7.17.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. This is Rebeccah Shore for Radio Eye, and today
I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated July August
twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio I is a
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
other disabilities that make it difficult to reprinted material. Please
join me now for the first part of the article

(00:24):
titled go Behind the Scenes of the Running of the Bulls,
an offbeat journey to the legendary Spanish festival one hundred
years after the life changing trip that inspired Ernest Hemingway
to write The Sun Also Rises by Tony Perrette in
the Annals of European Travel. Few summer holidays have been

(00:46):
so artistically productive as the trip taken by the aspiring
twenty five year old writer Ernest Hemingway and July nineteen
twenty five to Pamplona, the elegant Spanish provincial town in
the foothills of the US Pyrenees hem as he was
called by his friends, traveled from Paris with his first wife,

(01:06):
Hadley Richardson to attend the annual Festival of San Fermin,
whose most famous element is the Running of the Bulls,
where mostly young men in white outfits with red bandannas
and sashes, raise a dozen enormous bulls and steers through
narrow cobbled streets with the occasional bloody goring were stomping

(01:27):
along the way. It was an immersive event with an
electric mood, as he had found during his first visit
with Richardson two years earlier, when he had jotted notes, fifes, drums,
reed pipes, red neckerchiefs, circling, lifting, floating, dance all day,
all night, leather wine, bottles over shoulder, flat basque caps

(01:52):
or wide straw hats, faces like smoked buckskin, flat backs,
flat hips, dancing dancing. He was dazzled by the spectacular
daily bullfights as well as the fireworks bands on the plaza,
packed cafes, cheap wine, and faces in the crowd, the
faces of Velasquez's family drinkers, Goya and Greco faces. On

(02:18):
their third and most dramatic visit to the festival in
nineteen twenty five, Hemingway and Richardson were joined by five
Anglo American expat friends, all heavy drinking, rutless bohemians like himself.
The intense, alcohol fueled, sexually charged interaction inspired Hemingway to
write his first and arguably finest novel, The Sun Also Rises,

(02:43):
using thinly veiled characters and incidents from the sojourn. The
milestone of modernist literature, was published in New York the
following year, immediately putting the young author on the path
to international celebrity as the voice of the post war
Lost generation and incidentally changing Pamplona forever for centuries. The

(03:08):
nine day event had been just one of dozens of
annual Spanish festivals, many of which also involve in sierros
or bull runs, but its profile skyrocketed as The Sun
Also Rises became a smash bestseller and was later made
into a nineteen fifty seven hit film starring Tyrone power,

(03:30):
Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner. Largely thanks to the novel's
success and Hemingway's follow up meditations Death in the Afternoon
from nineteen thirty two and the posthumous The Dangerous Summer,
San Fermin became established as the ultimate Spanish celebration. Today

(03:51):
it is one of Europe's most popular gatherings, luring more
than a million visitors every year, with a round the
clock party atmosphere that puts Mark Perdi Gras in New
Orleans to shame. It has become so popular that as
many as thirty five hundred runners clog the bull running course,
making trampling the biggest danger. And yet the American connection

(04:14):
to Pamplona remains unshakable. Many American runners and spectators have
attended for decades, along with niche groups of officionados such
as the New York City Club to Reno buf Fighting Club,
who relish the traditions and pageantry of San Fermine but
don't train as matadors themselves. People who go to Pamplona

(04:39):
inspired by Hemingway are surprised at first, says Jennifer May Ryland,
a young Brooklyn based artist and club member. It can
seem like spring break in Florida, but the town's traditional
life still goes on behind the scenes. It's still wildly romantic.
In fact, I first learnedlearn about the less visible cultural

(05:02):
dimensions of the Sanfermines, as Spaniards call the festival when
Ryland invited me to attend several lectures at the Club Tourino,
in a grand nineteenth century townhouse in Manhattan's West Village.
One night, a Spanish fashion academic brought a collection of
antique matador outfits known as trajes de lucees suits of lights,

(05:27):
and discussed the new wave of women matadores. Another night,
a Peruvian journalist explained how medieval Spanish bull fighting traditions
were transformed in the New World. The Pamplona Fiesta's most
passionate fans feel it is often seen superficially. San Fermine

(05:48):
is so much more than the running of the bulls
and street parties, said Laurie Monegue, the club president, who
has attended every summer for some forty years. There are
the cons SERTs, dances, social clubs, gastronomic societies, religious processions.
It's an all consuming social and cultural event, she says.

(06:11):
Monige Ryland and other members offered to take me to
meet the Pomplonassus, the people of Pamplona and joint gatherings
filled with Spanish artists, rmands and musicians, And so I
found myself last summer rereading the sun also rises and
heading to the Pyrenees, hoping to glimpse behind the fiesta's

(06:32):
surface while piecing together the true story behind Hemingway's generation
defining book. Having lived in Paris with Richardson on and
off since late nineteen twenty one. Hemingway was a struggling
writer who could be spotted scribbling in left bank cafes.
A tall, lanky Midwesterner with unkempt hair, wearing sneakers, old

(06:56):
trousers and a patched jacket. Handsome charismatic, with boundless energy
and an infectious poyish smile. He was also an insecure bully,
a side that emerged particularly when he was drinking. In
the spring of nineteen twenty five, he was also suffering
from one of the cyclical bouts of depression that would

(07:18):
mar his life. He was bobbed down in his attempts
to write a novel and frustrated that his poetry and
short stories had appeared in obscure magazines but made no
dent in the American market. Beyond the left bank cafes,
he was virtually unknown, But the depression began to lift

(07:39):
when he and Richardson took the train from Paris to
Spain in late June for pre Fiesta fishing stopover, sending
their young son, John Bumby, with a nanny to Brittany.
Although they had little money, Hemingway and Richardson often took
advantage of the strong American dollar and tra traveled widely

(08:01):
in Europe. They had first visited Pamplona in nineteen twenty
three on the advice of Gertrude Stein and her partner
Alice B. Toklis, and Hemingway had been instantly enthralled. It
had become a summer tradition for the couple to meet
friends at the fiesta. He later recalled the nineteen twenty
four a visit with writer John dos Passos as the

(08:24):
goddamnedest wild time and fun you ever saw, and the
nineteen twenty five trip their third, promised to be He
assured one invitee and a letter a damned good time.
Just south of the border, the couple were joined for
trout fishing in the Irati River by Hemingway's boyhood pal
from Michigan, Bill Smith, who had been best man at

(08:48):
his wedding, and the American writer Donald Ogden Stewart, a
regular member of the Algonquin round Table in New York
and a successful satirist. Even though they caught almost snowfish,
Hemingway's melancholy promised to dissolve entirely when the group arrived
in Pamplona, on July second to convene with three other

(09:10):
expat friends coming from Paris. Instead, the vacation group was
plunged into bitter infighting. The catalyst for the drama was
Lady Duff Twysden, a thirty four year old socialite from
the luche British upper classes who had become a scandalous
miners celebrity in Paris for her beauty, her unique style,

(09:32):
and her many affairs. Slender and gray eyed with their
ribald sense of humour, she sported a short, boyish haircut
and wore eyebrow raising androgynous clothes and fedoras. She was
also an Olympic level drinker, a bewitching combination to some men,
who happily paid her massive bar tabs since she was

(09:55):
perpetually broke. Although Twysden arrived in Pomplona with her fiancee,
a jovial young Scottish war veteran and alcoholic named Patrick Guthrie,
jealousies erupted when it somehow came out that she had
recently spent two weeks on a romantic liaison and a

(10:15):
French coastal retreat, San Jean de Luze with the final
member of the Pomplona group a moneyed, preppy, and tightly
wound thirty three year old Princeton University graduate named Harold Loeb.
Hemingway already resented Loebe's inherited wealth. He was the cousin
of Peggy Guggenheim and his literary success. Loeb was a

(10:39):
founding editor of an arts magazine, Room, and his first
novel was about to come out in New York. Despite
being married, Hemingway was infuriated by the news that Lobe
had enjoyed a fling with the alluring Twisden. Although there
was no evidence that Hemingway and Twisden ever had an affair,

(10:59):
he had become captivated by her. In Paris, Hemingway biographers
lament that recreating the nineteen twenty five trip is a challenge.
In Pomplona, writes Michael Reynolds. In Hemingway the Paris years,
time twisted and days became interwoven and inseparable, making every

(11:20):
participant's memory a work of fiction. This was also a
side effect of the fiesta's wild and inebriated energy. There
seemed no point sleeping. Reynolds ads sleep was dead. Traveling
to the fiesta a century later, I could sympathize. Even

(11:40):
on the regional train from Zaragoza to Pomplona, the festivities
were in full swing. Crowds of Spaniards and foreigners sprawled
across the floor on suitcases and backpacks, sharing bottles of
kava the Spanish bubbly, and passing around plates of ham
she grapes and olives, while outside flashed a rural world

(12:04):
of abandoned farmhouses, Roman aqueducts and Speyer Gothic castles. Walking
from the train station into Pomplona's old town, I turned
a corner and was plunged straight into the Dionysian frenzy.
Every cobbled lane was blocked by revelers crowded outside the bars,

(12:25):
all wearing white and red fiesta costumes. The origins of
this traditional outfit are hazy, but white smocks had been
worn since the Middle Ages by Bosque peasants, and they
were popularized by one of the working class pennas or
social clubs after nineteen twenty nine. The red scarves, according

(12:47):
to one tradition, are in homage to Saint Fermien, the
first bishop and patron saint of the town, who was
beheaded by the Romans around the third century a d
at noon of Sunday, the sixth of July, the fiesta exploded,
Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises. The chaotic ambiance

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was fueled by cheap local wine absinthe and Fundador brandy,
and was exacerbated by having to shout every word to
be heard. Everything became quite unreal finally, and it seemed
as though nothing could have any consequences. To day, music
is still everywhere. Live bands and basque flutists pirouette around

(13:33):
gigantes and big heads dancers with enormous Papierre machet heads
of historical figures, including King's, Queen's and Moore's. A stage
is set up in a plaza for singers to perform
cheerful regional songs with the mariachi like lilt. All night,
the social clubs parade around the streets, blaring tubas, horns

(13:56):
and drums. At one point, a trumpeter played an impromptu
solo of a haunting traditional tune. He turned out to
be Manuel Blanco, a star of the Spanish National Orchestra
and Choir. That's what we call in Pamplona, a momentico,
a little moment. One local said he's the best trumpet

(14:17):
player in Spain. The appearance of Pamplona's old town, flanked
by a star shaped stone fortress, has also changed little
since Hemingway's day. To follow his nineteen twenty five trail,
I headed for the central Plaza de Castillo and stopped
in at his favorite spots, Cafe Uruna, with its polished

(14:40):
mirrors and worn tile floors, and Bar Chaco. The Hotel Quintana,
where the expat group stayed fictionalized as the Hotel Montoya
in the novel, is now an apartment building, although its
exquisite art nouveau facade remains white. Chose the Kintana because

(15:02):
it was where the matadors stayed, and he assumed the
role of the insider tour guide for his friends. He
donned a Basque boina, the local beret, and took pride
in chatting with the hotel's owner, Juanito Quintana about the
minutia of the bull fights in his fractured Spanish. Much later,

(15:24):
during an interview, Quintana remembered Hemingway unflatteringly as a very
strange person with a bad character. The writer's entourage was
constantly drunk and rowdy, often stumbling back into the hotel
at three a m. And provoking complaints from other guests.

(15:45):
When Kintana confronted Hemingway one night, the writer made excuses
until the hotelier warned him, if you don't let Matador
Kayetano or Dane's sleep tomorrow, you'll be fighting in the
bull ring yourself. The matter of the bull fighter's sleep
made an impression on Hemingway. No more, No more, Juanito,

(16:07):
he said. The daily schedule of the festival begins as
it did then at noon on July sixth by launching
a rocket called the Chupunazzo, and for the next eight
days has a running of the bulls every morning at
eight and a corrida or bull fight every evening at
six thirty. On my first morning, I got up at dawn,

(16:31):
slugged down a Cafe con leche, then squeezed among the
spectators onto stone steps above Estefera Street, part of the
half mile route of the Running of the bulls, when
the day's six torros pravos fighting bulls destined for the
evening's bull fights are raced from a corral to the
stadium with six local steers castrated bulls that guide them

(16:55):
along the route. Although difficult to pin down, the ritual
origins are believed to date at least from the Middle Ages,
when peasants brought cattle from the countryside to market in
summer and ran the route themselves. In photographs from hemingwayte time,
the most striking thing is how empty the route looks,

(17:17):
with only a few dozen young farm hands scattering ahead
of the bull's horns. These days it becomes a river
of white and red clad runners, and the event is
a major logistical production. In the pre dawn darkness, workers
erect wooden barricades along the route and remove them daily,

(17:37):
and thousands of spectators gather alongside or hang from balconies above.
Around seven a m. A loud speaker blares the rules
in Spanish and English. The running of the bulls is
not for everyone. It calls for composure, sobriety, good reflexes,
and outstanding physical fitness. It is impossible to run the

(18:01):
entire course. Do not incite the bulls, attract their attention,
or touch them while crowd members pass around newspapers with
descriptions of the six animals, names, weights, and breeders. Although
it was originally an all male right. The bull running
rules were relaxed in nineteen seventy four and a sprinkling

(18:23):
of women now join. At around seven forty five a m.
The runners sing a chant to a statue of San Fermin,
asking for protection. Then, at precisely eight a m. One
rocket is set off and the bulls burst from the corral.
The earth begins to shake as the animals, each one

(18:44):
a small tank of muscle thunder along the route at
speeds of up to twenty miles an hour, scattering runners.
The bulls are intent on reaching their goal. Only if
one is separated from the pack does it panic and
lash out with its horns. So the runner's challenge is
to get out of the way, but thanks to the crowds,

(19:06):
they can trip one another or pile up in bottle
necks and be stomped or goreed. Some two hundred medical
workers are posted along the route to aid the injured,
whose numbers range from two hundred to three hundred over
the eight days. Even so, since records began being kept

(19:26):
in nineteen ten, sixteen runners have been killed. The municipal
website offers a gruesomely detailed list of fatalities, noting that
a twenty two year old Illinois native was gored to
death in front of the town hall in nineteen ninety
five when a bull named Castellano sliced through a kidney,

(19:47):
punctured his liver, and severed a main artery. The most
recent fatality was in two thousand nine, when a twenty
seven year old from near Madrid slipped and was gored
by the left horn of a rogue bull named Cappuccino.
There is no record of Hemingway ever running with the
bulls himself, but he and his male friends joined the

(20:11):
crowds in the arena afterward, where they could play amateur
matador against younger bulls with padded horns. On one occasion,
Loeb managed to sit on a bull's head and be
carried around, making him the king of the ring in
Pamplona and stealing attention from Hemingway. Today, this amateur hour

(20:34):
still occurs in the stadium with smaller heifers, although they
can still pack a punch, as I saw when one
luckless young man was hit by a horn in the
jaw and lost several teeth. Afterward, runners gathered outside bar
Chaco to sip chocolate or vanilla milk with cognac and

(20:55):
gossip about the morning event, referring to dangerous stretches like
La curva, the curve, a hard right hand turn with
a pocket dubbed dead man's corner. If you run with
the bulls long enough, something is going to happen to you,
confided a Canadian who said he ran for seventeen years
until a bull cracked several of his ribs and injured

(21:17):
his neck. An Argentine runner confessed he had no feeling
in his left arm due to nerve damage from being stomped.
Others boasted about how often they had been hospitalized and
delighted in showing off their scars. In twenty nineteen, some
runners even held a sit down protest against the Encierro

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becoming too safe after authorities began spraying the cobblestones along
the route with an adhesive to prevent slips. As one
Irish runner complained to me, we'll be running with the
labradors next. At ten a m. Monig, the New York
City Club to Reno's director led me to an un

(22:00):
marked eighteenth century archway only steps from Barchaco that opened
onto a grandiose marble staircase and up to a casino,
not a gambling hall, but a private social club, where
a dance party was underway, fueled by brandy wine and
kanyas small glasses of draft beer. The ball room, a

(22:22):
jewel box of ornate wood paneling, gilt mirrors, and chandeliers,
was packed with white clad pamplonsis of all ages, dancing
and singing to a live band and shouting from balconies
at passers by below. A couple of hours later, we
ducked down a side alley to another unmarked portal, which

(22:44):
turned out to be the home of a gastronomic club
called the Neapardi Society. The hosts led us downstairs to
the club's historic cellar kitchen built into the medieval walls
of the village. The guests included two retired matadors in
their early fifties. Juan Jose Padilla was nicknamed the Pirate

(23:05):
for his black eye patch, the result of a severe
goring in twenty eleven. The other Francisco rivera Ordonez casually
chatted about his childhood connections to the United States when
he was sent to summer camp in Maine and military
schools in Indiana. I only realized I was in the
presence of bull Fighting Royalty. When Rivera Ordonez mentioned that

(23:30):
Orson Wells ashes are interred on the grounds of his
family ranch, the Hemingway connection suddenly came to life. He
was the great grandson of the matador Cayetano Ordonez, who
had stayed at the Hotel Quintana in nineteen twenty five
and appears as the handsome young matador Pedro Romero and

(23:52):
the sun also rises the best looking boy I have
ever seen, Hemingway rights. What's more, he was the grandson
of Anto Tonio or Dornez, one of history's greatest matadors,
the Babe Ruth of the bull Ring, who features in
Hemingway's posthumous ode The Dangerous Summer, and was fast friends
with Wells, another Officionado. After Wells died in nineteen eighty five,

(24:18):
the director's daughter decided to enter his ashes in a
dry well on the Odonnas family ranch in Ronda. Afterward,
as we strolled with the matadors through the streets, passers
by stopped in their tracks to stare, shot greetings or
request autographs and selfies. Hemingway would have approved. While the

(24:40):
Incieriro is Pamplona's most publicized event. Devotees cherish a more
exclusive ritual held every day at one p m. The Apartado,
or separation of the six Torros Bravos and the special
pen attached to the stadium. Again, Monig led through an
anonymous looking doorway into a self contained world. An elegantly

(25:06):
quaffed crowd of Spanish artists, politicians, bull breeders and lifelong
officionados gathered on two tiers overlooking the corral while sipping
and illusion fino, a light sherry. As the three battadors
were assigned their bulls for the evening by drawing lots
from the Mayor's hat. True diehards and the audience could

(25:29):
also snack on creadias, bulls testicles. I passed, but many
Pomplona restaurants offer bull on the menu, including Estefaro de torro,
a rich stew that is surprisingly tender and tasty. From there,
we dashed to the annual luncheon hosted by the Club
to Reno to Pamplona, which was founded in the late

(25:52):
nineteen forties and has its headquarters near the stadium. Some
hundred local guests sat at Tressel tables laid end to
end in a leafy park and were served mountainous platters
of grilled meat, fish, stews and salads. I found myself
next to a doctor who worked at the emergency room

(26:12):
in the bull fighting stadium. It's one of the best
places in Spain to have an accident, he boasted. I
have a full operating theater. News of social events was
passed around by word of mouth. The next afternoon, Monague
got wind of reception at a private bull fighting museum.

(26:32):
It was opened in nineteen eighty four by a local
aficionado named marcelinojmenez Elizagare in his own apartment, and lovingly
preserved after his death in two thousand six by his
wife Mari. This time we climbed a series of creaking
wooden stairs to find a Maladdin's cave of our artifacts.

(26:55):
Every inch of the wall space was covered with vintage posters,
but jeweled matador outfits antique photographs. One of Antonio Ordone's
posing with the bewhiskered Hemingway in nineteen fifty nine, a
handmade replica of an eighteenth century bull ring, complete with
hundreds of detailed human figures. The wine was flowing. A

(27:18):
professional cortador slicer was cutting ruby red shreds from a
side of ham and a dozen white clad tenors, among
them members of Bullfighter Andres Rocca Rey's quadrilla support team,
burst into a spontaneous rendition the so called Austreean Waltz,

(27:39):
a refrain heavy with civic pride, because the festivities have
arrived in this glorious city, which is something like no
other in the entire world. Riau, Riau. This concludes readings
from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been
Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.