Hemingway

I started reading "A Moveable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway this last weekend and I just finished it today. It's the first book by Hemingway that I've read and I've always wanted to read something by him, I had the feeling I was going to like him.

And I completely fell in love with it. "A Moveable Feast" is just so true, so intense, there were moments when I had to stop reading because of the beauty of it, because it was so natural it made me dizzy. And I don't have the right to give an opinion on such a great work of literature. For those who haven't read it "A Moveable Feast" is an account of the days when Hemingway lived in Paris, at least of some of the days, of the people he knew and of the things he did. But in some way is much more than that, it gives you an insight of how Hemingway thought, of how he lived. Reading it made me want to go back in time and get to Paris just to meet him, to live what he was living, or just to live his way nowadays. I really would like to live this way someday, maybe one day I get tired of my scientific career and decide just to start writing professionally, although I think I'm not good enough to do so, but anyways, it would be nice to write all day in cafés or wherever, save money only for trips and don't care about what you're wearing or what you're eating because that's not what it is important in live.

I have taken a lot of time to read it, but I still think I might have missed something and the end of it left me so shocked that I decided to read it all over again (it will be the first time I reread a book just after reading it).

I leave you a small extract that can be found in several chapters of my edition of the book.

From: The Pilot Fish and the Rich from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Nobody climbs on skis now and almost everybody breaks their legs but maybe it is easier in the end to break your legs than to break your heart although they say that everything breaks now and that sometimes, afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places. I do not know about that now but this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy. 


And I feel the need to put another fragment, which is similar to this one, from another chapter.

From: Nada y Pues Nada from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

No one can ever say they will not break a leg now under certain conditions. Breaking a heart is different. Some people say there is no such thing. Certainly you can not break it if you do not have it and many things unite to take it away from those who started with it. Perhaps there is nothing there. Nada. You can take this or not. And it can be true or not. There are philosophers that explain it very well.


Moreover on my edition there are other fragments that never made it to the original book, and they are strikingly beautiful, so sincere and powerful that it's a shame they didn't get into the book.