Death in The Afternoon - Contents

Contents

Any discussion concerning bullfighting would be incomplete without some mention of the controversy surrounding it. Toward that end Hemingway commented, "anything capable of arousing passion in its favor will surely raise as much passion against it."

The chances are that the first bullfight any spectator attends may not be a good one artistically; for that to happen there must be good bullfighters and good bulls; artistic bullfighters and poor bulls do not make interesting fights, for the bullfighter who has ability to do extraordinary things with the bull which are capable of producing the intensest degree of emotion in the spectator but will not attempt them with a bull which he cannot depend on to charge...

— Ernest Hemingway, from "Death in the Afternoon"

Hemingway became a bullfighting aficionado after seeing the Pamplona fiesta in the 1920s, which he wrote about in The Sun Also Rises. In Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway explores the metaphysics of bullfighting—the ritualized, almost religious practice—that he considered analogous to the writer's search for meaning and the essence of life. In bullfighting, he found the elemental nature of life and death. In his writings on Spain, he was influenced by the Spanish master Pío Baroja. When Hemingway won the Nobel Prize, he traveled to see Baroja, then on his death bed, specifically to tell him he thought Baroja deserved the prize more than he. Baroja agreed and something of the usual Hemingway tiff with another writer ensued despite his original good intentions.

Death in the Afternoon was published by Scribner's on 23 September 1932 to a first edition print run of approximately 10,000 copies.