The Orwell Prize was awarded this week, which gives cause to consider Orwell himself. Biographer D.J. Taylor tries to delineate the myths that have arisen around Orwell in the film above, but can provide only an impression. Lack of evidence is, of course, a major problem. Orwell’s archive, though extensive, seems incomplete, and no recording of him survives, not even of his voice. He remains a tantalising figure.
The body of Orwell’s writing proves similarly problematic. It is far from consistent philosophically or stylistically, and veers with equal brilliance between prophesy and paranoia. This is not altogether surprising. Much of Orwell’s work was reportage or a fictionalised account of the world around him, of which he was trying to make sense. Animal Farm and 1984, published towards the end of his life,
foreshorten the lens, tempting the reader to assume that Orwell was always a man of settled beliefs.
Christopher Hitchens once remarked that Orwell was right about the three central questions of the 20th Century: imperialism, fascism and Stalinism. Hitchens was careful to point out that this was a gradual, stammering process; but added that Orwell’s thought was shaped by two separate events. The first was his stint in the Burmese police, which set him against imperialism and inspired his visceral debut novel, Burmese Days, published in 1934. The second was his voluntary service on the Aragon Front during the Spanish Civil War, where he saw the left wing coalition against Franco degenerate into a civil war of its own, and witnessed the essential
illiberalism of communism. This would, in time, inform some of Animal Farm and 1984.
But, even after Spain, his mind was not ‘settled’, not in an exact sense. There is evidence of this disquiet in a review of Mein Kampf, which Orwell published in March 1940. He wrote:
‘When one compares his [Hitler’s] utterances of a year or so ago with those made fifteen years earlier, a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn’t develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics.’
Then he went on to write:
‘I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler. Ever since he came to power — till then, like nearly everyone, I had been deceived into thinking that he did not matter — I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs — and I recommend especially the photograph at the beginning of Hurst and Blackett’s edition, which shows Hitler in his early Brownshirt days. It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself. The initial personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is there. He is the martyr, the victim. Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.’
You can see that at which Orwell was driving: that Hitler had a charismatic quality, married to an acute sense of victimhood, which many people found intoxicating. But this quasi-elegy is a very odd way of making the point, even more so when one considers the timing. It is as if, dare I say it, the great writer could not find the right words.
One concrete thing about Orwell was his stated intention ‘to make political writing into an art’. If art exists largely to be interpreted, then Orwell was wholly successful. His work pervades public discourse, and dominates academic courses in English literature, modern history, philosophy and political science. The pervasive use of the word ‘Orwellian’ to describe an instrument or system of control that we do not understand but instinctively dislike, is an example of his continued influence on our present way of life. He is likely to remain in this exalted position, until such time as the world evolves a new politics of which he did not imagine.
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