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'''''Homage to Catalonia''''' is ]'s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting for the ] militia of the ] army during the ]. The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for ], as I understand it."{{r|RoddenRodden2007}} '''''Homage to Catalonia''''' is ]'s personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the ] for the ] militia of the ] army.


Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little commercial success, it gained more attention in the 1950s following the success of Orwell's better-known works '']'' (1945) and '']'' (1949).
The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952, when it appeared with an influential preface by ]. The only translation published in Orwell's lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948.<ref>''Omaggio alla Catalogna'', translated by Giorgio Monicelli (Mondadori, Verona, December 1948), ''The Lost Orwell'', p. 124.</ref> A French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39, was not published until five years after Orwell's death.<ref>''Facing Unpleasant Facts'', 1937–39, Secker & Warburg, 1998, p. xvi. {{ISBN|0-436-20538-6}}.</ref>


Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell recounts ]'s revolutionary fervor during his training in Barcelona, his boredom on the front lines in ], his involvement in the interfactional ] conflict back in Barcelona on leave, his getting shot in the throat back on the front lines, and his escape to France after the POUM was declared an illegal organization.
==Overview==

The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, ''against'' totalitarianism and ''for'' ], as I understand it."<ref>{{Cite web|title=Why I Write {{!}} The Orwell Foundation|url=https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/|access-date=2021-10-16|website=www.orwellfoundation.com|language=en-GB}}</ref>

== Background ==

=== Historical context ===
[[File:General map of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).svg|thumb|upright=1.4|General map of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). [[File:General map of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).svg|thumb|upright=1.4|General map of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).
'''Key'''<br> '''Key'''<br>
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{{spaces|3}}]{{spaces|2}} Refugee camps {{spaces|3}}]{{spaces|2}} Refugee camps
{{col-end}} {{col-end}}
|left]]The ] broke out with a military coup in July 1936 after months of tension following a narrow victory by the leftist ] in the February ]. Rebelling forces coalesced as the ] under the leadership of ] and attempted to take over cities that remained under government control.
]]
Orwell served as a private, a corporal (''cabo'') and—when the informal command structure of the militia gave way to a conventional hierarchy in May 1937—as a lieutenant, on a provisional basis,<ref>{{cite book|author=Shelden, Michael|title=Orwell|pages= 280, 293|author-link=Shelden, Michael}}</ref> in ] and ] from December 1936 until June 1937. In June 1937, the leftist political party with whose militia he served (the ], the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, an ] ] party) was declared an illegal organisation, and Orwell was consequently forced to flee.


The ] side, which viewed the Nationalists as fascists, was made up of several factions including socialists, anarchists, and communists. There was infighting between these factions, which Orwell details in his chapters on the ].
Having arrived in ] on 26 December 1936, Orwell told ], the ]'s (ILP) representative there, that he had "come to Spain to join the militia to fight against Fascism." He also told McNair that "he would like to write about the situation and endeavour to stir working class opinion in Britain and France." McNair took him to the POUM barracks, where Orwell immediately enlisted.<ref name=inspain>{{cite book|title=Orwell in Spain|page=6|publisher= Penguin Books|date=2001}}</ref> "Orwell did not know that two months before he arrived in Spain, the ]'s resident in Spain, ], had assured NKVD Headquarters, 'the Trotskyist organisation POUM can easily be liquidated'—by those, the Communists, whom Orwell took to be allies in the fight against ]."<ref name=inspain/>


=== Biographical context ===
By his own admission, it was somewhat by chance that Orwell joined the POUM, rather than the far larger ]-run ]. Orwell had been told that he would not be permitted to enter Spain without some supporting documents from a British left-wing organisation, and he had first sought the assistance of the ] and put his request directly to its leader, ]. Pollitt "seems to have taken an immediate dislike to him ... and soon concluded that his visitor was 'politically unreliable.'"<ref>{{cite book|author=Shelden, Michael|title=Orwell, The Authorised Biography| page=274}}</ref> Orwell then telephoned the headquarters of the ILP, and its officials agreed to help him. The party was willing to accredit him as a correspondent for the '']'', the ILP's weekly paper with which he was familiar, and thus provided the means for him to go legitimately to Spain.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Stansky, Peter |author2=Abrahams, William |title=Orwell: The Transformation|page=200}}</ref> The ILP issued him a letter of introduction to their representative in Barcelona and was affiliated with the POUM. Orwell's experiences, culminating in his and his wife ]'s narrow escape from the communist purges in Barcelona in June 1937,<ref name="newsinger">{{cite journal|author=Newsinger, John|url=http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj62/newsinger.htm |title=Orwell and the Spanish Revolution|journal=International Socialism Journal|issue= 62 |date=Spring 1994|author-link=Newsinger, John }}</ref> greatly increased his sympathy for the POUM and, while not affecting his moral and political commitment to ], made him a lifelong anti-Stalinist.


==== Joining the war ====
Orwell served on the Aragon front for 115 days. It was not until the end of April 1937 that he was granted leave and was able to see his wife Eileen in Barcelona again. Eileen wrote on 1 May that she found him, "a little lousy, dark brown, and looking really very well." At this point he was convinced that he would have the chance to see more action if he joined the International Brigades and fought with them on the Madrid front; his attitude was still one of exasperation in the face of the rivalries between the various factions. This "changed dramatically in the first week of May when he found himself and his comrades under fire not from the ] but from their left-wing 'allies'" in the fighting that followed ].<ref>{{cite book|author=Shelden, Michael|title=Orwell|page=291}}</ref> The Spanish government was seeking to assert direct control on Barcelona which, as part of ], was chiefly in the hands of the ]. The government decided to occupy the telephone building and to disarm the workers; the ] ] staff resisted, and street fighting followed, in which Orwell was caught up. The struggle was called off by the CNT leaders after four days. Large numbers of government reinforcements arrived from ].<ref>{{cite book|author=Brockway, Fenner|title=Inside the Left|year=1942|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216263|author-link=Brockway, Fenner}} Reprinted in ''Orwell Remembered'', p. 156.</ref>
Orwell left for Spain just before Christmas 1936, shortly after submitting '']'' for publication, the first book in which he explicitly espouses socialism.


Within the first few pages of ''Homage to Catalonia'', Orwell writes, “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.” However, it has been suggested that Orwell intended all along to enlist.<ref>{{Cite web|title=George Orwell's Prelude in Spain|url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/16/specials/orwell-homage.html|access-date=2021-10-16|website=archive.nytimes.com}}</ref>
On 17 May 1937, ] resigned and ] became prime minister. The ]-controlled secret police pursued its persecution of those who opposed the Moscow line. ] notes that on 16 June, when the POUM was declared illegal, "the Communists turned its headquarters in Barcelona into a prison for 'Trotskyists' ... leaders were handed over to NKVD operatives and taken to a secret prison in Madrid ... ] taken to ], where he was interrogated from 18 to 21 June ... he was then moved to a summer house outside the city which belonged to the wife of ] and tortured to death ... ] remarked; 'Whether Juan Negrín won with his communist cohorts, or Franco won with his Italians and Germans, the results would be the same for us.'"<ref>]. ''The Battle for Spain'', Chapter 23, "The Civil War within the Civil War"</ref>


Orwell had been told that he would not be permitted to enter Spain without some supporting documents from a British left-wing organisation, and he had first sought the assistance of the ] and put his request directly to its leader, ]. When Pollitt asked if he would join the ], Orwell replied that he wanted to see for himself what was happening first. With Pollitt refusing to help, Orwell telephoned the headquarters of the ], whose officials agreed to help him. The party was willing to accredit him as a correspondent for the '']'', the ILP's weekly paper with which he was familiar, and thus provided the means for him to go legitimately to Spain.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Stansky, Peter|title=Orwell: The Transformation|author2=Abrahams, William|page=200}}</ref> The ILP issued him a letter of introduction to their representative in Barcelona, ].
At the front, Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper on 20 May 1937 and nearly killed. He wrote in ''Homage to Catalonia'' that people frequently told him a man who is hit through the neck and survives is the luckiest creature alive, but that he personally thought "it would be even luckier not to be hit at all." After having his wounds dressed at a first aid post about half a mile from the front line, he was transferred to ] and then to ], where he received only an external treatment of his wound. On the 27th he was transferred to ], and on the 29th from there to Barcelona. On 23 June 1937, Orwell and Eileen, with John McNair and Stafford Cottman, a young English POUM militiaman, boarded the morning train from Barcelona to Paris. They safely crossed into France. Sir ] later wrote that the strain of her experience in Barcelona showed clearly on Eileen's face: "In Eileen Blair I had seen for the first time the symptoms of a human being living under a political terror."<ref>{{cite book|author=Rees, Richard|title=George Orwell: Fugitive from the camp of victory|url=https://archive.org/details/georgeorwellfugi00rees|url-access=registration|date=1961| page=}}</ref> On 13 July 1937, a deposition was presented to the Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason, ], charging the Orwells with 'rabid ]' and being agents of the POUM.<ref>''Facing Unpleasant Facts'', p. xxix.</ref>


Upon arriving in Spain, Orwell is reported to have told McNair, “I have come to Spain to join the militia to fight against Fascism.” While McNair also describes Orwell as expressing a desire to write “some articles” for the ] with an intention “to stir working-class opinion in Britain and France”, when presented the opportunity to write, Orwell told him writing was “was quite secondary and his main reason for coming was to fight against Fascism.” McNair took Orwell to the ] (]: ''Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista;'' English: Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, an ] ] party).<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Dag|first=O.|title=Bernard Crick: George Orwell: A Life -- Chapters 7 to 12|url=https://www.orwell.ru/a_life/Bernard_Crick/english/e_a-life_2.html|access-date=2021-10-16|website=www.orwell.ru|language=en}}</ref>
Orwell and Eileen returned to England. After nine months of animal husbandry and writing up ''Homage to Catalonia'' at their cottage at ], Orwell's health declined, and he had to spend several months at a sanatorium in ]. The trial of the leaders of the POUM and of Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona, in October and November 1938. Observing events from ], Orwell wrote that they were "only a by-product of the ] and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press."<ref>''Facing Unpleasant Facts'', pp. 31, 224.</ref> Barcelona fell to Franco's forces on 26 January 1939.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/jul/22/barcelona-spanish-civil-war-travel |title=Barcelona and the Spanish civil war|newspaper=The Observer|page=58|date= 22 July 2012}}</ref>


By Orwell's own admission, it was somewhat by chance that he joined the POUM: "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." He later notes, "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists." He also nearly joined ]'s ] midway through his tour because he thought they were likeliest to send him to Madrid, where he wanted to join the action.
Because of the book's criticism of the Stalinists in Spain, it was rejected by ], who had previously published all Orwell's books: "Gollancz is of course part of the Communism-racket," Orwell wrote to ] in July 1937. Orwell finally found a sympathetic publisher in ]. Warburg was willing to publish books by the dissident left, that is, by socialists hostile to ].<ref name="newsinger"/>


==== Writing ====
The book was finally published in April 1938, but according to ], "made virtually no impact whatsoever and by the outbreak of war with Germany had sold only 900 copies"; Newsinger maintained that "the Communist vendetta against the book" was maintained as recently as 1984, when ] published ''Inside the Myth'', a collection of essays "bringing together a variety of standpoints hostile to Orwell in an obvious attempt to do as much damage to his reputation as possible."<ref name="newsinger"/>
Orwell wrote diaries, made press-cuttings, and took photographs during his time in Spain, but they were all stolen before he left. In May 1937, he wrote the publisher of his previous books saying, "I greatly hope I come out of this alive if only to write a book about it."<ref>{{Cite web|title=George Orwell to Victor Gollancz, 9 May 1937 {{!}} The Orwell Foundation|url=https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/george-orwell-to-victor-gollancz-9-may-1937/|access-date=2021-10-17|website=www.orwellfoundation.com|language=en-GB}}</ref> According to his eventual publisher, "Homage was begun in February in the trenches, written on scraps, the backs of envelopes, toilet paper. The written material was sent to Barcelona to McNair's office, where his wife ]], working as a volunteer, typed it out section by section. Slowly it grew into a sizeable parcel. McNair kept it in his own room."<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Warburg|first=Fredric|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=29GpDwAAQBAJ&newbks=0|title=An Occupation For Gentlemen|date=2019-08-17|publisher=Plunkett Lake Press|language=en}}</ref>


Upon escaping across the French border in June 1937, he stopped at the first post office available to telegram the ''National Statesman'', asking if it would like a first-hand article. The offer was accepted but the article, "Eye-witness in Barcelona", was rejected by editor ] on grounds that his writing "could cause trouble"<ref>{{Cite web|date=2021-06-10|title=The Orwell wars|url=https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/05/orwell-wars|access-date=2021-10-16|website=New Statesman|language=en-US}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web|title=Gordon Bowker: The Road to Morocco {{!}} The Orwell Foundation|url=https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/articles/gordon-bowker-the-road-to-morocco/|access-date=2021-10-16|website=www.orwellfoundation.com|language=en-GB}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Orwell|first=George|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_WE4AAAAQBAJ&newbks=0|title=George Orwell: A Life in Letters|date=2013-08-12|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0-87140-462-6|pages=81|language=en}}</ref> (it was picked up by ]). In the months after leaving Spain, Orwell wrote a number of essays on the war, notably ]" and a praiseful review of ]'s '']''.
==Summary of chapters==

The following summary is based on a later edition of the book which contains some amendments that Orwell requested: two chapters (formerly chapters five and eleven) describing the politics of the time were moved to appendices. Orwell felt that these chapters should be moved so that readers could ignore them if they wished; the chapters, which became appendices, were journalistic accounts of the political situation in Spain, and Orwell felt these were out of place in the midst of the narrative.
Writing from his cottage at ], he finished around New Year's Day 1938.<ref name="newsinger">{{cite journal|author=Newsinger, John|author-link=Newsinger, John|date=Spring 1994|title=Orwell and the Spanish Revolution|url=http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj62/newsinger.htm|journal=International Socialism Journal|issue=62}}</ref><ref name=":0" />

== Publication ==
The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in April 1938 by ] after being rejected by ], the publisher of all Orwell's previous books, over concerns about the book's criticism of the Stalinists in Spain. "Gollancz is of course part of the Communism-racket," Orwell wrote to ] in July 1937.<ref name=":3" /> Orwell had learned of Warburg's potential willingness to publish anti-Stalinist socialist content in June, and in September a deal was signed for an advance of £150 ({{Inflation|UK|150|1938|r=-3|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}).<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite journal|last=BUCHANAN|first=TOM|date=2002-09-01|title=Three Lives of Homage to Catalonia|url=https://doi.org/10.1093/library/3.3.302|journal=The Library|volume=3|issue=3|pages=302–314|doi=10.1093/library/3.3.302|issn=0024-2160}}</ref><ref name=":2" /> "Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Communism; today it is almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Anarchism or 'Trotskyism'," Orwell wrote bitterly in 1938.<ref>Bowker, p. 230.</ref><ref name=":2" />

The book was not published in the United States until February 1952, with a preface by ].

The only translation published in Orwell's lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948.<ref>''Omaggio alla Catalogna'', translated by Giorgio Monicelli (Mondadori, Verona, December 1948), ''The Lost Orwell'', p. 124.</ref> A French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39, was not published until 1955, five years after Orwell's death.<ref>''Facing Unpleasant Facts'', 1937–39, Secker & Warburg, 1998, p. xvi. {{ISBN|0-436-20538-6}}.</ref><ref name=":4">http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85333/1/Preston_Lights%20and%20shadows_2017.pdf</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite book|url=https://readfrom.net/george-orwell/page,6,216513-orwell_in_spain.html|title=Orwell in Spain|pages=6}}</ref>

Per Orwell's wishes, the original chapters 5 and 11 were turned into appendices in some later editions. In 1986, ] published an edition with a few footnotes based on Orwell's own footnotes found among his papers after he died.<ref name=":5" /><ref name=":4" />

==Chapter summaries==
The appendices in this summary correspond to chapters 5 and 11 in editions that do note include appendices. Orwell felt these chapters, as journalistic accounts of the political situation in Spain, were out of place in the midst of the narrative and should be moved so that readers could ignore them if they wished.


===Chapter one=== ===Chapter one===
The book begins in late December 1936. Orwell describes the atmosphere in ] as it appears to him. "The anarchists were still in virtual control of ] and the revolution was still in full swing ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle ... every wall was scrawled with the ] ... every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been ]." "]" (referring to the Spanish ] and ]) were "in control", ] was prohibited by workers themselves, and servile forms of speech, such as "''Señor''" or "''Don''", were abandoned. He goes on to describe the scene at the ] Barracks (formerly the ] Barracks) where militiamen were given "what was comically called 'instruction'" in preparation for fighting at the front. Orwell describes the atmosphere of ] in December 1936. "The anarchists were still in virtual control of ] and the revolution was still in full swing ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle ... every wall was scrawled with the ] ... every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been ]." "]" (referring to the Spanish ] and ]) were "in control", ] was prohibited by workers themselves, and servile forms of speech, such as "''Señor''" or "''Don''", were abandoned. At the ] Barracks (formerly the ] Barracks), militiamen were given instruction in the form of "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".
]).<ref>''Out of the Shadows, a life of Gerda Taro'', François Maspero, p. 18, {{ISBN|978-0-285-63825-9}}.</ref>]] ]).<ref>''Out of the Shadows, a life of Gerda Taro'', François Maspero, p. 18, {{ISBN|978-0-285-63825-9}}.</ref>]]
He describes the deficiencies of the POUM workers' militia, the absence of weapons, the recruits mostly boys of sixteen or seventeen ignorant of the meaning of war, half-complains about the sometimes frustrating tendency of Spaniards to put things off until "''mañana''" (tomorrow), notes his struggles with Spanish (or more usually, the local use of ]). He praises the generosity of the Catalan working class. Orwell leads to the next chapter by describing the "conquering-hero stuff"—parades through the streets and cheering crowds—that the militiamen experienced at the time he was sent to the Aragón front. He describes the deficiencies of the POUM workers' militia, the absence of weapons, the recruits mostly boys of sixteen or seventeen ignorant of the meaning of war, half-complains about the sometimes frustrating tendency of Spaniards to put things off until "''mañana''" (tomorrow), notes his struggles with Spanish (or more usually, the local use of ]). He praises the generosity of the Catalan working class. Orwell leads to the next chapter by describing the "conquering-hero stuff"—parades through the streets and cheering crowds—that the militiamen experienced at the time he was sent to the Aragón front.
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===Chapter three=== ===Chapter three===
Orwell, in the hills around Zaragoza, describes the "mingled boredom and discomfort of ]," the mundaneness of a situation in which "each army had dug itself in and settled down on the hill-tops it had won." He praises the Spanish ]s for their relative ], for their holding of the front while the army was trained in the rear, and for the "democratic 'revolutionary' type of discipline ... more reliable than might be expected." "'Revolutionary' discipline depends on political consciousness—on an understanding of '''why''' orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square." Throughout the chapter Orwell describes the various shortages and problems at the front—firewood ("We were between two and three thousand feet above sea-level, it was mid winter and the cold was unspeakable"), food, candles, tobacco, and adequate munitions—as well as the danger of accidents inherent in a badly trained and poorly armed group of soldiers. In the hills around Zaragoza, Orwell experiences "mingled boredom and discomfort of ]," the mundaneness of a situation in which "each army had dug itself in and settled down on the hill-tops it had won." He praises the Spanish ]s for their relative ], for their holding of the front while the army was trained in the rear, and for the "democratic 'revolutionary' type of discipline ... more reliable than might be expected." "'Revolutionary' discipline depends on political consciousness—on an understanding of ''why'' orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square."
Throughout the chapter Orwell describes the various shortages and problems at the front—firewood ("We were between two and three thousand feet above sea-level, it was mid winter and the cold was unspeakable"), food, candles, tobacco, and adequate munitions—as well as the danger of accidents inherent in a badly trained and poorly armed group of soldiers.


===Chapter four=== ===Chapter four===
After some three weeks at the front, Orwell and the other English militiaman in his unit, Williams, join a contingent of fellow Englishmen sent out by the ] to a position at Monte Oscuro, within sight of Zaragoza. "Perhaps the best of the bunch was Bob Smillie—the grandson of ]—who afterwards died such an evil and meaningless death in ]." In this new position he witnesses the sometimes ] shouting between the Rebel and Loyalist trenches and hears of the fall of ]. "... every man in the militia believed that the loss of Malaga was due to treachery. It was the first talk I had heard of treachery or divided aims. It set up in my mind the first vague doubts about this war in which, hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple." In February, he is sent with the other POUM militiamen 50 miles to make a part of the army besieging ]; he mentions the running joke phrase, "Tomorrow we'll have coffee in Huesca," attributed to a general commanding the Government troops who, months earlier, made one of many failed assaults on the town. After some three weeks at the front, Orwell and the other English militiaman in his unit, Williams, join a contingent of fellow Englishmen sent out by the ] to a position at Monte Oscuro, within sight of Zaragoza. "Perhaps the best of the bunch was Bob Smillie—the grandson of ]—who afterwards died such an evil and meaningless death in ]." In this new position he witnesses the sometimes ] shouting between the Rebel and Loyalist trenches and hears of the fall of ]. "... every man in the militia believed that the loss of Malaga was due to treachery. It was the first talk I had heard of treachery or divided aims. It set up in my mind the first vague doubts about this war in which, hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple." In February, he is sent with the other POUM militiamen 50 miles to make a part of the army besieging ]; he mentions the running joke phrase, "Tomorrow we'll have coffee in Huesca," attributed to a general commanding the Government troops who, months earlier, made one of many failed assaults on the town.
]).]] ]).]]


===Chapter five=== === Chapter five (orig. ch. 6) ===
Orwell complains, in Chapter Five, that on the eastern side of Huesca, where he was stationed, nothing ever seemed to happen—except the onslaught of spring, and, with it, ]. He was in a ("so-called") hospital at ] for ten days at the end of March 1937 with a poisoned hand that had to be lanced and put in a sling. He describes rats that "really were as big as cats, or nearly" (in Orwell's novel '']'', the protagonist ] has a phobia of rats that Orwell himself shared to a lesser degree). He makes reference to the lack of "religious feeling, in the orthodox sense," and that the Catholic Church was, "to the Spanish people, at any rate in Catalonia and Aragon, a racket, pure and simple." He muses that Christianity may have, to some extent, been replaced by Anarchism. The latter portion of the chapter briefly details various operations in which Orwell took part: silently advancing the Loyalist frontline by night, for example. Orwell complains that on the eastern side of Huesca, where he was stationed, nothing ever seemed to happen—except the onslaught of spring, and, with it, ]. He was in a ("so-called") hospital at ] for ten days at the end of March 1937 with a poisoned hand that had to be lanced and put in a sling. He describes rats that "really were as big as cats, or nearly" (in Orwell's novel '']'', the protagonist ] has a phobia of rats that Orwell himself shared to a lesser degree). He makes reference to the lack of "religious feeling, in the orthodox sense," and that the Catholic Church was, "to the Spanish people, at any rate in Catalonia and Aragon, a racket, pure and simple." He muses that Christianity may have, to some extent, been replaced by Anarchism. The latter portion of the chapter briefly details various operations in which Orwell took part: silently advancing the Loyalist frontline by night, for example.


===Chapter six=== === Chapter six (orig. ch. 7) ===
One of these operations, which in Chapter Five had been postponed, was a "holding attack" on Huesca, designed to draw the Nationalist troops away from an Anarchist attack on "the ] road." It is described herein. It is one of the most significant military actions that Orwell participates in during his entire time in Spain. Orwell notes the offensive of that night where his group of fifteen captured a Nationalist position, but then retreated to their lines with captured rifles and ammunition. However, despite these finds, Orwell and his group were forced to pull back before they could secure a large ] they had discovered in a machine gun case, something more badly needed to their side than any single weapon. However, the diversion was successful in drawing troops from the Anarchist attack. The chapter ends with Orwell lamenting that even now he still is upset about losing the telescope.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Orwell|first1=George|title=Homage to Catalonia|url=http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/6.html|website=George Orwell.org|access-date=June 19, 2017}}</ref> Orwell takes part in a "holding attack" on Huesca, designed to draw the Nationalist troops away from an Anarchist attack on "the ] road." He suspects two of the bombs he threw may have killed their targets, but he cannot be sure. They capture the position and pull back with captured rifles and ammunition, but Orwell laments that they fled too hurriedly to bring back a telescope they had discovered, which Orwell sees as more useful than any weapons.


===Chapter seven=== === Chapter seven (orig. ch. 8) ===
This chapter reads like an interlude. Orwell shares his memories of the 115 days he spent on the war front, and its influence on his political ideas, "... the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism ... the ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England ... the effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before." By the time he left Spain, he had become a "convinced democratic Socialist." The chapter ends with Orwell's arrival in Barcelona on the afternoon of 26 April 1937. "And after that the trouble began." Orwell shares memories of the 115 days he spent on the war front, and its influence on his political ideas, "... the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism ... the ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England ... the effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before." By the time he left Spain, he had become a "convinced democratic Socialist." The chapter ends with Orwell's arrival in Barcelona on the afternoon of 26 April 1937. "And after that the trouble began."


===Chapter eight=== === Chapter eight (orig. ch. 9) ===
Orwell details noteworthy changes in the social and political atmosphere of Barcelona when he returns after three months at the front. He describes a lack of revolutionary atmosphere and the class division that he had thought would not reappear, i.e., with visible division between rich and poor and the return of servile language. Orwell had been determined to leave the POUM, and confesses here that he "would have liked to join the Anarchists," but instead sought a recommendation to join the ], so that he could go to the ]. The latter half of this chapter is devoted to describing the conflict between the anarchist CNT and the socialist ] (UGT) and the resulting cancellation of the May Day demonstration and the build-up to the street fighting of the ]. "It was the antagonism between those who wished the revolution to go forward and those who wished to check or prevent it—ultimately, between Anarchists and Communists." Orwell details noteworthy changes in the social and political atmosphere of Barcelona when he returns after three months at the front. He describes a lack of revolutionary atmosphere and the class division that he had thought would not reappear, i.e., with visible division between rich and poor and the return of servile language. Orwell had been determined to leave the POUM, and confesses here that he "would have liked to join the Anarchists," but instead sought a recommendation to join the ], so that he could go to the ]. The latter half of this chapter is devoted to describing the conflict between the anarchist CNT and the socialist ] (UGT) and the resulting cancellation of the May Day demonstration and the build-up to the street fighting of the ]. "It was the antagonism between those who wished the revolution to go forward and those who wished to check or prevent it—ultimately, between Anarchists and Communists."


===Chapter nine=== === Chapter nine (orig. ch. 10) ===
Orwell relates his involvement in the ] that began on 3 May when the ] tried to take the Telephone Exchange from the CNT workers who controlled it. For his part, Orwell acted as part of the POUM, guarding a POUM-controlled building. Although he realises that he is fighting on the side of the working class, Orwell describes his dismay at coming back to Barcelona on leave from the front only to get mixed up in street fighting. Assault Guards from ] arrive—"All of them were armed with brand-new rifles ... vastly better than the dreadful old ]es we had at the front." The Communist-controlled ] newspapers declare POUM to be a disguised Fascist organisation—"No one who was in Barcelona then ... will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food queues, and prowling gangs ...." In his second appendix to the book, Orwell discusses the political issues at stake in the May 1937 Barcelona fighting, as he saw them at the time and later on, looking back. Orwell relates his involvement in the ] that began on 3 May when the ] tried to take the Telephone Exchange from the CNT workers who controlled it. For his part, Orwell acted as part of the POUM, guarding a POUM-controlled building. Although he realises that he is fighting on the side of the working class, Orwell describes his dismay at coming back to Barcelona on leave from the front only to get mixed up in street fighting. Assault Guards from ] arrive—"All of them were armed with brand-new rifles ... vastly better than the dreadful old ]es we had at the front." The Communist-controlled ] newspapers declare POUM to be a disguised Fascist organisation—"No one who was in Barcelona then ... will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food queues, and prowling gangs ...." In his second appendix to the book, Orwell discusses the political issues at stake in the May 1937 Barcelona fighting, as he saw them at the time and later on, looking back.


===Chapter ten=== === Chapter ten (orig. ch. 12) ===
Orwell speculates on how the Spanish Civil War might turn out. Orwell predicts that the "tendency of the post-war Government ... is bound to be Fascistic."
Here he begins with musings on how the Spanish Civil War might turn out. Orwell predicts that the "tendency of the post-war Government ... is bound to be Fascistic." He returns to the front, where he is shot through the throat by a sniper,<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090224001114/http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3475881.html |date=24 February 2009 }} The Hoover Institute. Retrieved 23 December 2008.</ref> an injury that takes him out of the war. After spending some time in a hospital in ], he was moved to ] where his wound was finally examined more than a week after he'd left the front.


He returns to the front, where he is shot through the throat by a sniper,<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090224001114/http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3475881.html |date=24 February 2009 }} The Hoover Institute. Retrieved 23 December 2008.</ref> an injury that takes him out of the war. After spending some time in a hospital in ], he was moved to ] where his wound was finally examined more than a week after he'd left the front.
===Chapter eleven===

=== Chapter eleven (orig. ch. 13) ===
Orwell tells us of his various movements between hospitals in ], ], and ] while getting his discharge papers stamped, after being declared medically unfit. He returns to Barcelona only to find that the POUM had been "suppressed": it had been declared illegal the very day he had left to obtain discharge papers and POUM members were being arrested without charge. "The attack on ] was beginning ... there must have been numbers of men who were killed without ever learning that the newspapers in the rear were calling them Fascists. This kind of thing is a little difficult to forgive." He sleeps that night in the ruins of a church; he cannot go back to his hotel because of the danger of arrest. Orwell tells us of his various movements between hospitals in ], ], and ] while getting his discharge papers stamped, after being declared medically unfit. He returns to Barcelona only to find that the POUM had been "suppressed": it had been declared illegal the very day he had left to obtain discharge papers and POUM members were being arrested without charge. "The attack on ] was beginning ... there must have been numbers of men who were killed without ever learning that the newspapers in the rear were calling them Fascists. This kind of thing is a little difficult to forgive." He sleeps that night in the ruins of a church; he cannot go back to his hotel because of the danger of arrest.
] ]
], designed by ] ..."<ref>] (ed.), ''The Lost Orwell'', Timewell Press, 2006. {{ISBN|1-85725-214-4}}.</ref> "... I went to have a look at the cathedral—a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles ... I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up ... though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires."(Ch. XII)]] ], designed by ] ..."<ref>] (ed.), ''The Lost Orwell'', Timewell Press, 2006. {{ISBN|1-85725-214-4}}.</ref> "... I went to have a look at the cathedral—a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles ... I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up ... though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires."(Ch. XII)]]


===Chapter twelve=== ===Chapter twelve (orig. ch. 14)===
This chapter describes his visits accompanied by his wife to ], unit commander of the ] while Kopp was held in a Spanish makeshift jail—"really the ground floor of a shop." Having done all he could to free Kopp, ineffectively and at great personal risk, Orwell decides to leave Spain. Crossing the ] frontier, he and his wife arrived in France "without incident". This chapter describes his visits accompanied by his wife to ], unit commander of the ] while Kopp was held in a Spanish makeshift jail—"really the ground floor of a shop." Having done all he could to free Kopp, ineffectively and at great personal risk, Orwell decides to leave Spain. Crossing the ] frontier, he and his wife arrived in France "without incident".


===Appendix one=== ===Appendix one (orig. ch. 5)===
Orwell explains the divisions within the Republican side: "On the one side the C.N.T.-F.A.I., the P.O.U.M., and a section of the Socialists, standing for workers’ control: on the other side the Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and Communists, standing for centralized government and a militarized army." He also writes, "One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right."
The broader political context in Spain and the revolutionary situation in Barcelona at the time is discussed. The political differences among the ] (PSUC—entirely under Communist control and affiliated to the ]), the anarchists, and the POUM, are considered.


===Appendix two=== === Appendix two (orig. ch. 11) ===
An attempt to dispel some of the myths in the foreign press at the time (mostly the pro-Communist press) about the ], the street fighting that took place in ] in early May 1937. This was between anarchists and POUM members, against Communist/government forces which sparked off when local police forces occupied the Telephone Exchange, which had until then been under the control of CNT workers. He relates the suppression of the POUM on 15–16 June 1937, gives examples of the Communist Press of the world—('']'', 21 June, "Spanish Trotskyists Plot With Franco"), indicates that ] hinted, "fairly broadly ... that the government could not afford to offend the Communist Party while the Russians were supplying arms." He quotes ], the Minister of the Interior; "We have received aid from Russia and have had to permit certain actions which we did not like." An attempt to dispel some of the myths in the foreign press at the time (mostly the pro-Communist press) about the ], the street fighting that took place in ] in early May 1937. This was between anarchists and POUM members, against Communist/government forces which sparked off when local police forces occupied the Telephone Exchange, which had until then been under the control of CNT workers. He relates the suppression of the POUM on 15–16 June 1937, gives examples of the Communist Press of the world—('']'', 21 June, "Spanish Trotskyists Plot With Franco"), indicates that ] hinted, "fairly broadly ... that the government could not afford to offend the Communist Party while the Russians were supplying arms." He quotes ], the Minister of the Interior; "We have received aid from Russia and have had to permit certain actions which we did not like."


==Reception==
In a letter he wrote in August 1938<ref>Davison, Peter (ed.), ''Orwell in Spain'', Penguin Books, 2001, p. 306.</ref> protesting against the treatment of a number of members of the Executive Committee of the POUM who were shortly to be put on trial on the charge of espionage in the Fascist cause, Orwell repeated Zugazagoitia's words. An editorial note on the letter (taken from ], ''The Spanish Civil War'' 704) adds: "During a cabinet meeting, 'Zugazagoitia demanded if his jurisdiction as Minister of the Interior were to be limited by Russian policemen' ... Had they been able to purchase and transport good arms from US, British, and French manufacturers, the socialist and republican members of the Spanish government might have tried to cut themselves loose from ]."


==Reviews== === Sales ===
''Homage to Catalonia'' was initially commercially unsuccessful, only selling 683 copies in its first 6 months. By the time of Orwell's death in 1950, its initial print run of 1,500 copies had still not all sold.<ref name=":1" /> ''Homage to Catalonia'' re-emerged in the 1950s, following on from the success of Orwell's later books.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=BUCHANAN|first=TOM|date=2002-09-01|title=Three Lives of Homage to Catalonia|url=https://doi.org/10.1093/library/3.3.302|journal=The Library|volume=3|issue=3|pages=302–314|doi=10.1093/library/3.3.302|issn=0024-2160}}</ref>
Contemporary reviews of the book were mixed. Notably positive reviews came from ] in '']'', and from ] in the '']''. Gorer concluded, "Politically and as literature it is a work of first-class importance". Mairet observed, "It shows us the heart of innocence that lies in revolution; also the miasma of lying that, far more than the cruelty, takes the heart out of it." Hostile notices came from '']'', where a critic wondered why Orwell had not troubled to get to know Fascist fighters and enquire about their motivations, and from '']'' and '']'', "the first misrepresenting what Orwell had said and the latter attacking the POUM, but never mentioning the book".<ref>Shelden, pp. 320–21.</ref> ] wrote in the Communist Party's '']'' that "the value of the book is that it gives an honest picture of the sort of mentality that toys with revolutionary romanticism but shies violently at revolutionary discipline. It should be read as a warning".<ref>''Daily Worker'', 21 May 1938, reproduced in ] (ed.), ''Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War'', Oxford, 1986, pp. 304–05.</ref> Some Conservative and Catholic opponents of the ] felt vindicated by Orwell's attack on the role of the Communists in Spain; '']''{{'}}s review concluded that this "dismal record of intrigue, injustice, incompetence, quarrelling, lying communist propaganda, police spying, illegal imprisonment, filth and disorder" was evidence that the Republic deserved to fall.<ref>Buchanan, Tom. ''Three Lives of Homage to Catalonia'', The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 2002, Vol. 3.</ref> A mixed review was supplied by ] who called Orwell naïve about Spain but added that "no one excels him in bringing to the eyes, ears and nostrils the nasty ingredients of fevered situations; and I would recommend him warmly to all who are concerned about the realities of personal experience in a muddled cause".<ref>Bowker, Gordon, ''George Orwell'', Chapter 12, "The Road to Morocco. {{ISBN|978-0-349-11551-1}}.</ref> ], in a letter to Orwell of June 1938, called the book, together with his own '']'', a complete "picture of the revolutionary phase of the Spanish War".


=== Reviews ===
According to ]:<ref>Carr, Raymond, "Orwell and the Spanish war", essay in ''The World of George Orwell'', 1971, {{ISBN|0-297-00479-4}}.</ref>
<blockquote>
The Spanish Civil war produced a spate of bad literature. ''Homage to Catalonia'' is one of the few exceptions and the reason is simple. Orwell was determined to set down the truth as he saw it. This was something that many writers of the Left in 1936–39 could not bring themselves to do. Orwell comes back time and time again in his writings on Spain to those political conditions in the late thirties which fostered intellectual dishonesty: the subservience of the intellectuals of the European Left to the Communist 'line', especially in the case of the Popular Front in Spain where, in his view, the party line could not conceivably be supported by an honest man. Only a few strong souls, ] and Orwell among them, could summon up the courage to fight the whole tone of the literary establishment and the influence of Communists within it. ] quoted to an audience of Communist sympathizers ]'s phrase, 'In the long run a harmful truth is better than a useful lie'. The non-Communists applauded; the Communists and their sympathizers remained icily silent. ... It is precisely the immediacy of Orwell's reaction that gives the early sections of ''Homage'' its value for the historian. Kaminski, ], Koestler came with a fixed framework, the ready-made contacts of journalist intellectuals. Orwell came with his eyes alone.
</blockquote>


==== Contemporary ====
After years of neglect ''Homage to Catalonia'' re-emerged in the 1950s, following on from the success of Orwell's later books. The publication in 1952 of the first US edition (by ], of New York) with an influential introduction by ], "elevated Orwell to the rank of a secular saint". Another twist arrived in the late 1960s when the book "found new readers in an age of student radicalism and guerrilla struggle—Orwell being seen as an early ] and now appeared to offer a premonition of the Soviet suppression of the 1968 ]".<ref>''New Statesman'', 13 September 1968, letter from G. Flanagan, challenging a review that portrayed Orwell as a liberal.</ref> The book was praised by ].<ref>''American Power and the New Mandarins'', p. 117.</ref> Its popularity has continued, notably with ]'s heavily Orwell-influenced film '']''. Republished by ] in Britain in 1962, it has never been out of print since, and remains far better known than Franz Borkenau's ''The Spanish Cockpit'', a book Orwell himself had called, in July 1937, "the best book yet written on the subject" of the Spanish war.<ref>''Orwell in Spain'', p. 229.</ref>
Contemporary reviews of the book were mixed. ] wrote in the Communist Party's '']'' that "the value of the book is that it gives an honest picture of the sort of mentality that toys with revolutionary romanticism but shies violently at revolutionary discipline. It should be read as a warning".<ref>''Daily Worker'', 21 May 1938, reproduced in ] (ed.), ''Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War'', Oxford, 1986, pp. 304–05.</ref> Some Conservative and Catholic opponents of the ] felt vindicated by Orwell's attack on the role of the Communists in Spain; '']''{{'}}s review concluded that this "dismal record of intrigue, injustice, incompetence, quarrelling, lying communist propaganda, police spying, illegal imprisonment, filth and disorder" was evidence that the Republic deserved to fall.<ref>Buchanan, Tom. ''Three Lives of Homage to Catalonia'', The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 2002, Vol. 3.</ref> A mixed review was supplied by ] who called Orwell naïve about Spain but added that "no one excels him in bringing to the eyes, ears and nostrils the nasty ingredients of fevered situations; and I would recommend him warmly to all who are concerned about the realities of personal experience in a muddled cause".<ref>Bowker, Gordon, ''George Orwell'', Chapter 12, "The Road to Morocco. {{ISBN|978-0-349-11551-1}}.</ref>

Notably positive reviews came from ] in '']'', and from ] in the '']''. Gorer concluded, "Politically and as literature it is a work of first-class importance". Mairet observed, "It shows us the heart of innocence that lies in revolution; also the miasma of lying that, far more than the cruelty, takes the heart out of it." ], in a letter to Orwell of June 1938, called the book, together with his own '']'', a complete "picture of the revolutionary phase of the Spanish War".

Hostile notices came from '']'', where a critic wondered why Orwell had not troubled to get to know Fascist fighters and enquire about their motivations, and from '']'' and '']'', "the first misrepresenting what Orwell had said and the latter attacking the POUM, but never mentioning the book".<ref>Shelden, pp. 320–21.</ref>

==== Later ====
The publication in 1952 of the first US edition with an introduction by ], "elevated Orwell to the rank of a secular saint".{{Citation needed|date=October 2021}} Another twist arrived in the late 1960s when the book "found new readers in an age of student radicalism and guerrilla struggle—Orwell being seen as an early ] and now appeared to offer a premonition of the Soviet suppression of the 1968 ]".<ref>''New Statesman'', 13 September 1968, letter from G. Flanagan, challenging a review that portrayed Orwell as a liberal.</ref> The book was praised by ] in 1969.<ref>''American Power and the New Mandarins'', p. 117.</ref> ] praised Orwell in 1971 for being "determined to set down the truth as he saw it."<ref>Carr, Raymond, "Orwell and the Spanish war", essay in ''The World of George Orwell'', 1971, {{ISBN|0-297-00479-4}}.</ref>

In his 1971 memoir, ] of ''The New York Times'' declared, “The book did more to blacken the Loyalist cause than any work written by enemies of the Second Republic.”<ref>{{Cite book|last=Matthews|first=Herbert Lionel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-xQrAAAAMAAJ&newbks=0|title=A World in Revolution: A Newspaperman's Memoir|date=1971|publisher=Scribner|isbn=978-0-684-12536-7|pages=43|language=en}}</ref> In 1984 ] published ''Inside the Myth'', a collection of essays "bringing together a variety of standpoints hostile to Orwell in an obvious attempt to do as much damage to his reputation as possible," per ].<ref name="newsinger" />


==Aftermath== ==Aftermath==
Within weeks of leaving Spain, a deposition (discovered in 1989<ref>{{Cite web|last=News|first=Deseret|date=1989-11-19|title=1937 DOCUMENT REVEALS DANGERS ORWELL FACED IN SPANISH CIVIL WAR|url=https://www.deseret.com/1989/11/19/18833104/1937-document-reveals-dangers-orwell-faced-in-spanish-civil-war|access-date=2021-10-17|website=Deseret News|language=en}}</ref>) was presented to the Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason, ], charging the Orwells with 'rabid ]' and being agents of the POUM.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Orwell|first=George|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t8nyAAAAMAAJ&newbks=0|title=The Complete Works of George Orwell: Facing unpleasant facts, 1937-1939|date=1998|publisher=Secker & Warburg|isbn=978-0-436-20377-0|pages=31|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=News|first=Deseret|date=1989-11-19|title=1937 DOCUMENT REVEALS DANGERS ORWELL FACED IN SPANISH CIVIL WAR|url=https://www.deseret.com/1989/11/19/18833104/1937-document-reveals-dangers-orwell-faced-in-spanish-civil-war|access-date=2021-10-17|website=Deseret News|language=en}}</ref> The trial of the leaders of the POUM and of Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona, in October and November 1938. Observing events from ], Orwell wrote that they were "only a by-product of the ] and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press."<ref>''Facing Unpleasant Facts'', pp. 31, 224.</ref>
Andrés Nin'' ... the history of the Civil War that is taught to Catalan schoolchildren now includes Orwell, and has been wiped clean of any totalitarian or revisionist taint."<ref>Hitchens, Christopher, ''Orwell in Spain'', Introduction, p. xviii.</ref>]]

], deemed "quite likely" shot in the book's final chapter, was released in December 1938.

Barcelona fell to Franco's forces on 26 January 1939,<ref>{{cite news|date=22 July 2012|title=Barcelona and the Spanish civil war|page=58|newspaper=The Observer|url=https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/jul/22/barcelona-spanish-civil-war-travel}}</ref> and on 1 April 1939, the last of the Republican forces surrendered.{{sfn|Derby|2009|p=28}}


=== Effect on Orwell ===
''Homage to Catalonia'' was commercially unsuccessful, only selling 638 copies,<ref name="dalrymple20190824">{{Cite magazine |last=Dalrymple |first=William |author-link=William Dalrymple (historian) |title=Novel explosives of the Cold War |url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/novel-explosives-of-the-cold-war/ |magazine=The Spectator |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190826033137/https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/novel-explosives-of-the-cold-war/ |archive-date=2019-08-26}} </ref> but Barcelona under the Anarchists would remain with Orwell. "No one who was in Spain during the months when people still believed in the revolution will ever forget that strange and moving experience. It has left something behind that no dictatorship, not even Franco's, will be able to efface."<ref>Orwell, writing in '']'', review of ''Red Spanish Notebook'', 9 October 1937.</ref> In the words of a recent biographer, ], "the people that had effaced that ''reality'', the Soviet Communists, now had an implacable enemy they would come to regret having made." ]: "The narrative core of ''Homage to Catalonia'', it might be argued, is a series of events that occurred in and around the Barcelona telephone exchange in early May 1937. Orwell was a witness to these events, by the relative accident of his having signed up with the militia of the anti-Stalinist POUM upon arriving in Spain ... he became convinced that he had been the spectator of a full-blown ] ''putsch'' ... Moreover, he came to understand that much of the talk about ''discipline'' and ''unity'' was a rhetorical shield for the covert Stalinization of the ]."<ref>''Orwell in Spain'', Introduction xi, xiv.</ref>


==== Health ====
On 26 April 1937 when Orwell and his ILP comrades had returned to Barcelona on their leave they had been shocked to see how things had changed. The revolutionary atmosphere of four months earlier had all but evaporated, and old class divisions been reasserted. Similarly, as he headed for the French border on the train to ], Orwell noticed another symptom of the change since his arrival—the train on which classes had been abolished now had both first-class compartments and a dining car. Bowker reports that "Orwell mused that coming into Spain the previous year, bourgeois-looking people would be turned back at the border by Anarchist guards; now looking bourgeois gave one easy passage".<ref>Bowker, ''Orwell'', p. 224.</ref> A simple hostility to Stalinist Communism became a "deep-dyed loathing of it". After reviewing Koestler's best-selling '']'', Orwell decided that fiction was the best way to describe totalitarianism. '']'', "his scintillating 1944 satire on Stalinism",<ref>], ''Articles of Resistance'', p. 92.</ref>{{r|dalrymple20190824}} would be part of his response to the Spanish betrayal. "He had learned a hard lesson, especially about the new political Europe. Totalitarianism, the new creed of 'the streamlined men' of Fascism and Communism, was a new manifestation of Orwell's old Catholic enemy, the doctrine of Absolutism ... the ghost of ] had arisen, imprisonment without trial, confessions extracted under torture with ]s to follow."<ref>Bowker, ''Orwell'', p. 226.</ref> "The essential fact about a totalitarian regime is that it has no laws. People are not punished for specific offences, but because they are considered to be politically or intellectually undesirable. What they have done or not done is irrelevant."<ref>George Orwell, writing in ''The Observer'' 24 December 1944.</ref>
Orwell never knew the source of his tuberculosis, complications from which he died in 1950. But in 2018 researchers studying bacteria on his letters announced that there was a "very high probability" that Orwell contracted the disease in a Spanish hospital.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2018-07-31|title=Traces on George Orwell letter suggest he caught TB from Spanish hospital|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/31/traces-on-george-orwell-letter-suggest-he-caught-tb-from-spanish-hospital|access-date=2021-10-17|website=the Guardian|language=en}}</ref>


==== Politics ====
Even after Hitler had repudiated his non-aggression pact with Stalin by launching ] and most left-wing intellectuals were to "laud the virtues of the Soviet Union at the tops of their voices even on the right, keeping ] sweet was regarded as mandatory—Orwell went on insisting that the Soviet regime was a tyranny. Even as the ] battled the ]s to a standstill on the outskirts of Moscow. At this distance, it is hard to imagine what a lonely line this was to take. But when it came to a principle Orwell was the sort of man who would rather shiver in solitude than hold his tongue."<ref>], ''Even As We Speak'', pp. 11–12.</ref>
Orwell "had ''felt'' what socialism could be like"<ref>''The World of George Orwell'', p.72 ], 1971</ref> and, according to Bowker, "Orwell never did abandon his socialism: if anything, his Spanish experience strengthened it."<ref>Bowker, ''Orwell'', Chapter Eleven, "The Spanish Betrayal", p. 224.</ref> In a letter to ], written on 8 June 1937, Orwell said, "At last I really believe in Socialism which I never did before".{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} A decade later he wrote: "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."<ref name="RoddenRodden2007">{{cite book|last1=Rodden|first1=John|title=The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x8-fnamQuUkC&pg=PA133|year=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-67507-9|page=133}}</ref>


Orwell's experiences, culminating in his and his wife ]'s narrow escape from the communist purges in Barcelona in June 1937,<ref name="newsinger" /> greatly increased his sympathy for the POUM and, while not affecting his moral and political commitment to ], made him a lifelong anti-Stalinist.
Apart from the betrayal of the POUMists, the terror and the murder of Nin and Smillie, Orwell had been depressed by the attitude of the British press. "In Spain ... I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts ... I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ''party lines''."<ref>Orwell, George. "Looking Back on the Spanish war".</ref> Carr writes, "He was appalled at the treatment of the May days as a 'Trotskyist Revolt' in papers like the '']'' which simply swallowed uncritically the Communist line; or ]' report in '']'' that POUM militiamen were playing football with Fascist troops ... Given this ''supresio vero'' by interested parties, how could true history be written? Propaganda would pass as truth; 'facts' could be manipulated. Those who monopolized communication could create their own history after the event—the nightmare of '']''."<ref>Carr, Raymond, in Miriam Gross (ed.), ''The World of George Orwell'', p. 71.</ref> Orwell attacked sections of the left wing press for suppressing the truth about Spain, indicting the Communists for instigating a "reign of terror"; and he never forgave ], the editor of the '']'' who turned down his articles on the Spanish Civil War on the grounds that they "could cause trouble." ] remembered: "Once when we were lunching at a Greek restaurant in Percy Street he asked me if I would mind changing places. I readily agreed but asked him why. He said that he just couldn't bear to look at Kingsley Martin's corrupt face, which, as Kingsley was lunching at an adjoining table, was unavoidable from where he had been sitting before."<ref>Muggeridge, Malcolm. ''A Knight of the Woeful Countenance, the World of George Orwell'', p.166.</ref> "Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Communism; today it is almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Anarchism or 'Trotskyism'," Orwell wrote bitterly in 1938.<ref>Bowker, p. 230.</ref>


After reviewing Koestler's best-selling '']'', Orwell decided that fiction was the best way to describe totalitarianism. He soon wrote '']'', "his scintillating 1944 satire on Stalinism".<ref>], ''Articles of Resistance'', p. 92.</ref>{{r|dalrymple20190824}}
Yet Orwell "had ''felt'' what socialism could be like"<ref>''The World of George Orwell'', p.72 ], 1971</ref> and, according to Bowker, unlike the writer ] for example, "who also had a friend killed in custody by the SIM (]/Spanish Secret Police) in Spain, and reacted by deserting the Communists and shifting decidedly to the right, Orwell never did abandon his socialism: if anything, his Spanish experience strengthened it."<ref>Bowker, ''Orwell'', Chapter Eleven, "The Spanish Betrayal", p. 224.</ref> In a letter to ], written on 8 June 1937, Orwell said, "At last I really believe in Socialism which I never did before".{{Citation needed|date=December 2020}} A decade later he wrote: "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."<ref name="RoddenRodden2007">{{cite book|last1=Rodden|first1=John|title=The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x8-fnamQuUkC&pg=PA133|year=2007|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-67507-9|page=133}}</ref>


==''The Crystal Spirit''== === Inspired works ===
In the opening lines of the book, Orwell describes an Italian militiaman he met at the Lenin Barracks and to whose memory Orwell would dedicate a poem "nearly two years later, when the war was visibly lost". The poem was included in Orwell's 1942 essay "Looking Back on the Spanish War", published in '']'' in 1943.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140407084607/http://georgeorwellnovels.com/poems/the-crystal-spirit/ |date=7 April 2014 }} George Orwell Novels. Retrieved 19 August 2013.</ref> ]Orwell himself went on to write a poem about the Italian militiaman he described in the book's opening pages. The poem was included in Orwell's 1942 essay "Looking Back on the Spanish War", published in '']'' in 1943.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140407084607/http://georgeorwellnovels.com/poems/the-crystal-spirit/|date=7 April 2014}} George Orwell Novels. Retrieved 19 August 2013.</ref> The closing phrase of the poem, "No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit", was later taken by ] for the title of his ]-winning critical study of Orwell and his work, ''The Crystal Spirit'' (1966).<ref name="matt">Hiebert, Matt. {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130819135113/http://hpcanpub.mcmaster.ca/case-study/canada-and-abroad-diverse-publishing-career-george-woodcock|date=19 August 2013}} Retrieved 19 August 2013.</ref>


In 1995 ] released the film '']'', heavily inspired by ''Homage to Catalonia''.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2013-09-15|title=Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia revisited|url=https://albavolunteer.org/2013/09/differing-views-on-orwell-at-len-crome-memorial-event/|access-date=2021-10-17|website=The Volunteer|language=en-US}}</ref>
The closing phrase of the poem, "No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit", was later taken by ] for the title of his ]-winning critical study of Orwell and his work, ''The Crystal Spirit'' (1966).<ref name=matt>Hiebert, Matt. {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130819135113/http://hpcanpub.mcmaster.ca/case-study/canada-and-abroad-diverse-publishing-career-george-woodcock |date=19 August 2013 }} Retrieved 19 August 2013.</ref>


==See also== ==See also==

Revision as of 23:00, 17 October 2021

book by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia
AuthorGeorge Orwell
LanguageEnglish
GenreNon-fiction, political
PublisherSecker and Warburg (London)
Publication dateApril 1938
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages368 (paperback)
248 (hardback)
Preceded byThe Road to Wigan Pier 
Followed byComing Up for Air 

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army.

Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little commercial success, it gained more attention in the 1950s following the success of Orwell's better-known works Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell recounts Catalonia's revolutionary fervor during his training in Barcelona, his boredom on the front lines in Aragon, his involvement in the interfactional May Days conflict back in Barcelona on leave, his getting shot in the throat back on the front lines, and his escape to France after the POUM was declared an illegal organization.

The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "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."

Background

Historical context

General map of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Key
  Initial Nationalist zone – July 1936   Nationalist advance until September 1936   Nationalist advance until October 1937   Nationalist advance until November 1938   Nationalist advance until February 1939   Last area under Republican control     Main Nationalist centres
    Main Republican centres
Land battles
Naval battles
Bombed cities
Concentration camps
Massacres
      Refugee camps

The Spanish Civil War broke out with a military coup in July 1936 after months of tension following a narrow victory by the leftist Popular Front in the February 1936 Spanish general election. Rebelling forces coalesced as the Nationalists under the leadership of General Francisco Franco and attempted to take over cities that remained under government control.

The Republican side, which viewed the Nationalists as fascists, was made up of several factions including socialists, anarchists, and communists. There was infighting between these factions, which Orwell details in his chapters on the May Days of Barcelona.

Biographical context

Joining the war

Orwell left for Spain just before Christmas 1936, shortly after submitting The Road to Wigan Pier for publication, the first book in which he explicitly espouses socialism.

Within the first few pages of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell writes, “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.” However, it has been suggested that Orwell intended all along to enlist.

Orwell had been told that he would not be permitted to enter Spain without some supporting documents from a British left-wing organisation, and he had first sought the assistance of the British Communist Party and put his request directly to its leader, Harry Pollitt. When Pollitt asked if he would join the International Brigades, Orwell replied that he wanted to see for himself what was happening first. With Pollitt refusing to help, Orwell telephoned the headquarters of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), whose officials agreed to help him. The party was willing to accredit him as a correspondent for the New Leader, the ILP's weekly paper with which he was familiar, and thus provided the means for him to go legitimately to Spain. The ILP issued him a letter of introduction to their representative in Barcelona, John McNair.

Upon arriving in Spain, Orwell is reported to have told McNair, “I have come to Spain to join the militia to fight against Fascism.” While McNair also describes Orwell as expressing a desire to write “some articles” for the New Statesman and Nation with an intention “to stir working-class opinion in Britain and France”, when presented the opportunity to write, Orwell told him writing was “was quite secondary and his main reason for coming was to fight against Fascism.” McNair took Orwell to the POUM (Catalan: Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista; English: Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist party).

By Orwell's own admission, it was somewhat by chance that he joined the POUM: "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." He later notes, "As far as my purely personal preferences went I would have liked to join the Anarchists." He also nearly joined Communist International's International Column midway through his tour because he thought they were likeliest to send him to Madrid, where he wanted to join the action.

Writing

Orwell wrote diaries, made press-cuttings, and took photographs during his time in Spain, but they were all stolen before he left. In May 1937, he wrote the publisher of his previous books saying, "I greatly hope I come out of this alive if only to write a book about it." According to his eventual publisher, "Homage was begun in February in the trenches, written on scraps, the backs of envelopes, toilet paper. The written material was sent to Barcelona to McNair's office, where his wife , working as a volunteer, typed it out section by section. Slowly it grew into a sizeable parcel. McNair kept it in his own room."

Upon escaping across the French border in June 1937, he stopped at the first post office available to telegram the National Statesman, asking if it would like a first-hand article. The offer was accepted but the article, "Eye-witness in Barcelona", was rejected by editor Kingsley Martin on grounds that his writing "could cause trouble" (it was picked up by Controversy). In the months after leaving Spain, Orwell wrote a number of essays on the war, notably "Spilling the Spanish Beans" and a praiseful review of Franz Borkenau's The Spanish Cockpit.

Writing from his cottage at Wallington, Hertfordshire, he finished around New Year's Day 1938.

Publication

The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in April 1938 by Secker & Warburg after being rejected by Gollancz, the publisher of all Orwell's previous books, over concerns about the book's criticism of the Stalinists in Spain. "Gollancz is of course part of the Communism-racket," Orwell wrote to Rayner Heppenstall in July 1937. Orwell had learned of Warburg's potential willingness to publish anti-Stalinist socialist content in June, and in September a deal was signed for an advance of £150 (equivalent to £12,000 in 2023). "Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Communism; today it is almost impossible to get anything printed in favour of Anarchism or 'Trotskyism'," Orwell wrote bitterly in 1938.

The book was not published in the United States until February 1952, with a preface by Lionel Trilling.

The only translation published in Orwell's lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948. A French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39, was not published until 1955, five years after Orwell's death.

Per Orwell's wishes, the original chapters 5 and 11 were turned into appendices in some later editions. In 1986, Peter Davison published an edition with a few footnotes based on Orwell's own footnotes found among his papers after he died.

Chapter summaries

The appendices in this summary correspond to chapters 5 and 11 in editions that do note include appendices. Orwell felt these chapters, as journalistic accounts of the political situation in Spain, were out of place in the midst of the narrative and should be moved so that readers could ignore them if they wished.

Chapter one

Orwell describes the atmosphere of Barcelona in December 1936. "The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing ... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle ... every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle ... every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized." "The Anarchists" (referring to the Spanish CNT and FAI) were "in control", tipping was prohibited by workers themselves, and servile forms of speech, such as "Señor" or "Don", were abandoned. At the Lenin Barracks (formerly the Lepanto Barracks), militiamen were given instruction in the form of "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".

"There were still women serving in the militias, though not very many. In the early battles they had fought side by side with the men as a matter of course." (Barcelona, 1936. Militiawomen on beach near Barcelona. Photo: Gerda Taro).

He describes the deficiencies of the POUM workers' militia, the absence of weapons, the recruits mostly boys of sixteen or seventeen ignorant of the meaning of war, half-complains about the sometimes frustrating tendency of Spaniards to put things off until "mañana" (tomorrow), notes his struggles with Spanish (or more usually, the local use of Catalan). He praises the generosity of the Catalan working class. Orwell leads to the next chapter by describing the "conquering-hero stuff"—parades through the streets and cheering crowds—that the militiamen experienced at the time he was sent to the Aragón front.

Chapter two

In January 1937, Orwell's centuria arrives in Alcubierre, just behind the line fronting Zaragoza. He sketches the squalor of the region's villages and the "Fascist deserters" indistinguishable from themselves. On the third day rifles are handed out. Orwell's "was a German Mauser dated 1896 ... it was corroded and past praying for." The chapter ends on his centuria's arrival at trenches near Zaragoza and the first time a bullet nearly hit him. To his dismay, instinct made him duck.

Chapter three

In the hills around Zaragoza, Orwell experiences "mingled boredom and discomfort of stationary warfare," the mundaneness of a situation in which "each army had dug itself in and settled down on the hill-tops it had won." He praises the Spanish militias for their relative social equality, for their holding of the front while the army was trained in the rear, and for the "democratic 'revolutionary' type of discipline ... more reliable than might be expected." "'Revolutionary' discipline depends on political consciousness—on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square."

Throughout the chapter Orwell describes the various shortages and problems at the front—firewood ("We were between two and three thousand feet above sea-level, it was mid winter and the cold was unspeakable"), food, candles, tobacco, and adequate munitions—as well as the danger of accidents inherent in a badly trained and poorly armed group of soldiers.

Chapter four

After some three weeks at the front, Orwell and the other English militiaman in his unit, Williams, join a contingent of fellow Englishmen sent out by the Independent Labour Party to a position at Monte Oscuro, within sight of Zaragoza. "Perhaps the best of the bunch was Bob Smillie—the grandson of the famous miners' leader—who afterwards died such an evil and meaningless death in Valencia." In this new position he witnesses the sometimes propagandistic shouting between the Rebel and Loyalist trenches and hears of the fall of Málaga. "... every man in the militia believed that the loss of Malaga was due to treachery. It was the first talk I had heard of treachery or divided aims. It set up in my mind the first vague doubts about this war in which, hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple." In February, he is sent with the other POUM militiamen 50 miles to make a part of the army besieging Huesca; he mentions the running joke phrase, "Tomorrow we'll have coffee in Huesca," attributed to a general commanding the Government troops who, months earlier, made one of many failed assaults on the town.

"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 realise that there were serious differences between the political parties." (Republican soldiers, June 1937. Photo: Gerda Taro).

Chapter five (orig. ch. 6)

Orwell complains that on the eastern side of Huesca, where he was stationed, nothing ever seemed to happen—except the onslaught of spring, and, with it, lice. He was in a ("so-called") hospital at Monflorite for ten days at the end of March 1937 with a poisoned hand that had to be lanced and put in a sling. He describes rats that "really were as big as cats, or nearly" (in Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the protagonist Winston Smith has a phobia of rats that Orwell himself shared to a lesser degree). He makes reference to the lack of "religious feeling, in the orthodox sense," and that the Catholic Church was, "to the Spanish people, at any rate in Catalonia and Aragon, a racket, pure and simple." He muses that Christianity may have, to some extent, been replaced by Anarchism. The latter portion of the chapter briefly details various operations in which Orwell took part: silently advancing the Loyalist frontline by night, for example.

Chapter six (orig. ch. 7)

Orwell takes part in a "holding attack" on Huesca, designed to draw the Nationalist troops away from an Anarchist attack on "the Jaca road." He suspects two of the bombs he threw may have killed their targets, but he cannot be sure. They capture the position and pull back with captured rifles and ammunition, but Orwell laments that they fled too hurriedly to bring back a telescope they had discovered, which Orwell sees as more useful than any weapons.

Chapter seven (orig. ch. 8)

Orwell shares memories of the 115 days he spent on the war front, and its influence on his political ideas, "... the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism ... the ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England ... the effect was to make my desire to see Socialism established much more actual than it had been before." By the time he left Spain, he had become a "convinced democratic Socialist." The chapter ends with Orwell's arrival in Barcelona on the afternoon of 26 April 1937. "And after that the trouble began."

Chapter eight (orig. ch. 9)

Orwell details noteworthy changes in the social and political atmosphere of Barcelona when he returns after three months at the front. He describes a lack of revolutionary atmosphere and the class division that he had thought would not reappear, i.e., with visible division between rich and poor and the return of servile language. Orwell had been determined to leave the POUM, and confesses here that he "would have liked to join the Anarchists," but instead sought a recommendation to join the International Column, so that he could go to the Madrid front. The latter half of this chapter is devoted to describing the conflict between the anarchist CNT and the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the resulting cancellation of the May Day demonstration and the build-up to the street fighting of the Barcelona May Days. "It was the antagonism between those who wished the revolution to go forward and those who wished to check or prevent it—ultimately, between Anarchists and Communists."

Chapter nine (orig. ch. 10)

Orwell relates his involvement in the Barcelona street fighting that began on 3 May when the Government Assault Guards tried to take the Telephone Exchange from the CNT workers who controlled it. For his part, Orwell acted as part of the POUM, guarding a POUM-controlled building. Although he realises that he is fighting on the side of the working class, Orwell describes his dismay at coming back to Barcelona on leave from the front only to get mixed up in street fighting. Assault Guards from Valencia arrive—"All of them were armed with brand-new rifles ... vastly better than the dreadful old blunderbusses we had at the front." The Communist-controlled Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia newspapers declare POUM to be a disguised Fascist organisation—"No one who was in Barcelona then ... will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food queues, and prowling gangs ...." In his second appendix to the book, Orwell discusses the political issues at stake in the May 1937 Barcelona fighting, as he saw them at the time and later on, looking back.

Chapter ten (orig. ch. 12)

Orwell speculates on how the Spanish Civil War might turn out. Orwell predicts that the "tendency of the post-war Government ... is bound to be Fascistic."

He returns to the front, where he is shot through the throat by a sniper, an injury that takes him out of the war. After spending some time in a hospital in Lleida, he was moved to Tarragona where his wound was finally examined more than a week after he'd left the front.

Chapter eleven (orig. ch. 13)

Orwell tells us of his various movements between hospitals in Siétamo, Barbastro, and Monzón while getting his discharge papers stamped, after being declared medically unfit. He returns to Barcelona only to find that the POUM had been "suppressed": it had been declared illegal the very day he had left to obtain discharge papers and POUM members were being arrested without charge. "The attack on Huesca was beginning ... there must have been numbers of men who were killed without ever learning that the newspapers in the rear were calling them Fascists. This kind of thing is a little difficult to forgive." He sleeps that night in the ruins of a church; he cannot go back to his hotel because of the danger of arrest.

"And I hope the account I have given is not too misleading ... consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan ... beware of my partisanship, ... and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events. And beware of exactly the same things when you read any other book on this period of the Spanish war." (Ch. XII)
La Sagrada Família in 1980 "When Orwell speaks about the cathedral of Barcelona, he is talking in fact about La Sagrada Família temple, designed by Antoni Gaudí ..." "... I went to have a look at the cathedral—a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles ... I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up ... though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires."(Ch. XII)

Chapter twelve (orig. ch. 14)

This chapter describes his visits accompanied by his wife to Georges Kopp, unit commander of the ILP Contingent while Kopp was held in a Spanish makeshift jail—"really the ground floor of a shop." Having done all he could to free Kopp, ineffectively and at great personal risk, Orwell decides to leave Spain. Crossing the Pyrenees frontier, he and his wife arrived in France "without incident".

Appendix one (orig. ch. 5)

Orwell explains the divisions within the Republican side: "On the one side the C.N.T.-F.A.I., the P.O.U.M., and a section of the Socialists, standing for workers’ control: on the other side the Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and Communists, standing for centralized government and a militarized army." He also writes, "One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right."

Appendix two (orig. ch. 11)

An attempt to dispel some of the myths in the foreign press at the time (mostly the pro-Communist press) about the May Days, the street fighting that took place in Catalonia in early May 1937. This was between anarchists and POUM members, against Communist/government forces which sparked off when local police forces occupied the Telephone Exchange, which had until then been under the control of CNT workers. He relates the suppression of the POUM on 15–16 June 1937, gives examples of the Communist Press of the world—(Daily Worker, 21 June, "Spanish Trotskyists Plot With Franco"), indicates that Indalecio Prieto hinted, "fairly broadly ... that the government could not afford to offend the Communist Party while the Russians were supplying arms." He quotes Julián Zugazagoitia, the Minister of the Interior; "We have received aid from Russia and have had to permit certain actions which we did not like."

Reception

Sales

Homage to Catalonia was initially commercially unsuccessful, only selling 683 copies in its first 6 months. By the time of Orwell's death in 1950, its initial print run of 1,500 copies had still not all sold. Homage to Catalonia re-emerged in the 1950s, following on from the success of Orwell's later books.

Reviews

Contemporary

Contemporary reviews of the book were mixed. John Langdon-Davies wrote in the Communist Party's Daily Worker that "the value of the book is that it gives an honest picture of the sort of mentality that toys with revolutionary romanticism but shies violently at revolutionary discipline. It should be read as a warning". Some Conservative and Catholic opponents of the Spanish Republic felt vindicated by Orwell's attack on the role of the Communists in Spain; The Spectator's review concluded that this "dismal record of intrigue, injustice, incompetence, quarrelling, lying communist propaganda, police spying, illegal imprisonment, filth and disorder" was evidence that the Republic deserved to fall. A mixed review was supplied by V. S. Pritchett who called Orwell naïve about Spain but added that "no one excels him in bringing to the eyes, ears and nostrils the nasty ingredients of fevered situations; and I would recommend him warmly to all who are concerned about the realities of personal experience in a muddled cause".

Notably positive reviews came from Geoffrey Gorer in Time and Tide, and from Philip Mairet in the New English Weekly. Gorer concluded, "Politically and as literature it is a work of first-class importance". Mairet observed, "It shows us the heart of innocence that lies in revolution; also the miasma of lying that, far more than the cruelty, takes the heart out of it." Franz Borkenau, in a letter to Orwell of June 1938, called the book, together with his own The Spanish Cockpit, a complete "picture of the revolutionary phase of the Spanish War".

Hostile notices came from The Tablet, where a critic wondered why Orwell had not troubled to get to know Fascist fighters and enquire about their motivations, and from The Times Literary Supplement and The Listener, "the first misrepresenting what Orwell had said and the latter attacking the POUM, but never mentioning the book".

Later

The publication in 1952 of the first US edition with an introduction by Lionel Trilling, "elevated Orwell to the rank of a secular saint". Another twist arrived in the late 1960s when the book "found new readers in an age of student radicalism and guerrilla struggle—Orwell being seen as an early Che Guevara and now appeared to offer a premonition of the Soviet suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring". The book was praised by Noam Chomsky in 1969. Raymond Carr praised Orwell in 1971 for being "determined to set down the truth as he saw it."

In his 1971 memoir, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times declared, “The book did more to blacken the Loyalist cause than any work written by enemies of the Second Republic.” In 1984 Lawrence and Wishart published Inside the Myth, a collection of essays "bringing together a variety of standpoints hostile to Orwell in an obvious attempt to do as much damage to his reputation as possible," per John Newsinger.

Aftermath

Within weeks of leaving Spain, a deposition (discovered in 1989) was presented to the Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason, Valencia, charging the Orwells with 'rabid Trotskyism' and being agents of the POUM. The trial of the leaders of the POUM and of Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona, in October and November 1938. Observing events from French Morocco, Orwell wrote that they were "only a by-product of the Russian Trotskyist trials and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press."

Georges Kopp, deemed "quite likely" shot in the book's final chapter, was released in December 1938.

Barcelona fell to Franco's forces on 26 January 1939, and on 1 April 1939, the last of the Republican forces surrendered.

Effect on Orwell

Health

Orwell never knew the source of his tuberculosis, complications from which he died in 1950. But in 2018 researchers studying bacteria on his letters announced that there was a "very high probability" that Orwell contracted the disease in a Spanish hospital.

Politics

Orwell "had felt what socialism could be like" and, according to Bowker, "Orwell never did abandon his socialism: if anything, his Spanish experience strengthened it." In a letter to Cyril Connolly, written on 8 June 1937, Orwell said, "At last I really believe in Socialism which I never did before". A decade later he wrote: "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."

Orwell's experiences, culminating in his and his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy's narrow escape from the communist purges in Barcelona in June 1937, greatly increased his sympathy for the POUM and, while not affecting his moral and political commitment to socialism, made him a lifelong anti-Stalinist.

After reviewing Koestler's best-selling Darkness at Noon, Orwell decided that fiction was the best way to describe totalitarianism. He soon wrote Animal Farm, "his scintillating 1944 satire on Stalinism".

Inspired works

In 1996 a public square in Barcelona was named after Orwell.

Orwell himself went on to write a poem about the Italian militiaman he described in the book's opening pages. The poem was included in Orwell's 1942 essay "Looking Back on the Spanish War", published in New Road in 1943. The closing phrase of the poem, "No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit", was later taken by George Woodcock for the title of his Governor General's Award-winning critical study of Orwell and his work, The Crystal Spirit (1966).

In 1995 Ken Loach released the film Land and Freedom, heavily inspired by Homage to Catalonia.

See also

References

  1. "Why I Write | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  2. "George Orwell's Prelude in Spain". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  3. Stansky, Peter; Abrahams, William. Orwell: The Transformation. p. 200.
  4. ^ Dag, O. "Bernard Crick: George Orwell: A Life -- Chapters 7 to 12". www.orwell.ru. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  5. "George Orwell to Victor Gollancz, 9 May 1937 | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. Retrieved 17 October 2021.
  6. ^ Warburg, Fredric (17 August 2019). An Occupation For Gentlemen. Plunkett Lake Press.
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  8. ^ "Gordon Bowker: The Road to Morocco | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. Retrieved 16 October 2021.
  9. ^ Orwell, George (12 August 2013). George Orwell: A Life in Letters. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-87140-462-6.
  10. ^ Newsinger, John (Spring 1994). "Orwell and the Spanish Revolution". International Socialism Journal (62).
  11. BUCHANAN, TOM (1 September 2002). "Three Lives of Homage to Catalonia". The Library. 3 (3): 302–314. doi:10.1093/library/3.3.302. ISSN 0024-2160.
  12. Bowker, p. 230.
  13. Omaggio alla Catalogna, translated by Giorgio Monicelli (Mondadori, Verona, December 1948), The Lost Orwell, p. 124.
  14. Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1937–39, Secker & Warburg, 1998, p. xvi. ISBN 0-436-20538-6.
  15. ^ http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/85333/1/Preston_Lights%20and%20shadows_2017.pdf
  16. ^ Orwell in Spain. p. 6.
  17. Out of the Shadows, a life of Gerda Taro, François Maspero, p. 18, ISBN 978-0-285-63825-9.
  18. "Harry Milton – The Man Who Saved Orwell" Archived 24 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine The Hoover Institute. Retrieved 23 December 2008.
  19. Peter Davison (ed.), The Lost Orwell, Timewell Press, 2006. ISBN 1-85725-214-4.
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  21. Daily Worker, 21 May 1938, reproduced in Valentine Cunningham (ed.), Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War, Oxford, 1986, pp. 304–05.
  22. Buchanan, Tom. Three Lives of Homage to Catalonia, The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 2002, Vol. 3.
  23. Bowker, Gordon, George Orwell, Chapter 12, "The Road to Morocco. ISBN 978-0-349-11551-1.
  24. Shelden, pp. 320–21.
  25. New Statesman, 13 September 1968, letter from G. Flanagan, challenging a review that portrayed Orwell as a liberal.
  26. American Power and the New Mandarins, p. 117.
  27. Carr, Raymond, "Orwell and the Spanish war", essay in The World of George Orwell, 1971, ISBN 0-297-00479-4.
  28. Matthews, Herbert Lionel (1971). A World in Revolution: A Newspaperman's Memoir. Scribner. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-684-12536-7.
  29. News, Deseret (19 November 1989). "1937 DOCUMENT REVEALS DANGERS ORWELL FACED IN SPANISH CIVIL WAR". Deseret News. Retrieved 17 October 2021. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  30. Orwell, George (1998). The Complete Works of George Orwell: Facing unpleasant facts, 1937-1939. Secker & Warburg. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-436-20377-0.
  31. News, Deseret (19 November 1989). "1937 DOCUMENT REVEALS DANGERS ORWELL FACED IN SPANISH CIVIL WAR". Deseret News. Retrieved 17 October 2021. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  32. Facing Unpleasant Facts, pp. 31, 224.
  33. "Barcelona and the Spanish civil war". The Observer. 22 July 2012. p. 58.
  34. Derby 2009, p. 28. sfn error: no target: CITEREFDerby2009 (help)
  35. "Traces on George Orwell letter suggest he caught TB from Spanish hospital". the Guardian. 31 July 2018. Retrieved 17 October 2021.
  36. The World of George Orwell, p.72 Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971
  37. Bowker, Orwell, Chapter Eleven, "The Spanish Betrayal", p. 224.
  38. Rodden, John (2007). The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell. Cambridge University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-0-521-67507-9.
  39. Foot, Paul, Articles of Resistance, p. 92.
  40. Cite error: The named reference dalrymple20190824 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  41. "Big Brother is watching you, George Orwell". the Guardian. 15 June 2008. Retrieved 17 October 2021.
  42. "George Orwell ya tiene plaza" (PDF).
  43. "The Crystal Spirit" Archived 7 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine George Orwell Novels. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  44. Hiebert, Matt. "In Canada and Abroad: The Diverse Publishing Career of George Woodcock". Archived 19 August 2013 at archive.today Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  45. "Orwell's Homage to Catalonia revisited". The Volunteer. 15 September 2013. Retrieved 17 October 2021.

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