“Homeland strangeness”: American Poets in Spain, 1936–1939

Abstract

When war broke out in Spain in the summer of 1936, at first just a trickle of young, determined Americans made their way across the Atlantic into Spain via France. That trickle became a stream, defying the US government’s prohibition of such actions in the nonintervention pact affirmed by most of the Western powers in August of 1936. All told, about 2,800 Americans joined the International Brigades, and scores more visited the country as journalists, photographers, medical volunteers, or observers. Errol Flynn made a whirlwind tour, and the newspapers breathlessly reported him injured or dead. Theodore Dreiser pontificated and gestured; Ernest Hemingway produced documentaries, stories, and pamphlets to raise funds for ambulances; Dorothy Parker made a radio broadcast; John Dos Passos broke with the Communist Party because of his experiences in Spain. Langston Hughes spent six months reporting on Spain and documenting the presence of black Americans in the International Brigades for the Baltimore Afro-American. Many prominent writers participated in the 1937 International Writers’ Congress in Defense of Culture that convened in Madrid and Valencia, and lent their energies to raising money for the Republic once they had returned to the United States.

Cry out the shibboleth

into your homeland strangeness:

February. No pasaran.

Paul Celan, “Shibboleth”