
Hemingway’s World War I savior is anonymous no more - longdefeat
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/hemingways-world-war-i-savior-is-anonymous-no-more/2019/01/18/d3dbbb32-0ea0-11e9-831f-3aa2c2be4cbd_story.html
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telesilla
I ponder the reason Hemingway never mentioned him, and I imagine - which is
not to excuse him - that acknowledging the person who died in your place is a
trauma to be revisited. Instead of celebrating Fedele Temperini's death, it
seems that Hemingway felt guilt and shame. Even though that's an easy reading
of silence; I may be wrong.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Maybe because he saw so many die, and that one more death coincident with his
trauma was not any more or less important than the anonymous millions.

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baxtr
What a sad story. I wonder what other great books, movies, companies weren’t
made because someone died tragically without a savior.

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bambax
Many excellent French authors died during WWI; their death deprived us of new
works.

Charles Péguy, Henri Alain-Fournier, Louis Pergaud, to name just a few...

(Guillaume Apollinaire shouldn't be part of this list because, while he was
wounded during WWI, he died of the flu after the war.)

~~~
sophacles
Technically Guillaume Apollinaire died during the war, 9 November 1918
according to wikipedia. That's just a nit tho, a little fact I came across
looking up these authors, but it got me thinking...

Theres a couple of interesting questions in there though - during the war he
sustained wounds he was still suffering from at the time of his death. Did
these weaken him in a way that made him more susceptible to the flu? Did the
subpar conditions everyone in Paris was dealing with due to the total war (and
fronts not too far away) contribute?

In the broad scale - WW1 and the Spansish flu pandemic certainly had effects
on each other. Many of the early outbreaks are linked directly to troop
movements, and the living conditions in barracks, camps and trenches certainly
aided the spread of the flu. Governments were keeping quiet about the potency
and spread of the disease for morale reasons. Basically the question of "Is a
soldier dying of spanish flu during ww1 a war-related death?" is much deeper
than just sorting on proximate cause of death (e.g. flu, or gunshot, etc).

~~~
bambax
Okay, but in that case many people who died during the war, but not at the
front lines, died because of the situation the war had created (lack of food,
missing doctors, etc. etc.)

You have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe Apollinaire is a WWI casualty, but
not everyone is -- or else it wouldn't mean anything anymore.

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skookumchuck
"Strict Italian privacy laws prevent us from learning more about him."

Is privacy really an issue 100 years after the person's death?

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labster
I can't believe you're suggesting that a person's privacy is less important
than their copyright terms.

~~~
b_tterc_p
That assumes that he views copyright timelines as reasonable.

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rmason
Probably no American writer has been more heavily researched than Hemingway.
Amazingly we're still learning new things about his life.

~~~
hutzlibu
It would take a life to tell someones life completely ..

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jwilk
Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190118162959/https://www.washi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190118162959/https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/hemingways-
world-war-i-savior-is-anonymous-no-
more/2019/01/18/d3dbbb32-0ea0-11e9-831f-3aa2c2be4cbd_story.html)

~~~
magduf
Thanks! I was about to comment that I can't read this article.

