“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
Ernest Hemingway
Courtesy of Inspiration Journey:
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.
The man who never reads lives only one.”
George R. R. Martin
Courtesy of Existential Delight:
Preludes, Op. 28 – No. 6 ‘Tolling bells’ composed by Frédéric Chopin; this piece is poignant as it was played at Chopin’s own funeral:
I read Ernest Hemingway’s book “For Whom the Bell Tolls” as a young girl and its impact will stay with me forever. His other book “The Old Man and the Sea” had the same effect because he was one of the most original, mesmerising and resourceful writers in the world. When I opened the first book, before the first page, there was this full-page passage that gave his work its title. It is taken from a sermon to King James I by John Donne, his chaplain, in 1623, and this what it says:
“No man is an island entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory* were, as well as if a manor
of thy friend’s or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls:
It tolls for thee.”
*Promontory – A point of high land that juts out into the sea.
Courtesy of artofebrink:
I have this most profound text framed and on my wall, it reflects my own mantra – I am a human being first, and everything else after. It prevented me from ever feeling superior to anyone else, and created in me a highly developed sense of social conscience and the need to help anyone in need, human or animal. The second book, The Old Man and the Sea, has the famous quote: ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’ When I had a particularly difficult time in my life, it gave me the inspiration to persevere.
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway’s influence on the course of modern literature is incalculable, and his writing remains intense and vivifying. It tells much about growing up, about solitude, and resourcefulness, about fear and despite it, doing things anyway. His experience in the First World War coloured his outlook on life.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
21 July 1899 – 2 July 1961
Courtesy of Biography:
The childhood home of Hemingway in Oak Park, now the Hemingway Foundation
Downtown Oak Park
Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, a Chicago suburb. His father was a doctor and he was the second of six children. In 1917 Hemingway joined the Kansas City ‘Star’ as a cub reporter. The following year he volunteered to work as an ambulance driver on the Italian front where he was badly wounded but twice decorated for his services.
In 1919, he returned to America. In 1922 he reported on the Greco-Turkish war. Two years later he resigned from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris. Other writers, American expatriates, encouraged him to develop his unique style.
Courtesy of museny1:
In Paris Hemingway published several books and his international reputation was firmly secured by his three books: In Our Time, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Robert Jordan, the protagonist of the author’s novel of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls, became a ‘public hero’ after the book sold millions of copies. He was a far more conventional figure than his predecessors in Hemingway’s previous books. Robert Jordan joins the guerrillas hiding in the mountains because he wants to help in any way he can. He knows how to expertly blow the bridges that otherwise would allow General Franco’s army to advance towards the partisans.
His awkward attempts to grasp hold of some meaning in the midst of the war destruction is compounded by his unexpected falling for a peasant girl, a victim of General Franco’s soldiers. The romantic passion he and Maria cling to is moving beyond description.
“Then there was the smell of heather crushed and the roughness of the bent stalks under her head and the sun bright on her closed eyes and all his life he would remember the curve of her throat with her head pushed back into the heather roots and her lips that moved, and the fluttering of the lashes on the eyes tight closed against the sun and against everything, and for her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that colour, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that colour, all in the blindness of that colour. For him, it was a dark passage which led to nowhere, then to nowhere, once again to nowhere, always and forever to nowhere, heavy on the elbows in the earth to nowhere, dark, never any end to nowhere, hung on all time to always to unknowing nowhere, now beyond all bearing up. up, up, and into nowhere, suddenly, scaldingly, holdingly all nowhere gone and time absolutely still and they were both there, time having stopped and he felt the earth move out and away from under them.”
“He looked at her and across the meadow where a hawk was hunting and the big afternoon clouds were coming now over the mountains.
‘And it is not thus for thee with others?’ Maria asked him, they now were walking hand in hand.
‘No. Truly.’
‘Thou has loved many others’.
‘ Some. But not as thee.’
‘ And it was not thus? Truly?’
‘ It was a pleasure but it was not thus.’
‘ And then the earth moved. The earth never moved before?’
‘Nay. Truly never.’
‘ Ay,’ she said. ‘And this we have for one day.’
“Romance No. 1” by John Brunning, performed by Xuefei Yang:
Memorial Terç de Requetes, Monserrat, Spain
“Romance” (Traditional), performed by John Williams:
The Old Man and the Sea
A masterpiece
This hauntingly beautiful tale was published in 1952 and was greeted with great acclaim. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and was followed by the Swedish Academy’s bestowal of the Nobel Prize a year later.
As a fisherman himself, Hemingway gives a knowing description of the tools and techniques of fishing. It is a tale chronicling an elderly Cuban fisherman’s epic contest with an enormous marlin. Across several days and nights, the weary but determined Santiago tracks the hooked creature until he at last claims his catch, which is so big that it must be strapped to the side of his skiff, where it is inexorably attacked and eaten by sharks before the old man can get back to port.
Santiago meets his disappointment with great dignity. The sentiment he expresses as he helplessly watches the sharks destroy his hard-won prize. The immortal line – “A man can be destroyed but not defeated” – has been wildly heralded as the author’s own, the book celebrated for its uplifting message of perseverance. Yet, the tale’s simplicity and fleet forward motion are like a fable-like arc of struggle and symbolism, only masking its ineluctable expression of what Gabriel Garcia Marquez called Hemingway’s one essential theme: “the uselessness of victory.” The book’s sturdy, stalwart, almost ancient eloquence is haunted with echoes of the sure but ineffable truths of tragedy: we sense some profound meaning, but we can’t quite put words to it. The tale outlasts its interpretation, as only the strongest stories can.
The truths he has to tell are profoundly poetic, and they are diminished by any attempts to paraphrase them.
Another of the greatest writers of the world, William Faulkner commented:
“His best. Time may show it to be the best single piece of any of us, I mean his or my contemporaries.”
Here is a little sample of Hemingway’s masterpiece:
“Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”
Let us hope so, he thought.
A small bird came toward the skiff from the north. He was a warbler and flying very low over the water. The old man could see that he was very tired.
The bird made the stern of the boat and rested there. Then he flew around the old man’s head and rested on the line where he was more comfortable.
“How old are you?” the old man asked the bird. “Is this your first trip?”
The bird looked at him when he spoke. He was too tired even to examine the line and he teetered on it as his delicate feet gripped it fast.
“It’s steady,” the old man told him. ” It’s too steady. You shouldn’t be that tired after a windless night. What are birds coming to?”
The hawks, he thought, that come out to sea to meet them. But he said nothing of this to the bird who could not understand him anyway and who would learn about the hawks soon enough.
“Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. ” Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”
It encouraged him to talk because his back had stiffened in the night and it hurt truly now.”
The tale of the friendship between the old fisherman Santiago and the little boy, Manolin, is a story inside the story of the novel and in itself is a masterpiece.
Courtesy of Encore +, the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Short Animated Film in 2000:
naturetails 
When I was in High School Hemingway was one of my favorites too! I still remember doing an oral book report before the class on his short stories! I haven’t read him much in recent years but I do have a small book of his very first stories somewhere and your excellent post is inspiring me to read it! Beautiful post!
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Thank you, Phil, for your wonderful comments! It is good to know that we have a liking for Hemingway’s books in common! Try to find his two books and read them, you will be spell bound!
Joanna
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For a number of years, I’ve been thinking about re-reading The Old Man And The Sea. Maybe I’ll get to it in 2025. I enjoyed your essay!
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I remember reading The Old Man and the Sea in high school. And it was one of the first books that really touched me in a sense. I haven’t thought of it in a very long time. So, thank you for the wonderful post. The next time I’m at the library, I will try to remember to find one of his books. Great post!
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I studied Hemingwsy in literature in high school, but that was a long time ago. I must go back and renew acquaintances with his work. Have a great day, Joanne. Allan
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wonderful!!! how well done & interesting👍🏼🙏🏼really made me reflect, took me right in😊🥰thank you for the journey😘
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Thank you for your beautiful comments, which are greatly appreciated!
Joanna
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Thank you, Allan, for your wonderful comments, which are much appreciated!
Joanna
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Thank you, Diana, for your wonderful comments! Your beautiful thoughts are much appreciated!
Joanna
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Thank you, Neil, for your kind comments! Remember, life is sadly short, and reading this masterpiece will inspire your to live longer, and read more of this giant writer of American literature! Your thoughts are much appreciated!
Joanna
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I call each book an Adventure.
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Thank you, GP, for your comment! You are right, Hemingway’s books were the stories of his adventures, beautifully told in his writing. Your thoughts are much appreciated!
Joanna
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“There is no friend as loyal as a book.–Ernest Hemingway!“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.
The man who never reads lives only one.–George R. R. Martin !Absolutely true statements by such great authors ! Joanna ,you have done wonders with your outstanding post on books which are indeed such loyal friends inspiring us in challenging times when we are in trouble & can rely on their teachings to fight the odds!I am heartily grateful to you for the lucky chance to watch the award winning short animated film : Old man & the sea” !It was a long-due dream come true for me!Thank you so much & Namastey ,Joanna
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A brilliant writer who had an extraordinary and rather tragic life. You have written a great testament to him and I thank you for the reminder as well as the pictures and lovely music.
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Thank you, Carolyn, for the beautiful comments, which are greatly appreciated! The quote from his masterpiece inspired my life in a moment of great need. I cannot thank him enough!
Joanna
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Thank you so much, Dhirendra, for your wonderful comments! Your wise thoughts are greatly appreciated! Namaste!
Joanna
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A wonderful write up, Joanna. The Old Man and the Sea, amazing book, equally the movie with Spenser Tracey was excellent.
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Thank you, Monice, for your beautiful comments, which are much appreciated!
Joanna
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What a profound tribute to Ernest Hemingway Joanna. “The Old Man and the Sea” is one of my favorites. Thanks so much for sharing! 📚🥰💖
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Thank you, Kym, for your wonderful comments, which are deeply appreciated! I am so glad that we share literary interests!
Joanna x
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What a nice article Joanna! Thank you!
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Thank you, Dorothy, for your kind comment, which is greatly appreciated!
Joanna
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You are so very, very welcome as always my dear Joanna! It’s always good to revisit our literary roots! Have a delightful weekend! 🥰💖😍
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Thank you, dear Kym, and likewise!
Joanna x
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Thank you so much, Joanna, for sharing this interesting and engaging post about an author I adore.
I was fascinated by the wealth of information, the wonderful images and the beautiful videos.
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Thank you, dear Luisa, for your wonderful comments, which made me very happy as I adore Hemingway’s writing too!
Joanna x
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The opening two quotes are truly fitting and profound, making them a perfect way to begin this post on Ernest Hemingway.
Thank you, dear Joanna, for sharing the introductory passage from “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. I found it especially moving, particularly the line: “every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” I deeply resonate with this idea, which reflects the philosophy that we are all equal, each made from the same divine essence. This aligns beautifully with the belief that a spark of the divine exists in everyone. We are all interconnected; no one lives in complete isolation—the bell tolls for all of us.
Hemingway’s background as a journalist, seeing the world with his own eyes, undoubtedly shaped his writing. His firsthand experiences gave his work authenticity and depth.
I was particularly drawn to the character of Robert Jordan in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”—an American volunteer fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, on a mission to destroy a bridge behind enemy lines. His unexpected love for a peasant girl adds a tender layer to the harsh realities of war. The novel’s exploration of love, war, and mortality is truly powerful.
Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” is equally inspiring. His line—“A man can be destroyed but not defeated”—speaks volumes about resilience and perseverance. The aging fisherman, Santiago, embodies the strength of the human spirit to endure suffering in pursuit of triumph. His friendship with Manolin is heartwarming.
I also recall reading an excerpt from “A Farewell to Arms” during my school years. Its portrayal of love amidst the backdrop of war was so unique that I went on to read the entire book as a teenager.
Yet, it’s deeply saddening to note that such a brilliant and successful author eventually took his own life. It’s a stark reminder of the unpredictability of life.
Thank you once again, Joanna, for such a remarkable write-up on an exceptional writer. As always, your choice of images, audios, and videos including animated film added richness to the presentation. Much appreciated.
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Thank you, dear Kaushal, for the wonderfully analytical comments! I can only admire your knowledge of the literature, and your ability to write like a professional book critic! But knowing how versatile you are, and remembering your treatises on Indian writers, I am not surprised. Your kind thoughts about the writer’s works, which I love, are deeply appreciated.
When Hemingway was asked how easy it was to write, he answered:
“ It is easy. You just sit at the typewriter, and bleed.”
Joanna
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PS. I didn’t mention Hemingway’s ending because there are many theories speculating about the reason.
Joanna
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A pleasure indeed!
Thank you so much for your kind reply💗
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You are welcome, dear Luisa, as always!
Joanna x
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🙏💞🙏
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XXX!
Joanna
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Thank you so much, Joanna, for your generous words that I personally feel I don’t deserve, but I accept whatever you say, you’re a great friend of mine, and I have every regard for you, both as a person and a writer. The quote added by you here is new to me, but it’s so deep. Thanks for sharing it.
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Okay, I respect your decision. You’re welcome, Joanna.
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I agree with you. Thank you.
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Dear Kaushal, you deserve every praise as you are exceptionally gifted in more ways than it is possible to list here! I feel honoured to be your friend!
Joanna
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I’m humbled and honoured. You’re so kind, Joanna. Namaste 🙏
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Thank you, Kaushal! Namaste!
Joanna
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love this quote, Joanna “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.
The man who never reads lives only one.”
George R. R. Martin
Each passage, song, reading, image opens us to the gift Hemingway’s gifts. How inspiring and lucky are we by your post so passionately shared to delve into each word. I’ll be coming back! 💓
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Thank you, dear Cindy! With a reader like you, writing my posts is a great pleasure! Blessing!
Joanna xx
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Awww, I’m glad to know. I love the film too with such vivid colors and imagery. It was a wonderful tale, yet sad. 😢
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Thank you, Cindy, for your lovely comments, which are much appreciated!
Joanna x
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You’re so very welcome! 🙏🏼
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Thank you, Cindy!
Joanna x
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A Farewell to Arms was the first book of Hemingway that I read. Later I read For Whom the Bell Tolls. Sadly I never finished reading The Old Man and the Sea. Your deep and in depth write inspires me to go back and finish it.
Thanks Joanna, for this glimpse into this brilliant writer’s life and times.
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Thank you so much, Punam, for your wonderful comments! Your kind words about my favourite writer made my day!
Joanna x
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My pleasure, Joanna. I admire Hemingway a lot.
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Thank you, Punam!
Joanna x
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Thanks for all the interesting information, Joanna! I read most of Hemingway’s books back in the 80s, but didn’t enjoy his style so much. Maybe it’s time for a reread! One’s perspective changes so much with age.
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