1. OUT OF SEASON

It is well-known that Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) loved the “Queen of the Dolomites” and spent some of the happiest moments of his life in Cortina. What is less well-known is that it was there he wrote the story “Out of Season,” one of the early examples of his distinctive style. The story was penned between the Hotel Bellevue and the Hotel Concordia in 1923 and was included later in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories. Its plot is remarkably straightforward, and yet perplexing. A young American couple arranges for a local guide, a certain Peduzzi, to meet them at their hotel to go on a fishing expedition. The guide arrives on time, but they make him wait. Once they come down, Peduzzi senses that something has happened between them, as if one of them had said something embarrassing to the other. In the end, the plan to go fishing never materializes, and we will never know why. It seems that in Cortina, Hemingway started experimenting with the famous technique that he would later use in masterpieces such as The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. This is the ‘Iceberg Principle’, according to which a writer can omit certain details if he is keenly aware of the importance of what has been omitted and if the omission serves a structural purpose. Like Hemingway, many other writers would find inspiration in these mountains to work on their prose: their stories are collected in Lettere da Cortina (Elleboro Editore).