On October 28, 1954, Ernest Hemingway received the news that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In a surprising move, he decided to donate his Nobel Prize medal to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Charity in Cuba, also known as the Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre.
This Valentine’s Day, as discussions swirl around President Trump’s controversial Nobel Peace Prize nomination by María Corina Machado of Venezuela, Hemingway’s gesture merits reflection.
Hemingway’s act captures the spirit of Valentine’s Day.
The Virgin del Cobre holds the title of Cuba’s patron saint. By offering his medal to her sanctuary in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Hemingway expressed his affection for the Cuban people, among whom he had lived for over a decade, while distinctly separating his feelings from support for the Cuban government under the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista at the time.
In her memoir, “How It Was,” Mary Hemingway recounts how her husband announced his decision to present his medal in a Spanish address to the Cuban press.
Hemingway’s tribute extended beyond the Cuban populace. During a meeting with the American press, he acknowledged American literary figures like Mark Twain and Henry James, who never received the Nobel Prize but whom he felt deserved the honor. He further mentioned contemporary writers Isak Dinesen, Bernard Berenson, and Carl Sandburg as deserving candidates for the award.
In honoring past and present writers, Hemingway was doing the opposite of Trump, who has found it necessary to diminish the accomplishments of others in order to enhance his Nobel laureate claims.
Hemingway was following the path that Santiago, the fisherman-hero of his novel “The Old Man and the Sea,” takes after he has gone 84 days without catching a fish. When Santiago finally hooks a huge marlin, he promises to make a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre if he is able to land his catch.
Hemingway’s catch was the Nobel Prize, and he was confident that the fathers running the Sanctuary of the Virgin del Cobre would treat his medal with the same care they treated all gifts of devotion. They would not use the medal to publicize the sanctuary.
How honorable Hemingway’s decision seems in comparison to all that has happened since Machado turned over her medal to Trump.
In his White House meeting with Machado, the president made clear what he thinks it means to receive a gift of the Nobel Peace Prize and how the honors associated with the prize are ones he is now entitled to claim. “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” the president boasted on social media.
In an official statement the Nobel Committee disagreed. “A laureate cannot,” the committee declared, “share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced.”
Will the president heed the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s pronouncement? Probably not. But this Valentine’s Day that does not matter. If we are looking for a lesson in receiving and giving that moves us, we can do no better than turn back the clock to 1954 and Hemingway’s example.
Mills is co-chair of the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College and author of “Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.”
