Hemingway’s World War I savior is anonymous no more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/hemingways-world-war-i-savior-is-anonymous-no-more/2019/01/18/d3dbbb32-0ea0-11e9-831f-3aa2c2be4cbd_story.html

by longdefeat • 8 years ago

102 48 8 years ago

washingtonpost.com

baxtr3• 8 years ago

What a sad story. I wonder what other great books, movies, companies weren’t made because someone died tragically without a savior.

anfilt• 8 years ago

But what could have that "savior" done if they lived?

okonomiyaki3000• 8 years ago

Don't worry, guys, there are infinite parallel universes in which each and every one of those possibilities (and many others) all happened. Take comfort in that. Or don't, it doesn't matter. Another you in another universe will in your place.

paradoxparalax10• 7 years ago

I think the value of a human life is always the same, in my opinion.

If Ernest died, and savior was a gardener until die at age 98, It would be as good, for me.

The fact that I wouldn't be Marveled and had crazy dreams of adventure and never forget that book and always think about it's meaning, when I was a kid(The Old Man and the Sea)...

Is for sure not more important then the life of the good gardener, so I don't care if Hemingway had died or not...

...But the savior chose to save him, was his decision, and this is like in the Master Takeshi Kitano's[1] movies, there is the Brotherhood and Honor, that are the mindset of the hero , and this is admirable.

And I thank the savior for all the books, and giving us these books was exactly one of the things that the savior did for the world,...

..but not more important then the other things he did in his life, And that(giving us the books) was not ultimately important, as nothing that someone does is, when we value the value of a human life.

..but maybe he would be the Prophet(finally, or welcome back), or the new Albert Einstein...who knows...life is too surprising to guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeshi_Kitano

bambax3• 8 years ago

Many excellent French authors died during WWI; their death deprived us of new works.

Charles Péguy, Henri Alain-Fournier, Louis Pergaud, to name just a few...

(Guillaume Apollinaire shouldn't be part of this list because, while he was wounded during WWI, he died of the flu after the war.)

sophacles• 8 years ago

Technically Guillaume Apollinaire died during the war, 9 November 1918 according to wikipedia. That's just a nit tho, a little fact I came across looking up these authors, but it got me thinking...

Theres a couple of interesting questions in there though - during the war he sustained wounds he was still suffering from at the time of his death. Did these weaken him in a way that made him more susceptible to the flu? Did the subpar conditions everyone in Paris was dealing with due to the total war (and fronts not too far away) contribute?

In the broad scale - WW1 and the Spansish flu pandemic certainly had effects on each other. Many of the early outbreaks are linked directly to troop movements, and the living conditions in barracks, camps and trenches certainly aided the spread of the flu. Governments were keeping quiet about the potency and spread of the disease for morale reasons. Basically the question of "Is a soldier dying of spanish flu during ww1 a war-related death?" is much deeper than just sorting on proximate cause of death (e.g. flu, or gunshot, etc).

ptaipale• 8 years ago

Usually also those who die after the war are counted in its casualties, if they died of injuries suffered in the war.

As most towns and villages in Finland, my home town's parish has a "Pro patria" stone tablet at the premises. Naturally most of the men died during 1939-1945, but there's one name who deceased in 1957.

The story is simply that when the tablet was set up in 1980's, his fellow veterans (my father included), who knew his death was due to injuries from war even if it was 13 years after being wounded, decided "Svante deserves to have his name among the fallen" and listed him along.

coldtea3• 8 years ago

Or what people just died tragically without a savior -- regardless of whether they were authors or directors...

baxtr3• 8 years ago

Sure that, too. But as cruel as it may sound: I was more thinking about lasting stuff that wasn’t created

tossaccount123• 8 years ago

There was a quote by a British general or high ranking officer saying how depressed he was that Britian's next generation of poets, scientists, mathematicians, etc were buried in Western Europe

telesilla• 8 years ago

I ponder the reason Hemingway never mentioned him, and I imagine - which is not to excuse him - that acknowledging the person who died in your place is a trauma to be revisited. Instead of celebrating Fedele Temperini's death, it seems that Hemingway felt guilt and shame. Even though that's an easy reading of silence; I may be wrong.

JoeAltmaier• 8 years ago

Maybe because he saw so many die, and that one more death coincident with his trauma was not any more or less important than the anonymous millions.

skookumchuck• 8 years ago

"Strict Italian privacy laws prevent us from learning more about him."

Is privacy really an issue 100 years after the person's death?

labster• 8 years ago

I can't believe you're suggesting that a person's privacy is less important than their copyright terms.

b_tterc_p2• 8 years ago

That assumes that he views copyright timelines as reasonable.

pathseeker2• 8 years ago

I can't believe you're suggesting that stealing is reasonable. See, I can make things up too.

Udik• 8 years ago

pawelmurias• 8 years ago

I would guess a lot of people who actually own some valuable copyrights value them more then privacy.

w-m2• 8 years ago

You can find a telephone number of someone named Temperini who is living in Montalcino, by doing a quick search in the Italian telephone book. Surely it wouldn't break any laws just calling there?

coldtea3• 8 years ago

No, it would just make no sense.

rmason• 8 years ago

Probably no American writer has been more heavily researched than Hemingway. Amazingly we're still learning new things about his life.

hutzlibu2• 8 years ago

It would take a life to tell someones life completely ..

jwilk• 8 years ago

Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190118162959/https://www.washi...

magduf2• 8 years ago

Thanks! I was about to comment that I can't read this article.

Hemingway’s World War I savior is anonymous no more

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