Harry, a writer, fights with his last strength against gangrene, contracted while hunting in Africa.
And throughout the story, he reproaches himself for having "distanced from his life principles and from his profession as a writer" in addition to recovering stories that he always wanted to write... and never did.
Harry awaits the arrival of a plane, which will rescue him from near death.
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a brief, forceful and exceptional story, with the usual mastery that Ernest Hemingway bequeathed to us.
It dates from the mid-30s, a decade in which he was -at first- subjugated by Africa and this was also demonstrated in "The Green Hills of Africa" and "The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber".
Shortly after, he was going to move to the journalistic coverage of the Spanish Civil War, from which he also offered us another exceptional work: "For whom the bell tolls".
“Hemingway, to whom they owe so much the popularity of the San Fermín bullfights or the Caribbean paradise of Key West, was, without meaning to, the man who with a text moved Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and brought it closer to the imagination of millions of readers and nature lovers”, describes Hector D'Amico, a notable Argentinian editor and journalist.
mysteries at the top
With its almost 6,000 meters high, Kilimanjaro is the summit of Africa.
Its western peak is called Ngáje Ngai (The House of God, in the Maasai language).
Nearby is one of its greatest mysteries: the carcass of a frozen leopard.
No one could explain how it got there.
Damico, who is also an expert in mountaineering, says that the fascination of Kilimanjaro “cannot be explained by its technical difficulties, which are relatively few, nor by its height, less than the famous 'eight thousand' of the Himalayas.
But there is the largest volcano in the world and due to its particular location, close to both the equator and the Indian Ocean, it requires climbers to adapt rapidly to extreme climates”.
Nobel Prize
Ernest Hemingway, author of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, later made into a film by Hollywood.
Two decades after that work, Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1954).
At that time, both in the field of journalism and in literature, he was a consecrated, even when they cited him as a reference to "the lost generation."
If Paris and Spain captivated him in the early days (“Fiesta” or “Paris was a party” remain as testimonies), then it would be the time of Cuba, when his stay in the fishing village of Cojimar, in Cuba, inspired “El old man and the sea
Hemingway had been born at the end of the previous century (1899 in Oak Park, Illinois), had a difficult childhood, wrote his first chronicles in the Star, in Kansas City, and further progressed as a correspondent during World War I.
There he wanted to enlist, but one of his many health setbacks prevented him and he stayed as a nursing assistant for the Red Cross.
Tireless traveler, adventurer, journalist and writer of race, he could not enjoy those tributes too much.
Afflicted by multiple illnesses, he returned to his country, settled in Ketchum, Idaho and almost all the chronicles indicate that he committed suicide on July 2, 1961.
movie controversy
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" was made into a film by Henry King in 1952, as a romantic drama of relative success and discreet reviews.
Hemingway was never convinced by the adaptation of his story and used to comment that the only thing he liked was the performance of Ava Gardner (of course, his friend).
But the chemistry in the film between the great Ava and the great Gregory Peck – central protagonist as Harry – provides the most anticipated moments, especially when they meet.
Susan Hayward, like Helen, is the other star of the film, which also has a totally different ending to Hemingway's story.
save the planet
Mount Kilimanjaro, in a panoramic photo taken from Kimana, Kenya, in March 2021. Photo: Yasuyoshi CHIBA / AFP
But the Kilimanjaro that Hemingway wrote could only remain as a testimony of the past if, as recent Unesco reports reveal, those snows are becoming extinct.
“The upper front of the ice – Alfredo Merino wrote in El Mundo (Spain) a few days ago – is an immaculate wall that in some points reaches 20 vertical meters in height.
Before 2000, that mass of ice covered the top of the mountain.
Today with each passing day its edge is lower.
During the ascent, over six days, snow and ice are conspicuous by their absence, despite the altitude through which the route goes.
They do not glimpse up to the top.
Only there, where the temperatures are lower and the winds colder, resist the last ice of the highest mountain in Africa”.
According to UNESCO's "World Heritage Glaciers" report, by 2050 there will no longer be the slightest trace of ice on Kilimanjaro.
They would be at the forefront of the accelerated melting of glaciers found today in 50 World Heritage sites.
The situation also affects Everest, the Alaskan glaciers and ice masses in Antarctica.
According to the same report, since 2000 and due to CO2 emissions, 58 billion tons of ice are melting every year.
They also warn that the last African glaciers – Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Ruwenzori, will be the first to disappear.
“The retreat and disappearance of glaciers is one of the most dramatic proofs that the Earth's climate is warming", concludes the report. But there is also a glimmer of hope: "If we can drastically reduce emissions, we can save most of these glaciers.
This is really a call to action at all levels, not just at the political level, but at our level as human beings.” Hemingway and all humanists would look forward to it.
