Monthly Archives: June 2016

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell’s book, Homage to Catalonia, as discussed in class, could be of many genres, specifically historical, political, and autobiographical. This memoir, is a personal account of his time during the Spanish civil war. In the beginning of the novel, Orwell describes the atmosphere and the feelings of camaraderie felt at the start of this ‘revolution’. He talks about the atmosphere in the town of Barcelona,

“Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initial of the revolutionary parties…Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying it had been collectivized” (3).

This gives the reader a sense of the feelings of how the people felt, plus the extent of control the Anarchists had over the city. The condition of the town can only be described as ‘shabby,’ ‘untidy,’ kind of sombre, which is evidently a sign of the coming war. The fact that formal speech for addressing others, was not to be used, ‘Señor’, ‘Don’, and ‘Usted,’ gives me the idea that language is also a significant part of a country and that by changing certain parts of it, is a part of the ‘revolutionary’ movement. The people have all joined the ‘workers’ side,’ which says a lot about the fear people may have of not being a part of the norm, such as the people of the bourgeoisie class. The attitudes of the people part of the revolutionary army, were obviously layed-back because of how much the Spanish people have a habit of being late. What they share in addition to that, is their goal of going against the fascists. The idea of pushing things off, delaying, being unprepared with the equipment, contributed significantly to their continuous loss. Much like in Days of Hope, feelings aren’t enough.

In Chapter V of the novel, I find it interesting how Orwell describes rats, being almost nearly as big as the size of cats, making the reference through an old army song “There are rats, rats,/ Rats as big as cats,/ In the quartermaster’s store!” (56). This makes me recall, in Orwell’s novel 1984, O’Brien, a member of the Inner party, uses psychological torture and Blackmailing through the use of rats, in-order to threaten Winston into obeying. It is clear that in both of Orwell’s works, his fear of rats is brought to light. Like most writers, what they write can reflect how they are as a person.

From Chapter VII and VIII on, there is a change in Orwells views, after experiencing the trench warfares and such, he started to become a “democratic socialist.” There seems to be a clear disappointment in his part, because once he returned to Barcelona, he felt that the revolutionary atmosphere had disappeared, perhaps due to the losses they’ve had. After all that they were fighting for, freedom and equality, the re-emergence of the class system most likely brought him down. From the start, this war, may have been a loss cause already, so why does Orwell, go back to the front to fight? Would it make much of a difference?

The political situation seemed to be unstable in Spain, perhaps one could say that thanks to this instability, Orwell and his family, were able to successfully escape prosecution. Which could be seen in Chapter XII. A question I’ve been wondering, is it possible that Orwell regretted joining the POUM? If from the start, Orwell had been on a different side to begin with, would he have been a regular journalist, or would he still eventually join the war? From the start, he was swept with the emotions of the people, that’s why he joined the revolutionary front instead of being a journalist. Given the political situation, it makes me unable to relate to his feelings because it feels like a whole other world and also since we live in a love different era, an era of peace.

 

Homage To Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is a personal account of the Spanish Civil War. As a British expatriate, he joined the POUM (Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) and fought on the Republican side. He grew to love the Socialist society the Republicans have built and it provided him the motivation to fight:

“In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for” (10).

However, he is soon disappointed by the state of the military. “To my dismay I found that we were taught nothing about the use of weapons. The so-called instruction was simply parade-ground drill of the most antiquated, stupid kind: right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at attention in column of threes and all the rest of that useless nonsense which I had learned when I was fifteen years old” (16-17). He was very disappointed at how disorganized the army was and the fact that no practical instruction was being done. He also finds that the soldiers were starving for months and exhausted.

He also talks extensively about the political differences within the Republican side. He states:

“As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names–P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I., C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T.–they merely exasperated me. It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M. (I had only joined the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with I.L.P. papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties” (75).

It seems like he was caught up in the revolutionary spirit that was present in Barcelona, and not necessarily for the cause. It seems like it was rather an emotional response as opposed to a response through constructive examination of his ethics.

The question is, why is the title of the book Homage To Catalonia when it seems like there is an absence of any respect or reverence rendered to Spain or Catalonia? I have yet to read the full text but I do not see any homage being paid to the respective country/ies so far.

Homage To Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is a personal account of the Spanish Civil War. As a British expatriate, he joined the POUM (Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) and fought on the Republican side. He grew to love the Socialist society the Republicans have built and it provided him the motivation to fight:

“In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working class clothes, or blue overalls, or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for” (10).

However, he is soon disappointed by the state of the military. “To my dismay I found that we were taught nothing about the use of weapons. The so-called instruction was simply parade-ground drill of the most antiquated, stupid kind: right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at attention in column of threes and all the rest of that useless nonsense which I had learned when I was fifteen years old” (16-17). He was very disappointed at how disorganized the army was and the fact that no practical instruction was being done. He also finds that the soldiers were starving for months and exhausted.

He also talks extensively about the political differences within the Republican side. He states:

“As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names–P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I., C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T.–they merely exasperated me. It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M. (I had only joined the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with I.L.P. papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties” (75).

It seems like he was caught up in the revolutionary spirit that was present in Barcelona, and not necessarily for the cause. It seems like it was rather an emotional response as opposed to a response through constructive examination of his ethics.

The question is, why is the title of the book Homage To Catalonia when it seems like there is an absence of any respect or reverence rendered to Spain or Catalonia? I have yet to read the full text but I do not see any homage being paid to the respective country/ies so far.

Sobre Homage to Catalonia

I would have to say that this was easily the most entertaining piece we’ve read so far, which is both interesting and surprising for a number of reasons, most notably because the subject matter of the book is dire and tumultuous (as Paz touched on in her blog post). I for one was pleasantly surprised because my experience reading two of his other books (Animal Farm and 1984) wasn’t exactly what I would call “entertaining.” I also, like Paz, found it curious that there was even humor to be found in some of the situations Orwell described, or the series of observations he had. And as I commented on her blog post, I’ll pose it to the rest of you whether you think those humorous insertions were wholly genuine or used primarily for the purpose of entertainment for the reader. This question also brings to mind previous conversations we’ve had in and outside of class, about the author’s intention versus the outcome of a certain authorial choice. Does it matter whether or not Orwell intended to entertain us with these few anecdotes or observations? Regardless, I was entertained, and I do feel that it kept me engaged throughout the narrative (I confess I ended up reading it in one sitting!).

Another matter I’m still not decided on is the issue of whether Homage to Catalonia was a “fair” or “unbiased” narration of the events of the Spanish Civil War that Orwell participated in (I’m referring both to Mauricio’s thoughtful and well-written post, as well as our discussion in class yesterday). On the one hand, I recognize that Orwell does comment several times on the fact that he’s trying to contribute to the narrative by presenting what he believes is more or less an “unbiased” account of the events as he witnessed them. He also goes as far as saying that he believes that 90% of what has been said about the uprising in Barcelona is untrue (thereby suggesting that his contribution is perhaps less biased and more “accurate.” But what I can’t shake is that he does say explicitly that (in my own words) you can’t always trust what you read and that he only offers one perspective on the events that befell Barcelona and greater Catalonia in this time. To me, that disclaimer doesn’t necessarily invalidate the other points in the book where he seems to suggest that his account is more accurate than others, or that his account is more trustworthy than what others have said (especially those who didn’t actually experience the events of the war firsthand), but in my opinion this remark leaves the text’s ultimate stance on its own accuracy or authenticity ambiguous (Orwell’s stance, on the other hand, I don’t think one reading of the book entitles me to venture a guess).

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

El libro para esta semana Homage to Catalonia escrito por el inglés George Orwell es menos complicado para leer en comparación con los de Cela y Malraux. No quiero decir que por eso es menos interesante, pues muchas veces al leerlo, lo encontraba muy divertido y me puse a reír. Tiene cierto sentido de humor, por lo menos para mí, un matiz satírico, aunque el tema que toca Orwell es realmente muy triste y se trata de una desilusión.

Todo el libro parece un proceso de la desilusión. En los primeros párrafos, Orwell nos presenta un miliciano italiano que ¨has stuck vividly¨ en su memoria. Esta imagen le afectó emocionalmente tanto que Orwell incluso escribió un poema Crystal spirit dedicado a él. Para Orwell, y muchos otros voluntarios internacionales, el perfecto italiano encarna este ¨crystal espirit¨, el cual atrajo a ellos a venir desde diferentes partes del mundo para luchar en contra el fascismo. En los primeros capítulos, el libro describe cómo era la sociedad de Barcelona bajo el ambiente del socialismo e igualdad. ¨It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle...so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; there was very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars...Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.¨ Esta sociedad suena fascinante y prometedora, en el libro todas las personas sumergieron en esta atmósfera y querían dejar sus propios trabajos que en ese momento lo más importante que parecía era participar en la revolución y realizar la esperanza. Orwell también dejó su intención del viaje de ser periodista y participó en el ejército. Estaban unidos en lo profundo por este espíritu cristal y querían llegar en la batalla y luchar por el empeño aunque podrían sacrificar su vida en la batalla.

¨War, to me, meant roaring projectiles and skipping shards of steel; above all it meant mud, lice, hunger, and cold. It is curious, but I dreaded the cold much more than I dreaded the enemy.¨ (18) ¿Cuánto tiempo Orwell esperaba para llegar al frente de la batalla? ¿Cuándo tiempo él esperaba para lograr un arma? ¿Cuándo tiempo esperaba para ver realmente a un enemigo y matar al primer enemigo? ¿Cuándo tiempo esperaba para ser herido como un soldado honrado? Las apasionantes escenas sobre la guerra, el sacrificio, el heroísmo, etc., como en las novelas o las películas, son simplemente piezas fragmentadas. Claro que existía la escasez de armas para los revolucionarios en el frente, como se describe bien en el libro de Malraux, pero creo que además de la falta de armas, en muchas situaciones las guerras no son tan apasionantes como uno imagina. En el libro, se tardó bastante tiempo para encontrarse con el primer enemigo, muchas veces los enemigos eran unos puntos vagos de lejos, casi invisibles, o sólo existían en la mente. Sin embargo, cuando lograron a un desertor del ¨monstruo fascista¨, se dio cuenta que el desertor del ¨monstruo¨  era como ellos, una persona pobre e ignorante de la guerra a veces. En la mayoría del tiempo, el enemigo real era el frió, el aburrimiento, la hambre, los piojos...o el enemigo real era uno mismo y era la esperanza, la fe (no importa ser ciega o no) o la imaginación del enemigo que apoya a la gente a persistir. Creo que es análogo a la revolución. En el libro, Orwell sí menciona pero no tanto a Franco, al fascismo, al enemigo real, pero describe y analiza con detalles los conflictos dentro de la revolución, la lucha dentro de sí mismo y el colapso de ese espíritu cristal. No critica contra ese espíritu cristal, que para él es siempre una belleza pura y más que una vez lo veía en algunas personas, pero critica cómo la gente no lo merecía, que traicionaron al espíritu, cómo el espíritu cristal se convirtió en pretexto para manipular a las personas y eliminar a los disidentes.

Dije al principio que me puse a reír al leer el libro porque muchas veces Orwell describe la guerra como una caricatura. No parece nada seria sino cómica e incluso ridícula como una broma. Por ejemplo: ¨As a matter of fact, on this front and at this period of the war the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone. Being unable to kill your enemy you shouted at him instead. This method of warfare is so extraordinary that it needs explaining.¨ "Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the fascists how much better we were than they were..'Buttered toast! ..'we are just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' "  La guerra es descrita a veces como fuera un juego de niños, pero ante la elevada esperanza inmortal, realmente sí somos mortales y carnales, e incluso infantiles, ¿no?  Después de la risa también siento junto con el autor un cansancio de las luchas interiores incesantes, de la desconfianza, de las demasiadas informaciones o rumores, de las trampas...

En un párrafo dice:"To the Spanish people, at any rate in Catalonia and Aragón, the Church was a racket pure and simple. And possibly Christian belief was replaced to some extent by Anarchism, whose influence is widely spread and which undoubtedly has religious tinge." Recuerdo esta pieza porque después del libro, siento que Orwell cuestiona las apasionantes creencias y los partidos políticos o religiosos y sus convicciones, los cristianos, los fascistas, los comunistas o los anarquistas como sea. Si este libro es una propaganda, dudo que sea una propaganda completamente para el bando republicano.





Homage to Catalonia II

Homage to Catalonia cover

Concluding Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell tells us:

I suppose I have failed to convey more than a little of what those months in Spain mean to me. I have recorded some of the outward events, but I cannot record the feeling they have left me with. It is all mixed up with sights, smells, and sounds that cannot be conveyed in writing. (194)

To be fair, though, there’s no doubt that he has tried. Orwell is perhaps particularly attuned to smell: almost the first thing he describes is “the characteristic smell of war–in my experience a smell of excrement and decaying food” (15). Or for instance, as he approaches the front line itself what strikes him is “a sickening sweetish stink that lived in my nostrils for weeks afterwards” (19). More generally, Orwell continually emphasizes the visceral, embodied, affective aspect of participation in the Civil War. He opens his account, for instance, with a brief anecdote about an almost wordless encounter with an Italian militiaman that demonstrates (he claims) “the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was though his spirit and mine had succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy” (2). Not that his feelings are always positive; far from it. Orwell is as likely to tell us of the fear or, worse, the “horror” not so much of the war itself as of the backstage machinations, the “atmosphere of suspicion, fear, uncertainty, and veiled hatred” (155) that clouds especially is final few weeks in Barcelona, as the Communists crack down on the Anarchists and independent Socialists. For ultimately, these internecine battles had little to do with ideology of strategy, and it was this that made them so horrific. Ultimately, Orwell tells us, he “did not make any of the correct political reflections” and was left “conscious of nothing but physical discomfort and a deep desire for this damned nonsense to be over” (175).

Of course, Orwell’s “physical discomfort” at the end is not merely a matter of the intangible atmosphere of fear and repression. He has been shot through the neck, and is physically wounded. But whereas his account of the political intrigues and day-to-day life in the coffee shops and bars is heavily imbued with the emotional undercurrent that runs through them, his tale of being hit by an enemy sniper is surprisingly distanced, stoical, and understated. As he puts it: “The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think it is worth describing in detail” (143). Though he reports “the sensation of being at the centre of an explosion,” he quickly finds he has “a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense” (143, 144). Once he understands that the bullet has gone through his neck, he is convinced that he is done for–“I assumed that I was killed” (145)–yet even this is depicted without much in the way of panic or doom, but as “interesting–I mean that it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. [. . .] The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaningless of it!” (145). And it is not long before he views the whole event with a sort of black humour: as everyone insists that “a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive,” he retorts that he “could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all” (154).

So there is an odd discrepancy throughout the book between an affective treatment of politics, or what we might otherwise think of as an insistence on the affective infrapolitics that underlies and escapes all political discourse, and on the other hand a notably detached, distanced perspective on the body itself, which is treated as the object of almost quasi-scientific curiosity and scrutiny. This disconnect is further highlighted by what now appears as Orwell’s rather antiquated, perhaps quintessentially English attitude to anything that smacks of the personal. His injury is treated more as a nuisance than anything else. Beyond a brief description of a train journey in Burma (92), there is little to nothing in the way of Orwell recollecting or reflecting on his own personal history. His wife features frequently, but is never deemed worthy of a name. Orwell is honest about his own failings and minor hypocrisies (“God forbid that I should pretend to any personal superiority” [101]). And we learn much about his (lack of) personal hygiene on the front, and the lice that infest his clothing. But almost always Orwell’s gesture is to universalize, to present himself as a cipher for humanity as a whole: the lice, for instance, prompt the thought that “in war all soldiers are 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” (54).

Perhaps all this is because, in the end, Spain itself is something of a cipher for Orwell. Indeed, he claims not to have the chance to “look at Spain” at all until very late in the day, once he is finally discharged. With his “discharge papers in [his] pocket,” he tells us that “For almost the first time I felt I was really in Spain” (164). But even this Spain ends up being more a country of his own invention or fantasy than a real place: “I seemed to catch a momentary glimpse, a sort of far-off rumour of the Spain that exists in everyone’s imagination” (143). By implication, then, everything else that he has witnessed and described–the May Days in Barcelona, the Aragon Front, but also the militiamen and shopkeepers and so on–is in some sense not Spanish. They have all somehow obscured from view some other, supposedly more “real” Spain that would accord with the collective fantasy of what the country should be like. In short, the strange thing about the Spanish Civil War in Orwell’s eyes (but perhaps not only his) is that it is not really “Spanish” at all. And no doubt this is why his final thoughts are not with Spain but with England and its “deep, deep sleep [. . .] from which I sometimes fear that we will never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs” (196).

See also: Homage to Catalonia I; Spanish Civil War novels.

Homage to Catalonia

So far on the reading list, Homage to Catalonia appears to be the only one non-fictional, a memoir that recounts the real-life experiences of author George Orwell during the conflict. It is told in first person, narrated by Orwell himself. The story follows him as he first joins the ranks of the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) rather than the International Brigades purely by chance, because he was first issued with papers from the Independent Labour Party (ILP). There, he found a society most resembling and embodying socialism, where people were truly comrades in a fleeting egalitarian realm.

One recurrent theme within the story was the fact that both sides, but especially the Republicans were frequently inadequately armed, with hopelessly obsolete rifles, shells that didn’t explode, and limited ammunition. There were boys as young as fifteen fighting in their ranks in order to support their families.

In addition, there was a lot of intra-Republican squabbling where they would produce nasty, unconstructive rhetoric in the newspapers about their own comrades from different parties. When distributing rifles, this same type of petty politics was present as seen when weapons weren’t distributed to Republican soldiers that needed them most, but rather to those that aligned most with their party (as the Soviets did).

I found it quite interesting that on one hand he constantly berated the Spaniards for their lack of military prowess, terrible marksmanship, lack of organization etc., but on the other hand he praised them for their generosity, their largeness of spirit and their indomitable idealism. Nonetheless, in Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, the Spanish civil war is almost portrayed as a farcical war, a joke war waged by people who don’t know how to handle weapons.

One notion of the book I don’t completely understand is the part about revolution in chapter 5. According to Orwell, “the whole world was determined, upon preventing revolution in Spain. In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers’ control, but bourgeois democracy… Foreign capital was heavily invested in Spain… If the revolution went forward there would be no compensation, or very little; if the capitalist republic prevailed, foreign investments would be safe. And since the revolution had got to be crushed, it greatly simplified things to pretend that no revolution had happened.”

What difference would it make whether the press called it a revolution or not? The land reforms were still taking place as they spoke, and the foreign investments still in danger of being relinquished by the state. In fact, when the foreign press simplified the war to merely a struggle between “fascism and democracy”, were they still not lending their propagandist support to the Republicans who were instituting this land reform? Also, why were the communists against the land reform?