On Oct. 28, 1954, the day he acquired phrase that he had gained the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ernest Hemingway decided few anticipated. He introduced he was gifting his Nobel Prize medal to the Sanctuary of Our Woman of Charity in Cuba, (the Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre).
This Valentine’s Day, within the wake of the continuing controversy surrounding the receipt by President Trump of the Nobel Peace Prize he was gifted by María Corina Machado of Venezuela, Hemingway’s choice is value recalling.
It embodies the essence of Valentine’s Day.
The Virgin del Cobre is the patron saint of Cuba, and in gifting his Nobel Prize medal to the sanctuary for her within the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Hemingway was distinguishing his love for the folks of Cuba, his house for greater than a decade, from his help for the federal government of Cuba, which in 1954 was managed by the strongman dictator Fulgencio Batista.
In her memoir, “How It Was” Mary Hemingway tells the story of how her husband in a chat he gave in Spanish to the Cuban press introduced his choice to present his medal.
However it was not solely the folks of Cuba Hemingway sought to honor along with his Nobel Prize. In assembly with the American press, Hemingway spoke of such previous American writers as Mark Twain and Henry James, who had by no means acquired the Nobel Prize for Literature however who he believed deserved it. He then went on to say he thought that amongst residing writers, Isak Dinesen, Bernard Berenson, and Carl Sandburg have been worthy of the Nobel Prize.
In honoring previous and current writers, Hemingway was doing the alternative of Trump, who has discovered it essential to diminish the accomplishments of others with the intention to improve his Nobel laureate claims.
Hemingway was following the trail that Santiago, the fisherman-hero of his novel “The Previous Man and the Sea,” takes after he has gone 84 days with out catching a fish. When Santiago lastly hooks an enormous marlin, he guarantees to make a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre if he is ready to land his catch.
Hemingway’s catch was the Nobel Prize, and he was assured that the fathers working the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre would deal with his medal with the identical care they handled all presents of devotion. They might not use the medal to publicize the sanctuary.
How honorable Hemingway’s choice appears compared to all that has occurred since Machado turned over her medal to Trump.
In his White Home assembly with Machado, the president made clear what he thinks it means to obtain a present of the Nobel Peace Prize and the way the honors related to the prize are ones he’s now entitled to say. “María offered me along with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I’ve carried out,” the president boasted on social media.
In an official assertion the Nobel Committee disagreed. “A laureate can not,” the committee declared, “share the prize with others, nor switch it as soon as it has been introduced.”
Will the president heed the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s pronouncement? In all probability not. However this Valentine’s Day that doesn’t matter. If we’re searching for a lesson in receiving and giving that strikes us, we are able to do no higher than flip again the clock to 1954 and Hemingway’s instance.
Mills is co-chair of the literature division at Sarah Lawrence Faculty and writer of “Profitable the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.”
