Orwell's Roses

During the suffragist movement, one of the slogans in the campaign for women’s right to vote was “‘Bread for All, and Roses Too’” (85). Bread symbolizes the fulfillment of physical needs, while roses represent the fulfillment of self-actualization, aesthetic desires, and that which exists beyond the bare minimum for survival.

The slogan found another home in the labor movement of the 20th century, wherein workers fought not only for livable wages and safe working conditions but also for access to leisure activities and pleasure, the finer things in life. The poem “Bread and Roses” by James Oppenheim was eventually turned into a song, which Joan Baez recorded, in the 1970s. While Solnit doesn’t know whether Modotti was familiar with the phrase, “it was in wide circulation during her time in the United States” (89).

Solnit turns her attention to what she sees as the “puritanical position” of the left—socialists and communists—wherein aesthetic pleasure is seen as a waste of time and energy that should be directed toward revolution (91). She claims that Orwell, who was certainly aligned with the left in most ways, didn’t accept this view. Orwell defended himself against critics who suggested he was inappropriately preoccupied with nature and beauty. Many supporters of revolution claimed that art should serve the movement—that is, art should function only as propaganda.

In examining this notion, Solnit reflects on an essay entitled “Vermeer in Bosnia,” wherein a judge overseeing the war crimes trials in the Hague is asked how he handles hearing about atrocities on a regular basis. The judge replies that he visits the Vermeer paintings in a nearby museum to restore himself. Solnit suggests that this kind of viewing “may reinforce a sense of self and society, of values and commitments” (95). She posits that Orwell himself found such “refuge in natural and domestic spaces,” which allowed him to continue writing about the darker realities of the world (95).

In addition, Solnit reflects on the affection for mechanization that both communists and capitalists of the 20th century shared. Hence, Diego Rivera, a committed communist, painted murals in Detroit, the birthplace of the automotive industry and the assembly line—hallmarks of capitalism. She notes that Orwell, to the contrary, was never very enthusiastic about the factory—or even the city. In fact, Orwell was a frequent critic of the strain of socialism preoccupied with founding Utopias—ideal places that were, to his mind, impossible as well as joyless in their uniformity.

Solnit follows Orwell’s time fighting in the Spanish Civil War, wherein he joined POUM—or, in English translation, “the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification” (102). The optimism in the early days of the Spanish Civil War was palpable; the idealism seemed poised to produce results. Orwell’s book Homage to Catalonia, about his experiences during the war, is more “vivid” and “mature” than his earlier works, according to Solnit. His deep immersion in the war and connection to the people fighting it made for intense, specific details interspersed with insightful observations. This, she believes, sets Orwell apart from many revolutionaries who got so caught up in the ideologies that they were blinded to the realities.

Orwell was wounded in the war—shot through the neck—and therefore convalesced back home in England before returning to the front. The Spanish Civil War eventually disappointed many: The fascist-allied Francisco Franco won, plunging Spain into a 36-year-long dictatorship. In addition, the left suffered from an attachment to the Soviet Union, which took a brutal direction after Joseph Stalin assumed power: “[A]nd so by degrees people who had begun with noble ideals of freedom and equality and revolution came around to supporting one of the most brutal dictatorships the world has ever seen” (110). This was partly the result of their viewing the Soviet Union as a check on the encroaching power of Hitler’s Germany; to support Stalin was implicitly to reject the fascist ideology espoused by Hitler.

Solnit returns to the Modotti photograph to untangle some of these complicated—and often deadly—alliances: “She had in those years [the 1930s] gradually abandoned roses to devote herself to bread” (111). She became an exemplary communist, which included abandoning her artistic impulses for the sake of propaganda. For example, one photograph of hers during this time consists of tools rearranged in the shape of a hammer and sickle—the symbol of the Soviet communist party. After Franco’s victory, she eventually had to flee Spain and eventually ended up in Mexico, where she died under mysterious circumstances in 1942 at the age of 46.

Solnit notes that Orwell’s final days in the war, due to his association with POUM, put him at grave risk for assassination. Along with his wife, who was also assisting in the war efforts, he fled the country in fear for his life. His return to Wallington, however, was marred by an increasing sense that the Spanish Civil War was only the opening gambit and that a larger conflagration was looming.