Muriel Rukeyser and the Spanish Civil War

Poet and biographer Muriel Rukeyser documented and commented on the seismic events of the 20th century. In her five decades of writing, she captured her experiences as witness to racial inequality in America, the Civil War in Spain, and protests against the Vietnam War. Sarah Chadfield, Ph.D. candidate at Royal Holloway, University of London, conducted research in the Muriel Rukeyser papers held by the Library of Congress as British Research Council Fellow at The John W. Kluge Center. Her guest post below is in conjunction with the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center.

In 1936, the young poet Muriel Rukeyser went to Spain to report on the People’s Olympiad being held in Barcelona. Intended as an alternative to the Nazi Olympic Games in Berlin, the Olympiad never took place as days before the opening ceremony, the Nationalists staged a coup on the Republican government and the Civil War began.

Although only 22 when she went to Spain, Rukeyser was already an experienced political writer: she had traveled across America in 1933 to report on the Scottsboro trials for the Communist-affiliated, student newspaper the Student Review, and in early 1936 had been to Gauley Bridge in West Virginia to investigate an industrial disaster that led to the deaths of hundreds of workers. While these were both widely publicized cases of injustice, Spain was a new experience. Here, Rukeyser was unexpectedly caught in the middle of the conflict, watching the events unfold: she was, in the proper sense of the term, a witness. In my research in the Rukeyser papers at the Library of Congress, I was surprised to find that Rukeyser’s initial impressions of Spain reveal a less confident version of the young writer than critics have come to expect.

Rukeyser’s diary from Spain conveys the dizzying experience of witnessing the beginning of the conflict. Whether through stylistic choice or practical need, the form of the diary suggests a series of scenes quickly unfolding. It begins:

‘Cerbère – Port Bou – customs, passports – teams – 3^rd class – peasant woman – small towns – politics – Hungarian – Spanish family – soldiers visiting 1^st – stops – discussion – France, Spain, politics – stops – Moncada – peaches, sausage, bread, almonds, wine – news – general strike – re-arrangement of train – Martha Keith – reds – the town – anarchists – Beeth V – radio – the English…’

The writing itself is fragmentary, as though there is no time to process one image before another comes to replace it: blood, gunfire and the death of a French athlete are given the same space as the everyday sights that can be seen from the train. It seems that nothing is privileged in this account.

Her archive also contains other attempts to record the experience: a hand-drawn map of Moncada Station, and further list-like reminders of events. One postcard simply reads:

roosters

bombs

Church               5 off.

fire

breakfast

warning

buying

school

Aaron’s Rod

peasants house

glass

sniping

school

Team’s dep

camion

Otto

Alongside Rukeyser