dual personalities

Tag: Ernest Hemingway

March 14, 2019

“When we were very poor and very happy.” *

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Sylvia Beach (1887-1962), who was quite a gal. Daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she moved with her family to Paris in 1901 when her father was appointed the assistant minister of the American Church in Paris  and director of the American student center. The family moved back to New Jersey in 1906. Sylvia served with the Red Cross during WWI and never returned to the States.

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Sylvia is best known today as the owner/founder of the bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris and as the original publisher of Ulysses by James Joyce. (She wasn’t afraid to publish it.) Ernest Hemingway was a big fan of hers, and famously said that she was nicer to him than anyone he ever met.

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I wrote a paper about Sylvia Beach when I was in college. That was when my father told me that he had sat on Gertrude Stein’s lap as an infant–his way of saying his parents were a part of all that in Paris in the twenties. They probably hung out at Shakespeare and Company. He never elaborated because why would he do that? C’est la vie.

Anyway, in reading up on Sylvia, I was reminded that although Shakespeare and Company remained open after the Fall of Paris, Beach was forced to close by the end of 1941.  But she never left. Indeed, she was held for six months during WWII at Vittel, an internment camp for enemy aliens of the German Reich, until  Tudor Wilkinson managed to secure her release in February 1942. Wilkinson was an American  art collector and amateur art dealer, who was born and raised right here in St. Louis, Missouri! In gratitude for her release, Sylvia gave Wilkinson a first edition of Ulysses signed by Joyce.

When daughter #1 was in Paris a few years back, she made a pilgrimage to the second incarnation of Shakespeare and Company which I much appreciated. I probably have a photo of that occasion, but, of course, I can’t put my hands on it now.

Well, it may be time to dust off my copy of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company and re-read it. I will toast Sylvia tonight. I wish I had some French wine.

*Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

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November 8, 2018

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”*

by chuckofish

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Koichi Okumura (1888-1976)

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast 

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We still have most of our leaves on the trees here in flyover country, but winter is coming…

That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)

The last five paintings are by Andrew Wyeth.

P.S. I watched Nevada Smith (1966) last night. “I’ve got a rifle, a horse and eight dollars. It’ll  hold.”

*Ecclesiastes 3:1

 

4 Comments
July 21, 2015

One thing I don’t worry about

by chuckofish

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“Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”
“Yes, every once in a while.”
“Do you know that in about thirty- five more years we’ll be dead?”
“What the hell, Robert,” I said. “What the hell.”
“I’m serious.”
“It’s one thing I don’t worry about,” I said.
“You ought to.”
“I’ve had plenty to worry about one time or other. I’m through worrying.”
“Well, I want to go to South America.”
“Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
“But you’ve never been to South America.”
“South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don’t you start living your life in Paris?”

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961), American author and journalist, was born on this day 116 years ago in Oak Park, Illinois.

This flyover son sometimes reminds me of another midwestern fisherman.

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Don’t you think?

I haven’t read any Hemingway for quite a while. Perhaps it is time to dust something off. Needless to say, it is definitely time to toast old Ernesto.

And did you read this? I think ABInBev should sue!

6 Comments
April 10, 2013

To-whit! To-who!—a merry note

by chuckofish

“How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun.”
– Vincent Van Gogh

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“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

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