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When a fictional
character assumes life-like proportions, the thin line between fictional
rendering and real life personality blurs, writes Usha
Bande
In fiction and life both readers tend to conjecture the inspirational personality behind the portrayal. This holds good as much for painting and sculpture as for literature. If we wonder at Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic Mona Lisa trying to find her real life prototype, we also ask who could have been behind the famous Indian sculpture of Saalbhanjika whose fascinating smile has almost become legendary. Then, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady of his sonnets, William Wordsworth’s Lucy, Kalidas’s Yakshini of Meghdoot and Raja Ravi Verma’s women models have all been subjects of research, speculation and assumptions. Likewise, Ernest Hemingway’s old fisherman Santiago and O’Henry’s Della of The Gift of the Magi fame have always held readers’ fancy. Santiago, the hero of the novel, fascinates with his feats of strength and will power. So life-like is the picture that we could say there is a man out there, somewhere on the coast of Cuba who at this very moment is setting out to the open sea to catch a Marlin of his own. In his novel The Old Man and The Sea, Hemingway describes Santiago thus: "The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were in his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the chords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert." And visitors to Cuba have found that such a man did exist in a fisher village in Cuba and Hemingway modelled his hero on this man – Greorio Feuntes. Captain Adios Gregorio Fuentes born on July 11, 1897 at Lanzatoye in the Canary Island was a nautical captain who had migrated to Cuba when he was six years old. Fuentes, a larger-than life personality around Coj`EDmar till his death on February 13, 2002, was Cuba’s last living link to the Nobel Laureate. Fuentes shared months on end with the author, coming to know him perhaps better than anyone living today. Before Fuentes’ death, tourists would often walk up to Gregorio’s Coj`EDmar home for photos, enchanted by the thunderous laugh of the mythical seaman. The place and the old man have become legendary for scores of tourists on Cuba’s "Hemingway Trail." The story of the friendship of Hemingway and Feuntes is as legendary as the two seamen themselves. One day Hemingway was out searching for onions and rum with friends when a tropical storm swept in, forcing him to take refuge at Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys. Here he met Fuentes for the first time. In 1938 Hemingway hired Gregorio as captain and cook of his sport fishing boat, the Pilar, and the foundation of a lifelong friendship was laid.`A0In his interviews the Captain always asserted, "All of my memories with Hemingway are good ones. They were very happy times for us both. Full of adventure. We were young and full of life." The huge photograph of Hemingway hung in Gregorio’s home in Cojimar is the center of attraction for all visitors. Anees Jung, records this fact in one of her articles that appeared in 1999. Recounting her visit to Cuba and thence to Cojimar she tells of her meeting with the centurion who was an inveterate fan of his hero and could hear not a syllable against him. O’ Henry’s The Gift of the Magi is one of the best-loved Christmas stories of the world. It has moved the hearts of thousands of readers since it first appeared in 1905, and it will continue to be loved for generations to come. Set in a poorly furnished apartment in New York, it begins thus: " One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all, and sixty cents of it was it in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such a close dealing implied." So Della sells her lustrous and copious hair to buy an expensive chain for Jim’s wristwatch—a gift for Jim; and Jim sells his gold watch to buy hairpins for Della’s beautiful hair. Their gifts are rendered useless but their love shine all the more brightly. .O’Henry has modeled his Della on his wife whom he loved dearly. Twenty-four of Shakespeare’s sonnets are addressed to a woman. We have little information about her, except for a description the poet gives of her over the course of the poems. Shakespeare describes her as ‘a woman color’d ill’, with black eyes and coarse black hair. Thus, she has come to be known as the "Dark Lady". There are scholars who believe that the Dark Lady could be one of three historical women: Mary Fitton, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth; Lucy Morgan, a brothel owner and former maid to Queen Elizabeth; and Emilia Lanier, the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, patron of the arts. Some also consider William Davenant’s mother to be the Dark Lady, but only because Davenant claimed to be Shakespeare’s illegitimate son. In Wordsworth’s Lucy lyrics, Lucy remains a mystery of William Wordsworth’s verse. However, Lucy’s allure lies in her being the embodiment of Wordsworth’s preferred character: solitary, simple, and innocent. For William Wordsworth believed that for poetry to continue to please mankind permanently, it had to do with "essential passions" and these were to be found in "humble and rustic life. |
