By RENATO ORTIZ*
Ernest Hemingway wanted to emphasize this temporal indeterminacy, the malleability of time in relation to space, that is, the possibility of removing existence from a given geographical context
Finca Vigia: the house is located on the outskirts of the city. When Ernest Hemingway bought it, before the revolution, it was supposed to be protected by the silence that reigned around it. Today, the municipality of San Francisco de Paula is a peripheral area of the capital. The property is large and well-kept, and Havana's second swimming pool was built there. The boat, a companion on maritime adventures, was towed from the water to the land next door. When he died, the property was donated by his wife to the Cuban state.
The house is reminiscent of one of those Brazilian buildings, spacious, well-ventilated, with ceramic tile floors and sliding windows with hinges. The feeling of familiarity is reinforced when visiting the orchard, lemon trees, orange groves, mango trees and banana trees. Hunting trophies and enormous animal heads are displayed on the walls of the living room. The furniture is simple and functional, and not ostentatious. In the bathroom, there are traces of an intriguing habit: Ernest Hemingway, who was ill towards the end of his life, wrote down his weight on the wall every day. They say: a medical requirement.
The guides tell visitors with conviction the stories they have memorized, insisting on the details so that they seem true. In the room is the typewriter: Canon. Small. It rests on a piece of furniture next to the bed. Standing up, the great writer would set to work, first taking off his shoes and resting his feet on a small fur rug. He said that it was from this that he got his energy for writing, and that it was there that he fed his demons.
But he really did write standing up, as he says in his interviews. I return to another book by the author, Paris is a moveable feast. Right at the beginning, on the first page, the epigraph captures the reader’s attention: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast”. Patrick, son and editor of his father's work, says that his mother attributed the phrase to a conversation he had with a friend.
I had read the book in my youth, still in Paris, but with another title, Paris is a feast; the current edition has gained an additional word, “moveable"A moveable feast does not have a fixed date; it is celebrated at different times each year. Ernest Hemingway wanted to emphasize this temporal indeterminacy, the malleability of time in relation to space, that is, the possibility of removing existence from a specific geographical context.
The city would thus lose its roots, its density, we could carry it with us wherever we went, that would be the luck. But would it really be the main object of the phrase “lived in Paris as a young man”? Here an element foreign to the idea of spatiality is introduced: youth. Without it, would Paris have the virtue of being this party? The book is posthumous.
In November 1956 the manager of the Ritz Hotel sent Ernest Hemingway a trunk containing the things he had forgotten in March 1928. Pages of fiction, a draft of The sun also rises, books, newspaper clippings, old clothes, and a set of notes made during his stay. He used them to write the book. Living in Cuba, married again, he finished it a few years before his death in 1961. An old author writing from his memories and notes, and, as we know, memories know no spatial or temporal restrictions.
What does he say in the book? The first chapter talks about his habit of writing in cafes, Hemingway enjoys the crowd, like the flâneur Benjamin. It is raining and cold, the rooms and houses are poorly heated, so everyone crowds into these places amidst the cigarette smoke. He first describes the Armateurs' Cafe, next to Rue Cardinal Lemoine where you live, then walk towards the Latin Quarter and choose a nice place to stay in St. Michael's Square.
He hangs up his coat and takes his pencil and notebook out of his pocket. A beautiful girl is standing next to him. He looks at her without losing the thread of his writing. The story tells itself, pouring out in torrents. He notices the girl is gone, but he doesn't get distracted. Ernest Hemingway writes while sitting in a café, which is what he did throughout his stay in Paris.
However, when he tells the story to himself, he is standing in the room of his “finca” in Havana. He steps barefoot on the small rug beneath the dresser, does not write with a pencil, has a Canon, and can see the banana and mango trees outside. He knows that what surrounds him is circumstantial, does not interfere with the story, it is just a place where he speaks. By mixing up time and space, he deceives us with his trickery.
* Renato Ortiz He is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of The universe of luxury (Mall). [https://amzn.to/3XopStv]
Originally published on the BVPS blog [blogbvps28/08/2024Renato Ortiz Column].
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