Book Review

BOOK REVIEW

 

HOMAGE TO CATALONIA

By George Orwell

Published by Vintage Classics Library and Penguin Britain 2021

 

  

'In case I have not said this somewhere earlier in the book I will say it now: beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact 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. {page 191 of Homage to Catalonia} declares George Orwell.

This quote from Orwell's book ,'Homage to Catalonia,' about his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, suggests a rare honesty, modesty and almost apologetic account of his work. He grasps his limitations! And that is what is appealing about Orwell's account. Not only is it well written, witty, vivid and moving, but at times ruthlessly frank. He is so candid he admits his own embarrassing faults and antics. That requires a lot of courage. Orwell also has an enormous empathy. When you read his work you really feel that you are not only in his shoes but going through the experience of an Italian officer who can't understand a map or a deeply wounded soldier.

 

Unfortunately, this brilliant account is too often overshadowed by his more well known works such as '1984' and 'Animal Farm'. Readers who encounter this book are often surprised to find that Orwell was a socialist who took part in the Spanish Civil War and was badly injured and had to go on the run to avoid being arrested when the police cracked down on the militia he had joined. If you want to get the feel of what a city is like during a revolution as well as the nature of war, then this book is a must! The book also offers an insight into some of the reasons why the Republican side lost the Spanish Civil war. There was nothing inevitable about the Republic's defeat. For when Franco began his coup in Morocco in 1936, he was unable to land in Spain because striking sailors refused to take his troops to the Spanish mainland. Franco was even forced to appeal to Hitler and Mussolini to help airlift his men.

 

When Orwell came to Catalonia to volunteer for the militia he was a bit shocked at the bad conditions, training and lack of equipment. Not knowing Spanish, he even had to take out a Spanish English dictionary to ask for training in how to use a machine gun. The militia was short of guns. Orwell states: 'I was very anxious to learn how to use a machine gun; it was a gun I had never had the chance to  handle. To my dismay I found that we were taught nothing about the use of weapons. The so-called instruction was simply parade-ground drill of the most antiquated, stupid kind, right turn, left turn, about turn, marching at attention in columns of threes and all the rest of this useless nonsense which I learned when I was fifteen years old. It was an extraordinary form for the training of a guerrilla army to take.'{page 8- to 9} He laments that many of the soldiers were literary just children and were being sent to the front line without being able to use a rifle or pull the pin out of a grenade.  

 

The war wasn't an exciting adventure. Orwell describes it as marked by constant waiting, doing nothing, sheer boredom and enduring unpleasant conditions where they lived in muddy trenches and got cold, hungry and infested with lice. He hated the rats which frightened him and later haunted the prisoner in his work,1984. More often, nothing much happened.

 

But Orwell's account of the early atmosphere in Barcelona capture the mood of what it feels like to be in a real revolution. He writes 'Waiters and shop walkers looked you in the eye and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted': Everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou', and said 'Salud'! instead of 'Beunos Dias'. Almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift boy. There were no private motor cars, they had all been commandeered, and all trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. {page 3} . Then when Orwell returns a few months later he discovers the whole atmosphere has changed and all the old forms of behavior have returned. Ironically the revolution had been suppressed not by the fascists but the police serving the republican government.

 

Orwell describes how he was caught up in the cross fire between the militia who were mainly anarchists and socialists who favored a revolution and war against fascism, as opposed to the right socialists and Communist party who wanted to wage war first and then begin a revolution. The police forces started to arrest, detain and even shoot some of his comrades. There is an incident when a perplexed Orwell is told by his wife and Spanish hotel staff to 'Get out of the Hotel' in broken English. The police were arresting anyone with links to the Militia. Orwell was lucky to have narrowly avoided arrest. His comrades were not so lucky. He tells how his officer Kopp was imprisoned and how he could not get him released and how a Scottish comrade had died in prison due to illness. Orwell bitterly complains that it is a shameful way to treat volunteers who had come to volunteer their services. Orwell writes 'Smile's death was not something I can easily forgive. Here was this brave and gifted boy, who had given up his career at Glasgow University in order to come and fight against Fascism, and who as I saw for myself, had done his job at the front with faultless courage and willingness; and all they could find to do with him was to fling him into jail and let him die like a neglected animal'. {page 175}

 

Orwell himself was shot in the throat and just survived death. The doctors warned him he would never be able to speak again. Despite some bitter experiences, Orwell retained his optimism and witnessed many kind acts of behavior from the Spanish and his comrades. He writes about whenever he asked a Spaniard for a cigarette they would hand him a whole packet and how one volunteer risked his life under gunfire to bring him back a packet of cigarettes. The Spanish come across as very warm, friendly and helpful to people. Unlike so many other volunteers he did not return to the war completely disillusioned or cynical. Instead he writes 'Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.'[page 191}

 

For those readers who are seeking more details of the political background of events Orwell ends his account with three detailed appendixes. This is useful. But even if you are not interested in politics Orwell's book is instructive about how humans cope under pressure. But Homage to Catalonia should also be read as a poignant and moving memorial to Orwell's comrades who died in the Civil War. He went out of his way to ensure they would not be forgotten.