THENEWYORKTIMES: “La biblioteca JFK revela nuevas cartas de Hemingway”, por Patricia Cohen (Inglés)

Ernest Hemingway first met Gianfranco Ivancich at a bar in Venice in 1949, where the two struck up a conversation about their war experiences. It was the beginning of a epistolary friendship. Hemingway remained close to Mr. Ivancich and his sister, Adriana, whom he credited with inspiring his 1952 Pulitzer-prize winning novel “The Old Man and the Sea” during her visit to Cuba in 1950. Now the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation is making available 15 letters it bought from Mr. Ivancich, now in his early 80s, that Hemingway wrote between 1953 and 1960 as he wandered through Cuba; Ketchum, Idaho; Kilimanjaro; Nairobi; Paris; and Madrid. The library also acquired a manuscript of “The Faithful Bull,” a tale that Hemingway wrote for Mr. Ivancich’s nephew.
The letters, at turns chatty, amusing, and touching, offer a glimpse into Hemingway’s more private self. In one dated Feb. 22, 1953, from Cuba, he describes having to shoot his beloved cat Willie after he was hit by a car. Someone else offered to do the job, but Hemingway writes that he could not risk “a chance of Will knowing anybody was killing him.” He goes on to say that a group of tourists unexpectedly drove up: “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 response, he writes, “I humiliated him as he should be humiliated, omit details.”