Cuba is a hell of an interesting place now and has been for last five years. Probably before too you say. But only know what I've seen. Anyway am writing a story about this next revolution. Come on down any time and I'll take you over there in the boat and you'll get a good story out of it anyway. If you really feel blue enough, get yourself heavily insured and I'll see you can get killed [...] I'll write you a fine obituary that Malcolm Cowley will cut the best part out of for the new republic and we can take your liver out and give it to the Princeton Museum, your heart to the Plaza Hotel, one lung lung to Max Perkins and the other to George Horace Lorimer. If we can still find your balls I will take them via the Ile de France to Paris and down to Antibes and have them cast into the sea off Eden Roc and we will get Mac Leish to write a Mystic Poem to be read at that Catholic School (Newman?) you went to. Would you like me to write the mystic poem now. Let's see.
Lines To Be Read At the Casting of Scott FitzGerald's balls into the Sea from Eden Roc (Antibes Alpes Maritimes)
Whence from these gray Heights unjockstrapped wholly stewed he
Flung
Himself?
No.
Some waiter?
Yes.
Push tenderly oh green shoots of grass
Tickle not our Fitz's nostrils
Pass
The gray moving unbenfinneyed sea deaths deeper than
our debt to Eliot
Fling flang them flung his own his two finally his one
Spherical, colloid, interstitial,
uprising lost to sight
in fright
natural
not artificial
no ripple make as sinking sanking sonking sunk
Aw hell you'll have to get Mac Leish to write the mystic poem. I'll just give a few personal reminiscences of his Paris Period. Get that insurance now, pal. If they won't give you health or life insurance get accident insurance.
So long Scott --
Let me hear from you. Merry Christmas! Pauline sends her love.
Yours always affectionately
Ernest
- Ernest Hemingway, letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 21 December 1935, quoted in Carlos Baker (ed.), Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917-1961, London, 1981, p.428-9.
See also:
Books: A NZer makes powerful enemies at the BBC, 28 February 2023
Books: The importance of movies to Gopher Prairie, 6 October 2022
Books: The Paris correspondent starts his day, 30 April 2016
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