The Havana City of Beloved Ernest Hemingway
2019-09-14 11:58:09 / web@radiorebelde.icrt.cu / Alhija Villalón Veliz
The sun barely rises from its night lethargy in Cojimar town and the local fishers drop their boats into the sea. The dream about returning with plenty of fish caught drives his maritime challenge and the legendary castle is on the horizons from where they can be seen when they are leaving, while a man´s figure wearing a sailor hat and a thick white beard, seems to say good-bye to them.
The presence of Ernest Hemingway is immortal as he immortalized this town and its people through his literary works in spite of the almost 60 years that man have not visited Cojimar town.
His First Meeting
According to historical records from Havana´s harbor, the night on April 1st of the year 1928 was a cloudy night and a thick mist was then affecting the shipping.
Just at 22:50 hours, the Orita steamboat coming from France and traveling to Key West, docked at Havana´s harbor as part of a brief scale in its journey. The young reporter Ernest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline Pfaiffer were coming on board that vessel.
A few hours were enough for the writer of the Party for him to be captivated by this city´s eye-catching nature. This move by the destiny was then becoming Hemingway´s first encounter with the land he called as his second homeland.
A good site to write
The room number 511 of the local Ambos Mundos Hotel, which is located in the center and the always bustling Obispo Street, was the chosen place for him to stay at his return to Havana city in 1939, with an already then old typewriter, the reporter wrote his ´Crónicas de Pesca´book and the first chapters of his famous novel entitled´For Whom the Bells Tolls´ novel.
It is abundantly obvious that the Ambos Mundos Hotel played a key role in the life of the writer Ernest Hemingway and a key place in his life and it is where he writes in Cuba for the first time by using a humble room on the fifth floor.
Some years later, Hemingway stated about that warm site:
“It is a good site to write.”
The Havana of Hemingway
In 1940, Hemingway decided to settle permanently in Cuba and he bought a house in San Francisco de Paula that is a district at the outskirts of Havana and its quite environment in ´La Vigía´ Farm turned that site into a peaceful one where the writer wrote some of his most famous literary works.
However, the presence of Papá (Father) Hemingway as the local fishermen then called him, it is not only recognized in the places where he lived but also in the ones where he walked and that nature is perceived.
Hemingway´s tool at the legendary Floridita Bar and his tool facing the sea at La Terraza site on Cojimar beach recalls the 22 years he lived in Havana city.
Literature not only Hemingway´s passion and his days were legendary fishing days on board of Pilar board and from that union came out its most renowned novel entitled´The Old Man and the Sea.´
In 1957, Ernest Hemingway was granted the Literature Nobel Prize and he took his award and left it at the local Virgen del Cobre Sanctuary (Veirgen del Cobre Virgin) who is regarded as the mothers of all Cubans.
It is an interview granted to the National Press, Hemingway would surprise the audience by considering himself the first Cuban Sato of having won the related Novel Prize.
Hemingway the immortal
A few months of the Revolutionary Triumph from January from 1959, Hemingway was forced by the United States to abandon this island that he called his second homeland and it was shortly after on July 25th, 1960 where Hemingway decided to commit suicide by shooting himself at the jaw.
After getting to know the sad piece of new, the fishermen from Cojimar town, those he called his friends, built a cast using the bronze metal from his ships as a homage to the man who immortalized them through his works.
Translated by JC Caballero
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