The Spanish Field of Honour

For the first time, Max Aub's Field of Honour (Verso, 2009), a beautiful novel of the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War and Revolution, is available in English. Translator Gerald Martin took time to answer some questions about this fascinating work, the first in the six-novel cycle The Magic Labryrinth. GR: Why did you choose to translate Field of Honour and who do you hope will read it? Gerald Martin: I actually translated it 20 years ago and just revised it this time. (the publisher went out of business last time just as the book was about to appear!...) I have always admired Aub's work and sympathized sincerely with the predicament of a man who was exiled to Mexico and thus, bitterly, got less attention than writers who stayed on in Spain after the Civil War. I consider him easily the most important novelist of the civil war and his extraordinary ability to present the views of all sides is almost unique. As for readers, I was thinking of those interested in the Spanish Civil War, obviously, but anyone with a general interest in history and--above all-politics. GR: Will the other books in the Magic Labyrinth be translated into English? GM: Not by me (though I'd love to have done it). It requires a labor of love. GR: In your introduction, you write that Aub was a committed socialist and, from reading the novel, he appears to have had great sympathy for the anarchists. At the same time, the women in Field of Honour exist solely as sex objects--more like props or scenery than fully formed characters. Can you explain his apparently contradictory egalitarian and misogynist leanings? GM: All one can say is that it's a reflection of the era in Spain (and of the next 30 years as well!--things started to improve from 1975). It's true, to be fair, that aub was reflecting things as they were perceived through male eyes--though his treatment of the girls in the cabarets doesn't strike me as unsympathetic--but obviously it would have been better if he'd had a more obviously progressive perspective. That said, no one in the book comes out unscathed: this is a very critical and satirical writer. GR: Do you find that Americans know much about the Spanish Civil War? Are there lessons from 1936 Spain that are applicable to the US in 2010? GM: In general, no. I don't think it's at all likely but there are people who think that the Republican right could go fascist if the US's economic and political hegemony is further threatened over the next 10-15 years. Certainly the behavior of Limbaugh, Beck and O'Reilly is a disgrace to a democratic country and the Supreme Court's recent behavior has been more political than legal, which is quite shocking. But we've had these fears before. To put it bluntly, the left in the US is not left enough to fully provoke a fascist right into existence! Nick Holt's website is Grits and Roses.