The stark prose of “the macho of American literature” was born from the extreme personal experiences of its author. Boxing, war, hunting, disasters, intelligence agencies, and suicide—these elements shaped the life of an adventure enthusiast, making him truly extraordinary.
From “Dolly” to Manhood
Ernest Hemingway disliked his own name, yet he cherished his grandfather, after whom he was named. He associated his name with a naive character from a famous English play, while he respected his maternal grandfather for gifting his 12-year-old grandson a real rifle. The second of six children in a family, and the first son of a doctor and an opera singer, he learned to handle weapons alongside his music lessons. By the age of four, Ernest was already hunting, fishing, and building a forest shelter. While his artistic mother dressed him in girls’ dresses and didn’t cut his hair until he was six, calling him “Dolly,” his stern father instilled in him the skills to track game and handle a spear and bow.
Ernest Hemingway, 1900
Escaping from cello lessons into the wild was made possible by the family’s summer cottage on the shores of Michigan. Residents of the seven-room mansion, complete with a music studio and medical office, would vacation there from their suburban home in Oak Park, Chicago. His interactions with peers from the nearby Indian village and early survival experiences in the woods ignited in Ernest a taste for adventure and a passion for exotic travels.
Hemingway acknowledged the benefits of music lessons only in terms of their influence on his literary work: counterpoint became a hallmark of his phrasing and part of his unique style. Boxing, which he enjoyed during his school years, taught him to “get back up after taking hits and attack like a bull.” In the future, this fan of bullfighting and safari would “attack” lions, sharks, and German submarines.
The Illusion of Immortality
Working as a reporter for the city newspaper The Kansas City Star shaped the literary-minded graduate’s desire to be at the center of events and to explain things concisely. His reactions became swift, his thoughts concise, and his words precise. Journalism also instilled a sense of professional courage in the inquisitive young man.
Not drafted into the army due to a teenage injury to his left eye, Hemingway still found a way to plunge into the chaos of World War I. He arrived in war-torn Europe as a volunteer driver for an American Red Cross unit. On his very first day in Milan, he had to collect human remains at the site of a bombed military factory. While attempting to carry a wounded soldier out of the danger zone, the 18-year-old recruit was struck by mortar fire: on July 8, 1918, Hemingway sustained severe injuries, spending five days in a field hospital and six months in a hospital. Surgeons counted over 200 wounds on his body and removed 26 shrapnel pieces from his tissues. The serious damage to both legs required urgent surgery: the bullet-riddled kneecap had to be replaced with an aluminum prosthesis.
Ernest Hemingway in military uniform, 1918
“When you go to war as a boy, you have the illusion of immortality,” shared the author of “A Farewell to Arms.” “But everyone is convinced of their invulnerability only until the first wound. Then you learn that it can happen to you too.”
“A Celebration That Stays With You”
Like fellow writer Erich Maria Remarque, the 20-year-old war veteran returned from the front lines a changed man. His wounds, both physical and emotional, ached: his first love was shattered when the older Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowski, whom Ernest intended to marry, announced her engagement to an Italian officer. Devastated, Hemingway emerged from his depression with a psychological resolve to leave women before they could leave him.
In Paris, the foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star found companionship with pianist Hadley Richardson, who bore a resemblance to Agnes. His first wife was described by friends as “a tall, brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked beauty with a square chin and a soft voice.” This marriage brought Hemingway the love of a beautiful woman, with whom he healed his emotional wounds.
Ernest Hemingway and Hadley, 1922
His literary horizons expanded through interactions with “the most interesting people in the world” that Ernest met along the banks of the Seine. Among his new acquaintances were Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. It was here that Hemingway published his first books, including the successful novel “The Sun Also Rises,” about the members of the “lost generation” caught between two world wars.
“Asynchronous Love”
The writer had four marriages. After divorcing his first wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, Hemingway married her friend, Pauline Pfeiffer. In his first two marriages, Ernest fathered three sons. His third and fourth marriages were to journalists—Martha Gellhorn and Mary Welsh.
With his active lifestyle, Hemingway maintained the image of an “alpha male”: “What hinders a writer? Drinking, women, money, and ambition. And also the absence of all these things.”
Hemingway and Mary Welsh in Africa
It was said that among the “trophies” of the macho were Mata Hari, Ingrid Bergman, the wife of an African chief, and a Greek princess: supposedly, the writer himself recounted his masculine “feats.” And everyone knew about the numerous local prostitutes during his travels, as Hemingway never shied away from the cameras.
An exception was his 12-year platonic relationship with Marlene Dietrich. This “asynchronous love” (a term coined by Hemingway) turned out to be a secret union of kindred spirits. The writer called the movie star “Cabbage,” while she referred to him as “Daddy.” Their touching “epistolary” relationship lasted until the writer’s death in 1961. These letters were only made public in 2007 when the Kennedy Library in Boston fulfilled the request of Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, who had stipulated a release date for the family archive. One of the letters contains Hemingway’s well-known phrase: “When I hold you, I finally feel at home.”
On the Edge of Collapse
Hemingway rushed to live and, as a result, constantly risked his life. In 1937, he could not resist witnessing the Spanish Civil War firsthand: armed with a war correspondent’s credential and money for the Republicans, he ventured into the hot zone, gathering material for his novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” In the 1940s, he traveled to Cuba (even purchasing a house near Havana, which his widow later gifted to the Cuban people), installed acoustic equipment on his own boat, and hunted for German submarines in the Caribbean. He managed to be in China during the Japanese-Chinese war. He also made his mark in World War II: flying on British bombers, he covered the Allied landings in Normandy and entered Paris in 1944 with American troops. For his bravery, Hemingway even received a Bronze Star. However, he found himself under investigation for leading a French self-defense unit in Rambouillet, as journalists’ participation in combat was prohibited by the Geneva Convention.
Ernest Hemingway, 1939
Without wars, Hemingway “refueled on adrenaline” through hunting. In 1953, the restless adventurer nearly lost his life on a safari in Africa, where the bald-headed Ernest, clad in a loincloth and wielding a spear, could have been mistaken for a native. The danger did not come from a confrontation with a beast but from an airplane: during landing, the aircraft caught fire, and the writer suffered numerous burns. With a bandaged head and internal injuries, Hemingway was taken to Nairobi for treatment. But he managed to make himself useful there as well: he rushed to help extinguish a forest fire and sustained new burns.
Hemingway on a hunt
A Man Doesn’t Die in Bed
In 1952, Life magazine published Hemingway’s lyrical story about an old fisherman who lost the biggest catch of his life. For the author of “The Old Man and the Sea,” this work became his greatest literary success. Along with worldwide acclaim, the writer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize. However, Hemingway did not attend the ceremony for the “Swedish thing” (as he referred to the Nobel Prize) in 1954 due to health issues.
In his final years, diabetes and liver disease were accompanied by nervous breakdowns and panic attacks. During a flight to Minnesota, Ernest attempted to open the hatch and jump out of the plane, and during a refueling stop, he had to be forcibly pulled away from a running propeller.
“A real man doesn’t die in bed,” Hemingway once wrote. “He must die in battle or put a bullet in his forehead.”
The latter option was chosen in 1928 by the writer’s father, who shot himself with his hunting shotgun, which his mother later sent to her son. Ernest would follow suit, discharging the gun into his mouth. Later, his younger brother and granddaughter, an actress, would also take their own lives.
Ernest Hemingway, Venice, 1954
The Intrigue of Mystery
When in April 1961 his wife found him with a gun, she realized he needed help. A year before his fateful decision, Hemingway had moved from Cuba to the United States. In his gloomy house in Idaho, he resembled a prisoner in a fortress: constantly in a depressed state due to his weakened eyesight, which no longer allowed him to write. At 60, the writer began to cry frequently and complained of being followed. Hemingway feared that someone was trying to push him off a cliff, that poverty awaited him, and that intelligence agencies were watching him.
With symptoms of paranoia, in 1960, the writer was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where he was treated with electroshock therapy. The electroconvulsive therapy at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester robbed the patient of his memory. “Doctors don’t understand writers,” Hemingway complained. “Let psychiatrists try to write a literary text. Can this be done with a wiped memory and a ruined brain? Why did they take away my capital and throw me on the roadside of life?”
Returning to his home in Ketchum, on June 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway took his own life. However, his suicide was kept hidden for five years. Even afterward, the death of the famous writer continued to intrigue with its ambiguity. Twenty years later, 127 pages of the writer’s case were declassified, and speculations about FBI surveillance ceased to seem like a fantasy.
The master of composition skillfully concluded the plot with an open ending. A technique that once saved him in his writing proved fitting for life: when a story reaches a dead end, it should be cut off along with the removal of the last episode. Such a biography leaves an impression, as people are troubled by mysteries.