ALBA Workshops for Everyone: Hemingway, the Spanish Civil War, and the Lincoln Brigade

ALBA Workshops for Everyone

Ernest Hemingway, the Lincoln Brigade, and the Spanish Civil War

November 18, 2021, 5:00-6:15 PM EST

Dear participant,

Thanks for signing up for this workshop. We are looking forward to spending some time with you on Zoom. To facilitate our discussion, we’ve divided the topic into three parts. We’ve prepared some readings and viewings for each, as well as some options for further reading and viewing should you have time. You are also invited to pose any questions you’d like to discuss in advance of our meeting, through this Google form. Please post your questions by November 16.

 

Part 1: Politics & Hispanophilia: Hemingway & Lincoln Brigade

One could argue that Hemingway’s interest in the Spanish Civil War was—initially at least—driven more by his love of the country and its people (in a word, his Hispanophilia) than by his politics. The volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade, on the other hand, were politically driven but often less knowledgeable about Spain. How did the war change Hemingway’s politics and the Lincolns’ relationship to Spain?

Readings:

• Peter N. Carroll, “American Tourists in Spain,” in From Guernica to Human Rights (Kent State University Press), pp. 71-87.

Part 2: For Whom the Bell Tolls, the novel and film, as a flawed representation of the Spanish Civil War

For several generations of Americans, the image they held of the Spanish Civil War was shaped by Hemingway’s bestselling Spanish Civil War novel and its blockbuster Hollywood version (starring Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper). The Lincolns did not like the novel particularly; and Hemingway had his own issues with the movie script. Do the novel and the movie have any redeeming value? What did it mean to tell the story of the Spanish Republic’s fight against fascism before and after the US entered World War II, or during the Cold War?

Readings:

• Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), chapter 13, pp. 158-177.
• Peter N. Carroll, “Ernest Hemingway, Screenwriter: New Letters on For Whom the Bell Tolls,” in The Antioch Review 53.3 (1995): 261-83. (Also in: From Guernica to Human Rights, chapter 7).
• Hemingway, “On the American Dead in Spain.”

Optional viewing:

• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), available on various streaming services

Optional reading:

• Dan Kaufman, “Papa, Mac and Barack,” The Observer July 28, 2008. Why was Hemingway’s novel favored by both Barack Obama and John McCain?
• “The Butterfly and the Tank”; “Night Before Battle” (short stories), in Hemingway, The Fifth Column and Four Other Stories of the Spanish Civil War. New York: Scribner’s, 1969.
• Alvah Bessie review For Whom the Bell Tolls, in The New Masses, 5 Nov. 1940.
• Letter of Ernest Hemingway to Milt Wolff. ALBA Collection, NYU; Alvah Bessie Papers, Series IV: Subject Files, Box 5, Folder 32.
• “An Open Letter to Hemingway from the Lincoln Brigade Vets.” People’s World, 27 Nov. 1940. ALBA Collection, NYU; Alvah Bessie Papers, Series I: Spanish Civil War, Box 1, Folder 4: Clippings.

Part 3: Hemingway, Spain, and the Homefront

Martha Gellhorn and Hemingway were involved in the effort to convince the Roosevelt administration to intervene on behalf of the Spanish Republic. A key moment occurred when both were invited to the White House to screen The Spanish Earth, the documentary directed by the Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens for which Hemingway wrote the script and did the voice-over (after rejecting Orson Welles’s narration for sounding too pompous). What can we learn from the film about Roosevelt’s stance on intervention vs. non-intervention, the role of women journalists, and the nature of political documentaries?

Readings:

• Roosevelt, Quarantine Speech (1937)
• Martha Gellhorn, Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, April 1937
• Sebastiaan Faber, interview with Peter Davis on the making of Spanish Earth (The Volunteer, December 2018), link.

Viewings:

• The Spanish Earth (YouTube), reel 6 (43:00-53:50)

Optional viewings:

• The Spanish Earth (YouTube) in its entirety.