Cuba has opened up electronic access to thousands of documents belonging
to the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his greatest works on
the island.
The archive includes photographs, letters and manuscripts, as well as an
unpublished epilogue to Hemingway's novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The items had been stored in the cellar of the writer's Cuban home for
decades.
Curators say the files offer an insight into Hemingway's life on the
island, where he lived for 20 years.
"We are talking about 3,194 pages of documents, close to 2,000 plus of
documents, some already digitalised," said Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales,
director of the Museo Ernest Hemingway in Havana.
"For practically the first time, this is being made available to
students and researchers," she said.
Another 1,000 documents are still to be scanned and added to the
archive, Ms Alfonso said.
The archive includes coded messages which Hemingway sent while using his
yacht to search for German submarines operating off the island.
Academics and researchers will be able to request electronic copies of
the items from Cuba's Heritage Council.
Ms Alfono said the archive would "shed light on the Cuban period of
Hemingway, which was very important and not well known by his biographers".
The project is a joint operation with Heritage Council and the US Social
Science Research Council as part of a 2002 agreement to preserve the
original material.
CDs and microfilms of the documents have also been sent to the John F
Kennedy library in Boston and could eventually be made available online,
said Ms Alfonso.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7812902.stm
Published: 2009/01/06 07:21:29 GMT
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