Ernest Hemingway ( 1898-1961)

Ernest Hemingway ( 1898-1961)
Hemingway was also one of the young writers living in Paris in the 1920’s, who frequently visited the literary discussion in Gertrude Stein’s flat. He joined World War I. in the Ambulance Service and after the war he became a journalist. Then he devote himself to literature. His work dominated American literature for three following decades. His passionate interest in hunting, fishing, bull-fighting and other “male” sports is reflected in his novels ( bull-fights in Spain are the major setting in his novel Death in the afternoon, 1932).

Hemingway’s early short-story collections, In our time (1945) and Men without women (1927), carefully mix psychological realism and symbolism. He first won fame with his novel The sun also rises (1926), published in Europe under the title Fiesta. It deals with the personal tragedy of the main hero of the book, who has been sexually maimed during the war. The conflict is developing on the excellently described background of various festivals in Spain. In A farewell to arms (1929), an epic description of World War I, Hemingway presents a charming and moving love story of an American lieutenant and an English nurse in the Italian Ambulance Service. For whom the bell tools (1940) is a psychological picture of an American taking part with the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway himself supports Republican ideas and is fully aware of what a fascist victory in Europe would mean. The main character in the novel , American, comes to Spain to help in the fight against fascism. He died in a guerrilla action. Hemingway also published the novels To have and to have not (1937), or Across the river and into the trees (1950). In his short novel, The old man and the sea (1952), Hemingway writes about the eternal fight between nature and man in which man must lose if he fights alone. The novel deals with an old Cuban fisherman who struggles to catch a big fish but finally loses it. However, he does not give up fighting. For this humanistic novel, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954.

During his last years, suffering from a depression which led to his suicide in 1961, Hemingway wrote some short-stories. His autobiographical prose, A moveable feast, was published posthumously in 1964. This book is a memoir of the twenties in Paris, it contains some sketches and tells of his own experiences as a young writer who tries to make a breakthrough with his first stories. Islands in the stream is another posthumous book by Hemingway, published in 1970.

The other books are The green hills of Afrika, The fifth column and four stories of the spanish civil war, The garden of eden...

He had a very compact “objective” narrative style. His sentences are usually short and simple. The language is rarely emotional. His heroes are virile, fond of adventure, yet they are affected by some deeper reality.














devote věnovat se
decade desetiletí
passionate vášniví
reflected odražený
fame proslavit
deals zaměřuje se na
maimed zmrzačený
charming okouzlující
lieutenant poručík
taking uchvacující
aware vědom si
fascist fašistický
guerrilla partizán
eternal nekonečný
struggle usilovat o
give up vzdát se něčeho
suffering utrpení
led vedl
suicide sebevražda
posthumously posmrtně
breakthrough zásadní objev
narrative vypravování, povídka
rarely zřídkakdy
virile mužný
fond zamilovaný