|
Article Excerpt
Gladys Rodriguez Ferrero was the first curator of the Museo Finca Vigia, the historic house museum that preserves and interprets Hemingway's Cuban home and its extraordinary contents. Today, Rodriguez Ferrero is a distinguished member of Cuba's Consejo Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural and an honorary member of the Hemingway Society. To celebrate the Finca's 45th anniversary, we are fortunate to have this top Cuban museum expert take us on a tour of the house and grounds, as well as Hemingway's cabin cruiser Pilar. Along the way, Rodriguez Ferrero shares her reflections on the Finca's remarkable history both as Hemingway's home and as a museum, and describes for us the valuable and interesting artifacts on display, painting a picture of the material culture that surrounded Hemingway during his lifetime.
**********
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT ERNEST HEMINGWAY is one of the world's celebrities that Cuba knows and loves best. Even though more than forty years have passed since his death, Cuba keeps his memory alive. He has become not just part of Cuban culture, but one Of its myths, a legend assimilated into the Cuban national psyche.
Finca Vigia, his Cuban home from April 1939 until the end of July 1960, became a Museum on 23 August 1961, when, in accordance with her husband's wishes, Mary Welsh Hemingway deeded it to the Government of Cuba. On that August day, she entrusted the Finca Vigia to Dr. Fidel Castro Ruiz, then Prime Minister of Cuba's Revolutionary Government.
The Museum was inaugurated on 21 July 1962, Hemingway's sixty-third birthday. Two important Cuban writers spoke at the inaugural ceremonies: Alejo Carpentier, a recipient of Spain's prestigious Premio Cervantes; and Lisandro Otero, a recent recipient of Cuba's National Prize for Literature, who had known and interviewed Hemingway. since its inauguration, the Museum has undergone two major restorations, the first from 1982 to 1984, and the second from 1992 to 1994. A new, wider ranging restoration was begun in February 2004 and completed in 2006.
From the beginning, the Museum has assumed the important and difficult task of preserving the Finca Vigia as a cultural and historical treasure of international standing. In pursuit of this aim, the Museum has worked tirelessly during all its forty-five years, organizing its holdings and integrating them into educational and cultural programs. In 1986, it established the Coloquio Hemingway to facilitate and encourage cultural and scholarly interaction between local and foreign specialists.
Primarily a literary institution, the Museum is responsible for the preservation of its several important collections of primary sources. The most important of these includes the writer's manuscripts, letters written by the people with whom he interacted most intimately, and many other documents connected to the life and work of Ernest Hemingway during the three decades of his Cuban involvement. The writer's library forms another impressive collection: it includes editions of his works published in his lifetime, other editions (including editions of his collected works, of translations, and of letters), as well as the many books which testify to his remarkably wide range of interests. Much of our effort goes towards the conservation and preservation of these fragile materials. Hemingway's library has an administrative function and its holdings also act as Museum displays. So do the record and film collections, which preserve the voice and image of the author and contain his favorite music and films.
The Museum's collection of portraits and photographs is also used in its expositions. Images of the writer, his family, and friends give insight into his personal and creative life. The large and varied collection of personal objects and artifacts is also a prominent part of the Museum's holdings. It includes his clothes, shoes, medals, hunting trophies, and a wide range of other objects, including the typewriters preserved in the Ambos Mundos Hotel and in the Finca Vigia itself. The Museum also holds the many works of art (paintings, pottery, carvings, and other artifacts) which the Hemingways had in their home. Looking at the size and scope of the Museum's collections one realizes that Hemingway was, as George Plimpton defined him, a man incapable of discarding any of his possessions.
With such a variety of materials, preservation work becomes complicated. It has been necessary to create specialized teams, obtain and train new personnel, and coordinate their efforts. Architects, gardeners, librarians, archivists, curators, and experts in the fields of preservation, restoration, and conservation have worked and continue to work with metals, wood, paints, fabrics, leather, paper, and other materials. In addition to their expertise in their individual fields, the curators and scientists of the Museo Hemingway are also well-versed in other areas--the author's life, his work, and the literature, art, history, and material culture of the period-in order to ensure accuracy in restoration, preservation, and cataloguing; to be able to explain and contextualize the Museum's holdings; and to prepare exhibits for the scholarly and general public.
HEMINGWAY, CUBA, AND THE FINCA VIGIA
Ernest Hemingway first came to Cuba on the British steamship Orita, which docked at Havana on 10:50 P.M. on 1 April 1928 and departed the next morning at 5:29 A.M. (2) Hemingway and his wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, who was then six months pregnant with their son Patrick, spent that night in Havana's Ambos Mundos Hotel. During the next decade, Hemingway returned often to Cuba, to fish the rich Gulf Stream, to enjoy Havana's night life, and to work and sleep in his favorite room (Number 511) of the Ambos Mundos Hotel. During his frequent sojourns in Havana, all through the 1930s, he absorbed and internalized the city's colors, music, rhythms, traditions, and people, and these, in time, became the subjects and subtexts of several of his novels.
On 14 February 1939, Hemingway motored in his cabin cruiser, the Pilar, to Havana, intending to make the city his home. After one night in the Hotel Sevilla, he moved into his usual room at the Ambos Mundos Hotel. The marriage with Pauline was over, and Martha Gellhorn, later his third wife; joined him there. It was she who found and rented the Finca Vigia, into which they moved in April of that year.
Finca Vigia is in San Francisco de Paula, a town established at the end of the 18th century. The town is located at Kilometer 12.5 of the old Carretera Central (Central Highway). Although considerably larger today than it was, San Francisco de Paula still remains a small town. Its main features area cemetery, unused since 1962 and somewhat derelict, and a hermitage, built in 1795 and recently restored. From its hills one can see the city of Havana, its fortifications, and the seashore.
Legend has it that in the 19th century, a small wooden fort stood upon one of these hills. Used for general reconnaissance, it is said to have enabled the Spaniards keep track of a Cuban mambi (Cuban term for those who fought against Spanish dominion of Cuba) who was active in that area in 1895. The Spaniards are also said to have burned down the hill top home of a certain Pascual (this could be the man's first or last name), who defiantly rebuilt his home on the same site.
More solid facts came to light in 1985, when Sara Pascual Canosa, a Cuban socialite (d. September 1987) revealed that the architect who had built Finca Vigia was her grandfather, Miguel Pascual...
|
