Transcript

7.17.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebeccah Shore for Radio Eye, and today
0:05
I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated July August
0:09
twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio I is a
0:13
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
0:16
other disabilities that make it difficult to reprinted material. Please
0:21
join me now for the first part of the article
0:24
titled go Behind the Scenes of the Running of the Bulls,
0:29
an offbeat journey to the legendary Spanish festival one hundred
0:32
years after the life changing trip that inspired Ernest Hemingway
0:37
to write The Sun Also Rises by Tony Perrette in
0:42
the Annals of European Travel. Few summer holidays have been
0:46
so artistically productive as the trip taken by the aspiring
0:50
twenty five year old writer Ernest Hemingway and July nineteen
0:55
twenty five to Pamplona, the elegant Spanish provincial town in
0:59
the foothills of the US Pyrenees hem as he was
1:03
called by his friends, traveled from Paris with his first wife,
1:06
Hadley Richardson to attend the annual Festival of San Fermin,
1:11
whose most famous element is the Running of the Bulls,
1:14
where mostly young men in white outfits with red bandannas
1:18
and sashes, raise a dozen enormous bulls and steers through
1:23
narrow cobbled streets with the occasional bloody goring were stomping
1:27
along the way. It was an immersive event with an
1:31
electric mood, as he had found during his first visit
1:34
with Richardson two years earlier, when he had jotted notes, fifes, drums,
1:40
reed pipes, red neckerchiefs, circling, lifting, floating, dance all day,
1:46
all night, leather wine, bottles over shoulder, flat basque caps
1:52
or wide straw hats, faces like smoked buckskin, flat backs,
1:57
flat hips, dancing dancing. He was dazzled by the spectacular
2:03
daily bullfights as well as the fireworks bands on the plaza,
2:07
packed cafes, cheap wine, and faces in the crowd, the
2:12
faces of Velasquez's family drinkers, Goya and Greco faces. On
2:18
their third and most dramatic visit to the festival in
2:21
nineteen twenty five, Hemingway and Richardson were joined by five
2:26
Anglo American expat friends, all heavy drinking, rutless bohemians like himself.
2:32
The intense, alcohol fueled, sexually charged interaction inspired Hemingway to
2:38
write his first and arguably finest novel, The Sun Also Rises,
2:43
using thinly veiled characters and incidents from the sojourn. The
2:48
milestone of modernist literature, was published in New York the
2:52
following year, immediately putting the young author on the path
2:57
to international celebrity as the voice of the post war
3:01
Lost generation and incidentally changing Pamplona forever for centuries. The
3:08
nine day event had been just one of dozens of
3:12
annual Spanish festivals, many of which also involve in sierros
3:16
or bull runs, but its profile skyrocketed as The Sun
3:21
Also Rises became a smash bestseller and was later made
3:26
into a nineteen fifty seven hit film starring Tyrone power,
3:30
Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner. Largely thanks to the novel's
3:35
success and Hemingway's follow up meditations Death in the Afternoon
3:40
from nineteen thirty two and the posthumous The Dangerous Summer,
3:44
San Fermin became established as the ultimate Spanish celebration. Today
3:51
it is one of Europe's most popular gatherings, luring more
3:54
than a million visitors every year, with a round the
3:57
clock party atmosphere that puts Mark Perdi Gras in New
4:00
Orleans to shame. It has become so popular that as
4:05
many as thirty five hundred runners clog the bull running course,
4:09
making trampling the biggest danger. And yet the American connection
4:14
to Pamplona remains unshakable. Many American runners and spectators have
4:21
attended for decades, along with niche groups of officionados such
4:25
as the New York City Club to Reno buf Fighting Club,
4:29
who relish the traditions and pageantry of San Fermine but
4:34
don't train as matadors themselves. People who go to Pamplona
4:39
inspired by Hemingway are surprised at first, says Jennifer May Ryland,
4:44
a young Brooklyn based artist and club member. It can
4:48
seem like spring break in Florida, but the town's traditional
4:52
life still goes on behind the scenes. It's still wildly romantic.
4:58
In fact, I first learnedlearn about the less visible cultural
5:02
dimensions of the Sanfermines, as Spaniards call the festival when
5:06
Ryland invited me to attend several lectures at the Club Tourino,
5:11
in a grand nineteenth century townhouse in Manhattan's West Village.
5:17
One night, a Spanish fashion academic brought a collection of
5:21
antique matador outfits known as trajes de lucees suits of lights,
5:27
and discussed the new wave of women matadores. Another night,
5:31
a Peruvian journalist explained how medieval Spanish bull fighting traditions
5:36
were transformed in the New World. The Pamplona Fiesta's most
5:42
passionate fans feel it is often seen superficially. San Fermine
5:48
is so much more than the running of the bulls
5:50
and street parties, said Laurie Monegue, the club president, who
5:55
has attended every summer for some forty years. There are
5:59
the cons SERTs, dances, social clubs, gastronomic societies, religious processions.
6:06
It's an all consuming social and cultural event, she says.
6:11
Monige Ryland and other members offered to take me to
6:14
meet the Pomplonassus, the people of Pamplona and joint gatherings
6:19
filled with Spanish artists, rmands and musicians, And so I
6:24
found myself last summer rereading the sun also rises and
6:29
heading to the Pyrenees, hoping to glimpse behind the fiesta's
6:32
surface while piecing together the true story behind Hemingway's generation
6:38
defining book. Having lived in Paris with Richardson on and
6:42
off since late nineteen twenty one. Hemingway was a struggling
6:47
writer who could be spotted scribbling in left bank cafes.
6:51
A tall, lanky Midwesterner with unkempt hair, wearing sneakers, old
6:56
trousers and a patched jacket. Handsome charismatic, with boundless energy
7:02
and an infectious poyish smile. He was also an insecure bully,
7:07
a side that emerged particularly when he was drinking. In
7:11
the spring of nineteen twenty five, he was also suffering
7:15
from one of the cyclical bouts of depression that would
7:18
mar his life. He was bobbed down in his attempts
7:22
to write a novel and frustrated that his poetry and
7:26
short stories had appeared in obscure magazines but made no
7:30
dent in the American market. Beyond the left bank cafes,
7:35
he was virtually unknown, But the depression began to lift
7:39
when he and Richardson took the train from Paris to
7:42
Spain in late June for pre Fiesta fishing stopover, sending
7:47
their young son, John Bumby, with a nanny to Brittany.
7:53
Although they had little money, Hemingway and Richardson often took
7:56
advantage of the strong American dollar and tra traveled widely
8:01
in Europe. They had first visited Pamplona in nineteen twenty
8:05
three on the advice of Gertrude Stein and her partner
8:09
Alice B. Toklis, and Hemingway had been instantly enthralled. It
8:14
had become a summer tradition for the couple to meet
8:17
friends at the fiesta. He later recalled the nineteen twenty
8:20
four a visit with writer John dos Passos as the
8:24
goddamnedest wild time and fun you ever saw, and the
8:28
nineteen twenty five trip their third, promised to be He
8:32
assured one invitee and a letter a damned good time.
8:37
Just south of the border, the couple were joined for
8:40
trout fishing in the Irati River by Hemingway's boyhood pal
8:44
from Michigan, Bill Smith, who had been best man at
8:48
his wedding, and the American writer Donald Ogden Stewart, a
8:52
regular member of the Algonquin round Table in New York
8:56
and a successful satirist. Even though they caught almost snowfish,
9:01
Hemingway's melancholy promised to dissolve entirely when the group arrived
9:06
in Pamplona, on July second to convene with three other
9:10
expat friends coming from Paris. Instead, the vacation group was
9:15
plunged into bitter infighting. The catalyst for the drama was
9:20
Lady Duff Twysden, a thirty four year old socialite from
9:24
the luche British upper classes who had become a scandalous
9:28
miners celebrity in Paris for her beauty, her unique style,
9:32
and her many affairs. Slender and gray eyed with their
9:36
ribald sense of humour, she sported a short, boyish haircut
9:41
and wore eyebrow raising androgynous clothes and fedoras. She was
9:46
also an Olympic level drinker, a bewitching combination to some men,
9:51
who happily paid her massive bar tabs since she was
9:55
perpetually broke. Although Twysden arrived in Pomplona with her fiancee,
10:02
a jovial young Scottish war veteran and alcoholic named Patrick Guthrie,
10:07
jealousies erupted when it somehow came out that she had
10:11
recently spent two weeks on a romantic liaison and a
10:15
French coastal retreat, San Jean de Luze with the final
10:19
member of the Pomplona group a moneyed, preppy, and tightly
10:24
wound thirty three year old Princeton University graduate named Harold Loeb.
10:29
Hemingway already resented Loebe's inherited wealth. He was the cousin
10:34
of Peggy Guggenheim and his literary success. Loeb was a
10:39
founding editor of an arts magazine, Room, and his first
10:42
novel was about to come out in New York. Despite
10:46
being married, Hemingway was infuriated by the news that Lobe
10:51
had enjoyed a fling with the alluring Twisden. Although there
10:55
was no evidence that Hemingway and Twisden ever had an affair,
10:59
he had become captivated by her. In Paris, Hemingway biographers
11:05
lament that recreating the nineteen twenty five trip is a challenge.
11:10
In Pomplona, writes Michael Reynolds. In Hemingway the Paris years,
11:15
time twisted and days became interwoven and inseparable, making every
11:20
participant's memory a work of fiction. This was also a
11:25
side effect of the fiesta's wild and inebriated energy. There
11:30
seemed no point sleeping. Reynolds ads sleep was dead. Traveling
11:36
to the fiesta a century later, I could sympathize. Even
11:40
on the regional train from Zaragoza to Pomplona, the festivities
11:45
were in full swing. Crowds of Spaniards and foreigners sprawled
11:50
across the floor on suitcases and backpacks, sharing bottles of
11:55
kava the Spanish bubbly, and passing around plates of ham
11:59
she grapes and olives, while outside flashed a rural world
12:04
of abandoned farmhouses, Roman aqueducts and Speyer Gothic castles. Walking
12:10
from the train station into Pomplona's old town, I turned
12:14
a corner and was plunged straight into the Dionysian frenzy.
12:20
Every cobbled lane was blocked by revelers crowded outside the bars,
12:25
all wearing white and red fiesta costumes. The origins of
12:30
this traditional outfit are hazy, but white smocks had been
12:34
worn since the Middle Ages by Bosque peasants, and they
12:38
were popularized by one of the working class pennas or
12:42
social clubs after nineteen twenty nine. The red scarves, according
12:47
to one tradition, are in homage to Saint Fermien, the
12:52
first bishop and patron saint of the town, who was
12:55
beheaded by the Romans around the third century a d
13:00
at noon of Sunday, the sixth of July, the fiesta exploded,
13:04
Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises. The chaotic ambiance
13:09
was fueled by cheap local wine absinthe and Fundador brandy,
13:14
and was exacerbated by having to shout every word to
13:18
be heard. Everything became quite unreal finally, and it seemed
13:23
as though nothing could have any consequences. To day, music
13:28
is still everywhere. Live bands and basque flutists pirouette around
13:33
gigantes and big heads dancers with enormous Papierre machet heads
13:38
of historical figures, including King's, Queen's and Moore's. A stage
13:44
is set up in a plaza for singers to perform
13:47
cheerful regional songs with the mariachi like lilt. All night,
13:52
the social clubs parade around the streets, blaring tubas, horns
13:56
and drums. At one point, a trumpeter played an impromptu
14:01
solo of a haunting traditional tune. He turned out to
14:04
be Manuel Blanco, a star of the Spanish National Orchestra
14:09
and Choir. That's what we call in Pamplona, a momentico,
14:13
a little moment. One local said he's the best trumpet
14:17
player in Spain. The appearance of Pamplona's old town, flanked
14:22
by a star shaped stone fortress, has also changed little
14:26
since Hemingway's day. To follow his nineteen twenty five trail,
14:32
I headed for the central Plaza de Castillo and stopped
14:35
in at his favorite spots, Cafe Uruna, with its polished
14:40
mirrors and worn tile floors, and Bar Chaco. The Hotel Quintana,
14:47
where the expat group stayed fictionalized as the Hotel Montoya
14:51
in the novel, is now an apartment building, although its
14:55
exquisite art nouveau facade remains white. Chose the Kintana because
15:02
it was where the matadors stayed, and he assumed the
15:05
role of the insider tour guide for his friends. He
15:09
donned a Basque boina, the local beret, and took pride
15:15
in chatting with the hotel's owner, Juanito Quintana about the
15:19
minutia of the bull fights in his fractured Spanish. Much later,
15:24
during an interview, Quintana remembered Hemingway unflatteringly as a very
15:29
strange person with a bad character. The writer's entourage was
15:35
constantly drunk and rowdy, often stumbling back into the hotel
15:40
at three a m. And provoking complaints from other guests.
15:45
When Kintana confronted Hemingway one night, the writer made excuses
15:50
until the hotelier warned him, if you don't let Matador
15:54
Kayetano or Dane's sleep tomorrow, you'll be fighting in the
15:58
bull ring yourself. The matter of the bull fighter's sleep
16:02
made an impression on Hemingway. No more, No more, Juanito,
16:07
he said. The daily schedule of the festival begins as
16:13
it did then at noon on July sixth by launching
16:16
a rocket called the Chupunazzo, and for the next eight
16:20
days has a running of the bulls every morning at
16:23
eight and a corrida or bull fight every evening at
16:26
six thirty. On my first morning, I got up at dawn,
16:31
slugged down a Cafe con leche, then squeezed among the
16:34
spectators onto stone steps above Estefera Street, part of the
16:39
half mile route of the Running of the bulls, when
16:42
the day's six torros pravos fighting bulls destined for the
16:47
evening's bull fights are raced from a corral to the
16:50
stadium with six local steers castrated bulls that guide them
16:55
along the route. Although difficult to pin down, the ritual
17:00
origins are believed to date at least from the Middle Ages,
17:04
when peasants brought cattle from the countryside to market in
17:07
summer and ran the route themselves. In photographs from hemingwayte time,
17:13
the most striking thing is how empty the route looks,
17:17
with only a few dozen young farm hands scattering ahead
17:20
of the bull's horns. These days it becomes a river
17:24
of white and red clad runners, and the event is
17:28
a major logistical production. In the pre dawn darkness, workers
17:33
erect wooden barricades along the route and remove them daily,
17:37
and thousands of spectators gather alongside or hang from balconies above.
17:43
Around seven a m. A loud speaker blares the rules
17:47
in Spanish and English. The running of the bulls is
17:50
not for everyone. It calls for composure, sobriety, good reflexes,
17:57
and outstanding physical fitness. It is impossible to run the
18:01
entire course. Do not incite the bulls, attract their attention,
18:06
or touch them while crowd members pass around newspapers with
18:10
descriptions of the six animals, names, weights, and breeders. Although
18:16
it was originally an all male right. The bull running
18:19
rules were relaxed in nineteen seventy four and a sprinkling
18:23
of women now join. At around seven forty five a m.
18:28
The runners sing a chant to a statue of San Fermin,
18:32
asking for protection. Then, at precisely eight a m. One
18:37
rocket is set off and the bulls burst from the corral.
18:41
The earth begins to shake as the animals, each one
18:44
a small tank of muscle thunder along the route at
18:48
speeds of up to twenty miles an hour, scattering runners.
18:52
The bulls are intent on reaching their goal. Only if
18:56
one is separated from the pack does it panic and
18:59
lash out with its horns. So the runner's challenge is
19:03
to get out of the way, but thanks to the crowds,
19:06
they can trip one another or pile up in bottle
19:09
necks and be stomped or goreed. Some two hundred medical
19:14
workers are posted along the route to aid the injured,
19:17
whose numbers range from two hundred to three hundred over
19:21
the eight days. Even so, since records began being kept
19:26
in nineteen ten, sixteen runners have been killed. The municipal
19:31
website offers a gruesomely detailed list of fatalities, noting that
19:36
a twenty two year old Illinois native was gored to
19:40
death in front of the town hall in nineteen ninety
19:43
five when a bull named Castellano sliced through a kidney,
19:47
punctured his liver, and severed a main artery. The most
19:52
recent fatality was in two thousand nine, when a twenty
19:56
seven year old from near Madrid slipped and was gored
19:59
by the left horn of a rogue bull named Cappuccino.
20:04
There is no record of Hemingway ever running with the
20:07
bulls himself, but he and his male friends joined the
20:11
crowds in the arena afterward, where they could play amateur
20:15
matador against younger bulls with padded horns. On one occasion,
20:20
Loeb managed to sit on a bull's head and be
20:24
carried around, making him the king of the ring in
20:27
Pamplona and stealing attention from Hemingway. Today, this amateur hour
20:34
still occurs in the stadium with smaller heifers, although they
20:39
can still pack a punch, as I saw when one
20:42
luckless young man was hit by a horn in the
20:45
jaw and lost several teeth. Afterward, runners gathered outside bar
20:51
Chaco to sip chocolate or vanilla milk with cognac and
20:55
gossip about the morning event, referring to dangerous stretches like
21:00
La curva, the curve, a hard right hand turn with
21:03
a pocket dubbed dead man's corner. If you run with
21:07
the bulls long enough, something is going to happen to you,
21:10
confided a Canadian who said he ran for seventeen years
21:14
until a bull cracked several of his ribs and injured
21:17
his neck. An Argentine runner confessed he had no feeling
21:21
in his left arm due to nerve damage from being stomped.
21:26
Others boasted about how often they had been hospitalized and
21:30
delighted in showing off their scars. In twenty nineteen, some
21:35
runners even held a sit down protest against the Encierro
21:39
becoming too safe after authorities began spraying the cobblestones along
21:44
the route with an adhesive to prevent slips. As one
21:48
Irish runner complained to me, we'll be running with the
21:51
labradors next. At ten a m. Monig, the New York
21:56
City Club to Reno's director led me to an un
22:00
marked eighteenth century archway only steps from Barchaco that opened
22:05
onto a grandiose marble staircase and up to a casino,
22:09
not a gambling hall, but a private social club, where
22:13
a dance party was underway, fueled by brandy wine and
22:17
kanyas small glasses of draft beer. The ball room, a
22:22
jewel box of ornate wood paneling, gilt mirrors, and chandeliers,
22:27
was packed with white clad pamplonsis of all ages, dancing
22:32
and singing to a live band and shouting from balconies
22:36
at passers by below. A couple of hours later, we
22:40
ducked down a side alley to another unmarked portal, which
22:44
turned out to be the home of a gastronomic club
22:47
called the Neapardi Society. The hosts led us downstairs to
22:52
the club's historic cellar kitchen built into the medieval walls
22:56
of the village. The guests included two retired matadors in
23:00
their early fifties. Juan Jose Padilla was nicknamed the Pirate
23:05
for his black eye patch, the result of a severe
23:08
goring in twenty eleven. The other Francisco rivera Ordonez casually
23:14
chatted about his childhood connections to the United States when
23:18
he was sent to summer camp in Maine and military
23:21
schools in Indiana. I only realized I was in the
23:25
presence of bull Fighting Royalty. When Rivera Ordonez mentioned that
23:30
Orson Wells ashes are interred on the grounds of his
23:34
family ranch, the Hemingway connection suddenly came to life. He
23:39
was the great grandson of the matador Cayetano Ordonez, who
23:44
had stayed at the Hotel Quintana in nineteen twenty five
23:47
and appears as the handsome young matador Pedro Romero and
23:52
the sun also rises the best looking boy I have
23:55
ever seen, Hemingway rights. What's more, he was the grandson
23:59
of Anto Tonio or Dornez, one of history's greatest matadors,
24:04
the Babe Ruth of the bull Ring, who features in
24:07
Hemingway's posthumous ode The Dangerous Summer, and was fast friends
24:12
with Wells, another Officionado. After Wells died in nineteen eighty five,
24:18
the director's daughter decided to enter his ashes in a
24:22
dry well on the Odonnas family ranch in Ronda. Afterward,
24:27
as we strolled with the matadors through the streets, passers
24:30
by stopped in their tracks to stare, shot greetings or
24:34
request autographs and selfies. Hemingway would have approved. While the
24:40
Incieriro is Pamplona's most publicized event. Devotees cherish a more
24:47
exclusive ritual held every day at one p m. The Apartado,
24:52
or separation of the six Torros Bravos and the special
24:56
pen attached to the stadium. Again, Monig led through an
25:00
anonymous looking doorway into a self contained world. An elegantly
25:06
quaffed crowd of Spanish artists, politicians, bull breeders and lifelong
25:11
officionados gathered on two tiers overlooking the corral while sipping
25:16
and illusion fino, a light sherry. As the three battadors
25:21
were assigned their bulls for the evening by drawing lots
25:24
from the Mayor's hat. True diehards and the audience could
25:29
also snack on creadias, bulls testicles. I passed, but many
25:34
Pomplona restaurants offer bull on the menu, including Estefaro de torro,
25:40
a rich stew that is surprisingly tender and tasty. From there,
25:45
we dashed to the annual luncheon hosted by the Club
25:48
to Reno to Pamplona, which was founded in the late
25:52
nineteen forties and has its headquarters near the stadium. Some
25:56
hundred local guests sat at Tressel tables laid end to
26:01
end in a leafy park and were served mountainous platters
26:04
of grilled meat, fish, stews and salads. I found myself
26:09
next to a doctor who worked at the emergency room
26:12
in the bull fighting stadium. It's one of the best
26:15
places in Spain to have an accident, he boasted. I
26:18
have a full operating theater. News of social events was
26:23
passed around by word of mouth. The next afternoon, Monague
26:28
got wind of reception at a private bull fighting museum.
26:32
It was opened in nineteen eighty four by a local
26:36
aficionado named marcelinojmenez Elizagare in his own apartment, and lovingly
26:42
preserved after his death in two thousand six by his
26:45
wife Mari. This time we climbed a series of creaking
26:50
wooden stairs to find a Maladdin's cave of our artifacts.
26:55
Every inch of the wall space was covered with vintage posters,
26:59
but jeweled matador outfits antique photographs. One of Antonio Ordone's
27:05
posing with the bewhiskered Hemingway in nineteen fifty nine, a
27:09
handmade replica of an eighteenth century bull ring, complete with
27:13
hundreds of detailed human figures. The wine was flowing. A
27:18
professional cortador slicer was cutting ruby red shreds from a
27:22
side of ham and a dozen white clad tenors, among
27:27
them members of Bullfighter Andres Rocca Rey's quadrilla support team,
27:33
burst into a spontaneous rendition the so called Austreean Waltz,
27:39
a refrain heavy with civic pride, because the festivities have
27:44
arrived in this glorious city, which is something like no
27:47
other in the entire world. Riau, Riau. This concludes readings
27:54
from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been
27:58
Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.