Homage to Catalonia
Jun. 22nd, 2014 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliHomage to Catalonia by George Orwell
First hand account of the Spanish Civil War. Admittedly from a man who had a very limited role in the fighting, since the trenches that faced each other on the front were extremely strong. And then some first-hand of the Communist suppression of P.O.U.M. and Anarchist elements.
Those who have read his collected letters and essays will notice that this is before World War II, and he's still holding the position that there is no difference between capitalism and fascism.
We get his views of the Revolution in Barcelona -- admitting that he had heard reports of its being much stronger earlier but really impressing him with the way the workers controlled -- and later his reaction to its withdrawal. His cheerful admission that the stories that the churches were destroyed only when used as Nationalist strongholds were in fact just stories, they were destroyed whenever they could.
The actual trench warfare, where the enemy were pretty much the last consideration, the first being firewood, the horrible weapons and supply problems.
And then back to the city, where he was shocked at how things had reverted to normal, and then there was the fighting. . . he and his wife escaped narrowly.
Got weigh it for his point of view, but an interesting look.
First hand account of the Spanish Civil War. Admittedly from a man who had a very limited role in the fighting, since the trenches that faced each other on the front were extremely strong. And then some first-hand of the Communist suppression of P.O.U.M. and Anarchist elements.
Those who have read his collected letters and essays will notice that this is before World War II, and he's still holding the position that there is no difference between capitalism and fascism.
We get his views of the Revolution in Barcelona -- admitting that he had heard reports of its being much stronger earlier but really impressing him with the way the workers controlled -- and later his reaction to its withdrawal. His cheerful admission that the stories that the churches were destroyed only when used as Nationalist strongholds were in fact just stories, they were destroyed whenever they could.
The actual trench warfare, where the enemy were pretty much the last consideration, the first being firewood, the horrible weapons and supply problems.
And then back to the city, where he was shocked at how things had reverted to normal, and then there was the fighting. . . he and his wife escaped narrowly.
Got weigh it for his point of view, but an interesting look.
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-23 06:05 pm (UTC)Oh, he never ceased being a socialist.
But contrast (a) his saccharine naivete in 1942 -- relatively late, but more change was to come -- in concluding his poem of tribute to the fallen Republican soldiers of the Spanish Civil War,... with (b) the fate of Winston Smith in 1984 (published 1949, only seven years after the above poem), whose "crystal spirit" is shattered by agents of the Ministry of Love, just like the coral in Winston's paperweight, leaving him loving Big Brother even as he is shot in the head.
Talk about disillusionment!
no subject
Date: 2014-06-23 07:04 pm (UTC)One was in the essay "My Country, Right or Left," where facing World War II, he recanted the view that Fascism and democracy were the same. Indeed, after that you read essays in which he denounces views -- using the very words he used to express and support those views earlier.
The other one is more subtle, but after criticizing one of Koestler's works because you must not say that progress does not occur -- and the atom bomb -- he criticized another for saying that progress does not occur, saying that used to be plausible. That the bomb did is implicit in the essay, but he does say that what the writer is praising as progress has lead to the possibility of their blowing themselves to pieces.