A Spanish Reading of Hemingway

>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Well good afternoon and welcome. I am Francisco Macias from the Law Library of Congress. We have certainly had the pleasure of delivering a robust slate of events in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month. These programs are possible because of the collegial spirit that fills this wonderful institution. And for that I want to thank all my colleagues, many of whom are present here, for the commitment in making 2016 another successful celebration of our heritage. Today's program, A Spanish Reading of Hemingway, brings to us an unorthodox reading of one of America's most celebrated authors. We ask that you be prepared to see Ernest Hemingway certainly through the lens of World War I. But we also ask that you set aside some of what you know of him so that you might see him through the lenses of Cuba and Spain, spaces from which he drew his inspiration, and through authors like Miguel de Unamuno, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Felix Lope de Vega y Carpio, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Rafael Alberti, and Vicente Blasco Ibanez. Douglas LaPrade is Professor of English at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He has received two Fulbright grants to Spain. Over the course of eight years, while in Spain, he taught at the University of Barcelona. He has published four books in Spain at the University of Salamanca and at the University of Valencia. His book are based on the censorship of documents from the Franco regime that he found in the official archives of the Spanish government. In Spain he is a member of the Board of the [foreign words]. This foundation is named for Hemingway's Spanish biographer. In Cuba, he is a member of the [foreign word] Hemingway. His work has been reviewed in Spain's leading newspaper, El Pais , and in Cuba's official newspaper, Granma . In addition to his work in South Texas he lectures in Spain and in Cuba. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Douglas LaPrade. [ Applause ] Thank you Francisco. You're a national treasure and our ambassador-at-large to the Hispanic world. And I thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk about Anglo-Hispanic crosscurrents with you. It's been a pleasure and thank you for arranging this. The title of this lecture is "A Spanish Reading of Hemingway." But this is not the first time there has been a Spanish reading of Hemingway in Washington, D.C. Seventy-four years ago there was an important Spanish reader of Hemingway's works. That Spanish reader was the Ambassador of Spain in Washington. When the Spanish Ambassador read Hemingway's works at the Embassy of Spain in 1942, he was not pleased. The Ambassador had just received a letter from the Counsel of Spain in California who warned him that a Hollywood studio was preparing a film version of For Whom the Bell Tolls , Hemingway's novel about the Spanish Civil War. In his letter to Spain's Ambassador the Counsel condemns Hemingway as follows. "Given the subject of this work, and taking into account the leftist tendency of this author, this film could, if completed, become anti-Spanish propaganda that is highly detrimental to our government's objectives." A week later the Ambassador of Spain responded to his Counsel in California with a letter that read as follows. "Regarding the film, for Whom the Bell Tolls , which Paramount Studio intends to produce and which, as you judge correctly, could serve as propaganda against Spain, I think it would be advisable to insist upon halting production of the film." Upon receiving this letter from his Ambassador the Counsel of Spain in California approaches Paramount Studio in Hollywood to request a copy of the script. Paramount Studio cooperates with the Spanish diplomats and provides them with a copy of the script. After reading the script the Counsel writes the following letter to the Ambassador of Spain. "The script is atrocious, a thousand times worse than the book. The Red Bandits described by Hemingway appear as angels, moderate Republicans with a high democratic ideal. On the other hand, the nationalists, who are always called Fascists, appear as loathsome sorts with no honor or courage who are devoted to cutting women's hair off after raping them and killing their aged parents. I see no way how this script could be made even half decent, no matter how much it is changed or modified." When the Ambassador of Spain receives this quickie from his Counsel in California, the Ambassador in turn writes a letter to Spain's Minister of Foreign Affairs in Madrid. In this letter from the Ambassador to the Minister dated September 25th, 1942, the subject line reads, "Report on Paramount's Proposed Film Against Spain." In the first sentence of the letter the Ambassador expounds as follow. "Paramount Studios in Hollywood has plans to produce a film based on the book published by the writer Hemingway entitled For Whom the Bell Tolls , which was written for the propaganda of the Reds in Spain." The next month, on October 7th, 1942, the Ambassador of Spain in Washington writes another letter to the U.S. Undersecretary of State. The letter says, "The film script based on Hemingway's book is, quote, 'completely insidious for the Spanish nation and it is almost impossible to fix it,'" end of quote. The letter continues to issue the following warning to the American government. Again, quote. "The Embassy of Spain in Washington has thought it necessary to make these points clear and to engage the cooperation of the authorities of the United States to determine the possibility of halting the propaganda which by all accounts is unfair and inaccurate, and which could contribute to complicating the current relations between Spain and the United States," end of quote. Let's stop here and re-examine the title of this lecture, "A Spanish Reading of Hemingway." These diplomatic letters tell us that the first Spanish reading of Hemingway in Washington, D.C. occurred 74 years ago when Spain's Ambassador tried to stop a Hollywood studio from making the movie version of For Whom the Bell Tolls . This happened in 1942 when America was involved in the Second World War. American troops were fighting against Hitler and Mousseline while back home in California an American film studio allowed a Fascist official to censor a copy of an American film script. The American public became aware of this because articles were published in the San Francisco Chronicle about Paramount's complicity with Franco's censor. In spite of the protests of the Spanish government, the film was released in 1943. The film stars Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. However, some of the Spanish Counsel's recommendations were incorporated into the script. In the movie, the Fascists are called nationalists. The Spanish officials were very proud of this semantic victory in the propaganda war, the war of words that accompanies all wars. So when we talk about a Spanish reading of Hemingway in Washington, D.C. we must realize that a Spanish reading of Hemingway in 1942 has influenced the way Americans perceive Hemingway. The Spanish readers altered the English language script of the movie version of For Whom the Bell Tolls . In 1942 the citizens of Spain could not even read For Whom the Bell Tolls because Franco censored the novel entirely until 1968. However, the diplomatic correspondence we have just examined proves that Hemingway's name was well-known to the highest government officials in Spain. Some of the letters we have cited reached the desk of Spain's Minister of Foreign Affairs in Madrid. This is the counterpart to the U.S. Secretary of State. We must ask ourselves, how many times in history has a writer or artist been considered a threat to the national security of a country? As we have seen, the agents of Franco's Spain all label Hemingway a red propagandist. Americans can debate Hemingway's political sympathies endlessly. Was he communist or just a sympathizer? However, to Franco's Fascist regime in Spain, Hemingway was clearly an agent of propaganda at the service of the reds. Hemingway's role in the Spanish Civil War was well-known to Franco, and for that reason Franco censored Hemingway's books published in Spain. For example, in one of Hemingway's short stories about the Spanish Civil War entitled, The Old Man at the Bridge , Franco's censors changed the word "fascists" to "troops." Once again, Franco's sensitivity of semantics is apparent. In another short story about Madrid entitled, Capital of the World , the censors eliminated the dialog in which one character says that the "bulls and the priests are the two curses of Spain." Another line of dialog from this censored passage speaks of the necessity of killing the priests and the [foreign words]. Hemingway's novel entitled, Across the River and into the Trees includes a phrase critical of Franco. Specifically, Hemingway calls Franco "General Fat *** Franco." Of course, Franco's censors eliminated this phrase entirely [laughter]. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month here at the Library of Congress we should recall that October 12th is the national holiday of Spain. October 12th has been called El Dia de la Hispanidad, when Spain wanted to emphasize its connection to its former colonies in Latin America. For others, October 12th is Columbus Day of the Day of the *** of the Pilar, the Patroness of Spain. October 12th also is important in the academic calendar at universities in Spain. Historically, classes begin at the Spanish universities after October 12th. Eighty years ago this week, on October 12th, 1936, a famous ceremony took place at Spain's oldest university, the University of Salamanca. The famous philosopher Miguel de Unamuno was President of the University of Salamanca and he presided over the ceremony on Spain's National Holiday. The Spanish Civil War had begun three months before on July 18th 1936, and Unamuno had to conduct the ceremony with some of Franco's Fascist officers in attendance. One of Franco's generals, Jose [foreign words], stood up during the ceremony and shouted, "Viva la muerte. [Speaking in foreign language]," or long live death. Death to intelligence. Unamuno responded by giving an impassioned defense of culture which he felt was imperiled by Fascism. Unamuno knew that Franco's side would win the war and he said, "[Speaking in foreign language]" or rather you will conquer or you will not convince. Franco's wife escorted Unamuno from the hall. Unamuno was placed under house arrest and died of a broken heart two-and-a-half months later on New Year's Eve. Hemingway even wrote a short story as a homage to Unamuno. Actually, he published this story three years before the Spanish Civil War. The story's entitled A Clean Well-Lighted Place which takes place in a bar in Spain. Unamuno was an agnostic philosopher in addition to being President of the University of Salamanca. Unamuno's seminal essay is entitled The Tragic Sense of Life," of Del [speaking in foreign language] de la Vida , published in 1912. Unamuno says that "IT The tragedy of life is not the prospect of death or hell, but rather the uncertainty of knowing whether or not there is anything in which to believe." The word "nada" becomes a virtual refrain in Unamuno's essay. Nada is the Spanish word for nothing. The word "nada" occurs about 150 times in his essay as Unamuno wonders whether or not there is a god or if there's just nothing. In Hemingway's story, A Clean Well-Lighted Place , an old man drinks alone in the same bar every night until well after midnight. An older waiter is sympathetic to his customer's spiritual void and recognizes that the clean well-lighted bar represents a sanctuary to this alcoholic customer who believes in nothing. The story concludes with the old waiter reciting "The Lord's Prayer" to himself. But he substitutes the Spanish word "nada" for every significant word. In Hemingway's story, "The Lord's Prayer" becomes the following. "Our nada who art the nada, nada be thy name, thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada, nada. God in heaven had become nothing. Hemingway adopts Unamuno's agnostic refrain "nada" for his short story and incorporates the word "nada" into "The Lord's Prayer." So when the Spanish Civil War began Hemingway already knew about Unamuno, and Hemingway adopted Unamuno's attitude that Fascism was the enemy of culture. Fascism was an exercise in nihilism. The Fascist refrain was not "nada," but something even more existential -- "viva la muerte," long live death. Another Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, also believed that Fascism was the enemy of culture. Antonio Machado wrote the following at the outset of the Spanish Civil War. So here's a fairly long passage of a paragraph by Antonio Machado. "Fascism is the force of anti-culture, the negation of the spirit. The people protect works of art with devotion and Fascism destroys them with rage because they are works of spirit and culture. I affirm that absolutely the Prada Museum, the National Library, have been bombarded without any military objective other than the fatal necessity of destruction which motivates Fascism. I have seen the marks of the shells used on those temples of culture. Cultural interests are in danger. This vandal bombardment shows it. Culture is a military objective for the Fascists. And to destroy culture they send their foreign airplanes as ambassadors of the negative forces of history." That's the end of the quote of Machado. So when Hemingway went to Spain during the Spanish Civil war he recognized immediately the attitude of Unamuno and Machado, who considered Fascism a threat to culture and civilization. In fact, Hemingway became a close ally of a group of Spanish writers who called themselves "The Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals for the Defense of Culture," which was founded the year the war began. The Spanish poet, Raphael Alberti, was the Director of The Alliance. The Alliance was an official organization under the Spanish Republic's Ministry of Public Education. In other words, The Alliance was created to produce propaganda favorable to the Republic. Much of their propaganda depicted Fascists destroying culture. Hemingway contributed to this propaganda effort by writing For Whom the Bell Tolls as a homage to Raphael Alberti and The Alliance. Hemingway's classic novel of the Spanish Civil War is really a tribute to the history of Spain and to Hispanic culture. In fact, Hemingway includes the etymology of the word "Espania" in the middle of his novel. On the first page of Chapter Three of For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway offers his etymological study of the word "Espania." This etymological study is cryptic and requires careful scrutiny of the text. It is not nearly as obvious as Hemingway's use of the Spanish word "nada" in the short story we just discussed. The word "Espania," the Spanish word for Spain is derived from the Latin word "Hispania" with an "H." Obviously "Hispania" is the root word of the adjective "Hispanic." And we are here to celebrate our Hispanic heritage. But let's recall that Hispania was the name given to Spain by the Romans when they conquered the Iberian Peninsula. Hispania was an integral part of the Roman Empire and three Roman Emperors were from Hispania, namely Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. Before the Romans conquered Spain, the Greeks had established colonies in Iberia. But the earliest immigrants to Spain were the Phoenicians who sailed to Spain over 3000 years ago. Phoenicia is now Lebanon at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, while Spain is at the western end of the Mediterranean. Therefore, when the Phoenicians sailed to Spain in 1100 B.C., they called Spain Span, S-P-A-N, because Span was the Phoenician word for hidden. For the Phoenicians, Spain was the hidden land at the other end of the Mediterranean. Hemingway knew this and he originally planned to entitle his novel, The Undiscovered Country before settling upon For Whom the Bell Tolls . The Undiscovered Country sounds like the Phoenician name for Spain, the hidden land. We should notice also that the word, "Hispanic," and also the Spanish word "Espania" both include the Phoenician root word "Span." The four letters, S-P-A-N, still figure prominently in both words, "Espania," and "Hispanic." It easy to trace the etymology of "Espania" back to the Latin name "Hispania" with an H. After all, Spanish is a romance language. But the Romans maintained the Phoenician word "Span" within their name, "Hispania." But the Phoenician name for Spain, Span, also had another meaning. Besides meaning hidden, Span means "rabbit." So for the Phoenicians, Spain was the land of the rabbit. Rabbits proliferated in Spain, so Spain was the land of the rabbit. Everybody knows that in For Whom the Bell Tolls the protagonist Robert Jordan has a distinctive nickname for his lover, Maria. Throughout the novel he calls his lover "Rabbit" or "Little Rabbit." In the novel, Robert Jordan is an American Professor of Spanish at the University of Montana. So when he calls Maria "Rabbit" he is making her a personification of Spain. Because he is a professor of Spanish he knows that the etymology of the word "Espania" means land of the rabbit. Maria is always described in comparison to the Spanish landscape. Her hair is compared to a field of wheat and her *** are hills. When Robert Jordan and Maria make love, the question is asked, "Did you feel the Earth move?" Of course this metaphor for a *** climax has inspired countless jokes. However, Hemingway wanted to make it clear that Maria is a personification of the country Spain, so this is why he compared making love to Maria with an earthquake. The joke is obvious, but not everyone recognizes the literary intention to make Maria a symbol of Spain. Robert Jordan is a Professor of Spanish so his love for Maria symbolizes his love for Spain. Like Hemingway, Robert Jordan is concerned that the Spanish Civil War will destroy Hispanic culture. All readers know that the plot of For Whom the Bell Tolls is remarkably simple. The protagonist, Robert Jordan, carries a knapsack full of dynamite which he plans to use to blow up a bridge. By exploding the bridge he can prevent the enemy from advancing toward Spain. Not surprisingly, Hemingway transformed the -- transforms the bridge into another important symbol. After all, that is the essence of literature. Hemingway's metaphorical method becomes apparent early in the novel on the first page of Chapter Three of For Whom the Bell Tolls . The Professor, Robert Jordan, examines the bridge that he wants to blow up. He examines the structure of the bridge carefully because he wants to place the dynamite strategically. He even carries a notepad and draws diagrams of the bridge. This seems like an odd pursuit for a Professor of Spanish who is accustomed to conjugating verbs rather than drawing diagrams of bridges. However, both pursuits, the grammatical and the architectural, demand the same power of analysis. Robert Jordan even says to himself, "You're a bridge blower now, not a thinker." As he diagrams the bridge and ruminates, Robert Jordan uses the word "span" as a synonym for bridge. In fact, Hemingway uses the noun "span" or the past-tense verb form "spanned" three times on Page One of Chapter Three as Robert Jordan draws the bridge. Following are the three sentences on the first page of Chapter Three of For Whom the Bell Tolls that include the word "span" or "spanned" in reference to the bridge. So here's a quote from the novel. "It was a steel bridge of a single span and there was a sentry at each box. It was wide enough for two motors cars to pass and it spanned a deep gorge. Now he was noting the points where the explosive should be placed in order to cut the support of the span and drop a section of it in the gorge." As we have seen, span is the Phoenician word for "Spain." Who else would know this other than a Professor of Spanish? When Robert Jordan calls Maria "Rabbit, and when he calls the bridge a span, he is demonstrating his knowledge of the etymology of the word "Espania." Maria personifies Spain and the bridge is another symbol of Spain. Many people have wandered the mountains northwest of Madrid, the Sierra de Guadarrama, looking for a bridge resembling the one described by Robert Jordan in the novel. Needless to say they have never found the bridge, so they criticize Hemingway for lack of verisimilitude. These are the same people, of course, who laugh at the lovers who make the Earth move. Hemingway's novel is not a historical chronicle of the Spanish Civil War. On the contrary, For Whom the Bell Tolls is an allegory and in an allegory all characters and things represent as abstract ideas. Maria and the bridge are symbols of Spain, which raises the question, what does Robert Jordan represent? His last name is the same as that of a famous river, the Jordan River. Late in the novel the character makes the connection explicitly between his name and the river. The Jordan River separates Moses and the Hebrews from the Promised Land. Likewise, in Hemingway's novel, Robert Jordan must destroy the bridge over a river to protect the promised land of Madrid and all of Spain from the advance of the enemy. So why did Hemingway decide to write his long novel as an allegory in which one character personifies Spain and another character personifies a river? The answer requires us here to introduce another famous Spanish writer, the poet, Raphael Alberti. Besides Federico Garcia Lorca, Raphael Alberti is the most famous Spanish poet of the 20th century. Alberti won Spain's National Prize for a volume of poetry in 1924. Alberti was a Communist and a supporter of the Spanish Republic. During the Spanish Civil War the poet, Raphael Alberti, and his wife, Maria Teresa Leon, were two of the leaders of a group called "The Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals for the Defense of Culture." The Alliance was formed in 1936 and became the Spanish Republic's propaganda mission during the Spanish Civil War. The Alliance staged many plays, and these theatrical productions influenced Hemingway's composition of For Whom the Bell Tolls . Alberti introduced Hemingway to the Spanish Republic's propaganda war and Hemingway adopted the Spanish Republic's posture as the guardian of Spanish art and culture. The Alliance performed its plays in the Zarzuela Theater in the center of Madrid. They designed their plays to encourage the besieged citizens of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. The most famous play performed by The Alliance was the play entitled Numancia . The play Numancia was written originally by Cervantes in 1585. Alberti revised Numancia for performance during the Spanish Civil War. Following is the story of Numancia . The Romans ruled Spain from 200 B.C. to 400 A.D. and fought many wars against the native Iberians. The most famous such battle was fought at Numancia, the Iberian city to which the Romans set siege for 16 years. Numancia is situated on top of the hill near the modern city of Soria [assumed spelling] on the Dwerel [assumed spelling] River. When the Romans finally defeated Numancia in 133 B.C., they entered the city to find all the citizens dead as result of a suicide pact. The citizens of Numancia preferred to die instead of surrendering to the Romans. Since then, the indomitable spirit of the Iberians of Numancia has been symbolic of Spain's refusal to surrender to invaders. The story of Numancia is invoked whenever Spain is under siege. The play about Numancia is an allegory and includes a character who is a personification of Spain. This character's name is Hispania. Another character in the play is a personification of the Dwerel River, the river that flows past Soria and Numancia. This is where Hemingway got the idea to write For Whom the Bell Tolls as an allegory. Like the characters in Numancia, the characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls are allegorical. Maria personifies Spain, and Robert Jordan personifies the Jordan River. Besides the two allegorical characters, there's another feature of For Whom the Bell Tolls that makes it similar to Numancia. Both works are about a siege on a hilltop. Numancia is about a siege during which the Iberians on a hill resist the Romans for 16 years. Likewise, Hemingway's characters in For Whom the Bell Tolls are on top of the mountain waiting for the enemy to approach for the entire duration of this 500-page novel. For Whom the Bell Tolls is designed to resemble the siege of Numancia. After all, the only dramatic action in the entire novel is the explosion of the bridge. Other than that the characters just wait, biding their time on top of the Guadarrama Mountain outside of Madrid. Hemingway's mountain setting and stalemate resemble the 16-year siege of the hilltop city of Numancia by the Romans in the Second Century B.C. Besides the play by Cervantes about Numancia, The Alliance staged other plays from the Golden Age, Spain's glorious era of theater during the Renaissance. Alberti and Leon had a predilection for plays with a democratic theme. The Alliance's strategy was to dramatize the socialist spirit with which the Spanish people have always resisted the tyranny of kings in the past. The same tyranny embodied by Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Besides Numancia, Lope de Vega's play entitled Fuenteovejuna formed part of The Alliance's repertoire. In this classic Spanish play, published in the year 1619, the citizens of the town of Fuenteovejuna killed the tyrannical [foreign word]. When the judge interrogates individual citizens each one responds by saying that Fuenteovejuna is the culprit. In other words, when they are asked to identify the killer, they say the whole town did it. By offering the same response, the citizens forfeit their individuality to protect themselves in a collective identity which is the essence of socialism. Hemingway even mentions the title of the play, Fuenteovejuna , within the pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls . Lope de Vega's name also appears in the novel. Hemingway's allusion to Lope de Vega is really a homage to Alberti and The Alliance. Furthermore, Chapter 10 of For Whom the Bell Tolls represents Hemingway's version of Fuenteovejuna . Many readers sympathetic to the Spanish Republic have criticized Hemingway for including Chapter 10 in his novel because the scene narrates a wild frenzied massacre during which the Republicans kill Fascists in a ritual ceremonial fashion. However, it is wrong to way that Hemingway is criticizing the Republican in this scene. On the contrary, the point of the massacre is to show the socialist spirit of the Republic. Hemingway does not want to emphasize the violence but rather the cooperative communal spirit of the ceremony. The key to understanding this scene is the mutual desire of the townspeople to share the blame amongst themselves. Each citizen is obliged to participate in the lynching of the Fascists. Like Lope de Vega, Hemingway wants to portray mass identity as the fundamental element of socialism. The citizens protect themselves by not allowing individuality when they must pass judgment on the fate of the tyrant. During the massacre one of Hemingway's characters even says, "Each man should have his share in the responsibility." The character named Pilar says, "If the Fascists were to be executed by the people, it was better for all the people to have a part in it, and I wish to share the guilt as much as any." Hemingway's line recalls the most famous line in Fuenteovejuna . When officials investigate the killing, all the citizens respond, "Fuenteovejuna did it." Both Lope de Vega and Hemingway create scenes in which citizens protect each other by assuming a mass identity, or rather a socialist identity, so no individual can be singled out for responsibility. This explains Hemingway's direct reference to a 17th century play in his 20th century novels. Another favorite play performed by The Alliance was The Mayor of Zalamea , a play written by Pedro Calderon de la Barca in the year 1636. This play also portrays the Spanish people's resistance to tyranny. In Calderon's play, the Spanish Army is courted in the town of Zalamea on its way to Portugal. A captain in the army rapes the daughter of the Mayor of Zalamea who in turn executes the captain. The King of Spain arrives in Zalamea and determines that, while the mayor has no jurisdiction over the army, his execution of the captain is just. Calderon's play is about the democratic right of Spanish citizens to resist abuse by the Spanish Army even under a monarchy. Hemingway offers his version of The Mayor of Zalamea in Chapter 31 of For Whom the Bell Tolls . In this chapter, Hemingway narrates how the Fascists *** the daughter of the mayor of a Spanish town. This is a clear allusion to the plot of Calderon's play. Both Calderon's play and Hemingway's novel depict the *** of a mayor daughter. In Hemingway's novel, Maria's father is the mayor of the town where he is killed. So his assassination acquires symbolic value. His assassins take his daughter, Maria, into his office in the city hall and *** her there, thus augmenting the symbolic nature of the action. Besides assaulting Maria as an individual, the Fascists are expressing scorn for the civil authorities in the Republic. In summary, the central plot of For Whom the Bell Tolls resembles that of Numancia , a play written by Cervantes and revised by Raphael Alberti. Chapter 10 of For Whom the Bell Tolls is a homage to Lope de Vega's play entitled Fuenteovejuna , a play mentioned directly in Hemingway's novel. Chapter 31 of Hemingway's novel is a homage to Calderon's play entitled The Mayor of Zalamea . These three plays from Spain's Golden Age of Theater formed part of the repertoire of The Alliance directed by Alberti and Leon during the Spanish Civil War. The purpose of The Alliance was to encourage democracy by preserving Spain's democratic heritage portrayed in Golden Age plays. The Alliance organized a group of actors called Guerreras [assumed spelling] del Teatro which staged plays at the front to encourage the Republican soldiers. By calling themselves Guerreras, these actors underscored the close relationship between theater and warfare. The Guerreras del Teatro imagined themselves as soldier in the propaganda war, and The Alliance was their army. When Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls he aligned himself with The Alliance and its propaganda machine. And Hemingway became yet another Guerrera del Teatro. Toward the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls the character Pilar says, "So much theater tires me." When she speaks the word "theater" she is referring to war which she compares to theater. But besides the metaphor, Hemingway also wants the reader to recognize that Pilar is an actor in a play. She is a Guerrera del Teatro and when she speaks of theater she is saying that the plot of Hemingway's novel is also the plot of the play Numancia . Pilar's statement demands that the reader ask if he's reading a novel about the Spanish Civil War or if he is watching a presentation of a play performed by The Alliance. The reader must recall that Hemingway wrote only one play in his life, and that play is about the Spanish Civil War. The Fifth Column is Hemingway's play about the siege of Madrid and it was intended as a homage to the theatrical presentations of The Alliance and the Guerreras del Teatro. The artistic and political affinity between Hemingway and Alberti continued beyond the Spanish Civil War. Both men were exiled from Spain at war's end in 1939. Hemingway went to Cuba and Alberti went to Argentina. However, they did not concede defeat. They still had hope that the Spanish Republic would be revived to replace Franco's dictatorship in Spain. Hemingway maintained the indomitable spirit of Numancia and The Alliance from his exile in Cuba. In fact, the Spanish Republic's fight against Fascism in Spain motivated the revolution in Cuba, which triumphed in 1959. The influence of Alberti can even be seen in Hemingway's novel entitled The Old Man and the Sea . Published in 1952, 12 years after the publication of For Whom the Bell Tolls . The Old Man and the Sea is about a simple Cuban fisherman named Santiago. In The Old Man and the Sea Hemingway alludes to a poem by Alberti as a way of saying that the spirit of The Alliance now lives in Cuba. Hemingway alludes directly to a famous poem by Alberti in the following passage from The Old Man and the Sea . Here's a quote from The Old Man and the Sea . "He always thought of the sea as la mar, which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen spoke of her as el mar, which is masculine." In this passage, as in his other works about Spain and Cuba, Hemingway leaves some words in Spanish to invoke Hispanic culture. We have already discussed A Clean Well-Lighted Place in which Hemingway repeats the Spanish word "nada," repeatedly. In the above passage from The Old Man and the Sea , Hemingway suggests that "mar," the Spanish word for "sea" can be preceded by either the feminine or masculine definite article, "la" or "el." Hemingway's reason for distinguishing between "la mar" and "el mar" is found in the first line of a poem of the first anthology published by Raphael Alberti. So here's a quote from a poem by Alberti. [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] Thus begins a poem of [foreign words], the anthology that began Alberti's poetic career in 1924. [Foreign words], the translated title, I believe, is "Land-Locked Sailor." Alberti won Spain's National Prize for this volume, so it was well-known. When Hemingway explains the difference between "el mar" and " la mar" in Spanish in the middle of an English language book, he is paying homage to the first famous poem by his friend Raphael Alberti, 13 years after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Another passage in The Old Man and the Sea represents a paraphrase of another poem by Alberti. Like all of Hemingway's books, The Old Man and the Sea has a very simple plot. The old Cuban fisherman named Santiago hooks a giant fish and then spends the whole novel pulling him in. In the middle of the book, the old fisherman recalls his youth to give him strength. Specifically, he recalls the time he participated in an arm-wrestling match. Here's another quote from The Old Man and the Sea . "As the sun set, he remembered to give himself confidence, the time in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great *** from Cienfuegos who is the strongest man on the dock." That's the end of the quote from the [inaudible]. The arm-wrestling match lasts all night and ends in a draw. As Santiago struggles with his fish, his mind wanders back to his youth. His recollection of the arm-wrestling match represents a way of summoning strength, the strength of his youth. Nonetheless, this interpellated tale requires further justification, and Raphael Alberti's poetry again provides an explanation. In 1935, Alberti wrote a volume of poetry entitled [speaking in foreign language]. In other words, "Thirteen Stripes and 48 Stars." The anthology's title refers to the American flag. And the poems within are about American imperialism in Latin America. The fourth poem in the collection is entitled [foreign words]. The first stanza of [foreign words] is as follows. [ Speaking in Foreign Language ] In English, these lines are as follows. "Black man, give your hand to the white man. White man, give your hand to the black man. Hand to hand, for Cuba does not belong to the Cuban, but rather to the American." [Foreign words] is an allegory of American imperialism in Cuba. The black man personifies Cuba while the white man personifies the United States. As the arm wrestle mano o mano, they determine the political fate of Cuba. In The Old Man and the Sea Santiago recalls an arm-wrestling match in which he competes with a black man from [foreign words]. Santiago's memory of the arm-wrestling match is quite singular because it has nothing to do with the story's plot. His recollection is even more distinctive because he stipulates that his opponent is black while Santiago himself is white. The memory lasts two full pages in the middle of The Old Man and the Sea . Santiago's gratuitous memory of the arm-wrestling match is Hemingway's homage to Alberti's poem [foreign words]. The scene in Hemingway's novel and Alberti's poem share a common setting, a common action, and a common cast of characters. In both cases the setting is Cuba, the action is arm-wrestling, and the characters are a white man and a black man in competition against each other. The reader must ask why Hemingway would allude to Alberti's poem about American imperialism in Cuba. When Alberti published the poem in 1935, Fulgencio Batista had been in power in Cuba for two years, and would remain in power until 1944 when he left Cuba for Florida. Batista returned to power in Cuba in 1952, the same year that Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea . By referring to Alberti's poem in The Old Man and the Sea , Hemingway is acknowledging that the United States and Cuba were wrestling for the fate of Cuba in 1952. Batista was an American puppet who forfeited the interests of common Cubans like Santiago to make concessions to American businesses in Cuba. Hemingway's protagonist is a humble fisherman who lives on the day's catch. The Cuban economy in 1952 has become distorted to the extent that life is almost impossible for the subsistence fisherman Santiago who must play the lottery for financial survival. The final stanza of [foreign words] reinforces the allegorical quality of the arm-wrestling match -- mano o mano [speaking in foreign language] norteamericano, ***, mano o mano, blanco, mano o mano, negri [assumed spelling] blanco, mano o mano, mano o mano, mano o mano. For the better part of this stanza Alberti simply repeats the words "mano o mano" which literally mean "hand to hand" and which have become recognizable to English speakers. Alberti is saying that Cuba is engaged constantly in an arm-wrestling match against the American. Hemingway's arm-wrestling scene in The Old Man and the Sea is memorable. But one must be aware of Hemingway's political and artistic affinity with Alberti to recognize that Santiago's arm-wrestling match represents his struggle with American imperialism. Hemingway and Alberti both supported the side that lost the Spanish Civil War against Fascism in 1939. When he wrote The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway was attempting to sustain the anti-imperialist spirit in Cuba where many Spanish Republicans went after the Spanish Civil War. If you go to Havana, you can visit the hotel room where Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls . Room 511 of the Ambos-Mundos Hotel is now a museum dedicated to Hemingway. You can look out the window at Havana Bay and imagine Hemingway writing his novel about Spain, a country from which he was exiled for 14 years after the Spain and Civil War. When Hemingway was in Cuba, he was homesick for Spain. The most nostalgic scene in For Whom the Bell Tolls is about Valencia. One of the characters recalls going to the bullfight there during the big fiesta in July. Then the character recalls eating paella outdoors on the beach. This scene is remarkable for the menu as Hemingway recalls eating seafood and cold melon. He recalls drinking beer and wine in Valencia. It is a very sensual scene, a bombardment of tastes which ends inevitably in the bedroom with two characters making love. This beautiful scene is Hemingway's farewell to Spain written in a Cuban hotel room. We must ask why Hemingway chose Valencia as the site of this nostalgic farewell to Spain. The answer is clear. Hemingway began writing The Sun Also Rises in Valencia in 1925. Of course, The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway's first masterpiece about Spain. In The Sun Also Rises , the characters run with the bulls through the streets of Pamplona. Hemingway attended the big bullfight fiesta in Pamplona early in July, 1925. And then he followed the bullfighters to Valencia for the season's next big fiesta which takes place every year in late July. Fourteen years later, Hemingway was in Cuba trying to write his second novel about Spain, For Whom the Bell Tolls . For inspiration Hemingway invokes the memory of Valencia where the muses had blessed him with The Sun Also Rises . Let us imagine that we are in Valencia and 1925 as Hemingway writes The Sun Also Rises . In Valencia, in 1925, Hemingway surely was inspired by the legacy of the Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibanez. Vicente Blasco Ibanez was the pride of Valencia and the author of international best sellers. One of the most famous novels by Blasco Ibanez is about the bullfight. That novel is entitled Blood and Sand , published in Spanish in 1908. The American public became familiar with Blood and Sand in 1922 when Hollywood produced a film version of the novel starring Rudolph Valentino. Rudolph Valentino was Hollywood's first super star. In fact, the first iconic Hollywood portrait of the romantic male lead was Rudolph Valentino dressed as a bullfighter in 1922. When Hemingway published The Sun Also Rises in 1926, the American public still recalled the image of Rudolph Valentino dressed as a bullfighter in the film version of Blood and Sand . Hollywood and Blasco Ibanez prepared the American public for Hemingway's bullfight novel of 1926. Certain characteristics of Hemingway's novel show a clear debt to Blood and Sand . The Spanish novel by Blasco Ibanez includes a female character named Dona Sol who is a classic femme fatale who seduces a bullfighter and sabotages his career. Anyone who has read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises knows that the female protagonist Brett Ashley seduces the bullfighter Pedro Romero and jeopardizes his performance in the bullring. In 1924, Hemingway published a one-page experimental piece in the Parisian edition of In Our Time that describes the bullfight in cinematic terms. Hemingway describes a bullfighter who dies in the bullring after he is gored by the horn of the bull. Part of the piece reads as follows. "[Foreign word] felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it got larger and larger and larger, then smaller and smaller. Then everything commenced to run faster and faster, as when they speed up a cinematograph film. Then he was dead." In this passage Hemingway uses two cinematic techniques. He describes those -- a zoom lens as the scene gets larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. The second technique is Hemingway's appeal to fast motion as when they speed up the camera. Why would Hemingway write about the view of the bullfight through the lens of a movie camera? The clear answer is that Hemingway is trying to appease the American reader who already associates the bullfight with the famous film starring Rudolph Valentino which was released only two years before Hemingway's publication. Even before Blood and Sand , Hemingway had already been influenced by another novel by Vicente Blasco Ibanez. That novel was about the First World War, and it was entitled, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was published in Spain in Spanish in 1916, and it was the first great novel of the First World War. A hundred years later, the two best-known novels about the First World War are Hemingway's IT A Farewell to Arms and Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front . However, both of those novels were published in 1929, 13 years after Blasco Ibanez's masterpiece and 10 full years after the end of the war. We cannot underestimate the influence of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . In 1919, the English language translation of this Spanish novel was the bestselling novel in the United States. In fact, the Spanish novel was so popular in America, it was made into a Hollywood film in 1921. The star of that film, yet again, was Rudolph Valentino. The very next year in 1922 Valentino starred in Blood and Sand which we've just discussed. Between the years 1919 and 1922, Vicente Blasco Ibanez became enormously popular in the United States because of his novels about the bullfight and the First World War. Blasco Ibanez made a lecture tour of the United States in 1919, and he was featured in "Life Magazine" in 1920. His name and image were everywhere and his novels were made into films starring Rudolph Valentino. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , the best-selling novel of 1919 takes its title from the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse. The Book of Revelation includes many symbolic characters including the four horsemen who represent pestilence, war, famine, and death. The First World War was so cataclysmic that many people though doomsday was near, so the biblical reference to the apocalypse comprised a suitable title for a novel about the war. The influence of Blasco Ibanez on popular American culture became most apparent in 1924 when the backfield of the University of Notre Dame football team was named the Four Horsemen by the most famous sportswriter in American history, Grantland Rice. Everyone in the United States recognized the connection between Rudolph Valentino and the Notre Dame football team. Also in 1924, the same year that the Four Horsemen played football for Notre Dame, Hemingway published his first fictional pieces about the First World War. And like the Notre Dame football team, Hemingway was influenced by Blasco Ibanez. For example, in 1925, Hemingway published a short story entitled "On the Quay at Smyrna." The story is barely two pages long and began as a newspaper article that Hemingway wrote for the Toronto Star . While living in Paris after World War I, Hemingway went to Turkey to cover the conflict between Greece and Turkey in 1922. The First World War was over but skirmishes continued and Hemingway found symbolic value in this incident in which the Turkish army drove Greek residents from the coast city of Smyrna. "On the Quay at Smyrna" cannot be any shorter. However, the entire story is in the title. Where is Smyrna? What is the importance of Smyrna? Smyrna is on the western coast of Turkey. But Smyrna is also mentioned in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible that inspired the title of the novel by Blasco Ibanez. John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation on the island of Patmos, and sent it as a letter to seven churches in Asia Minor, now called Turkey. One of the seven churches to which John sent his letter is the Church at Smyrna. In other words, Hemingway knew that the mere mention of Smyrna would conjure up apocalyptic images of doom among those readers familiar with the Bible. As a result, Hemingway does not have to write a long story about the apocalypse because the title says it all in a cryptic illusive style that would become the hallmark of Hemingway's entire career. This shortest of short stories, published in 1925, is evidence of Hemingway's debt to Blasco Ibanez whose famous novel, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , already had made the connection between the Book of Revelation and the First World War. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus says, "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Hemingway's story quotes these words but reverses them. Hemingway says, "No end and no beginning," as if to say that all history has ended. Furthermore, Smyrna is near the remains of Troy, so Hemingway suggests that the Greco-Turkish War of 1922 was reminiscent of the Trojan War, with references to the Bible and to Homer's Iliad , Hemingway suggests that there has only been one war in history. It just never stopped, and it will end only with the apocalypse. When Hemingway won the Noble Prize in 1954 he said he was happy to be the first Cuban writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He said this in Spanish during an interview on Cuban television just after he received the award. Even Hemingway considered himself a Cuban writer. Six years later in 1960 Hemingway was forced to leave his beloved Cuban home because of politics. Hemingway decided to move in Idaho where he would live for only one year before committing suicide. The choice of Idaho is significant because Idaho had a high concentration of Basque immigrants from Spain. Traditionally, Basques migrated to the American West, to Idaho, Nevada, and new Mexico where they would work as shepherds. After working for 15 or 20 years they would return to the Basque country where they could retire comfortably with their American fortune. The Basque shepherds in Idaho reminded Hemingway of his youth in Spain when he wrote about the bullfight. During Hemingway's last year in Idaho he was visited by a Spanish novelist, Jose Luis Castillo Puche, who wrote a novel about his visit to Idaho. The novel is entitled, Oro Blanco or White Gold , a reference to the lucrative wool industry and employed the Basque immigrants. Jose Luis Castillo Puche later wrote the most famous book in Spanish about Hemingway. When Hemingway committed suicide on July 2nd, 1961, he already had tickets to the bullfights in Pamplona which were scheduled to begin five days later on July 7th, just as they do every year. His suicide occurred only three months after the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba which took place in April, 1961. Hemingway knew he would never be able to return to his beautiful home in Cuba. One year after his suicide, in July, 1962, some Cuban fishermen erected a bust of Hemingway in the village of Kohima, the setting of The Old Man and the Sea . Just three months after they erected the bust, the Cuban Missile Crisis transpired between America and the Soviet Union in October, 1962. Even on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the citizens of Cuba knew that Hemingway loved them. In 1968, even Franco allowed the citizens of Pamplona, Spain to erect a bust of Hemingway, whose books had been censored as Communist propaganda by the same regime. These busts of Hemingway were erected by a Communist regime in Cuba and by a Fascist regime in Spain. Hemingway's books are transcendent because they unite cultures that have been separated by politicians. These two busts of Hemingway are the best evidence that literature is the best diplomacy and that a novel by Hemingway is the best passport to Spain and Cuba. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Francisco Madias: Thank you very much. >> Douglas LaPrade. Thank you. >> Francisco Madias: We have just a few moments of -- if there are any burning questions for Dr. LaPrade, we could take those now. Yes. >> I'm curious about translations. Were any of the works [inaudible] translated into English? Were they well-known in this country? >> Douglas LaPrade: Not at that time, no. Unamuno wrote something about Walt Whitman. You know, they're -- so if you want to begin to talk about that sort of dialog it begins that early. But I'm not aware of any translation that early of -- certainly in [foreign words] but not Unamuno either, yeah. >> So many were -- any way [inaudible]. >> Douglas LaPrade: He did one? >> Yeah. >> Douglas LaPrade: Yes, he did. In fact, I'll tell you now. I spent the summer in Spain. And one of the last names I just mentioned -- there was Jose Luis Castillo Puche, the Spanish novelist. He won Spain's National Prize in 1958 and again in 1982. He's probably 20 years younger than Hemingway. He was born in 1919. They were friends. And I'm on his foundation. I spent the summer in his archives looking for letters from Hemingway. And, yes, they are in Spanish. That's later, of course. Though they didn't meet until the '50s. But he was good with languages. >> Well, thank you for doing this presentation. Extremely interesting, historically significant. And I'm glad we're covering it here at the Library of Congress. I was just curious of when the embassy was determining whether or not to change the term [inaudible] Fascist to Nationalist. Was Hemingway ever consulted during that time or was it just government embassy and studios with embassy? Was the author ever consulted? >> Douglas LaPrade: The best story I know about that. He was involved in the writing of the script and one thing I thought about including in the presentation today -- Hemingway wanted to employ somebody named Gustavo Duran as technical consultant on the script. It wasn't allowed because if -- this was, you know, 1943. It was frankly the early days of McCarthyism. Gustavo Duran was a Communist. And he was a friend of Hemingway's. But they were aware of the preparation of the script. There again, I'll refer to Jose Luis Castillo Puche. One time he told me he sat down with Hemingway and a translation of the novel and started pointing out errors in the translation. Hemingway got angry and threw the book across the room. But -- So Hemingway would go back to Spain in the '50s. He was aware of the censorship, but according to what they say, he was frankly more concerned about getting his royalties. So he had become rather pragmatic at that point. Yes, sir. >> So at that time, the '40s, the '30s and the '40s, the -- certainly by the '50s, didn't Hemingway start to get a sense of the genocide that the Communists had been perpetrating since 1917? And, you know, when you look at Stalin in Russia and you talk about, you know, how they just annihilated Russian culture. And, you know, and Red China. That was much later, but didn't Hemingway just sort of get a sense for that and start to pull back? >> Douglas LaPrade: Yes. There again, one thing you can say about -- I don't think you could ever accuse him of having a party card. And even the -- the alter-ego protagonist, Robert Jordan in the novel, he, you know, in a sort of stream of consciousness way asks himself, "Are you a Communist?" He says, "No. But I accepted Communist discipline for the duration of the war." That's it. So he does acknowledge being a Communist sympathizer in Stalin. There's one page in the novel where he mentions the non-Stalinist or non-Soviet indigenous Communist Party of Spain, the POUM, Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista. If it has the word Marxist in the title, it's going to be a Communist Party. Stalin did come in and eliminate that party. And, of course, that's why it's so difficult to understand the Spanish Civil War. It's not left against right. It's left against left. That was largely in Barcelona in May of 1937 at the Place de Catalonia. There's a Hotel Cologne [assumed spelling] and the Telefonica where -- Stalin came in to eliminate the FAI, Federacion Anarquista Iberica, and the POUM. And Hemingway ridicules the POUM in the middle of his novel. That's how you can tell that, yes, he is a Stalin sympathizer. And, of course, the best story in that regard -- about 11 years ago, it was 2005, a good book came out. There's a Steven Koch, K-O-C-H, Cook, Koch -- I'm -- frankly I don't know how to pronounce it. It was called The Breaking Point . And it described Hemingway's break with Dos Passos. And, of course, Dos Passos was more explicitly Communist than Hemingway. Made tours of the Soviet Union and so on. But when his translator, who taught at Johns Hopkins and was a native of Valencia, was assassinated by, or executed by Stalin, Hemingway told him to dismiss it as a casualty of war. And so the title of that books if The Breaking Point . And there's a good book in Spanish, Ignacio Martinez de Pison, called [foreign words]. So he talks about -- there again, Hemingway in relation to Stalinism, sure. >> Do you know if Hemingway ever visited the Soviet Union? >> Douglas LaPrade: I know that he published something with Pravda. You know, there's a character in For Whom the Bell Tolls . He calls him Karkov. It's a thinly disguised name for Koltsov. Koltsov was the -- a journalist for Pravda who was Stalin's right-hand man. And so I don't believe Hemingway went. Here's something else that's rather interesting. There's a guy named Alexander Orloff who record -- in 1935 he was in Cambridge recruiting the Cambridge spies who then became the double agents for the next 40 years. And in 1936 he goes to Madrid and sets up the Secret Police, the precursor to the KGB. So all through For Whom the Bell Tolls there's a reference to the SIM, Servicio de Investigacion Militar which is the Secret Police at the service of Stalin. Alexander Orloff set all of that up and he claims to have taught Hemingway about guerilla warfare in Benicassim which is on the Valencia Coast. He had a training camp for guerilla warfare. So Hemingway was close to these Communists, the Soviets Koltsov and Alexander Orlov. Alexander Orlov -- Koltsov was called back to Moscow and was killed. He was part of the purge, or one of the purges. And then Alexander Orlov got recalled and he knew what was going to happen, so he escaped, went to Cleveland, lived his life in Cleveland, and in 1963 published a handbook of guerilla warfare at the University of Michigan Press. And he was probably immune because he had the identity of the Cambridge spies. That was his protection. So, yes, he flirted with disaster and danger and what have you, but there again seemed to avoid the label more than others. >> Can I have one other question? >> Douglas LaPrade: Mm-hmm. >> Sure. In Hemingway's short stories, he talks about his involvement in the Hispanic Civil War. It seems he's always doing propaganda films. >> Douglas LaPrade: Very good. >> Did he do -- did he do any military stuff with the -- in the revolution? >> Douglas LaPrade: I don't think so. I mean I think you can find a photo of him reloading a gun for somebody. But I don't -- in fact, there was a Republican General, a Communist, who eventually went to Cuba where he was more comfortable and -- name of Lister, Enrique Lister, who was from Galicia. And the name is Lister. It sounds English, but he was Galician. He's got a book published in 1966 called Nuestra Guerra , his memory of -- his memoir of the Spanish Civil War. And he ridicules Hemingway frankly for wanting to go to the front lines and -- but just being ridiculed because he wasn't taken seriously by the combatants. >> Thank you. >> Douglas LaPrade: Thank you. >> Francisco Madias: Thank you very much for joining [inaudible] some Hemingway. A round of applause. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.