Sunday, September 9, 2012

Review: Homage to Catalonia


Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book was a great and engrossing read, bringing the Spanish Civil War and the Barcelona street fighting between the Anarchists, the Stalinists, the Replublicans and the POUM back to vivid life 80 years later. I highly recognize it for its unromantic description of life in the trenches on the front line but also for its very moving and romantic treatment of the original revolution in Spain and Orwell's description of the people and the changes that the revolution had on daily life and the slow descent back into authoritarianism.

Orwell has an interesting technique of first describing how an event (such as the street fighting in Barcelona) directly affected him in a diary like account, and then in the following chapter, he'd fill in the story with a broader brush of what was going on in a political, macroscopic view.

The final chapter's were maddening descriptions of the Pogram against the POUM, the trotskyite party and militia which were outlawed and thrown into prison, accused of collaborating with the fascists, even as they were coming off of the front lines that they were holding against the fascist. I had heard stories of the treachery of the Stalist factions in the Spanish Civil War, but had no idea the extent of their back-stabbing.

But still Orwell warns that all accounts of the Spanish Civil Was were biased and he warns of taking his own account as objective truth. But through it all the heartbreak, the stupidity, the treachery; he still sees the humanity of the people in the streets and on the front lines:


This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil, and yet I do not wish that I had missed it. When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this--and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering — the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.





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