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Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.
--
Letter to Bernard Berenson (13 September 1952); published in Ernest Hemingway : Selected Letters 1917-1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

 

Ernest Hemingway

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