Ernest Hemmingway: Bookcase Puzzle in Cuba

While in Cuba, two different bookshelves became a fascination.

One set of bookshelves was in the house of Ernest Hemingway, which was at a place called San Francisco de Paula, just outside Havana. 

The other bookshelf was in the Museum of Napoleon in Vedado, Havana.

I couldn’t understand the fascination.  It was something about their contrast… I thought about the well-annotated books of Hemingway.  They were in a well-thumbed state, about 9,000 of them, on eclectic subjects and genres, amid a house of loving memorabilia: old pieces of driftwood, sea shells, magazines, art work, stuffed animals and even a frog in formaldehyde.

However the bookcase in the Napoleon’s museum was in pristine condition and all the books were on Napoleon in some way: a history, a document, a graphic account of a battle.  They looked untouched, often gold leafed, standing behind a glass cover within a formal room of polished wood and spotless floors and had belonged to pre-revolution sugar tycoon Julio Lobo and about 7,000 of them.

Hemingway’s library had an air of having been well-used.  Even though they were much younger books, they looked ‘read’ and were loved, read, left about the house, next to the toilet, in every room of the house.  I supposed that had been used to inspire the Nobel prize winner’s creativity, and their obvious value to him as an avid reader.

Whereas Lobo’s library looked more like just a collection, put there more like storage or hoarding.  Because of their pristine condition, even though they were much older, there was a sense of disuse about them: or more that their use was to be hoarded or kept, making supply less and demand more… or feeding an obsession.  “Un fanatico” the museum guide called him.  They were stacked like bricks of a castle wall, to hoard or imprison, like a stash of unseen jewellery, unused, unseen.

I kept thinking about these bookshelves, and how they both had been taken from their owners by the revolutionaries.  Lobo was an honest sugar tycoon who was no fan of the dictator Batista but was neither fan of the new socialist government.  After the 1959 revolution, in 1962, when asked to run the new nationalised sugar plantations, Lobo refused and so he was exiled, leaving behind all his assets and of course his Napoleon book collection.

Mary Hemmingway, Hemingway’s widow (by 1961 Hemingway had died) had decided herself to donate his house and library to the Cuban People.  Though not political, Hemingway was on good terms with Fidel Castro and the two had discussions about literature.  Mary described Hemingway as selling nothing but ‘words’ and thought he’d be pleased to give the Cuban people some of the pleasure he’d found in his house for the last 30 years of his life, where he wrote much of his work (including Old Man and the Sea) between 1931 and 1960.

After Lobo’s departure, the sugar industry collapsed, with two thirds of its factories and refineries closed.  However this was not the fault of nationalising the industry, but an embargo that took place where countries worldwide stopped buying Cuba’s sugar because of its ‘communism’ despite the Vatican’s and the UN’s calls for the blockade to be lifted.

But it seemed to me that the ‘used’ books of Hemingway were like the use of capital.  It can either be hoarded away and unused, rather like the Napoleon books, or it can be spread around for everyone’s good, like those magazines and books of Hemingway.

Use is rather like spreading love: if you are possessive it goes off, but if you let it free it just gets stronger.

Nationalising these two libraries and making Cuba independent of American power was not the only feat for Castro.  He had to spread the wealth across a nation and educate, hospitalise, feed and create jobs.  Money made was given back to public domain and Cuba now has the highest literacy rates and life expectancy in South America, the lowest infant mortality rate (even lower than America) and basic needs of its people are met.  Like Hemingway’s bookshelf, the wealth of the country is ‘used’.  Castro ensured that all Cuban people can reach the first level and perhaps the next of Maslow’s human pyramid: and thus have a better chance to self-actualise.

If you think of the ‘unused’ bookshelf of the Napoleon books, this is the wealth and capital of countries where 1 percent of the people see it while the other ninety nine percent watches public schools, arts and hospitals deteriorate.

Fidel Castro’s feat was a huge one and he succeeded.  His first speech, a white dove of peace landed on his shoulder, for some this was a miraculous sign that he was a guide sent to teach the world about something.  Whatever it meant, when bearing in mind these two bookcases, it is certainly true that in terms of the hoarding of wealth and the capital: such cupidity bodes no good for a nation and just like the bookcase, it is the spreading of words and the use of knowledge that can transform a mind into a Nobel Award for literature and become a treasure for all the people, its message living on well into the future.

Other posts of interest:
The Arabian Nights: how storytelling can nurture a love story
The wisdom of Confucius: How the I Ching can help you find the best answer
Kafka’s Metamorphosis: How Art can be as Captivating as Dream
Transformation and Victor Hugo: "To love another person is to see the face of God"
Daniel Maximin: "Poetry is Emancipation"
Katherine Mansfield: How to live life in BLISS