Sold – A Christmas Card, From Mary and Ernest Hemingway, From the Year he Wrote Old Man and the Sea
With a photograph of Hemingway’s Boat, “Pilar,” reproduced on the cover, and a reference to a work of Alfred Jarry .
Alfred Jarry, best known for his play Ubu Roi, or King Ubu, is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. Ubu Roi famously begins with the main character exclaiming “merdre,” mispronouncing “merde,” a new word roughly translated as “Shite.” This word threw the audience at...
Alfred Jarry, best known for his play Ubu Roi, or King Ubu, is often cited as a forerunner to the surrealist theatre of the 1920s and 1930s. Ubu Roi famously begins with the main character exclaiming “merdre,” mispronouncing “merde,” a new word roughly translated as “Shite.” This word threw the audience at the Theatre de l’Oeuvre into a frenzy on opening night in 1896. Parisians did not take well to the affront from a 23 year-old playwright. This broadside of “Shite!” successfully shot Jarry to stardom. In August 1952, under a new posthumous translation, the work was revived. A performance was scheduled in New York City, where the lead actor, improvising, added Hemingway’s name. “Oh Merdre! All the important personages, into the trap… Winston Churchill, into the trap. Ernest Hemingway, into the trap.”
On September 1, Hemingway published the the novella The Old Man and the Sea, and the story of Santiago the fisherman brought Hemingway critical and critical success. At the time, he was living with his wife Mary in Cuba and writing. With a successful year behind him and a Nobel Prize to greet him the next year, he wrote an unidentified friend this Christmas Card, sending an image of his boat and quoting Jarry’s made-up word.
Document signed by Mary and Ernest Hemingway, a printed Christmas card with the inscription “Merry Christmas – Happy New Year/Mary and Ernest Hemingway / Fincia Vigia / San Francisco de Paul / Cuba” on the inside. It is inscribed first by Mary: “Meilleurs souhaites” and below that by Hemingway, who has drawn an arrow to the “Merry Christmas” line, and written, “This isn’t sarcasm. Probably this year we ought to just say ‘Merdre’ EH.”
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