Dale Price at Dyspeptic Mutterings takes a look at Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia:
Orwell (L), photographed as member of the POUM militia forces
fighting for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War.
It is no understatement to say that George Orwell’s service as a volunteer soldier for the Spanish Republic during the 1936-39 conflict was the clarifying moment of his life:
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.
[The last eight words are sometimes lopped off of the above quote, an Orwellian edit I will not repeat.]
Such a statement makes reading Orwell’s works about the War an absolute necessity if one wants to understand him. These works are his war memoir, Homage to Catalonia (1938) and the pre-Homage notes contained in Spilling the Spanish Beans (1937), Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942), and Notes on Nationalism (1945).
But.
The unpleasant reality facing an observant Catholic reader of Orwell is that he reads as one who has drunk deeply from the wells of English hostility towards “Popery.” To be sure, he does not use terms like popery, Romanism or make derisive references such as “hocus-pocus.” But he did say things like “stinking Catholics,” alas. Orwell was baptised an Anglican and buried–at his direction–according to Anglican rites. He also seems to have periodically attended Anglican services despite being an atheist.
In addition to reflexive Anglican anti-Catholic attitudes, Orwell biographer Gordon Bowker also points to young Eric Blair’s sour experiences being educated by Ursuline nuns as a formative moment.
Even with the above in mind, Orwell’s casual–even occasionally celebratory–acceptance of the destruction of the Catholic Church in the Spanish Republic still shocks.
A January 1937 report presented to the ruling council of the Republic by minister-without-portfolio (and later justice minister) Manuel de Irujo revealed there was not one open Catholic church in Republican-held territory–with the exception of the Basque provinces.
The convents and abbeys had been emptied as well, and their former occupants usually imprisoned or shot.
At that point, the Republicans controlled at least half of Spain’s territory, and the majority of its population and urban areas.
The revolution had snuffed out open worship by Catholics. But that wasn’t all: de Irujo reported that Republican security forces made regular sweeps of private homes, removing and destroying religious items and paraphernalia.
As it turned out, de Irujo (himself a Basque) was the only minister who thought religious persecution was a problem, and the report was quietly buried.
[As an aside, one of the reasons the Basque region fell so quickly to the Nationalists during the latter’s 1937 offensive was that Basques as a whole–even the fiercely-separatist ones–were appalled by the violence of the revolution. Many Basques wanted to separate from Spain, but only a minuscule number wanted to separate from the faith. Plus, there were still a significant number of Basques with an attachment to Carlism, and the latter were all-in on the uprising.]
In Homage, the perceptive Orwell was correct when he observed that the Church in places like Catalonia had lost touch with the people. Too often it was in fact the dutiful handmaid/schoolmarm of those with money and power–something we still see in high places today. Indeed, in a visit to a Catalan cemetery, Orwell notes that he saw only one headstone with a religious message. He also archly reports that the secular headstones were larded with cringeworthy praise for the deceased.
So it would be fair to say that there existed a profound disconnect between the majority of Catalans and the faith of their forebears which happened long before the events of 1936.
And yet, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the public extirpation of the Church in the Republic met with Orwell’s approval. In Spilling the Spanish Beans, he describes the Church as parasitic and sneeringly dismisses reports of nuns being raped and murdered (the latter indisputably happened). In Homage, he describes with with unstinting admiration the leveling effect of the anarchist revolution in Barcelona, with the erasure of class distinctions and modes of behavior, and describes the dismantling of former churches as part of this sea change>
Go here to read the rest.
A few observations:
- Orwell was a man of the Left who gradually became horrified by much that was occurring on the Left. When he went to fight for the Republic that process was in its early stages.
- Orwell had the traditional, since the Reformation, English antipathy to Catholicism. Add to that Leftism and it was hard for him to work up any sympathy for Catholicism or Catholics. To put it bluntly, Orwell had a deep prejudice against believing Catholics.
- Orwell was a highly intelligent observer of Britain, but he knew bang all about Spain. He wasn’t alone in that ignorance, as almost all contemporary writings from the Left and the Right in Britain about the Spanish Civil War conjure up the phrase Invincible Ignorance.
- His Homage to Catalonia tells us a great deal about his own intellectual development, but his observations as to what was actually going on in Spain remind me of the musings of British men and women of the right who took part in some of the Nationalist tours of battlefields organized prior to the end of the war, ie not of much value. The one exception is Orwell’s account of the Communist successful effort to snuff out the Trotskyite POUM.
- Faithful readers of this blog know that I generally think highly of Orwell as an opponent of totalitarianism but such admiration does not blind me to his flaws, and in his writings on the Spanish Civil War some of his worst flaws are amply on display.
I’m a fan of Eric Blair.
A favorite quote was his on reporting on the Spanish CW – something like it didn’t have the kernel of truth contained in the common lie – that fits the US media.
But, I take what is good and flush down the loo the rest. I’m selective.
Years ago, I bought a large book with much of his writings, including Homage to Catalonia. I read the Homage based on outsized estimates of its value. I was disappointed. It wasn’t much on the war and less on the communist outrages – massacres of Catholic religious and laity.
The corporation I worked for had a large operation in Puerto Rico. I would work there often. One of my local colleagues told me he had an uncle who had fought in the Spanish CW with the reds. He found most noteworthy the use of political troops who followed the line in attacks shooting troops that weren’t moving forward.
It seemed as if Blair was turned off by the reds’ autophagy. Seemed as if murdering nuns was OK.
Unsolicited reading recommendation: Jack London’s short stories.
T. Shaw I saw some documentaries where it was said that there were death squads patrolling the streets of Berlin during the final Russian invasion of the city. They had the power to order summary execution for treason and desertion of those not fighting, usually public hanging to make an example of them to the remaining Germans.
True. The bad/good WWII movie “Fury” had that meme.
Stalin and Hitler were evil incarnate.
Hitler had a policy – I think ‘zippenschaft(?)’ – that a general’s family would be executed if he failed to fight his outfit to the last man.
Years ago, an article on WWII ‘issues’ estimated that in Stalingrad 10,000 to 20,000 soviet soldiers were shot by political troops for not advancing or deserting.
A couple of notes. Spain’s reconquista was a piecemeal affair, consequently its strong regional differences, some of which continue today. Orwell did not learn until late, if he ever did completely, the difference between authoritarian and totalitarian. A deconstruct of both words would have enlightened him greatly. Finally, it goes without saying that the literati of the day gave cover to the cruelty and the stupidity of the Republicans. Much of the fictional aspects of that war continue as revealed belief today, the mist egregious being that the republic was some sort of besieged democracy.
The lies told about the Spanish Civil War are an insult to History.
“The lies told about the Spanish Civil War are an insult to History.”
I would go so far as to say it was the birth of the West’s modern narrative creation–and enforcement–apparatus. And the Marxists still smart over the fact that they lost–which is why the lies must continue to pour forth.