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Hemingway Adventure
Chapter 4: Spain
In December 1921 the Leopoldina, en route from New York to Le Havre, put in at Vigo in the province of Galicia on the north-west coast of Spain.'You ought to see the Spanish coast,' Hemingway wrote to Sherwood Anderson. 'Big brown mountains looking like tired dinosaurs.'
And in a letter to his childhood friend Bill Smith, he compared Galicia with north Michigan. 'We're going back there. Trout streams in the mts. Tuna in the bay. Green water to swim in and sandy beaches... Cognac is 4 pesetas a litre.'
Though he was only there four hours he came up with an article on tuna fishing for the Toronto Star Weekly. In it, apart from an uncanny foretaste of a later book, is the essence of all that attracted him to Spain.
'The Spanish boatmen will take you out to fish for them for a dollar a day... It is a back-sickening, sinew straining, man-sized job... but if you land a big tuna after a six-hour fight, fight him man against fish when your muscles are nauseated with the unceasing strain, and finally bring him up alongside the boat, green-blue and silver in the lazy ocean, you will be purified...'
Struggle, peasant pride, redemption through physical pain, the confrontation with nature that strips away sham and compromise. This is what comfortable, bourgeois Oak Park Ernest saw in Spain and it drew him like a magnet.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Chapter 4: Spain
- Country/sea: Spain
- Place: Pamplona
- Book page no: 95
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