In the cool of the morning at Finca Vigia
Hemingway recalled places, experiences
and people with stories worth telling. It
was here that the unforced, unsensational
and uncomplicated World of Hemingway
was brought to life. Clean, simple and
intense. Through the intensity of his
prose, the description of place, the smells
and sounds, the reader can be transported,
leaving the familiarity of everyday life, to
fight for moral and political convictions far
from home.
It was on his boat Pilar that Hemingway
would hear the following news over
the radio: “For his mastery of the art of
narrative, most recently demonstrated in
The Old Man and the Sea, the 1954 Nobel
Prize for Literature has been awarded
to Ernest Hemingway.” In response,
Hemingway pronounced that he was very
happy to be the first ‘Cubano Sato’ (gardenvariety Cuban) to win and presented the
medal to a national shrine, the Virgen del
Cobre.
F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested at the time
of Hemingway’s first divorce that Earnest
would require a new woman for each big
book.
During the last twenty years of his life,
Hemingway presided over San Francisco
de Paula like a benign feudal lord.
Today, Finca Vigia is exactly the same as
when he left it in 1960. Reading glasses
Returning to Cuba from reporting on
are on a bookshelf next to his typewriter.
the Second World War ‘on a promise’ to
marry Mrs. Mary Welsh (he had proposed Animal heads adorn every room. Picasso’s
plate of a bull hangs on the wall. A Voodoo
on the first night of their meeting at the
doll with needles impaled in the groin and
Dorchester Hotel).
heart protect first editions inscribed to
“Marti” made her mark on Finca by
him by James Joyce, Scott- Fitzgerald and
building a four-storey workshop tower
Gertrude Stein. Even the drinks tray, with
between the main house and the pool. It
all his bottles on it, is in the living room.
was an effort to get 30 cats out of the house,
Visitors are left with the eerie impression
and to provide Ernest with a place more
that Hemingway might have left the room
becoming to write in. It worked with the
only five minutes ago.
cats but not with Ernest.
Many say the inspiration for the
protagonist in: The Old Man and the Sea
was Ernest’s own boat Captain, Gregorio
Fuentes. Right up until his death in 2002,
at the age of 104, cigar smoking Gregorio
was certainly fond of telling that version of
the story.
The Old Man and the Sea brings to life the
special relationship Hemingway had with
the local fisherman in Cojimar. He thought
nothing of helping pull in nets or tow
fishing smacks back to the harbor when
seas got rough. He admired the courage
of the fishermen who: “Rowed and sailed
their small skiffs into currents where fish
of unimaginable size dwelled.”
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