
Hemingway in Love - ableal
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/ernest-hemingway-in-love-180956617/?no-ist
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munificent
Wonderful article. But it's a hell of a lot less fun if you consider it from
the perspective of Hadley or Pauline, or, worse, his kids.

Life must be so hard for Ernest. What with having to decide which of two
devoted women he prefers. If he wasn't able to distract himself with living in
a series of beautiful locales, and a few other affairs, it would be nigh
intolerable.

Meanwhile, some kids probably just wish they could know their dad.

~~~
nemo44x
Hemingway was quite aware he was not a great father and it killed him.

He was a selfish guy, a raging alcoholic and one of the most talented American
writers of all time. His books to this day reflect that moment in time. They
stand the test of time well.

I'm not sure he would be the artist he was without all his flaws.

------
Mz
Presumably, Pauline met some need for a time. He seems to have not really
avoided her at first. He takes the easy way out of blaming her, even though
his friend Fitzgerald was quick to tell him "Be rid of her.", advice he
disregarded and even rebutted. Granted, she was obnoxiously aggressive. But
when he really was tired of her, he divorced her as well. So when he really
wanted to be rid of her, he was. It is a matter of convenience to pin the
blame all on her during the time when he didn't really want to be rid of her.

It can be really hard to say whether it was a good thing he got his needs met
through her or a bad thing. I mean, it can be a hard judgement call even if
you are one of the people involved in such a situation. Outsiders generally
have no real idea what is going on behind closed doors. A report like this,
long after his death, really hard to judge. People will tend to judge based on
their own prejudices, in essence.

------
peterwwillis
This story sounds sad and beautiful, but love lost really is the most
worthless, horrible thing in the world. Makes you want to crawl into a hole
and die a hundred times.

This is really good writing because it captures the romance without focusing
on all the bleak.

~~~
jimminy
I can't agree that it's the most horrible worthless thing in the world, having
just come out of a relationship. I would have agreed with you prior to that.

I managed to get over it relatively quickly, with several realizations.

The hurt I felt, wasn't that love was lost, but that I no longer had a place
for all the love I had. This leads to the understanding that love cannot be
lost, it's a resource inside us all, and we just have to find other means to
redirect it.

To think of love, from the perspective of a single entity, leads to the kind
of thinking of it being worthless. But the shared love that we think of
romantically is coming from a multitude of entities, it isn't lost but as a
resource redistributed elsewhere.

In death love is truly lost on one side, but is also somewhat immortalized on
the other. This solidification of love, is similar to the concept of
heartbreak, we don't want to share that love, but the easiest way to free
ourselves of the pain is to love.

Love is something you create and give. It can't really be lost, because every
day is another day to create or find something to love. You have to separate
the concept of love from the entities and relationships.

I still love her, always will, but I had to say goodbye to the friendship
because trying to hold onto her was doing exactly what you said. It was
killing me, trying to hold on to the relationship, as she started moving on
with another. I realized that they deserved a chance, she was chosing to move
on with her life and love. That hurt, but what hurt the most was that I
couldn't share my love with her any more without possibly alienating him and
the love he gave.

I realized those things about love coming from inside and being okay with
moving on and focusing on things and others. Accepting that love and care
sometimes require sacrifices of ourselves for the good of others.

------
david_shaw
For those that enjoy this story, I'd strongly recommend _A Moveable Feast,_
Hemingway's autobiographical tale of his time in Paris. It feels more "real"
coming from him directly, even though he claims that much of it is fiction.

He specifically speaks mournfully about loving two women at the same time, and
it's clear in the writing how much it impacted him -- even many years later.
_A Moveable Feast_ is the last thing Hemingway wrote before he took his own
life.

------
cousin_it
Wow. Pauline comes across as scummy and Hemingway comes across as weak. I'm
not a religious person, but this is exactly what the word "sin" was invented
for: an action that is tempting but morally wrong and also makes you worse
off.

Like many people, I've been in a similar situation. My girlfriend's "best
friend" decided that she wanted me for herself. After a few very unpleasant
months of the same "double love" as described in the article, one day me and
my gf just decided to cut off the "friend" completely, no contact through any
channels. I thought it would hurt, but actually it felt great.

~~~
klodolph
That's a fairly shallow and judgmental way of putting things, and you managed
to insert some bragging at the same time. "Hemingway is weak, Pauline is
scummy, but I did the right thing when two women both loved me."

~~~
cousin_it
Jeez. They were just people, and we're people. Imagine you have a male friend
and he tells you this story. "Hey man, I'm in this difficult situation, I got
a wife and a baby but there's this other lady chasing me too. We tried to get
away from her and went to a resort, but she came to the same resort! I love my
wife but I think I love that lady too."

What would you do? I'd tell him to forget the love bullshit and cut that lady
out of his life ASAP. I think that's the only sane decision. There's no point
trying to be non-judgmental here.

~~~
klodolph
I guess my issue here is that the comment doesn't really offer anything
besides judgment. It's okay to be judgmental, but the comment didn't have any
substance to it.

~~~
cousin_it
Yeah I see. It was actually intended as advice for people in similar
situations. Giving an example from my life was just to lend some weight to the
advice, otherwise people would say "it's not so easy and you don't know what
you're talking about". Sorry if it came across as a humblebrag, I didn't
realize that at the time.

