Ernest Hemingway in Milan 1918 retouched 3

"A Very Short Story" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

written by

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

. It was first published as a vignette, or chapter, in the 1924 Paris edition titled ''

In Our Time In Our Time may refer to: * ''In Our Time'' (1944 film), a film starring Ida Lupino and Paul Henreid * ''In Our Time'' (1982 film), a Taiwanese anthology film featuring director Edward Yang; considered the beginning of the "New Taiwan Cinema" * ''In ...

'', and later rewritten and added to Hemingway's first American short story collection ''

'', published by

Boni & Liveright Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American Publishing#Book publishing, trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which chan ...

in 1925. In the story, a

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

soldier and a nurse named "Luz" fall in love as she tends to him over the course of three months in a hospital in

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of t ...

. They decide to marry, but when the soldier returns home to the United States, he receives a letter from Luz with the news that she has fallen in love with an officer. Later she writes that she has not married, but the soldier ignores her. Shortly afterward, the soldier contracts

gonorrhea Gonorrhea, colloquially known as the clap, is a sexually transmitted infection (STI) caused by the bacterium '' Neisseria gonorrhoeae''. Infection may involve the genitals, mouth, or rectum. Infected men may experience pain or burning with ...

from a sexual encounter in a taxi. Hemingway based the story on his World War I affair with

Agnes von Kurowsky Agnes Hannah von Kurowsky Stanfield (January 5, 1892 – November 25, 1984) was an American nurse who inspired the character "Catherine Barkley" in Ernest Hemingway's 1929 novel ''A Farewell to Arms''. Kurowsky served as a nurse in an American Re ...

, a nurse he met in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard language, Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the List of cities in Italy, second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 ...

while recuperating in the hospital from leg injuries sustained at the Italian front."Decoding Papa: 'A Very Short Story' as Work and Text" by Robert Scholes in ''New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway'' ed. Jackson J. Benson (1990) Duke University Press (Paper); 0-8223-1065-1

References

External links

Ernest Hemingway Collection, JFK Library
Short stories by Ernest Hemingway 1925 short stories Padua in fiction {{1920s-story-stub