Review: Homage to Catalonia
May. 29th, 2017 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebIn the quest for books on Spain, I ran across George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, written in 1937. I love his writing style, so I picked it up. Here is his short summary of the plot of this nonfiction book: "I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do."
His visit to Barcelona "was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle." Public buildings were seized by the workers and draped with red flags, churches had been gutted, "Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized. ... Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech [such as señor, don, and even usted] had temporarily disappeared." Tipping had been forbidden. There were no private motor cars; all had been commandeered. "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 of this was queer and moving. ... Also I believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers' state and the the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being." Even the military was egalitarian--people of all ranks had the same pay, and you complied out of respect for the cause (after asking about the reasons), not because of fear. Compliance took longer at first, but then was stronger.
His descriptions of this equality have really grabbed me, as the atmosphere of equality grabbed him.
Interesting note: "In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles and the enemy," in that order where he was. Personally, I'd put water over tobacco (and yes, even my vice of sugar). Candles were used for lighting.
Interestingly, there were a lot of deserters coming over from Franco's side. This is partly because they had been conscripted and partly because megaphones were used as weapons. "Generally they shouted a set-piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the Fascist soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international capitalism, that they were fighting against their own class, etc., etc., and urged them to come over to our side. ... I admit I was amazed and scandalized when I first saw it done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of shooting him! I now think that from any point of view it was a legitimate manoeuvre. ...[D]eserters are actually more useful to you than corpses, because they can give information." One of these megaphone users "simply told the Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative. 'Buttered toast!'--you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!'"
Then there was the chapter on politics, which he told us we could skip. But I didn't feel the need. When he'd first come, he'd thought the war was between fascism and democracy. But really Franco's was a military mutiny backed by the aristocracy and the church, more to re-establish feudalism than to establish fascism. And at first his real opponent was not so much the government as the trade unions, and they were not resisting in the name of democracy (and status quo) but for revolution. And news of the revolution was downplayed or ignored throughout Europe. Even the Russians were against it.
Interestingly, "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 investors would also be hurt by revolution (as their assets were seized). So the Anarchists, Socialists and Communists united against Franco, but Russia, who provided the bulk of the weaponry, called the shots. And it was more important to beat Franco than to have revolution. "As usual, the breaking-up of the [workers'] militias was done in the name of military efficiency; and no one denied that a thorough military reorganization was needed. It would, however, have been quite possible to reorganize the militias and make them more efficient while keeping them under direct control of the trade unions; the main purpose of the change was to make sure that the Anarchists did not possess any army of their own." Just sickening.
Orwell was convinced that "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 were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight."
Interestingly, "All this time I was at the front [January until late April] ...in the strip of Aragon controlled by Anarchist and P.O.U.M. troops, the same conditions persisted, at least outwardly. The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class."
Another interesting fact: "At the front everyone stole, it was the inevitable effect of shortage, but the hospital people were always the worst."
After four months at the front, he had a two-week leave in Barcelona. "Everyone who has made two visits, at intervals of months, to Barcelona during the war has remarked upon the extraordinary changes that took place in it. And curiously enough, whether they went there first in August and again in January, or, like myself, first in December and again in April, the thing they said was always the same: that the revolutionary atmosphere had vanished." By "revolutionary," he meant egalitarian: "the normal division of society into rich and poor, upper class and lower class, was reasserting itself." The "waiters, flower-women and bootblacks" no longer looked you in the eye and called you comrade. "The restaurants and hotels [patronized by the rich] seemed to have little difficulty in getting whatever they wanted, but in the working-class quarters the queues for bread, olive oil, and other necessaries were hundreds of yards long." Beggars were back, "the cabaret show and high-class brothels" had re-opened, and only rich people could get proper cigarettes (smuggled in).
During his first week of leave, he overate! So he stayed a second week to recover from that and that's when the battle at Barcelona happened. All the papers said that the P.O.U.M. started the fight, in the pay of the Fascists, but Orwell was in a position to see that this was not true. That story was fabricated to hide the revolutionary factor.
After this scuffle, he returned to the front until he was shot in the throat. When he returned, they were rounding up P.O.U.M. members as traitors, throwing them into prison, and, at best, throwing away the key. He had had no clue, but found out in time. He hid at night (because police would be called if he checked into a hotel), but could hang out anonymously in places where he was unknown during the day (at least once things opened at 9 am). Finally he (and his wife!) escaped.
He concluded that even if Franco lost, the government would still be fascist, though not as bad.
There was an introduction (I read this last so as not to have spoilers), but all it said was that Orwell was a virtuous man without being a genius, which the intro writer found refreshing. Whatever.
I encountered some new Spanish vocabulary:
* centuria - group of about 100 soldiers
* porrón - "a sort of glass bottle with a pointed spout from which a thin jet of wine spurts out whenever you tip it up; you can thus drink from a distance, without touching it with your lips, and it can be passed from hand to hand. I went on strike and demanded a drinking-cup as soon as I saw a porrón in use. To my eyes the things were altogether too like bed-bottles, especially when they were filled with white wine."
* fusil - rifle
* ametralladora - machine gun. "Yo sé manejar fusil. No sé manejar ametralladora. Quiero aprender ametralladora. Cuándo vamos apprender ametralladora?" [I know how to use a rifle. I don't know how to use a machine gun. I want to learn the machine gun. When are we going to learn the machine gun?] The answer was always a harassed smile and a promise that there should be machine-gun instruction mañana. Needless to say, mañana never came."
* cabo - corporal. "I had been made a corporal, or cabo, as it was called, as soon as we reached the front, and was in command of a guard of twelve men. It was no sinecure, especially at first." Partly because the "men" were mostly teenaged boys.
* several more: "The difficult passwords which the army was using at this time were a minor source of danger. They were those tiresome double passwords in which one word has to be answered by another. Usually they were of an elevating and revolutionary nature, such as Cultura--progreso [Culture--progress], or Seremos--invencibles [We are--invincible], and it was often impossible to get illiterate sentries to remember these highfalutin words. One night, I remember, the password was Cataluña--heroica [Catalonian--heroic]." When a guy asked, he explained that heroica meant the same as valiente [brave]. Later, he replied "valiente" so the sentry shot him (but missed, as usual in this war).
* maricón - "nancy boy" (according to SpanishDict, an extremely offensive word for homosexual)
* practicante - "The practicantes (hospital assistants) stole practically every valuable object I possessed including my camera and all my photographs."
I also learned a new English word.
* harrow - an implement consisting of a heavy frame set with teeth or tines that is dragged over plowed land to break up clods, remove weeds, and cover seed. "There was a kind of harrow that took one straight back to the later Stone Age. ... made of boards joined together, to about the size of a kitchen table; in the boards hundreds of holes were morticed, and into each hole was jammed a piece of flint. ... I had to puzzle over it for a long while before grasping that it was a harrow. It made me sick to think of the work that must go into the making of such a thing, and the poverty that was obliged to use flint in place of steel. I have felt more kindly towards industrialism ever since."
His visit to Barcelona "was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle." Public buildings were seized by the workers and draped with red flags, churches had been gutted, "Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized. ... Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech [such as señor, don, and even usted] had temporarily disappeared." Tipping had been forbidden. There were no private motor cars; all had been commandeered. "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 of this was queer and moving. ... Also I believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers' state and the the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers' side; I did not realize that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being." Even the military was egalitarian--people of all ranks had the same pay, and you complied out of respect for the cause (after asking about the reasons), not because of fear. Compliance took longer at first, but then was stronger.
His descriptions of this equality have really grabbed me, as the atmosphere of equality grabbed him.
Interesting note: "In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles and the enemy," in that order where he was. Personally, I'd put water over tobacco (and yes, even my vice of sugar). Candles were used for lighting.
Interestingly, there were a lot of deserters coming over from Franco's side. This is partly because they had been conscripted and partly because megaphones were used as weapons. "Generally they shouted a set-piece, full of revolutionary sentiments which explained to the Fascist soldiers that they were merely the hirelings of international capitalism, that they were fighting against their own class, etc., etc., and urged them to come over to our side. ... I admit I was amazed and scandalized when I first saw it done. The idea of trying to convert your enemy instead of shooting him! I now think that from any point of view it was a legitimate manoeuvre. ...[D]eserters are actually more useful to you than corpses, because they can give information." One of these megaphone users "simply told the Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative. 'Buttered toast!'--you could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!'"
Then there was the chapter on politics, which he told us we could skip. But I didn't feel the need. When he'd first come, he'd thought the war was between fascism and democracy. But really Franco's was a military mutiny backed by the aristocracy and the church, more to re-establish feudalism than to establish fascism. And at first his real opponent was not so much the government as the trade unions, and they were not resisting in the name of democracy (and status quo) but for revolution. And news of the revolution was downplayed or ignored throughout Europe. Even the Russians were against it.
Interestingly, "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 investors would also be hurt by revolution (as their assets were seized). So the Anarchists, Socialists and Communists united against Franco, but Russia, who provided the bulk of the weaponry, called the shots. And it was more important to beat Franco than to have revolution. "As usual, the breaking-up of the [workers'] militias was done in the name of military efficiency; and no one denied that a thorough military reorganization was needed. It would, however, have been quite possible to reorganize the militias and make them more efficient while keeping them under direct control of the trade unions; the main purpose of the change was to make sure that the Anarchists did not possess any army of their own." Just sickening.
Orwell was convinced that "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 were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight."
Interestingly, "All this time I was at the front [January until late April] ...in the strip of Aragon controlled by Anarchist and P.O.U.M. troops, the same conditions persisted, at least outwardly. The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class."
Another interesting fact: "At the front everyone stole, it was the inevitable effect of shortage, but the hospital people were always the worst."
After four months at the front, he had a two-week leave in Barcelona. "Everyone who has made two visits, at intervals of months, to Barcelona during the war has remarked upon the extraordinary changes that took place in it. And curiously enough, whether they went there first in August and again in January, or, like myself, first in December and again in April, the thing they said was always the same: that the revolutionary atmosphere had vanished." By "revolutionary," he meant egalitarian: "the normal division of society into rich and poor, upper class and lower class, was reasserting itself." The "waiters, flower-women and bootblacks" no longer looked you in the eye and called you comrade. "The restaurants and hotels [patronized by the rich] seemed to have little difficulty in getting whatever they wanted, but in the working-class quarters the queues for bread, olive oil, and other necessaries were hundreds of yards long." Beggars were back, "the cabaret show and high-class brothels" had re-opened, and only rich people could get proper cigarettes (smuggled in).
During his first week of leave, he overate! So he stayed a second week to recover from that and that's when the battle at Barcelona happened. All the papers said that the P.O.U.M. started the fight, in the pay of the Fascists, but Orwell was in a position to see that this was not true. That story was fabricated to hide the revolutionary factor.
After this scuffle, he returned to the front until he was shot in the throat. When he returned, they were rounding up P.O.U.M. members as traitors, throwing them into prison, and, at best, throwing away the key. He had had no clue, but found out in time. He hid at night (because police would be called if he checked into a hotel), but could hang out anonymously in places where he was unknown during the day (at least once things opened at 9 am). Finally he (and his wife!) escaped.
He concluded that even if Franco lost, the government would still be fascist, though not as bad.
There was an introduction (I read this last so as not to have spoilers), but all it said was that Orwell was a virtuous man without being a genius, which the intro writer found refreshing. Whatever.
I encountered some new Spanish vocabulary:
* centuria - group of about 100 soldiers
* porrón - "a sort of glass bottle with a pointed spout from which a thin jet of wine spurts out whenever you tip it up; you can thus drink from a distance, without touching it with your lips, and it can be passed from hand to hand. I went on strike and demanded a drinking-cup as soon as I saw a porrón in use. To my eyes the things were altogether too like bed-bottles, especially when they were filled with white wine."
* fusil - rifle
* ametralladora - machine gun. "Yo sé manejar fusil. No sé manejar ametralladora. Quiero aprender ametralladora. Cuándo vamos apprender ametralladora?" [I know how to use a rifle. I don't know how to use a machine gun. I want to learn the machine gun. When are we going to learn the machine gun?] The answer was always a harassed smile and a promise that there should be machine-gun instruction mañana. Needless to say, mañana never came."
* cabo - corporal. "I had been made a corporal, or cabo, as it was called, as soon as we reached the front, and was in command of a guard of twelve men. It was no sinecure, especially at first." Partly because the "men" were mostly teenaged boys.
* several more: "The difficult passwords which the army was using at this time were a minor source of danger. They were those tiresome double passwords in which one word has to be answered by another. Usually they were of an elevating and revolutionary nature, such as Cultura--progreso [Culture--progress], or Seremos--invencibles [We are--invincible], and it was often impossible to get illiterate sentries to remember these highfalutin words. One night, I remember, the password was Cataluña--heroica [Catalonian--heroic]." When a guy asked, he explained that heroica meant the same as valiente [brave]. Later, he replied "valiente" so the sentry shot him (but missed, as usual in this war).
* maricón - "nancy boy" (according to SpanishDict, an extremely offensive word for homosexual)
* practicante - "The practicantes (hospital assistants) stole practically every valuable object I possessed including my camera and all my photographs."
I also learned a new English word.
* harrow - an implement consisting of a heavy frame set with teeth or tines that is dragged over plowed land to break up clods, remove weeds, and cover seed. "There was a kind of harrow that took one straight back to the later Stone Age. ... made of boards joined together, to about the size of a kitchen table; in the boards hundreds of holes were morticed, and into each hole was jammed a piece of flint. ... I had to puzzle over it for a long while before grasping that it was a harrow. It made me sick to think of the work that must go into the making of such a thing, and the poverty that was obliged to use flint in place of steel. I have felt more kindly towards industrialism ever since."