Fallen Sparrows: The International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War

Voorkant
American Philosophical Society, 1994 - 157 pagina's
The International Brigades were some 32,000 foreigners who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Prof. Michael Jackson peels away some myths that have long obscured them. Some of these concern facts such as their numbers, nations, classes, ages, & political affiliations. Others examine their commitment & motivation for taking part in a war that did not directly involve their native lands. The Brigaders were both more complex & simpler than portrayed in propaganda, myth, in history because the men in the ranks were far more varied than any ideological account can accommodate & simpler because theirs was the universal experience of war. The significance of the International Brigades lies less in the ideological convictions that recruited them than in the endurance they displayed once there. Jackson's goal is to expose some of the mythology & to interpret of the experiences of the Brigadiers.
 

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Populaire passages

Pagina 132 - There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be which have no memorial ; who are perished as though they liad never been ; and are become as though they had never been born ; and their children after them.
Pagina 132 - And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten. With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant. Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes. Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted out. Their bodies...
Pagina 120 - I had guessed long ago in the Champs-Elysees, and had since established to my own satisfaction, that when we are in love with a woman we simply project into her a state of our own soul, that the important thing is, therefore, not the worth of the woman but the depth of the state ; and that the emotions which a young girl of no kind of distinction arouses in us can enable us to bring to the surface of our consciousness some of the most intimate parts of our being...
Pagina iv - Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? And one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father.
Pagina 23 - To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth — "Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the conscience of the world is tending — a wind is rising, and the rivers flow...
Pagina 124 - If, then, we understand the political in the sense of the polis, its end or raison d'etre would be to establish and keep in existence a space where freedom as virtuosity can appear. This is the realm where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible in words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which are talked about, remembered, and turned into stories before they are finally incorporated into the great storybook of human history.
Pagina 6 - I saw that, for the greatest part, men came to the reading of history with an affection much like that of the people in Rome: who came to the spectacle of the gladiators with more delight to behold their blood, than their skill in fencing. For they be far more in number, that love to read of great armies, bloody battles, and many thousands slain at once, than that mind the art by which the affairs both of armies and cities be conducted to their ends.
Pagina 27 - Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.
Pagina 50 - Many of the British volunteers appear to have been persons who desired some outlet through which to purge some private grief or maladjustment. An English Communist volunteer summed up the motives of his countrymen in Spain by saying 'undoubtedly the great majority are here for the sake of an ideal, no matter what motive prompted them to seek one'.2 The qualification is significant. But let not posterity impugn the sincerity of these men.
Pagina 125 - Au courage. Maintenant je sais que l'homme est capable de grandes actions. Mais s'il n'est pas capable d'un grand sentiment, il ne m'intéresse pas.

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