The Women Who Shaped Hemingway’s Life and Work影響海明威生活和工作的女性

劉莉

Ernest Hemingway has often been described as a “notorious man’s man” whose prose is rife with depictions of men engaged in bull fights， boxing， hunting and warfare. Though women also play key roles in his fiction， numerous scholars and literary critics （not to mention casual readers） have taken him to task for1 creating female characters who were， too often， stereotypes and projections rather than authentic， flesh and blood women. But the real women who influenced his writing—his wives， girlfriends， colleagues， family members and friends—were anything but stereotypes; they were complex， independent women who played an outsized role in shaping Hemingway’s life and work.

In her 1983 book The Hemingway Women， author Bernice Kert examined the lives of some of the most important women in Hemingway’s life. They include：

Grace Hemingway， Ernest’s mother. Her father worked in a wholesale cutlery business， and her mother encouraged Grace’s interest in music， arranging for her to take violin， piano and voice lessons. When Grace was a teenager， the family moved to Oak Park where she met Clarence “Ed” Hemingway. They struck up a friendship， and Ed， who was studying medicine， was interested in marriage. But Grace was not ready to give up on her musical career. She traveled to New York to study voice and audition at the Metropolitan Opera. But work never materialized and Grace returned to Oak Park to marry her boy next door， Ed. The couple had six children—Ernest was the second born. They spent summers in Michigan， and Grace， when not occupied with the children， spent time planning for a lavish 8-bedroom “dream” home. Years later， Ernest Hemingway would blame his mother’s reckless spending and selfishness for his father’s death. Suffering from financial troubles and physical decline， Ed shot himself with his father’s Smith & Wesson revolver at age 57. Kert argues that his father’s suicide set off in Hemingway a “continuing search for a villain ... [and] he cast Grace in that role.”

Hadley Richardson， Hemingway’s first wife. Hadley was badly injured as a child after falling from a second-story window and afterward her mother became extremely protective. After high school she attended Bryn Mawr College， but dropped out after her mother convinced her that she was too delicate to be on her own. She spent the next decade taking care of her mother; after her death the now 30 year-old Hadley accepted an invitation from a friend to visit Chicago， where she met a 21 year-old aspiring writer named Ernest Hemingway. The two were married less than a year later. They moved to Paris and met members of the “Lost Generation” like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas， Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1923， Hadley， then six months pregnant， traveled with Ernest to Pamplona for his first visit to the Festival of San Fermin. Their son John was born later that fall. The couple returned to Pamplona the next summer， this time joined by a group of American and British ex-pats including journalist Pauline Pfeiffer; it was this trip that inspired his first novel The Sun Also Rises. By the time Hemingway started writing and revising the book， his marriage to Hadley was ending—she discovered he was having an affair with Pauline. They divorced in January， 1927; Hemingway granted her the royalties to The Sun Also Rises in the settlement.

Pauline Pfeiffer studied journalism at the University of Missouri and worked for newspapers in Cleveland and New York before landing a job at Vogue as the assistant to their Paris editor. On her first trip to Paris， accompanied by her sister Virginia， she met Ernest and Hadley Hemingway. She struck up a friendship with the couple and traveled with them to Pamplona as well as Schruns， Austria， where she and Ernest began an affair. After a tumultuous period Ernest and Hadley separated and he and Pauline were married months later. When Pauline became pregnant with their first child， they moved back to the U.S.， settling in Key West. Their son Patrick was born in 1928 as Hemingway was in the midst of writing his novel A Farewell to Arms. The character Catherine—in particular her difficult labor—was inspired in part by Pauline. Three years later she gave birth to their second child， Gregory. The couple remained together until 1940， three years after Hemingway began an affair with Martha Gellhorn.

Martha Gellhorn was already an accomplished author by the time she met Hemingway in December， 1936. Originally from St. Louis， Martha worked as a foreign correspondent in France before returning to the U.S. to research and write about the impact of the Great Depression on working people. Her findings were the basis of a well-received collection of short stories titled The Trouble I’ve Seen， published in 1936. After they struck up a friendship in Key West， Ernest and Martha traveled together to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War and began their affair. During this time Hemingway wrote his first （and only） play， Fifth Column. While Ernest and Pauline didn’t formally separate until 1939， he and Martha lived together off and on from 1936 until they were married in 1940. Martha covered the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany， was the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day and was among the first journalists to report from Dachau concentration camp after it was liberated by Allied Troops. Resentful of Gellhorn’s long absences， Hemingway once wrote her from Cuba asking， “Are you a war correspondent， or wife in my bed？” By the end of the war Martha had had enough and ended the relationship—though not before Ernest had already begun a relationship with the women who would become his fourth and final wife.

Mary Welsh attended Northwestern University， majoring in journalism， where she supported herself through a series of part-time jobs. During the Depression she worked as a copy editor for trade publications， eventually landing a job as a reporter at the Chicago Daily News. Coincidentally her boss was Paul Mowrer， who just moved back to Chicago from Paris with his new wife Hadley， the former Mrs. Hemingway. In 1936 Mary traveled to London where she was hired by the London Daily Express and married an Australian journalist named Noel Monks. Not long after England declared war on Germany， Mary was hired as a correspondent for Time. She and her husband both took on assignments covering the war and the couple grew apart; by 1943 Mary found herself in the center of a group of American artists and intellectuals living in London—people like photographer Robert Capa and writers William Saroyan and Irwin Shaw. Shaw introduced Mary to Ernest Hemingway， who pursued her immediately， though they were both still married. On their third date he drunkenly declared， “I don’t know you Mary. But I want to marry you.” Two years later they married in Cuba. She soon discovered she was pregnant， but it was an ectopic pregnancy and she nearly died after her Fallopian tube ruptured in her sleep. Ernest’s quick intervention saved her life. According to Bernice Kert， after that “Mary’s appreciation for Ernest seemed to swell into an everlasting and unshakeable trust. Nothing he could do to her， either inadvertently or with premeditation， would destroy that gratitude.” After his suicide in 1961， Mary became his literary executor and was responsible for the publication of A Moveable Feast， Islands in the Stream， The Garden of Eden and other posthumous works. She died in 1986 at age 78; in her will， she stipulated that she be buried in Idaho next to Hemingway.

歐內(nèi)斯特·海明威在其作品中大量描寫了斗牛、拳擊、狩獵和作戰(zhàn)的男人，故而常常被描述為“猛男一輩”。雖然女性在他的小說中也起著關(guān)鍵作用，但是許多學(xué)者和文學(xué)評論家（更不必說尋常讀者）卻責(zé)備他塑造的女性角色往往刻板且?guī)в兄饔^臆測，而不是有血有肉的真實女性形象。不過，現(xiàn)實生活中影響他寫作的那些女性——他的妻子、女友、同事、家人和女性朋友們——卻絕非刻板之人。她們是復(fù)雜的、獨立的女性，在海明威的生活和工作中對他產(chǎn)生了深遠影響。

在1983年出版的《海明威的女人們》一書中，作者伯尼斯·克爾特探究了海明威一生中最重要的一些女人的生活。她們包括：

格雷絲·海明威，即海明威的母親。父親從事餐具批發(fā)生意，母親則鼓勵她學(xué)習(xí)音樂，讓她上小提琴、鋼琴和聲樂課程。格雷絲十幾歲時，全家搬到了橡樹園鎮(zhèn)。她在那里邂逅了克拉倫斯·“愛德”·海明威，兩人開始交往。當時正在學(xué)醫(yī)的愛德很想結(jié)婚，但格雷絲卻還沒準備好放棄她的音樂生涯。她前往紐約學(xué)習(xí)聲樂，并參加大都會歌劇院試唱，但卻一直沒有找到工作。于是格雷絲便回到了橡樹園鎮(zhèn)，嫁給了住在隔壁的愛德。這對夫妻生育了6個孩子——歐內(nèi)斯特排行老二。他們一家人在密歇根度過了無數(shù)個夏天，每當格雷絲不用忙著照顧孩子時，她就籌劃一個豪華的八居室“夢想”家園。因此，多年以后，歐內(nèi)斯特·海明威會將父親之死歸咎于母親胡亂花錢、自私自利。在經(jīng)濟困窘和身體變差的折磨下，愛德57歲時用父親的史密斯威森牌左輪手槍自殺了?？藸柼靥岢?，父親的自殺使海明威開始“不斷尋找一個惡人……（并且）讓格雷絲扮演了這個角色”。

哈德利·理查森，即海明威的第一任妻子。哈德利兒時曾從二樓窗戶上跌落，身受重傷。此后，她的母親就對她百般保護。哈德利高中畢業(yè)后進入布林莫爾學(xué)院求學(xué)，卻在母親的說服下認為自己太纖弱而無法自立，最終退學(xué)。之后10年，她都在家照顧母親。母親去世后，時年30歲的哈德利在朋友的邀請下前往芝加哥，遇到了雄心勃勃的21歲的作家歐內(nèi)斯特·海明威。兩人認識不到一年便結(jié)婚了，搬到巴黎后遇到了格特魯?shù)隆に固┮?、愛麗絲·B.托克勒斯、埃茲拉·龐德、F.斯科特·菲茲杰拉德等“迷惘的一代”。1923年，懷孕6個月的哈德利與海明威一起去了潘普洛納，陪他參加人生中第一次的圣費爾明節(jié)。那年秋天，他們的兒子約翰出生了。這對夫婦于第二年夏天回到了潘普洛納，這一次是與一群英美僑民一起，其中就包括記者保利娜·法伊弗。海明威正是在這次旅行中獲得靈感，創(chuàng)作出了第一本小說《太陽照常升起》。他開始寫作和修改這本書的時候，與哈德利的婚姻也走到了盡頭——她發(fā)現(xiàn)海明威與保利娜有染。兩人在1927年1月離婚，海明威在離婚協(xié)議中將《太陽照常升起》的版稅留給了女方。

保利娜·法伊弗曾在密蘇里大學(xué)修讀新聞學(xué)，并在克利夫蘭和紐約的報社工作過，后來成為巴黎版《時尚》雜志主編的助手。她在姐姐弗吉尼亞的陪同下第一次前往巴黎，遇到了海明威夫婦。保利娜與這對夫婦成為了朋友，與他們一同前去潘普洛納和奧地利小鎮(zhèn)施倫斯，并在那些地方與海明威私通。經(jīng)歷了一段波折后，海明威與妻子分手并于數(shù)月后與保利娜結(jié)婚。當保利娜懷上頭一胎時，夫婦倆搬回了美國，定居基韋斯特。他們的兒子帕特里克于1928年出生時，海明威正在創(chuàng)作小說《永別了，武器》。書中的角色凱瑟琳——尤其是她的難產(chǎn)情節(jié)，正是受到了保利娜的一些啟發(fā)。3年后，他們的第二個孩子格雷戈里呱呱墜地。這對夫婦的婚姻一直持續(xù)到了1940年，也就是海明威出軌瑪莎·蓋爾霍恩3年后。

瑪莎·蓋爾霍恩于1936年12月邂逅海明威，當時她已經(jīng)是一位頗有成就的作家。來自圣路易斯市的她曾在法國擔任外國通訊記者，后來又回到美國研究、撰文記述經(jīng)濟大蕭條對勞動人民的沖擊。基于自己的研究成果，她創(chuàng)作了一系列反響頗佳的短篇小說，并于1936年集結(jié)為《我所見的困苦》一書出版。海明威與瑪莎在基韋斯特開始來往后，便一同前去西班牙報道西班牙內(nèi)戰(zhàn)，并且開始了戀愛。海明威在那期間創(chuàng)作了他的第一部也是唯一一部戲劇《第五縱隊》。雖然海明威與保利娜直到1939年才正式分手，但是從1936年起他便斷斷續(xù)續(xù)地與瑪莎同居，直到兩人于1940年結(jié)婚?，斏粌H報道了阿道夫·希特勒在德國的掌權(quán)，也是唯一一位在進攻日當天登陸諾曼底的女性，還是盟軍解放達豪集中營后第一批從營內(nèi)發(fā)出報道的記者之一。由于妻子長期駐外，憤恨的海明威曾從古巴寫信質(zhì)問她“究竟是一名戰(zhàn)地記者，還是我床上的妻子？”二戰(zhàn)結(jié)束后，忍無可忍的瑪莎終結(jié)了這段關(guān)系。不過在此之前，海明威已然與他未來的第四任也是最后一任妻子談情說愛了。

瑪麗·威爾士曾就讀于西北大學(xué)新聞學(xué)專業(yè)，做各種兼職養(yǎng)活自己。經(jīng)濟大蕭條時期，她曾擔任貿(mào)易出版物的文字編輯，最終在《芝加哥每日新聞》報找到了一份記者的工作。巧的是，她的上司保羅·莫勒與新婚妻子哈德利正好從巴黎搬回了芝加哥，這位哈德利正是海明威的前妻。1936年，瑪麗搬到了倫敦并任職于《倫敦每日快報》，嫁給了一位名叫諾埃爾·蒙克斯的澳大利亞記者。英國對德國宣戰(zhàn)后不久，瑪麗成為了《時代》雜志的通訊記者。她和丈夫都承擔了報道戰(zhàn)爭的任務(wù)，于是便分居兩地。1943年，瑪麗發(fā)現(xiàn)自己身邊圍繞了一群生活在倫敦的美國藝術(shù)家和知識分子，包括攝影師羅伯特·卡帕、作家威廉·薩洛揚和歐文·肖。在歐文·肖的介紹下，海明威認識了瑪麗并立刻展開了追求，盡管當時兩人都已結(jié)婚。第3次約會時，海明威醉醺醺地宣告：“瑪麗，我不了解你。但是我想娶你?！庇谑莾赡旰笏麄冊诠虐徒Y(jié)婚了?，旣惡芸毂惆l(fā)現(xiàn)自己有了身孕，不過卻是一次宮外孕。在睡夢中，她的輸卵管突然破裂，幾乎要了她的命，多虧海明威迅速處理才逃過一劫。根據(jù)伯尼斯·克爾特的說法，在那次事件后，“瑪麗對海明威的欣賞似乎擴大成了一種永恒的、不可動搖的信任。不管有意還是無意，無論他對她做什么，都無法摧毀那種感激之情?！?961年海明威自殺后，瑪麗成了他的遺稿保管人，負責(zé)《流動的盛宴》《海流中的島嶼》《伊甸園》等遺作的出版。1986年，78歲的瑪麗與世長辭。她在遺囑中明確要求將自己葬在愛達荷州，與海明威相伴長眠。