So, I thought that I would write about Chaper 4, in which Levi introduces us to Null Achtzehn, Zero Eighteen. Levi tells that this is the only name that he has for him, "as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that Null Achtzehn is no longer a man" (42). I had thought that I would use this passage to talk about the psychological effects about a person being reduced to a number, and how Levi himself must resort to this "name" every single time that he refers to Null Achtzehn. There is definitely more to discuss about this, which is why I wanted to bring it up, but every time that I try to delve into this loss-of-name/loss-of-humanity that the camps utilize, I just become so distracted by the final interview at the end of the book.
I'm pretty sure that nearly all of our copies include the interview between Primo Levi and Philip Roth, but I can't help but wonder why.
After reading Survival in Auschwitz / If This Is a Man, I don't know why the publishers needed to place this interview at the end of the book, making it, in effect, Levi's final words on the subject. I wonder if they felt the need to finalize Levi's story and show that he had a life outside of Auschwitz and was able to look back at his story subjectively?
I don't believe that this is a well-done interview either. Roth's questions are long-winded, like he must have pre-written them and had been reading them from a piece of paper as he questioned Levi. This of course, makes the interview less organic, having Roth steer the conversation and at times make implications and assumptions that Levi then must turn into his own points. Yet, despite this, I feel that Levi leads the conversation, and that impressed me.
There were moments that I enjoyed in this interview, mostly learning that Levi had made the copper wire animals. There is something wonderfully poetic about that.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Primo Levi
As I read Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, I kept considering the tone of the writing, particularly after the video we watched in class last week that commented on his style and attributed it to his chemistry background. What amazes me is how beautiful the language of this book actually is. I'm reminded a bit of Lifton's book--how he is primarily an academic but his writing doesn't feel that way. We also talked in class last week about what makes "good writing" or "lyrical writing." I think (as Jen's blog title suggests), that Levi's language is beautiful even in its depiction of an "ugly world." Aside from perhaps being beautiful or pleasant, I think what makes writing good is its ability to produce an experience for the reader that engages their senses, though imagined. Being able to not only visualize the conditions in one's mind, but to smell, taste, hear, and feel the conditions. And to also experience an emotional reaction. Many of our blog posts touch on the idea of feeling disbelief in the Holocaust, in the sense that the conditions seem unimaginable and we wonder how this could really happen. Yet Primo Levi forces us to imagine it by holding nothing back in his details of the camp. And in this way, the tone does not necessarily sound hopeful but rather matter-of-fact and with a sense of urgency to reveal what he has witnessed. (I found his dream of telling his story to indifferent listeners to be quite significant to how he [and other survivors] must have felt. That fear of not being able to tell the story seems to feed the urgency of the book itself.) He also speaks to this need to tell the story in the preface: "The need to tell our story to 'the rest,' to make 'the rest' participate in it, had taken on for us, the character of an immediate and violent impulse....This book has been written to satisfy this need...as an interior liberation" (9).
After reading the preface, I moved forward with Levi's notion that this book's purpose is "to furnish documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind" (9). The key to survival in the camp, it turns out, is highly dependent on strength of mind.
A critical idea is of maintaining one's humanity--to try as hard as possible to remain men and not to become "beasts." On page 41, he explains, "One must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization." Chapter 9 ("The Drowned and the Saved") proved to be a significant chapter in this distinction. At the beginning of the chapter, Levi writes, "We would also like to consider that the Lager was pre-eminently a gigantic biological and social experiment."
On page 90, Levi explains what it means to be one of "the drowned"--a Muselmanner. "To sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the discipline of the work and the camp. Experience showed that only exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way. All the musselmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story." They "form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence...One hesitates to call them living: one hesistates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand."
To survive, in contrast, requires something much different: "Survival without renunciation of any part of one's own moral world was conceded only to very few superior individuals." But for the rest, they must rely on that renunciation. Levi tells us Henri's three methods to escape extermination: organization, pity, and theft.
I'll end with a quote from Chapter 14 "Kraus": "Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live" (131).
After reading the preface, I moved forward with Levi's notion that this book's purpose is "to furnish documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind" (9). The key to survival in the camp, it turns out, is highly dependent on strength of mind.
A critical idea is of maintaining one's humanity--to try as hard as possible to remain men and not to become "beasts." On page 41, he explains, "One must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization." Chapter 9 ("The Drowned and the Saved") proved to be a significant chapter in this distinction. At the beginning of the chapter, Levi writes, "We would also like to consider that the Lager was pre-eminently a gigantic biological and social experiment."
On page 90, Levi explains what it means to be one of "the drowned"--a Muselmanner. "To sink is the easiest of matters; it is enough to carry out all the orders one receives, to eat only the ration, to observe the discipline of the work and the camp. Experience showed that only exceptionally could one survive more than three months in this way. All the musselmans who finished in the gas chambers have the same story, or more exactly, have no story." They "form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence...One hesitates to call them living: one hesistates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand."
To survive, in contrast, requires something much different: "Survival without renunciation of any part of one's own moral world was conceded only to very few superior individuals." But for the rest, they must rely on that renunciation. Levi tells us Henri's three methods to escape extermination: organization, pity, and theft.
I'll end with a quote from Chapter 14 "Kraus": "Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live" (131).
The Exploration of the Unspeakable
I remember
one of the term papers I wrote for a graduate class called “Marxism and
Creativity” was about how certain events (in the case of that class
specifically, 9/11) were unspeakable. I related this to certain texts on the
holocaust (which, I realize now, almost nine years later, is something only a
cocky young academic would do), including Levi, on how the only way to deal
with these moments is to address them in a flat, observant style that does not
seek to add imaginative details or language, because those flourishes make the
event seem more than it is, and to do so makes in unspeakable. I thought that labeling something unspeakable
was more related to being unable to understand the experiences of others, to
maintaining a “polite” society, full of whitewashing to overlook the horrors
that occurred, to brush it all under the rug because we don’t want to deal with
moments of horror in human history.
What I didn’t realize at the time
that what was to label something unspeakable is to do so because we don’t have the
words to encapsulate these horrors, or we lack the linguistic capacity to write
about evil that becomes banal. It became clear to me reading this book, as it’s
a concept that Levi returns to repeatedly. He showcases this when he writes: “Then for the first time we became aware that
our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man.” It
strikes me that this is at the very heart of the text: giving the words that
are able to express these moments of horror, so that we may examine them as a
whole. After all, isn’t this what Levi means when he tells us early on that this
book “adds nothing to what is already known to readers throughout the world on
the disturbing question of the death camps . . . [and was not] written in order
to formulate new accusations; it should be able, rather, to furnish documentation
for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind.”? The text is looking
to speak that which there are no words for, and to let us witness the process
which led Levi to those moments.
I came across a book, Primo Levi: A Matter of a Life by Berel
Lang, over the weekend as I was trying to get these thoughts on the unspeakable
into some functional order. In it,
Lang writes, “The issue raised by [terms
like unspeakable] involves the relation between language and experience or,
more generally, between language and history: are there intrinsic limits to the
capacity of language to represent personal or collective experience? All experience? The most extreme moments
of types of experience?” Can anything be put into text as to encapsulate the
horrors of places like the death camps? Can voicing these moments give us
understanding into moments where evil becomes bureaucratic? Where unspeakable
becomes more synonymous with being unimaginable or inconceivable?
It
strikes me that is a question that Levi is wrestling with throughout the text,
or at least the area that he is functioning in as a writer. We see this during
constant examination of what it means to be a prisoner at the camp, both in
relation to other prisoners (“There are few men who knew how to go to their
deaths with dignity, and often they are not those whom one would expect.” or “whoever
thinks he is going to live is mad, it means that he has swallowed the bait, but
I have not.”) and to his own state of being, specifically in the more personal
examinations on life (“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect
happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the
antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.”). In speaking
what was previously unspeakable, it must be imagined, acknowledged, conceived
in a manner conducive to language (which, when you think about how Levi supervised
the translations of the book, means that there had to be examination in multiple
languages), and thus become able to be read, to be witnessed, to be examined for
whatever meaning that may be gleaned from the experience of reading an
experience.
Working and Reporting and Sciencing
At the end of my edition of the book is included a conversation between Levi and Phillip Roth. At one point Roth asks Levi about his balancing of the scientific and writerly part of his mind and Levi responds--
From the interview I learned that Levi worked with more literary intent and had a fun time writing his later books, especially If Not Now, When. But I find it difficult to think of writing as the same thing they were doing in the camp and as the thing that is the most quotidian thing in the world--work. I had about as hard a time reading Roth's verbose introduction to the conversation as I did reading Levi's bare prose. Which is worse to complain about--the work of writing or the work of reading? Is it right to assume leisure on either of them that they're works of leisure and therefore not subject to complaint?
P.S. -- one other chemist-writer I know is Padgett Powell, my favorite writer. His novel A Woman Named Drown is kind of explicitly about being a chemist-writer, but all of his works have that science-led lyricism. He's more fun than Levi.
I lived my camp life as rationally as I could, and I wrote If This is a Man struggling to explain to others, and to myself, the events I had been involved in, but with no definite literary intention. My model (or, if you prefer, my style) was that of the "weekly report" commonly used in factories: it must be precise, concise, and written in a language comprehensible to everybody in the industrial hierarchy. And certainly not written in scientific jargon. By the way, I am not a scientist, nor have I ever been...I had to limit myself to being a technician throughout my professional life.I was struck by the "no literary intent" and the model of a "weekly report." In an ostensible "work camp" that insists "work will set you free" there is no freedom and only a useless and senseless mockery of work; so in the book that attempts to describe the useless and senseless work done there, the writer might be undercut by the tendencies of writing with "literary intent"--tendencies toward further mockery or forced metaphor or any cohesion that would belie Levi's belief that luck was the largest factor in any person's survival there. The writer of a book like that is probably better served, as Levi was, by offering reports of the vulgar absurdities as precisely and concisely as possible. The reader (and the writer, probably) has already proved ill-equipped to deal with this subject matter on a broader level (hence such unworthy words "vulgar" and "absurd")--so perhaps the only place to start is from the technician's report.
From the interview I learned that Levi worked with more literary intent and had a fun time writing his later books, especially If Not Now, When. But I find it difficult to think of writing as the same thing they were doing in the camp and as the thing that is the most quotidian thing in the world--work. I had about as hard a time reading Roth's verbose introduction to the conversation as I did reading Levi's bare prose. Which is worse to complain about--the work of writing or the work of reading? Is it right to assume leisure on either of them that they're works of leisure and therefore not subject to complaint?
P.S. -- one other chemist-writer I know is Padgett Powell, my favorite writer. His novel A Woman Named Drown is kind of explicitly about being a chemist-writer, but all of his works have that science-led lyricism. He's more fun than Levi.
Survival in Auschwitz : Using Beautiful Language to Depict an Ugly World
After reading Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, I sat and tried to determine which aspect of this extraordinary book moved me the most. Although the memoir contained many levels and forms of torture and degradation, I found my mind continually drawn to the lyrical and, at times, heartbreakingly beautiful language used to describe much harrowing and dehumanizing experiences. I was amazed that such beautiful language could so vividly describe the revolting and horrifying way that the Jews were systematically broken down into lifeless Haftlinge before being exterminated. Levi's lyrical writing made his survival story so real that I felt like I was joining him as he was pushed further and further away from his humanity, his sense of self. Through his gift of language, Levi was able to make the reader understand how he could say that the victims of the Holocaust weren't men, weren't human, rather than the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. His evocative writing allowed the reader to understand that enduring such extreme suffering and deprivation can extinguish the spark of life necessary to be considered a man, a human being. Levi's words painted a clear picture of the Haftlinge's inability to hope, to dream or to concentrate on anything besides the cold, their hunger and their physical pain. The SS officers, on the other hand, according to Levi, could still be considered men, albeit evil men, because they still desired things and cared about their futures, as they were certain they would have futures.
Even when it became clear that the tide of the war was changing and that the allied forces were drawing nearer, the Jews viewed these changes with complete indifference. Levi captured this indifference with the following eloquent words: "...it was not a conscious resignation, but the opaque torpor of beasts broken in by blows, whom the blows no longer hurt" (118). This lyrical sentence was just one example of the way Levi conveyed the complete lack of hope and soul annihilating despair that defined the life of the Jewish prisoners. Levi artfully explained further that their dehumanizing treatment within the camp and lack of connection with the outside world led the Jewish prisoners to feel as if they were "untouchables," condemned to a life of suffering and unworthy of interactions with ordinary civilians. These feelings of condemnation and sub-human status made Levi and his fellow Haftlinge believe that they had no say in their own fates so there was no point wondering what would happen to them when the Russians made it to Auschwitz. Months of being completely at the German's mercy caused the Jewish prisoners to be doubtful that any change to the camp would better their situation. Their lives at the camp were rooted in hopelessness and a complete lack of power. As Levi stated in many unique and moving ways, to be human is to desire and to hope, and the Germans had made it their mission to strip the Jews of their humanity.
Levi's ability to move past the physical torture and pain the Jews suffered to the destruction of their individual identities and sense of human worth made this memoir so powerful to me. He created powerful images that depicted just what it meant and felt like to be an untouchable and how crushing such feelings can be to the human psyche. Most impressive of all, Levi managed to express the total annihilation of the human spirit in such hauntingly beautiful prose, prose that stayed with me long after I finished reading the book.
Even when it became clear that the tide of the war was changing and that the allied forces were drawing nearer, the Jews viewed these changes with complete indifference. Levi captured this indifference with the following eloquent words: "...it was not a conscious resignation, but the opaque torpor of beasts broken in by blows, whom the blows no longer hurt" (118). This lyrical sentence was just one example of the way Levi conveyed the complete lack of hope and soul annihilating despair that defined the life of the Jewish prisoners. Levi artfully explained further that their dehumanizing treatment within the camp and lack of connection with the outside world led the Jewish prisoners to feel as if they were "untouchables," condemned to a life of suffering and unworthy of interactions with ordinary civilians. These feelings of condemnation and sub-human status made Levi and his fellow Haftlinge believe that they had no say in their own fates so there was no point wondering what would happen to them when the Russians made it to Auschwitz. Months of being completely at the German's mercy caused the Jewish prisoners to be doubtful that any change to the camp would better their situation. Their lives at the camp were rooted in hopelessness and a complete lack of power. As Levi stated in many unique and moving ways, to be human is to desire and to hope, and the Germans had made it their mission to strip the Jews of their humanity.
Levi's ability to move past the physical torture and pain the Jews suffered to the destruction of their individual identities and sense of human worth made this memoir so powerful to me. He created powerful images that depicted just what it meant and felt like to be an untouchable and how crushing such feelings can be to the human psyche. Most impressive of all, Levi managed to express the total annihilation of the human spirit in such hauntingly beautiful prose, prose that stayed with me long after I finished reading the book.
Humanity Must Prevail
I remember in 9th grade I read Night. I finished reading it and just sat. It's impossible to form a reaction other than shock and disgust at humanity. Though, also an awe for the survival of humanity, despite it all. People outlasted the execution of the extermination of a race. It is our duty as humans to listen to the stories people have to tell. Eye witness accounts. Victims of unimaginable cruelty. Cogs in the machine meticulously designed and programmed for sparing nobody.
In most every book we have read so far the word "truth" is somewhere in the description or reviews. In the last line of Levi's introduction he states, "It seems to me unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented." The inherent desire to deny these attrocities is almost understandable--not in the ability to turn a cheek to the deaths of millions or the torture of countless others, but to not wanting to believe that people were capable of all of this. That is why these memoirs are so important. They are first hand accounts of what happened--it is undeniable and the information and perspective they give is as important as it is, in every sense of the word, disheartening.
I feel I am underplaying just how moving and important Survival In Auschwitz (and similar books) are. It is imperative that we know our past. That we are informed. That a generation is not silenced. A few years ago I spent my spring break traveling around western Europe (I traveled exclusively by train and yes, I did call my trip spring training). One day I was in Munich and I intended to do a free tour of the city. There were also several candy shops I had been eying and wanted to check out. When I got to Marienplatz I learned that the only tour of Dachau taking place during my time in Germany was leaving in twenty minutes. I had not planned to do this today. I hadn't eaten, I didn't have my good camera, and I just overall didn't expect to spend my day at Dachau. I'm not sure if I thought there was going to be a good time, mentally, to do this...but whatever the case may have been, I decided that I didn't want to miss seeing Dachau and would subsequently be leaving in twenty minutes. I grabbed a quick apple strudel and boarded the train. Walking through Dachau was the most eery thing I have ever done. The sky was the most pure blue. I learned that in the summer, the camp is 4 degrees warmer than the surrounding area and during the winter, the camp is 4 degrees colder than the surrounding area. The conditions of these concentration camps was unbelievable to see. I don't think I spoke for any of the hours of the tour.
While reading Survival in Auschwitz I had the same reaction. This sort of awe at the fact of not only what people survived, but the calculated pain that humans inflicted upon other humans. The discrimination of an entire people, and furthermore the lack of discrimination in mechanical murder--everybody was the same and deserved death for simply being.
The inner strength of humanity to prevail through these mass, extended atrocities is something everybody should be exposed to. We need to learn.
In most every book we have read so far the word "truth" is somewhere in the description or reviews. In the last line of Levi's introduction he states, "It seems to me unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented." The inherent desire to deny these attrocities is almost understandable--not in the ability to turn a cheek to the deaths of millions or the torture of countless others, but to not wanting to believe that people were capable of all of this. That is why these memoirs are so important. They are first hand accounts of what happened--it is undeniable and the information and perspective they give is as important as it is, in every sense of the word, disheartening.
I feel I am underplaying just how moving and important Survival In Auschwitz (and similar books) are. It is imperative that we know our past. That we are informed. That a generation is not silenced. A few years ago I spent my spring break traveling around western Europe (I traveled exclusively by train and yes, I did call my trip spring training). One day I was in Munich and I intended to do a free tour of the city. There were also several candy shops I had been eying and wanted to check out. When I got to Marienplatz I learned that the only tour of Dachau taking place during my time in Germany was leaving in twenty minutes. I had not planned to do this today. I hadn't eaten, I didn't have my good camera, and I just overall didn't expect to spend my day at Dachau. I'm not sure if I thought there was going to be a good time, mentally, to do this...but whatever the case may have been, I decided that I didn't want to miss seeing Dachau and would subsequently be leaving in twenty minutes. I grabbed a quick apple strudel and boarded the train. Walking through Dachau was the most eery thing I have ever done. The sky was the most pure blue. I learned that in the summer, the camp is 4 degrees warmer than the surrounding area and during the winter, the camp is 4 degrees colder than the surrounding area. The conditions of these concentration camps was unbelievable to see. I don't think I spoke for any of the hours of the tour.
While reading Survival in Auschwitz I had the same reaction. This sort of awe at the fact of not only what people survived, but the calculated pain that humans inflicted upon other humans. The discrimination of an entire people, and furthermore the lack of discrimination in mechanical murder--everybody was the same and deserved death for simply being.
The inner strength of humanity to prevail through these mass, extended atrocities is something everybody should be exposed to. We need to learn.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
survival of the mind as well as the body
As we once again face genocide head on, this time in Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, we are forced to contemplate the horrors committed by human beings onto other human beings. Levi tells a story of survival under the most inhumane conditions. This truly is a story about survival: what would it take for a person to survive such atrocities? At the end of the book, there is an interview between Philip Roth and Levi, in which Levi contributes his survival to luck: the luck in getting sent to Auschwitz in 1944, when the life span of the worker was lengthened; luck in knowing German, luck in getting sick only once, at the "right moment." Certainly, these factors worked in his favor, but I wondered at the mental capacity it takes to endure such hardships without giving up.
On page 129, Levi writes: "Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live ... as sometimes happens, when you really seem to lie on the bottom - well, even in that case, at any moment you want you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence ... then it would stop raining." This describes not only the various "fortunes" one could attribute to their survival, but also of the (however small) desire to live that prevents inmates from going over and touching the electric fence, as it were. I find that will to live, to conquer such atrocities, to be an interesting aspect of the horror of genocide. How much can a human endure? What are the limits of a man's desire to live? At the point of suffering in which a human ceases to feel like a human at all, but rather, becomes something less, something not quite real - and still he strives to survive, what does that mean about him, about humanity in general?
On page 129, Levi writes: "Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live ... as sometimes happens, when you really seem to lie on the bottom - well, even in that case, at any moment you want you could always go and touch the electric wire-fence ... then it would stop raining." This describes not only the various "fortunes" one could attribute to their survival, but also of the (however small) desire to live that prevents inmates from going over and touching the electric fence, as it were. I find that will to live, to conquer such atrocities, to be an interesting aspect of the horror of genocide. How much can a human endure? What are the limits of a man's desire to live? At the point of suffering in which a human ceases to feel like a human at all, but rather, becomes something less, something not quite real - and still he strives to survive, what does that mean about him, about humanity in general?
Organized Exterminaton
I think it's difficult to write anything about the Holocaust because for us, as outsiders in terms of presence and time (being born long afterwards), it's simply difficult to wrap our minds around something that fundamentally evil. Since we just read Balakian, the idea of how the Holocaust compares against the Armenian genocide, or other instances of genocide (Slavey, Rwanda, Cambodia, etc.) enters the mind.
For me, the difference between the Holocaust and other instances of genocide has been its organized, mechanical nature. This is, of course, not to say that other instances of mass murder were less atrocious; all of them are atrocities and should be treated as such. But the sort of slick machinery of the Holocaust in terms of how it dehumanized its victims (as described in Levi's first couple chapters, especially At the Bottom and Initiation) sets it apart from the others for me, and makes it more horrifying. It wasn't enough to simply kill the Jews and other victims, they had to be systematically stripped of their identity and culture before their inevitable death. Even slavery, which reduced human beings to property, had the end goal of efficient labor. The dehumanization there was just as cruel, but the endgame wasn't immediate. You worked until you died; death itself was not the goal as it was in Auschwitz and other death camps. I'm not sure if this makes a new point or raises any important conversation, but it's always the thing that strikes me when reading the writing of Holocaust survivors, and something that I often cannot shake after reading their work.
For me, the difference between the Holocaust and other instances of genocide has been its organized, mechanical nature. This is, of course, not to say that other instances of mass murder were less atrocious; all of them are atrocities and should be treated as such. But the sort of slick machinery of the Holocaust in terms of how it dehumanized its victims (as described in Levi's first couple chapters, especially At the Bottom and Initiation) sets it apart from the others for me, and makes it more horrifying. It wasn't enough to simply kill the Jews and other victims, they had to be systematically stripped of their identity and culture before their inevitable death. Even slavery, which reduced human beings to property, had the end goal of efficient labor. The dehumanization there was just as cruel, but the endgame wasn't immediate. You worked until you died; death itself was not the goal as it was in Auschwitz and other death camps. I'm not sure if this makes a new point or raises any important conversation, but it's always the thing that strikes me when reading the writing of Holocaust survivors, and something that I often cannot shake after reading their work.
Survival in Auschwitz : "You Who Live Safe"
Following from previous discussions of “bearing witness,” I started
Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir wondering about the drive to survie extreme
circumstances in order to recount them, i.e. to bear witness. In an early section
of the book Levi even mentions a defiant impulse to survive, that one “must
survive, to tell the story, to bear witness” (41). Again, we have a writer
wishing to portray something others might not want the world to see, just as Balkian
wanted to summon the voices of the Armenian dead in the face of Turkish denial,
and as Orwell outlined an eyewitness account of the Spanish Civil War to
complicate the simplified reports of Eastern and Western propagandists.
What I find interesting in this case is the sense that Levi
lays a burden of witnessing on his audience, at least in the poem that precedes
the memoir. The poem seems to dare readers to ignore Levi’s account, even going
so far as to invoke a curse on those willing to forget the events he had to
live through. Before even beginning his story, Levi pre-emptively attacks any
attempts to deny these truths—whether they are straightforward denials or the
mind’s impulse to balk at horrific events. It seems that all the writers before
have trusted us to read and consider their testimonies, but Levi believes the
stakes are higher. It’s as though, with this poem, he challenges us not simply
to read (and then forget) this memoir but to absorb and repeat it. I think it
is interesting that this elevates the importance and the responsibility of the
reader when it comes to discussing and understanding events as dark and tangled
as this.
Survival of the Mind
As I read Survival in Auschwitz I returned again and again to the final line of Levi's preface: "It seems to me unnecessary to add that none of the facts are invented" (10). Why did I keep returning to that statement? I kept raising my hand to my mouth, shutting my eyes, re-reading lines as though they might (hoping they might) suddenly become less horrific. They didn't, of course. I'm still grappling with the fact that Levi's book consists entirely of these horrific, factual recollections of life (if one can call it that) in Auschwitz. I still have trouble accepting that this was reality. And I imagine many survivors do, or did, or have, too. And that leads me to what I believe is the main subject of this post, and of Levi's book: the mind.
In his preface, Levi writes, "this book of mine adds nothing to what is already known to readers throughout the world on the disturbing questions of the death camps. It has not been written in order to formulate new accusations; it should be able, rather, to furnish documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind" (9).
I was fascinated by the fact that survival was made possible almost only by way of the mind. If one ceased to be able to hold certain ideas--certain survival tactics, certain understandings of the hell they'd been thrown into, certain definitions (many newly created as a result of suffering, of life and death and the question of morality in this world)--in their mind, they seemingly died (in spirit and in mind and, later, as a consequence, in body). The mind determined one's fate.
This in itself is a difficult idea to come to terms with.
Levi explores many dimensions of the mind and survival, some of which are the ethical dilemmas (or forfeiting of ethics) in becoming a thief, a traitor...
I was also amazed by Levi's articulation of the idea that there is a difference between being unhappy as a free man and being unhappy as a prisoner of Auschwitz--"For a few hours we can be unhappy in the manner of free men" (76).
The following is another stunning articulation of the imprisoned human and their mind: "For human nature is such that grief and pain--even simultaneously suffered--do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving in the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life one hears it said that man is never content. In fact it is not a question of a human incapacity for a state of absolute happiness, but of an ever-insufficient knowledge of the complex nature of the state of unhappiness; so that the single name of the major cause is given to all its causes, which are composite and set out in an order of urgency" (73).
I want to end with this quote from the chapter titled "The Drowned and the Saved," with Levi's haunting description of living men as dead:
"Their life is short, but their number is endless; they, the Muselmanner, the drowned, form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass, continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to really suffer. One hesitates to call their death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to understand" (90).
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Primo Levi and Cormac McCarthy
I take some pride in finishing a book I've started to read. I don't know when or how it exactly became a point in my life, but it has surely inhabited me -- almost become an ethos. Perhaps I imbue the written word or the work of the author with too much reverence. There are certainly cases when this notion has been seriously disabused. Most of it coming from the free section of Amazon's Kindle selections, but even then I try to find something in the work or the genre or the style that I can learn from.
There was a time I couldn't finish a book. Blood Meridien by Cormac McCarthy inhabited me in a way I still fully haven't come to terms with. Perhaps it was the immensity of the prodigious art of his words wrapping around the most terrible atrocities that made it seem almost profane to me. But from the very first night, the words took hold and I slept haunted by nightmares as if the words were taking root somehow. After a few days (and I am normally a fast reader) I just couldn't continue.
Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz struck me as a similar exercise in art finding a way through horror. Perhaps in this case I have come to terms with the feelings the work engenders, perhaps it was Levi finding a way to maintain his humanity in the most dire of circumstances that helped me to turn the corner. His rawness and his poetic turns struck me as reassuring even as the horrible Nazi machine ground away against an entire race.
That he would bear witness to these crimes and still find a way to come back to a moral humanity was profoundly inspiring, although no less difficult to read at times. His determination to give names, to name the victims he could recall, was particularly poignant and struck me as an important part of his struggle against the forces that strove so hard to strip them of that humanity. "Therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness," he wrote. "No one must leave here and so carry to the world, together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man's presumption made of man in Auschwitz."
Perhaps that is what McCarthy was lacking in his work, this hope for humanity. I will sleep easier with The Canto of Ulysses in my mind. "Think of your breed; for brutish ignorance. Your mettle was not made; you were made men, to follow after knowledge and excellence."
There was a time I couldn't finish a book. Blood Meridien by Cormac McCarthy inhabited me in a way I still fully haven't come to terms with. Perhaps it was the immensity of the prodigious art of his words wrapping around the most terrible atrocities that made it seem almost profane to me. But from the very first night, the words took hold and I slept haunted by nightmares as if the words were taking root somehow. After a few days (and I am normally a fast reader) I just couldn't continue.
Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz struck me as a similar exercise in art finding a way through horror. Perhaps in this case I have come to terms with the feelings the work engenders, perhaps it was Levi finding a way to maintain his humanity in the most dire of circumstances that helped me to turn the corner. His rawness and his poetic turns struck me as reassuring even as the horrible Nazi machine ground away against an entire race.
That he would bear witness to these crimes and still find a way to come back to a moral humanity was profoundly inspiring, although no less difficult to read at times. His determination to give names, to name the victims he could recall, was particularly poignant and struck me as an important part of his struggle against the forces that strove so hard to strip them of that humanity. "Therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness," he wrote. "No one must leave here and so carry to the world, together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man's presumption made of man in Auschwitz."
Perhaps that is what McCarthy was lacking in his work, this hope for humanity. I will sleep easier with The Canto of Ulysses in my mind. "Think of your breed; for brutish ignorance. Your mettle was not made; you were made men, to follow after knowledge and excellence."
Orwell's Defense of P.O.U.M.
After reading this book, it's clear why Orwell hated propaganda. Yet this memoir not only warned against the terror wars caused by propaganda, but by writing the novel the way he did, Orwell's example shows a way to directly fight against the use of propaganda.
First, I should mention that I was tempted to skip the book's more political chapters, as Orwell advises: "It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details of inter-party politics; it is like diving into a cesspool" (149). His warning of what was to come in the following chapters and the admission that he himself does not have interest in the world of politics seemed quite ominous, making me more than ever want to avoid said chapters before I even started reading them. Of course, I realized that Orwell's special nod to the upcoming chapter made it all the more reason to pay even closer attention, especially after the line, "This squalid brawl in a distant city is more important than might appear at first sight" (149). So, after a bit of mental preparation for what I believe was going to be a long-winded and confusing twenty or so pages, I dug into chapter eleven.
And I was surprised and impressed with what I found. Orwell deftly explains how the news stories contradict each other and shows that he and his fellow P.O.U.M. members were being arrested and imprisoned, and even killed, all because of this propaganda war that was created to instill fear and create an atmosphere of suspicion. Yet, by writing this memoir, Orwell is able to fight against this by using logic, reason, and common sense. He quotes news sources of the time, which anyone could double check, and shows that the journalists don't have a clue as to what is really going on in the war. He even points out that there was no evidence to make the arrests, for if the evidence that they claimed actually existed, then why weren't they using it to incriminate the people that they kept locked in the jail cells?
I found these sections eye-opening. I see it as a way for Orwell to advocate for people to think clearly for themselves. He showed how the media created distrust by using misinformation, but by reading Orwell's explanation of how controlling politics becomes, we find that we must raise our knowledge to a higher standard.
Orwell needed a way to fight against propaganda, and he found a way to do so by writing this memoir.
First, I should mention that I was tempted to skip the book's more political chapters, as Orwell advises: "It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details of inter-party politics; it is like diving into a cesspool" (149). His warning of what was to come in the following chapters and the admission that he himself does not have interest in the world of politics seemed quite ominous, making me more than ever want to avoid said chapters before I even started reading them. Of course, I realized that Orwell's special nod to the upcoming chapter made it all the more reason to pay even closer attention, especially after the line, "This squalid brawl in a distant city is more important than might appear at first sight" (149). So, after a bit of mental preparation for what I believe was going to be a long-winded and confusing twenty or so pages, I dug into chapter eleven.
And I was surprised and impressed with what I found. Orwell deftly explains how the news stories contradict each other and shows that he and his fellow P.O.U.M. members were being arrested and imprisoned, and even killed, all because of this propaganda war that was created to instill fear and create an atmosphere of suspicion. Yet, by writing this memoir, Orwell is able to fight against this by using logic, reason, and common sense. He quotes news sources of the time, which anyone could double check, and shows that the journalists don't have a clue as to what is really going on in the war. He even points out that there was no evidence to make the arrests, for if the evidence that they claimed actually existed, then why weren't they using it to incriminate the people that they kept locked in the jail cells?
I found these sections eye-opening. I see it as a way for Orwell to advocate for people to think clearly for themselves. He showed how the media created distrust by using misinformation, but by reading Orwell's explanation of how controlling politics becomes, we find that we must raise our knowledge to a higher standard.
Orwell needed a way to fight against propaganda, and he found a way to do so by writing this memoir.
Orwell the Journalist, On Journalism
As the book progressed, passages where Orwell talked about how journalists were dictating the terms of the war from hundreds of miles distance of the fronts stuck out to me. Perhaps because he was a writer who sought first person experience, when he wrote about journalists who harmfully did otherwise, his writing was very clear.
The people who write that stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalist do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history--a jingo with a bullet-hole in him. (pg 66)Orwell gets his bullet later--so it makes me very happy that he still feels strongly enough about the life/death consequences of propaganda that he continues to hold that image of justice.
I am aware that it is now the fashion to deny that socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that socialism means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. (pg 104)I never expected the motif of journalistic mistrust to be the very thing that disillusioned Orwell to the war--I had just been seeing it as a minor gripe like Graves had had. But the detail with which he makes his case in Chapter XI and XII--the concern he has about the lack of credible sources to which future generations will have to look to--all of that was hugely inspiring even if it was the less narratively fruitful as the rest of the book. He noticed all that right away--eight months or so after he was out of the country, he knew there was a shortage of real journalism on the war that he'd experienced. New hero.
Patterns upon patterns upon patterns
There is a continued understanding from graves to Orwell, that trench warfare was much less focused on killing and instead surviving. More specifically not surviving the enemy, but the wild. I forgot the place, but there was a point where Orwell describes the five things he found most terrifying and worrisome. The list included heat and cigarettes with the least concerning being the enemy. Because the shortage of weapons, the main tool used to fight, which is the main action of war, the game was more psychological. Much of the description mirrors what graves mentions in his book.
I am curious about this from a game design standpoint. If trench warfare would be turned into a game representative of the experience these men went through, it would look nothing like Call of Duty or other popular multiplayer shooters we think of when we think of "war simulations." The main mechanic would not be shooting, not according to Orwell, who didn't even receive a rifle until he left for the front lines. He even mentioned at one point how he fired so few bullets that to kill a fascist it would take him, at that rate, 20 years.
I understand no one very much cares about this from a game perspective, (nerd alert) but I also think it's interesting to note how this shifts our cultured idea of what we think war is compared to what war actually manifests as. The question of why our media represents war as a gruesome bloody landscape of perpetual batting and fighting and shooting and killing is important to raise. What is trying to be conveyed here? That war is "fun" or "adventuresome" or "hearty" "manly"? That you should join?
I am planning to write my paper from a game studies perspective, probing into the idea of whether war can be considered a game on the theoretical level and how media representations create the illusion of what war is for propaganda purposes. I think it's important to understand how trauma affects a person (whether direct like Orwell or graves or indirect like balakian) and how that ties into the system of war itself. Orwell gives us yet another perspective of war as a system being played by political parties and using people as pawns in their dealings, whether for an ultimate good or evil, the game is still being played by both sides.
I am curious about this from a game design standpoint. If trench warfare would be turned into a game representative of the experience these men went through, it would look nothing like Call of Duty or other popular multiplayer shooters we think of when we think of "war simulations." The main mechanic would not be shooting, not according to Orwell, who didn't even receive a rifle until he left for the front lines. He even mentioned at one point how he fired so few bullets that to kill a fascist it would take him, at that rate, 20 years.
I understand no one very much cares about this from a game perspective, (nerd alert) but I also think it's interesting to note how this shifts our cultured idea of what we think war is compared to what war actually manifests as. The question of why our media represents war as a gruesome bloody landscape of perpetual batting and fighting and shooting and killing is important to raise. What is trying to be conveyed here? That war is "fun" or "adventuresome" or "hearty" "manly"? That you should join?
I am planning to write my paper from a game studies perspective, probing into the idea of whether war can be considered a game on the theoretical level and how media representations create the illusion of what war is for propaganda purposes. I think it's important to understand how trauma affects a person (whether direct like Orwell or graves or indirect like balakian) and how that ties into the system of war itself. Orwell gives us yet another perspective of war as a system being played by political parties and using people as pawns in their dealings, whether for an ultimate good or evil, the game is still being played by both sides.
Orwell
I enjoyed this book much more than I anticipated. I think a lot of what fed this enjoyment was the tone Orwell upheld throughout the book. He incorporated so much humor. Like Caitlin pointed out, his descriptions of the Spaniards had me laughing, but he also shed such positive light on them and their generosity that I never found his humorous criticism to be offensive. It read as more playful an conversational, from someone who was frustrated by the disorganization and futility of the war. He also fueled that frustration in more serious tones and critiques of the war, pointing out contradictions not only within the press (another story entirely) but among the anti-Fascist groups within Spain. I thought these thoughts were best expressed by Orwell toward the end of the book when he tells us of those he knows that have been thrown in jail. And he writes so passionately about these men and all of the work and soul they put into the war only to be treated so awfully, as criminals.
My thoughts are going to be all over the place.
One of the other things I enjoyed about the book was Orwell'a descriptions. From the landscape to the trench conditions, everything was wonderfully specific and even poetic (even if he was describing something terrible). But the one scene that sticks out to me the most is his description of being shot. I don't think I have ever read anything like that. He writes those feelings so vividly that it became almost a physical experience to read.
Aside from the writing techniques, I appreciated Orwell's willingness to discuss how hard it is to write truthfully. Admitting to his biases and possible mistakes (many of which were cited in footnotes). I think that level of candor in writing lends itself to the reader trusting Orwell more. Not only does he point out contradictions and censorship in the press, but he strives to provide more accurate information to counter them and force us to examine the reality (as close as possible). If I have learned anything in the last few weeks of this course and in reading these books, it's that the responsibility of us as writers to wade through the propaganda and expose a reality and a truth. (And I've also really been able to see how heavily propaganda is used!) Although it's perhaps true that we cannot necessarily write from a completely unbiased standpoint, it's worth trying for.
My thoughts are going to be all over the place.
One of the other things I enjoyed about the book was Orwell'a descriptions. From the landscape to the trench conditions, everything was wonderfully specific and even poetic (even if he was describing something terrible). But the one scene that sticks out to me the most is his description of being shot. I don't think I have ever read anything like that. He writes those feelings so vividly that it became almost a physical experience to read.
Aside from the writing techniques, I appreciated Orwell's willingness to discuss how hard it is to write truthfully. Admitting to his biases and possible mistakes (many of which were cited in footnotes). I think that level of candor in writing lends itself to the reader trusting Orwell more. Not only does he point out contradictions and censorship in the press, but he strives to provide more accurate information to counter them and force us to examine the reality (as close as possible). If I have learned anything in the last few weeks of this course and in reading these books, it's that the responsibility of us as writers to wade through the propaganda and expose a reality and a truth. (And I've also really been able to see how heavily propaganda is used!) Although it's perhaps true that we cannot necessarily write from a completely unbiased standpoint, it's worth trying for.
Why I Hate My Gaps in Historical Knowledge
One of
the things that struck me reading Homage
to Catalonia is how much I didn’t know about the Spanish Civil War, and how
much having that knowledge really informs a text that is taking place within
narrative’s present tense. When I originally began reading the story I skipped
the introduction, as I always seem to do, because I find they sometimes give an
analytical reading of the entire narrative that may give away developments I
don’t want spoiled. However, after having read the opening chapters of Homage to Catalonia I thought there
would be something within the introduction that would give me some grounding to
the situation that Orwell found himself in when he joined the militia.
Thankfully it was there and I chided myself for thinking that a nonfiction
introduction would work in the same way as the introduction to a fictional
work.
With
that understanding, going back and rereading the opening chapters, while a
little more informed, still left me, for some reason, unable to be completely
grounded while reading the text. Perhaps I expected more of a straightforward chronology
of the war, as opposed to Orwell’s limited view and opining of what was going
on around his area specifically.
That
being said, while reading the memoir, I was still able to be caught up in
Orwell’s shifting views of the conflict that he had become a part of. His realizations
that this war was not like the ones he had expected and how the lack of organization
and shifting allegiances/goals of the politics were dismaying were fascinating
to read. I think upon reading a more straight forward history of the war, being
able to have a more concrete understanding of where this specific memoir exists
in the larger frame of the conflict and then returning to read it again is something
I’ll have to do, to fill in those gaps I’m disappointed in myself for having.
I don't have a good title, but Michaela's got that song stuck in my head.
I had a similar reading experience as Chris, in that as I read this book I was reminded of Graves' account of trench warfare. I found myself comparing the two, and wondering how the basic crux of "war" can be experienced in such completely different ways. Where Graves was incredibly traumatized due to the atrocities and fighting he experienced during WWI, Orwell's experiences were quiet, often frustrating. Like Michaela, I too was flabbergasted at the lack of guns. Orwell recounts how poorly supplied the militia was; they lacked not only guns but bayonets, tin hats, bombs. The supplies that they did have were laughably incompetent; on page 36, Orwell tells of the F.A.I. bomb, which was as dangerous to the thrower as to the men they were thrown at. In combination with these poor supplies, the men themselves were ill-prepared. Orwell was one of the few who even knew how to use a rifle, and when they did get guns, they got them with minimal instructions on how to use them. How can a war be fought like this?
But the lack of supplies and good soldiers speaks of the nature of this war itself; that is, there was hardly any fighting to require the need of such weapons. Orwell writes, "We were fighting pneumonia, not men." If one could visualize the utter pointlessness of war, the picture we are presented with here would be it - two sides camped out too far from one another to fight, without weapons to do so, reduced to calling insults back and forth as if words could replace bullets (and, to an extent, they could). I did find that the insult-throwing being somewhat effective was interesting, as it once again ties into the psychology of post-traumatic stress and how the conditions of war, whether there is extreme fighting or not, can get to a man. In this, I didn't find Orwell's experience so dramatically different from Graves' at all. The cold will get to you; the hunger will get to you; the frustration and the lack of sense will get to you.
To jump off of this, I enjoyed how Orwell laid out the political environment of this time and the causes of this conflict, though I also appreciated that he footnotes that he did not necessarily have these views at the time that he was involved in the fighting. I thought that was interesting because it ties into the mindset of, why do men fight in a war, why are they eager to sign up for this misery, if they do not even understand what it is they're fighting for? This is especially true in the case of the very young boys who enlisted to fight, boys less than fifteen who were likely seeking glory and adventure. What is the cost of glory and adventure or even a prolonging of every day life? Once again I think of Graves, and his motivations in joining the war to put off Oxford. What was the cost of this for him? In essence, he paid with his mental health for the rest of his life.
One last thing that really struck me was how the first time Orwell found himself under fire, he describes himself as being embarrassingly frightened; it reminded me that even in the most frustrating, slow war conditions, fear is still a very real thing.
But the lack of supplies and good soldiers speaks of the nature of this war itself; that is, there was hardly any fighting to require the need of such weapons. Orwell writes, "We were fighting pneumonia, not men." If one could visualize the utter pointlessness of war, the picture we are presented with here would be it - two sides camped out too far from one another to fight, without weapons to do so, reduced to calling insults back and forth as if words could replace bullets (and, to an extent, they could). I did find that the insult-throwing being somewhat effective was interesting, as it once again ties into the psychology of post-traumatic stress and how the conditions of war, whether there is extreme fighting or not, can get to a man. In this, I didn't find Orwell's experience so dramatically different from Graves' at all. The cold will get to you; the hunger will get to you; the frustration and the lack of sense will get to you.
To jump off of this, I enjoyed how Orwell laid out the political environment of this time and the causes of this conflict, though I also appreciated that he footnotes that he did not necessarily have these views at the time that he was involved in the fighting. I thought that was interesting because it ties into the mindset of, why do men fight in a war, why are they eager to sign up for this misery, if they do not even understand what it is they're fighting for? This is especially true in the case of the very young boys who enlisted to fight, boys less than fifteen who were likely seeking glory and adventure. What is the cost of glory and adventure or even a prolonging of every day life? Once again I think of Graves, and his motivations in joining the war to put off Oxford. What was the cost of this for him? In essence, he paid with his mental health for the rest of his life.
One last thing that really struck me was how the first time Orwell found himself under fire, he describes himself as being embarrassingly frightened; it reminded me that even in the most frustrating, slow war conditions, fear is still a very real thing.
War: (huuuuuuuh) What Is It Good For
Say it again, y'all...
The more memoirs I read for this class the more I realize how little I know about war. I grew up in America and, less one semester I spent experiencing first-hand Berlusconi riots, have lived here all my life. The media is constantly inundating us with images of war. TV shows portray what it is like to be a soldier. Movies capitalize on attempting to convey what it is to live through war...after war...everything. I consume all of these things. I love books, and TV, and films and have absorbed a plethora of information about how people say war is. That said, I should clarify that not all of the information I get is from fictional imaginings. And yet, I still cannot grasp what war is. Obviously, at a rudimentary level, I understand that there are sides and opposing views and, in theory, an objective which, upon achieving, will determine a winner.
Perhaps it's because the war that is going on in my life time is less cut and dry. Perhaps, it's because my experiences with war and soldiers are primarily *based* on real people and events, but not actually *the* real people. Perhaps, I was raised more hippie than I realized. Whatever the case may be, the more I read these memoirs about war and the life of a soldier, the more I realize how not systematic everything is. I believe David called it a "cluster fuck." That feels about right.
When Orwell is describing that people didn't even have GUNS, I was flabbergasted. How? HOW? That seems like the minimal requirement for a soldier. If you do not have guns, you literally just have a human...and a poorly trained, confused youth does not a soldier make. Every element just seemed like from all levels, they were inadequately prepared. Mentally, physically...guns...they didn't have guns. And, the guns that the did eventually get barely even functioned.
I am glad that I am reading all these memoirs about war. It is an interesting and vital perspective. I thought that I would understand war better after reading so much on first-hand accounts, but I'm realizing now that my original notion may have been scarily accurate. War is not clear-cut. Nothing is guaranteed. Manana. There are rules and regulations but, at the end of the day it's war; there are no rules and regulations. You fight, however you can when you can and where you can...and, in the end, you just hope for the best.
Also, as a gem that I found in this book, I loved that when Orwell was shot in the neck and people kept telling him people who lived who were shot through the neck were the luckiest people in the world...and he said that it would've been more lucky to never have been shot. That is gold.
The more memoirs I read for this class the more I realize how little I know about war. I grew up in America and, less one semester I spent experiencing first-hand Berlusconi riots, have lived here all my life. The media is constantly inundating us with images of war. TV shows portray what it is like to be a soldier. Movies capitalize on attempting to convey what it is to live through war...after war...everything. I consume all of these things. I love books, and TV, and films and have absorbed a plethora of information about how people say war is. That said, I should clarify that not all of the information I get is from fictional imaginings. And yet, I still cannot grasp what war is. Obviously, at a rudimentary level, I understand that there are sides and opposing views and, in theory, an objective which, upon achieving, will determine a winner.
Perhaps it's because the war that is going on in my life time is less cut and dry. Perhaps, it's because my experiences with war and soldiers are primarily *based* on real people and events, but not actually *the* real people. Perhaps, I was raised more hippie than I realized. Whatever the case may be, the more I read these memoirs about war and the life of a soldier, the more I realize how not systematic everything is. I believe David called it a "cluster fuck." That feels about right.
When Orwell is describing that people didn't even have GUNS, I was flabbergasted. How? HOW? That seems like the minimal requirement for a soldier. If you do not have guns, you literally just have a human...and a poorly trained, confused youth does not a soldier make. Every element just seemed like from all levels, they were inadequately prepared. Mentally, physically...guns...they didn't have guns. And, the guns that the did eventually get barely even functioned.
I am glad that I am reading all these memoirs about war. It is an interesting and vital perspective. I thought that I would understand war better after reading so much on first-hand accounts, but I'm realizing now that my original notion may have been scarily accurate. War is not clear-cut. Nothing is guaranteed. Manana. There are rules and regulations but, at the end of the day it's war; there are no rules and regulations. You fight, however you can when you can and where you can...and, in the end, you just hope for the best.
Also, as a gem that I found in this book, I loved that when Orwell was shot in the neck and people kept telling him people who lived who were shot through the neck were the luckiest people in the world...and he said that it would've been more lucky to never have been shot. That is gold.
The Spanish Civil War: A Fight Between Revolution and Fascism
What stuck me most about Homage to Catalonia was how much Orwell changed politically as a result of the Spanish Civil War. At the beginning of the war, Orwell was not only unaware of the true complexity of the politics behind the anti-fascist forces, but he lacked interest in it. He had joined the war for the noble purpose of stemming the tide of fascism in Europe. Orwell, like many others, believed that stopping Franco from taking power was the highest priority so the question of which of the many Socialist-tinged parties would take control of the Spanish government should take a backseat until the fighting was over. However, soon enough, Orwell was forced to become better acquainted with the battle between the Communist forces backed by Stalinist Russia (ex: P.S.U.C.) and the more revolutionary Communist forces (ex: P.O.U.M.) and the Anarchists (ex: C.N.T.-F.A.I.).
During his leave time in Barcelona, he saw just how contentious and debilitating this power struggle within the anti-fascist forces was. Orwell saw firsthand that resources were being horded and energy was being drained in the Communists' pursuit to quash all revolutionary notions and to limit the influence of P.O.U.M. and C.N.T. Witnessing the seemingly senseless street fighting between the left wing factions and the right wing factions,initiated by the Communist backed Civil Guards' desire to wrestle control of the Telephone Exchange away from the C.NT. ,changed Orwell. Orwell went from being a man, who, if he had to pick a political preference, would have picked the Communists (P.S.U.C.) due to the fact "they were the only people who looked capable of winning the war" to being disgusted by the Communists and in favor of the more revolutionary P.O.U.M (63). In essence, Orwell now believed that the war was a fight between revolution and fascism, not just a fight against fascism.
Witnessing Orwell's political awakening during the Spanish Civil War was extremely interesting to me. He never stopped believing that fascism was an evil that must be rooted out, but the mechanism for rooting it out changed in his mind. Orwell began to realize that the working class people of Spain viewed a return to the status quo as only slightly better than the feudalism that Franco would bring. He also realized that the promise of revolution had energized the fight against Franco in the first place. Before the war took full swing, minor factions of Anarchists were the ones who took to the streets and fought back Franco's forces, not the government backed armed forces. The hope that a true revolution would someday come to Spain had given the Spanish working class the strength to continue to fight, even though they lacked proper training and weaponry. Once the Russian backed Communists had extinguished the revolutionary flame in favor of a capitalistic democracy, the working class felt less determined to defeat Franco. By using brutality and force to destroy P.O.U.M. and any and all revolutionary parties, the Communists (P.S.U.C.) broke the will of the working class people to fight.
The Communists' obsession with destroying revolutionaries ended up costing them the war. As history has shown us, Franco won the Spanish Civil War in 1939. Franco ruled Spain under a dictatorship until his death thirty-six years later. One of the ways he managed to hold onto his power was by playing political factions against each other. Clearly, he learned this tactic during the war, as his victory was, in part, due to the fighting amongst political parties within the anti-fascist forces. Perhaps, if the Communists weren't so fixated on fighting all the revolutionary factions, the anti-fascist forces might have beaten Franco. The Communists not only broke the necessary spirit of the working class, but it diverted valuable men and resources away from the front to round up and imprison P.O.U.M members and soldiers, including valuable P.O.U.M. soldiers fighting on the front. So, in the end, Orwell was right to turn against the Communists. He was right to think that the Communists were turning this important war against fascism into senseless fighting and persecution. Orwell was right to think that, at least, the promise of revolution was essential to beating Franco.
During his leave time in Barcelona, he saw just how contentious and debilitating this power struggle within the anti-fascist forces was. Orwell saw firsthand that resources were being horded and energy was being drained in the Communists' pursuit to quash all revolutionary notions and to limit the influence of P.O.U.M. and C.N.T. Witnessing the seemingly senseless street fighting between the left wing factions and the right wing factions,initiated by the Communist backed Civil Guards' desire to wrestle control of the Telephone Exchange away from the C.NT. ,changed Orwell. Orwell went from being a man, who, if he had to pick a political preference, would have picked the Communists (P.S.U.C.) due to the fact "they were the only people who looked capable of winning the war" to being disgusted by the Communists and in favor of the more revolutionary P.O.U.M (63). In essence, Orwell now believed that the war was a fight between revolution and fascism, not just a fight against fascism.
Witnessing Orwell's political awakening during the Spanish Civil War was extremely interesting to me. He never stopped believing that fascism was an evil that must be rooted out, but the mechanism for rooting it out changed in his mind. Orwell began to realize that the working class people of Spain viewed a return to the status quo as only slightly better than the feudalism that Franco would bring. He also realized that the promise of revolution had energized the fight against Franco in the first place. Before the war took full swing, minor factions of Anarchists were the ones who took to the streets and fought back Franco's forces, not the government backed armed forces. The hope that a true revolution would someday come to Spain had given the Spanish working class the strength to continue to fight, even though they lacked proper training and weaponry. Once the Russian backed Communists had extinguished the revolutionary flame in favor of a capitalistic democracy, the working class felt less determined to defeat Franco. By using brutality and force to destroy P.O.U.M. and any and all revolutionary parties, the Communists (P.S.U.C.) broke the will of the working class people to fight.
The Communists' obsession with destroying revolutionaries ended up costing them the war. As history has shown us, Franco won the Spanish Civil War in 1939. Franco ruled Spain under a dictatorship until his death thirty-six years later. One of the ways he managed to hold onto his power was by playing political factions against each other. Clearly, he learned this tactic during the war, as his victory was, in part, due to the fighting amongst political parties within the anti-fascist forces. Perhaps, if the Communists weren't so fixated on fighting all the revolutionary factions, the anti-fascist forces might have beaten Franco. The Communists not only broke the necessary spirit of the working class, but it diverted valuable men and resources away from the front to round up and imprison P.O.U.M members and soldiers, including valuable P.O.U.M. soldiers fighting on the front. So, in the end, Orwell was right to turn against the Communists. He was right to think that the Communists were turning this important war against fascism into senseless fighting and persecution. Orwell was right to think that, at least, the promise of revolution was essential to beating Franco.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
In Simple Terms, a Clusterf*ck
By virtue of sheer chance, it so happens that the last work of fiction that I read before beginning this class was Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Naturally, then, I was interested and excited to see how Orwell would handle the same subject matter. I was also interested because Homage to Catalonia was a work of nonfiction, and I hoped that it would shed more light on exactly what was going on during the Spanish Civil War.
Needless to say, the description of what was actually going on was quite dense and confusing. Parties were betraying other factions of the same parties; the USSR was undermining efforts to build a communist state, and the press across the nation (and throughout Europe) was telling a very different story than what was actually happening on the ground. The lack of coordination and cooperation between likeminded militias was especially surprising, given that in many ways, they had a common enemy. Thus, I felt it necessary to describe the entire situation as a clusterfuck, where no one really knows what's going on, who's doing what, or what they should be doing (this is especially evident in the street fighting chapter [chapter 10?] in Barcelona).
One lesson from this mess that I think it's important to keep in mind is that it's impossible to use a blanket to cover everyone who subscribes to a certain political belief system. In Spain, many different factions of socialists, communists or anarchists all had different ideologies and agendas, so it would be a mistake to group them all together. I think that the way we have been raised and educated has lead to us believing that all members of a given ideology think the same way and agree on the same things. When we hear Communist, we assume that someone believes the same things as our preconceived notions of communism. Same goes for Anarchism, and Socialism, which has been turned into a dirty word over the last couple years even though we have socialist aspects already at work in our society. I think it's important for us to realize that it's impossible, and probably irresponsible, to think we can use one of these terms and automatically assume that we know exactly what a subscriber to that belief system thinks.
Needless to say, the description of what was actually going on was quite dense and confusing. Parties were betraying other factions of the same parties; the USSR was undermining efforts to build a communist state, and the press across the nation (and throughout Europe) was telling a very different story than what was actually happening on the ground. The lack of coordination and cooperation between likeminded militias was especially surprising, given that in many ways, they had a common enemy. Thus, I felt it necessary to describe the entire situation as a clusterfuck, where no one really knows what's going on, who's doing what, or what they should be doing (this is especially evident in the street fighting chapter [chapter 10?] in Barcelona).
One lesson from this mess that I think it's important to keep in mind is that it's impossible to use a blanket to cover everyone who subscribes to a certain political belief system. In Spain, many different factions of socialists, communists or anarchists all had different ideologies and agendas, so it would be a mistake to group them all together. I think that the way we have been raised and educated has lead to us believing that all members of a given ideology think the same way and agree on the same things. When we hear Communist, we assume that someone believes the same things as our preconceived notions of communism. Same goes for Anarchism, and Socialism, which has been turned into a dirty word over the last couple years even though we have socialist aspects already at work in our society. I think it's important for us to realize that it's impossible, and probably irresponsible, to think we can use one of these terms and automatically assume that we know exactly what a subscriber to that belief system thinks.
Orwell as a Witness (Or Why You Shouldn't Wear a Hoodie to a Republican Rally)
Today, Orwell's work resonates as strongly as it was written in 1938. As we explore this idea of witnessing history throughout the semester, we get another strong sense of those who wish to warp the truth with words, themselves. It is fairly clear the proganda of the Communists and later, the Nazis, terrified Orwell and gave rise to later works like 1984 and Animal Farm (It's an allegorical novella about Stalinism -- and spoiler alert -- it sucks!)* As we learned in Blag Dog of Fate, "Books are the most powerful things in the world," (124) and here we see the constant manipulation of history and rewriting of narrative in order to accomplish political goals. Orwell's need to set the record straight as he experienced it is another example of this social activism that Lifton more overtly called for in his book.
Modern manipulation of the media might very well have exceeded anything Orwell envisioned. His nightmare was overt control of the message, whereas the true form is insidious and subtle. I remember very distinctly working as a reporter during the mid-term election and coming across a Republican*** rally being held outside my apartment complex (I lived around the corner from the Republican party election headquarters in Cambria County.)
I was enjoying a rare day off and trying to do those enjoyable things one does with that time, like laundry and grocery shopping when I came back to find no parking at my place. There were about 100 people at the event and maybe a handful of members of the press. I was unshaven, dressed in a hoodie and track pants as I begrudgingly parked a block away and walked home through the crowd. I didn't see one of our reporters, so I called another editor and asked if they needed coverage (you always have your reporter kit and camera on you or in your car.) Thankfully, we did not need coverage so I moseyed my way down to the crowd to say hello to a few of the reporters and camera people I knew. It was rather amusing because track pants and a hoodie was not really the rally dress code. In fact, there was a tremendous amount of Polo jersey and ironed jeans, khakis and perfectly coiffed hair going on.
Two of the communications directors for the party were standing next to the RV where the politicians (and they had a group there running for offices from the township to state level) were prepping inside. I sidled up to them and was pleasantly surprised to not be recognized. Hooray for the hoodie, I thought. The communications guys were busy pointing out the press in the crowd and making quick assessments on how to approach them with the message. Reporter from a local television station: "WJAC. Works off the release. Not a problem." Reporter from a local newspaper: "Tribune-Democrat. They'll push local." Reporter from the Altoona Mirror: "That guy's smart. Watch him."
I also immediately noticed that there weas far more recording of the event from the party side of the rally than the reporting side. I was intrigued, and counted five different platforms officially working the crowd that included high-end digital cameras, hand-held digital cameras, phone video, standard news-style video and two-person high-definition rig that cost somebody at least $25,000. Why not just rely on the high-end crew for the work, it shoots beautiful photos and video, I asked myself.
That became clear over the next two months. That one rally with 100 participants showed up in more than a dozen different party releases on the Internet in various forms. There were beautifully slick shots from the high-end platforms used for official advertisements.***** There were grainy Youtube videos of the supposedly grassroots nature embedded within various Tea Party forums. There were emails and flyers and newsletters all with coverage taken from event and designed to resonate with different demographics. It was very much like watching the same moment in time from a dozen different perspectives.
This is the world we live in now and we can see it forming in Orwell's narrative. Who, among us, can tell the truth when so many are lining up to control the worldview and message?
*If you aren't watching the television show "Archer," you should consider it just for the literary references. And, you know, if you want to see some of the better comedy writing going on in that medium.**
**Random quote from that show. I personally do not believe Animal Farm sucked.
***It happens with Democratic message too, I just didn't witness an event like this being hosted by that party, so I was trying to observe without bias.****
****Actually, I do get to bias publicly a lot now that I'm no longer a credentialed member of the press. Hooray for getting to vote again! But that's not the point.
*****Funny note. When the groups working the crowd panned across me in my sorry state, they invariably cut away from the shot. In fact, the high definition crew went so far as to whip-pan up and around my hoodie-wearing ass twice. Guess I wasn't projecting the right kind of America that day.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Responsibility to the Truth
Like Chris, I was also quite moved by Orwell's dedication to conveying
the truth about the Spanish Civil War and, for that matter, about war in
general. It seems one of the main purposes that Orwell wrote Homage to Catalonia was to ensure that unaware
(whether intentionally or not) people are enlightened on the reality of war, of
the corruption that was so toxic in this particular one, and of the
implications that resulted from such blemishing of the truth.
Orwell’s dedication to the truth is also conveyed in the organization of
the book. He recounts the way he came to understand the truth of the war (and
its corrupt politics) in the order that he actually experienced it.
Early in the book, as he writes continually of his feelings of boredom
and “nothing happening,” he also writes of his early, ignorant thoughts:
“I did not realize that there were serious differences between the
political parties ... my attitude always was, ‘Why can’t we drop all this
political nonsense and get on with the war?’ This of course was the correct
‘anti-Fascist’ attitude which had been carefully disseminated by the English
newspapers, largely in order to prevent people from grasping the real nature of
the struggle” (47).
This is one of the first times that Orwell mentions the issue of
propaganda, of gaining power by controlling the news. Later he mentions the
“horrible atmosphere of suspicion” and the “whispering that everyone else was a
spy of the Communists” that begins to consume Spain, and we begin to understand
the absurdity of this war as Orwell came to understand it (140).
By chapter eleven we’re fully immersed in Orwell’s determination to
unveil the truth that’s been obscured by propaganda, corruption, and lies. In
fact, he clearly declares his intentions for chapter eleven at the end of
chapter ten. He writes, “So much political capital has been made out of the
Barcelona fighting that it is important to try and get a balanced viewed of it
... It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details of inter-party
polemics; it is like diving into a cesspool. But it is necessary to try and
establish the truth, so far as it is possible. This squalid brawl in a distant
city is more important than might appear at first sight” (149).
He does an enormous job of detailing those inter-party polemics in
chapter eleven, and of articulating the important fact that the “accusation of
espionage against the P.O.U.M. rested solely upon articles in the Communist
Press and the activities of the Communist-controlled secret police” (175). It’s
distressing (and frustrating, of course) to think that all of those men were
wrongfully jailed and unable to prove their innocence, and that most were executed
in prison.
Finally, we come to the end of the book and read of Orwell’s thoughts at
the end of his time in the war. He writes, “What angers one about a death like
this is it utter pointlessness. To be killed in battle—yes, that is what one
expects; but to be flung in jail not even for any imaginary offence, but simply
owing to dull blind spite, and then left to die in solitude—that is a different
matter. I fail to see how this kind of thing—and it is not as though Smillie’s
case were exceptional—brought victory any nearer (217).
We're left with Orwell’s fear of widespread oblivion and his
call to wake the world. He writes that the England of his childhood is “all
sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which [he] sometimes fear[s]
that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs”
(232). It’s clear that this fear drove Orwell to write this book. He has
successfully passed that fear of the world’s ignorance on to me.
(Some other thoughts:
There are many other parts of the book I was both charmed and intrigued
by: the description of the uniquely generous and often humorous and frustrating
Spanish people (especially the idea of putting everything off until “mañana”; in
Miami, we call it “running on Cuban time”); the descriptions of setting in the
trenches and in Barcelona; Orwell’s feelings of wanting to stay in Spain
despite the need to flee after being discharged, and the way he describes the
ignorant air of England.)
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