Ernest Hemingway often drew on events from his own life
when composing his short fiction. An especially significant example is his tale titled
“A Very Short Story.” In this extremely brief work, Hemingway’s personal experiences are
alluded to in a number of different ways, including the
following:
- Like the unnamed protagonist of the
story, Hemingway was indeed an American in Europe during World War
I. - Like the protagonist, Hemingway was injured during the
war, required hospital treatment, and fell in love with a nurse who treated him. In real
life, the nurse was a fellow American named Agnes von Kurowsky.
- Like the protagonist, Hemingway was treated in Italy
(where he had been injured). - Hemingway implies a sexual
relationship between the protagonist and the nurse. Agnes von Kurowski denied that she
had had any such relationship with Hemingway (see Jeffrey Meyers’ biography of
Hemingway). According to Martin Smith, in his study of Hemingway’s book In Our
Time,
Despite what some biographers have claimed, and
despite the wishful thinking of some Hemingway "fans," it is highly
unlikely that Hemingway and Agnes von Kurowsky
had sex in his hospital
bed.
- In the story,
Hemingway implies that the couple have serious, imminent plans to marry. Von Kurowski
later claimed that she was never as serious about Hemingway as Hemingway suggested and
that their relationship had been quite innocent. Nevertheless, in the story, the
protagonist describes receiving letters from the nurse, who was smitten with him. Her
letters, he says,
were all about the hospital, and how much she
loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was
missing him at
night.
- In the
story, the protagonist returns to America, planning to find a job so that he and the
nurse can marry – a detail that fits the basic facts of Hemingway’s
life. - In the story, the nurse falls in love with an
Italian and breaks off her relationship with the protagonist – another detail taken from
“real life.” - In the story, the nurse’s letter is sent to
Chicago, which was indeed Hemingway’s
hometown.
In short, the events described in “A
Very Short Story” bear many resemblances to real events in Hemingway’s life, but
Hemingway seems to have taken a good deal of fictional liberty in creating the
story.
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