Ernest Hemingway

In this summer, when I was about to say a temporary goodbye to this City of Lights, I happened to come across a book by Ernest Hemingway titled "A Moveable Feast," at Shakespeare and Company, an old and cozy bookshop near Notre Dame. I had heard about the book before because a Valedictorian of the previous batch at my graduate school quoted one sentence from the book in his speech at graduation ceremony. It reads "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." The introduction of the book said that the book is about Hemingway's memories of life as an unknown writer living in PAris in the 1920s . As a Paris resident, I got attracted to the sentence as well as the introduction of the book . So I picked up the book. And I only started reading it recently.

Halfway into the book, I have totally been mesmerized by the beauty of his writing, his ability to convey delicate feelings and situations in such a concise and simple manner. His sentences are simple, but very deep. This was the first time that I read his book in English. Of course, some Paris factor should be there as for my high appreciation of the book. However all in all, I have come to clearly understand why Hemingway is so beloved by so many people in the world. Also, I could easily associate myself with his rather stoic attitude toward life and people. I beame a genuine fan.

So, I took the next step = which was to look him up at the wikepedia. I was mostly curious about his marriage life since I could see that he was very much in love with his wife. But helas, this woman was the first wife out of four wives he had in total. He got married three more times after he divorced the first wife. This somewhat made me sad. It is difficult for me not to be sad whenever I hear love stories which saw unhappy ending although I know for sure that protagonists of "everlasting" love stories are not necessarily the happiest people on the earth.

But what shocked me most was the fact that he committed suicide. I had heard of this before but I had completely forgotten it for a long time. Now I remember. A story of a genius commiting suicide... is such a cliche. But still, I have got extremely saddened on learning the fact. These kind of people who contribute so much to the joy and beauty of the human kind deserve to be "happy". But so many times, these talented and genius people have a lot to suffer in their personal lives. Since i have seen so many talented and genius people going extremes and even choosing to end their lives, I have come to wonder if a genius is indeed something that cannot go hand in hand with personal happiness. The world owes so much to these people and yet it is helpless when it comes to providing happiness to these people, blocking them from choosing such extreme means to escape unhappiness.