Unpublished Letters by Ernest Hemingway Released
F ifteen letters written by Nobel
Prize-winning author
Ernest Hemingway to his close friend Gianfranco
Ivancich have been made available to scholars by
the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Hemingway met Ivancich and his sister, Adriana, who
became the author’s muse, while visiting Venice in 1949.
The letters provide a glimpse into Hemingway’s life in
Cuba and his travels around the world.
“These extraordinary letters offer new insight into
Hemingway during the last years of his life,” said Tom
Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum. “Since many of the letters have
never been seen before, they are a treasure trove for
new scholarship.”
Spanning the years 1953 to 1960, the fifteen pieces
of correspondence written by Ernest Hemingway were
purchased from Gianfranco Ivancich by the John F. Kennedy
Library Foundation in November 2011. The letters, twelve
of which have never before been published, are both handwritten
and typed, many with signatures and handwritten notes in the
margins. Hemingway wrote to his Venetian friend from Cuba,
where he was living during this period, and also while in Ketchum,
Idaho;
Kilimanjaro; Nairobi; Paris;
and Madrid.
These new letters
complement the twenty-three letters and cables from Ivancich
and five from Hemingway to Ivancich that are already in the
Hemingway Collection at the Kennedy Library.
Gianfranco Ivancich first met Ernest Hemingway in January
1949 at the bar of the Gritti Palace Hotel in Venice, where they
bonded over common war experiences (both had been badly
wounded in the legs). Despite their age difference of over twenty
years, the two struck up an unlikely friendship. In November of
1949, Ivancich announced that he would take up work at a
shipping agency in Cuba,
and Hemingway hosted him in a guest
room at the Finca Vigia for an extended stay. Ivancich eventually
purchased his own home near Ranco Boyeros, where he lived
on and off until 1958, when he sold the property. Up until
Hemingway’s death, the pair maintained a close friendship
through letter writing, and Ivancich was one of the few people
present at Hemingway’s private funeral.
Hemingway’s affection for Ivancich is apparent throughout
the letters, which are both frank and personal. In one letter
dated
February 22, 1953, Hemingway describes the painful event of
having to shoot his cat Willie after the animal was struck by a
car.
When a group of tourists arrived at his home the same day, he
writes, “I still had the rifle and I explained to them they had
come
at a bad time and to please understand and go away. But the rich
Cadillac psycho said, ‘We have come at a
most interesting time. Just in time to see
the great Hemingway cry because he has
to kill a cat.’”
In many of the letters, Hemingway
inquires about Adriana, whose visit to
Cuba in 1950 he credited with inspiring
the creative period during which he wrote
much of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
Old Man and the Sea.
In addition to the Hemingway letters,
the Kennedy Library Foundation has also acquired from
Ivancich’s collection a manuscript of The Faithful Bull, a fable
that Hemingway wrote for Adriana. The story is from a period of
Hemingway’s work that he referred to as the “Venetian Fables,”
and a final version was eventually published in the now defunct
Holiday magazine.
The Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library spans Hemingway’s entire career and
represents ninety percent of existing Hemingway manuscript
materials, making the Kennedy Library the world’s principal
center for research on the life
and work of Ernest Hemingway.