Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain (review)
- Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain
Gina Herrmann’s Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain (2010) investigates autobiographical writings by well-known historical figures (Dolores [End Page 361] Ibárruri, Jorge Semprún, Rafael Alberti, María Teresa León) and lesser-known communist activists (a father and daughter, Tomás and Teresa Pàmies) to explain how the Spanish Communist memoir both conforms to and diverges from Communist writing practices in the rest of Europe and Stalinist Russia. Herrmann’s study underscores the unique effects of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that generated hope and nostalgia for a perceived collective endeavor, but which also led to disappointment in the Spanish Communist project.
Written in Red examines a selection from a diverse demographic of people attracted to Communism: party leaders, intellectuals, artists, resistance fighters, journalists, and proletarians. Herrmann creates new categories for identifying two distinct writing styles: the “organic” and “dissolutive” memoirs (xiv). The organic memoir unfailingly upholds Communist Party ideals and Stalinist values, and is exemplified in writings by Ibárruri, León, Alberti, and Tomás Pàmies. In contrast, the dissolutive memoir, including those by Semprún and Teresa Pàmies, conveys what François Furet calls the “passing” of the Communist illusion (xiv). Herrmann’s book uncovers how individuals comply with, resist, or work through Communist practices. Memoirs combine intimate thoughts and ideology to demonstrate how the author’s personal identity is formed. The chapters are organized chronologically and thematically, which allows the reader to examine each one independently and easily identify common threads and differences among accounts.
The introduction, “The Subject of the Communist Autobiography,” describes three important characteristics of autobiographical writing that point to how memoirs are, in Herrmann’s words, “a literary representation of self in history” (7). For Herrmann, memoir writing is referential (to historical experiences), performative (as a process of self-creation), and relational (to others and their writing). In this chapter Herrmann also provides a definition of Communism, as a Soviet-style or Stalinist ideology, which assists the reader in understanding the framework of her study.
Chapter one, “Dolores Ibárruri and the Mothering of Party,” uses la Pasionaria as a classic example of an organic memoir author because her writing solely focuses on Communism’s positive attributes and therefore functions as Stalinist propaganda. Herrmann discusses the performativity of la Pasionaria’s autobiographical practices to show how she manipulates discourse related to maternity and womanhood to connect to those of her gender. Ibárruri’s memoir, along with that of León and Teresa Pàmies, reveals women activists’ sense of “public happiness,” their excitement in engaging in political and cultural work (xiv). Herrmann uses Ibárruri’s highly publicized life to challenge the notion that an individual’s private life is more authentic than a public or political one.
Chapter two, “The Road to Consciousness: Youth and Conversion,” analyzes the conversion stories of León, Alberti, and Semprún to show how these writers distance themselves from their bourgeois origins to embrace proletarian values. León’s fragmentary autobiography repudiates her bourgeois origins. Throughout five main conversion experiences, Semprún struggles with his class origins but unlike León, he does not renounce them. Alberti shifted his class alliance by declaring himself a political poet and an enthusiast for the USSR. The rhetorical patterns in [End Page 362] these memoirs help to identify the depth of political commitment of each of these individuals and illustrate how these writers weave a convincing story of their loyalty.
Chapter three, “The War in Spain,” assesses gender performance in the Spanish wartime context and how it shaped identity. The women of Herrmann’s study (Ibárruri, León, and Pàmies) express both enthusiasm and sorrow for going beyond normative gender roles. León’s account celebrates women’s solidarity and camaraderie, two aspects that Herrmann connects to León’s sense of public happiness (92). At the same time, León also laments her political losses in writing (92). Pàmies’s “hybrid apology...
