Homage to Catalonia

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Summary: Lionel Trilling's homage to George Orwell
Review: There is Lionel Trilling's introduction written in 1952. Standing alone the introduction is historic and of consequence. It appears in the Beacon Press edition of the work. At any rate, Trilling finds that the moral tone of Orwell's book is uniquely simple and true. Orwell was a virtuous man. He had an old fashioned temperament. Orwell's experience of being declasse , of being down and out after service in Burma, had significant implications for his writing. Orwell thought the intelligentsia refused to consider the conditional nature of life. Orwell could never believe that intellectual life would be a political idyll.

When Orwell went to Spain he went to write newspaper articles but joined a militia almost immediately. In Barcelona revolutionary posters were everywhere. In the P.O.U.M. militia the shortage of rifles was desperate. Therefore, there was no weapon training, just marching, drills. Orwell described the smells of war. Rifles were finally received three miles from the front line. Orwell noted that in trench warfare five things were important, firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. Orwell said he actually saw very little fighting. He was in hand to hand combat once, and he reported once was too much.

There was equality in the militias. Military failure could not be attributed to the system of equality. Failure resulted from the newness, the lack of material, the lack of training, and the age of the recruits. He found that revolutionary discipline depended on political consciousness, an understanding of why orders must be obeyed. (What Orwell described is termed the learning curve in other kinds of discourse.) The militias held the line and there were few desertions. There was a lack of firewood. Warfare had made the bare mountainous region even more bare of vegetation. The English and Spanish always got on well together. When more Englishmen arrived, Orwell was shifted over to that group. They were now somewhat closer to the enemy. Aragon peasants treated their mules well but their donkeys abominably. In late February 1937 they left Monte Oscuro and were sent with all of the P.O.U.M. troops in the sector to make a part of the army besieging Huesca. Until late March nothing happened.

Initially Orwell ignored the political side of the war. Spain seemed to be suffering from a plague of initials and the matter was confusing. Orwell thought all of the government forces were Socialists, anti-fascists. In the beginning Franco's real opponent was not so much the government as the trade unions. A revolution had started in Spain but its progress and significance varied by region. By October-November 1936 there was a swing to the Right. Power passed from the Anarchists to the Communists. The Communist leadership sought to suppress the revolution because it was believed to be premature. Only Mexico and Russia came to the assistance of the government and only Russia was big enough to dictate terms.

The Communist Party moved first against the P.O.U.M. and then against the Anarchists. The war was essentially a triangular struggle. The P.O.U.M. was a dissident Communist party. The unions were not necessarily Anarchists in the pure sense and yet they were tinged with the philosophy and made up a huge portion of the forces opposing Franco. They aimed at worker control and not parliamentary democracy. They had uncompromising hostility to the bourgeoisie and the Church.

At the time Orwell preferred the Communists because they had a definite policy. Press censorship was mainly under Communist control. One of the worst aspects of war is war propaganda. The Communists and the P.O.U.M. came to write more bitterly against each other than against the fascists. Orwell was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the working class. On paper the Communist case was a good one. Orwell drew back at their actual behavior. Communists seemed to be not working to postpone the revolution but to make sure it never happened at all.

In spring the peasants plowed the fields. The landowners had left. Orwell never did learn if the land had been collectivized or if the arrangements were informal. The farming implements were antiquated. Orwell was surprised that no one crossed himself, even as a gesture. To the people of Catalonia and Aragon the Church was evidently a racket. When he went on leave, he had been on the line for one hundred fifteen days and felt that it was the most useless period of his life. The time did form a kind of interregnum. The prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. The Spanish militias, while they lasted, were sort of a microcosm of a classless society.

Barcelona had changed in the three months and there was general indifference to war. It was no longer fashionable to be in the militia. Enlistments had sunk. The Popular Army was replacing the militias in theory, but in fact it was still training in the rear. Now there was open contrast of wealth and poverty. Middle class people no longer wore worker clothing.

A civil disturbance broke out in Barcelona as the government and Communist forces sought to defeat the Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. It was all very confusing to Orwell. There developed a food shortage. The Popular Army as a body stayed away from the fray. The Barcelona fighting had given the Valencia government the excuse to assume fuller control of Catalonia.

Three days after the fighting in Barcelona ended Orwell's group returned to the front. On routine duty he felt himself being the center of an explosion. He was taken to Barbastro and then to Lerida. Eight or nine days after being wounded his wound was finally examined at Tarragona. Sinister rumors of all kinds flew around Barcelona. It was hard to convey the atmosphere he claimed because in England political intolerance was not taken for granted.

At this point Orwell hoped to just get out of Spain and return to England. He had been certified medically unfit, but he needed to obtain a discharge. He had to repeat the circuit of field hospitals and intermediate stations in order to have his papers signed. Returning to the hotel in Barcelona he discovered the P.O.U.M. had been declared an illegal organization and that he might be subject to arrest. Andres Nin was taken and killed. The manner of leaving the country makes exciting reading. The experience in Spain clearly foreshadowed ANIMAL FARM and 1984.

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Summary: Intriguing look at the experience of war...
Review: In addition to being a book about the experience of an infantry man in the Spanish Civil War, this is also a book about the nature of politics and political parties. Orwell doesn't hold anything back when he discusses his disgust at the Fascist party of Franco, as well as the fabricated lies of the Communist press, and the ignorance of the French and English media. His political analysis is quite intriguing in that it provides the reader with an historical context in which to examine the key players who would be involved in another conflict only a couple years later. The Spanish Civil War serves as an exciting background to the Second World War which is right around the corner.
This is a vivid account of the life of a soldier. Orwell doesn't over dramatize situations; rather he tends to maintain a realistic style throughout this work. In addition, Orwell successfully intertwines humor with suspense as he recounts his brushes with death. In this book, Orwell examines the moral and physical experience of a man at war. His literary style resembles that of Remarque in his book All Quiet on the Western Front. Writing an engaging account from the first person point of view makes the account more authentic.

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Summary: Honor and Radical Politics at High Stakes
Review: The best way that I can think of to describe George Orwell is a skeptical and responsible idealist, obsessed with the nature of, uses and abuses of power. Generally unacknowledged about Orwell was the fact that he was a committed socialist and a man who believed that human beings were capable of creating a society where a brotherhood of man based on social justice could exist.

In 1936 he went to Spain and saw in Catalonia, and more specifically Barcelona, and felt that he was witness to a society that existed on that basis-in his own words, he "recognized it as a state of affairs worth fighting for." Over the next several months, while he fought for the Spanish republic side by side with workers in the militia of the radical POUM, he saw it destroyed and libeled by the republic he came to defend and, more specifically, the Spanish Communist Party and its lackeys throughout the world. His story is exactly what the title proclaims it to be: homage to the men and women who had fought, very literally for freedom and social justice, and the society that existed on those principles that he saw destroyed. Like any good journalist as well, he wants to set the record straight about a very misunderstood state of affairs.

Part soldiering memoir, with what seems to be the obligatory British emphasis on the surreality and physical deprivation of the trenches, and part recitation of the little known suppression of anarchists and radical socialists in the midst of the general war against Franco, Orwell is able to show the spirit that animated the thousands of foreign volunteers that went to fight for the republic, and how they were all betrayed. The nature of the betrayal was made even worse by the fact that it was committed in a libelous fashion that did not allow most to even know that it had occurred. Orwell did not go to Spain looking to expose anyone on the republican side of the war as a villain, but by the time he left in July of 1937, he knew with a good amount of certainty that the Soviet Union was as great an enemy of democracy as any fascist could be-a very foreign idea in left-wing thought at the time.

Through the cataloging of his own experiences in Barcelona during the suppression of the POUM and anarchists in early 1937 and comparing them with the accounts of left-wing and Communist newspapers from in and outside of Great Britain, Orwell concluded that a massive campaign of disinformation concerning the suppression of anti-Communist radicals in Catalonia. Disturbing enough was the fact that it was happening and that Communists were lying about it. Orwell knew that the Communist Party press had a tendency to lie, but what was much more disturbing was how the more mainstream liberal and left opinion makers were accepting hook, line and sinker the stories of the perfidy of anti-Communists that were coming exclusively from Communists and their allies. He saw an inexcusable mixture of gullibility and laziness animating the reportage of the war there.

The disinformation that he records was terrible enough, but this was not where the true horror and betrayal laid. Hundreds of defenders of the republic, including foreigners that Orwell knew personally had sacrificed much to fight there, were being thrown in jail and the government of Spain was utterly powerless to stop it. Orwell shows something of a Communist state within a state that operated outside the power of the government. He concludes that it was because the Spanish republic had to depend on the Soviet government for its military support. This lamentable situation is the fault not of the republican government, men of goodwill and honestly mostly, but by the fact that no countries other than the Soviet Union, and to a small degree Mexico, were helping the republic in the fight for its life. The confrontation against Franco's fascism was being undermined because the powers that were running the war were declaring the most militant of the antifascists to be de facto traitors. If there were ever an abuse of power, coupled with a colossal abuse of the truth, the suppression of the POUM and its allies was it.

As an historical document, "Homage to Catalonia" is a necessary to any understanding of the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War. The villainous and parasitical treatment of the Spanish Republic by the Soviet Union that has recently come to light was dimly perceived decades by Orwell decades before the documentation proving Soviet perfidy came out of Russian archives. It is also necessary reading to gain a deeper understanding of Orwell's masterwork "1984." If there any wonder as to how he could so vividly imagine a totalitarian society without ever having lived in one, it becomes clear that he had some help from the utterly preposterous situation he found himself in during the suppression of the POUM and anarchists in Catalonia. Finally, the level of honesty and sincerity with which he tells his story is total and completely without pretension and propaganda. Orwell was loyal to truth and basic goodness-values that are still in short supply today.

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Summary: Orwell had a more interesting life then assumed!
Review: I have not read any of Orwell's books, besides Homage To Catalonia. It's a great book, often funny, often not. I have never read a single thing on this war, i've heard of it. It's never came up in any of my classes, probably because of it's anarchist-communist fighting facism. Well, check this book out.

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Summary: A Marvelous Read
Review: I picked up Homage to Catalonia on a whim. I am glad I did. Orwell writes in magnificent prose his experiences as an idealistic young man taking up arms to fight the spread of fascism. It concludes with a disillusioned, near mortally wounded (but still idealistic) Orwell fleeing the country for his life - a wanted criminal in the land he fought and bled to save. While he spent only a few months in Spain, but his vivid descriptions of the personalities he met, the hardship he endured and the near-fatal gunshot wound he received clearly impacted him in a profound way. His account will similarly impact the reader.

Homage to Catalonia is really two books - one is the graphic retelling of Orwell's daily existence with the POUM (a Marxist group of revolutionaries), his impressions of his fellow militia-men, the privations they suffered, and the combat that they hardly ever saw. The other is Orwell's first-hand account of the politics "behind the scenes"; the Machiavellian plotting and schemeing between various revolutionary groups, the half-truths (and outright fabrications) of the media, the jockeying of politicians and nations in what would become the "dress rehearsal" for the Second World War. Much to my amusement, Orwell realizes he is writing two books, and point-blank invites the reader to "skip" the political analysis and get to the "good stuff" if the reader so wishes.

In either case, Orwell wrote a tragedy. A tragedy that Spain had to suffer as it did. And that such noble ideas (as those Orwell himself fought for) were eventually washed away with Great Power "realpolitik." The book was written while the civil war was still playing itself out; I beleive Orwell saw the writing on the wall. Highly recommeded reading.

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Summary: Great companion piece to a general history
Review: This first-hand account of Orwell's experience in the Spanish Civil War is not to be missed. It's very funny and still manages to remain informative. Orwell's adventure begins in the Lenin Barracks, where he learns of his comrade's terrible ignorance in military matters. We follow Orwell to the front lines, where he sees very little action. He manages to take a shot in the throat from a sniper's bullet, and is assured by doctors he will never be able to speak again (which turned out to be an incorrect assessment). We also get to read of Orwell's experience in the May Day events in Barcelona. Orwell shows us various newspaper clippings regarding the activities, which reveal the absolute dishonesty and manipulative nature of the communist press. Many of the snippets contain outright lies, and some of the papers even contradict themselves in different articles. Orwell's adventure is forced to an end when the communist-controlled government begins to crack down on the "Trotskyist" POUM, of which Orwell was a member. Trotsky himself had denounced the POUM: I suppose facts cannot get in the way of a Stalinist's determination. It's interesting to note Orwell's enthusiasm when he first arrives and his disillusionment when he leaves. He had witnessed the equality of the anarchist collectives upon his arrival: when he left, the communists had taken control and he was a wanted man. He still believed in the republican side, and would most likely have continued fighting for it if the government had not begun it's witch-hunt for "Trotskyists". This is an excellent account of the Spanish Civil War, absolutely essential for any Orwell fan or student of Spanish history.

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Summary: Insightful on Stalinist foreign policy, Spanish Civil War
Review: I actually wrote this an extra credit book report:
A Homage to Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is an account of Orwell's personal story of his experience in the Spanish Civil War and some reflections on the complex political situations involved. He wrote it in 1938 (I think so; the introduction didn't bother to mention when it was actually written as its author was obviously not a historian), only months after his experience. The reader is put the exciting situation of Europe before World War II. The fact he was writing about contemporary subjects makes it all the more interesting, because he did not have the advantage of knowing what was going to happen next making his opinions of what should be done more valid.
I started reading the book thinking it was going to be about Orwell's disillusionment with Stalinist Russia. If he ever did admire the USSR, he does not admit to it. He does however admit to only joining the POUM because that was the first group he found, though I do not believe he would have ever joined what he referred to as a right-wing Socialist group (though he was tempted at one point, as it was the only way to get to Madrid). It is certain he was disillusioned by several other things. The degree to which USSR-backed groups were not revolutionary, but only wished to perpetuate the "bourgeoisie democracy" I think did surprise them. He thought that this antirevolutionary policy may have been detrimental to anti-Franco cause, because, for example, it meant the Moors of Morocco could not be effectively allied with. This policy was similar to the USSR insisting the Chinese Communists allied with the moderates long after this made sense, though there they had the excuse that unindustrialized China was not ready for a revolution. One thing Orwell was certainly disillusioned about was journalism, due to the coverage of the Spanish Civil War and its disparity with what he was witnessing. On both sides he found simplifications and outright lies.
Orwell obviously cannot be fully objective about the topic. However, he is a journalist and does try. Orwell sums up this possibly downfall fairly well in saying "... beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events." His politics can be described as Marxist. He thought that a revolution was the only way to help the proletariat; it could not happen within the constraints of democracy. Outside of some the political commentary, the book is in fact a primary document and in this respect it is good to read regardless of his subjectivity, as his opinions are valuable in their own right.
I traveled to Spain a few years ago and found I agreed with his reflections on Spanish culture. He pointed out from time to time things in "typical Spanish fashion." Orwell noted how laid-back the Spanish are, the word incompetent could almost be used. For instance, it was often a hassle to pay the bill at a restaurant. It is like they did not want our money. I had attributed this as a reaction to Fascism, though it apparently predated it. In one of his few optimistic statements, he predicted Fascism would not be as bad as in Italy and Germany because of the inefficiency of the Spanish culture; they would just not be able to pull it off. From the little I know of the following decades, this was more or less bore out.
Homage to Catalonia remains an excellent read to anyone interested into this facet of the Spanish Civil War or Stalinist foreign policy in general. It gives a first person account of the soldier's view of the war; I think a fairly average one. Most accounts of war seem to be by people who take down their story because something unique happened to them. Orwell was probably planning to write a book regardless. So Orwell complains much more about boredom then he does carnage, as he was stationed where both he and the Fascists did not have enough firepower to go on the offensive.

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Summary: The Standard for War Autobiographies
Review: Written with passion, verve and brilliance, this is Orwell's personal history of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. A liberal leftist in the old sense of the words, his dedication to political liberty compelled him to put his life on the line for the ideals he held dear.

And a harrowing experience it was. Orwell shows how the forces of the Republic were themselves split along idealogical lines and eventually became totalitarian as the war progressed. The atrocities on both sides, the deeply felt values of his anarchists and the political intrigues of an increasingly crumbling republic are all highlighted.

Read Orwell. Read this, his essays and his novels, not just the popular 1984 or Animal Farm. His one one of the great voices of the early-mid twentieth century. A contrarian, a liberal leftest and an anti-totalitarian. Homage to Catalonia is one of the most gripping tales of the twentieth century by one of it's most shining minds.

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Summary: REALPOLITIK NIGHTMANRES
Review: Picture a man in a twilight zone: He has left that uncomfortable and boring, at times deadly experience known as static trench warfare after a sniper's bullet has missed his jugular by a millimeter, and wound up on the run from the local authorities who were now chasing him as a terrorist suspect. Along the way he encounters newspapers which distort the truth and publish outright lies, thus rewriting history, he has to dodge and deceive local police who arrest people against their superiors' wishes and cart them off to secret jails to be eventually shot, and he has to keep his military identity and what unit he belongs to a secret, while keeping his military documents on his person to avoid getting arrested as a deserter. ... this first hand true account was written by a man, who would go on to become a British propagandist during the World War Two and who would lend his name to totalitarian omnipotence, the man is none other than George Orwell.


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Summary: Important
Review: This is one of the most important books of the 20th Century. Orwell went to Spain as somewhat of a vaguely committed leftist; when he returned, he had truly found not only himself but the course of the remainder of the century. Orwell discovers that things rarely exist in black and white but in a million shades of gray; there rarely is a "good side" in any contest. Tyranny is tyranny whether it wears the swastika or the hammer and sickle. Another aspect of this book, for people who only know Orwell through Animal Farm and 1984, is his bravery. He was right in the thick of everything and lived to write one of the truest, most searing documents of the last 100 years. As a chronicle of war before WWII, I think it ranks with Graves's Goodbye to All That. In both books, the writer plummets to the depths of human experience and fear and surfaces with enlightenment.