|
Agnes von Kurowsky Stanfield (January 5, 1892 – September 25, 1984) was an American nurse who inspired the character "Catherine Barkley" in Ernest Hemingway's ''A Farewell to Arms''. Kurowsky served as a nurse in an American Red Cross hospital in Milan during World War I. One of her patients was the 19-year-old Hemingway, who fell in love with her.〔 By the time of his release and return to the United States in January 1919, Kurowsky and Hemingway planned to marry within a few months in America. However, in a letter dated March 7, 1919, she wrote that she had become engaged to an Italian officer. Although Kurowsky did eventually return to the United States, they never met again.〔 Their story is shown in the 1996 film ''In Love and War''. Hemingway used his experiences in Italy as the basis for ten short stories. Fictionalized characters based on Kurowsky appear in his short stories ''A Very Short Story'' and ''The Snows of Kilimanjaro'', as well as his novel ''A Farewell to Arms''. ==Background== Agnes von Kurowsky Stanfield was born on January 5, 1892, in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents met while her German-born father〔Meyers, Jeffrey (1977). (''Married to Genius'' ), London Magazine Editions, p. 177〕 was teaching languages at the Berlitz school in Washington, D.C.. One of her uncles was the famous Chicago architect William Holabird, and her maternal grandfather was Gen. Samuel Beckley Holabird, who served as a Quartermaster in the United States Army. Although her family would move many times during her childhood, Agnes came to regard Washington as her home. She attended the Fairmont Seminary and a training program for the public library in Washington. She got her first job in 1910 as a cataloguer for the library there. In 1914 she decided to leave the library and attend nursing school. In her words "(library ) was too slow and uneventful. My taste ran to something more exciting." She attended the Bellevue Nurses Training Program in New York City, graduating in 1917. She applied for service with the American Red Cross, and, on June 15, 1918, she sailed for Europe. It was there, at her first assignment for the Red Cross at the Army Hospital in Milan that she met Hemingway. In 1919, she rejected him through a letter, while he was in the United States. Agnes's identity as the basis for the fictional character was not widely known until Hemingway's brother, Leicester, published a book in 1961 about his brother. Leicester Hemingway visited with Agnes in Key West while researching his book. Agnes gave him some photographs from her scrapbook that now reside at the Hemingway Foundation. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Agnes von Kurowsky」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|