“Sometimes I think we only half live over here. The Italians live all the way,” wrote Ernest Hemingway to his sister in 1919, upon his return to the US; he’d just served in Italy as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross during World War I.
Known as the macho icon of 20th-century literature and for his larger-than-life personality–he might’ve been found running with the bulls in Pamplona, deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean, or racing cars in Key West, Florida–the Illinois-born author embraced the hedonistic lifestyle he so admired of Italy, capturing it on the keys of a typewriter. Although his typical unadorned, economical writing style might feel at odds with the unbridled energy of Italy, he managed to capture, for example, the indulgences of Venice’s Carnival, in Across the River and into the Trees, or the pleasure of hearty Italian meals, and plenty of drinking, in A Farewell to Arms.
Although traveling would inform several of Hemingway’s semi-autobiographical works–his experiences in France, Spain, and Kenya, to name a few, permeated his most applauded publications, including A Moveable Feast, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro–his relationship with Italy was a special one.
The author’s first time in Italy, immortalized in his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms, was at the age of 18, when he left a reporting job in Kansas in 1918 to volunteer as a Red Cross ambulance driver, reaching the Italian Front at Fossalta di Piave via Milan, Schio, and Bassano del Grappa. Hemingway’s daily routine here also included handing out coffee, chocolate, cigarettes, and postcards to Italian soldiers in the trench. Just one month into his service, he became severely wounded by a mortar shell explosion and he was sent for a lengthy recovery to the American Red Cross hospital in Milan.
(If you find yourself in the region, Villa Ca’Erizzo Luca is the fifteenth-century building where he, along with other WWI volunteers, were stationed, now home to the Hemingway and Great War Museum. A short drive away from the museum is the author’s wounding site by the Piave River, marked with a memorial.)
Hemingway’s experience in the hospital was far from average, thanks in part to copious amounts of alcohol and in part to a momentous love affair with an American nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky. The exact circumstances and reasons for their breakup are not definitively documented, but the heartbreak, a formative experience for Hemingway, is: the romance between Lieutenant Frederic Henry and his nurse, Catherine Barkley, in A Farewell to Arms calls back to his personal experience.
Before returning to the US, Hemingway spent time in Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, a place he would return to frequently throughout his life. Here, he would stay at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromées in room 106 (now named the Hemingway Suite), drinking dry martinis and overlooking what he called one of the most beautiful Italian lakes. This place would be fictionalized in his first Veneto-based novel; the self-proclaimed “old fan of Veneto” set two in the region.
But it was only after World War II that Hemingway discovered the beauty of Venice, capturing it in Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), also based on one of Hemingway’s infamous love affairs–this time with Adriana Ivancich, a 19-year-old Italian countess 30 years his junior whom he met while visiting the region with his third wife, Mary. The story of an aging American colonel’s passionate relationship with a young Italian countess in Venice–he really doesn’t try to hide it, does he?–is written in uncharacteristically lyrical prose, and many believe that this departure from his usual sparse style reflects the emotional intensity of his feelings for Adriana.
In Venice, Hemingway would stay at the luxurious Gritti Palace Hotel, where you will find another Presidential Suite named after him, or on the then nearly deserted island of Torcello, at the more minimalist Locanda Cipriani, writing and duck hunting in the lagoons. (One of his favorite spots for the latter was along the banks of the Tagliamento river.)
He became close friends with Giuseppe Cipriani, who founded the mythical Harry’s Bar (just a short walk from the Gritti Hotel), a place Hemingway would refer to as “home” and which was the meeting point between the aforementioned fictional colonel and countess. He spent many a night–and day–there drinking. The Montgomery Martini was a favorite, 15 parts gin to one of vermouth, said to be named after British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. He would fight the enemy only if he had 15 soldiers to their one. It’s still a strong, must-try cocktail when visiting Venice today.
Hemingway’s first encounters with love, loss, and life in Italy would be indelible. He believed that life was lived to the fullest here, that even in the most horrid of wartimes, a zest for life could not be extinguished and was found in overflowing glasses of wine and sumptuous meals, passionate loves and sweeping lake views–beautifully hedonistic things that can still be found here, almost 100 years later.
