Sunday, November 17, 2013

Hemingway's "Mississippi": Pamplona & The Fiesta

The Cafe Iruna in Pamplona -- The Place Where It All Began and the location of many dramatic scenes in The Sun Also Rises
July 6, 2013, Pamplona, Spain -- Ernest Hemingway visited Pamplona and the San Fermin Fiesta nine times. Ironically, on that fateful July day in 1961, at the same time Papa reached to open his unlocked gun cabinet to end it all, on his desk were tickets and reservations for the place where it all began -- not just for his career -- but for modern American literature.


When Hollywood finally gets around to doing an epic of Papa's life, there is only one fitting way to film the final scene, and that is to show a shaky hand opening the unlocked gun cabinet, then slow-pan and fade-in focus up close on those tickets, followed by a sudden black-screen (with no gun shot, please).

"We went down the stairs and out of the door and walked across the square toward the Cafe Iruna." The Sun Also Rises

"Across the square the white wicker tables and chairs of the Iruna extended out beyond the Arcade to the edge of the street. I looked for Brett and Mike at the tables. There they were.." The Sun Also Rises
Why is Pamplona so important? Is it just a place for men (and now women) of all ages to come test their metal and courage in the Running of the Bulls, as the popular myth would have you believe? Perhaps, for some, but for American literature it is so much more.

"Brett saw us coming and waved. Her eyes crinkled up as we came to the table. 'Hello, you chaps!' she called." The Sun Also Rises -- Inside the Iruna Cafe -- Nothing Has Changed
"The Sun Also Rises" is important because so much that we enjoy in literature came from this one book, inspired here, in this place, with this work.



Dad (center, back turned) ordering us a drink at the bar EH Frequented both in Fiction and in Real Life. His statue is in the background right looking towards the entrance and out onto the plaza.
His many early visits here, in the 1920's, inspired the novel that not only made him famous, but identified him and his writing style: short declarative sentences, lacking adjectives and fancy words; allowing us to drink in every word for its impact; detailed description that puts you there, with him, at every turn, like the journalist he was; free-flowing conversational dialogue; and honest story lines that describe real life, in all its complexities, both with meaning and without, not fantasy or escapism. In sum, writing done with unvarnished truth and integrity.



Holding up the Bar with Papa (the hat thing felt a little disrespectful, so I removed it)


Above Is Perhaps the Most Photographed Statue in Pamplona -- The Spirits of San Fermin and Ernesto Were With Us
This new approach to literature, as put together in novel form for the first time with "The Sun Also Rises", has since been replicated by many.  Specifically, it helped give voice to "The Lost Generation" of young people who saw their world turned upside down by The Great War. The violent and horrific scenes -- the effects of chemical warfare, losing life and limb to take ground only to be voluntarily ceded the next day, the meaninglessness of the war's beginning, and the tragedy of its duration and end -- all marked this generation. Few members of it were as marked as Ernest Hemingway, and his fellow ex-patriots of writers, artists and musicians.

The Bar Adjoined to the Iruna Where Papa Keeps Watch and Holds Up the Bar
Hemingway gave them a voice, and did so with a new modernist literary style that all began with "The Fiesta", the first title and still the title in Europe.



The corrals from which the bulls are released in the morning for the bull run,and the location of one of the opening scenes between "Brett and Jake".
"At the gate of the corrals two men took tickets from the people that went in. We went through the gate. There were trees inside and a low stone house. At the far end was the stone wall of the corrals..." The Sun Also Rises 


"All along the old walls and ramparts people were standing.... 'They must think something is going to happen," Brett said. 'They want to see the bulls.'" The Sun Also Rises
However, why does something that mattered to another, older generation, still matter now, to us?

Hemingway's gift was not just to his own generation, but to each successive generation, each of which has a need to find its own voice and a means to express it.

"Beyond the river rose the plateau of the town." The Sun Also Rises
Whether it was "The Lost Generation", the "Greatest Generation", the "Rock and Roll" or "Vietnam Generations", the yuppies in "Thirty Something" or Generation X, they each have replicated what was first done here, in a small city in the Navarre Region of Northern Spain, by a young writer trying to find his own voice, in a book about a small group of ex-patriots, a fiesta, a beautiful girl, a tragic romance, and the Bull Fights.
Dad in front of the corral, at sunset. 
"The Sun Also Rises" is not just Hemingway's voice, it is our own. That is what makes it a classic. That is what makes it special. That is what makes this place, and everything about it, "Hemingway's Mississippi."

Next week: Day one of the Fiesta begins like a rocket -- literally! Now that we have established the significance of The Sun Also Rises, as a reminder for some, as an introduction for others, but mostly as an introspective exercise for me, we can move on next time with more fun. Parties, drinking, dancing, singing, and, of course, running with bulls and watching my first bull fights.

Along the way, I meet John Hemingway, grandson to Ernest and Pauline Hemingway (of Arkansas), and I even espouse a little on that "something" we never can seem to define, but that felt an awful lot like Ernest himself looking out for me.

We will end the Spanish portion of this blog -- perhaps the most important -- in the same place the novel finished, at the same bars and restaurants in Madrid.

So stay tuned.








Sunday, November 10, 2013

The Sun Also Rises, From Hemingway's Room



The Hostel Burguete, Where -- in the 1920s -- Hemingway, Hadley & Friends Stayed Several Times and in the Fictional Account Known as "The Sun Also Rises"
July, 6th, 2013, Burguete, Spain -- I write this post from the very same room that Ernest Hemingway stayed in and later wrote about in great detail in "The Sun Also Rises". I am up early on the morning of the Saint Fermin Festival's first day, writing in the same room that EH wrote in, looking out on the same unchanged landscape.


Hemingway's Room Number (Photo by Drew Smith)


Hemingway's Window at Sunrise: "When I woke in the morning I went to the window and looked out. It had cleared and there were no clouds on the mountains" Excerpt from The Sun Also Rises
This is indeed turning into my own Woody Allen nostalgic "pinch me" tour. I am also writing this at the same time Ernest himself would have written, at the break of dawn, with roosters crowing outside my open window, which looks out onto the Irati Forest and valley -- the mountains in silhouette against still dark skies.

Below is the Courtyard where once there "were some old carts and an old diligence..." 

"It was cool outside in the early morning and the sun had not yet dried the dew that had come when the wind died down. I hunted around in the shed behind the inn and found a sort of mattock, and went down toward the stream to try and dig some worms for bait. The stream was clear and shallow but it did not look trouty." The Sun Also Rises
From out side the window in the picture above you can see the old shed (pitched roof and black door), still standing and still paddocked as it must have been in the 1920s. The brook where he dug for worms is down a path behind this shed about 200 yards, about where the treeline meets the brown pasture.

Hemingway's Room" "After supper we went up-stairs and smoked and read in bed to keep warm. Once in the night I woke and heard the wind blowing. It felt good to be warm and in bed." The Sun Also Rises

It was cold, but not viewing-my-breath-cold, as it was in the novel. The Pyrenees are in the background, the same ones that Drew and I hiked yesterday in preparation for our Kilimanjaro hike later.

"There were two beds, a washstand, clothes-chest..." The Sun Also Rises

"and a big, framed steel-engraving of Nuestra Senora de Roncesvalles." The Sun Also Rises
It is hard to describe this feeling for you. The room is just as he described it himself in the book on his visit to the village of Burguete. There is a picture of him outside the door marking this as his room.

The Famous Photo of EH outside the Entrance
They serve trout from the Irati river in the cafe, and the downstairs is just as it was, with the piano, the same prints, and all the rest as described in the book. On Trip Adviser and in a NY Times article about this hotel it mentioned that the good thing is that "nothing has changed" and it does not seem to be a tourist mecca or have been spoiled at all by -- lets be honest -- people like me. It also mentions, however, that the sparseness of the room suggests that it really has not changed any at all. Of course, that is exactly as I would have it.

The Downstairs Entrance: "It had a stone floor, low ceiling, and was oak panelled." The Sun Also Rises
The owners of the hotel spoke little to no English. My Spanish speaking son had to interpret for us. As with my post entitled "Midnight in Barcelona" this experience gave off a similar eerie feeling. It was if we really had gone back in time to the 1920's. Like the book, we practically had the place to ourselves. They charge a little more for the Hemingway room than the others, but still it was very cheap to stay here. Hemingway's favorite room in Pamplona costs thousands to rent per night and is booked years in advance. This one, arguably more interesting, is a steal.

The old woman who greeted us had to be the granddaughter of the woman in the book..."The fat woman who ran the inn came out from the kitchen and shook hands with us..." There is a small photo of an old woman on the door to the kitchen who looks a lot like this woman... could it be?

We did not have time to go fishing, nor to stay longer than about a half day and a night.  But Drew and I did go on a hike that followed much the same route as in the book, down to the Irati River and back, as Dad rested in the Inn.


The Village of Burguete, in the Navarre Hills of Northern Span: "As we came to the edge of the rise we saw the red roofs and white houses of Burguete ahead and strung out on the plain, and away off on the shoulder of the first dark mountain was the gray metal-sheathed roof of the monastery of Roncesvalles." The Sun Also Rises (Photo by Drew Smith)


"We went up the street, past the whitewashed stone houses, families sitting in their doorways watching us, to the inn." The Sun Also Rises (photo by Drew Smith)

"The houses of Burguete were along both sides of the road. There were no side-streets. We passed the church and the schoolyard, and the bus stopped." The Sun Also Rises (Photo courtesy Drew Smith)
"'We have to follow this road along the ridge, cross the hills, go through the woods on the far hills, and come down to the Irait valley,' I pointed out to Bill. That's a Hell of a Hike.'" The Sun Also Rises (photo courtesy Drew Smith)
"We started up the road and then went across a meadow and found a path that crossed the fields and went toward the woods on the slope of the first hill. We walked across the fields on the sandy path. The fields were rolling and grassy and the grass was short from the sheep grazing. " The Sun Also Rises (photo by Drew Smith)
"The cattle were up in the hills. We heard their bells in the woods." The Sun Also Rises


The path crossed a stream on a foot-log. The log was surfaced off, and there was a sapling bent across for a rail. In the flat pool beside the stream tadpoles spotted the sand. We went up a steep bank and across the rolling fields."

"Looking back we saw Burguete, white houses and red roofs, and the white road with a truck going along it and the dust rising." The Sun Also Rises (photo by Drew Smith) 

"Beyond the fields we crossed another faster-flowing stream. A sandy road led down to the ford and beyond into the woods." The Sun Also Rises (photo by Drew Smith)

"Way off we saw the steep bluffs, dark with trees and jutting with gray stone, that marked the course of the Irati River." The Sun Also Rises (photo by Drew Smith)
"The road came out from the shadow of the woods into the hot sun. Ahead was a river-valley. Beyond the valley was a steep hill. There was a field of buckwheat on the hill. We saw a white house under some trees on the hillside." The Sun Also Rises

"It was very hot and we stopped under some trees beside a dam that crossed a river.... The gate was up, and I sat on one of the squared timbers and watched the smooth apron of water before the river tumbled into the falls. In the white water at the foot of the dam it was deep. As I baited up, a trout shot up out of the white water into the falls and was carried down."  The Sun Also Rises (photo by Drew Smith)

"a smooth apron of water..." The Sun Also Rises (Photo by Drew Smith)


"We found a stream with a pool deep enough to swim in. " The Sun Also Rises Local children swimming in the Irati River. (Photo by Drew Smith) 


 "It was hot enough so that it felt good to wade in the cold stream, and the sun dried you when you came out and sat on the bank." The Sun Also Rises  -- Photo of me contemplating Hemingway, beside the Irati River , after taking a dip myself. The water is still "so cold my hand and wrist felt numbed..." and it is certainly cold enough to chill wine, as it was in the book.(photo by Drew Smith) 
After Drew and I made this hike we stopped at a roadside store, purchased the kind of practical things you can never find on a trip, and walked back to the Inn. It was dusk. There were several other real hikers coming south from the French border town of Saint Jean Pied de Port. In "The Sun Also Rises" Jake also meets an Englishman named Harris who is a hiker, and who they end up befriending for five days of fishing, drinking and playing three handed bridge. We did not make friends with any hikers, but there were several.

The Only Official Sign that this is Hemingway Turf --
a Map in Spanish Outlining His Favorite Spots of the Navarre Region

Drew and Dad outside the Hotel Burguete Before Leaving for The Fiesta
If you want to visit this area, the most popular hike is the one mentioned in the book from the Monastery of Roncesvalles to Pamplona. It is a beautiful yet challenging hike, mostly on what are today paved roadways. The Pyrenees are just as scary and steep as they look on TV.

"We started up the road into the woods. It was a long walk home to Burguete, and it was dark when we came down across the fields to the road, and along the road between the houses of the town, their windows lighted, to the inn." The Sun Also Rises

Headed for Pamplona and the first day of "The Fiesta" as the snow melt runs through the town's gutters. (photo by Drew Smith)
I wish I had more time here. It is a real village experience. There was one literary type I saw sipping wine and reading, jotting in her journal, at the side cafe next to the hotel.  Dad rested up after a long day of travelling across France the day before. We all hate to go now... but it is time for the Fiesta!

"Come on to Pamplona. We can play some bridge there, and there's going to be a damned fine fiesta." Jake Barns to Harris, the English hiker. The Sun Also Rises

NEXT WEEK: The Fiesta Kicks Off -- A Party Like No Other You Have EVER Seen-- I Promise






Sunday, November 3, 2013

Perspective on the Pont du Gard


Le Pont du Gard, par Hubert Robert - 1787 (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
"The resounding impact of my steps as I walk beneath these mighty arches made me think I could almost hear the voices of those who built them. I was lost, like an insect, in its immensity. I felt, though small and insignificant, that something unknown was lifting my soul and I said to myself, 'Am I not a Roman?'" Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"As I turn to face the Gard bridge, my soul is thrown into a deep and prolonged sense of astonishment. The Coliseum in Rome never saw me plunge so deeply into such a state of reverie. " 1838 French Realist Marie-Henri Beyle or better known as his pen name "Stendhal"

July 4th, 2013, Pont du Gard, France -- So far, the last three blogs have all pretty much covered just one very special day in the South of France. An Independence Day that began with the sounds of street sweepers outside our hotel balcony, in preparation for the Tour de France, ended late that afternoon atop nearby Pont du Gard -- the best preserved Roman aqueduct in the old Roman Empire-- and one of the most famous of all World Heritage Sites. Pont du Gard is also most famous of all the "Grand Sites de France" -- a special French National designation.


Pont du Gard is Featured on the Euro, Held Up Here Next to the Actual Pont du Gard
(photos courtesy of Drew Smith)

Pont du Gard as you approach from the Visitor's Center, on the Right Bank
(photo by Drew Smith)

This was the picture you have no doubt seen countless times in textbooks and in pretty much any description of how advanced Roman Civilization was 2000 years ago. While most Europeans were still running around like the noble savage, in tribes, the Romans were constructing a civilization that must have seemed at the time like the airplane flying over an aboriginal hut in a Borneo jungle.


The Top of the Aqueduct Contains a Tunnel that  Moves the Water Using Gravity
(photo by Drew Smith)
After taking the exit and finding the parking lot, we took our time going through the Visitor Center and Museum, which explains the history of Roman Civilization in what is now France, how the availability of fresh, safe water for drinking and irrigation was essentially the "oil" of that day. If you could move water you could expand civilization and thus the Roman Empire -- simple as that.

 
 
The Walkway Bridge Underneath (photos by Drew Smith)
 
The engineering and technology to build this masterpiece was not simple, however. Each stone was cut from the quarry up river and moved here then carved and fitted into each space designed especially for that space, and to hold up the structure. There is no cement, no other construction, and it has survived in tact for 2000 years.
 
The hydrology was equally amazing. Water was moved using gravity along a route hundreds of miles long passing through here and ultimately to nearby Nimes, a Roman center and to this day full of other Roman artifacts and structures. In Nimes, an amazing array of plumbing was used to spread this water throughout the homes and buildings and squares.
 
If you plan ahead, you can schedule a tour that takes you through the actual covered aqueduct on top. Drew and I hiked the steep climb and made it to the doorway, but unfortunately it was locked. It is big enough for grown people to walk through. If I come back, I am doing that tour.
 
 
 
                                                            (photo by Drew Smith)
 
(photo by Drew Smith)
 
                                                                 (photo by Drew Smith)
 
                                              (photo of our Trip Photographer -- Drew Smith)

                                                     The Gard River (Hence Pont du Gard)
                                                                 (photo by Drew Smith)

                    The Gard River is apparently a favorite swimming and picnicking place for locals.
       (photo by Drew Smith)

Scene from the Left Bank of the Gard, Near the Prehistoric Ruins and, of course, an outdoor café (this is France, where there are literally more outdoor cafes than there are bathrooms or pretty much anything else).
(photo by Drew Smith)
 
 
 (photo by Drew Smith, from the Gard River)

Close Up View (photo by Drew Smith)
 
 
 
 
A Villa By The River with an Outstanding View of the Pont du Gard. It is currently undergoing renovation. I was told that this was a famous honeymoon location. I can see why. They say at night the Pont du Gard is even more beautiful to behold. I wish we could have stayed to find out, but we had to hit the road to stay on schedule for this whirlwind tour.
(photo by Drew Smith)
 
 
Ancient Olive Tree -- What This Tree Has Seen!
(photo by Drew Smith)
 
Perspective? I imagine it was not too different from the hundreds of artists and others who have come to this spot for inspiration and insight over the millennia. Like Rousseau and Stendhal above, this place requires, even demands reflection.

For me, the timeless questions asked throughout literature, poetry, music and art of all kinds can be summed up by the feelings wrought by walking across a 2000 year old structure, still standing. What is it all about? Our lives are but blips on the radar screen -- flashing moments in the totality of time and the universe. Why are we here? The people who placed these stones in their place are long gone, their cares and worries and loves and the rest all "Gone With the Wind" or, as the Kansas song says, like "Dust in the Wind". Yet this survives them.

For me, ironically, this place is a reminder of how almost everything we have today will one day no longer be, including ourselves and all that we know. Why is this so special a place? Because it is so rare that something lasts this long. After the Roman Empire fell, Europe entered a period known as The Dark Ages, and most if not all Roman Engineering advances like this were torn down by the ignorant tribes that remained behind, during one of the bleakest and scariest times in history.

In short, it put into perspective for me that -- even as I sit here and type on a modern computer, thinking that we are so advanced as a people -- it can just as easily be lost again by those who seek to destroy and obstruct out of fear and ignorance and greed, like these Roman masterpieces were destroyed in the Dark Ages

Those who know me know that I am something of a climate change hawk. We sit by, day by day, debating the cares and concerns of today while choosing to be ignorant of science and of the fateful warnings everywhere that -- even if we stop today -- the use of our atmosphere as an open sewer is leading us down a path that at best will change our lives dramatically and at worst will rock the very foundation of our current advanced civilization to the point of collapse.

The Ancient Romans once had good reason to believe the world would always go on as it had before, with them leading the way. But it all crumbled, quite literally, around them. Before the Romans, it happened to the Ancient Greeks, as it has to all great civilizations before and since. Who are we to think it could not happen to us? In spite of all the changes from their time to ours, the one thing that has not changed at all is human nature.  We think we have changed, and perhaps we have around the fringes. Yet we still have the capacity to destroy our planet and civilization with the very same technology that helped us build it.

So, what does last? Hope. That is the only recourse. Somehow, just maybe, things will be different this time. The other thing that is certain, is now. Today. No one can take that away. So I was grateful that I had this day with my father and my son, at this special place, bathed in the late afternoon Mediterranean sun in all its splendor.

This was my own perspective, atop the Pont du Gard.

Alas, we had to hurry back to the parking lot and be on our way. After stopping in Toulouse later that night (a very long night of driving I might add), the next day we would be heading across the steep Pyrenees Mountains and into the French/Spanish border just above Pamplona. My next post will be from the little village of Burguete, where Hemingway spent the night while going trout fishing and hiking in real life and in "The Sun Also Rises". So if you are reading along, try to get to that point in the book by next weekend. I stayed in the same room, and I took pictures! Until then, Au Revoir!