Hemingway and his Spanish compadres, both real and fictional, engaged life on their own terms?#34;like the fabled but still-current mad running of the bulls on the streets of Pamplona. Did he himself run the bulls? The answers are contradictory.* Regardless, the mercurial young novelist always knew when to retreat from the action and write about life.
Likewise, during Oak Park’s annual three-day Hemingway Birthday Festival this weekend, with so much July heat and ado, it might be wise for those celebrating to escape for half an hour to the cool of our main branch library. There, on the second floor north wall in the Periodicals Section, is a small and rewarding jewel of a photo collection depicting not only the “runnings” but a few portraits of the artist at work in Finca Vigia, his villa in Cuba.
Some of the Pamplona shots could brand you on the spot?#34;the insane spectacle of frightened bulls on the charge, amok in the narrow streets, mixing it in real time with the fevered and overmatched thrill-seekers. Pandemonium in fear. Panic in the raw. And crazed people, in various states of drunkenness cutting into the dance with death.
One frozen moment catches a reveler wearing a mask of fright, caught on the tip of a bull’s horn; not impaled, but hanging by a single belt loop. He’s being carried pell-mell like a useless banner, helpless, hapless, upside down along the bull’s flanks, “no direction home.”
An arena shot, taken from afar, carries the poetic symmetry of a corrida with attendant picadors entering opposite the matador, amid a dramatic division of darkness and sunlight. Then a magnificent close?#34;up of the bullfighter resplendent in his flamboyantly brocaded costume, framed against a cloud-dappled blue sky.
Meanwhile, 5,000 miles west and 30-something years later, the writer is shown at work in his beloved Finca Vigia. A possibly interesting, possibly pedestrian observation can be made that Hemingway was a lefty. (Either that, or the photo has been flopped.)
Whence this bijou of a showing? In May, the Hemingway Museum, with some assistance from the Oak Park Public Library, hosted a two-day tribute honoring the association of Ernest Hemingway with the province of Navarra?#34;more particularly the town of Pamplona. Several dignitaries from Spain came to participate in an exhibition, a forum, a film and dinner, May 18 and 19. The public was invited to the mutual appreciation of the Spanish culture and the talent of an Oak Park author who so greatly embraced it.
As a parting gesture, the Spanish officials left behind this stunning collection?#34;more of which the library has in storage. Shot by “internationally known photographers,” most are from Spain. Eight weeks ago, without fanfare, the mounted prints?#34;some in vibrant color, others in black and white and one in sepia?#34;went up on the north wall, where they are having an open run.
Taking one’s time to see and appreciate?#34;not just look at?#34;this modest collection, one could ride one’s imagination as far as Pamplona and see also Hemingway, Hadley and Spain itself. As Jake Barnes said at the close of The Sun Also Rises, “Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?”
*Research shows that “Neither Hemingway nor his model, Jake Barnes, ever ran with the bulls.” (Charles M. Oliver, Hemingway A to Z.)