Hold Katalánsku

by George Orwell

Orwellovo reportážní zpracování zážitků ze španělské občanské války.

V prosinci 1936 se vydal George Orwell do Španělska, aby zde na republikánské straně bojoval proti Frankovým nacionalistům. Přestože ho Henry Miller v Paříži od úmyslu jít do války zrazoval, Orwell se připojil k milicím POUM na aragonské frontě. V bojích utrpěl vážné zranění, když mu nepřátelský ostřelovač prostřelil krk, a po uzdravení byl donucen za zhoršující se politické situace ze Španělska uprchnout. Ve své reportážní knize Hold Katalánsku autor s odzbrojující upřímností popisuje bezprostřední průběh války, revoluční euforii, hrůzy bombardování, vlastní zranění na frontě, ale i přátelství a zradu mezi stoupenci svobodného Španělska.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Classics, War, Memoir, Biography

220 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 1938

About the author

Eric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both fascism and stalinism), and support of democratic socialism.

Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.

Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 3 out of 5]

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

George Orwell is one of my favourite writers. 1984 and Animal Farm were game-changers for me when I first picked them up at 12 years old, and they fostered an interest in politics that would stay with me for the rest of my life. Homage to Catalonia never quite affected me in the same way, but I decided it was time to do a reread of it as an adult. In July, I will be visiting Catalonia-- again, my first time doing so as an adult --so it seemed especially appropriate.

Orwell is a great writer, but it's just a shame that the material here is not that exciting. I found it interesting reading about how his experiences fighting Franco and the fascists during the Spanish Civil War shaped his personal and political beliefs; it's just that his extensive detailing of trench life is repetitive and largely uneventful.

The place where Orwell was stationed actually saw very little action. He describes a bunch of raggedy boys stood around shivering in the cold, smoking any cigarettes they could get hold of, and mostly just waiting for something to happen. All Quiet on the Western Front documents trench warfare - the filth, the cold, the rats - and it is a far more compelling account. Here, it gets quite tedious, even with Orwell's accessible and conversational style.

It's not just a memoir, though. He also attempts to explain the history of the conflict, and separate out the different groups involved. He explains how the Anarchists and Communists were in conflict with one another but were, in this case, technically on the same side against Franco. How well Orwell understands this history is not clear, and his explanation of all the political differences is rather convoluted (he packs a lot of information into a couple of chapters), especially when he turns his attention to the trade unions involved.

What it is possible to gather from the complex web that Orwell portrays is that the political landscape at this time was a complete mess. He often uses his trademark humour to comment on the ridiculousness of the war, and it was indeed a ridiculous situation. I did some outside reading on the Spanish Civil War, and it is easy to see why Orwell's two chapters of background info are lacking. It was such a complex conflict that had in part been building for close to a hundred years.

One of my favourite aspects of the book - and, in truth, probably why I like Orwell quite a lot - is that he never really portrays any person as his enemy. His enemy remains fascism throughout. He speaks highly of those he meets and claims that while his memories of Spain were "most evil" he had “very few bad memories of Spaniards.” He was, as far as I can tell, a humanist. And in the midst of all that chaos, that was no small thing.

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[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is justly famous for its disillusioned account of how the Communist Party—in its eagerness to defeat Franco--betrayed the successful anarchist experiment in Catalonia for the sake of expedience, how it executed and imprisoned its anarchist and socialist comrades for the sake of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois.

I found all this very interesting, but have to admit that the real reason I liked the book so much was for its gritty account of war on the cheap, where guns are poor, marksmanship is worse, and the lack of food, matches and candles is more important than any threat by the enemy. In spite of the generally poor marksmanship, however, Orwell did manage to get himself shot in the neck, and his first-hand account of what it is like to be wounded is vivid and completely absorbing.

The only thing that keeps this book from being superb is its detailed discussion of each of the various left-wing parties and their responsibility—or lack of responsibility--for the internecine battles on the streets of Barcelona that contributed to the subsequent purges, arrests, and imprisonments. Orwell clearly realizes that this account may be a problem for his narrative, for he apologizes for its length, arguing that previous accounts in the international press have been so deceptive that it has become necessary to set the record straight. Now, however, more than seventy-five years later, such a precise accounting is indeed unnecessary--at least for the general reader--and Orwell's book suffers as a result.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency."

Sometimes, when I get particularly frustrated with that strange idealist in me that chose to work with teenage education, I think of George Orwell and his fight in the Civil War in Spain. He knew at some point that the war would be lost, and that both sides in it had major issues, flaws and most of all a great deal of confusion hidden underneath excruciatingly stupid and dishonest propaganda. And yet he fought, for a lost cause, because NOT fighting for human decency was not an option.

Obviously, being a teacher is a positive experience, whereas his was a massive trauma, and I don't by any means intend to compare teaching to being a soldier. But the mindset of an idealist is the same, - a vague sense of having to do the right thing no matter how tired and frustrated one feels, how badly it pays, and how much aggression one faces.

As always, Orwell manages to highlight the human condition in the mess, both the cowardice and the bravery, the hatred and the love, the destructive powers and the binding culture. Reading Homage To Catalonia is a key to understanding how much love for humankind is hidden underneath the political satire in 1984 and Animal Farm, and in his essays against nationalism.

Because he cared, he was angry.

I can relate to that!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I had been about ten days at the front when it happened. The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail. It was at the corner of the parapet, at five o’clock in the morning. This was always a dangerous time, because we had the dawn at our backs, and if you stuck your head above the parapet it was clearly outlined against the sky. I was talking to the sentries preparatory to changing the guard. Suddenly, in the very middle of saying something, I felt – it is very hard to describe what I felt, though I remember it with the utmost vividness. Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion…”
- George Orwell,Homage to Catalonia

In 1936, George Orwell went to Spain with the intention of reporting on the ongoing civil war as a journalist. His purpose – as a dedicated socialist – was to highlight the fight against fascism, and to rouse the opinion of the working class in both Great Britain and France.

Evidently, Orwell decided that the best way to get close enough to write about the war was to become a part of it. He enlisted as a private in the Partido Obrero de Unificatión Marxista (POUM), a Marxist worker’s party militia. Thereafter, he went to the front, saw a bit of combat, became embroiled in the internecine conflict between various left-wing groups (a civil war within the civil war), was wounded, and was finally forced to escape Spain, chased not by fascists but by communists who had taken power and declared the POUM illegal. Soon afterwards, Orwell’s account of his experiences was published as the now-classic Homage to Catalonia.

(Orwell wrote this about seven months after his service ended. It was originally published in Great Britain in 1938. It did not make its way to America until 1952. The version I read is a reissue of the 1952 version, which is unfortunately sparse when it comes to explanatory footnotes or background).

The Spanish Civil War that Orwell so famously covered was incredibly complicated. Broadly speaking, it pitted Republicans (who were in lawful power) against Nationalists (who were in revolt). This does not nearly begin to convey the densely tangled alliances on both sides. The Republicans consisted of communists, anarchists, other socialist groups, and Ernest Hemingway. The Nationalists fielded an array of monarchists and conservatives, centered around General Francisco Franco. Ultimately, the war captured the world’s attention, drawing reporters and soldiers from around the globe. Many were convinced that the fates of communism, fascism, and democracy would be decided in Spain.

I mention the context because Orwell does not.

Homage to Catalonia was written contemporaneously with the events depicted. At the time – before World War II cast its long shadow – the Spanish Civil War was a well-known event. Accordingly, Orwell does not expend any effort explaining what he assumed his readers already knew, and jumps into his tale without filling in any of the backstory. If you’re thinking of tackling this, a primer might be in order (I’ve had the Modern Library revised edition of Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War on my shelf for twenty years. Just waiting for the stars to align on that one).

As to the content of the book, my reaction was surprisingly muted. I expected to love this, and ended up at an emotion quite a bit below that. This gave me pause, as Orwell is a famous author, and Homage to Catalonia is acknowledged as one of his finest works.

I always hesitate to criticize something that is roundly admired, especially as I am well-aware of my own deficits as a reader. In this case, I knew that my own ignorance about the Spanish Civil War – which cannot fairly be attributed to Orwell – played a role. Still, a lot of it has to do with the maddening inconsistency of the narrative. Some parts are great; others are torpor-inducing.

The parts devoted to Orwell’s frontline experiences are wonderful. He assumes an engaging voice that is both self-ironical and humble. Many memoirs tend to overstate and exaggerate, but this is certainly not the case here. If anything, Orwell underplays what happens, which gives Homage to Catalonia the ring of truth.

During his time in Spain, Orwell served mainly as a private and a corporal. As a result, this is really a ground-level view of warfare. With his sharp eye for detail, Orwell discusses the day-to-day drudgery of soldiering. Most of it is waiting around, being hungry or cold or dirty, and usually all three at once. He describes equipment shortages, antiquated weaponry (the jerry-rigged grenades sound horrifying, and it’s a wonder that Orwell had the guts to carry them around), endless watches, and the way that countless hours of tedium can be interrupted by a few terrifying seconds of shelling. Despite being on the frontlines, ostensibly closest to what’s going on, Orwell notes how he and his fellow soldiers seldom had a very good idea of the bigger picture. They were often in the dark, trying to piece things together through rumor, hearsay, and gossip.

There is never a great battle. As Orwell freely admits, he was posted away from the major areas of operations, meaning that he was not subjected to massive artillery bombardments, aerial bombings, or large troop concentrations. Still, Orwell memorably captures his participation in a no-name skirmish that nevertheless was fought for the highest stakes imaginable, his own life. It is a reminder that even the smallest gun-battle is light-years beyond the normal boundaries of existence.

Homage to Catalonia is brimming with humanity. Occasionally, there is a bit of sardonicism, especially with regard to the procrastination with which orders were carried out (the running joke is that things are always happening mañana, tomorrow). Orwell is also unflinching about the less-noble aspects of warfare, such as the hospital orderlies who steal everything of value off wounded men. For the most part, though, Orwell writes admiringly of the men he meets, their principles, their ability to endure, and their generosity.

Unfortunately, Orwell intercuts his wartime service with long discussions about the politics of the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, the longest sections of Homage to Catalonia take place in Barcelona, where the Republicans were far too busy liquidating themselves to worry about Franco. These ideologically-based contretemps were driven by the communists (supported from afar by Joseph Stalin) who were maniacally obsessed with finding “Trotskyists” in their ranks. The political machinations featured a dizzying array of political groups, many of them communicating in a language that Orwell would later dub “Newspeak” in 1984. This makes it incredibly hard to follow, especially without prior grounding on the subject.

Orwell himself admits that these parts of his book are pretty dry. In fact, he even recommends skipping them. I pushed through, however, since the political angle becomes so extensive that avoiding them would have left me with the sensation of having never read the book at all. Worse than the esoteric nature of this discussion is Orwell’s handling of it. He does not even pretend to be an objective observer, and instead seems to be engaging in a lot of score-settling. For instance, he frequently quotes or excerpts something written in the press, and then criticizes it as communist propaganda. This might have been impactful when Orwell first wrote it, but it has little relevance now.

Today, the Spanish Civil War is often seen as a foretaste of the tragedies to come between 1939 and 1945. Even though it is a striking historical event in its own right, it does not really get its due, in no doubt because many of the issues it raised were decided on the much larger, bloodier stage of World War II. In some ways, Homage to Catalonia suffers from this reality, as the party strife, doctrinal bickering, and political posturing Orwell covered now feels far more academic than enlightening.

With that said, Orwell’s work endures, not so much as a specific history, but as a realistic tale of men at war. There are many wartime memoirs, but most are written by people who were soldiers first and writers second. Orwell was always a writer first – he is humorously deprecatory about his martial virtues – and it shows. The ins-and-outs of the Spanish Civil War may have faded, but Orwell’s precise recollections of lice-ridden soldiers, of long winter nights on sentry duty, of what it feels like to aim a gun at another human being, and to be shot at in return, still burns brightly.

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there is a book to read on the Spanish Civil War, this is the one. It has the strength of testimony and wins support through the intensity of convictions. Unfortunately, however, this history predates the younger generations. Still, the ideas, especially the great ideas, endure, and I cannot encourage curious minds too much to immerse themselves in this "homage," which is still current.

[BookHunter M ُH َM َD · Rating 4 out of 5]

و الكلمة الوحيدة التي لا يملك الغريب إلا أن يتعلمها هي كلمة "مانيانا" أي غدا و معناها الحرفي اليوم التالي. فإن كان بالمستطاع .. يؤجل عمل اليوم إلى المانيانا.

أنا شوفت الكلام ده فين قبل كده 
يتحدث في أحيان أخرى عن الكرم الأسباني و عن الشعور السوداء و العيون العربية و البشرة السمراء فأتذكر أننا يوما ما كنا هنا.

ما الذي يجعل شاب كيوت و ابن ناس كجورج أورويل يترك حياة المدنية و يزج بنفسه في حرب لا ناقة له فيها و لا جمل كبريطاني يعيش في أزهى عصور دولته الإستعمارية.

إنها انسانيته التي جعلته يستقيل من وظيفته الحكومية كشرطي في بلاد البنجال التي ولد فيه كإبن لمستعمر إنجليزي قبل أن يتلقى تعليمه في إنجلترا ثم يعود للعمل في مستعمرته و مسقط رأسه. نعم تمرد أورويل على الوظيفة و على الحياة و على الدولة و هام على وجهه مع المشردين و العمال و المهمشين إلى أن ذهب إلى أسبانيا كمراسل حربي أثناء الحرب الأهلية ثم لم يلبث أن انخرط في هذه الحرب كجندي يدافع عن الإنسانية و عن الحق في العمل و الحياة الكريمة لجميع عمال العالم.

يصاب برصاصة في عنقه و لحسن حظه أثرت في حنجرته فقط و لكنه يقول إن كان محظوظا فلم تمر رصاصة في عنقه أصلا.

بإسلوب أدبي جميل و رصين يحكي لنا أورويل قصته و قصة الحرب و كـأنك تقرأ رواية لا تفاصيل معارك و خلافات حربية و حزبية.

كتاب جميل و جدير بالإقتناء عن ثوار تكالبت عليهم الأمم و قدموا أرواحهم وقودا في حرب اقتربت كثيرا من أن تكون عبثية.

أما عن وجهة نظر جورج أورويل فتجدها في كتاب أخر كتقرير صحفي مطول بعد انتهاء الحرب تجده هنا

[Taufiq Yves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of my friends who formally study literature often say that Orwell might not be considered a top-tier literary figure. They argue that his works are too politically charged, overly serious, not entertaining, and often unsettling. The scenes in 1984 and the tragedies in Animal Farm seem to have obvious allegories. Recently, I even discovered some translations of Animal Farm that explicitly highlight its reference to the Soviet Union. However, I found that people without a literary background often appreciate his works. Political science and sociology students frequently recommend Orwell, and his works are undoubtedly classic examples of dystopian literature and valuable for understanding totalitarian regimes.

Personally, I particularly enjoy this type of writer. When it comes to the gravity of literature, I undoubtedly prefer the weighty. While I can appreciate the lightness of Calvino’s style, it doesn't resonate with me on a deeper level. I remember Orwell once said, ”Looking back through my work, I see that when I lacked a political purpose, I wrote lifeless books, flowery prose, meaningless sentences, ornamental adjectives, and generally deceptive works". - Orwell: Why I Write..

Orwell might not be a conventional literary figure; more accurately, he was a journalist (as was Hemingway). Homage to Catalonia resembles journalistic writing more than literary fiction, but the magic of literature lies in the ability of nonfiction works to also present poetic qualities.

The content of this book is straightforward, recounting Orwell’s memories of fighting against Franco's regime on the Spanish battlefield. There are no grand war scenes or heroic figures; instead, the narrative centers on the intricate internal conflicts within Spain - the clashes between the Spanish Communist Party and anarchist factions, the suppression by "Stalinists" against "Trotskyites." Within the anti-fascist camp, internal contradictions and irreconcilable conflicts abound.

Several parts of the book left a deep impression on me:

1. Orwell's hatred for war correspondents: ”One of the most horrible features of war is that all the propaganda, shouting, and lies come invariably from people who are not fighting." "The people who write pamphlets against us, and those who slander us in newspapers, are often hundreds of miles from the front lines, living comfortably at home or, at most, in the safety of a newsroom in Valencia." "One of the dark aspects of this war is the realization that left-wing media, in every way, are as deceitful and hypocritical as the right-wing media."

2. Lice: ”The parasites on you now resemble tiny lobsters and mainly thrive in your trousers. The only way to get rid of them is to burn all your clothes. They lay clusters of shiny, milky-white eggs along the seams of your pants, resembling tiny grains of millet, which hatch and breed at a terrifying speed. I believe that peace advocates could be more effective by including enlarged photos of lice in their anti-war pamphlets... Those who have fought have lice everywhere, even on their scrotum. We would usually toast their eggs and wash as much as possible whenever conditions allowed, trying to keep their numbers as low as possible. Nothing forces me to jump into cold water like lice do."

3. Spain: ”I have a poor opinion of the country of Spain but no bad impression of the Spaniards. I recall being angry at a Spaniard only twice, and every time I think about it, I believe it was entirely my fault. Undoubtedly, they are generous and noble, but these qualities do not truly belong to the 20th century. Because of this, one might expect even fascism in Spain to adopt a relatively loose and acceptable form of governance. Few people in Spain possess the qualities needed for a modern totalitarian state: terrifying efficiency and a high degree of uniformity.”

Indeed, the distance of Spain from modernity was mentioned by the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. I deeply relate to this through football. In recent years, my interest in football has waned, partly due to lack of energy but mainly because the passion and magic of football have nearly vanished under the waves of global commercialization. Utilitarian football dominates, and finding an exciting match is challenging (excitement shouldn't be measured by the number of goals). The only team that still moves me is Barcelona, adhering to their unique style. Initially, I only knew Barcelona, but through Barça, I learned about Catalonia's independence movement.

Reading Orwell’s books gave me a deeper understanding of the Catalan people. I'm irresistibly drawn to their unrestrained personality, touched by their sincere unity, and can't help but pay homage to Catalonia.

4.4 / 5 stars

My other review of Orwell's Work:
Animal Farm
1984
The Road to Wigan Pier
Down and Out in Paris and London
Why I Write
Coming up for Air

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always preferred Orwell as a writer of nonfiction, and Homage to Catalonia is most certainly up there with the best of it. Didn't think much of Animal Farm, and haven't even bothered to read 1984 yet, which, to be honest, doesn't really interest me anyway. What does interest me, a lot more, is his voice in the real world. I think now, having read this, Down & out in Paris & London, and some of his brilliant essays, he's simply a great writer. Didn't think I'd be saying that after Animal Farm. When he suddenly got shot here, I feared for his life, even though, of course, I knew he was to survive. He was told by a doctor he would lose his voice, permanently, but thankfully it did come back within a few months, having previously been reduced to a whisper. He was a lucky boy though, and on any other day the wound could have been fatal, thus, there would have been no book, or any others after for that matter. Orwell had joined the POUM militia, after simply serving as a journalist, because of his loose ties with the Independent Labour Party back home, but the poumistas were anti-Stalinists, and in the era of Moscow show-trials, they soon found themselves accused of being Trotskyist-fascists and enemy agents by the Moscow-run Spanish Communist Party, but like with many other conflicts there's lots of finger-pointing and accusations made by all sides. What I loved about this work is that Orwell never romanticizes about war, and is crisp and as clear as possible in regards to his intellectual honesty and capacity for observation. In between his reports of being on the frontline, he gives a really detailed account to the political side of things, and all those involved, which for someone like me, who is not well knowledged on the Spanish Civil War, provided much needed information, to at least make certain things that little bit clearer. Orwell, who produced this work fresh in his mind only a few months after returning to England, was not writing for effect. He recorded what he had seen out of a compelling need to testify. His prose has none of the mannerisms of modern cynical equivalents, who can tend to glamorise the horror and the futility of war. For Orwell, the characteristic smell and taste of war was that of excrement and decaying food, while also being pestered by rats and lice, he paints a vivid picture of the squalid trenches of the Aragón front in the early months of the war, while also describing the naive idealisms, his fellow comrades, the inability to use their rusty rifles properly (some of the weapons were decades old), and, to my surprise, there appeared to be more casualties (at least during Orwell's time) caused by simple accidents than by enemy fire, and he points out often, while on the front, that nothing really appears to be happening. So the battles overall are scarce, but when something does kick in, you bloody well know it. His descriptions in may of 1937 are a fascinating portrayal of mounting suspicion and much uncertainty, of which, he may have been wrong about certain events, but then so were other journalists and later historians, even more so, yet the immediacy of Orwell's account conveys the terrible fear and utter confusion caused by everything that was going on around him, which was, pardon my french, a bit of a clusterfuck at times, mitigated only by incompetence and many unpredictable flashes of humanity. As this was pretty much my first book to do with the Spanish Civil War, I'd be lying if I suddenly said everything now becomes crystal, because it doesn't. But at least it's a stepping stone toward likely future reading on the subject.

[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page 127 the author states that while watching a “fat Russian” it was the first time that he had seen “ …a person whose profession was telling lies - unless one counts Journalists” I wonder what the sublimely brilliant writer of this observation, George Orwell, would think if he was seeing the accusations of fake news (lies) that is routinely hurled around today. He himself warns against his own bias while writing about his time in Spain. Trust nothing is the mantra. Indeed.

I first read Orwell in my late teens. I have thought back hard in recent days and I think it was my parents that gave me, for what I think must have been my 17th or 18th birthday, a compendium of books that contained, Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Nineteen Eighty-Four. I read Nineteen Eighty-Four first and was spellbound. Being very much a reader of Sci Fi in my youth this was something utterly different. It was beyond great and after several rereads over the years and a good few items as to Orwell’s ideas behind it I have considered Nineteen Eighty-Four one of greatest piece of English language literature the world has ever seen. I read the other books in the compendium and found Animal Farm to be in the classic mold as well.

So where does Homage to Catalonia fit? In my opinion this is an exceptionally important book for those that have been admirers of Orwell’s and look to understand why he wrote both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Spain there was betrayal of the ideals that he held dear by those he thought he could trust. It is not a matter if I or anyone else agreed or disagreed with his political beliefs; he had his ideals but watched them literally gunned down. The narrative of his time in Spain shows an almost naive outlook as he went to the front feeling a part of a working class fight against fascism to a return to Barcelona to discover all he thought exemplar smashed by his own side of the political spectrum. Strangely through all this he could still write about humans being generally decent. Should all that Orwell wrote of those days in Spain be lessons for us all in not trusting those whose profession is telling lies? I think so. Read this book and read the genesis of ideas for the sublime Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Judge a book by its cover? Not generally but image of a bidding of farewell to the International Brigades near Barcelona 1938 by Robert Capa is certainly one of the most striking and apt I have seen.

In passing I would like to thank my great friend Gordon Wilson for his gift of this book on my 60th birthday. As I write may his Welsh team do themselves proud at the world cup and may we have a great time at the sevens.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Francesc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disfruté y aprendí mucho sobre la Guerra Civil Española con esta novela.
Me gustó mucho.

I enjoyed and learned a lot about the Spanish Civil War with this novel.
I really liked it.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 4 out of 5]

He had come to Spain to write newspaper articles, but he joined the militia instead, because at the time the only conceivable thing to do was to fight against Fascism.
Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s account of those gruesome months he spent fighting for what he believed in.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing”--"Why I Write," George Orwell

I decided to listen to Homage to Catalonia to give myself a daily sensitivity to the planet’s Endless War, this year reading about, among other wars/conflicts, Ukraine, of course, but what gave me the final nudge was an article featuring journal excerpts from a deserted Russian soldier who complained of the ridiculous lack of preparation, resources and propaganda from the Russian side. I am sure that lack of prep and resources are part of the Ukrainian story, too, but months later, the Ukrainians seem to be resilient and creative, supported by sympathetic countries the world over.

George Orwell went to Spain as a journalist to cover the resistance to Franco, and ended up as a lieutenant on the anti-fascist side. Like the Russian soldier above, Orwell tells of the lack of preparation, lack of weaponry, lack of resources, food, cigarettes, and so on, consistent with all the great anti-war novels and histories. Orwell notes that in his care were children--boys of fifteen and sixteen-- fighting, eager and ill-informed and unprepared. He writes a great passage about lice that I won't share here, sorry, but all soldiers will be able to relate to it. Homage to Catalonia was written from his journals of the time, where he admits he has limited perspective on what is going on, as all soldiers do, but wants to tell the truth as he sees it:

"If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency.'"

Orwell gets injured--shot in the throat!--and recovers to write a political critique that makes it clear he would do anything to fight fascism but he also chronicles the chaos and splintering of the left that in part led to their loss. As a journalist he is hard especially on journalists who theorize and rant and lie:

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

Principally you might want to read this because it contains so much amazing writing, where he reveals some political insights abut also admits his own limitations as much as the disappointing sniping organizations that blame each other for the loss. One of his chapters focuses on the fighting in Barcelona, which he participated in, and then tries to separate the what from the chaff in the political analysis in the aftermath. It’s so hard to get at the truth when so many people are screaming they are right. He notes the obvious lies of Franco, supported by Mussolini, Hitler and other totalitarian leaders, their control of the media, and shows how resistance to Franco was hindered by capitalists across the globe who preferred profits to decency and democracy, as socialism was vilified as much then as it is now by similar (usually rich) folks. But Orwell writes, with humor and humanity, of his love of the Spanish working class people he knew and fought alongside of:

“I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.”

[Somormujo · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5
💣💣💣💣💣

Tras “1984” y “Rebelión en la granja”, esta es la tercera obra que leo de George Orwell. En esta ocasión, no es una novela distópica o simbólica, sino que se trata de un ensayo, donde el autor narra sus vivencias en la Guerra Civil española, desde diciembre de 1936 hasta junio de 1937, coincidiendo en el tiempo y en el lugar con las Jornadas o Hechos de Mayo, que tuvieron lugar en Cataluña, con epicentro en Barcelona. George Orwell (1903-1950) no necesita de mucha presentación y es el pseudónimo de Eric Blair, novelista, ensayista y periodista, del que las tres obras citadas sean acaso las más conocidas, sobre todo, “1984” (1945) y “Rebelión en la granja” (1949), que ya pueden considerarse como obras clásicas.

Esta obra se escribió en 1938, muy poco tiempo después de que el autor abandonara España. Cuando Orwell llega a Barcelona en diciembre de 1936, es un militante del Partido Laborista Inglés y se enrola en las milicias del POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) para luchar contra el fascismo, aunque su intención inicial era escribir artículos periodísticos, como él mismo narra al comienzo de la obra. Más tarde, engrosará también las filas de las Brigadas Internacionales. En ese momento, los anarquistas controlaban casi toda Cataluña y el POUM se significaba como un partido bastante discrepante con el PCE y el PSUC. Es en este ambiente, en el que se desarrollarán las Jornadas de Mayo con un enfrentamiento abierto entre anarquistas y POUM, por una parte, y los partidos más gubernamentales (PCE y PSUC) por otra. El propio Orwell nos avisa de su parcialidad:

"Por si no lo he dicho antes, lo advierto ahora: cuidado con mi parcialidad, mis errores y la inevitable distorsión causada por haber presenciado solo parte de los acontecimientos. Y lo mismo digo respecto a cualquier otro libro sobre esta época de la guerra de España".

El primer tramo de la obra, se dedica a su participación en el frente de Aragón, donde Orwell sirve desde enero hasta abril de 1937. En concreto, Orwell nos narra la camaradería y las penurias que sufren los soldados en el frente, como cuando nos dice:

"Los guardias de asalto y los carabineros, que no eran cuerpos pensados para ir al frente, estaban mejor armados e iban mucho mejor vestidos que nosotros. Imagino que lo mismo ocurre en todas las guerras y que siempre se produce el mismo contraste entre la elegante policía de la retaguardia y los harapientos soldados del frente."

La segunda parte de la obra está dedicada a los Hechos de Mayo, ya que Orwell está en esos momentos de permiso en Barcelona. Así pues, narra en primera persona, lo vivido en esos días de enfrentamiento directo entre las facciones mencionadas antes. A veces, se ha hablado incluso de una guerra civil en el marco de la Guerra Civil, donde los partidos gubernamentales tratan de desarmar a las milicias y los anarquistas, a lo que estos se resisten, generando situaciones de enfrentamiento armado en los núcleos urbanos. Aun hoy, persiste cierta incredulidad con respecto a lo acaecido entonces.

"Nadie que estuviese en Barcelona por aquel entonces o en los meses siguientes olvidará el clima tan horrible que produjeron el temor, la sospecha, el odio, los periódicos censurados, las cárceles atestadas, las largas colas para comprar comida y los grupos de hombres armados que recorrían las calles".

Y es que lo acontecido, como el autor señala, tiene un fuerte componente político que no se puede obviar. De hecho, es claro al respecto al señalar:

"Pero lo cierto es que sería casi imposible hablar de la guerra de España desde un punto de vista puramente militar. Era, por encima de todo, una guerra política. No hay un solo acontecimiento, al menos de los ocurridos el primer año, que pueda entenderse si no se conocen, aunque sea por encima, las luchas entre partidos que tenían lugar detrás de las líneas del bando gubernamental".

La tercera parte de la obra, se dedica a su vuelta al frente tras las Jornadas de Mayo, donde Orwell es herido. Tras su convalecencia, regresará a Barcelona, desde donde huirá de España, ante la persecución de que son objeto las milicias. Acompaña un análisis más de corte político, sobre la difusión y repercusión nacional e internacional de los hechos acaecidos.

"Una de las facetas más desagradables de la guerra es que los gritos, las mentiras y el odio provienen siempre de personas que no están combatiendo".

Es importante señalar que la obra narra los acontecimientos vividos por el autor en las circunstancias comentadas, y aquí el oficio de Orwell es brillante como narrador y como periodista. En resumidas cuentas, estamos ante la narración en primera persona de unos hechos oscuros que tuvieron lugar durante el mes de mayo de 1937 en Cataluña (de ahí el título) y, aunque con cierto sesgo como el propio autor no niega (se habla solo de manera tangencial de otros hechos que ocurren en la retaguardia), considero de innegable valor. Por todo ello, mi calificación es de 5 estrellas y lo recomiendo sin dudar, aunque solo sea para que no nos olvidemos de hechos que han ocurrido en este país, no hace ni un siglo aún.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 ½ stars.

Now, after many false starts …

In my first attempt at reviewing this, I began by saying “This is a first rate source for information … on the Spanish Civil War.” Wrong!!! It really is a very poor source of information on the SCW. Because it is on a very personal level, and is mostly seen from a very limited and narrow point of view, this is really an almost useless book for learning anything historically significant about the war.

So, let’s start over.

Why is this book so famous?

The first reason should be obvious, its author. Orwell is one of my favorite authors, as he is for a great number of readers.

I believe the second reason is this. For many years Homage was one of the only English language, non-academic books available about the Spanish Civil War (with a famous author, no less). This book has been rated by over 17,000 readers here on GR. Among non-fiction books dealing with the war, I would venture that no others have been rated by even one-tenth that many readers.

What’s in the book.

The book is really two “books”. One “book”, the majority of the words, is about Orwell’s personal experiences in the war. A war memoir. The second “book” contains Orwell’s analysis of the machinations of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party during the war, specifically regarding the Spanish situation in that period.

There are two different layouts for the book.

The second of the above “books” was chapters V and XII of Homage to Catalonia as originally published. Orwell had second thoughts about this arrangement, and later suggested that these two chapters be moved to appendices. Some editions of the work have actually done this. Others have kept the original layout. It’s easy enough to tell about the book you read. If it has 14 chapters and no appendices, it’s the original layout; otherwise it will have 12 chapters and the two appendices. (The copy of the book I have is a paperback version of the first U.S. edition, in the original layout. It’s a Harvest Book, published by Harcourt Brace & World, with a copyright date of 1952. It contains an introduction by Lionel Trilling, which has been reprinted in many editions of the book since then.)

The first book - when. The 12 chapters of Orwell’s experiences in Spain take place from late in 1936 to about the middle of 1937. In Volume 1 of The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, titled An Age Like This 1920-1940, entry 92 is a letter dated 15 December 1936, in which he says that he should be leaving for Spain “in about a week”. Entry 99, dated 8 June 1937, is another letter, written while Orwell was still hospitalized in Barcelona. From the last couple chapters of Homage is would appear that it was probably no more than a couple weeks after this letter that, having been discharged from hospital and met up with his wife, they had made it across the border into France. Entry 100, an article called Spilling the Spanish Beans, was written after he was back in England, and appeared in two installments in New English Weekly on 29 July and 2 September.

The first book, as a war memoir. Frankly, it really isn’t very exciting. Of course it’s well written, but Orwell’s experiences on the front on which he was stationed, in Catalonia, southwest of Barcelona, didn’t really see all that much action. There was enough action for Orwell to receive a bullet wound in the neck, which could easily have killed him, and did put him in hospital for much of the remaining time he was in Spain. The chief interest of this majority of the book is mainly of the “this is what being stationed on a pretty inactive front was like in the mid 1930s in Spain” sort.

We meet few other characters (none of them memorable, for me) in which we can become interested, or who played an important part in Orwell’s own experiences.

The second book. In the second “book” Orwell goes into details of how he came to be connected to the Catalonian Anarchist formation he ended up with, instead of with a Communist formation. (He had had a letter of Introduction from a Communist organization in England, but it had little effect on how he was assigned by the Republican recruiters who were dealing with foreign volunteers.)

Then he tells us of the various contingents of the Republican forces, and the political leanings that they each had. Now here’s the thing. At least as far as I know, Orwell did not speak Spanish. So, first, whatever information he got was either from the few Spaniards he met that may have spoken English, or else second or third hand from non-Spanish English speakers. Then, since he was connected to an Anarchist unit, naturally much, if not most, of this information came from Anarchist-leaning men.

I don’t remember (and I haven’t the book at hand as I write) if Orwell gives any indication that he was familiar with the decades-old animosity that had existed between Communist, socialist, and at least two different flavors of anarchist political movements in Catalonia.

For these reasons, Orwell’s book is little used as a reference for histories of the Spanish Civil war by academics. He just didn’t have that deep a knowledge of what was going on politically on the Republican side, especially as regards the tides of semi-allied eras these groups had gone through, interspersed with longer and very violent periods of conflict between them.

Now I’m not saying that the things he writes in the book are flat wrong, or are useless. But I don’t think they are a dependable source of information. Of some other books I’ve read on this era of Spanish history, two contain MUCH more, and I’m sure better, information than is found in Orwell’s second “book”. These are (a) The Spanish Civil War A Very Short Introduction, and (b) Gerald Brenan’s The Spanish Labyrinth. The first book, by English historian Helen Graham, is a modern, up-to-date compendium, dense with information, about the causes of the war, the major phases of the military conflict, the political and social forces driving the two sides, and the brutal way in which Franco spent years afterwards making sure that those who had opposed him paid for their crimes; it makes use of much primary material that has become available only with the demise of Franco and the beginnings of a democratic Spain.

The second book is a magnificent summary of Spanish social and political movements for the 60-70 years preceding the SCW, with a brief Afterward written after the war was over. It does not deal directly with the years in which the War was fought.


What is wrong with Orwell’s version. Orwell seems to imply (though I don't know how closely he comes to saying this outright) that the Republican cause was basically betrayed by Stalinist/Communist machinations which produced mass arrests and imprisonments (and worse) of long standing major figures in the socialist and anarchist forces fighting for the Republic.

In her book, Graham writes that this considerably overstates the effect of these very right wing Stalinist activities in Spain (which certainly did happen), and in no way is the reason that the Republican side lost the war.

Far more important were these facts. (1) While Franco's forces were being supplied with weapons, tanks, planes, etc by the fascist governments of both Hitler and Mussolini, the Republican side was dependent on a single source of arms, Russia. (And at some point in the war, Stalin decided to cut his losses in this regard.) (2) The Republicans desperately wanted to be able to buy arms from other sources, but couldn't. Why couldn't they? (3) The attitude of England, whose capitalist power brokers were much more concerned with the prospect of the leftist Republicans winning than they were with the conservative, right wing Franco winning, prevented it. How? (4) England, and to a somewhat lesser extent France, led a diplomatic initiative which formed a very effective arms embargo on all of Spain throughout the war. Of course Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union paid no attention to this embargo, but other "law-abiding" countries were for the most part quite content to observe the embargo.

The Republicans never really had a chance, certainly after the time at which Russia cut off their arms supply - and really not even before that happened.

I would recommend either of the above books, or better yet both of them, as a source of information for (a) the SCW, and (b) the state of Spanish society when the Civil War broke out. This would be a far more useful reading exercise for this knowledge than Homage to Catalonia.

[Piyangie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's narrative about his personal experience as a soldier in the war against fascism. Orwell arrived in Barcelona in December 1936. His initial intention was to work as a journalist, covering the Spanish Civil War. But he changed his plans and joined the Republican side as a militiaman. This twelve-chapter book narrates his experience and what he witnessed as a militiaman. So, in short, this is a military narrative. The political views of Orwell are set out in the appendix.

Orwell gives a truthful account of the Spanish Civil War as a firsthand witness. It is a military narrative. No history of the conflict is provided, and the account begins in the middle of the action with his arrival at the Lenin barracks in Barcelona. It took some time for Orwell to grasp the political complexities, but his narrative about the war is as accurate as it can be. Orwell warns that it may at times be tinted with a personal bias, but that the overall picture it paints is true. And we have no reason to doubt him, for Orwell accounts to the reader how he was disillusioned by the Republican policies, and how he was disgusted by the treachery and betrayal within the Republican side. Orwell later realized that the division was the result of different political views of the different parties that allied themselves with the Spanish Republican government in its war against General Franco's Fascist uprising. However, even in the midst of this political chaos, Orwell appreciates the loyalties amongst whom he fights. Orwell had to flee Spain because the organization to which he was attached was declared illegal, yet he commends the comradeship among its members even in the time of adversity. He says:

I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.

When Orwell joined the fight, he was naive as to the political intentions of the war. He says:

If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered I should have answered: "To fight against Fascism," and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered, "common decency".

The only criticism Orwell had at the time was the Spanish inefficiency. He says that militiamen were not properly armed and that many were young boys who had no idea about the use of firearms. There was no proper training and no proper military organization. He compares the disorganized military factions to his home troops and seriously doubts their capacity to win.

But later, when Orwell witnessed the infighting within the Republican side only that he realized there was factionalism within them. He was shocked and dismayed. That completely disillusioned him and made him see the ugly picture behind the superficial fantasy.

One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

At the time of writing Homage to Catalonia, General Franco had not won the war. But history shows that he did, and Orwell lived to see it. Reading his account, one feels that he knew it would be inevitable.

Orwell's experience in Spain altered his political vision. He became a democratic socialist and turned anti-Stalinist. He saw how communism was turned into an absolute dictatorship. Even Franco's fascism was milder than Stalin's dictatorship, according to Orwell. His new understanding made him fight for a new political ideology - democratic socialism.

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism as I understand it.

Orwell's narrative Homage to Catalonia held more trust than interest in me. However, his words resonated with me. Coming from a country that endured a thirty-year Civil War, Orwell's words had special meaning.

It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.

If you look at today's conflicts, these words still ring true.

More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/

[Sarah (Presto agitato) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always found the Spanish Civil War confusing. After reading Homage to Catalonia, I at least feel that I was justified in my confusion. On the surface, of course, it was a conflict between Franco’s Fascists and the democratic Republican government, but it was far more complicated than that. When Orwell arrived in Spain to fight on the Republican side with the P.O.U.M. militia, a P.S.U.C. position was pointed out to him and he was told “Those are the Socialists” to which he responded, “Aren’t we all Socialists?” He quickly learned that would be far too easy. Orwell does an admirable job of sorting out the alphabet soup of the anti-Fascist parties and militias - the P.S.U.C., C.N.T., F.A.I., P.O.U.M., U.G.T., etc., etc. The distinctions between the Anarchists, left-wing Communists, and right-wing Communists seem subtle, especially since the groups were supposedly united in their opposition to Franco, but they became critically important later. As Orwell learned, associating with the wrong party was a potentially lethal decision.

Orwell served in the P.O.U.M. (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) in 1937. He chose the party somewhat arbitrarily, based on connections he had through the British Independent Labour Party. Rather than providing a comprehensive discussion of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell focuses on his personal experiences of fighting at the front (against the Fascists). He then moves on to the May, 1937 street fighting in Barcelona, when the various Republican groups fought each other. He vividly describes the experiences of war, with the cold, dirt, and lice, the inadequate weapons, and the idealistic but inexperienced soldiers, some of whom were children. With characteristic dryness, he recounts events such as being shot in the throat by a sniper, beginning, “The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail.” I would say so.

More interesting, however, is Orwell’s growing disillusionment with the politics of the war, a story he surely did not expect to have to tell when he set out to fight Fascism. He contrasts the atmosphere in Barcelona when he first arrived in Spain, when the workers were in control and he “breathed the air of equality,” with the oppressive environment of the police state that predominated just a few months later. The Soviet-backed P.S.U.C. pinned the May fighting in Barcelona on Orwell’s P.O.U.M., an excuse to suppress the P.O.U.M. and declare it illegal. The P.O.U.M. members were accused of being “Trotsky-Fascists,” which seems like an amusing oxymoron, but with it came the implication that they had secretly aided Franco. This was disastrous for the P.O.U.M. members, many of whom were thrown in jail for months on end without being charged of anything or allowed to stand trial. Many of them “disappeared,” including Andrés Nin, the leader of the P.O.U.M., who met a horrible end at the hands of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police).

Orwell’s commanding officer and friend Georges Kopp was imprisoned in terrible conditions. Orwell recounts a poignant story of frantically rushing around the city trying to convince the authorities to read a letter that would exonerate Kopp. His Spanish was shaky and his voice even weaker after the vocal cord paralysis he suffered from his neck wound. He also ran a very real risk of being arrested himself, simply by association with Kopp and the P.O.U.M. Orwell’s room was raided and all of his books and papers confiscated by the secret police. He and his wife only barely escaped from Spain themselves.

The Spanish Civil War was a microcosm of the conflict that was developing in Europe in the 1930s, a sort of testing ground for ideologies in preparation for World War II. Many foreigners came to fight, idealistically hoping to strike out against Fascism and to support a new government which seemed to represent the working people. Unfortunately, as Orwell came to find, other doctrines were tested as well, with the terrors of the totalitarian police state that came to dominate his later writing.

[The Conspiracy is Capitalism · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading Orwell over the years...

1) Early guidance:
--Political views need to be constantly tested and updated. Two of my early influences were both great admirers of Orwell. One lasted while the other fell:
i) Noam Chomsky: introduced me to imperialism (starting with Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance) and propaganda (I found Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies especially useful to unpack the liberal/capitalist intelligentsia, whereas the classic Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is more specific to geopolitics).
ii) Christopher Hitchens: it's easy for a beginner to be drawn to the edgy "Hitchslaps", picking the low-hanging fruit of religion... until this became unhitched from the Left thanks to the "War on Terror"...I've yet to review this process, although I did revisit my thoughts on religion: Why I am an Atheist and Other Works.

2) Contradictions and crisis:
...Chomsky's analysis of propaganda should have brought up the following unsettling questions:
i) How do we evaluate liberal imperialist miseducation's love for Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 (prominent in Western high school education systems)?
ii) How should we position this with Orwell's own views?
--This question came about slowly for me, as Chomsky himself has been a USSR-basher ( "USSR was a dungeon" , as if his US Red Scare audience are equipped with filling in the context). But perhaps I was preparing to put everyone under a microscope as the one-time-"Trotskyite" Hitchens face-planted into reactionary Islamophobia and outright US imperialist warmongering after 9/11.

3) Reframing Communism:
--The obvious counter to Left anti-communism is Michael Parenti, in particular "Ch.3 Left Anticommunism" in Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. Parenti unpacks the contradictions of the USSR under the struggles of "siege socialism" (also called "war communism").
...However, by this time I was already becoming unsettled by the overwhelming bias of reading predominantly Western Anglo writing, so I temporarily skipped over Parenti and explored a group of Marxists based in India, highlighted by Vijay Prashad. Their Global South framing guided be to look beyond the bi-polar "Cold War" from Western-capitalism-vs.-Soviet-socialism, to center the process of decolonization.
--The Western Left's apathy towards Churchill (i.e. at least he was an Ally fighting fascism) is replaced with revulsion (Bengal Famine of 1943), with a somewhat reversed process for the USSR leaders. See this video on the "ideological censorship" of Western imperialism which does not shy away from triggering examples (i.e. North Korea).
-intro: Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism
-dive: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

4) Reframing Orwell:
--Now, I have little interest in spending so much time on one individual as to become an Orwell historian (I'm not even a Marxologist, and on theory Orwell is no where near Marx). It's enough for me to accept that such a prominent political commentator engaged in the messy real world will be surrounded by a mess of re-interpretations.
--As learning is a process, I can recognize certain works may be quite useful in earlier steps, only to become a limitation at later steps. Early on, perhaps Orwell can have some literary uses popularizing power structures (his 2 famous fiction) and reporting on the working conditions of the British working class (The Road to Wigan Pier) and the non-working/precarious (Down and Out in Paris and London), although this book stands out the most (i.e. fighting fascism, anarchist/anarcho-syndicalist communes and Communist sabotage). For more of the libertarian-socialist/anarchist critique of real-world socialism/communism, see "What is Politics?" video series, especially episodes:
-"11 - Why Every Communist Country is a One-Party Dictatorship"
-"11.1 Why the Russian Revolution Failed: When Rich Kids do all the Socialism"
--Orwell's earlier excursions in the Indian Imperial Police (fictionalized in Burmese Days) I found surprisingly uncompelling. Overall, I do think Orwell is grossly over-read, especially relative to all the censored critical voices out there.
--Although it's difficult to be as vulgar as the Western biases towards Churchill, it's difficult for influential British figures to escape British imperialism. Consider the legendary (esp. amongst progressives) political economist John Maynard Keynes (Keynesian and Post-Keynesian economics) and his connections with the Bengal Famine of 1943 (for a broader context, see: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
...We can apply this to Orwell's later life plagued with obsessive anti-communism while cozying up with the propaganda unit of imperialist Britain: see in infamous Orwell's List, as well as Ben Norton's article "George Orwell was a reactionary snitch who made a blacklist of leftists for the British government".


//old review:
Here we have socialist Orwell's experience in 1937 Catalonia, where anarchist/anti-Stalin Marxist workers collectivized Barcelona and were running the city (anarcho-syndacalism) during the Spanish Civil War against Fascist Franco. It turns out this type of direct democracy is unacceptable to all vertical power structures, not just Fascists. The Stalinist bureaucracy and Spanish Government, supposed allies in the Civil War, purged these workers.

Meanwhile, Western Capitalist "democracies" didn't even bother supporting the fight against Fascism; they were too busy appeasing Hitler (Munich Agreement).
*Update: American oil company Texaco (ran by outright Nazi Torkild Rieber) supplied much-needed oil to Fascist Franco.

[7jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

music: Durutti Column - "Street Fight"
(also because there's a small, POUM-hostile extremist-anarchist group called Friends Of Durruti mentioned in the book, who were used as part of false-information war by the government)

(my book has intros by Hochschild and Trilling, both very excellent. Two chapters of the book have been appendixed to the end, which I also think as a wise choice, since both are rather political side-comments 1: why and how Communists suppressed the smaller leftist groups 2: about Barcelona fight in more detail, and how non-Spanish press wrote about it)

I made a lot of notes reading this book. The book did give me new information on the political situation of the left during Spanish Civil War. When Orwell joined in the battle in 1936, he wasn't at first interested in the political side of things - though from quite almost the start he realised his admiration for the Spanish character in general - but gradually came to realise the importance of it. This book is a good example of ideals vs. reality thing, of wanting revolution or just wanting things to stay in balance (it is said here that Franco was more about keeping of feudalism at first, really - the power of the aristrocracy and the church - where are the Church-blessed martyrs of the *Franco* era, eh?)

Orwell talks about his life in the trenches, the difference of Barcelona as he first saw it (red and hopeful) and the second time (class system back in, Communists taking over other left and anarchists), becoming wounded and having to flee Spain, for various reasons (but mainly as to not be imprisoned and disappeared forever, not just because of his state of health).

The part about late 1930s being a dark time for democracy, with fascism rising everywhere, sounds familiar a bit now, doesn't it? And Stalin's support of only the Communists (because they agree enough with him), not the true revolution-attempt of the other left/Anarchists... well, capitalism just can be hidden. And reading the text you realise: you have read about communists, maoists, etc. being blind to the black marks of their political way (Maos family and persecutions, Stalin's purges, etc.), and this Spanish civil war's thing of Communists fight against the minority sides (propaganda, not enough guns, imprisonment, naming them as friends of Fascists/Trotskyites etc.) is another of those things that was not known, ignored and lied about in Commist presses in other countries, who sometimes also contradicted their own information as the time passed or even in the same article.

The war was started by the right, and these small minority left/anarchist groups reacted quicker than the weaker, indecisive, mainly Communist government. It's easy to see why the Communists were a larger group - easier to be a member if you're just talking rather than getting to work immediately: the goverment believed in 'first war, then revolution' (when revolution would've been less easy to begin on after peace), while the minorities believed more in 'revolution *and* war'.

Didn't know that Willy Brandt had been in this war. Also amused at the dislike Orwell had at Gaudi's cathedral XD And all those cigarettes... and that telescope having to be left behind. Now I also think about the lice when I hear the word 'lousy', more *lol*

Yep, Stalin is where the arms for the left mostly came from; others were older stuff, and not always working. Mexico sent some too, but not much. Most Western Europe that was not fascist didn't deliver arms, and USA (of course) not either (for communits, already, notice).

The author returns home to England, still seemingly idyllic, peaceful, IGNORANT of war... but war is just around the corner for them, too. This book changed my view on a plenty of political tactics within the left side, where I still stay. Never was blinkered about the dark sides and selling outs, really, but just got another corner of history more opened up. This is essential reading, and in many ways has relevant things to say even today.

[Jan-Maat]

"The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty & a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency" (p.172)

The opening chapters in particular lead me to imagine Basil Fawlty going abroad, or possibly the travel programmes of my youth, the accommodation is terrible, the way the food and wine are served is unhygienic, everything is disorganised and late, the Spaniards don't even speak Spanish, and with the fascists 700 metres away can you even call it a war? No, it is "a comic opera with the occasional death" (p.34) as he is told.

His comment on a Jewish-Polish officer is that he speaks terrible English, for some curious reason I imagine that when inevitably Orwell was made a corporal that he spent most of his time teaching his men to speak English rather than Catalan.

Then after establishing an image of himself as fusty Englishman abroad and war as pantomime (no uniforms, terrible old rifles, awful ammunition, no maps, no artillery, no field glasses) he then looks at the broader political picture explaining the war as one of Revolution against fascism, in which the Communists pushed for fighting the war first and then having a revolution after - this approach was aiming to reassure the international community - while the Anarchists wanted to see the revolution accomplished first. Orwell explains how he began by backing the Communists in this regard but over time shifted to the Anarchist position believing it alone had the potential for weakening Franco by inspiring revolt in fascist held territories. In the Communist backed crushing of the Anarchists in Catalonia as a viable political force one can see the origins of Animal Farm.

In the middle of the book he is caught up in street fighting in Barcelona which leads into a discussion of its misrepresentation in the press on political grounds before he returns to the front where he gets shot. The food in the hospitals is plentiful and rich, but with the classic complaint of an English tourist to southern Europe: it is too greasy, food culture is changing even in Britain, a contemporary might instead praise the artisanal quality of such food and its regional authenticity, but back then it was just considered greasy and lacking lard and beef dripping.

In contrast to Laurie Lee's A moment of war Orwell was not repeatedly arrested as a suspected spy, this was because he entered affiliated with the Independent Labour Party which itself was linked to the P.O.U.M. militia - an anarchist grouping. His account of fighting and non-fighting is impressionistic and fascinating, cold, hunger, and lack of sleep are more pressing dangers than bombs and bullets. Pretty much everything in Spain to his eyes is execrable particularly the agricultural tools apart from the people who he pretty much universally likes and admires.

The Spanish Civil war still seems to be in progress on various (non-military) fronts if not exactly raging, aside front that I think in several of Orwell's comments you can see the roots of 1984 and Animal farm.

Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War film "Land and Freedom" draws strongly upon Homage to Catalonia as a source, though it's main character is a working class, rather than upper class, Englishman.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Orwell went to Spain to cover the civil war there and then actually joined the fighting, enlisting as a militia soldier fighting for a faction of the government against the fascist rebels.

This is an “on the ground” narrative as Orwell presents to us a soldier’s view of the war: from the trenches, standing cold watches, hungry, dirty, and always wanting cigarettes. He also explains to a reader almost a hundred years later about the complicated makeup of the republican government forces, composed of regulars but also of militia that were composed of political groups. Orwell fought with the POUM, which was later suppressed, and many of Orwell’s comrades were jailed and perhaps even killed while in political incarceration.

Orwell also provides a commentary on the Spanish people, seen in their worst time in civil war, with communist and fascist factions killing each other, but also of decent human beings who liked to laugh, to eat and to live. His description of Barcelona, just miles from the fighting, but where cafes and shops were still open and where people where anxious to get back to their lives.

I could not help thinking that this was the Orwell who a decade later would produce 1984. Perhaps it was from the brazenly partisan newspapers that he first kindled the idea of the Ministry of Truth. Maybe it was in his harried flight from Spain, fearing arrest, that he first began to think about The Party.

Good book.

*** btw, check out this photo, that's Orwell holding the puppy and you can see Ernest Hemingway behind him

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself.

Autobiographies and memoirs are, I think, the best books to read on vacation. Not only are they light, easy, and entertaining, but they’re usually not hard to put down. This is important because, if you’re like me, you may end up spending your whole vacation with your head buried in a book. Most valuable, however, is simply seeing how an excellent writer transforms their experiences into stories. The vague emotions of daily life, the interesting characters we encounter, the sights and sounds and smells of new places—good autobiographies direct our attention to these little details.

In this spirit I picked up Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia to read during my trip to Seville. It was an excellent choice. It’s been a while since I’ve read Orwell, and I’d nearly forgotten what a fine writer he is. In fact, perhaps the most conspicuous quality of this book is the caliber of the prose. It is written with such grace, clarity, and ease, that I couldn’t help being constantly impressed and, I admit, extremely envious at times. The writing is direct but never blunt; the tone is personal and natural, but not chummy. The book may have been a bit too readable, actually, since I had a hard time prying myself away to go explore Seville (and a book has to be very good indeed to compete with Seville).

There seems to be a bit of confusion about this book. Specifically, some people seem to come to it expecting to learn about the Spanish Civil War. This is a mistake; Orwell only experienced a sliver of the war, and his understanding of the political situation was limited to the infighting between various leftist groups. The events and conflicts that led up to the war, and the progress of the war itself, are for the most part unexplained. This book is, rather, a deeply personal record of his time in the Spanish militia. We learn more about Orwell’s military routine than about any battles between fascist and government forces. More light is shed on Orwell’s own political opinions than the political situation in Spain.

If you come to the book with this in mind, it will not disappoint. His time in Spain made a deep impression on Orwell; he writes of it in a wistful and nostalgic tone, as if everything that happened occurred in a dreamy, timeless, mist-filled landscape, disconnected from the rest of his life. Characters come and go, soldiers are introduced, arrested, or killed in action; but we do not get acquainted with anyone save Orwell himself. The mood is introspective and pensive, as if it all took place in another life. Even when he is describing his friends’ imprisonment, or his experience getting shot in the neck and hospitalized, he manages to sound dispassionate and serene.

Two chapters, however, do not fit into this characterization. These are Orwell’s analyses of the political situation in Barcelona during this time. In some books, they are published as appendices—which I think is a good choice, actually, since they interrupt the flow of the book quite a bit. Despite the abrupt change in tone and subject-matter, however, they make for valuable reading. The machinations and petty political squabbles that went on during this time are astounding. One would think that having a common enemy in Franco would be enough to unite the various factions on the Left, at least for the duration of the war. Instead, the anti-revolutionary communist party ended up declaring the pro-revolutionary communist party (of which Orwell was a member, entirely by chance) to be a fascist conspiracy, resulting in hundreds of people—people who had spent months fighting at the front—being thrown in secret prisons. Orwell himself narrowly escaped.

Nevertheless, I think that Orwell’s analyses of the general situation in Spain should be taken with copious salt. He understands nearly everything through a quasi-Marxist lens of class-warfare, which I think fails to do justice to the complex political and cultural history of the conflict. Added to this, one gets the impression that Orwell’s command of Spanish was fairly rudimentary, which I think greatly limited his ability to understand the war. To his credit, though, Orwell does warn us about his limitations:

In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact, and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war.

But these are minor complaints of a book which I found to be supremely well-written and absolutely fascinating. His accounts of life at the front were possibly the best descriptions of war that I’ve ever read, with the exception of those in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. This is not because Orwell saw very much fighting; quite the opposite. Rather, he conveys a sense of the crushing boredom and the sense of futility that many soldiers must feel during a long, draw-out war. Also superb was his portrayal of political oppression, the climate of fear and backstabbing that arose during the party conflicts in Barcelona.

Perhaps most impressive, though, is that, despite all of the hardships Orwell endured, and despite the obvious injustices inflicted on both himself and his friends, he does not come across as bitter or resentful. I leave you with his words:

When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this—and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering—the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A re-read for me of a book I first read in my early twenties. I recall it made a big impression on me at the time, due to its description of the infighting on the Government side during the Spanish Civil War.

Orwell was in his thirties when he went to Barcelona and had already been everything from a Police Superintendent in colonial Burma to a tramp sleeping rough back in Britain. You couldn’t say he was lacking in knowledge of life, but he arrived in Spain with an idealistic impression of a war where “the rights and wrongs had been so beautifully simple.” Orwell joined the militia of a small Marxist party which went by the acronym POUM. Initially Orwell had no particular leaning towards the POUM as opposed to any other Marxist group. He joined them because he arrived in Barcelona with letters of recommendation from the Independent Labour Party in Britain, who happened to be affiliated with the POUM. At this stage he thought that the communists, the anarchists and the POUM were separated only by minor differences over tactics.

Orwell’s time at the front was during a period of static trench warfare, where the troops spent their time combating hunger, cold and lice more than they did the enemy. He only took part in one incident of hand-to hand fighting, when his unit was involved in a diversionary attack. As he says himself, that occasion was “one too many.”

The core of this book though, is the brutal suppression of the POUM by the rival PSUC – the Socialist Unity Party of Catalonia, which took its orders from the USSR, as well what Orwell sees as the suppression of the workers’ revolution in Catalonia by pro-Stalinist factions. To justify their actions, the Communists portrayed the POUM as disguised fascists in the pay of Franco and Hitler, pretend revolutionaries who were really aiding the Fascist cause. This absurd story was repeated across the world by pro-communist journalists. It’s clear that these events had a major bearing on Orwell’s later literature, particularly in “1984” where what was reported was always the opposite of the truth. As Orwell puts it:

“It is not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher, with a dazed white face looking out from among the blankets, and to think of the sleek persons in London and Paris who are writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise.”

Orwell manged to escape across the border to France, but his commanding officer, a Belgian named Georges Kopp, was arrested as was Bob Smillie, one of Orwell’s close friends. Smillie was a 22-year old from Central Scotland who died in prison in Valencia. At the time of writing, Orwell didn’t know how Smillie had died, but later research has suggested he was beaten to death. He also comments on the dreadful fate of the German and Italian volunteers within the POUM. They had fled fascism in their own countries, and had nowhere to go to escape their Communist persecutors.

Several chapters in the book contain detailed descriptions of the various parties on the Republican side in the War, and Orwell’s assessment of the merits of their political positions. He senses himself that this might be turgid stuff for many and advises readers they can skip these chapters if they want. He’s reflective enough also to admit that his account of the war is partisan.

For me, this is a book primarily about disappointed idealism, and how Orwell came to terms with that.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.”

Orwell’s account of his own involvement in the Spanish Civil War. It covers the period between December 1936 and June 1937. Orwell was based in Barcelona and fought on the Aragon front. He experienced being in the trenches and the boredom and futility that go with it. Orwell also describes his experiences during the fighting in Barcelona in May 1937 when the PSUC (backed by Russia and identifying as Communist) fought with the Anarchists and the POUM (basically a Trotskyite group). He dissects the factional in-fighting as he goes along. He was shot in the neck, ending his front line involvement and goes on to describe the hospital system. The reportage is excellent throughout: Orwell was good at that.
Orwell stated at the beginning that he was there to fight Fascism and he never lost that impetus. He describes his frustration with the infighting and tries to outline his own perceptions. Orwell had gone to Spain under the auspices of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and was therefore fighting with the POUM. There has been plenty of debate about whether the infighting enabled Franco’s eventual victory and there are arguments on both sides. Orwell was writing in 1938, before the end of the war and didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. The political reality was that the only major power supporting the Spanish government against Franco was the USSR which leant weight to the PSUC. Historically the left has always done this. It was brilliantly parodied by Python team in Life of Brian. It still happens. Orwell knew what he was fighting against and where his sympathies lay:

“When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”

Homage to Catalonia has been debated a great deal over the years, going in and out of fashion and used by all sides of the political spectrum. There is no doubt this is a very good snapshot of a point in time, but as an overall analysis it is lacking and even Orwell, writing later, amended his analysis.
This is well worth reading, as is the history of how it has been regarded.
“It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.”

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 3 out of 5]

زنده باد کاتالونیا ثابت می کند که حتی استادی مانند جرج اورول هم ، آثار ضعیف و نازلی دارد ، کتاب حقیقتا سردرگم هست و به هدفی ( البته اگر نویسنده داشته باشد ) نه تنها نمیرسد بلکه حتی نزدیک هم نمی شود . کتاب بدون هیچ مقدمه یا آشنایی ناگهان یقه خواننده نگون بخت را می گیرد و او را با خود به اسپانیای آفتابی و معروفترین شهر آن بارسلونا می برد .نویسنده بدون آن که چیزی از وضعیت و جنگ داخلی اسپانیا بگوید ( پس از کودتای ملی گرایان به رهبری ژنرال فرانکو علیه دولت جمهوری خواه بر آمده از انتخابات ، اسپانیا صحنه جنگ داخلی و چیزی که امروزه به آن جنگ نیابتی می گویند شد و آلمان و ایتالیا به حمایت از فرانکوی فاشیست و شوروی به پشتیبانی کمونیست ها بر خاستند و نتیجه یک جنگ داخلی بسیار خونین و کشتار شهروندان اسپانیایی و یک فاجعه برای اقتصاد اسپانیا شد ) خواننده را در خیابان رامبلاس بارسلونا رها می کند و خواننده خود باید متوجه باشد که علاوه بر فاشیستها ی فرانکو ، کمونیست ها ، آنارشیست ها ، تروتسکی ها و گروه دیگری که صد البته برای ما ایرانیها خیلی آشنا هستند یعنی لباس شخصی ها و حتی گروه های دیگری بدون آن که علت حضور آنها را بدانیم حضور داشته و در حال جنگ با هم هستند ، بدون آنکه بدانیم تفاوت این گروه ها باهم چیست و اصولا در اسپانیا به دنبال چه هستند .آقای اورول در ابتدا تصویری از بارسلونایی که همه در آن برابر و شهریی که سیمای کمونیستی کارگری دارد ارائه داده و سپس زمانی که بعد از شش ماه به همین بارسلون برمی گردد ، شهر ظاهری سرمایه داری به خود گرفته و از جامعه آرمانی سوسیالیستی دور شده است . زمانی که نویسنده به وطن خود انگلستان بر میگردد کاملا بارسلونا را رها می کند و هیچ وقت متوجه نمی شویم که بارسلونا چگونه سقوط کرد و تکلیف گروههای مختلف آن چه شد . اما نویسنده تصویری دوست داشتنی از مردم اسپانیا ارائه داده و از خونگرمی بسیار آنان می گوید ( و واقعا ملت اسپانیا جز خوش اخلاق ترین و با روحیه ترین ملت های اروپا هستند و هیچ چیزی نمی تواند آنها را از خوش بودن بازدارد ، فلسفه معروف مانیانا یعنی فردا که منظور آن به فردا انداختن کار سخت وامروز خوش بودن بر آمده از همین دیدگاه است ) همین طور بارها از بی نظمی سیستم حکومت ، بیمارستان ، شهرداری و پلیس اسپانیا شکایت کرده ولی در آخر کار ، به خاطر همین سیستم ضعیف است که توانسته خود را از اسپانیا خارج و به وطن برساند ، که اگر در آلمان می بود ، آن وقت قضیه فرق داشت و جناب اورول به جای وطن ،شاید سر از آشویتس در میاورد .

[Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this memoir-like book surprisingly interesting and readable in terms of his direct experience in the Spanish Civil War. I think George Orwell didn't try to be a hero there since he himself was gunned down by a shot through his throat one morning. He simply wrote, "The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail" (Chapter X, pp. 143-4)

However, his valor didn't diminish and he still kept writing based on his political ideology. Therefore, while reading his lively words, it's like you're in the war yourself and thus we can't help admiring how he narrated his thought & ideas fearlessly. This obviously has since signified his unique character and integrity in this chaotic world.

Linguistically, reading it has also helped me learn some new adjectives ended with -ish, for instance, longish, sweetish, greenish, sheepish, hellish, darkish, etc. for the first time.

[B0nnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should anyone want to understand why George Orwell, a life long socialist, developed the antipathy to the Soviet Union which informed his best known novels Animal Farm and 1984, then this is the book to read.

When Orwell travelled to Spain in December 1936, intending to fight fascism and write about the Spanish Civil War, he stepped into a complex and murky political situation. The left-wing forces supporting the Republican government against the fascist forces led by Franco had different and conflicting aims. The pro-Republic forces included the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM – Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) which supported the Trotskyist aim of world revolution, the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. The latter was a wing of the Spanish Communist Party and was backed by Soviet arms and aid. Orwell's accreditation in Spain came from the British International Labour Party, which was linked with POUM. He accordingly joined the POUM militia and fought with it on the Aragon front at Alcubierre, Monte Oscuro and Huesco.

Orwell's account of experiences in Spain focuses on four distinct periods. Firstly, it deals with his initial time in the trenches on the reasonably quiet Aragon front. The next part of the narrative covers the internecine conflict in Barcelona in May 1937 which involved street-fighting between Communist groups loyal to Moscow* and anti-Soviet communists, socialists and anarchists. The third part of the work concerns Orwell's experience of being shot in the throat by a sniper when he returned to the Aragon front and the treatment he subsequently received for his injury. Finally, Orwell deals with the suppression of POUM and the consequent arrest of those associated with the organisation, which contributed to Orwell having to leave Spain in a hurry.

What led Orwell to turn so conclusively against Soviet style communism was the banning of POUM, the persecution of its leaders and members and his conviction that Moscow was behind the vilification of anarchist and non-Soviet aligned communist groups and specifically the accusation that they were fascist agitators. In the work, he analysed the propaganda against groups like POUM which was published in the communist newspapers at the time, both within Spain and abroad, and explained why he believed the claims against POUM and similar groups were baseless.

I know very little about the Spanish Civil War and this memoir, which was first published some nine months after Orwell left Spain, is not in any sense a history of that conflict. It obviously cannot be, given that it was published before the war ended and deals with Orwell's own experiences rather than with the bigger picture. Reading the work is like listening to an intelligent, thoughtful, well-informed friend talk about his experiences. The prose is clear and concise and the style is conversational, without being simplistic. The fact that Orwell wrote about his experiences so soon after the events in which he was involved took place gives an immediacy to the narrative.

The most difficult part of the work is coming to terms with the different groups involved in the conflict: they make up a veritable alphabet soup. But Orwell's explanation of the politics is clear and, as uninformed as I am, I found it very interesting. Just as interesting are the accounts of Orwell's fairly dull time on the front, where boredom, cold, discomfort and an infestation of lice made up the daily reality of life, his account of what it feels like to be shot in the throat and his account of being in Barcelona after POUM was suppressed. Ultimately, Orwell's departure from Spain read like a thriller.

I love Orwell's writing and this is an excellent example of what makes it so good. The work is honest, moving, passionate and sometimes prescient. The very last sentence - written in 1937 or 1938 - foretells the war yet to come. Orwell refers to the English "sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England" from which he feared that they would never wake until "jerked out of it by the roar of bombs".


*When Orwell referred to communists in this work, he was generally (although not always) referring to pro-Soviet groups and individuals. Substituting "Stalinist" for "communist" is a handy way of distinguishing between the various left wing factions.

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War,as part of the militia of a party,the P.O.U.M.

Ironically,the party was later declared illegal and after all his struggles on its behalf,Orwell had to flee Spain eventually,to avoid being imprisoned.

While Orwell,a foreigner,was taking such risks with his life in the war,a lot of people and places in Spain remained unaffected.As to why he was fighting in the war,Orwell gives his reason as "common decency."

The best part of the book describes the conditions of trench warfare on the Aragon front.Conditions resembled those of World War I.The trenches had plenty of filth and rats.

It was very cold and the soldiers were lousy,with the lice rapidly mutilplying.Then, there was the lack of sleep.

The weapons were antiquated and there was very little ammunition.Boys of fifteen were being used as soldiers.

Later,Orwell would go to other areas and watch street fighting and began to think of it as a futile period.Finally,he was shot through the neck.

He temporarily lost his voice,thought he was going to die,but miraculously survived and even recovered the use of his voice.The bullet injury got him discharged from the militia as he was declared "useless."

But even when he finally got out of Spain,he found his personal freedom boring and kept wondering if it wouldn't have been more interesting to be imprisoned in a Spanish jail !

When Orwell finally finished writing Homage to Catolonia,his publisher refused to publish it.He found another publisher but it hardly made an impact,selling just 900 copies.

I found it a mixed bag,Orwell's personal war experiences are interesting and large parts of the book focusing on the politics of Spain are fairly boring.

Despite all the trouble he endured,Orwell seems only mildly disillusioned by the war.As wounded men go back and fresh men take their place,he still looks at war as something glorious.

I admire Orwell as an author,but I don't admire him for taking part in this distant war and trying his level best to get himself killed.

[Hanneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Orwell struck me as an extremely honest and sincere recorder of his war experiences in Spain in 1937. He showed himself a brave and fearless warrior for the good cause, fighting the Franco troops in the desolate mountain region in the northern province of Aragon. This is what he writes on the last page of his account after he succeeded to escape to France from Spain, seriously wounded and a wanted man. “This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil, and yet I do not wish that I had missed it. When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this - and however it ends, the Spanish war wil turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaugher and physical suffering - the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.”
I think it is safe to say that, without his Spanish civil war experiences, George Orwell would never have written ‘Animal Farm’ or ‘1984’. Reading ‘Homage to Catalonia’ was a special experience, because I thought he spoke straight from his heart. An exceptional man!