far as the sky
far as the sky
close as a wish
we all those sailors
who never caught their fish
far as the sky
close as a wish
we think of the only question
though we're poor or we're rich
far as the sky
close as a wish
life starts with "why"
day's role is to teach
far as the sky
close as a wish
hello equals goodbye
the great wisdom we will reach
far as the sky
close as a wish
the words of anybody dies
when he meets the death!
Oldmen and Sea -- Waldemar von Kazak
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." Thus begins Ernest Hemingway's last full-length novel published during his lifetime. After a period of poor literary reception, the famous "has-been" wrote the draft of "The Old Man and the Sea" in 8 weeks, saying that it was "the best I can write ever for all of my life." The novel garnered his only Pulitzer Prize (though the jurors had unanimously voted to award his 1941 novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls," the chairman, Columbia University president Nicolas Murray Butler, had vetoed their choice, claiming it to be both offensive and profane) and in 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for "his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style." He spent his remaining years beginning many new novels which he was unable to finish (though several were subsequently edited by his family and published posthumously to considerable acclaim) and killed himself in 1961. “Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.”
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