Writer's legacy lives on in his renovated estate in Havana
By Bob Hoover
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
HAVANA — Six years after he won the Nobel Prize in 1954, Ernest
Hemingway's world was falling apart.
The best-known writer in America, perhaps the world, was losing
his mind. Depression and paranoia were overtaking him, turning his
renowned terse and direct style into rambling excess. His writing, the
talent that made him famous and rich, was slipping away.
Biographers blame Hemingway's "heroic" lifestyle for his mental
decline. Heavy drinking, drugs, a handful of concussions and neglected
injuries from two plane crashes in Africa in 1953 combined to assault
his 60-year-old body.
Equally devastating was the political upheaval in Cuba, his
longtime home where he lived in shabby baronial luxury at a 19th-century
estate 10 miles east of Havana.
Finca Vigia — or "Lookout Farm" — was the only house Hemingway
owned outright. He bought it in 1940. From its full staff of servants to
its secluded swimming pool, the finca fitted Hemingway like his favorite
"guayabera," the traditional Cuban shirt.
The writer and his fourth wife, Mary, sailed from Cuba on July
25, 1960, leaving behind the "silver, Venetian glassware, eight-thousand
books ... and Ernest's small collection of paintings, one Paul Klee, two
Juan Gris, five Andre Masson, one Braque ... ," along with 70 cats and
at least nine dogs.
Hemingway never returned. He killed himself with a
double-barreled shotgun blast July 2, 1961, at his other home, in
Ketchum, Idaho.
The government of Cuba, however, refuses to let "Papa's" presence
on the island die. After appropriating the property in 1961, it
continues to promote Hemingway as a cultural icon, casting him as a
mythical figure on a level just below Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
"Hemingway loved the Cuban people and they loved him," said
Gladys Rodriguez, who, as president of the Hemingway section of Cuba's
Jose Marti Institute of International Journalism, is the official keeper
of Papa's flame. Mention an incident in the writer's life and she can
recite chapter and verse on the details.
She lays out examples of the Hemingway-Cuba love affair:
• "The Old Man and the Sea," his last novel to appear when he was
still alive, is read by Cuban schoolchildren for its sympathetic central
character, a Cuban fisherman.
• He gave his Nobel Prize medal (though not the $35,000 cash
prize) to a Cuban church.
• Though no friend of the revolution, he and Fidel Castro were
photographed together after Castro entered and won — legitimately —
Hemingway's fishing contest in 1960. Photographs from the event are
reverently displayed in a variety of places. Plus, the writer never
publicly criticized the communist dictator.
• Finally, Hemingway "did not live in the best part of Havana,
but with the poor people outside of town," Rodriguez says, overlooking
the fact that his home came with a full complement of servants.
That home, now called the Ernest Hemingway Museum by the Cubans,
is the center of this homage. Reopened in January after what the
government says is a $1 million renovation, the one-story stucco
building and grounds are a lovingly restored time capsule of a different
era.
Much remains to be accomplished at the estate. The museum plans
to restore the pool, servants' quarters and the guesthouse. It also
wants to find models of Hemingway's 1950s fleet of cars for the garage
after a new building for offices and document preservation is built,
sometime next year.
For now, the charming house appears in excellent shape, but less
than two years ago, the finca and its contents were in serious decline.
Conditions were so bad that the National Trust for Historic
Preservation named it one of its 11 most endangered landmarks in 2005,
the only building outside North America to make the list.
The roof leaked water into the interior walls, causing mold to
grow throughout the house, which lacked basic climate controls like
dehumidifiers. The foundation was shifting, the stucco was peeling and
steps were crumbling. The property even lacked a modern security system.
The museum moved the library, documents, furniture and other
items, including animal heads from Hemingway's African hunting trips,
into storage bins in the basement.
The salvation of the finca and Hemingway's books and papers was
the result of a unique and troubled partnership of Americans and Cubans,
a relationship that remains clouded because the Bush administration has
prohibited nearly all business transactions between the two countries
since 2004.
"The big problem with saving the Hemingway site is the U.S.
government," U.S. Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., said in a telephone
interview. "This hassle is a relic of the Cold War and the result of the
administration's domestic policies, that's all."
McGovern was a key player in the 2002 deal he and Castro signed
at the finca initiating a joint preservation project.
A group of American specialists in restoration and document
salvage schooled the Cubans in the latest techniques while the Cubans
promised to give the Hemingway Library digital copies of his letters and
documents.
Sandra Spanier, a Penn State University English professor, is
director of the letters' collection project.
"It's been a very big deal in the last year, year-and-a-half, to
salvage all the letters, but the house has been a major concern. Things
needed to be done," she said.
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