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February 22-March 29, 2021 22 Working Nurse l WorkingNurse.com Von Kurowsky never contacted him, put off by reports of his heavy drinking. While Von Kurowsky moved on, Hemingway had continued to dwell on their romance. He incorporated fictionalized versions of the rela- tionship into several short stories and eventually his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. Not only was the novel's heroine — Catherine Barkley, a nurse who falls in love with her wounded patient in Italy — clearly inspired by Agnes Von Kurowsky, Hemingway based a different character on Enrico Serena, another of Von Kurowsky's wartime beaus! Print the Legend The connection between Von Kurowsky and the characters she'd inspired became public knowledge after Hemingway's suicide in 1961. Hemingway had always tended to exaggerate the events of his own life even when he wasn't using them for literary fodder, so by the time Von Kurowsky died in 1984, many scholars and Hemingway aficionados had difficulty separating the facts from the fiction. In 1989, Von Kurowsky's 1918 diary and her letters to Hemingway were published in a nonfiction book that threw some cold water on the legends that had grown up around Hemingway's wartime exploits. However, the book's 1996 film adaptation, also entitled In Love and War [see nearby review], again parted ways with reality, casting Chris O'Donnell and Sandra Bullock as Hemingway and Von Kurowsky in a soapy romance as sensationalized as anything Hemingway had written or said. It seems that sometimes, fiction is more powerful than truth. ___________________________________________________________ Aaron Severson is the associate editor of Working Nurse. You can find his recent historical features, "William Rathbone VI (1819-1902), Father of English District Nursing" and "A Brief History of Measles and Its Vaccines," at WorkingNurse.com. WN Von Kurowsky admits that she went to war in search of adventure, and part of that seems to be juggling affairs of the heart. She has left a boyfriend back home and has a handsome Italian surgeon in love with her, but the brash, younger Hemingway has an effect on her that she can't ignore. From Another Era During the time this story takes place, peo- ple wounded in action were not shipped home for treatment as they are today, so wartime nurses sometimes spent a lot of time with patients, witnessing their gradual improvement or worse, their slow death. In those conditions, it was probably difficult to prevent staff and patients from forming close emotional attachments. At the same time, it wasn't a situation with a lot of permanency. Once patients were discharged, the nurses might never hear from them again. It's easy to see how all of this shapes Von Kurowsky's thoughts about the future of her relationship with Hemingway. It is said that this love affair, possibly one of his earliest serious relationships, is what led Hemingway to write A Farewell to Arms, basing the book's main characters, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley, on himself and Von Kurowsky. THIS MOVIE SEEMS to have been largely overlooked when it came out in 1996, but it has an enormous cast, large and graphic battlefield scenes, atmospheric music and beautiful settings. Some scenes look like old world paintings, as the camera lingers on the picturesque vistas of Vittorio Veneto. In Love and War isn't always realistic: The nurses on duty always wear bright white, crisply pressed uniforms, seldom look dirty or tired, and on their days off, the characters dress like something from a Victorian picture book. However, I was happy to let myself get lost for two hours in the passion of a powerful love story. In Love and War (New Line Cinema, 1996) ____________________________________ Christine Contillo, RN, BSN, PHN, is a public health nurse with more than 40 years of experience, ranging from infants to geriatrics. She writes the Nursing Book Club column. WN AN AFFFAIR TO REMEMBER Left: Ernest Hemingway was hospitalized from battlefield injuries. Top left: Agnes Von Kurowsky. Top right: On the mend, Hemingway takes a walk with nurse companions. Von Kurowksy is to his right. continued from page 21 continued from page 21