An article about Hemingway's play "The Fifth
Column," and a newly-discovered letter about the
circumstances of its
production.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/theater/10mcgr.html.
A sample of the letter, describing a shelling of H's hotel in Madrid:
Something you can’t put on the stage but that
would be good in a picture was the first big
shelling of the Florida. The hotel was packed
when the shelling started just at daylight and
after the first shell hit the front of the
building, (seven more hit it that day and over
eleven hundred were fired into the town), there
was a sort of mass migration from the rooms on
the side that faced the lines. Couples carrying
their mattresses over their backs scuttled across
the halls on every floor like a movement of the
lemmings. Then in the crashing and the rolling
clouds of dust Antoine de Saint Exupéry started
to give away grapefruits. He had brought two
bushel of them from Valencia and this was his
first bombardment and he was handling it by giving away grapefruits.
“Est-ce-que vous voulez une pamplemousse?”
Crash. More dust. People lying under the
mattresses. Screams from ladies awakened too early and abruptly.
“Est-ce-que vous voulez une pamplemousse?”
Crash. More dust. Strong smell of cordite and
blasted granite. Pieces of masonry fall through
skylight. Ladies under mattresses who have not
thought of facing eternity until awakened give serious thoughts to same.
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