Anarchy's Brief Summer: The Life and Death of Buenaventura Durruti

by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Mike Mitchell (Translator)

Overview

A unique portrait of a revolutionary movement that is largely unknown outside Spain.

Northern Spain is the only part of Western Europe where anarchism played a significant role in the political life of the twentieth century. Enjoying wide-ranging support among both the urban and rural working class, its importance peaked during its “brief summer”—the civil war between the Republic and General Franco’s Falangists, during which anarchists even participated in the government of Catalonia.
 
Anarchy’s Brief Summer brings anarchism to life by focusing on the charismatic leader Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936), who became a key figure in the Spanish Civil War after a militant and adventurous youth. The basis of the book is a compilation of texts: personal testimony, interviews with survivors, contemporary documents, memoirs, and academic assessments. They are all linked by Enzenberger’s own assessment in a series of glosses—a literary form that is somewhere between retelling and reconstruction—with the contradiction between fiction and fact reflecting the political contradictions of the Spanish Revolution. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857426000
Publisher:	Seagull Books
Publication date:	01/15/2019
Series:	The German List
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, often considered Germany’s most important living poet, is also the editor of the book series Die Andere Bibliothek and the founder of the monthly TransAtlantik. Seagull Books has published many of his books, including, most recently, Tumult, Panopticon, and Anarchy’s Brief Summer.

Mike Mitchell has worked as a literary translator since 1995. He was awarded the 1998 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translation of Herbert Rosendorfer’s Letters Back to Ancient China. For Seagull Books, he has translated works by Ingeborg Bachmann, Max Frisch, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Peter Handke, among others.
 

Table of Contents

The Funeral Ceremony 1

First Gloss On History as Collective Fiction 6

Stray Bullets 11

Second Gloss On the Roots of Spanish Anarchism 22

Los Solidarios 34

Third Gloss On the Spanish Dilemma, 1917-1931 48

Exile 54

Fourth Gloss On the Spanish Dilemma, 1931-36 76

The Republic 80

The Victory 106

Power-Sharing 129

The Campaign 141

Behind the Lines 176

The Peasants 198

Fifth Gloss About the Enemy 212

The Militias 218

Sixth Gloss On the Decline and Fall of the Anarchists 235

The Defence of Madrid 241

Seventh Gloss About the Hero 261

His Death 265

Eighth Gloss The Revolution Grows Older 285

Posterity 289

Sources 299

Editorial Reviews

"Enzensberger’s collection of personal testimonies creates a vivid portrait of Durruti as a revolutionary."

On the Seawall

"Anarchy's Brief Summer is one of greatest novels I've ever read."

Daniel Alarcon