The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of English POLITICS, THE PRESS, AND PERSUASIVE AESTHETICS: SHAPING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN AMERICAN PERIODICALS A Dissertation in English by Gregory S. Baptista © 2009 Gregory S. Baptista Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2009 ii The dissertation of Gregory S. Baptista was reviewed and approved* by the following: Mark S. Morrisson Associate Professor of English Graduate Director Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Robin Schulze Professor of English Department Head Sandra Spanier Professor of English and Women’s Studies James L.W. West III Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English Philip Jenkins Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the presentation of the Spanish Civil War in selected American periodicals. Understanding how war-related works functioned (aesthetically and rhetorically) requires a nuanced view of the circumstances of their production and an awareness of their immediate cultural context. I consider means of creation and publication to examine the complex ways in which the goals of truth-seeking and truth-shaping interacted—and were acted upon by the institutional dynamics of periodical production. By focusing on three specific periodicals that occupied different points along a line leading outward from the mainstream of American culture, I examine the ways in which certain pro- Loyalist writers and editors attempted to shape the truth of the Spanish war for American readers within the contexts and inherent restrictions of periodical publication. I argue that responses to the war in these publications are products of a range of cultural and institutional forces that go beyond the political affiliations or ideological stances of particular writers. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ……………………………………………………………………………….v Acknowledgments …………………………………………………………………………vii Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One Mass Market Anti-Fascism: Ken Magazine, the Consumer Market, and the Spanish Civil War ………………………………………………………...23 Chapter Two Hemingway, Gingrich, and Ken: “Militant Pacifism” and the Limits of Masculine Rhetoric...………………..…………………………………...117 Chapter Three Struggling After the Truth: The Nation and Internal Divisions in Republican Spain ………………………..…………………………………………...219 Chapter Four “Elegy for Our Dead”: The Volunteer For Liberty and the Aesthetics of a Losing Army …………………………………………………………….286 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………363 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Cartoon satirizing the Western democracies’ response to fascist aggression…….. 61 Figure 2. Cartoon criticizing America’s isolationist stance…………………………………. 62 Figure 3. Cartoon satirizing dictators; one of the items to which several early Ken contributors objected……………………………………………………………… 64 Figure 4. Cartoon satirizing world leaders…………………………………..………………. 66 Figure 5. A cover illustration that imposes a tragic tone on a lighthearted story…………… 76 Figure 6. Gruesome drawing placed to intensify the charge of betrayal in Hemingway’s article………..……………………………………………………………………..81 Figure 7. Photograph of Chiang Kai-Shek accompanying story……………………………. 83 Figure 8. Drawing of grieving mother accompanying a reader’s letter……………………... 83 Figure 9. Cartoon highlighting the direct threat to the U.S. from international spies………. 85 Figure 10. Cartoon developing the theme of foreign espionage on American soil….……… 87 Figure 11. Cover illustration emphasizing German militarism………..……………………. 89 Figure 12. A cartoon and adjacent visio-graphic lead that connect fascist propaganda efforts with the impending Republican defeat in Spain……...…….....………………… 96 Figure 13. Cartoon using the memory of the Great War to criticize the spread of fascism across Europe…………….……………………………………...………………. 99 Figure 14. Cartoon satirizing the Spanish war………………………………………………. 99 Figure 15. Comic map of European colonies in Africa……………………………………. 100 Figure 16. Cartoon caricaturing General Franco as a puppet of Hitler and Mussolini……. 102 Figure 17. Cartoon depicting Spain as a slaughtered bull……………………………......... 104 Figure 18. Cartoon reflecting Gingrich’s professed stance of sympathy for both capital and labor……………………………………………………………………………. 111 Figure 19. Photograph of a dead man shot through the face, an apparent Jewish victim of Arab violence. …………………………………………………………………. 133 vi Figure 20. Disconnected images of violence juxtaposed for visual impact………………... 134 Figure 21. Cartoon blending comic and violent elements…………………………………. 136 Figure 22. Drawing representing Spain as an executed woman…………………………… 137 Figure 23. Drawing of a war protester impaled by Japanese soldiers’ bayonets…………... 137 Figure 24. Cartoon figuring War as a monster rising from a pool of blood……………..… 138 Figure 25. Pair of drawings emphasizing the fires of battle and the resulting graveyard….. 139 Figure 26. Drawing of a young soldier standing knee-deep in a grave.…………………… 141 Figure 27. Drawing of a mourning mother in a graveyard………………………………… 141 Figure 28. Advertisement for Ken…………………………………………………………. 142 Figure 29. Images of mutilated soldiers’ bodies, accompanying Hemingway’s “Dying, Well or Badly.”……………………………………………………..………………... 165 Figure 30. Two-page spread of Hemingway’s “The Cardinal Picks a Winner.”…………... 171 Figure 31. Two-page spread of Hemingway’s “The Old Man at the Bridge.”…………….. 180 Figure 32. Volunteer for Liberty cover illustration.......…………………………………… 290 Figure 33. Two-page spread from Edwin Rolfe’s first issue of the Volunteer…………….. 307 Figure 34. Page layout showing memorial elements………………………………………. 317 Figure 35. Volunteer page annotated by Frank Lister……………………………..………. 324 Figure 36. Langston Hughes’ “October 16th” and Oliver Law memorial……….................. 337 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the archivists and staff persons at the following archives for their kind assistance: Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; Ernest Hemingway Collection, John F. Kennedy Library; and Special Collections Library, Penn State University. I am grateful to Sandra Spanier, Robin Schulze, and Philip Jenkins for their generous help and support. Special thanks to James L. W. West III for his invaluable tutelage and encouragement; working for him was a highlight of my graduate studies that I will remember fondly. Special thanks also to my advisor, Mark Morrisson, for his guidance and encouragement throughout the long process of development, research, and writing. I also thank Robert Bleil and Heather Murray for unwavering friendship and incalculable assistance. viii DEDICATION For Alan Rosen 1 Introduction In the conclusion to a 1962 study of American responses to the Spanish Civil War, Allen Guttmann claims that aside from the Great Depression and the start of the Second World War, “no public event of the 1930’s mattered so much to so many Americans as did the Spanish Civil War” (201). There may be a measure of overstatement in this claim, but it reflects something of the romantic quality with which the Spanish war of 1936-1939 is often imbued by literary scholars and historians. Beginning as an attempted coup by right-wing Spanish generals in July 1936 and quickly becoming a world war in miniature with the active intervention of Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union, the struggle roused great emotions in the U.S.—emotions that ran the gamut from horror to hope to disillusionment. To be sure, many Americans sympathized with General Franco’s Nationalist effort, often because they identified with its stated purpose of eradicating communism in Spain, or with its connection to the Catholic Church. But writers and intellectuals were much more likely to side with the government, and, consequently, pro-Loyalist perspectives dominate accounts of the war in American literary studies. Support for the Spanish Republican government, whose ostensibly democratic nature belied the complexity and fragmentation of its political makeup, became the cause célèbre of many American liberals, progressives, and radicals. The artists and public intellectuals among these camps raised their voices for the Republic and against international fascism in myriad ways, through poetry and fiction, reportage and editorials, rallies and fundraisers, paintings and political cartoons, photography and film. In particular, the varied participation and commentary of such American literary figures as Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, Lillian 2 Hellman, Malcolm Cowley, and Dorothy Parker have raised the war to near-mythic status in literary studies, casting it as a romantic and tragic moment in which art and ideology clasped hands in support of an ultimately lost cause. As Frederick R. Benson has claimed, “the Spanish Civil War represented the intellectual as well as the emotional climax of the turbulent 1930s” (3). Indeed, the war was a crucial event in a decade that saw a definite shift in the artistic priorities of many American writers. Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury write that “during the 1920s, American