Hemingway's "Mississippi": Pamplona & The Fiesta

The Cafe Iruna in Pamplona -- The Place Where It All Began and the location of many dramatic scenes in The Sun Also Rises

July 6, 2013, Pamplona, Spain -- Ernest Hemingway visited Pamplona and the San Fermin Fiesta nine times. Ironically, on that fateful July day in 1961, at the same time Papa reached to open his unlocked gun cabinet to end it all, on his desk were tickets and reservations for the place where it all began -- not just for his career -- but for modern American literature.

When Hollywood finally gets around to doing an epic of Papa's life, there is only one fitting way to film the final scene, and that is to show a shaky hand opening the unlocked gun cabinet, then slow-pan and fade-in focus up close on those tickets, followed by a sudden black-screen (with no gun shot, please).

"We went down the stairs and out of the door and walked across the square toward the Cafe Iruna." The Sun Also Rises

"Across the square the white wicker tables and chairs of the Iruna extended out beyond the Arcade to the edge of the street. I looked for Brett and Mike at the tables. There they were.." The Sun Also Rises

Why is Pamplona so important? Is it just a place for men (and now women) of all ages to come test their metal and courage in the Running of the Bulls, as the popular myth would have you believe? Perhaps, for some, but for American literature it is so much more.

"Brett saw us coming and waved. Her eyes crinkled up as we came to the table. 'Hello, you chaps!' she called." The Sun Also Rises -- Inside the Iruna Cafe -- Nothing Has Changed

"The Sun Also Rises" is important because so much that we enjoy in literature came from this one book, inspired here, in this place, with this work.

Dad (center, back turned) ordering us a drink at the bar EH Frequented both in Fiction and in Real Life. His statue is in the background right looking towards the entrance and out onto the plaza.

His many early visits here, in the 1920's, inspired the novel that not only made him famous, but identified him and his writing style: short declarative sentences, lacking adjectives and fancy words; allowing us to drink in every word for its impact; detailed description that puts you there, with him, at every turn, like the journalist he was; free-flowing conversational dialogue; and honest story lines that describe real life, in all its complexities, both with meaning and without, not fantasy or escapism. In sum, writing done with unvarnished truth and integrity.

Holding up the Bar with Papa (the hat thing felt a little disrespectful, so I removed it)

Above Is Perhaps the Most Photographed Statue in Pamplona -- The Spirits of San Fermin and Ernesto Were With Us

This new approach to literature, as put together in novel form for the first time with "The Sun Also Rises", has since been replicated by many.  Specifically, it helped give voice to "The Lost Generation" of young people who saw their world turned upside down by The Great War. The violent and horrific scenes -- the effects of chemical warfare, losing life and limb to take ground only to be voluntarily ceded the next day, the meaninglessness of the war's beginning, and the tragedy of its duration and end -- all marked this generation. Few members of it were as marked as Ernest Hemingway, and his fellow ex-patriots of writers, artists and musicians.

The Bar Adjoined to the Iruna Where Papa Keeps Watch and Holds Up the Bar

Hemingway gave them a voice, and did so with a new modernist literary style that all began with "The Fiesta", the first title and still the title in Europe.

The corrals from which the bulls are released in the morning for the bull run,and the location of one of the opening scenes between "Brett and Jake".
"At the gate of the corrals two men took tickets from the people that went in. We went through the gate. There were trees inside and a low stone house. At the far end was the stone wall of the corrals..." The Sun Also Rises 

"All along the old walls and ramparts people were standing.... 'They must think something is going to happen," Brett said. 'They want to see the bulls.'" The Sun Also Rises

However, why does something that mattered to another, older generation, still matter now, to us?

Hemingway's gift was not just to his own generation, but to each successive generation, each of which has a need to find its own voice and a means to express it.

"Beyond the river rose the plateau of the town." The Sun Also Rises

Whether it was "The Lost Generation", the "Greatest Generation", the "Rock and Roll" or "Vietnam Generations", the yuppies in "Thirty Something" or Generation X, they each have replicated what was first done here, in a small city in the Navarre Region of Northern Spain, by a young writer trying to find his own voice, in a book about a small group of ex-patriots, a fiesta, a beautiful girl, a tragic romance, and the Bull Fights.

Dad in front of the corral, at sunset. 

"The Sun Also Rises" is not just Hemingway's voice, it is our own. That is what makes it a classic. That is what makes it special. That is what makes this place, and everything about it, "Hemingway's Mississippi."

Next week: Day one of the Fiesta begins like a rocket -- literally! Now that we have established the significance of The Sun Also Rises, as a reminder for some, as an introduction for others, but mostly as an introspective exercise for me, we can move on next time with more fun. Parties, drinking, dancing, singing, and, of course, running with bulls and watching my first bull fights.

Along the way, I meet John Hemingway, grandson to Ernest and Pauline Hemingway (of Arkansas), and I even espouse a little on that "something" we never can seem to define, but that felt an awful lot like Ernest himself looking out for me.

We will end the Spanish portion of this blog -- perhaps the most important -- in the same place the novel finished, at the same bars and restaurants in Madrid.

So stay tuned.