Orwell in Spain Read online

  BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937

  BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937

  Eric Blair and his wife Eileen Blair

  It is clear from their correspondence that they are confirmed Trotskyists. They belong to the IRP [sic] of England.

  ERIC BLAIR was on the ILP Committee functioning in the Lenin Division on the Granja front (HUESCA).

  Liaison with the ILP of England (correspondence of D. MOYLE and JOHN MACNAIR).

  Among the effects of CHARLES DORAN is found a letter addressed to ERIC B. from JOHN MACNAIR, asking him to write reports for the ILP.–

  They must be considered as liaison officers of the ILP with POUM.

  They were living in the Hotel Falcon, supported by the POUM Executive Committee.

  Credential from the POUM Executive Committee signed by JORGE KOPP (from its character it seems to be a credential in favour of EILEEN B. valid for the events of May. [No closing bracket]

  ERIC B. took part in the events of MAY.

  Liaison with ALBACETE by means of DAVID WICKES.

  Liaison with MOSCOW.–

  Eileen B. was on the Huesca front on 13–3–37 (date inscribed on a photograph). She has a credential issued in BARCELONA on 17–3–37. Her husband has a permit to leave the front to go to Barcelona, issued on 14–3–37.

  1. Sir Richard Rees, George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961), 147. For Burnett Bolloten’s application of the word ‘terror’ to the Spanish experience, see The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (1991), 570–71.

  Charles Doran

  A man of the ILP, in very close collaboration with the ILP Committee on the Huesca front, within POUM.–

  It is clear from his correspondence that he is a confirmed Trotskyist.–

  In Spain he had very close contact with the FAI, as well as a firm liaison with the Iberian Communist Youth of POUM.–

  Liaison with Albacete.–

  In his effects the names KOPP and MACNAIR are frequently found, as is material by BLAIR [or as in BLAIR’s effects]. –

  In Glasgow, Scotland, in December 1936, he wrote a letter in which he defended Trotsky and Karl Radek against the Moscow trial.

  Addresses in Spain found in his effects give reason to suppose the existence of co-religionists in Spain. D., as well as Blair and McNair, has written for the ILP. In his effects is found a newspaper extract relating to the trial for espionage in France of an English lieutenant BAILLIESTE NAST and his mysterious girl-friend MARIA LUISA SCHULE (or MARTIN), who both worked for the GESTAPO.–

  On 5 July 1937, Victor Gollancz wrote to Orwell to say that, though he could not be sure until he had seen the typescript, he thought it probable that he would not wish to publish Homage to Catalonia, upon which Orwell was already engaged. Although not a Communist, he felt he should never publish anything ‘which could harm the fight against fascism’. He did see the irony of rejecting an account by someone who had been on the spot while he had sat quietly in his office. He hoped Orwell would continue to regard Gollancz as his main publisher. In fact this, and the later rejection of Animal Farm (published 1945), led to Orwell’s break with Gollancz and his publisher became Martin Secker & Warburg. On the following day, 6 July, Fredric Warburg wrote to Orwell to tell him that two ILP members, John Aplin and Reginald Reynolds (the latter of whom became a good friend), had suggested that Orwell’s proposed book ‘would not only be of great interest but of considerable political importance’. He asked Orwell to discuss the book with him. On 17 July, Orwell wrote to his agent, Leonard Moore, enclosing ‘a sort of rough plan of my book on Spain’ which he thought might be of use to Secker’s. He was making a more detailed plan and ‘no doubt it will be done by Christmas, but I am not going to hurry it’. Orwell told Moore on 6 December that he had finished the rough draft and begun revising and that it should be finished by the middle of January (412). In mid-February, 1938, he supplied Moore with a carbon copy of the typescript (425). On 25 April 1938, Martin Secker & Warburg published 1,500 copies of Homage to Catalonia. (See 375, 377; for publication details and some account of reviews of the book, see 438.)

  Homage to Catalonia

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Orwell’s experience in Spain when fighting for the Republicans in the Civil War, and particularly what he saw of the actions of Communists against other political parties fighting Franco, had a profound influence upon his political attitudes, his writing and the publication of his books. Victor Gollancz, who had published Orwell’s first five books, rejected Homage to Catalonia, believing, as did many people on the Left, that everything should be sacrificed in order to preserve a common front against the rise of Fascism. Fredric Warburg agreed to bring out Orwell’s book and, in time (and partly as a result of Gollancz’s generous impulse), his company, Secker & Warburg, took over the publication of all Orwell’s books in Britain. The book’s publication on 25 April 1938 created some stir but sales were poor and, although only 1,500 copies were printed, they had not all been sold by the time a second edition was printed for the Uniform Edition on 21 February 1951. The only translation made in Orwell’s lifetime was into Italian, published in December 1948, and Homage to Catalonia was not published in the United States until February 1952.

  Orwell hoped that, if a second edition were published, it could be revised. He left notes for his Literary Executor indicating what he wanted changed; some four to six months before he died in January 1950 he marked up his copy of Homage to Catalonia showing what should be amended and sent it to Roger Senhouse, a Director of Secker & Warburg; and he was in correspondence with Madame Yvonne Davet about the changes to be made from as early as the spring of 1938. Senhouse, unfortunately, disregarded Orwell’s requests and the Uniform Edition merely reprinted the 1938 text (with additional errors). In France, Madame Davet made her translation even though publication had not been arranged. By 11 September 1938 Orwell had corrected the first six chapters of her work, and corrections to chapters VI–X were returned to her on 19 June 1939. The Second World War then intervened and it was not until 1947 that they could again correspond. Madame Davet’s translation was finally published by Gallimard in 1955 and this, unlike any of the editions in English published over a period of nearly half a century, did include many of the changes Orwell required. The most obvious of these was the removal of chapters V and XI from the body of the book, transferring them as appendixes to the end of the book, where Orwell considered it was more appropriate to place historical and political discussion of what otherwise was a personal account of his experiences.

  At various times thought was given to including a preface. Before the Second World War, Madame Davet suggested that Georges Kopp, Orwell’s commander in Spain, might be suitable; in 1947 she proposed André Malraux, but Orwell thought that he might find it ‘politically rather embarrassing’ at that stage of his career – he had acted as General de Gaulle’s Minister of Information from November 1945 to January 1946. In the event, only the American edition had a preface, written by Lionel Trilling.

  Some of the changes Orwell required can easily be made, although it is sometimes necessary to follow them up with consequential amendments because, for example, chapters V and XI have become appendixes. Some changes specifically required by Orwell present difficult problems and an editor has to do rather more than he would normally regard as appropriate to his task in order to carry them out. Thus, Orwell instructed (referring to the first edition):

  Pp. 161–242 [pp. 103–27, 138–69, 190–215]. All through these chapters are constant references to ‘Civil Guards’. Should be ‘Assault Guards’ all the way through. I was misled because the Assault Guards in Catalonia wore a different uniform from those afterwards sent from Valencia, and by the Spaniards referring indifferently to all these formations as ‘la guardia’. The remarks on p. 213 [p. 198] lines 14–17 and footnote should be regularised. The undoubted fact that Civil Guards often joined Franco when able to do so makes no reflection on the Assault Guards who were a formation
raised since the 2nd Republic. But the general reference to popular hostility to ‘la guardia’ and this having played its part in the Barcelona business should stand.

  Orwell’s confusion was shared by many historians. His error was pointed out to him by Geoffrey Gorer on 18 April 1938, but simply replacing ‘Assault’ for ‘Civil’ can lead to even worse confusion. On page 121, line 27 Orwell originally wrote: ‘It was easy enough to dodge the Assault Guard patrols; the danger was the Civil Guards in the “Moka”…’ Change ‘Civil’ to ‘Assault’ and what was happening is obscured. I have therefore distinguished between the ‘local Assault Guards’ and ‘Valencian Assault Guards’ when the sense demands this. In the first edition, Orwell wrote of the ‘hated Civil Guards’; changing ‘Civil’ to ‘Assault’ here switches the object of hatred. At this point the new edition simply reads ‘Assault Guards’ (page 116, line 22) but an opportunity was taken a few pages later (page 121, line 11) to reintroduce ‘hated’ in an appropriate context. Where Orwell wrote of the arrival of Assault Guards from Valencia (page 121, lines 10–11), ‘another formation similar to the Civil Guards’, this has been amended to read ‘another formation similar to the local Assault Guards and the hated Civil Guards’.

  Orwell’s list of changes has been drawn on to provide one or two additional footnotes (e.g., those on pages 47 and 99)*. The French edition has a few more explanatory footnotes, evidently the work of the translator though based on information provided by Orwell. These are recorded in the Textual Note to the Complete Works edition, VI/251–61 (Secker & Warburg, 1986). One, subsequently confirmed to the editor in 1984 by Stafford Cottman, Orwell’s youngest colleague in Spain, provides a useful gloss on a puzzling reference. Thomas Parker is said to have come ‘nearer to being a DSO than he cared about’ (page 73, line 11). The French edition explains that DSO parodied ‘Distinguished Service Order’ and meant ‘Dickie Shot Off’ (page 79).

  This edition, then, endeavours to put into effect Orwell’s explicit instructions for the revision of Homage to Catalonia and to make these changes as discreetly as is practicable.

  Peter Davison

  Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest

  thou also be like unto him.

  Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he

  be wise in his own conceit.

  Proverbs, xxvi.4–5

  I

  In the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona, the day before I joined the militia, I saw an Italian militiaman standing in front of the Officers’ table.

  He was a tough-looking youth of twenty-five or -six, with reddish-yellow hair and powerful shoulders. His peaked leather cap was pulled fiercely over one eye. He was standing in profile to me, his chin on his breast, gazing with a puzzled frown at a map which one of the officers had open on the table. Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend – the kind of face you would expect in an Anarchist, though as likely as not he was a Communist. There were both candour and ferocity in it; also the pathetic reverence that illiterate people have for their supposed superiors. Obviously he could not make head or tail of the map; obviously he regarded map-reading as a stupendous intellectual feat. I hardly know why, but I have seldom seen anyone – any man, I mean – to whom I have taken such an immediate liking. While they were talking round the table some remark brought it out that I was a foreigner. The Italian raised his head and said quickly:

  ‘Italiano?’

  I answered in my bad Spanish: ‘No, Inglés. Y tú?’

  ‘Italiano.’

  As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard. Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was as though his spirit and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy. I hoped he liked me as well as I liked him. But I also knew that to retain my first impression of him I must not see him again; and needless to say I never did see him again. One was always making contacts of that kind in Spain.

  I mention this Italian militiaman because he has stuck vividly in my memory. With his shabby uniform and fierce pathetic face he typifies for me the special atmosphere of that time. He is bound up with all my memories of that period of the war – the red flags in Barcelona, the gaunt trains full of shabby soldiers creeping to the front, the grey war-stricken towns further up the line, the muddy, ice-cold trenches in the mountains.

  This was in late December, 1936, less than seven months ago as I write, and yet it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance. Later events have obliterated it much more completely than they have obliterated 1935, or 1905, for that matter. 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. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing. To anyone who had been there since the beginning it probably seemed even in December or January that the revolutionary period was ending; but when one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted and its images burnt. Churches here and there were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised; even the bootblacks had been collectivised and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Señor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou’, and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos días’. Almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from an hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor cars, they had all been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of the militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognised it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for. Also I believed that things were as they appeared, that this was really a workers’ State and that the entire bourgeoisie had either fled, been killed, or voluntarily come over to the workers’ side; I did not realise that great numbers of well-to-do bourgeois were simply lying low and disguising themselves as proletarians for the time being.

  Together with all this there was something of the evil atmosphere of war. The town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostly shabby and half-empty. Meat was scarce and milk practically unobtainable, there was a shortage of coal, sugar, and petrol, and a really serious shortage of bread. Even at this period the bread-queues were often hundreds of yards long. Yet so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people
, and no beggars except the gipsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers’ shops were Anarchist notices (the barbers were mostly Anarchists) solemnly explaining that barbers were no longer slaves. In the streets were coloured posters appealing to prostitutes to stop being prostitutes. To anyone from the hard-boiled, sneering civilisation of the English-speaking races there was something rather pathetic in the literalness with which these idealistic Spaniards took the hackneyed phrases of revolution. At that time revolutionary ballads of the naïvest kind, all about proletarian brotherhood and the wickedness of Mussolini, were being sold on the streets for a few centimes each. I have often seen an illiterate militiaman buy one of these ballads, laboriously spell out the words, and then, when he had got the hang of it, begin singing it to an appropriate tune.

  All this time I was at the Lenin Barracks, ostensibly in training for the front. When I joined the militia I had been told that I should be sent to the front the next day, but in fact I had to wait while a fresh centuria was got ready. The workers’ militias, hurriedly raised by the trade unions at the beginning of the war, had not yet been organised on an ordinary army basis. The units of command were the ‘section’, of about thirty men, the centuria, of about a hundred men, and the ‘column’, which in practice meant any large number of men. The Lenin Barracks was a block of splendid stone buildings with a riding-school and enormous cobbled courtyards; it had been a cavalry barracks and had been captured during the July fighting. My centuria slept in one of the stables, under the stone mangers where the names of the cavalry chargers were still inscribed. All the horses had been seized and sent to the front, but the whole place still smelt of horse-piss and rotten oats. I was at the barracks about a week. Chiefly I remember the horsy smells, the quavering bugle-calls (all our buglers were amateurs – I first learned the Spanish bugle-calls by listening to them outside the Fascist lines), the tramp-tramp of hobnailed boots in the barrack yard, the long morning parades in the wintry sunshine, the wild games of football, fifty a side, in the gravelled riding-school. There were perhaps a thousand men at the barracks, and a score or so of women, apart from the militiamen’s wives who did the cooking. 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. It is a thing that seems natural in time of revolution. Ideas were changing already, however. The militiamen had to be kept out of the riding-school while the women were drilling there, because they laughed at the women and put them off. A few months earlier no one would have seen anything comic in a woman handling a gun.