A healthy mind in a healthy body: 10 famous writers who were fond of sports

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It seems that there can be no such dissimilar activities than sports and literature. However, many well-known literary men quite successfully combined writing work with serious hobbies for sports. And they even considered him an integral part of life, played football and boxing, swimming and shooting, played chess and ran marathon distances. In our today's review, famous writers who could not imagine their life without sports.

Ernest Hemingway

Among the many hobbies of the American writer were shooting and hunting lions, fishing and hi-alai. However, Hemingway's real passion has always been boxing, which the future writer has been doing since the age of 14. Since then, he has always trained, and he gave preference to good boxers, from whom he took lessons. Even in his own house, he had a ring, where the writer not only boxed himself, but also acted as a referee. Ernest Hemingway joked: his lack of interest in beating and constant winning prevented him from becoming a champion in this sport. At the same time, Jack Dempsey, a professional boxer, refused to fight with the then beginning writer. True, not because he was afraid of being defeated, but only not wanting to harm the talented writer.

Alexander Pushkin

He had a weakness for boxing and the beacon of Russian poetry. If from childhood the poet at the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum enjoyed taking lessons in fencing, swimming and horse riding, then in adulthood he became interested in boxing, becoming one of its first fans in Russia. There is an assumption that much contributed to the desire to box the love for this sport of the idol of the poet Lord Byron. The absence of coaches did not frighten Alexander Sergeevich, he studied boxing techniques from books he read in French.

Albert Camus

The French novelist and essayist became interested in football as a child. Even the punishment that awaited him after the game did not scare him. Despite the spoiled clothes and shoes, and the grandmother's lashes that followed, he picked up the ball again and again. During his studies at the Lyceum, he played for the national team of his educational institution, dreamed of playing football professionally, but severe tuberculosis prevented the fulfillment of this desire, after which the doctors forbade Camus to exercise. Since then, he could only be a fan.

Lev Tolstoy

The Russian classic has always taken good care of his health, so physical education and sports were included in his daily schedule. He perfectly kept in the saddle and played in the towns, did exercises without fail, loved to solve chess problems, walked a lot and even equipped a tennis court in Yasnaya Polyana, although this sport was not yet popular in Russia at that time. In addition, Lev Nikolayevich enjoyed training with a kettlebell, and at the age of 67 he mastered a bicycle, which became the writer's greatest hobby.

Jack Kerouac

The American writer and poet was seriously involved in American football, was even a celebrity of the local team, thanks to which he became a sports scholar, first at Boston College, and then at Columbia University in New York. But Jack Kerouac was not destined to become a professional footballer: at first he broke his leg, and then once again had a falling out with the coach, which made it possible to interrupt the payment of a sports scholarship, and then expel the future writer from among the university students.

Vladimir Nabokov

It is not for nothing that they call him the most athletic of the Russian classics. In the life of Vladimir Nabokov, there was a place for boxing and American football. The future writer gladly stood at the gate and was so successful that he became the goalkeeper of the Trinity College team. Chess and tennis became Vladimir Nabokov's greatest hobbies. At the same time, many famous grandmasters considered the writer a worthy rival, but Nabokov was not going to study professionally. But as a tennis coach, Nabokov had to work while he was living in Germany.

Arthur Conan Doyle

The author of famous detective stories about Sherlock Holmes, like his famous character, loved boxing, and besides that he played rugby, loved auto racing and alpine skiing. He was also passionately involved in cricket, taking part in 10 matches, where he played for the team of the Marylebone Cricket Club, the most famous in the world. The writer did not pass by his hobby for football, while he was even the captain of the amateur national team of Portsmouth.

Alexander Kuprin

Lev Tolstoy himself spoke well of the physical data of Alexander Kuprin, calling him a pleasant muscular strongman. However, Kuprin himself did not hide the fact that he loves sports, usually practicing for a long time and intensively. Alexander Ivanovich was engaged in weightlifting and even initiated the creation of an athletic community in Kiev. He was familiar with Poddubny and Zaikin, and even taught the latter to read and write. In addition, the writer was engaged in shooting, equestrian sports and swimming, went to lessons in the pool. Kuprin's sphere of interests also included shooting, which he considered not even a sport, but a real art.

Haruki Murakami

The renowned Japanese writer and translator has been running marathon and triathlon for many years. He ran the Boston Marathon six times, ran the New York Marathon three times, and in 1996 ran a 100-kilometer marathon around Japan's Lake Saroma. There is a book in Murakami's bibliography "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running", in which the writer collected his thoughts about doing this sport and shared his impressions of participating in marathons, comparing running with literary work.

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeevich was seriously interested in chess. He was not interested in any other games and sports, he analyzed games from books, during periods of creative stagnation he preferred this particular game to all kinds of leisure and dreamed of playing with professional chess players. In addition, Turgenev studied the theory of chess, and actively introduced his friends to this game, helping to study all its subtleties.

Writers, like ordinary people, do not immediately find their vocation. Many famous writers of the twentieth century began their career not at all from writing novels, and to provide food for themselves or their families, while they had to master a variety of professions.