Born on July 21st 1889 Ernest Hemingway is one of the best American writers and journalists of all time. He was an author of novels and short stories.
Let’s read about his life and career: nicknamed “Pope”, he was part of the American expatriate community in Paris during the 1920s, known as the “Lost Generation” and named by himself in his memoir Festa mobile, inspired by a phrase by Gertrude Stein. He led a turbulent social life, was married four times and was credited with various romantic relationships. Already in his life he reached an uncommon popularity and fame that elevated him to the myth of the new generations. Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
His fame is linked to his literary style: it is characterized by the paratactic essentiality and dryness of the language, and by the hypobole, had a significant influence on the development of the novel in the twentieth century. Its protagonists are typically men with a stoic disposition, who are called to show “grace” in situations of discomfort (grace under pressure). Many of his works are considered to be milestones in American literature. He was awarded the Nobel prize for The old man and the sea, He wrote the torrent of Spring, The sun also raises, Fiesta, Who wins takes nothing.
Among the themes he deals with in his novels: the will, the sickness, the force of nature, solitude, human strenght, death, beauty of nature.
In 1922 Hemingway continued his collaboration with the Toronto Star, writing articles that were later collected in various anthologies and, in April of the same year, the newspaper sent him to Genoa as a correspondent to the International Economic Conference, which ended with the agreement concluded in Rapallo. In June he returned to Italy with his wife. From Aosta he arrived by train in Milan, from there he continued to Schio and to Fossalta di Piave. In Milan he went to the headquarters of the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia to interview its director, Mussolini. Back in Paris, he sent Harriet Monroe in Chicago some poems for Poetry: a Magazine of Verse and wrote six miniatures which he titled Paris 1922. In the same month a poem and a short story by William appeared in the New Orleans magazine “Double-Dealer” Faulkner. At that time the Toronto Star sent him as an envoy to Constantinople to follow the war between Greece and Turkey. Despite the contrary opinion of his wife, the young Hemingway left and, in Constantinople, he met Colonel Charles Sweeny, a soldier of fortune with whom he formed a sincere friendship that served as inspiration for one of his characters.
After witnessing the evacuation of Christians from Thrace, on 21 October he returned by train to Paris, suffering from malaria and tormented by bedbugs. He tragically died on July 2, 1961.