Guernica, prelude to The Blitz

[Paul Nightingale]

Picasso was another "perpetual dissident" (to borrow P.'s description of
Orwell). Consequently he had to take it from all sides because he
refused to paint what people expected: modernism in all its forms was
denounced as 'degenerate' by the Nazis and as 'fascist' by the Soviet
Union. As Radek said of Joyce: "The literature of dying capitalism has
become stunted in ideas. It is unable to portray those mighty forces
which are shaking the world--the death agonies of the old, the birth
pangs of the new. And this triviality of content is fully matched by the
triviality of form displayed by bourgeois world literature." He goes on
to praise "the realism of Balzac".
 
Pynchon is himself a perpetual dissident, refusing in this Foreword to
write what some would wish him to write. Possibly Radek would have
approved of some of the comments posted here.
 
Guernica deals with the way a new form of warfare did indeed transform
the landscape in more ways than one. Compare the (British) civilian
response to WW1, when the trenches seemed so far away, with the
(British) civilian response to WW2: the 'home front' meant it had become
impossible for those living in, eg, London and Coventry to think of the
war as elsewhere. As P. keeps reminding us, throughout the Foreword,
it's all about perceptions and how we know what we (think we) know.
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of Bandwraith at aol.com
Sent: 12 May 2003 00:47
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Guernica, prelude to The Blitz
 
(formally mutualcode)
 
In Pynchon's foreword to _NIneteen Eighty-Four_ the phrase
"the moment enemy bombs begin to fall on one's homeland,"
needs to be understood in the historical context of the origin
of large-scale state sponsored and intiated bombing of civilians. 
The trial run for this new type of mechanized genocide from 
above was Guernica.
 
As premiered by the Fascist States, the bombing of 
Guernica represented the calling card of a new type of 
institutionalized violence- calculated, mechanized, terrifying-
such acts of institutionalized violence against innocents 
for political purposes helped define a new status quo-
dependent on private enterprise for its means. 
 
But it is not just the well known fact that Orwell's literary
soul was forged on the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War 
that the phrase "the moment enemy bombs begin to fall" 
should implicitly bring to mind the horrors of Guernica. Almost
everyone these days thinks of Picasso's _Guernica_ when
trying to picture the horrors of indiscriminate bombing. By
capturing this new horror at its inception the painting has 
become its most recognized symbol.
 
http://web.org.uk/picasso/guernica.html
 
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~lanes/english/hemngway/picasso/guernica.htm    
 
It is also the realization that Picasso's work represents a near
perfect fusion of art and politics. Like the horrific act itself
it was unjudicable by the old standards. Another type of
"Newspeak," _Guernica_ was made necessary in order for
Picasso to avoid being just another apologist for "The Way 
Things Are,"  which, after the bombing, was very dufferent 
from the way they had been. In 1937, for Picasso, whose 
homeland was Spain, depiction of this new type of inhumanity 
by The Fascists was at least subversive:
 
       ...Initial reaction to the painting is overwhelmingly critical. 
       The German fair guide calls Guernica "a hodgepodge of 
       body parts that any four-year-old could have painted." It 
       dismisses the mural as the dream of a madman. Even 
       the Soviets, who had sided with the Spanish government 
       against Franco, react coolly. They favor more overt imagery, 
       believing that only more realistic art can have political or 
       social consequence. Yet Picasso's tour de force would 
       become one of this century's most unsettling indictments 
       of war.
 
  http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/gmain.html
 
 
respectfully