“Now the Greatest Living Romantic Was Dead”

Norman Mailer and Mary Hemingway’s Eulogies to Ernest Hemingway

Authors

  • Erik Nakjavani University of Pittsburgh Author

Keywords:

Ernest Hemingway, elegy and memorialization, romanticism, existentialism, metaphysical inquiry, literary mourning

Abstract

Two defiant voices rose plaintively but strongly after the fateful morning of Ernest Hemingway’s suicide. They questioned the manner of Hemingway’s death and advanced their own theories on his last moments among us. The voices belonged to his widow, Mary, and Norman Mailer, and they were intuitive and consequential. What the voices conveyed were highly sensitive and had perceptive consequences. The philosophical and metaphysical implications of their utterances approximate the elegiac in intention and tone. This aura was particularly so in Mailer’s case, who made a passionate effort to envision Hemingway’s death as the man’s restless habitual practice of simulating suicide with a shotgun gone wrong.

Author Biography

  • Erik Nakjavani, University of Pittsburgh

    Erik Nakjavani is Professor Emeritus of Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has specialized in Hemingway scholarship, his life-long interdisciplinary interest in psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary theory, and the arts has resulted in many wide-ranging publications. His latest essays include “Homage to Guillevic: The Poet of Atavistic Nostalgia for the Primeval” (2010), “Alchemy, Memory, and Archetypes: Reading Hemingway's Under Kilimanjaro as an African Fairy Tale" (2010), and “Hemingway’s African Book of Revelations: Dawning of a “New Religion” in Under Kilimanjaro” (2011), and “Esmail Khoi: The Poet as Observer and Creative Explorer” (2012).

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Published

2026-10-09

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013): A Double Life • Mind of an Outlaw

Section

Articles