

In his letters, Hemingway talked about many of his unusual sexual partners, such as the entire harem of black women he acquired during an African safari.

Some contemporaries, including Gertrude Stein, questioned everything Hemingway tried hard to convince everyone of. Stein generally suspected (and shared this suspicion with those around her) that he was a hidden homosexual.

There is, however, absolutely no evidence that Hemingway ever had any homosexual relationships with anyone. The writer himself said that only once in his life did a man approach him with very specific proposals.

Hemingway did not like to use contraception when he was intimate with women. He always preferred to deal with women who "were willing to take risks." During sexual intercourse, Hemingway was often not at his best, and sometimes even suffered from impotence, which was caused by frequently occurring stressful situations.

Hemingway loved to brag about his sexual prowess, claiming that he had a variety of women as his lovers, including Mata Hari, Italian countesses, a Greek princess, and the prostitutes with whom he especially dealt in his youth and during his years in Havana. In fact, Hemingway was a much more chaste person, and his attitude towards sex was sometimes even almost prudish. He often dreamed of Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, and in life he preferred beautiful and obedient blondes. Friends and acquaintances believed that Hemingway was simply a “Puritan” because he visibly blushed and was ashamed if a prostitute approached him somewhere on the street with an offer, since he believed that only lovers could make love.

Hemingway was married four times and had three sons from these marriages. Hemingway's first few years of marriage to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, were almost perfect. Their family fell apart when he met the beautiful Pauline Pfeiffer. Until the end of his life, Hemingway considered his divorce from Hadley to be the “greatest sin” of his life. Officially, according to documents, Hemingway's family life with Pauline lasted 12 years, although they stopped living with each other much earlier. Their marriage also turned out to be fragile due to Hemiguey’s sexual dissatisfaction, who was forced to constantly use the method of interrupted coitus, since Pauline’s Catholic upbringing prohibited the use of any contraceptives and prophylactics.

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Hemingway met Martha Jellhorn in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. They quickly became close, but their mutual passion cooled quite quickly after they became husband and wife. They divorced in 1945. This was Hemingway's shortest marriage. She and Martha were completely different people and were absolutely not suitable for each other. Ernest did not like Martha's independence (she herself wrote quite well) and her sharp tongue. He expected blind worship, admiration, and submission from his partner, and Martha was by no means submissive and compliant.

Hemingway's fourth wife, Mary Welsh, seemed to have been created to his order. Patient, beautiful, 9 years younger than Hemingway, she treated her husband with respect and even reverence. He called it his “pocket Rubens painting.” Their family life together continued until the last days of Hemingway's life, largely due to the fact that Mary often turned a blind eye to some of her husband's actions. Hemingway continued to enjoy flirting with women in that marriage, not particularly trying, by the way, to hide it from those around him, including Martha herself.

When Hemingway was younger, he preferred more mature women. Hadley was, for example, 8 years older than him. At a more mature age, he began to prefer women who were much younger than him. Some of them were the prototypes of his literary characters, such as Breet Ashley in the novel The Sun Also Rises. None of them, however, managed to win his heart. Hemingway always tried to keep women at some distance, fearing, obviously, that they would try to control him.

Here's what Hemingway said about this: “I know these women. Any woman is always a lot of problems.”

They lived together for fifteen years. This was Hemingway's longest and happiest marriage. Nevertheless, the writer’s children accused Mary Welsh that it was she who helped Hemingway die.

After their first meeting, Hemingway said: “Mary, I don’t know you at all. But I want to marry you. You are so alive! You are so pretty. Like a spinner. I want to marry you right now. And someday you will want to marry me. Just remember that I will marry you. Today, or tomorrow, or in a month, or in a year.” They met in London in May 1944. This happened in a restaurant where Mary Welsh was dining in the company of the writer Irwin Shaw (Shaw later portrayed her in his novel “The Young Lions” under the name Louise. - Ed.). Hemingway stopped at the table and asked to be introduced to “this charming blonde.”

The “charming blonde” was an American, the daughter of a lumberjack, trained to be a journalist. At the time of her meeting with Hemingway, she was thirty-six years old and married. In London, Mary worked for the newspaper “The London Daily Express”: she covered events at the front and gave reports from press conferences of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Over the next year, he wrote letters to her, sometimes two a day: “My love, this is just a note to tell you how much I love you... I’m in deep trouble, so you take care of yourself for me or for us, and we will fight with all our might for everything that was talked about, and against loneliness, falsehood, death, injustice, inertia (our old enemy), surrogates, all kinds of fear and other worthless things; to fight for you, gracefully sitting next to you on the bed, pretty, more beautiful than any figure on the bow of the most beautiful and tall ship that has ever raised sails or heeled from the wind, for kindness, constancy, love for each other.

Mary, honey, please love me deeply and always, and take care of me, baby, the way all babies take care of their older friends...”

By that time, the relationship between Hemingway and his third wife Martha Gellhorn had completely gone wrong. From the beginning of the war, Martha was at the front - she was a war correspondent, like Mary Welsh, and was distinguished by her extraordinary courage. Hemingway regretted that he taught her to write and shoot well. He himself settled in Cuba, which he considered his “base,” and was in no hurry to fight this—for him, the fifth—war. True, he equipped his own yacht “Pilar” with a machine gun and an anti-submarine weapon. To do this, they had to obtain special permission from President Roosevelt. On the yacht, Hemingway and his crew went out hunting for German submarines: they occasionally appeared off the coast of Cuba. But since the hold of the Pilar was filled with boxes not only of shells, but also of intoxicating liquor, protecting coastal waters from submarines turned into a big fishing trip. And yet, in 1944, Martha persuaded him to become a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine.

Shortly after meeting Mary Welsh, Hemingway was involved in a car accident. He wasn't the one driving, but the driver was just as drunk as the passenger. Both were seriously injured. Martha was in no hurry to get to her wounded husband, and when she finally got to London, she found Ernest in bandages, flowers, bottles and - with Mary. The caustic Martha commented on the “battle injuries”, and this became the reason for the final break. In December 1945 they divorced.

Having received divorce papers. Hemingway, who was in Cuba at that moment, instructed Mary to tell his friend... Marlene Dietrich that he was free. Dietrich dressed in a man's suit, came to the writer's beloved and, on behalf of Hemingway, acted out a passionate love scene in front of her.

Mary received a divorce with great difficulty. Hemingway hated Mary's ex-husband, Noel Monks, to such an extent that one day at the Ritz Hotel in Paris he installed his photograph on the toilet cistern and shot him with a revolver. Along the way, he seriously damaged water pipes, resulting in several floors of the hotel being flooded.

After the wedding, Mary and Ernest went hunting at the invitation of friends in Sun Valley. On the way we stopped at a hotel; at night Mary became ill. Ernest took her to a local hospital, and the doctor on duty there diagnosed her with an ectopic pregnancy and a ruptured fallopian tube. An urgent operation was required, but the surgeon could not quickly get to the hospital. Mary was losing blood, the frightened doctor told Hemingway: “Take courage! This is fate...” “Nonsense! - he told the doctor. “You can rape fate, and then she, like a woman, will submit to you!” Ernest himself took it upon himself to give Mary a blood transfusion, remembering his service in the Red Cross during the First World War. So he kept her alive, repeating like a mantra “let’s never marry again” until the surgeon arrived. As Mary later wrote, this miraculous phrase saved their lives and love many times.

They settled in Cuba on an estate called "Finca Vigia" - "Farm with a View". This was the first time Hemingway brought a new wife into the house in which he lived with his previous one. Before this, he began life with each new wife with a clean slate and a new refuge. But for Marta, unlike Ernest, Finca Vigia never became a real home. Marta was not at all a homely type.

Despite the presence of thirteen servants (of whom four were gardeners), the villa was in a terrible state. Suffice it to say that the water in the pool was never changed: chlorine was simply added to it. Mary tidied up the garden with the famous mango trees - Hemingway more than once later boasted of “18 varieties of mangoes for breakfast”, planted a vegetable garden, repaired all the leaky roofs and pipes, trained the servants, and most importantly, did everything so that her Ernest could work in peace. She built a studio for him next to the house - a four-story tower, from the flat roof of which one could see the sea and the fishing village of Cojimar, the same one where the story that formed the basis of the story “The Old Man and the Sea” happened.

Hemingway worked every day from 5 am to 1 pm. Be sure to count how many words were written. On average, he wrote 700-800 words daily. But he only got up from the table when he already knew what he would write about tomorrow. All this time, Mary was busy with his beloved dogs, cats, of which there were at least a dozen and a half, and his adored fighting cocks. She entertained the friends, sons of the writer, and even his former lovers who constantly visited the “Farm”. Apart from Martha, all of Hemingway’s ex-wives and girlfriends remained on excellent terms with him and were even friends with each other.

Scott Fitzgerald said that Hemingway had a novel for each of his women. His first love, which he described in the novel “A Farewell to Arms!”, was nurse Agnes von Kurowski. He dedicated “A Holiday That Is Always With You” to Hadley Richardson. They married in 1921 in Paris and had a son, Jack. Hadley was eight years older than Hemingway, but she did not have enough worldly wisdom to keep him. In May 1927, he married Pauline Pfeiffer, whom he featured in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. She bore him two more sons, Patrick and Gregory, but was too “selfish” - she did not learn to tolerate her husband’s frequent “business trips.” In 1940, Hemingway married Martha Gellhorn, also, as he said, a big egoist. She got the novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

Mary was not selfish. She meekly accepted not only her husband's ex-wives at the Farm. In 1950, she had to welcome Ernest’s new passion. 19-year-old artist Adriana Ivancic. Mary knew that her husband was crazy about this young Italian aristocrat - Hemingway told Mary everything, without choosing words, without fear of revealing himself. He was never afraid that he would lose her by introducing her to his masculine truth.

The Italian was settled in the tower, next to Hemingway’s office. In those days, his friends Harry Cooper, Marlene Dietrich and Ingrid Bergman were visiting the Farm. Together they organized the “White Tower Society,” into which they enrolled all the writer’s favorite cats who lived on the first floor of the tower. The Society's goal was to survey all the bars in Havana. Hemingway could drink 12 servings of Hemingway Special, a sugar-free daiquiri mix and a double shot of rum, in an evening - and also fill a thermos “for the road”. At home, after “research,” he broke dishes and scolded his wife in such words that the guests blushed deeply... Hemingway’s love for Adriana formed the basis of the novel “Across the River, in the Shade of the Trees,” but he dedicated the book to Mary. Harry Cooper later said that he had never seen such selfless devotion: “Mary loves him like a child loves her father, trying not to disappoint him even in the smallest way.”

She learned to tolerate much more offensive things. Once upon a time, Cousin Mary was visiting Cuba. They agreed to have lunch with Hemingway on board his yacht Pilar. Mary and her cousin waited for Hemingway for a couple of hours, and finally he appeared, fairly tipsy and accompanied by a young prostitute, whom Hemingway called “Xenophobia.” And I didn’t think to apologize. He stated that he was brutally tired “from working in the galleys” - on a new novel - and communication with “Xenophobia” refreshed him.

Once upon a time, the writer Ezra Pound gave Hemingway’s first wife advice, which his fourth wife strictly followed: “Most wives try to change their husbands. With Ernie it would have been a terrible mistake."

One day, she still couldn’t stand it... They were in Spain - Life magazine ordered Hemingway to write an article about bullfighting. Under the pretext that she needed to tidy up the house in Cuba and the recently acquired “hunting lodge” in Ketchum, Mary left Hemingway in Pamplona alone. Having honestly put both houses in order, she wrote a letter to her husband: she called his behavior “thoughtless”, his nagging towards her “offensive and groundless” and said that she would rent an apartment in New York and finally relax.

Hemingway cabled back: “Thank you for the letter and for the work you have done. Unfortunately, I cannot agree with your conclusions. I respect your views, but I fundamentally disagree... I'm sorry for causing you so much inconvenience. I still love you." And Mary stayed.

For such, as he said, a “sunny” attitude to life, Hemingway called Mary “my pocket Rubens,” adding: “if she loses weight, I’ll turn her into a “pocket Tintoretto.” And he repeated like a spell “I still love you.”

He repeated these words to her when he nursed Mary after two plane crashes in Africa, one after the other. In January 1954, they went to explore the waterfalls of eastern Africa. Cessna pilot Roy March, flying around a flock of birds, touched telegraph wires. The plane crashed. Hemingway escaped with scratches, and Mary had several broken ribs. They were evacuated first by boat, across Lake Victoria, and then by plane. While approaching Uganda, the plane crashed and caught fire. Mary suffered burns and her left arm was crushed. Hemingway's injuries were much more serious, but this became clear later. Then he believed that he was just a little burned, and sleeplessly kept watch at Mary’s bedside while they sailed from Africa to Venice. And then for another seven years, every day, morning and evening, he massaged her immobilized hand. She did not believe that it would help, but there was no case that he missed even one session. Twelve years later, her hand really “came to life.”

In October 1954, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the story “The Old Man and the Sea,” first published in Life. He greeted the news of the prize with the words: “The prize is a prostitute who can infect you with a bad disease. “Glory is the sister of death” and was glad that he had good reasons not to fly to Stockholm - after the plane crash he was found to have damage to his skull, liver, right kidney, and spleen. True, Hemingway considered all these to be scratches - he had more serious wounds. He was afraid to speak in public. Previously, Mary perceived his fears as eccentricities - he, for example, was afraid to talk on the phone. Now I began to fear that I would no longer be able to write anything. And this fear exhausted him and her, because here she was powerless to help him: “The life of a writer passes alone. For he creates alone, and if he is a good writer, his job is to see eternity ahead, or the lack thereof, day after day,” said his Nobel lecture. It was read by John Cabot, the American Ambassador to Sweden.

He began writing memoirs about his happiest years, Paris, and did not finish the book: “This is an amazing book, I know how everything should be, but I can’t do anything,” he admitted to Mary.

“What do you think happens to a person when he realizes that he will never write his next book again? - he asked once. - It doesn’t matter how long you don’t write - a day, a year. ten years if you know in your heart that one day you will be able to do it. But if you don’t have this knowledge, then the uncertainty becomes unbearable, like an endless wait.”

Hemingway tried to drown out his fear, because of which he practically stopped sleeping, by drinking. These binges were legendary. One day he set fire to the palm trees next to the house, and when the firefighters arrived, he got the whole team drunk and raced around the house in fire trucks. Mary endured these antics without complaint. Hemingway's children reproached her for lack of will. “You don’t understand anything,” she once said. “I’m a wife, not a policeman.” “I loved him and his actions, huge, uncouth, like wild granite blocks,” she wrote in her memoirs.

“I think the worst thing I did in my life,” Hemingway wrote in his diary, “was fighting my love. Women simply loved me, and I fought for their love. That's why I lost all my beloved women. They couldn't stand my fight for their love. Only my last love was without a fight.”

“Let’s never get married again, okay, kitten?” - he repeated to Mary more and more often.

He called her “kitten”, she called him “lamb”. Well, what a “lamb” Hemingway is! But he often, when he wanted to flatter her, hummed the English children's song “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

On their last night, July 2, 1961, which Mary and Ernest spent at their hunting lodge in Ketchum, Idaho, Mary remembered a completely different song, an Italian one. She hummed it as she made the bed: “Everyone calls me blonde, but I’m not a blonde at all...” “Because my braids are darker than the night...” he responded from his office. She shouted: “Good night, my little lamb, good dreams!” “Good night, kitten,” he replied.

Early in the morning, quietly, trying not to wake anyone, he went downstairs, took out his favorite double-barreled Boss shotgun, loaded it, rested the butt on the floor, pressed his forehead to the barrels and pulled the trigger.

In the last year of his life, he tried to commit suicide more than once. One day Mary found her husband loading a gun. She tried to distract him by joking that it would be a good idea to write a suicide note first. A doctor and Ernest’s friend came and took the gun from him and persuaded him to go to the hospital. When they got into the car, Hemingway stated that he forgot some things and went into the house, where he again tried to shoot himself. Then he wanted to jump out of the plane on which he was being taken to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, but it didn’t work, the door didn’t open.

After Mary and Ernest moved to Ketchum - due to the revolution in Cuba - the writer's children decided that their father was developing paranoia: he insisted that FBI agents were watching him. As it turned out later, the FBI was really watching him because he was friends with the Cubans. Hemingway was persuaded to go to the clinic. Mary rented a room in a nearby hotel and spent all her days with her husband. She was the only person Hemingway could talk to without fear of being suspected of insanity. What they talked about is unknown. She only said that he laughed a lot when he found out that he was registered at the clinic under the name Lord.

The writer was treated with electric shock. This caused partial loss of memory, vision and even deeper depression. When he was asked to write a couple of simple sentences for a book about Kennedy, after several hours of fruitless effort, he burst into tears in the presence of his doctor; the great writer could not complete even the most primitive sentence...

Mary understood what this meant for him. The writer's eldest son, Jack Hemingway, even after 1966, when it was officially recognized that the writer committed suicide (until that time the cause of death was hidden. - Ed.), accused Mary of helping Ernest die - although locked the room in which the weapons were kept, but left the key on the table in the hallway - no less than on purpose...

Well, if Mary was guilty of anything, it was only that she promised him “to take care of him the way all the little ones take care of their older friends.” And she kept her promise.

Mary survived her husband by a quarter of a century. She prepared for publication those very Parisian memoirs of Hemingway, which he was afraid to finish. The book was published under the title “A Holiday That Is Always With You” and was recognized as Hemingway’s best work. In 1976, she wrote an autobiography, "The Way It Was," about which her best friend said that if it didn't talk about Hemingway, it wouldn't be worth publishing - there's almost no Mary Welsh in it. Towards the end of her life she drank a lot: she was haunted by thoughts about why she left that damned key on the table. But she couldn't hide it. It would be humiliating. For Ernest. And she thought about him first.

Nobel Prize winner Hemingway was the most translated foreign writer into Russian during the Soviet Union. Ernest’s works were published in the magazines “30 Days”, “Abroad”, “International Literature”, etc., and in European countries this gifted man was called “the number one master of the pen.”

The great writer was born in America, on the southwestern coast of Lake Michigan, not far from the cultural capital of the Midwest - Chicago, in the provincial town of Oak Park. Ernest was the second child of six children. The boy was raised by parents who were far from literary art, but wealthy: the popular performer Mrs. Grace Hall, who had retired from the stage, and Mr. Clarence Edmont Hemingway, who devoted his life to medicine and natural history.

It is worth saying that Miss Hall was a unique woman. Before her marriage, she delighted many cities in the United States with her sonorous voice, but left the singing field due to intolerance to stage light. After leaving, Hall blamed everyone for her failure, but not herself. Having accepted Hemingway’s marriage proposal, this interesting woman lived with him all her life, devoting her time to raising children.

But even after marriage, Grace remained a strange and eccentric young lady. Ernest was born until he was four years old in girls' dresses and with bows on his head because Mrs. Hemingway wanted a girl, but the second child was a boy.

In his free time, general practitioner Clarence loved to go hiking, hunting and fishing with his son. When Ernest was 3 years old, he got his own fishing rod. Later, childhood impressions associated with nature will be reflected in Hemingway's stories.

Mom dressed Ernest Hemingway as a girl

In his youth, Khem (the writer's nickname) voraciously read classical literature and composed stories. While at school, Ernest made his debut in a local newspaper as a journalist: he wrote notes about past events, concerts and sports competitions.

Although Ernest attended the local Oak Park school, his works often describe northern Michigan, a picturesque place where he went on summer vacation in 1916. After this trip, Ernie wrote a hunting story, “Sepi Zhingan.”

Ernest Hemingway fishing

Among other things, the future laureate in literature had excellent sports training: he was fond of football, swimming and boxing, which played a cruel joke on the talented young man. Due to the injury, Hem was practically blind in his left eye and also damaged his left ear. For this reason, in the future the young man was not accepted into the army for a long time.

Ernie wanted to become a writer, but his parents had other plans for their son's future. Clarence dreamed that his son would follow in his father’s footsteps and graduate from medical school, and Grace wanted to raise a second child, imposing music lessons that he hated on her child. This mother’s whim affected Khem’s studies, as he missed a whole year of compulsory classes, studying the cello every day. “She thought I had abilities, but I had no talent,” said the elderly writer in the future.

Ernest Hemingway in the army

After graduating from high school, Ernest, disobeying his parents, did not go to university, but began to master the art of journalism in the city newspaper of Kansas, The Kansas City Star. At work, police reporter Hemingway encountered such social phenomena as deviant behavior, dishonor, crime and the corruption of women; he visited crime scenes, fires, and visited various prisons. However, this dangerous profession helped Ernest in literature, because he constantly observed the behavior of people and their everyday dialogues, devoid of metaphorical delights.

Literature

After participating in military battles in 1919, the classic moved to Canada and returned to journalism. His new employer was the editors of the Toronto Star newspaper, which allowed the gifted young man to write materials on any topic. However, not all of the reporter’s works were published.

After a quarrel with his mother, Hemingway took things from his native Oak Park and moved to Chicago. There the writer continued to collaborate with Canadian newspapermen and at the same time published notes in the Co-operative Commonwealth.

In 1821, after his marriage, Ernest Hemingway fulfilled his dream and moved to the city of love - Paris. Later, impressions of France will be reflected in the book of memoirs “A holiday that is always with you.”

There he met Sylvia Beach, the eminent owner of the bookstore "& Company", which was located not far from the Seine. This woman had enormous influence in the literary circle, because it was she who published James Joyce’s scandalous novel “Ulysses,” which was banned by censors in the United States.

Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Beach outside Shakespeare and Company

Hemingway also became friends with the famous writer Gertrude Stein, who was wiser and more experienced than Hem and considered him her student all her life. The extravagant woman disdained the creativity of journalists and insisted that Ernie be involved in literary activities as much as possible.

Triumph came to the master of the pen in the fall of 1926 after the publication of the novel “The Sun Also Rises” (“Fiesta”) about the “lost generation.” The main character Jake Barnes (Hemingway's prototype) fought for his homeland. But during the war he received a serious injury, which forced him to change his attitude towards life and women. Therefore, his love for Lady Brett Ashley was platonic in nature, and Jake healed his emotional wounds with the help of alcohol.

In 1929, Hemingway wrote the immortal novel “A Farewell to Arms!”, which to this day is included in the required list of literature for study in schools and higher educational institutions. In 1933, the master composed a collection of short stories, “The Winner Takes Nothing,” and in 1936, Esquire magazine published Hemingway’s famous work “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” which tells about the writer Harry Smith, who is looking for the meaning of life while traveling on safari. Four years later, the war work “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was released.

In 1949, Ernest moved to sunny Cuba, where he continued to study literature. In 1952 he wrote the philosophical and religious story “The Old Man and the Sea,” for which he was awarded the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes.

Personal life

The personal life of Ernest Hemingway was so replete with all sorts of events that a whole book would not be enough to describe the adventures of this great writer. For example, the master was a thrill-seeker: at a young age he could “rein in” a bull by participating in a bullfight, and was also not afraid to be alone with a lion.

It is known that Hem adored the company of women and was amorous: as soon as a girl he knew showed her intelligence and graceful manners, Ernest was immediately amazed by her. Hemingway created the image of a nobody, talking about the fact that he had many mistresses, ladies of easy virtue and black concubines. Whether this is fiction or not, biographical facts say that Ernest really had many chosen ones: he loved everyone, but called each subsequent marriage a huge mistake.

Ernest's first lover was the lovely nurse Agnes von Kurowski, who treated the writer in the hospital for his wounds during the First World War. It was this light-eyed beauty who became the prototype of Catherine Barkley from the novel “A Farewell to Arms!” Agnes was seven years older than her chosen one and had maternal feelings for him, calling him “baby” in her letters. The young people thought of legitimizing their relationship with a wedding, but their plans were not destined to come true, as the flighty girl fell in love with a noble lieutenant.

The second chosen one of the literary genius was a certain red-haired pianist Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, who was 8 years older than the writer. She may not have been a beauty like Agnes, but this woman supported Ernest in every possible way in his activities and even gave him a typewriter. After the wedding, the newlyweds moved to Paris, where at first they lived from hand to mouth. Elizabeth gave birth to Hema's first child, John Hadley Nicanor ("Bumby").

In France, Ernest often visited restaurants where he enjoyed coffee in the company of his friends. Among his acquaintances was the socialite Lady Duff Twisden, who had high self-esteem and did not disdain strong words. Despite such provocative behavior, Duff enjoyed the attention of men, and Ernest was no exception. However, at that time the young writer did not dare to cheat on his wife. Twisden was later "recast" as Brett Ashley from The Sun Also Rises.

In 1927, Ernest began to become involved with Pauline Pfeiffer, Elisabeth's friend. Paulina did not value her friendship with the writer’s wife, but on the contrary, she did everything to win someone else’s man. Pfeiffer was pretty and worked for the fashion magazine Vogue. Later, Ernest will say that a divorce from Richardson will be the greatest sin of his entire life: he loved Paulina, but was not truly happy with her. From his second marriage, Hemingway had two children - Patrick and Gregory.

The third wife of the laureate was the famous US correspondent Martha Gellhorn. The adventurous blonde loved hunting and was not afraid of difficulties: she often covered important political news happening in the country and did dangerous journalistic work. Having achieved a divorce from Paulina in 1940, Ernest proposes to Martha. However, soon the newlyweds’ relationship “came apart at the seams,” since Gellhorn was too independent, and Hemingway loved to dominate women.

Hemingway's fourth betrothed is journalist Mary Welsh. This radiant blonde supported Ernest’s talent throughout the marriage, and also helped with publishing efforts, becoming her husband’s personal secretary.

In 1947 in Vienna, a 48-year-old writer falls in love with Adriana Ivancic, a girl 30 years younger than him. Hemingway was attracted to the white-skinned aristocrat, but Ivancic treated the author of the stories like a father, maintaining friendly relations. Mary knew about her husband’s hobby, but she acted calmly and wisely as a woman, knowing that the fire that arose in Hemingway’s chest could not be extinguished by any means.

Death

Fate constantly tested Ernest's resilience: Hemingway survived five accidents and seven catastrophes, and was treated for bruises, fractures and a concussion. He also managed to recover from anthrax, skin cancer and malaria.

Shortly before his death, Ernest suffered from hypertension and diabetes, but was admitted to the Mayo Psychiatric Dispensary for “cure.” The writer’s condition only worsened, and he also suffered from manic paranoia about being watched. These thoughts drove Hemingway crazy: it seemed to him that every room wherever he was was equipped with bugs, and vigilant FBI agents were on his heels everywhere.

The clinic doctors treated the master in the “classical way”, resorting to electroconvulsive therapy. After 13 sessions, therapists made it impossible for Hemingway to write because his vivid memories had been erased by electric shock. The treatment did not help, Ernest plunged deeper into depression and obsessive thoughts, talking about suicide. Returning to Ketchum on July 2, 1961, after being discharged, Ernest, thrown “to the margins of life,” shot himself with a gun.

• One day Ernest made a bet with his friends that he would write the most laconic and touching work in the world. The literary genius managed to win the bet by writing six words on paper:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

• Ernest was terribly afraid of public speaking, and especially hated giving autographs. But one persistent fan, dreaming of the coveted signature, pursued the writer for 3 months. As a result, Hemingway gave up and wrote the following message:

"To Victor Hill, a real son of a bitch who can't take no for an answer!" (“To Victor Hill, a real Son of a Bitch, who can’t take “no” for an answer”).

• Before Ernest, Mary Welsh had a husband who did not want to agree to a divorce. So one day an enraged Hemingway put his photo in the toilet and started shooting with a gun. As a result of this spontaneous act, 4 rooms in an expensive hotel were flooded.

Hemingway Quotes

• While sober, make all your drunken promises come true - this will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
• Travel only with those you love.
• If you can provide even a small service in life, you shouldn’t shy away from it.
• Don't judge a person just by his friends. Remember that Judas had perfect friends.
• Look at pictures with an open mind, read books honestly and live as you live.
• The best way to know if you can trust someone is to trust them.
• Of all the animals, only man knows how to laugh, although he has the least reason for this.
• All people are divided into two categories: those with whom it is easy, and just as easy without them, and those with whom it is difficult, but impossible without them.

Bibliography

• "Three Stories and Ten Poems" (1923);
• "In Our Time" (1925);
• "The Sun Also Rises (Fiesta)" (1926);
• "A Farewell to Arms!" (1929);
• "Death in the Afternoon" (1932);
• "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936);
• "To Have and Have Not" (1937);
• "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940);
• “Across the River, in the Shade of the Trees” (1950);
• "The Old Man and the Sea" (1952);
• "Hemingway, Wild Time" (1962);
• "Islands in the Ocean" (1970);
• "Garden of Eden" (1986);
• "A Collection of Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway" (1987);