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[skygiants]

After eight years or so, I have now read Orwell in Spain so that I could finally return it to gramarye1971 during my very brief stint in DC last week. I don't regret the long wait -- as always, Orwell is timely and never moreso than when he's talking about situations that are messy, complicated, unwinnable and un-abandonable.

Orwell in Spain includes the full text of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's book about the Spanish Civil War, as well as various contextualizing letters and articles he wrote while there and on returning.

I first read Homage to Catalonia back in 2011, and, unlike most of the things I wrote in 2011, my review of it from that time still pretty much encapsulates the things I would say about it now. What sticks with me more, this time, is how Orwell talks about the ragtag Marxist-anarchist battalion he accidentally ends up in as the only time in his life that he's ever had the chance to see the ideal of absolute equality, abolition of hierarchy, collective action, in practice, and how it convinced him it could be put into practice, that it was a realizable dream and one worth fighting for -- about how he was miserable and hungry and cold all the time and achieved absolutely nothing and still.

But of course context is important. And though Orwell is very determined to try and be fair-minded, and to encourage his readers to treat him as biased and to come to their own conclusions, the most interesting thing about the contextualization provided in Orwell in Spain is how it shows how much he was driven by his concern for his friends who were in prison, and his goal of raising some kind of outcry among international Socialists for their release. He writes reviews and articles, many of which are not published because they do not accord with the party line of What We Should Feel About Spain; he argues endlessly and demands receipts from everyone who publishes an account of what happened during the street fighting in Barcelona that doesn't accord with his lived experience; he returns consistently and desperately to the topic of his superior officer, who is probably still in jail, Situation Unknown.

And then the superior officer gets out of jail, and the next bit of writing included in the compilation is from several years later. This may be fiat on the part of the editor of Orwell in Spain, but it very much serves to emphasize that the personal is political. It's not that I don't think Orwell cared about the truth generally, because I do think he did, but also it's got to feel much more important to scream when you know it's going to immediately and directly impact the people you care about.

Comments

[sovay]

that it was a realizable dream and one worth fighting for -- about how he was miserable and hungry and cold all the time and achieved absolutely nothing and still.

This sentence, and the way you write about both Homage to Catalonia and Orwell in Spain generally, made something chime in my head that about ten minutes after the fact turned out to be Keller in The Kestrel, the satirical journalist going off to the war (from which he will come back with TB) for his own personal-political reasons. I can't tell right now if this is Doylistically significant or merely a sign of my tendency to read history through the fiction I encountered first, but here we are. I am increasingly impressed with the Westmark trilogy and the way it just lurks around on library shelves for unsuspecting middle-schoolers to discover political philosophy.

[skygiants]

I FORGOT KELLER GOT THE TB IN THE WAR. I one hundred percent believe that Orwell is one of the things that went into Westmark -- it's been about ten years since I last read the trilogy, and it definitely came before I first read Homage to Catalonia, so I'm certainly due for a reread.

[sovay]

I FORGOT KELLER GOT THE TB IN THE WAR.

OF COURSE HE GOT TB I LIKE HIM.

I one hundred percent believe that Orwell is one of the things that went into Westmark

As you are the person who has read the relevant Orwell, I defer to your judgment! Also, awesome.

(What actually happened was that I read this post and thought, "It's really weird that Lloyd Alexander wasn't in the Spanish Civil War," and then the connection came into focus.)

-- it's been about ten years since I last read the trilogy, and it definitely came before I first read Homage to Catalonia, so I'm certainly due for a reread.

I look forward to your thoughts! I believe I last re-read the books in early 2017, which was relevant.

[kore]

This is a great review. I love Orwell (haven't read this particular book though!) and Homage to Catalonia is so good, and you really capture his personality and why his writing still seems to speak to later ages so urgently and immediately.

[skygiants]

I did not expect, when reading Orwell's nonfiction for the first time, to find him so matter-of-fact and relatable -- he really does give the impression of just kind of laying out facts and impressions and inviting you to engage with them, very much "this is what I think and why I think it although you don't have to agree."

[kore]

Yeah, that's one reason I love him -- I think it's very rare to find him arguing from a position of authority, and that's on principle. He's really good at arguing, and often vehement, but there's a certain kind of....open-ness? about him too.

[luzula]

If you want more about the Spanish Civil War and the build-up to it, I recommend The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, although it's possible that it's too dry and detailed for someone who isn't as interested in syndicalism as I am. I reviewed it here.

[skygiants]

Thank you for the review and the rec - it definitely seems worth reading!

[ndrosen]

I enjoyed your review of Homage to Catalonia, which I read for the first time back in the 1970s, as a teenager if not preteen. I was a precocious admirer of Orwell.

[skygiants]

Thank you! I don't remember what first brought me to Homage to Catalonia -- I think it might have been somebody's syllabus of revolutionary readings -- but I'm glad it did, as otherwise I probably would have gone through my life thinking vaguely of Orwell as something that happened to other people.

[osprey_archer]

I was already meaning to read Homage to Catalonia (reading All Art is Propaganda has nudged me toward an Orwell kick), and this has pushed it to the top of my list.

[skygiants]

I'm extremely looking forward to seeing what you think! I ought to get All Art Is Propaganda.

[gramarye1971]

Looking over the book, Kopp appears to have been released in that narrow time period between the effective end of the Spanish Civil War (April 1939) and the start of World War II (September 1939), and not long after Orwell returned from Morocco (where he'd been staying to avoid aggravating his TB in the winter of 1938-39). So I suspect that Orwell moves away from his Spanish experiences in line with his response to current events, if nothing else.

I am glad that you liked these books, all the more so since I remember practically thrusting them into your hands at the time!

[skygiants]

Yeah, my guess is that it's partly there's more immediate current events to deal with and partly that once the job is done it's okay to let it drop, but the sudden stop is REALLY interesting regardless.

I very much appreciate that you did; if you hadn't I never would have read them and it's been an extremely rewarding experience!