Years of life: from 06/25/1903 to 01/21/1950
English writer, publicist. George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair).
Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950) wrote under the pseudonym "George Orwell", which was too "rustic" and "coarse" for his "aristocratic" name. This combination of first and last names was more typical for some English worker than for a person engaged in literary work. He was born on the very periphery of the British Empire, civilization in general and the literary world in particular. His homeland is the unremarkable Indian village of Motihari somewhere on the border with Nepal. The family into which he was born was not rich, did not make a special fortune, and when Eric was eight years old, it was not without difficulty that he was assigned to a private preparatory school in the county of Sussex. A few years later, Eric Arthur Blair shows remarkable academic abilities; the boy receives a scholarship on a competitive basis for further studies at Eton, the most privileged private school in Great Britain, which opened the way to Oxford or Cambridge. But later he leaves it forever educational institution to work as a simple policeman in India, and then in Burma. It was there, perhaps, that George Orwell was formed.
The spirit of adventure revealed to him the lower classes of English society, familiar to the average person only from Dickens's "The Pickwick Papers." This same desire - to experience life in all its diversity - made Orwell go to Spain in 1936, where Civil War. As a BBC war correspondent, Orwell enters the revolutionary struggle against the Nazis, is seriously wounded in the throat and returns to England. There they begin to appear best books. In November 1943 - February 1944, George Orwell wrote his most unusual work - the fairy tale about Stalin "Animal Farm". The satire was so frank that they refused to publish the fairy tale in both England and America; it was published only in 1945. In 1945, Orwell’s wife unexpectedly died and he, along with adopted son, moved to the island of Jura (Hebrides), settling in a rented old farmhouse, located 25 km from the pier and the only store. Here he began work on the novel "1984", which became one of the most famous dystopias of the 20th century (according to many researchers of the writer's work, Orwell swapped the numbers of the year the novel was written - 1948 to 1984). In June 1949, the novel "1984" was published in England and America, and six months later, on January 21, 1950, George Orwell died of tuberculosis. The novel "1984" was translated into 62 languages, and 1984 was named by UNESCO as the year of George Orwell. In addition to them, the writer publishes numerous novels, articles, newspaper articles, reviews (and George Orwell is still considered one of the best publicists and reviewers of the twentieth century).
In the 1960-1970s. Orwell's fame reaches the borders of the USSR. There was no question of publishing his works in a Soviet publishing house - they were too politically engaged, the protest against the communist system was too vivid. There were only two familiar paths left - “samizdat” and “tamizdat”. And here is a typical picture from dissident times: some Soviet intellectual, for example, a simple minister from a research institute, at night, by the light of a table lamp, straining his eyesight, reading quickly, quickly, fingering a stack of pale typewritten sheets with a trembling hand - they gave him the tenth copy, and only for one night - to make it before dawn. They can go to jail for Orwell, but how can you break away, how can you force yourself to trust the leaders and general secretaries after this? True, “1984” was published in a small edition for the powers that be, labeled “for official use” - and they also listened. He firmly fit into the samizdat reading circle - along with Andrei Platonov, Evgenia Ginzburg, Anna Akhmatova, Vasily Grossman, Andrei Bitov, Varlam Shalamov, Dmitry Galkovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Voinovich and many others for whom the path to publication in their homeland was closed. And I didn’t want to believe that he was a stranger, that he was an Englishman - for thousands and thousands of people he became one of their own, became a Russian writer, although he had never been on Soviet soil. (And, to be honest, I wrote “1984” not at all about the USSR during the Stalin era.)
Since then, his name became so famous, he was quoted, and the unforgettable “newspeak” and “doublethink” were forever written into the Russian lexicon. And in 1984, when, in fact, the socialist nightmare of the novel of the same name takes place, Literary Gazette staged a cheerful persecution of Orwell - well, they say, but it still didn’t turn out your way! And they themselves did not understand that this was still very good, that not everything was guessed by the author, and not everything came true.
And only at the very end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s it began to be published in large quantities, and, as a rule, in copies of hundreds of thousands; the collections also contained two more dystopias - “We” by Zamyatin and “O Brave New World!..” by Aldous Huxley . But "1984" had the greatest impact on the reader. George Orwell, despite his noisy scandalous fame, is still not fully read in Russia. Here he is the author of one, well, two books. In fact, his collected works consist of 20 volumes, in the UK it is included in school curriculum, and there are four novels that have never been published here. They are afraid to publish it, they are afraid to translate it - because there is no confidence in the commercial success of Orwell's other works. Are you afraid of disappointing the reader? Perhaps, but there remains hope that after the centenary of the birth of this outstanding writer, the Russian reader will be able to read his other great works.
* Despite the fact that in Orwell’s works many see a satire on the totalitarian system, the writer himself for a long time suspected of having close ties with the communists. As the dossier on the writer, declassified in 2007, showed, the British counterintelligence MI-5 from 1929 and almost until the writer’s death in 1950 conducted surveillance on him. For example, in one of the dossier notes, dated January 20, 1942, agent Sgt Ewing describes Orwell as follows:
This man has advanced communist beliefs and some of his Indian friends say that they often saw him at communist meetings. He dresses bohemianly both at work and in his leisure time.
According to the documents, the writer actually took part in such meetings, and he was described as “sympathizing with the communists.”
*George Orwell is known not only for his famous novel “1984”, but also for his ardent fight against communists. He took part in the Spanish Civil War and fought on the Republican side. All his life, Orwell hated the communist system and Stalin, whom the writer blamed for all the troubles. In 1949, Orwell, seriously ill with tuberculosis, compiled a list of 38 names, naming people who, from his point of view, supported the communists. This list fell into the hands of a young British intelligence officer with whom Orwell was hopelessly in love.
Orwell knew all the people on the list personally, and some of them considered him their friend. Basically, they belonged to the circle of show business or were writers, like Orwell himself. The vigilant George Orwell described these respected people as secret communists who sympathized with the Stalin regime and provided support Soviet Union. Eric Blair (this is the writer's real name) believed that all American citizens he named should be thoroughly interrogated for communist sympathies and registered.
List of enemies American people was entrusted to Celia Kirwan, who worked in the secret department of the British Foreign Office. The writer was madly in love with the young charmer and wanted to help her advance in her career, as well as win her trust - in case she decided to turn her attention to Orwell. By the way, the list was taken seriously, and all the people listed on it were verified. Thus, Daily Express journalist Peter Smollett was identified as a Soviet agent.
Writer's Awards
1984 in the Hall of Fame nomination for the novel "1984"
1989 " " (USSR) for the novel "1984"
1996 "" Award in the "Novel" category for the story "Animal Farm". The prize was awarded retrospectively - for 1946.
George Orwell- English writer and publicist.
His father, a British colonial official, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Department. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, in 1917 received a personal scholarship and attended Eton. In 1922-1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.
Orwell's early - and not only documentary - books are largely autobiographical. Having been a scullery maid in Paris and a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through English villages, Orwell received material for his first book, “A Dog's Life in Paris and London” (Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). "Days in Burma" (Burmese Days, 1934) largely reflected eastern period his life.
Like the author, the hero of the book Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) works as an assistant to a second-hand bookseller, and the heroine of the novel A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) teaches in seedy private schools. In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was the angry documentary book “The Road to Wigan Pier” (The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), where Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. , on this trip he acquired a strong interest in the works popular culture, which is reflected in his now classic essays "The Art of Donald McGill" and "Boys" Weeklies.
The civil war that broke out in Spain caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Orwell went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately upon arriving in Barcelona he joined the partisan detachment of the Marxist workers' party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, and was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the Battle of Barcelona on the side of the POUM and anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the communist government's secret police, Orwell fled Spain. In his account of the trenches of the civil war, Homage to Catalonia (1939), he reveals the Stalinists' intentions to seize power in Spain. The Spanish impressions stayed with Orwell throughout his life. In the last pre-war novel “Behind the Sip” fresh air"(Coming Up for Air, 1940) he denounces the erosion of values and norms in the modern world.
Orwell believed that real prose should be “transparent as glass,” and he himself wrote extremely clearly. Examples of what he considered the main virtues of prose can be seen in his essay “Shooting an Elephant” and especially in his essay “Politics and English language" (Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic sloppiness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty as defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945, he wrote Animal Farm, which made him famous - a satire on the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes it generated, in the form of a parable telling how animals began to rule on one farm. His last book was Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a dystopian novel in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger.
George Orwell- pseudonym of Erik Blair - born June 25, 1903, in Matihari (Bengal). His father, a British colonial official, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Department. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, received a personal scholarship in 1917 and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.
Orwell's early - and not only documentary - books are largely autobiographical. Having worked as a scullery in Paris and a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through English villages, Orwell received material for his first book, A Dog's Life in Paris and London ( Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933). "Days in Burma" ( Burmese Days, 1934) largely reflected the eastern period of his life. Like the author, the hero of the book “Let the Aspidistra Bloom” ( Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936) works as an assistant to a second-hand bookseller, and the heroine of the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) teaches in run-down private schools. In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was the angry non-fiction book The Road to Wigan Pier ( The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937), where Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. It was also on this trip that he acquired an enduring interest in works of popular culture, reflected in his now classic essays, "The Art of Donald McGill" ( The Art of Donald McGill) and Weeklies for Boys ( Boys' Weeklies).
The civil war that broke out in Spain caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Orwell went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately upon arriving in Barcelona he joined the partisan detachment of the Marxist workers' party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, and was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the Battle of Barcelona on the side of the POUM and anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the communist government's secret police, Orwell fled Spain. In his account of the trenches of the civil war - “In Memory of Catalonia” ( Homage to Catalonia, 1939) - it reveals the intentions of the Stalinists to seize power in Spain. The Spanish impressions stayed with Orwell throughout his life. In the last pre-war novel, “For a Breath of Fresh Air” ( Coming Up for Air, 1940) he denounces the erosion of values and norms in the modern world.
Orwell believed that real prose should be “transparent as glass,” and he himself wrote extremely clearly. Examples of what he considered the main virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "The Killing of an Elephant" ( Shooting an Elephant; rus. translation 1989) and especially in the essay “Politics and the English Language” ( Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic sloppiness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty as defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945 he wrote Animal Farm, which made him famous ( Animal Farm) - a satire on the Russian revolution and the collapse of the hopes it generated, in the form of a parable telling how animals began to take charge of one farm. His last book was the novel "1984" ( Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger. Orwell died in London on January 21, 1950.
George Orwell is the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, who was born in 1903 in the Indian village of Motihari on the border with Nepal. At that time, India was part of the British Empire, and the father of the future writer, Richard Blair, served in one of the departments of the Indian administration of Great Britain. The writer's mother was the daughter of a French merchant. Although Richard Blair served faithfully British crown Until his retirement in 1912, the family did not make a fortune, and when Eric was eight years old, it was not without difficulty that he was sent to a private preparatory school in Sussex. A few years later, having demonstrated extraordinary academic abilities, the boy received a scholarship on a competitive basis for further studies at Eton, the most privileged private school in Great Britain, which opened the way to Oxford or Cambridge. Later, in the essay “Why I Write,” Orwell recalled that already at the age of five or six he knew for sure that he would be a writer, and at Eton the circle of his literary passions was determined - Swift, Stern, Jack London. It is possible that it was the spirit of adventure and adventurism in the works of these writers that influenced Eric Blair's decision to turn away from the beaten path of an Eton graduate and join the imperial police, first in India, then in Burma. In 1927, disillusioned with the ideals and the system he served, E. Blair resigns and settles on Portobello Road, in a quarter of the London poor, then leaves for Paris, the center of European bohemia. However, the future writer did not lead a bohemian lifestyle; he lived in a working-class neighborhood, earning money by washing dishes, absorbing experiences and impressions that the writer George Orwell would later melt into novels and numerous essays.
J. Orwell’s first book “Burmese Everyday Life” (on the site “Days in Burma” translated by V. Domiteyeva - Burmese Days) was published in 1934 and tells the story of years spent serving in the colonies of the British Empire. The first publication was followed by the novel “The Priest’s Daughter” ( A Clergyman's Daughter, 1935) and a number of works on the most various issues- politics, art, literature. J. Orwell was always a politically engaged writer, shared the romanticism of the “Red 30s”, was concerned about the inhuman working conditions of English miners, and emphasized class inequality in English society. At the same time, he treated the idea of English socialism and “proletarian solidarity” with distrust and irony, since socialist views were more popular among intellectuals and those who belonged to the middle class, far from being the most disadvantaged. Orwell seriously doubted their sincerity and revolutionary nature.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the writer’s socialist sympathies brought him into the ranks of the Spanish Republicans when civil war broke out there. He goes to Spain at the end of 1936 as a correspondent for the BBC and the London Observer newspaper. Orwell was fascinated by the atmosphere of equality and militant brotherhood that he felt upon his arrival in Barcelona. Socialism seemed to be a reality, and, after undergoing basic military training, the writer went to the front, where he received a serious throat wound. Orwell described those days in the documentary book “In Honor of Catalonia” (on the website “In Memory of Catalonia” - Homage to Catalonia, 1938), where he sang of friends in arms, the spirit of brotherhood, where there was no “blind obedience”, where there was “almost complete equality of officers and soldiers.” While in hospital after being wounded, Orwell would write to a friend: “I witnessed amazing things and finally really believed in Socialism, which was not the case before.”
However, the writer also learned another lesson. There, in Catalonia, a newspaper La Batalla, the organ of the Spanish United Marxist Workers' Party, in whose ranks J. Oruedel fought, back in 1936, condemned the political trials in Moscow and the Stalinist massacre of many old Bolsheviks. However, even before leaving for Spain, Orwell was aware of the mass processes, which he called “ political assassinations“But, unlike most of the English left, he believed that what was happening in Russia was not an “offensive of capitalism,” but a “disgusting perversion of Socialism.”
With the passion of a neophyte, Orwell defended the original “moral concepts of socialism” - “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice,” the process of deformation of which he captured in the satirical allegory “Animal Farm”. The actions of some Republicans in Spain and the brutal practices of Stalin's repressions shook his faith in the ideals of socialism. Orwell understood the utopian nature of building a classless society and the baseness of human nature, which is characterized by cruelty, conflict, and the desire to rule over one’s own kind. The writer’s anxieties and doubts were reflected in his most famous and frequently cited novels - “Animal Farm” and “”.
The history of the publication of Animal Farm is complicated. (Animal Farm: A Fairy Story), this “fairy tale with political significance", as the author himself defined the genre of the book. Having completed work on the manuscript in February 1944, Orwell, after the refusal of several publishing houses, was able to publish it only in 1945. Publishers were scared off by the openly anti-Stalinist (according to Orwell himself) nature of the book. But there was a war, and faced with the threat of fascist slavery, Moscow political processes and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact were pushed to the periphery public consciousness— the freedom of Europe was at stake. At that time and in those conditions, criticism of Stalinism was inevitably associated with an attack against the fighting Russia, despite the fact that Orwell defined his attitude towards fascism back in the 30s, taking up arms to defend Republican Spain. During the Second World War, George Orwell works for the BBC, then as a newspaper literary editor, and at the end of the war as a reporter in Europe. After the end of the war, the writer settled on the coast in Scotland, where he completed the novel 1984, which was published in 1949. The writer died in January 1950.
In our country, the novel became known to a wide readership in 1988, when different magazines three satirical dystopias are published: “We” by E. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by O. Huxley and “Animal Farm” by J. Orwell. During this period, there is a revaluation of not only Soviet, but also Russian literature abroad and the work of foreign authors. The books of those Western writers who were excommunicated from the Soviet mass reader because they allowed themselves to make critical statements about us, those who were disgusted in our reality by what today we ourselves do not accept and reject, are being actively translated. This primarily applies to satirical writers, those who, due to the specific nature of their mocking and caustic muse, are the first to make a diagnosis, noticing signs of social ill health.
During the same period, a long-term taboo was lifted from another dystopia by George Orwell - “1984”, a novel that was either hushed up in our country or interpreted as anti-Soviet, reactionary. The position of critics who wrote about Orwell in the recent past can be explained to some extent. The whole truth about Stalinism was not yet available, that abyss of lawlessness and atrocities against classes and entire nations, the truth about the humiliation of the human spirit, mockery of free thought (about the atmosphere of suspicion, the practice of denunciations and much, much more that historians and publicists revealed to us , as told in the works of A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Grossman, A. Rybakov, M. Dudintsev, D. Granin, Yu. Dombrovsky, V. Shalamov and many others. At the same time, Stalin’s barracks socialism was perceived by many as an inevitability, a given that did not exist. alternatives: one born in captivity does not notice it.
Apparently, one can get the “sacred horror” of the Soviet critic, who already read in the second paragraph of “1984” about a poster where “a huge face, more than a meter wide, was depicted: the face of a man about forty-five years old, with a thick black mustache, rough, but attractive in a masculine way... On each landing the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you stood, your eyes would not let you go. "BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU"- the inscription read" [hereinafter quoted from: "1984", New world: No. 2, 3, 4, 1989. Translation: V.P. Golyshev], a clear allusion to the “father of nations” could dull the sharpness of critical perception of the work.
But the paradox is that in the essay “Why I Write,” Orwell defines his task as a critique of socialism from the right, rather than an attack on the left. He admitted that every line he had written since 1936 "was directly or indirectly directed against totalitarianism in defense of Democratic Socialism, as I understand it." "Animal Farm" is not only an allegory of the Russian revolution, but also tells of the difficulties and problems that can be encountered in building any just society, no matter what the beautiful ideals of its leaders. Excessive ambitions, hypertrophied egoism and hypocrisy can lead to the perversion and betrayal of these ideals.
The characters in Animal Farm, rebelling against the tyranny of farm owner Jones, proclaim a society where “all animals are equal.” Their revolutionary slogans are reminiscent of the seven biblical commandments, which everyone must strictly follow. But the inhabitants of Animal Farm pass their first idealistic phase, the phase of egalitarianism, very quickly and come first to the usurpation of power by pigs, and then to the absolute dictatorship of one of them - a boar named Napoleon. As the pigs try to imitate the behavior of people, the content of the commandment slogans gradually changes. When the piglets occupy Jones's bedroom, thereby violating the commandment "No animal shall sleep on a bed," they amend it - "No animal shall sleep on a bed with sheets." Imperceptibly, not only a substitution of slogans and a shift in concepts is taking place, but also a restoration status quo ante, only in an even more absurd and perverted form, for the “enlightened” power of man. gives way to bestial tyranny, the victims of which are almost all the inhabitants of the farm, with the exception of the local elite - members of the pig committee (pig committee) and their faithful guard dogs, whose ferocious appearance resembled wolves.
Painfully recognizable events take place in the barnyard: Napoleon's rival in an incendiary political debate, Snowball, nicknamed Cicero, is expelled from the farm. He is deprived of awards honestly won in historical battle at the Cowshed, won by free animals over their neighboring farmers. Moreover, Cicero is declared a spy of Jones - and fluff and feathers are already flying on the farm (literally), and even heads are being chopped off by stupid chickens and ducks for their “voluntary” confession of “criminal” connections with the “spy” Cicero. The final betrayal of "Animalism" - the teachings of the late theorist, the hog named Major - occurs with the replacement of the main slogan "All animals are equal" with the slogan "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." And then the anthem “Live cattle, livestock without rights” is prohibited and the democratic address “comrade” is abolished. In the last episode of this incredible story the surviving inhabitants of the farm with horror and amazement contemplate through the window the pig's feast, where worst enemy farm, Mr. Pilkington proposes a toast to the prosperity of Animal Farm. The pigs stand on their hind legs (which is also prohibited by the commandment), and their snouts are no longer distinguishable among the drunken faces of people.
As befits a satirical allegory, each character is the bearer of one or another idea, embodies a certain social type. In addition to the cunning and insidious Napoleon, the system of characters in Animal Farm includes the political projector Cicero; a pig named Squealer, a demagogue and a sycophant; young filly Molly, ready to sell her newfound freedom for a piece of sugar and bright ribbons, for even on the eve of the uprising she was interested in the only question- “Will there be sugar after the uprising?”; a flock of sheep, appropriately and inappropriately singing “Four legs are good, two legs are bad”; old donkey Benjamin, whose worldly experience tells him not to join any of the opposing parties.
In satire, irony, grotesque and piercing lyricism rarely coexist, because satire, unlike lyricism, appeals to reason, not to feelings. Orwell manages to combine the seemingly incompatible. Pity and compassion are caused by the narrow-minded, but endowed enormous power horse Boxer. He is not experienced in political intrigue, but honestly pulls his weight and is ready to work for the benefit of the farm even more, even harder, until mighty forces They don’t leave him, and then they take him to the slaughterhouse. In Orwell’s sympathy for the toiling Boxer, one cannot help but see his sincere sympathy for the peasantry, whose simple lifestyle and hard work the writer respected and appreciated, because they “mixed their sweat with the earth” and; therefore have a greater right to land than the gentry (small nobility) or the "high middle class" Orwell believed that the true guardians of traditional values and morality are simple people, and not intellectuals fighting for power and prestigious positions. (However, the writer’s attitude towards the latter was not so clear.)
Orwell is an English writer to the core. His “Englishness” was manifested in everyday life, in his “amateurism” (Orwell did not receive a university education); dressing in an eccentric manner; in love for the land (my own goat was walking in my own garden); close to nature (he shared the ideas of simplification); in adherence to traditions. But at the same time, Orwell was never characterized by “island” thinking or intellectual snobbery. He was well acquainted with Russian and French literature, closely followed political life not only Europe, but also other continents, always considered himself a “political writer.”
His political engagement manifested itself with particular force in the novel “1984,” a dystopian novel, a warning novel. There is an opinion that “1984” means the same thing for English literature of the 20th century as “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes, a masterpiece of English political philosophy, means for the 17th century. Hobbes, like Orwell, tried to solve a cardinal question for his time: who in a civilized society should have power, and what is the attitude of society towards the rights and responsibilities of the individual. But perhaps the most noticeable influence on Orwell was the work of the classic English satire Jonathan Swift. Without Swiftian Yahoos and Houyhnhnms, Animal Farm could hardly have appeared, continuing the tradition of dystopia and political satire. In the 20th century, a synthesis of these genres emerged - a satirical utopia, dating back to Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We,” completed in 1920 and first published in the West in 1924. It was followed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's 1984 (1949).
Isaac Deutscher in his book “Heretics and Renegades” claims that the author of “1984” borrowed all the main plots from E. Zamyatin. At the same time, there is an indication that by the time he became acquainted with the novel “We,” Orwell had already matured the concept of his own satirical utopia. American professor Gleb Struve, an expert on Russian literature, told Orwell about Zamyatin’s novel, and then sent him French translation books. In a letter to Struve dated February 17, 1944, Orwell writes: “I am very interested in literature of this kind, I am even taking notes myself for my own book, which I will write sooner or later.”
In the novel “We,” Zamyatin depicts a society that is a thousand years removed from the 20th century. The United State rules on Earth, having conquered the world as a result of the Two Hundred Years' War and fencing itself off from it with the Green Wall. Rules the inhabitants One State- by numbers (everything in the state is impersonal) - “the skillful heavy hand of the Benefactor”, and the “experienced eye of the Guardians” looks after them. Everything in the United State is rationalized, regulated, regulated. The goal of the State is “an absolutely precise solution to the problem of happiness.” True, according to the narrator (mathematician), number D-503, the United State has not yet been able to completely solve this problem, for there are “established by the Tablet Personal Watch" In addition, from time to time “traces of a hitherto elusive organization are discovered that sets itself the goal of liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State.”
The author of a satirical utopia, as a rule, is based on contemporary trends, then, using irony, hyperbole, grotesque - this “ construction material"satires, projects them into the distant future. The logic of an intellectual, the keen eye of a writer, the intuition of an artist allowed E. I. Zamyatin to predict a lot: the dehumanization of man, his rejection of Nature, dangerous trends in science and machine production that turn a person into a “bolt”: if necessary, a “bent bolt” could always be “throw it away” without stopping the eternal, great progress of the entire “Machine”.
The time of action in O. Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” is the year 632 of the “era of stability.” The motto of the World State is “Commonality, Sameness, Stability.” This society seems to represent a new round in the development of Zamyatin’s United State. Expediency and its derivative, caste, reign here. Children are not born, they are hatched by the “Central London Hatchery and created in an educational center”, where, thanks to injections and a certain temperature and oxygen regime, alphas and betas, gammas, deltas and epsilons grow from the egg, each with its own programmed properties, designed to perform certain functions in society .
The hedonistic societies created by the imagination of Zamyatin and Huxley are mainly aimed at consumption: “every man, woman and child was obliged to consume so much annually for the prosperity of industry.” A whole army of hypnopedists are engaged in brainwashing in the “brave new world”, instilling in alphas, betas and everyone else, recipes for happiness, which, when repeated a hundred times three times a week for four years, become “truth”. Well, if minor upsets happen, there is always a daily dose of “soma” that allows you to detach yourself from them, or a “super-singing, synthetic-speech, color stereoscopic sensory film with synchronous olfactory accompaniment” that serves the same purpose.
The society of the future in the novels of E. Zamyatin and O. Huxley is based on the philosophy of hedonism; the authors of satirical dystopias admit the possibility of at least hypnopaedic and synthetic “happiness” for future generations. Orwell rejects the idea of even illusory social welfare. Despite advances in science and technology, “the dream of a future society—incredibly rich, leisurely, orderly, efficient, a shining, antiseptic world of glass, steel, and snow-white concrete” could not be realized “partly because of the impoverishment caused by the long history of life.” a series of wars and revolutions, partly due to the fact that scientific and technological progress was based on empirical thinking, which could not survive in a strictly regulated society" [cited from: New World, No. 3, 1989, p. 174], the contours of which Orwell, who had a surprisingly keen political vision, already discerned on the European horizon. In a society of this type, a small clique rules, which, in essence, is a new ruling class. “Frenzied nationalism” and “deification of the leader”, “constant conflicts” are integral features of an authoritarian state. Only “democratic values, the custodians of which are the intelligentsia,” can resist them.
Orwell's irrepressible imagination was fed by themes and plots not only of Soviet reality. The writer also uses “pan-European subjects”: pre-war economic crisis, total terror, extermination of dissidents, the brown plague of fascism creeping across European countries. But, to our shame, “1984” predicted much of our newest Russian history. Some passages of the novel coincide almost word for word with examples of our best journalism, which spoke about spy mania, denunciations, and falsification of history. These coincidences are mainly factual: neither a deep historical understanding of this or that negative phenomenon, nor its angry statement can compete in the power of exposure and impact on the reader with effective satire, which includes mocking irony and caustic sarcasm, caustic mockery and striking invective. But for satire to take place and hit the target, it must be associated with humor, ridicule, through the general category of the comic, and thereby cause rejection and rejection of the negative phenomenon. Bertolt Brecht argued that laughter is “the first undue manifestation of a proper life.”
Perhaps the leading means of satirical interpretation in “1984” is the grotesque: everything in Ingsoc society is illogical and absurd. Science and technological progress serve only as instruments of control, management and suppression. Orwell's total satire strikes all the institutions of a totalitarian state: the ideology of the party slogans reads: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength); the economy (the people, except members of the Inner Party, are starving, coupons for tobacco and chocolate have been introduced); science (the history of society is endlessly rewritten and embellished, however, geography is no more fortunate - there is a continuous war for the redistribution of territories); justice (the inhabitants of Oceania are spied on by the “thought police”, and for a “thought crime” or “face crime” the convicted person can not only be crippled morally or physically, but even “pulverized”).
The telescreen continuously “spewed out fabulous statistics, processing the mass consciousness.” Half-starved people, dull from meager living, from fear of committing a “personal or mental crime,” were surprised to learn that “there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more pots, more fuel,” etc. Society, the telescreen broadcast, was “rapidly rising to new and new heights.” [quoted from: New World, No. 2, 1989, p. 155.] In the Ingsoc society, the party ideal depicted “something gigantic, menacing, sparkling: a world of steel and concrete, monstrous machines and terrible weapons, a country of warriors and fanatics who march in a single formation, think one thought, shout one slogan, three hundred million people work tirelessly, fight, triumph, punish—three hundred million people, and all look the same.”
And again satirical arrows Orwell achieve their goal - we recognize ourselves, yesterday, “forging labor victories”, “fought on the labor front”, entering into “battles for the harvest”, reporting on “new achievements”, marching in a single column “from victory to victory”, recognizing only “unanimity” and professing the principle of “all as one.” Orwell turned out to be surprisingly prescient, noticing a pattern between the standardization of thinking and the cliché of language. Orwell's “newspeak” was intended not only to provide symbolic means for the worldview and mental activity of “Ingsoc” adherents, but also to make any dissent impossible. It was assumed that when “Newspeak” was established forever, and “Oldspeak” was forgotten, unorthodox, that is, alien to “Ingsots,” thought, in so far as it is expressed in words, would become literally unthinkable.”
In addition, the task of “newspeak” was to make speech, especially on ideological topics, independent of consciousness. The party member had to utter “correct” judgments automatically, “like a machine gun firing a burst.”
Fortunately, Orwell did not guess everything. But the author of the novel-warning should not have strived for this. He only brought the socio-political trends of his time to their logical (or absurd?) end. But even today Orwell is perhaps the most widely quoted foreign writer. The world has changed for the better (Hmm... is that true? O. Doug (2001)
), but the warnings and calls of George Orwell should not be ignored. History has a habit of repeating itself.
Cand. Philol. Sciences, Associate Professor
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N. A. Zinkevich, 2001
N. A. Zinkevich: “George Orwell”, 2001
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