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leigonj: If you are generally interested in revolution/ civil war Reed's reportage from the Mexican Revolution (in some ways similar, in others quite different to Orwell's book) is well worth reading.
3.5 rounded up. This memoir won't give you much information about the history of the Spanish Civil War but it was an interesting memoir of one Orwell's experience as a fighter for the Republican army. ( )
Everything about this memoir rings true - from the shifting political winds on the Government/communist side of the Spanish Civil War, to the little details of life at war- the parasites, the sounds of artillery and bullets, the pastoral and rustic Spanish countryside.
Orwell is admired for his unfailing moral compass, unclouded by ideological allegiances. He clearly wants to do what is good and right, and is particularly attuned to the deadly ironies of radical political belief. He demonstrates heroism in his fight against the fascists, but he describes his own exploits matter-of-factly, leaving the impression that his courage was not unexceptional. He holds human beings in tender sympathy, with a special affection for the poor, the downtrodden, the working class. ( )
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Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. Proverbs XXVI, 5-6
Tilegnelse
Første ord
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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.
Citater
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...beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inveitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events.
In war, all soldiers are lousy, at least when it is warm enough.
But I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain!
The chief excitement was the arrival of Fascist deserters, who were brought under guard from the front line. Many of the troops opposite us on this part of the line were not Fascists at all, merely wretched conscripts who has been doing their military service at the time when war broke out and were only too anxious to escape.
It was the first time in my life I had fired a gun at a human being.
In this war, everyone always did miss everyone else, when it was humanly possible.
I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.
The way in which the working class in the democratic countries could really have helped her Spanish comrades was by industrial action—strikes and boycotts.
One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word ‘comrade’ stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality.
Orwell takes his place with these men as a figure. In one degree or another—they are geniuses, and he is not—if we ask what it is he stands for, what he is the figure of, the answer usually: the virtue of not being a genius, of fronting the world with nothing more than one’s simple, direct, undeceived intelligence, and a respect for the powers one does have, and the work one undertakes to do. (Introduction, by Lionel Trilling)
Not very much attention was paid to his truth—his book sold poorly in England, it had to be remaindered, it was not published in America, and the people to whom it should have said most responded to it not at all. (Introduction, by Lionel Trilling)
You could not, as before, ‘agree to differ’ and have drinks with a man who was supposedly your political opponent.
It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details of inter-party polemics; it is like diving into a cesspool.
There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.
...they agree on nothing except in putting the blame on the other side.
The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.
Sidste ord
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Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen--all sleeping in the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.
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