Fifty Orwell Essays

by George Orwell

true that in the twenties the literary emphasis was more on technique and

  less on subject matter than it is now.

  The leading figures in this group are Auden, Spender, Day Lewis,

  MacNeice, and there is a long string of writers of more or less the same

  tendency, Isherwood, John Lehmann, Arthur Calder-Marshall, Edward Upward,

  Alee Brown, Philip Henderson, and many others. As before, I am lumping

  them together simply according to tendency. Obviously there are very

  great variations in talent. But when one compares these writers with the

  Joyce-Eliot generation, the immediately striking thing is how much easier

  it is to form them into a group. Technically they are closer together,

  politically they are almost indistinguishable, and their criticisms of

  one another's work have always been (to put it mildly) good-natured. The

  outstanding writers of the twenties were of very varied origins, few of

  them had passed through the ordinary English educational mill

  (incidentally, the best of them, barring Lawrence, were not Englishmen),

  and most of them had had at some time to struggle against poverty,

  neglect, and even downright persecution. On the other hand, nearly all

  the younger writers fit easily into the public-school-university-Bloomsbury

  pattern. The few who are of proletarian origin are of the kind that is

  declassed early in life, first by means of scholarships and then by the

  bleaching-tub of London 'culture'. It is significant that several of the

  writers in this group have been not only boys but, subsequently, masters

  at public schools. Some years ago I described Auden as 'a sort of

  gutless Kipling'. As criticism this was quite unworthy, indeed it was

  merely a spiteful remark, but it is a fact that in Auden's work,

  especially his earlier work, an atmosphere of uplift--something rather

  like Kipling's If or Newbolt's Play up, Play up, and Play the Game!--never

  seems to be very far away. Take, for instance, a poem like 'You're

  leaving now, and it's up to you boys'. It is pure scoutmaster, the exact

  note of the ten-minutes' straight talk on the dangers of self-abuse.

  No doubt there is an element of parody that he intends, but there is also

  a deeper resemblance that he does not intend. And of course the rather

  priggish note that is common to most of these writers is a symptom,

  of release. By throwing 'pure art' overboard they have freed themselves

  from the fear of being laughed at and vastly enlarged their scope.

  The prophetic side of Marxism, for example, is new material for poetry

  and has great possibilities.

  We are nothing

  We have fallen

  Into the dark and shall be destroyed.

  Think though, that in this darkness

  We hold the secret hub of an idea

  Whose living sunlit wheel revolves in future years outside.

  (Spender, TRIAL OF A JUDGE)

  But at the same time, by being Marxized literature has moved no nearer to

  the masses. Even allowing for the time-lag, Auden and Spender are

  somewhat farther from being popular writers than Joyce and Eliot, let

  alone Lawrence. As before, there are many contemporary writers who are

  outside the current, but there is not much doubt about what is the

  current. For the middle and late thirties, Auden Spender & Co. ARE 'the

  movement', just as Joyce, Eliot & Co. were for the twenties. And the

  movement is in the direction of some rather ill-defined thing called

  Communism. As early as 1934 or 1935 it was considered eccentric in

  literary circles not to be more or less 'left', and in another year or

  two there had grown up a left-wing orthodoxy that made a certain set of

  opinions absolutely DE RIGUEUR on certain subjects, The idea had begun to

  gain ground (VIDE Edward Upward and others) that a writer must either be

  actively 'left' or write badly. Between 1935 and 1939 the Communist

  Party had an almost irresistible fascination for any writer under

  forty. It became as normal to hear that so-and-so had 'joined' as

  it had been a few years earlier, when Roman Catholicism was fashionable,

  to hear that So-and-so had 'been received'. For about three years, in

  fact, the central stream of English literature was more or less directly

  under Communist control. How was it possible for such a thing to happen?

  And at the same time, what is meant by 'Communism'? It is better to

  answer the second question first.

  The Communist movement in Western Europe began, as a movement for the

  violent overthrow of capitalism, and degenerated within a few years into

  an instrument of Russian foreign policy. This was probably inevitable

  when this revolutionary ferment that followed the Great War had died

  down. So far as I know, the only comprehensive history of this subject in

  English is Franz Borkenau's book, THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL. What

  Borkenau's facts even more than his deductions make clear is that

  Communism could never have developed along its present lines if any

  revolutionary feeling had existed in the industrialized countries. In

  England, for instance, it is obvious that no such feeling has existed for

  years past. The pathetic membership figures of all extremist parties show

  this clearly. It is, only natural, therefore, that the English Communist

  movement should be controlled by people who are mentally subservient to

  Russia and have no real aim except to manipulate British foreign policy

  in the Russian interest. Of course such an aim cannot be openly admitted,

  and it is this fact that gives the Communist Party its very peculiar

  character. The more vocal kind of Communist is in effect a Russian

  publicity agent posing as an international socialist. It is a pose that

  is easily kept up at normal times, but becomes difficult in moments of

  crisis, because of the fact that the U.S.S.R. is no more scrupulous in

  its foreign policy than the rest of the Great Powers. Alliances, changes

  of front etc., which only make sense as part of the game of power

  politics have to be explained and justified in terms of international

  socialism. Every time Stalin swaps partners, 'Marxism' has to be hammered

  into a new shape. This entails sudden and violent changes of 'line',

  purges, denunciations, systematic destruction of party literature, etc.,

  etc. Every Communist is in fact liable at any moment to have to alter his

  most fundamental convictions, or leave the party. The unquestionable

  dogma of Monday may become the damnable heresy of Tuesday, and so on.

  This has happened at least three times during the past ten years. It

  follows that in any Western country a Communist Party is always unstable

  and usually very small. Its long-term membership really consists of an

  inner ring of intellectuals who have identified with the Russian

  bureaucracy, and a slightly larger body of working-class people who feel

  a loyalty towards Soviet Russia without necessarily understanding its

  policies. Otherwise there is only a shifting membership, one lot coming

  and another going with each change of 'line'.

  In 1930 the English Communist Party was a tiny, barely legal organization

  whose main activity was libelling the Labour Party. But by 1935 the face
<
br />   of Europe had changed, and left-wing politics changed with it. Hitler had

  risen to power and begun to rearm, the Russian five-year plans had

  succeeded, Russia had reappeared as a great military power. As Hitler's

  three targets of attack were, to all appearances, Great Britain, France,

  and the U.S.S.R., the three countries were forced into a sort of uneasy

  RAPPROCHEMENT. This meant that the English or French Communist was

  obliged to become a good patriot and imperialist--that is, to defend the

  very things he had been attacking for the past fifteen years. The

  Comintern slogans suddenly faded from red to pink. 'World revolution' and

  'Social-Fascism' gave way to 'Defence of democracy' and 'Stop Hitler'.

  The years 1935-9 were the period of anti-Fascism and the Popular Front,

  the heyday of the Left Book Club, when red Duchesses and 'broadminded'

  deans toured the battlefields of the Spanish war and Winston Churchill

  was the blue-eyed boy of the DAILY WORKER. Since then, of course, there

  has been yet another change of 'line'. But what is important for my

  purpose is that it was during the 'anti-Fascist' phase that the younger

  English writers gravitated towards Communism.

  The Fascism-democracy dogfight was no doubt an attraction in itself, but

  in any case their conversion was due at about that date. It was obvious

  that LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism was finished and that there had got to be

  some kind of reconstruction; in the world of 1935 it was hardly possible

  to remain politically indifferent. But why did these young men turn

  towards anything so alien as Russian Communism? Why should WRITERS be

  attracted by a form of socialism that makes mental honesty impossible?

  The explanation really lies in something that had already made itself

  felt before the slump and before Hitler: middle-class unemployment.

  Unemployment is not merely a matter of not having a job. Most people can

  get a job of sorts, even at the worst of times. The trouble was that by

  about 1930 there was no activity, except perhaps scientific research, the

  arts, and left-wing politics, that a thinking person could believe in.

  The debunking of Western civilization had reached its Climax and

  'disillusionment' was immensely widespread. Who now could take it for

  granted to go through life in the ordinary middle-class way, as a

  soldier, a clergyman, a stockbroker, an Indian Civil Servant, or

  what-not? And how many of the values by which our grandfathers lived

  could not be taken seriously? Patriotism, religion, the Empire, the

  family, the sanctity of marriage, the Old School Tie, birth, breeding,

  honour, discipline--anyone of ordinary education could turn the whole

  lot of them inside out in three minutes. But what do you achieve, after

  all, by getting rid of such primal things as patriotism and religion? You

  have not necessarily got rid of the need for SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN.

  There had been a sort of false dawn a few years earlier when numbers of

  young intellectuals, including several quite gifted writers (Evelyn

  Waugh, Christopher Hollis, and others), had fled into the Catholic

  Church. It is significant that these people went almost invariably to the

  Roman Church and not, for instance, to the C. of E., the Greek Church, or

  the Protestants sects. They went, that is, to the Church with a

  world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with

  power and prestige behind it. Perhaps it is even worth noticing that the

  only latter-day convert of really first-rate gifts, Eliot, has embraced

  not Romanism but Anglo-Catholicism, the ecclesiastical equivalent of

  Trotskyism. But I do not think one need look farther than this for the

  reason why the young writers of the thirties flocked into or towards the

  Communist Party. If was simply something to believe in. Here was a

  Church, an army, an orthodoxy, a discipline. Here was a Fatherland

  and--at any rate since 1935 or thereabouts--a Fuehrer. All the loyalties

  and superstitions that the intellect had seemingly banished could come

  rushing back under the thinnest of disguises. Patriotism, religion,

  empire, military glory--all in one word, Russia. Father, king, leader,

  hero, saviour--all in one word, Stalin. God--Stalin. The devil--Hitler.

  Heaven--Moscow. Hell--Berlin. All the gaps were filled up. So, after

  all, the 'Communism' of the English intellectual is something explicable

  enough. It is the patriotism of the deracinated.

  But there is one other thing that undoubtedly contributed to the cult of

  Russia among the English intelligentsia during these years, and that is

  the softness and security of life in England itself. With all its

  injustices, England is still the land of habeas corpus, and the

  over-whelming majority of English people have no experience of violence

  or illegality. If you have grown up in that sort of atmosphere it is not

  at all easy to imagine what a despotic r�gime is like. Nearly all the

  dominant writers of the thirties belonged to the soft-boiled emancipated

  middle class and were too young to have effective memories of the Great

  War. To people of that kind such things as purges, secret police, summary

  executions, imprisonment without trial etc., etc., are too remote to be

  terrifying. They can swallow totalitarianism BECAUSE they have no

  experience of anything except liberalism. Look, for instance, at this

  extract from Mr Auden's poem 'Spain' (incidentally this poem is one of

  the few decent things that have been written about the Spanish war):

  To-morrow for the young, the poets exploding like bombs,

  The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;

  To-morrow the bicycle races

  Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

  To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,

  The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;

  To-day the expending of powers

  On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

  The second stanza is intended as a sort of thumb-nail sketch of a day in

  the life of a 'good party man'. In the-morning a couple of political

  murders, a ten-minutes' interlude to stifle 'bourgeois' remorse, and then

  a hurried luncheon and a busy afternoon and evening chalking walls and

  distributing leaflets. All very edifying. But notice the phrase

  'necessary murder'. It could only be written by a person to whom murder

  is at most a WORD. Personally I would not speak so lightly of murder. It

  so happens that I have seen the bodies of numbers of murdered men--I

  don't mean killed in battle, I mean murdered. Therefore I have some

  conception of what murder means--the terror, the hatred, the howling

  relatives, the post-mortems, the blood, the smells. To me, murder is

  something to be avoided. So it is to any ordinary person. The Hitlers and

  Stalins find murder necessary, but they don't advertise their

  callousness, and they don't speak of it as murder; it is 'liquidation',

  'elimination', or some other soothing phrase. Mr Auden's brand of

  amoralism is only possible, if you are the kind of person who is always

  somewhere else when the trigger is pulled. So much of left-wing thoughtr />
  is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is

  hot. The warmongering to which the English intelligentsia gave themselves

  up in the period 1935-9 was largely based on a sense of personal

  immunity. The attitude was very different in France, where the military

  service is hard to dodge and even literary men know the weight of a pack.

  Towards the end of Mr Cyril Connolly's recent book, ENEMIES OF PROMISE,

  there occurs an interesting and revealing passage. The first part of the

  book, is, more or less, an evaluation of present-day literature. Mr

  Connolly belongs exactly to the generation of the writers of 'the

  movement', and with not many reservations their values are his values. It

  is interesting to notice that among prose-writers her admires chiefly

  those specialising in violence--the would-be tough American school,

  Hemingway, etc. The latter part of the book, however, is autobiographical

  and consists of an account, fascinatingly accurate, of life at a

  preparatory school and Eton in the years 1910-20. Mr Connolly ends by

  remarking:

  Were I to deduce anything from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be

  called THE THEORY OF PERMANENT ADOLESCENCE. It is the theory that the

  experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools are so intense

  as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development.

  When you read the second sentence in this passage, your natural impulse

  is to look for the misprint. Presumably there is a 'not' left out, or

  something. But no, not a bit of it! He means it! And what is more, he is

  merely speaking the truth, in an inverted fashion. 'Cultured'

  middle-class life has reached a depth of softness at which a

  public-school education--five years in a lukewarm bath of snobbery--can

  actually be looked back upon as an eventful period. To nearly all the

  writers who have counted during the thirties, what more has ever happened

  than Mr Connolly records in ENEMIES OF PROMISE? It is the same pattern

  all the time; public school, university, a few trips abroad, then London.

  Hunger, hardship, solitude, exile, war, prison, persecution, manual

  labour--hardly even words. No wonder that the huge tribe known as 'the

  right left people' found it so easy to condone the purge-and-trap side of

  the Russian r�gime and the horrors of the first Five-Year Plan. They were

  so gloriously incapable of understanding what it all meant.

  By 1937 the whole of the intelligentsia was mentally at war. Left-wing

  thought had narrowed down to 'anti-Fascism', i.e. to a negative, and a

  torrent of hate-literature directed against Germany and the politicians

  supposedly friendly to Germany was pouring from the Press. The thing

  that, to me, was truly frightening about the war in Spain was not such

  violence as I witnessed, nor even the party feuds behind the lines, but

  the immediate reappearance in left-wing circles of the mental atmosphere

  of the Great War. The very people who for twenty years had sniggered over

  their own superiority to war hysteria were the ones who rushed straight

  back into the mental slum of 1915. All the familiar wartime idiocies,

  spy-hunting, orthodoxy-sniffing (Sniff, sniff. Are you a good

  anti-Fascist?), the retailing of atrocity stories, came back into vogue

  as though the intervening years had never happened. Before the end of the

  Spanish war, and even before Munich, some of the better of the left-wing

  writers were beginning to squirm. Neither Auden nor, on the whole,

  Spender wrote about the Spanish war in quite the vein that was expected

  of them. Since then there has been a change of feeling and much dismay

  and confusion, because the actual course of events has made nonsense of

  the left-wing orthodoxy of the last few years. But then it did not need

  very great acuteness to see that much of it was nonsense from the start.

  There is no certainty, therefore, that the next orthodoxy to emerge will

  be any better than the last.