Homage to Catalonia
Ratings99
Average rating4.1
In this book Orwell recounts his time fighting for the POUM in Spain and observes the Byzantine nature of leftist politics in Spain and its intersection with the culture. He deftly handles the twists and turns of the myriad alphabetized organizations with a style so clear and vivid that you almost want to be there in spite of the dirt and the lice and the stray bullets.
A great but very non-chalant description of the Spanish civil war. Very interesting to see it from the perspective of an insider.
Deberia haberlo leído hace años.
George Orwell se paso por españa para hacer un reportaje y acabo varios meses pegando tiros en el frente de la guerra civil.
Hay un momento que están en un edificio, hay un gran ruido abajo, van a mirar y dice alguien, nah, no es nada, unos tirando unas granadas de mano.
“The human louse somewhat resembles a tiny lobster, and he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of thier own at horrible speed. I think pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate thier pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war indeed! In war all solderies are lousy, at the least when it is warm enough. The men that fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae - every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles.”
One sentence synopsis... Orwell's eyewitness account of the Spanish civil war is an invaluable piece of his personal experience but fails to provide broad, reliable analysis of the complicated politics informing the war. .
Read it if you like... “For Whom the Bell Tolls” or “Slaughterhouse-Five”. .
Further reading... “Capital” and other political writings help to better understand the ideologies that divided Spain so deeply.
Page 127 the author states that while watching a “fat Russian” it was the first time that he had seen “ ...a person whose profession was telling lies - unless one counts Journalists” I wonder what the sublimely brilliant writer of this observation, George Orwell, would think if he was seeing the accusations of fake news (lies) that is routinely hurled around today. He himself warns against his own bias while writing about his time in Spain. Trust nothing is the mantra. Indeed.
I first read Orwell in my late teens. I have thought back hard in recent days and I think it was my parents that gave me, for what I think must have been my 17th or 18th birthday, a compendium of books that contained, Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Nineteen Eighty-Four. I read Nineteen Eighty-Four first and was spellbound. Being very much a reader of Sci Fi in my youth this was something utterly different. It was beyond great and after several rereads over the years and a good few items as to Orwell's ideas behind it I have considered Nineteen Eighty-Four one of greatest piece of English language literature the world has ever seen. I read the other books in the compendium and found Animal Farm to be in the classic mold as well.
So where does Homage to Catalonia fit? In my opinion this is an exceptionally important book for those that have been admirers of Orwell's and look to understand why he wrote both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In Spain there was betrayal of the ideals that he held dear by those he thought he could trust. It is not a matter if I or anyone else agreed or disagreed with his political beliefs; he had his ideals but watched them literally gunned down. The narrative of his time in Spain shows an almost naive outlook as he went to the front feeling a part of a working class fight against fascism to a return to Barcelona to discover all he thought exemplar smashed by his own side of the political spectrum. Strangely through all this he could still write about humans being generally decent. Should all that Orwell wrote of those days in Spain be lessons for us all in not trusting those whose profession is telling lies? I think so. Read this book and read the genesis of ideas for the sublime Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Judge a book by its cover? Not generally but image of a bidding of farewell to the International Brigades near Barcelona 1938 by Robert Capa is certainly one of the most striking and apt I have seen.
In passing I would like to thank my great friend Gordon Wilson for his gift of this book on my 60th birthday. As I write may his Welsh team do themselves proud at the world cup and may we have a great time at the sevens.
১৯৩৬-১৯৩৭ সাল। অরওয়েল সস্ত্রীক স্পেনে। স্পেনের সিভিল ওয়্যার চলছে তখন। ক্যাটালোনিয়ার আকাশে-বাতাসে সাম্যের গান। কেউ কাউকে বড়লোক বলে তোয়াজ করে না। কেউ গরীব বলে টিপসও নেয় না। জাতে ইংরেজ এই লেখক এসেছেন ফ্যাসিস্টদের বিরুদ্ধে যুদ্ধ করতে। যুদ্ধে ফ্রন্টে গিয়েছেন দুইবার, শেষবার আহত হয়ে অল্পের জন্য বেঁচেও গিয়েছেন।
তো, এই যদি বইয়ের কন্টেন্ট হত, তাহলে অরওয়েল বোধকরি বইটাই লিখতেন না। কয়েকমাসের মধ্যে সোভিয়েত রাশিয়ার লেজুড় ধরা কমিউনিস্ট পার্টির অ্যানার্কিস্ট ও এন্টি-স্ট্যালিন কমিউনিস্ট পার্টিগুলোর বিরুদ্ধে নিকৃষ্টতম প্রোপাগান্ডা ও দমন-পীড়নের একটা ফার্স্টহ্যান্ড আইডিয়া আছে এই বইতে। দেখা গেলো কীভাবে প্রলেতারিয়েতের স্বার্থরক্ষার একটা দল ডানে সরতে সরতে কট্টর ডানপন্থী হয়ে যেতে পারে এবং প্রপাগান্ডা ও নিপীড়নে ফ্যাসিস্টদেরও ছাড়িয়ে যেতে পারে।সিভিল ওয়্যারের ইতিহাসের পপুলার ভার্সন, অর্থাৎ সোভিয়েত প্রণীত ভার্সনে বলা যেতে পারে তার ঠিক উল্টটা বলা।
এই বইটা না পড়লে 1984 এবং Animal Farm পড়ার পর অরওয়েলকে আপনার এন্টি-কমিউনিস্ট মনে হবে। আদতে জর্জ অরওয়েল কমিউনিজমের ভুত দেখেছেন। তিনি অ্যানার্কিস্ট, এবং সোশ্যালিস্টও বটে।
I love history, but I tend to shy
away from war narratives; I get
lost in the details about weapons
and strategies. Homage to Catalonia
is a different kind of war narrative,
the story of a man who never glamorized
war (except, perhaps, when he enlisted).
I loved the chapters about day-to-day
life. I can just see the generals and
admirals telling Orwell, “Don't tell them
that!” I found myself wanting to post
chapters to young American men I know serving
in Iraq and asking if Orwell's experiences
in the Spanish Civil War rang true for them.
Recommended.