스크랩북으로 엿보는 헤밍웨이의 어릴적 삶

퓰리처상과 노벨문학상을 수상한 미국 소설가 어니스트 헤밍웨이의 어릴 적 삶이 그의 어머니가 제작한 스크랩북을 통해 볼 수 있게 되었다.

오는 일요일부터 존 F.케네디 도서관 및 박물관에서 헤밍웨이 스크랩북 다섯 개의 내용을 최초로 인터넷에 공개할 예정이다.

그의 어머니, 그레이스 홀 헤밍웨이는 스크랩북 속에 1899년 7월, 헤밍웨이가 태어난 날부터 그가 18세가 될 때까지의 기록을 빼곡히 적어놨다. 그가 태어난 날 밝았던 햇빛과 계속해서 지저귀던 새소리의 묘사까지 적혀있다.

“책 속의 내용은 대중들에게 공개된 적은 한번도 없으며 오직 몇 명의 연구자들만이 전체 시리즈를 모두 보았다,”라고 수잔 위린, 헤밍웨이 콜렉션의 큐레이터가 말했다.

책 표지가 낡아 떨어지는 것을 방지하기 위해 어두운 금고 안에 보관 되어 온 이 기록들은 작가가 아직 살아있었더라면 114번째 생일날이 되었을 날에 공개되는 것이다.

“아마 그의 삶에 대해 관심이 있고 그의 유년기에 대해 배우고 싶었던 사람이라면 이 기록이 굉장히 중요한 자원이 될 거에요,”라고 그의 손자 션 헤밍웨이가 말했다. “그는 굉장한 재능을 가지고 있었어요. 아마 이것 안에 그에 관한 단서도 있을거에요,”라고 덧붙였다.

펜실베니아 대학의 교수 산드라 스파니어는 헤밍웨이의 어머니가 만든 이 스크랩북 안에는 그가 18살까지 어떻게 살아왔는지가 기록돼 있으며, 그 어디에서도 찾아볼 수 없는 자세한 디테일까지 수록돼 있다고 말했다.

“그녀는 거의 그의 인생을 한편의 스토리로 만들었어요…아마 이러한 부분이 그의 삶의 후반과, 또 그가 쓴 소설들에 영향을 미쳤을 것이라고 생각합니다,”라고 그녀는 말했다.

이번에 공개될 스크랩북은 헤밍웨이의 미망인 메리가 그의 남편이 1961년 자살한 후에 JFK 도서관에 기부한 것이다. 손자 션은 이것을 통해, 자신도 한번도 보지 못한 할아버지에 대해서 많이 알 수 있었다고 한다.

“그는 제가 태어나기도 전에 돌아가셨어요,” 46세의 션이 말했다. “이러한 것들을 보면서 그의 삶에 대해 조금이라도 알 수 있는 기회가 생긴거죠.” (코리아헤럴드)

<관련 영문 기사>

Scrapbooks give peek inside Hemingway‘s early life

Long before Ernest Hemingway first wrote a story, his mother was busy writing about him.

Grace Hall Hemingway started a series of scrapbooks documenting the childhood of the future Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner by describing how the sun shone and robins sang on the day in July 1899 when he was born.

Starting Sunday, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston will make the content of five Hemingway scrapbooks available online for the first time, giving fans and scholars the chance to follow the life of one of the 20th century‘s literary greats from diapers to high school degree.

Hemingway Collection curator Susan Wrynn said much of the content hasn’t been made available to the public before and only a few researchers have seen it in its entirety. The fragile leather-bound volumes have been kept in a dark vault for about four decades to keep them from falling apart.

The release of these records from the archive, home to 90 percent of existing Hemingway manuscript materials, will come on what would have been the scribe‘s 114th birthday.

``I think it will be a very rich resource for people interested in learning about this period of his life,’‘ Sean Hemingway, the author’s grandson, said in an interview with The Associated Press. ``He had tremendous talent. It must have been there from the beginning. So I‘m sure there are clues in there to that.’‘

Pennsylvania State University professor Sandra Spanier, who is general editor of a project that will publish Hemingway’s letters in more than a dozen volumes, said the scrapbooks that the author‘s mother created offer details of his daily life up until age 18 that aren’t anywhere else.

``She almost made their lives into a story ... and I think that carries over into his life and his fiction,‘’ she said.

There‘s a scribbling from when Hemingway wasn’t quite 3 years old that the future war correspondent and novelist _ who later won a Pulitzer Prize for ``The Old Man and the Sea‘’ _ told his mother depicted the roaring sea. Other early passages also hinted at the writer Hemingway would become.

Before he was 4, Hemingway was trooping into the woods to go hunting with his father and ``using long words‘’ and making ``sage remarks,‘’ according to his mother, who enclosed photos of her son trout fishing and holding his own rifle.

``Can cock my own gun,‘’ one of her captions read.

By the time Hemingway was 5, his mother noted that he was collecting war cartoons and had an appreciation for characters with courage.

``He loves stories about Great Americans,‘’ she wrote.

The scrapbooks have a plethora of family photos from the Hemingway family‘s home in Oak Park, Illinois, and their vacation cottage on a lake in Northern Michigan, including shots of a bare-bottomed baby Hemingway playing in the water by a canoe.

They include letters to Hemingway and others he wrote as a child, including a note of contrition in which he confessed to bad behavior in church.

``My conduct tomorrow will be good,’‘ 13-year-old Hemingway promised.

The scrapbooks also contain childhood paintings and tell of Hemingway playing the cello, suiting up for a ``lightweight’‘ football squad and taking up boxing. During his junior year of high school, he was on his school’s prom committee and, according to a report card note from his Latin teacher, showed ``improvement both in attitude and work.‘’

As Hemingway matured, the scrapbooks showcased his earliest attempts at the craft that would come to define his professional life. Among them were a short story from his high school‘s literary magazine, clippings from some of his first assignments as a high school newspaper reporter and a sonnet in which 16-year-old Hemingway seemed to poke fun at himself.

``Nobody likes Ernest, that, is straight stuff,’‘ he said, ``and when he writes stories _ we all cry `Enough.’‘’

The scrapbooks are part of the collection that Hemingway‘s widow, Mary, gifted to the JFK Library and Museum after the author’s 1961 suicide. Sean Hemingway said he‘s excited by their public release and called them one of the ways he’s become familiar with a grandfather he never met.

``He died before I was born,‘’ the 46-year-old said. ``Looking at these kinds of things ... I feel like I have gotten a chance to know him a bit.‘’ (AP)