fp.

Is it remarkable that Hemingway was convinced? I can understand if I was a 'mundane' person and thought somebody was spying on me, I could be convinced that I was paranoid. But if I have ties to one of the obvious enemies of the US, I think it would be very hard to convince me that I _wasn't_ being spied on because the motive seems obvious. Do we know why Hemingway was able to be convinced?

skmurphy•6mo ago

In his letter to his friend Guy Hickok Hemingway described an out-of-body or near-death experience triggered by the close explosion of a mortar shell that killed a soldier next to him: "There was one of those big noises you sometimes hear at the front. I died then. I felt my soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner. It flew around and then came back and went in again and I wasn’t dead anymore.”

sources

   https://greatwar.nl/hemingway/hemingway.html

   https://www.ehemingway.com/biography

   Letter to Hickok does not appear to be available online. But his "Natural History of the Dead" is at https://short-stories.co/@ernesthemingway/a-natural-history-of-the-dead-0gpz4rgjln7d

mbonnet•6mo ago

I wonder if that experience is what inspired the scene in A Farewell to Arms where his trench is hit by a shell and his soldier next to him is killed.