Oh my goodness. So, there has been controversy over the editing done by Scribner's of The Garden of Eden manuscript. That I knew. Something like two-thirds of it was cut. That I knew. But what are we to to? We have only the Scribner's edition. The manuscript is in the JFK library and is only made available for reading, not copying, by bona fide Hemingway scholars. I have tried to read the criticisms but they are all by academics and except for one published in 1987 in New Republic you can only read the introductions on JStor. So, what are we going to do? In looking up ecrasseuse and its variations I came across this.:
In the Scribner's version of Hemingway's The Garden of Eden, after burning her husband's manuscripts and before going away near [She has already gone away, you fucking idiot] the end of the novel, Catherine Bourne writes David a remorseful letter in which she compares her burning of his manuscripts to hitting a child with a car: "The thump of the fender or maybe just a small bump and then all the rest of it happening and the crowd gathering to scream. The Frenchwoman screaming ecrasseuse even if it was the child's fault. I did it and I knew I did it and I can't undo it. It's too awful to understand. But it happened" (237). In The Garden of Eden manuscript, Catherine then continues to describe the enormity of her act in terms that have been deleted from the Scribner's edition of the novel: she feels as if she'd "blown the Bosch room in the Prado." The Prado, she explains, was the only thing she ever loved besides loving David (KL/EH 422.1, f34, c43, p22). (1) Comparing the destruction of Davids manuscripts to blowing the Hieronymus Bosch room at the Prado is a powerful, if curious, analogy. Among other things, it invites us to compare David's writing to one of the Prado's greatest treasures, [No, you moron, it is not analogizing the destroyed stories to a great museum treasure, it is analogizing to the fantastical world depicted by Bosch.] Bosch's stunning triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights--a work of central importance to The Garden of Eden but whose importance has been obscured by the editing of the published text.
...Mary [Hemingway] writes, "Ernest found a hoopoe bird in Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Eden painting. No discovery in Madrid pleased him more" (388). According to Mary, Ernest particularly associated hoopoe birds with Spain (383). He briefly mentions them in The Garden of Eden manuscript, with David consoling Catherine for her inability to paint and thereby capture Spain, "The country is here.... The Prado's here" (GOE 53). She knows what she saw and felt, he assures her. It's hers. She wouldn't "want to put the hoopoes in a cage," would she? (KL/EH 422.1, f6, c9, p10).
...
Rodin's Metamorphoses of Ovid, the statue in the Eden manuscript that inspires the sexual experiments of both the Bournes and Sheldons,
Scribner's cut the letter? Oh my God, I'm going to be sick. Why?
The Sheldons? Who the fuck are the Sheldons?
Why was the Rodin statue cut from the book? That's sort of important that it was the inspiration for the sexual transference.
What hoopoe bird?
There are no Rodins, Boschs, Sheldons, or hoopoe birds in the Scribner's. Oh my goodness, those are significant omissions. What did you do, Scribner's?
I looked up hoopoe birds. From Wikipedia:
In what was long thought to be a defensive posture, hoopoes sunbathe by spreading out their wings and tail low against the ground and tilting their head up; they often fold their wings and preen halfway through.[18]
I swear there is some mention of David taking note of how Catherine sunbathes with her head up but I swore "grinder" was in the book too and it wasn't. So I downloaded a pdf version of the book and searched "head up:"
She went to sleep that way with her head back and her chin up as though she were in the sun on the beach...(31)
The hoopoe bird hits the air pump in Scribner's. Why didn't they just publish the manuscript? Why does JFK allow only scholars to see the ms? Don't know and there's nothing we can do.
In the Scribner's version of Hemingway's The Garden of Eden, after burning her husband's manuscripts and before going away near [She has already gone away, you fucking idiot] the end of the novel, Catherine Bourne writes David a remorseful letter in which she compares her burning of his manuscripts to hitting a child with a car: "The thump of the fender or maybe just a small bump and then all the rest of it happening and the crowd gathering to scream. The Frenchwoman screaming ecrasseuse even if it was the child's fault. I did it and I knew I did it and I can't undo it. It's too awful to understand. But it happened" (237). In The Garden of Eden manuscript, Catherine then continues to describe the enormity of her act in terms that have been deleted from the Scribner's edition of the novel: she feels as if she'd "blown the Bosch room in the Prado." The Prado, she explains, was the only thing she ever loved besides loving David (KL/EH 422.1, f34, c43, p22). (1) Comparing the destruction of Davids manuscripts to blowing the Hieronymus Bosch room at the Prado is a powerful, if curious, analogy. Among other things, it invites us to compare David's writing to one of the Prado's greatest treasures, [No, you moron, it is not analogizing the destroyed stories to a great museum treasure, it is analogizing to the fantastical world depicted by Bosch.] Bosch's stunning triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights--a work of central importance to The Garden of Eden but whose importance has been obscured by the editing of the published text.
...Mary [Hemingway] writes, "Ernest found a hoopoe bird in Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Eden painting. No discovery in Madrid pleased him more" (388). According to Mary, Ernest particularly associated hoopoe birds with Spain (383). He briefly mentions them in The Garden of Eden manuscript, with David consoling Catherine for her inability to paint and thereby capture Spain, "The country is here.... The Prado's here" (GOE 53). She knows what she saw and felt, he assures her. It's hers. She wouldn't "want to put the hoopoes in a cage," would she? (KL/EH 422.1, f6, c9, p10).
...
Rodin's Metamorphoses of Ovid, the statue in the Eden manuscript that inspires the sexual experiments of both the Bournes and Sheldons,
Scribner's cut the letter? Oh my God, I'm going to be sick. Why?
The Sheldons? Who the fuck are the Sheldons?
Why was the Rodin statue cut from the book? That's sort of important that it was the inspiration for the sexual transference.
What hoopoe bird?
There are no Rodins, Boschs, Sheldons, or hoopoe birds in the Scribner's. Oh my goodness, those are significant omissions. What did you do, Scribner's?
I looked up hoopoe birds. From Wikipedia:
In what was long thought to be a defensive posture, hoopoes sunbathe by spreading out their wings and tail low against the ground and tilting their head up; they often fold their wings and preen halfway through.[18]
I swear there is some mention of David taking note of how Catherine sunbathes with her head up but I swore "grinder" was in the book too and it wasn't. So I downloaded a pdf version of the book and searched "head up:"
She went to sleep that way with her head back and her chin up as though she were in the sun on the beach...(31)
The hoopoe bird hits the air pump in Scribner's. Why didn't they just publish the manuscript? Why does JFK allow only scholars to see the ms? Don't know and there's nothing we can do.
