![Sample our Sports and Leisure journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5949/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Sports-Leisure.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Through the study of an article written by the young Hemingway in The Toronto Star Weekly dated from May 15th, 1920, these lines offer an additional insight into the writer’s personality, and more specifically the reasons for his admiration for boxing. Entitled ‘Prizefight Women’, this article relates the reactions of a crowd during a traditional pugilistic meeting featuring the ‘French Idol’ – Georges Carpentier. If throughout his life, Pap displayed his taste for this sport, it appears that the main reasons for his fascination were already revealed in this writing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Between February 1920 and December 1924, Hemingway wrote approximately 150 articles for The Toronto Star. The subjects of these articles were many and varied: diplomacy, international relations, politics, gastronomy, medicine, economics, sport … For more information, see Charles Scribner, Jr. ‘Foreword’, Ernest Hemingway, Dateline: Toronto Star, The Complete Toronto Star Dispatches, 1920–1924, William White, 1985.
2 Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, ‘Impressions de Foule’, Le Matin, May 30, 1912.
3 Ibid.
4 Jules Claretie, La Vie à Paris, 1910 (Paris: Eugène Fasquelle, 1911), 96. All translations of untranslated works are the translator’s own, unless otherwise stated.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Les Soirées de Paris, 15 January 1914, 3.
9 Kasia Boddy, Boxing: A Cultural History (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 218.
10 Ibid., 219.
11 Ibid., 219.
12 Maureen Dowd, ‘A Farewell to Macho’, The New York Times, October 15, 2011.
13 Joyce Carol Oates, On Boxing (Dolphin: Doubleday, 1987), 42.
14 ‘Boxing is a purely masculine activity and it inhabits a purely masculine world … Boxing is for men, and is about men, and is men. A celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost’, Oates, On Boxing, 70–72.
15 Boddy, Boxing, 218.
16 Josette Smetana, La philosophie de l’action chez Hemingway et Saint-Exupéry (Paris: La Marjolaine, 1965), 77.
17 Alain Corbin, ‘Introduction’, in Histoire de la virilité, ed. Alain Corbin, Jean Jacques Courtine, Georges Vigarello, Book 2, Le triomphe de la virilité. Le XIXe siècle, Seuil, 2011, 8.
18 ‘In the beginning, the women were armed. But they assembled the bows and arrows the wrong way around and fired potshots. Men had to intervene to re-establish order, by taking the weapons and making reasoned use of the power of violence’, for further information see Penser la violence des femmes, ed. Coline Cardi and Genevieve Pruvost, La Découverte, Paris, 34.
19 ‘Introduction générale’, Penser la violence des femmes, ed. Coline Cardi et Genevieve Pruvost, La Découverte, Paris, 34.
20 Josette Smetana, La philosophie de l’action chez Hemingway et Saint-Exupéry, 61.
21 Michel Winock, La Belle Époque. La France de 1900 à 1914 (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 162.
22 L’Auto, 14 March 1912.
23 Boddy, Boxing, 220.
24 Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner, 1932), 2.
25 Odette Thibault, La maîtrise de la mort (Paris: Paperback, 1975), 180.
26 Aaron Edward Hotchner, Papa Hemingway (London: Random House, 1966), 26.
27 Edgar Morin, L’homme et la mort (Paris: Seuil, 1976), 314.
28 Georges Albert Astre, Hemingway par lui même (Paris: Seuil, 1959), 33.
29 Robert E. Gajdusek, Hemingway’s Paris (New York: Scribner, 1978), 50.
30 Letter to his family, 18 October 1918, in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner Classics, 1981), 19.
31 Edgar Morin, L’homme et la mort (Paris: Seuil, 1976), 206.
32 Ibid.
33 Aaron Edward Hotchner, Papa Hemingway (London: Random House, 1966), 139.
34 ‘The only place where you could see life and death, i.e. violent death, now that the wars were over, was in the bullring … ’ Death in the Afternoon, 2.
35 Ibid, 22.
36 Ibid, 122.
37 ‘A querencia is a place the bull naturally wants to go in the ring; a preferred locality’, ibid, 122).
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid, 54.
41 Ibid, 100.
42 Ibid.
43 Oates, On Boxing, 30.
44 The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes, ed. Donald Hall (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 242.
45 Aron Edward Hotchner, Hemingway and His World (New York: Vedome Press, 1989), 22–3.
46 Alberic D’Hardivilliers, Ernest Hemingway. Vivre, écrire, tout est là (Paris: Transboréal, 2014), 182.
47 Georges Casella, Le sport et l’avenir, opinion des écrivains contemporains sur l’influence sociale des sports (Paris: Mathot, 1910), 214.
48 Letter to Lillian Ross, in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner Classics, 1981), 643.
49 Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, 104.
50 Jack London, ‘Gladiators of the Machine Age’, The San Francisco Examiner, 16 November 1901.
51 Oates, On Boxing, 19.
52 Ernest Hemingway, ‘Prizefight Women’, The Toronto Star Weekly, May 15, 1920.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid.
55 Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 191.
56 Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, 19.
57 Hemingway ‘Prizefight Women’.
58 Norman Mailer, ‘Punching Papa’, The New-York Review of Books, February 1, 1963.
59 Fatima Anouar, La mort et la violence chez Ernest Hemingway, PhD Thesis, Paris III, Department of Anglophone Countries, 1984, 48.
60 Carlos Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner, 1969), 242.
61 Ibid.
62 Carlos Baker, Hemingway. Histoire d’une vie, tome 1 (1899–1936), Robert Laffont, 1971, 377.
63 Letter to his family, 18 October 1918, in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner Classics, 1981), 19.
64 ‘It allows the deceased warrior to attain a state of glory for all time to come; and the splendour of this celebrity, kleos, which is now attached to his name and person, constitutes the last word in honour, its pinnacle, the crest scaled’. Jean Pierre Vernant, ‘La Belle mort et le cadavre outragé’, in La mort, les morts dans les sociétés anciennes, ed. Gherardo Gnoli and Jean Pierre Vernant (Paris: Cambridge University Press & Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1990), 45.
65 Pindar: Olympian odes, Pythian odes, trans. William H. Race (London: Harvard University Press, 1997), 55.
66 Hemingway is believed to have said this to Morley Callaghan. For more information, see Boddy, Boxing, 235.
67 For further information, see Stéphane Hadjeras, ‘Les hommes des lettres, spectateurs et acteurs de la boxe à la Belle Epoque’, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de France, n°2, April-June 2018.
68 Loïc Wacquant, Corps et âme, carnet ethnographique d’un apprenti boxeur, Paperback, 2002, 142.
69 Ibid.
70 Jérome Charyn, Hemingway, portrait de l’artiste en guerrier blessé, Découverte Gallimard, 1999, 38.
71 Wacquant, Corps et âme, carnet ethnographique d’un apprenti boxeur, 68.
72 Charyn, Hemingway, portrait de l’artiste en guerrier blessé, 39.
73 Ibid.
74 Josette Smetana, La philosophie de l’action chez Hemingway et Saint-Exupéry (Paris: La Marjolaine, 1965), 150.
75 Ibid.
76 Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner’s, 1964), 6.
77 Ibid., 12.
78 Georges Carpentier, Mon Match avec la vie (Paris: Flammarion, 1954), 43.
79 Hemingway, ‘Prizefight Women’.
80 Carlos Baker, Hemingway: A Life Story (New York: Scribner, 1969), 108.
81 Maurice Maeterlinck, The Measure of the Hours (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1907), 206.
82 Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner, 1932), 191.
83 Ibid.
84 Rédouane Abouddahab, L’écriture-limite. Poétique des nouvelles de Hemingway, Second Volume: Le paysage textuel, Merry World, 2011, 85.
85 See, for instance, his comparisons between Vélazquez, Goya and Le Greco in Death in the Afternoon, Scribner, 1932, 203–205.
86 Jack London, ‘Gladiators of the Machine Age’, The San Francisco Examiner, November 16, 1901.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid.
89 Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935, 27.
90 Ibid.
91 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers Jonathan Cape, 1972, 13.
92 Jean Prévost, Plaisirs des sports. Essais sur le corps humain (Paris: La Table Ronde, 2003), 59.
93 Alexis Philonenko, Histoire de la boxe (Paris: Bartillat, 2002), 64.
94 Ibid.
95 Ernest Hemingway, ‘Carpentier Sure to Give Dempsey Fight Worth While’, The Toronto Star Weekly, October 30, 1920.
96 While Ernest Hemingway described the Frenchman as ‘clever’, most American journalists called him a ‘false alarm’, ‘grandstander’, ‘flash in the pan’, ‘morning glory’ … For further details, see Hemingway, ‘Carpentier Sure to Give’.
97 According to Hemingway, the odds were 3–1 in Dempsey’s favour.
98 Letter to Grace Quinlan, 21 July 1921, in Hemingway, Lettres choisies, Gallimard, 1986, 92.
99 In September 1915, he received the Croix de Guerre (War Cross), having been commended in the Army Order by the Commanding General of the Fourth Army: ‘Sergeant Carpentier Georges, pilot of the M.F.55. squadron – On the 25th September 1915, did not hesitate to fly over enemy lines during combat in foggy and rainy conditions. Demonstrated remarkable composure and energy under many different circumstances and never returned from missions until they were completed, often with an aeroplane riddled with bullets and shrapnel.’ Georges Carpentier, Ma vie de boxeur (Paris: Roger Leveillard, 1921), 151.
100 Michael Reynolds, The Young Hemingway (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 236.
101 While considered to this day as a great boxer, Dempsey is also seen as a shirker or ‘slacker’ who avoided his military duties, claiming family responsibility. As such, when he entered the ring against Bill Brennan on the 14th December 1920 at Madison Square Garden, New York, the subject of hostile demonstrations from American veterans. For further information, see L’Echos des Sports, 20th June 1921.
102 Rédouane Abouddahab, L’écriture-limite. Poétique des nouvelles de Hemingway, Second Volume: Le paysage textuel, Merry World, 2011, 85.
103 Letter to Charles Scribner, 6 and 7 September 1949, in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961, ed. Carlos Baker (New York: Scribner Classics, 1981), 673.