It’s not very often that I commend a blurb. I prefer to mock them, especially for their brevity or generic flavour—fantasy and science fiction are particularly guilty of this. For Homage to Catalonia I can make an exception: my edition has a blurb on the back cover from Antony Beevor, who calls this “an unrivalled picture of the rumours, suspicions and treachery of civil war.” This describes the book perfectly.A couple of burdens of ignorance to confess before we begin here. Firstly, I had no idea there was a Spanish Civil War until I picked up this book. If any of the various books related to the early twentieth century or to World War II that I have cracked open since the days of Grade 10 history class mentioned a Spanish Civil War, such passing allusions have long fled my mind. I’m somewhat ashamed to have such a massive gap in my historical knowledge, but there you have it. At least I’ve filled it in with a firsthand account from one of England’s great twentieth-century writers!Secondly, I didn’t realize this was non-fiction until I started reading the introduction. See, I didn’t set out to read this book. George Orwell is one of those authors whose oeuvre, at least these days, is overshadowed by one or two masterpieces—Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm in his case. For the vast majority of anyone who reads Orwell, one or both of those works are their introduction, and usually the totality of their Orwellian experience. His other works lurk on the fringes of popular perception. Some, like his essay, “Politics and the English Language” are more prominent than others. Suffice it to say: I had never heard of Homage to Catalonia until a colleague at school offered me a copy—she had accidentally ordered two. I don’t turn down free books, let alone books by George Orwell.While my ignorance regarding history shames me, it also gave me an opportunity to approach Orwell’s account without many preconceptions. Unlike a student of history reading this for a course, or someone who is more familiar with the period, I had no idea what Orwell was prattling on about when he talked about Franco, the POUM or PSUC, etc. I understand the differences between the Marxist, Stalinist, and Trotskyist flavours of Communism, and I knew the names of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. As far as the political situation in Spain went, however, I was tabula rasa. This allowed me simply to embrace and go with Orwell’s explanation and opinions instead of fighting against any contradictions or additional confusion created by my prior knowledge. So, in some cases, ignorance can be a useful tool for reading comprehension.Homage to Catalonia definitely improved my awareness of the complex political climate in Europe prior to World War II. I was about to say it “clarified my understanding” until I realized how silly a statement that would be. The dense, almost inscrutable explanations of the political situation in Spain during the Civil War in this book bely any claims that the politics are a simple matter of Left versus Right, Communist versus Fascist. Orwell himself was so frustrated by attempting to explain the matter that, in his errata for later editions of the book, he instructed editors to remove it from the main body and place those chapters into appendices, which is how they appear in this edition. This was a great choice, because I can’t imagine someone less interested in the politics trying to slog through this chapters and still finish the book. Tucked away as appendices, they are less intimidating but just as informative. (You really don’t need that information, however, just to enjoy Orwell’s personal account of his experiences in Spain.)At its most basic, this is a personal account of an English journalist of socialist tendencies who went to Spain, enlisted in the militia, and fought in the trenches against Fascists. Orwell captures the vagaries of living in the trenches, particularly those engendered by a combination of poorly equipped, poorly trained soldiers and a lack of sound strategic leadership. He recounts the periods of endless waiting, the lines that were comically far apart—too far for their obsolete rifles to be effective—and the occasional thrill of real danger. Throughout those months, Orwell’s sense of idealistic enthusiasm for the Socialist/Communist movement fades palpably. And what’s left diminishes even further after he is wounded and returns to Barcelona, only to experience the street fighting and suppression of the POUM.(I confess I enjoyed reading Orwell’s description of the sensations of being shot—in the throat!—and recovering afterwards. One can write about many experiences authentically without ever having to undergo them oneself, and that might include the experience of being shot. But there is a depth to Orwell’s account that comes out of that moment of certainty that one’s life is over. It is harrowing yet reassuring.)Although the descriptions of trench life and criticism of the militia’s unprepared, unprofessional attitude are all well and go, I started to get invested in the second half of the book. Once Orwell returns from the front to recover from his wound, things get very interesting. Still technically a soldier fighting against Fascism, he quickly finds himself aligned with a party that has fallen out of favour. The other elements of the Communist aparatus begin to suppress and move against the POUM. Orwell goes from being a recovering soldier to an innocent observer to a “Trotyskist betrayer” who is wanted for arrest. Eventually, he and his wife end up fleeing from the very government and people he had so idealistically sought to defend when he first came to Spain.Orwell’s political explanations are invaluable, and this is where his appendices prove most useful. Obviously, for someone unfamiliar with this event, it has provided me with a wealth of information. I can now comfortably ride out a mention to the Spanish Civil War in casual conversation—no longer must I feel the beginnings of a dry sweat in my palms and on my forehead as someone throws out a passing reference to Franco, fascism, or the PSUC! Yet Homage to Catalonia provides an education more general and even more important than mere familiarity with the events and political players of the day: Orwell’s deft political commentary is also a scathing indictment of propaganda and interventionist imperialism. Its message is still relevant in today’s political climate, where both Left and Right scream at us for attention, for exclusive allegiance, for polarized patriotism.Consider, for example, how Orwell deconstructs the portryal of events in foreign newspapers. He criticizes British and other foreign newspapers for only showing one side of the story. He also criticizes journalists who went to Spain but just reprinted the official, accepted version of events instead of digging deeper for the truth. Within Spain, stories were murkier and more complicated—censorship was rife, and in the hands of the Communists and the PSUC, but there were still conflicting voices. Outside Spain, however, the Communist apparatus spearheaded by the USSR managed to spin events to their benefit. And it’s interesting that this spin was anti-revolutionary.After all, the first thing one learns about communism as a political philosophy is that it is the result of a worker revolution against the wealthy bourgeoise. Orwell illuminates how Communism—that is, the movement as it was expressed in Russia—had already become compromised and corrupted by that need for any form of government to perpetuate its own existence and interests. It was in Russia’s interest to have a Franco government, albeit a capitalist one. It was in Britain’s interests to have a Franco, capitalist government. These titanic powers of the European stage intervened (or, equivalently, chose not to intervene) and spun the story to ensure the outcome that was favourable to their interests, regardless of the effect this would have on the Spanish population. It’s the same old story, and it still happens today. Observe the recent revolution in Libya, which garnered American support despite the United States’ previous close ties to Gaddafi. As political winds shift, so too do attitudes towards intervention. And Orwell makes clear his disgust for this.Orwell’s conclusions will be familiar for anyone who has read Nineteen Eighty-Four: don’t trust what you read in the papers. Bias is everywhere. The only innoculation is to read more than one perspective, to piece together something that might be closer to the truth through a synthesis of conflicting accounts, and to be aware of the possible biases of the writers. (This is why the single voice of the state in Orwellian England is so pernicious.) He also provides a healthy reminder that neither the Left nor the Right have the monopoly on propaganda or bias. As a liberal, I’m making a mistake if I assume that only the “right wing” sources of news are the ones presenting a biased view of events and that leftist or centrist news sources are somehow more reliable.Furthermore, it would be overly naive and optimistic to assume that the Internet somehow alleviates this problem. While it’s true that the Web has provided some unique opportunities for peer-to-peer, uncensored communication—Google and Twitter’s assistance to the Egyptian revolution is one example—the problem remains that the Internet is not fundamentally democratic. I do believe it can be a powerful tool for democracy—that is to say, it’s no more anti-democratic by nature than it is democratic. But, as Evgeny Morozov has repeatedly argued, it is not a magic bullet.Orwell’s obvious disillusionment with Communism as a movement in this book provides key insights into his later novels. Both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are not exactly subtle in their messages. Nevertheless, Homage to Catalonia sharpens those messages, providing a historical context that makes it more evident why Orwell was motivated to write those two books. He was clearly reacting strongly against what he perceived as a betrayal of the very principles he supported, and he wanted to convey the danger of that betrayal to everyone.I’m very glad Homage to Catalonia found me. It educated me about an important event in recent European history. It gave me insight into the personal life of a great author of the twentieth century. It emphasized the dangers of propaganda and the necessity of questioning the motives of external actors in larger world events. And it sharpened my understanding—and appreciation—of the power and importance of Orwell’s two major novels. Both compelling on its own and as a companion piece, Homage to Catalonia is a gem.
Another *FAQ* I wrote from back in the day in usenet for alt.books.george-orwell Mr. Orwell has kindly granted me an interview regarding his book, Homage to Catalonia B: There has been some talk about the Spanish Civil War lately, perhaps inspired by the recent movie El Laberinto del Fauno . This war was a labyrinth as well: sorting out the various factions and who did what to whom certainly is quite a chore. But first things first. Could you describe your ensemble - you are wearing some unusual clothing. Is it a uniform? O: Of a sort. It is not exactly a uniform - perhaps a 'multiform' would be the proper name for it. I am wearing a thick vest and pants, a flannel shirt, two pull-overs, a woollen jacket, a pigskin jacket, corduroy breeches, puttees, thick socks, boots, a stout trench-coat, a muffler, lined leather gloves, and a woollen cap. B: !!! That is a lot of ensemble - you must be very hot. O: I heard that Canada is quite cold. I dressed in what I wore on cold nights at the front. B: Now, is this typical clothing for the militia? O: Practically everyone in the army wore corduroy knee-breeches . . . . some wore puttees, others corduroy gaiters, others leather leggings or high boots. Everyone wore a zipper jacket, but some of the jackets were of leather, others of wool and of every conceivable colour. The kinds of cap were about as numerous as their wearers. It was usual to adorn the front of your cap with a party badge, and in addition nearly every man wore a red or red and black handkerchief round his throat.B: Very dashing. And red goes particularly well with dark hair. You guys gave those clothes-horse fascists something to think about. O: I believe we did, in our own way. B: Let's discuss the puttees. For the benefit of those who do not know it, could you give a brief etymology of this word? O: It's from the Hindi and Urdu, their word for a strip of cloth, which in turn originated from Sanskrit. It is usually a woolen strip of cloth and it's wrapped around the leg from the ankle to knee. This prevents your trousers from being torn or soiled. B: Ah, practical *and* chic. Surely a real chore to remove though? O: One rarely removed one's clothing. You see, one had to be ready to turn out instantly in case of an attack. In eighty nights I only took my clothes off three times, though I did occasionally manage to get them off in the daytime. B: I won't ask you about *that*. Sleeping in your clothes must have been a hardship? O: No, not after a day or two. But there was a worse problem. For sheer beastliness the louse beats everything I have encountered . . . . he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of their own at horrible speed. I think the pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war, indeed! In war all soldiers are lousy . . . B: Surely not - they are usually brave, I understand.O: No, not lousy. 'Lousy.' The men who fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae - every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles. B: Ok, enough of that! Ha-ha, I'm confident no one wants to discuss your testicles, lousy or otherwise. O: ??? B: So there you were, an Englishman thrown in with the Spaniards. How is your Spanish? O: Villainous. All this time I was having the usual struggles with the Spanish language. Apart from myself there was only one Englishman at the barracks, and nobody even among the officers spoke a word of French . . . B: Impossible! O: Things were not made easier for me by the fact that when my companions spoke to one another they generally spoke in Catalan. The only way I could get along was to carry everywhere a small dictionary which I whipped out of my pocket in moments of crisis. But I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain! B: You joined the P.O.U.M. militia, and you have been criticized for not criticizing the way they ran the war. O: They didn't 'run' the war, they were muddling through like everyone else. The whole militia-system had serious faults, and the men themselves were a mixed lot, for by this time voluntary recruitment was falling off and many of the best men were already at the front or dead. There was always among us a certain percentage who were completely useless. Boys of fifteen were being brought up for enlistment by their parents, quite openly for the sake of the ten pesetas a day which was the militiaman's wage; also for the sake of the bread which the militia received in plenty and could smuggle home to their parents. B: You wrote Homage to Catalonia with a certain detachment and regard for form? O: Yes, I tried to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. B: What sort of action did you see? O: All the time I was in Spain I saw very little fighting. I was on the Aragon front from January to May, and between January and late March little or nothing happened on that front, except at Teruel. In March there was heavy fighting round Huesca, but I personally played only a minor part in it. Later, in June, there was the disastrous attack on Huesca in which several thousand men were killed in a single day, but I had been wounded and disabled before that happened.B: That wound turned out to be quite lucky. You had been promoted to second lieutenant, and then on May 20, 1937 you caught a sniper's bullet in the throat. Please describe it.O: It was a 7mm bore, copper-plated, Spanish Mauser bullet, shot from a distance of about 175 yards, at a velocity of 600 feet per second . . . B: I mean, describe your experience.O: Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all round me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shrivelled up to nothing . . . .All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense. B: Did your life flash before your eyes, as they say? O: I felt a vague satisfaction. This ought to please my wife, I thought; she had always wanted me to be wounded, which would save me from being killed when the great battle came. B: She must have felt a vague sorrow for your pain. But I understand Eileen was working in Barcelona as a secretary in the IPL office, very rare for a foreign woman to come to Spain at that time. O: Yes, and in mid-March she visited me for three days in the front line trenches. The fascists threw in a small bombardment and quite a lot of machine-gun fire while she was there. B: She must have hated it. O: No, she wasn't frightened and found it quite interesting. She never enjoyed anything more. B: Come on. O: That's what she said, really. B: She certainly wasn't mousey like she was once called. O: She wasn't a bad old stick, at any rate. My commanding officer George Kopp rather admired her too, and thought her awfully brave and heroical. But that's another story. B: You and Eileen barely escaped out of Spain, with the Soviet Police hunting down P.O.U.M. members. O: We started off by being heroic defenders of democracy and ended by slipping over the border with the police panting on our heels. B: C'est la vie, hein! O: . . . B.
What do You think about Homage To Catalonia (1980)?
HEADLINE: For students, here the politics is explained.For you students who have this great book imposed upon you in a syllabus, here is the best help I can give you with regard to Chapters V and XI, which are in some editions included only as Appendices.It is interesting to note that at the outset Orwell himself was nonplussed by the alphabet soup of the political situation in Spain. At first he was at a loss when confronted with the idea of right wing communism as you probably are. It was only as he became aware that he was every bit as much in danger of being killed by the “Communists” as he was of being killed by Fascists that he became educated.That aspect of the book is dense when one first encounters it. No doubt about it. This is not Orwell's fault because he explains it about as clearly as it could be explained. I think the problem arises in part out of the simplistic preconceptions about the Spanish Civil War that we bring to the book even now. Orwell is still trying to get us straightened out in our thinking.Far be it from me to sound as if I am trying to be helpful to Orwell. Nonetheless and for what it is worth, I think his explanation would have been immeasurably clearer if he had used the term “Stalinist” every time he describes the P.S.U.C. rather than “Communist.” The reason that he did not is perhaps that the term “Stalinist” was not in quite as wide a usage then as it is today. The distinction is simply this. Stalinists placed the interests of the Soviet Union first and foremost. The ideals of socialism held a very distant second place to that. In fact it was Leon Trotsky's view, simplistically put, that Stalinists really did not give a shit about international socialist ideals at all and in fact considered them anathema.Therefore, when you are reading, try mentally substituting the word “Stalinist” for the word “Communist” whenever you encounter it. In those few instances where that substitution would lead to an inaccurate reading, the context will clearly tip you off.It was in the vital interest of the Soviet Union at the time to have strong alliances with capitalist democracies for the purposes of its own defense. The Spanish Republic, the government that Franco was attempting to overthrow by military coup, was a capitalist democracy. Another capitalist democratic ally is exactly what the Stalinists wanted in Spain. They did not want a revolution, be it anarchist or socialist. It was the Stalinists who were truly defending the existing capitalist democracy.Obviously, the Stalinsts also deeply appreciated that a Franco government in Spain would not be an ally of the Soviet Union.Therein is where the three-way aspect of this conflict comes in. Contemporaneously, with the hostilities between the army and the established Republic, the anarchists and labor groups started a true left-wing revolution that ultimately would have done away with the Republic, a capitalist democracy. . . .and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain, by the way. The tricky aspect of the situation arose out of grim necessity. The true left-wingers, the anarchists and labor groups who were in the midst of staging their revolution, and their enemies the Stalinists were forced into an extremely uneasy cooperative effort in fighting Franco. Had there been no Franco, the Spanish Civil War would have been a two-way conflict between the left-wing anarchists and labor groups on one side and the capitalist democratic Republic and Stalinists on the other. Maybe.I have read these sections of the book many times in order to get this through my head, but I gladly stand ready to be corrected on any of it. The lesson of the book, by the way, is: Pay attention to politics. Politics can get you killed.
—Steve
Pats silpniausias Orwell'o veikalas. Ne vien del to, kad jau po 100psl pasimeciau kas tie Poum, Cnt ir t.t , bet kas ten su kuo ir, kodel kovoja. Realiai nieko naujo nepasakysi apie knyga, kaip sakoma Fallout intro "war, war never changes". Taip ir cia, ta pati karo beprasmybe, kai po ilgos kovos niekas nesupranta, kodel kovoja toliau, resursu stygius, kare pasitaikantys pavieniai bajeriukai. Bet viskas aprasyta labai paprastaii ir pavirsutiniskai. Atrodo,kad pasakotu druzokui prie alaus bokalo. Tikiuosi kiti memuarai is bomzavimo periodo sueis geriau.
—Kaimynas
1. Homage to Catalonia has the distinction of being on my mental to-read list for longer than any other book. I've wanted to read this book longer than any of the people who elbowed or punched me in the face this week have been alive. I figured after almost twenty and half years I should finally read it. I've owned the book for over a decade.I have no clue what book now currently holds the distinction book I've wanted to read for the longest time but haven't.2. When I was a senior in high school I wrote a paper for a friend of mine on this book, he was a year older and a freshman at Fordham. I had been visiting him, and he needed to write a paper on this book. I'm not sure if he read it or not. I hadn't. The paper was on the relationship between the Anarchists (CNT) and the Communists (PSUC). I dictated the paper to him, highlighting the ideological differences between the two groups and why the Communists would turn on the Anarchists. Prior to the evening that we did this I don't know if I had ever really known anything about the Spanish Civil War. I don't remember having ever really learned anything in school or had read anything about Anarchism or Communism (beyond what we learned growing up in the waning and thawing days of the Cold War, not necessarily the most objective facts being passed on to young minds). I babbled on about the differences between these two ideologies. My friend typed and gave me some bits he knew or remembered from the book to get my reaction to them. It was the first college paper I wrote, and it wasn't for myself. My friend later told me that he got his highest grade for that class on this paper. It would take me two decades to actually read the book. 3. The Spanish Civil War I think of as one of the great tragedies of the 20th Century. Fuck the 60's. To me this was the last stand of idealism.4. The book. George Orwell went to Spain to report on the war in late 1936. Arriving in Barcelona he got caught up in the revolutionary feeling of the city and joined the militia. His credentials to get him into the country were from an organization aligned with the POUM, a politically fairly insignificant group in the hodgepodge of alphabet groups that made up the Spanish Government who were fighting Franco. Orwell wasn't necessarily happy about joining the POUM, he would have rather joined up with the Communists, which was where his sympathies lay at the time. But, he also wanted to help defeat this threat of fascist, and wanted to do his part and kill at least one fascist in battle. So he joined and after a short time went to one of the fronts. It's significant that Orwell had joined the POUM. About six months later the POUM would be a suppressed political group, branded fascist traitors by the Communists (PSUC), they would be accused of the heretical crime of Trotskyism, and many of the leaders would disappear into jails, never to be heard of again, and the rank and file arrested as fast as they could be found. Orwell would end up escaping from Spain and evading arrest as friends of his were arrested, disappeared and ultimately died in the custody of the Communists. The book itself is mostly a narrative of Orwell's time in Spain. A travel essay where instead of describing his Holiday in the Sun in some exotic place he ends up spending four months living in a trench, takes part in an ineffectual assault on a fascist position, goes on leave just in time to arrive back in Barcelona to witness and take part in the street fighting of May 1937, goes back to the trenches, gets shot in the throat, and arrives wounded back in Barcelona just in time to be branded a traitor and an enemy of the state because he had been in a POUM regiment. Interspersed with this narrative are some chapters on the political climate of Spain and the gross distortions and lies about the various political groups that were being trumpeted in the press both in Spain and abroad. Orwell's narrative of his time in Spain is great reporting on the time. It's fairly amazing today to think that he did what he did. There was no real reason why he should have signed up to fight in this war. It wasn't his country. He was caught up in the revolutionary possibilities being exhibited in Barcelona at the time, and as he says he was tired to seeing the fascists up until this point winning at everything they tried, so it makes sense why wanted to take part, but I think about myself and other people I've known and I can see myself being sympathetic to the cause, but to actually sign up, live in a cold trench with almost no food, and shooting and getting shot at with antiquated rifles? This isn't like deciding to go sleep in a park and play bongoes in order to collapse the capitalist system. The real message to the book though is in Orwell himself. He never politically sympathized with the POUM or the CNT (I don't know how to describe the POUM, revolutionary-socialist might work, but those terms get clouded, but they need to be put in perspective with the Communist position, which wasn't revolutionary at all, but was attempting to hold back the floodgates of revolutionary fervor, so as not to alienate the middle class and foreign interests-- in case you forgot the CNT are the Anarchists, who played a very significant role in the Spanish Civil War, especially in the early days, and their role lessened when the big backer of the Government (which is the side this whole alphabet soup were fighting on) became the USSR and the better weapons and stuff were finding their ways into the hands of the various Communist armies and militias), he saw problems with the waging of a revolution alongside creating a united front against Franco. Orwell might have been naive, but he sort of thought that the war could be won by a united front, and then the revolution, true equality as was being attempted and exhibited by the POUM and CNT at the time could be had by all. If this doesn't make too much sense it might be my fault in explaining it, or it might be in the small differences between the groups and their aims that make them essentially incompatible with each other. Sooner or later the differences between them were going to become visible. And they did, and through lies and distortions people who had been risking their lives in fighting against the fascists were overnight turned into enemies of the government. Men returning from the front were finding themselves being branded the very thing they had been fighting against. They were arrested. The atmosphere of Barcelona became what we might later call Orwellian. But back to Orwell himself. He wasn't politically sympathetic to the abstract ideas these groups might have had, but he was more than sympathetic to The Truth and the individual men who he had known, served and fought with. He knew they weren't a fifth column looking to help the fascists, they were people who believed in protecting their country, they were people who were giving their lives and comforts to holding lines and carrying out dangerous assignments. And the truth, as it was being broadcast now by Communist organs was that they were traitors. English Communist newspapers were calling for the execution of the them for being traitors to the revolution. Things Orwell had seen first hand were being reported as the exact opposite and being passed off as truth, and these distortions when they were noticed were shrugged off by fellow-travellers as necessities of the forward march of progress. It might not seem like a big deal that Orwell was shocked by the lies he saw, and that he was more deeply committed to the truth than to an abstract political concept or the Party line, but you can compare him to other intellectuals at the time who needed to have the atrocities of Stalin to be beyond any hope of being wished away before they turned away from their love affair with Stalin's vision of pragmatic action. Or you can compare Orwell to someone like Hemingway who knew full well that a friend of his had been innocent of the charges he was arrested for in Spain, but he had no problem with supporting the official line that even if he was innocent he was still guilty of treason, because the Party had said so. To write this book when Orwell did was courageous. The truth being held to be less important than orthodoxy. It would be kind of like one of those Evangelistic money-makers coming out with a book exposing all the fraud, lies and deceit that his fellow cronies were taking part in. Or a Conservative pundit coming out with an attack on the lies and fleecing the neo-cons have been a part of, say a month before a presidential election. Needless to say, this book of Orwell's was pretty much ignored when it came out. Today, with the Spanish Civil War something that most people don't really know about or care about, this book stands as an interesting read about a man going to war, but more importantly as a testament to one man's dedication to the truth and his strong moral fortitude.
—Greg
