Ernest Hemingway in Milan 1918 retouched 3

"A Very Short Story" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single 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 old ...

written by

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...

. It was first published as a

vignette Vignette may refer to: * Vignette (entertainment), a sketch in a sketch comedy * Vignette (graphic design), decorative designs in books (originally in the form of leaves and vines) to separate sections or chapters * Vignette (literature), short, i ...

, or chapter, in the 1924 Paris edition titled '' In Our Time'', and later rewritten and added to Hemingway's first American short story collection '' In Our Time'', published by Boni & Liveright in 1925. In the story, a

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

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 ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...

. 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 Gonorrhoea or 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. Gonorrhea is spread through sexual c ...

from a sexual encounter in a taxi. Hemingway based the story on his World War I affair with Agnes von Kurowsky, a nurse he met in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

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