The Ernest Hemingway Thread

[Martinis at 8]

I understand what you are saying, but that is a strange sort of love in my opinion ...Anyway, back to Hem...

I think much of this is explained in Death in the Afternoon. While most folks focus on his novels, this particular non-fiction work, I opine, reveals more of his character. He just comes right out and says things without us having to infer from some novel's passage about a deeper meaning whereby we are probably incorrect. If you have not read it, I do recommend it even though the topic itself you may not like. I think some of his evaluations of the various bullfighters are very interesting. The book also provides a good historical glimpse of bullfighting at the time, which is different from what is seen in the bullring today.

On the topic itself, it's tragic that even if the bull wins the fight, he still gets slaughtered out back. This is to keep the bull owner from fighting the bull again. The bulls are actually very smart. Once they have been in the ring with a matador a Round 2 would prove fatal to the next matador. No, they are not retired out to pasture or kept for breeding if they win the contest with the matador.

Bloodless bullfighting, as I mentioned above, is done in South Texas at the Santa Maria bullring in La Gloria (close to the Tex-Mex border). They also run a school there. With venues like this, one can see the art and sport that Hem appreciated without the kill. In addition, amateur bullfighting is done routinely on bull ranches in Mexico, Spain, etc. These are also bloodless and are used to test the bloodlines of the bull by doing non-kill "tientas" of the proposed fighting bull's siblings. The rule is that a bull that enters a death match should not have ever been in a bullring beforehand, so siblings are tested instead to ensure that the bull going into the ring will be worthy.

So how do you feel about pre-Colombian Mayan soccer?

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Bloodless bullfighting, as I mentioned above, is done in South Texas at the Santa Maria bullring in La Gloria (close to the Tex-Mex border). They also run a school there. With venues like this, one can see the art and sport that Hem appreciated without the kill. In addition, amateur bullfighting is done routinely on bull ranches in Mexico, Spain, etc. These are also bloodless and are used to test the bloodlines of the bull by doing non-kill "tientas" of the proposed fighting bull's siblings. The rule is that a bull that enters a death match should not have ever been in a bullring beforehand, so siblings are tested instead to ensure that the bull going into the ring will be worthy.

In the 1920s, Hemingway spent as much time as possible in Pamplona. He stayed at the Pension Aguillar because that was where the bullfighters lived. Although he never ran with the bulls in the San Fermín festival, he competed in amateur bullfighting competitions.

In 1932, he journeyed to Spain to research "Death in the Afternoon," a manifesto on bullfighting that was published in Esquire and became the Bible of the sport.

Bloodless bulfighting:

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley to press charges against the company that supplied the bulls. The bullfight -- staged as part of the Festa da Bola, a three-day festival celebrating Portuguese culture.

An officer "discovered the bull fighters were using long wooden sticks with several-inch sharpened nails on the end to stab, torment and infuriate the bulls. [The officer] noticed the bulls were being stabbed when he saw blood and puncture wounds on the bull when the animal was being returned to the trailer from the ring. The bull had been repeatedly stabbed with up to 8 sticks."

In a bloodless bullfight, the animals are not killed in the ring, and their shoulders -- which are pierced with javelin-type implements in a traditional bullfight -- are covered with Velcro. But despite their name, such fights are "anything but bloodless"...[huh]

 

[Martinis at 8]

CB, you just can't stay away from my posts can you? Obsessive-Compulsive disorder maybe? lol

I can play the search engine game as well. Sheesh! Such a Papa Poser. From the same article you parsed:

Others say the bloodless fights are exactly what they claim to be -- a statement on the website of bloodless bullfighting company Ranch Cardoso describes the events as "'Nerf' bullfighting." The bulls are treated with respect, the site alleges, adding that the fights it produces are "no different from rodeos, horse jumping events, horse racing, etc.

I understand what you are saying, but that is a strange sort of love in my opinion ...Anyway, back to Hem...

HadleyH,

One thing I forgot to mention...the picture linked by CB from PBS illustrates my point. Here we have a man, Hemingway, who clearly enjoys being around animals as evidenced by the bovine in the photo and Hem's joviality. Nevertheless, at the same point in time in his life he would gladly see the species engaged in a bullfight. I do not see an inconsistency here. Many don't, many do. It all depends on the lens which we look at life through and is probably not a question of who is perfect and who is not.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

CB, you just can't stay away from my posts can you? Obsessive-Compulsive disorder maybe? lol

No I enjoy a good discussion. Yet you have yet to produce one convincing counterpoint to my arguments. In fact my perspectives are antithetical to your thesis.

In fact, we even have bloodless bullfighting in one of our dusty South Texas towns near the border. But for the real stuff, one has to cross the border.

According to 'The Case Against Bullfighting" by Michael Ogorzaly, your bloodless bulfighting is quite barbaric. In fact, in chapter 4 the author describes Portuguese bullfights, often mis-described as "bloodless," are particularly brutal because while the bull is not killed in the ring, he does have banderillas (banner-festooned daggers) stuck in him, and the injured bull, destined for the slaughterhouse, sometimes suffers for days before being put to death. This makes a mockery of the 1928 law that forbade killing bulls in the ring to try to reduce the animals' suffering.


Further, in later chapters, Ogorzaly relates how artists, authors and the cinema have sanitized bullfighting and romanticized the matador. Ogorzaly is especially scornful of Ernest Hemingway, whose 1932 volume Death in the Afternoon is still widely believed to be the most authoritative book on Spanish bullfighting written in the English language.

"Hemingway found the sight of a horse tripping over its own entrails 'comic,'" Ogorzaly writes. "It is too bad that the old reprobate could not have had an out-of-the-body experience and seen himself on that fateful day in 1961 after he had put a shotgun to his face and pulled the trigger. He might have laughed his head off, or at least what he had left of it." But the evil that men do lives on. Running with the bulls en route to the ring in Pamplona, a little-known local tradition when Hemingway wrote about it in The Sun Also Rises (1926), now attracts thousands of participants from around the world, and similar events are now held in many other nations.

Hemingway never ran with the bulls. But in this thread you seem to run with Bull.

 

[Martinis at 8]

...your bloodless bulfighting is quite barbaric...

CB,

I see you are doing more Googling to help your shallow understanding of things. It has become apparent that your resident scholarship is non existent. Wiki-scholarship abounds in this modern age but you aren't even adept enough to make it look like you really know something about the topic at hand. Such a poser.

Bloodless bullfighting is not "mine," as you describe. I simply say it is an alternative for those who may not care for the real thing. I unabashedly have already stated I prefer real bullfighting, and so apparently did Hemingway as do many others.

"It is too bad that the old reprobate could not have had an out-of-the-body experience and seen himself on that fateful day in 1961 after he had put a shotgun to his face and pulled the trigger. He might have laughed his head off, or at least what he had left of it."

It is a shame that you have to resort to posting such quotes, even though not your own, to denigrate the subject of this thread - Hemingway. You certainly disrespect the man.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

CB,

I see you are doing more Googling to help your shallow understanding of things. It has become apparent that your resident scholarship is non existent. Wiki-scholarship abounds in this modern age but you aren't even adept enough to make it look like you really know something about the topic at hand. Such a poser.

Bloodless bullfighting is not "mine," as you describe. I simply say it is an alternative for those who may not care for the real thing. I unabashedly have already stated I prefer real bullfighting, and so apparently did Hemingway as do many others.



It is a shame that you have to resort to posting such quotes, even though not your own, to denigrate the subject of this thread - Hemingway. You certainly disrespect the man.

Actually that is a quote from the author If you read carefully you will see that quotes are used. In my "scholarship" we use quotes when attributing statements to others. Kindly read more carefully before you attribute statements to me....BTW I am still waiting for you to make any persuaive factual points regarding this "bloodless" bullfighting you introduced.

Here is the cite for the book

The Case Against Bullfighting
by Michael A. Ogorzaly
Author House (1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200, Bloomington, IN 47403), 2006
248 pages, paperback. $14.95.

Ogorzaly, in The Case Against Bullfighting, has introduced yet another view regarding Hemingway. One which I neither support or oppose. I do not have enough facts by which to form an opinion. I am simply reporting what a person who has a vastly more in depth knowledge of the sport and Hemingway's contribution and Hemingway's effect on those who follow the sport.

My position regarding Hemingway and his influence on my life has remained steadfast.

Yet, again you fail to meet your burden....[huh]

And yet again you contradict yourself. While launching another personal attack. shakeshead

I like bullfighting. In fact, we even have bloodless bullfighting in one of our dusty South Texas towns near the border.

 

[Widebrim]

I think that it would be wise for all of those involved in this discussion to go into their respective corners, take a few deep breaths, and then get a bit back on track before a bartender closes this thread. (It has been done before, you know. )

 

[Carlisle Blues]

^^^^^^
I agree.........

 

[Martinis at 8]

Actually that is a quote from the author If you read carefully you will see that quotes are used. In my "scholarship" we use quotes when attributing statements to others. Kindly read more carefully before you attribute statements to me....BTW I am still waiting for you to make any persuaive factual points regarding this "bloodless" bullfighting you introduced.

Seems like you are the one who needs to read. As I said in that post, "It is a shame that you have to resort to posting such quotes, even though not your own..."

Did you not read the whole post? So yet again in your haste, you you make yourself look like a fool. Read post #45 again, and this time make the effort to comprehend.

And BTW, Bloodless bullfighting is what it is called. There is no burden to prove. The link you provided up-thread also calls it that. However, the naming convention is a trivial sidebar. Your Papa Poser-ness is not. Seems like you are only in this thread to impress.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

What life is, you who hold it in your hands...
You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.

Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.

Ts Eliot

From Eliot's Portrait of a Lady

Harp I realize you meant this for another lounger, I wanted to say that it is a lovely poem.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Another side of Hemingway is encompassed in

"To Good Guys Dead"

They sucked us in;
King and country,
Christ Almighty
And the rest.
Patriotism,
Democracy,
Honor--
Words and phrases,
They either bitched or killed us.

by Ernest Hemingway (1922)

Here there seems to be none of the gung ho rallying that appears in his other works.

One interpretation is as follows:

In line 2 Hemingway is referring to a rallying cry from the British Army.
The other lines are various reasons why wars are started.

As such this piece is as timely today as it was when he penned it. Nothing has changed.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Even further with Poetry by Hemingway

"The Age Demanded" Paris 1922 Published February 1925


The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age was handed
The sort of s**t that it demanded.

It is believed that Hemingway borrowed the aforementioned from:

Ezra Pound's `Hugh Selwyn Mauberly'" Part Two 1920

II
The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.

It appears Hemingway was referring to the Jazz Age. More, it seems that Hemingway is using irony illustrate his views toward society.

For example:

"The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue."

Connotes that as a society we are given the illusion that we can speak freely.


"The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung."

That the illusion of freedom is everywhere until someone attempts to exercise it; then they are stopped.


"The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants."

Again the illusion of autonomy only to be thwarted by authority.

"And in the end the age was handed
The sort of s**t that it demanded."

Finally, here Hemingway realizes that the "age" is no more than the authoritarian world that has been in place for many generations.

 

[Harp]

What life is, you who hold it in your hands...
You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.

Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.

Ts Eliot

From Eliot's Portrait of a Lady

Just ran past Papa's boyhood home here in Oak Park

 

[HadleyH]

...and this is Ernest when he was a baby!!!!!

in 1917

in 1923 ... and looking handsome too!

OMG how I love this thread.... :eusa_clap

 

[Carlisle Blues]

HEMINGWAY, Ernest. Death in the Afternoon. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. $6800.

First edition, with Hemingway's bookplate on front pastedown.

Acquired directly from the Hemingway family (with letter of provenance included), this copy of the first edition of Death in the Afternoon was given to Pauline (Hemingway's second wife) but kept in Ernest's library and eventually given to his younger brother Leicester. Some rubbing to binding; front hinge tender. A few pages at rear with creasing at corners. Without the dust jacket. An important Hemingway item with impeccable provenance

 

[PADDY]

At the Hemingway's Chicago parental home.

I took the train up to the house when I was in Chicago last year. There's also a nice little museum to him literally two minutes walk down the same street. It's a nice area to walk around and some lovely houses.

 

[Story]

Nothing has changed.

Nothing ever does. The more one learns about the idolized 'Golden Era', the more applicable the phrase Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Fun fact : March 14, 1946 - author Earnest Hemingway and Mary Welsh, married in Cuba. The couple met in London in 1944.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Nothing ever does. The more one learns about the idolized 'Golden Era', the more applicable the phrase Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I could not agree more...sometimes it is packaged a little differently or called something a little more catchy but it all is the same and it goes round and around....

 

[HadleyH]

I took the train up to the house when I was in Chicago last year. There's also a nice little museum to him literally two minutes walk down the same street. It's a nice area to walk around and some lovely houses.

Great photos Paddy!!! :eusa_clap Thank you for posting!

 

[Carlisle Blues]

This image of Hemingway is from the digital collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts / 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Well worth the trip. Just think the most exciting city on earth. Food being thrown at you while the servers yell at you. Then a trip to the bakery to help digest the amazing collections at the library...

A very nice day indeed....