Appearance
Homage to Catalonia
This small book was decades ahead of its time. The internecine warfare Orwell documents reads more like a description of the Vietnam War than the Second World War that followed.What might have appeared to be a war of all against Franco and, more important, a war to stop what was perceived as a tidal wave of fascism engulfing Europe became, in fact, a political war of various coalitions against other coalitions, ultimately to the detriment of Orwell's own division.Also, note how remarkably cautious Orwell is when describing events; how carefully he reminds readers of the limitations of his vantage point, of the fact that his experience may well be idiosyncratic -- not representative of the totality of the complicated war he is documenting. When is the last time any you remember hearing a journalist express that level of humility?
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell traveled to Spain in 1936 as a journalist. However, his political views and sympathy for the Spanish Rebublic's struggle against fascism in the guise of General Franco led him to enlist in the militia of the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (Party of Marxist Unification) or P.O.U.M. While his own political views were communist, his connections in Spain came via an English group called the I.L.P. which had ties with the P.O.U.M. and he concluded that he would first enlist and then later transfer to a unit more closely affiliated with the Communists. Ultimately, his wound and the changing political climate in Republican Spain would compel Orwell to end his service in Spain and literally flee that country after less than one year. Based upon that experience, he has some interesting observations to offer on the various armed forces serving the Republic - as well as the nationalists. He served both in the ranks and as a squad/platoon leader in the frontlines. Although he speaks of "trench warfare" he also makes it clear that his frontlines were not the continuous trench lines of World War I but more chains of hilltop outposts separated from both friends and enemies by the steep ravines that cut through this hilly terrain. Thus, his frontline experience was more a matter of long hours of bored watchfulness punctiated by raids back and forth across 'no-man's land' and some longrange sniping (his wound the result of such an incident).The resulting experience offers some interesting insights into the Civil War in Catalonia. His service in Spain ended in the wake of the Spanish Republic's supression and arrest of the P.O.U.M. militia and its supporting party as the growing communist influence in Madrid resulted in demands for the elimination of their rivals in the anarchist P.O.U.M. and its militia. In Barcelona in May 1937, Orwell had a front row seat for the Barcelona uprising that became the justification for this suppression and is able to rebut convincingly the communists' description of that event in the propaganda defending the elimation of the P.O.U.M. Force to flee while still seeking treatment for his serious wound at the hand of a fascist sniper, Orwell's experiences colored forever his perceptions of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement as reflected in many of his subsequent works. He wrote "Homage to Catalonia" and saw it published in 1938, before the end of the Civil War in Spain and this 1952 reprinting has the advantage of his own subsequently added footnotes where he noted errors he had made in his original account and how subsequent events related to or reflected upon the story told here. In this book, George Orwell offers an interesting and informative tale of men at war, of how the war in Spain looked to the men in the 'trenches,' and how his political views were forever shaped by the incidents of this conflict. This is a must read for anyone seeking a better understanding of the civil war in Spain or of George Orwell the man and his body of work.
Homage to Catalonia
This should be the essential English read when it comes to first-hand experiences on the Spanish Civil War, Republican side.Orwell writes about every single thing he experienced about many aspects of the Republic during the Civil War. The struggles of ideologies, the society, the environment, the ravages of war, etc. Orwell, a leftist, sided with the P.O.U.M., a militant marxist party which fought the fascist, and at the same time were discriminated by the dominant Communist Party of Spain.As Orwell writes in these memoirs, he explains the several differences between the ideologies within the Republic. The Communists believed that it was better to defend the democracy and wait to do the revolution. This was particularly useful for the USSR (at that time, under Stalin, who Orwell despised), which pretty much was the big ideological boss of the Communist Party, and provided weaponry as well. The anarchists and the P.O.U.M., however, believed the Revolution went along with the war, they couldn't be separated. Catalonia was the scenery of this struggle for a classless, egalitarian, and stateless society, which was somewhat very successful during the beginnings of the War. It was, as Orwell put it, the ideal of an anarchist society, which would eventually fall to the fascists.If you want to initiate yourself on the Spanish Civil War topic, this is a good book, since it's a foreigner's report on a War in which both sides made up lies about each other. However, this book won't give you a good image about the fascist side led by Franco, so don't take it as an universal report on the Civil War and it's conditions.
Homage to Catalonia
One of George Orwell's lesser known works, "Homage to Catalonia" is however, equally deserving of recognition as any other of his fine, fine writings. Shorter in length than most of his books (the memoir itself is approximately 190 pages long, with appendices taking up the remainder of the pages), it nonetheless paints a vivid picture of Orwell's experiences as a militiaman during the Spanish Civil War. Fighting against Franco's Fascists, Orwell left England to enlist in the radical and populist Republican militia. Unlike many in his militia unit, Orwell was not tied to any particular political persuasion in Spain, When asked why he had made the journey to Spain he replied simply "to fight Fascism", and when asked what he was fighting for he merely replied "common decency". Orwell left for Spain under the auspices of the ILP (Independent Labour Party), and as such, found himself among the ranks of the POUM militia. In actual fact, a point that Orwell appears to be at pains to repeat to his reader is his attempt at impartiality in his final assessment of his experiences. He denounces for example, the blatant lies and distortions of the Communist and pro-Communist press works just as he attacks the Fascist press with equal criticism (although he does exempt the Manchester Guardian from his wrath, which he commends for it's "honsest reporting"). Throughout the book, one gets a sense of Orwell's commitment to honesty.Orwell's vivid, journalistic prose is perfect for capturing the human side of warfare and how the human spirit reacts to the immense stresses brought about by armed combat. Orwell himself however, did not experience combat on a regular basis, and a great deal of his observances of life at the front are filled with descriptions of conditions in the trenches, the attitudes of his fellow soldiers and the occasional peek above the trench in the hope of spotting a Fascist! The book is as much social commentary as it is war correspondance.By far the most intriguing section of the book is Orwell's depiction of the cynical betrayal of the Republican militia by the Spanish Communist Party and it's agents. Having arrived in Spain, Orwell witnessed a Barcelona in a state of social revolution. Upon his return to the city after a stint at the front, he was witness to something very different. Under the order of the Spanish Communist Party (who in turn reported directly to Moscow, the Kremlin and Josef Stalin), Barcelona was the centerpiece of a dictatorial state within a state. Police and agents of the Communist Party turned their sights on members of all non-Communist militia units, be they radicals, populists or anarchists. Waves of arrests were followed in many cases by murders within the confines of Barcelona's frightful prsion cells (including that of Orwell's commander, Kopp, a Belgian). One can very easily see the beginnings of his later works of "Animal Farm" and "1984" in these pages, where he denounces all Communist Parties as agents of Moscow and condemns their propaganda offensives against opponents of all kinds. It was Orwell's experiences in Spain that resulted in him making this now poignant statement:"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."In conclusion, "Homage to Catalonia" should be read by any fan of Orwell, and as a prelude to "Anmal Farm" and "1984". My only criticism is that Orwell's use of abbreviations to describe the many political factions can leave the reader in a slight state of confusion. However, this should not detract from the merits of this book.
Homage to Catalonia
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.
Homage to Catalonia
George Orwell went to Spain in late 1936, in his role as a journalist, but then, pretty inevitably, put down his pen and spent the next year fighting with the P.O.U.M (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) Militia against the Fascist forces under Francisco Franco. Homage to Catalonia, written immediately after his return and published in 1938, tells the story of his military service with the POUM, both against the Right and the Left, and, in quick succession, of his initial hopes for the classless society that he thought he had found on first arrival, then of his disappointment with the level of disorganization of the Leftist forces and finally of his disillusionment when pro-Stalinist "allies" began attacking Socialists and Anarchists who refused to toe the Soviet line. Orwell, who by then had nearly been killed when shot through the neck in battle, and his wife were ultimately forced to flee from Spain, to avoid Stalinist security forces, which had labeled him pro-fascist.The one thing, more than any other, that makes Orwell one of the great literary and cultural figures of the 20th Century, is that it was this last fact that truly galled him. Orwell was committed to the idea of revolutionary Socialism. As he says when the security forces attack POUM:I have no particular love for the idealized 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but 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.He was fueled by an animus towards the class system which is almost incomprehensible to us Americans, but which came naturally to young British intellectuals, particularly in the wake of the First World War. Accordingly, he was not unsympathetic to the Soviet decision that they had to take over the Left in Spain; in his revolutionary heart, he could understand that such a maneuver, however brutal might eventually serve the greater cause of the Workers. No, what he could not tolerate was that the perpetrators and their fellow travelers in the Press lied about it. It is the essence of the man that being purged was tolerable, but having his political beliefs portrayed incorrectly was intolerable.Orwell's concern for honest language is easy to discern in 1984 (see Orrin's review) and Animal Farm (see Orrin's review) once you know to look for it, but it is first evident here. He recognized early on that one of the ways in which dictators would attack freedom was to degrade the language and by cheapening the meaning of words, deaden the emotional reaction of the citizenry to events. Prescient in so many ways, Orwell was never more correct than when he made this connection between the integrity of language and the integrity of the men using it. One can only imagine a profile of Bill Clinton as written by Orwell.The Spanish Civil War is second only to the Hitler/Stalin pact as a dividing line between mere Left-Wingers and genuine Communists. It was here that the true nature of the Soviet Union first intruded itself upon the public consciousness to such a degree that its defenders truly had to be considered apologists, not simply naive do-gooders. Orwell, objective and honest as always, wrote only about what he saw, so his portrayal of events is necessarily incomplete and, writing while the conflict was still going on, he was not able to form the really harsh judgments that our historical perspective allows us to make. But it is to his great good credit that he wrote what he did and when he did. Many of his brethren on the Left refused to do so for fear of hurting "the cause". Orwell chose to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may; for that alone he should be celebrated.GRADE: A