startling & vibrant description
KS
On 09/02/2008, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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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