George Orwell- English writer and publicist.

His father, a British colonial clerk, held a minor post in the Indian Customs Board. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, in 1917 he received a nominal scholarship and until 1921 attended Eton College. 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 non-fiction - books are largely autobiographical. After being a boat-washer in Paris, a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through the English countryside, Orwell obtained material for his first book, 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 Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) works as an assistant book dealer, 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 nonfiction book The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), where Orwell, to the annoyance of his employers, criticized English socialism. During this trip, he developed a keen interest in popular culture, as reflected in his 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 arrival in Barcelona he joined the partisan detachment of the Marxist Workers' Party POUM, fought on the Aragonese and Teruel fronts, was seriously wounded. In May 1937 he took part in the battle for Barcelona on the side of the POUM and the 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 - "Memory of Catalonia" (Homage to Catalonia, 1939) - he reveals the intentions of the Stalinists to seize power in Spain. Spanish impressions did not let Orwell go throughout his life. In his last pre-war novel, Coming Up for Air (1940), he denounces the erosion of values ​​and norms in the modern world.
Orwell believed that true prose should be "transparent as glass" and wrote extremely clearly himself. Examples of what he considered to be the chief virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "Shooting an Elephant" and in particular in his essay "Politics and English language” (Politics and the English Language), where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic slovenliness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his writing duty in defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting the totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945, he wrote Animal Farm, which glorified him, a satire on the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the hopes it engendered, in the form of a parable, telling how animals began to take over on a farm. His last book there was the novel "1984" (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger.

Biography

Often in the conversation of people associated with the political side of public life there are such phrases as " cold war” or “thought police”, “Big Brother”. Almost no one thinks about where they originate from, moreover, about who first used them. The "father" of these neological expressions is George Orwell, a British writer and publicist, known for the novel "1984" and the story "Animal Farm". Admirers of his work believe that he was a very outstanding person with his own views on all aspects of life.

Like others famous people, the writer has come a long way of becoming not only as a person, but also as an author. In order to understand where he got the craving for writing stories that conquered the whole world, it is worth taking a short journey through his biography. In addition, few people know that Mr. Orwell's real name is Eric Arthur Blair.

Childhood

The future publicist was born in June 1903. His birth is dated the twenty-fifth. Despite the fact that in the future the boy will become a British writer, he spent his childhood in India, which at that time was a colony. His father was an employee of the Opium Department of the British colonial administration.

And although the boy's parents were poor people, he managed to get a place in the school of St. Cyprian, which is located in a place called Eastbourne. It was there that Eric Arthur Blair showed his extraordinary mind and abilities. His studies here lasted five years, after which the boy received a nominal scholarship from the college at Eton.

Youth

Mr. Orwell's youth began in 1917 when he first arrived at Eton to study. It is known that in college the young man was a student who received a royal scholarship. From there, he could easily enter any prestigious university in Britain, for example, Oxford or Cambridge, however, his creative way was somewhat different.

After studying at Eton until 1921, Mr. Blair went to Burma to enter public service. It took him about five years to understand that he did not like such an occupation. In 1927 he returns to Europe to change countless professions.

It is known that Eric Arthur worked as a teacher, took care of a boy who was unable to move independently, a seller. At the same time, he managed to write short articles, essays for small newspapers, magazines with a literary focus. Only when he arrived in Paris, Mr. Black realized that it was important for him to give up everything except writing. So, in 1935, George Orwell was born.

mature years

After the beginning of his writing career, it cannot be said that the man forgot about his work as a publicist. In 1936, he had to become a participant in hostilities and go to the Aragonese front, which was formed during the Spanish Civil War. Six months after joining the ranks of the militia, the man was wounded and retired.

But only in 1940, the publicist was recognized as completely unfit for military service. However, he wasn't about to give up. It was then that his publications in the Partisan Review magazine began to appear, where he spoke in detail about working combat strategies, pointing out the advantages of fortifications and the weaknesses that arise during their construction.

From the very beginning of World War II, the writer broadcast on the BBC channel, which had an anti-fascist focus. Orwell was a deeply humane person, and therefore the policy promoted by the Nazi leader offended his entire living being. This can also be seen in the stories and novels written by him during the war period.

Personal life

For Mr. Orwell, the glory of a ladies' man and womanizer was entrenched. However, this did not prevent him from being an exemplary husband and father. In 1936, the man married for the first time. Eileen O'Shaughnessy became his chosen one. A man often admitted that he had several mistresses, however, his wife always remained faithful to him.

Four years after the marriage, the couple decided to adopt a child. For some reason, not confirmed by passing a medical examination, Eric Arthur believed that he could not become the father of his own baby. The little boy adopted by him and Eileen was named as the writer's favorite uncle - Richard.

They said about Orwell that he was a wonderful father, however, the family idyll in his life was present for a short time. In 1946, the writer's beloved wife died of a heart attack during an operation when an oncological formation on her female genital organs was removed. At the time of his death and funeral, the man was away, and therefore only upon arrival he managed to plant a rose bush on his wife's grave as an eternal reminder of their relationship.

After Eileen's death, Richard was raised by a woman named Susan. Together they lived for some time on the island of Jura, where in 1948 the writer learned about his terrible disease - tuberculosis. It was then that the family moved to the capital of Great Britain, where he again met his second wife, Sonya Brownell. The girl worked with a friend of the writer and expressed a desire to get to know him.

Young people got married in the hospital room where Orwell was in 1949. It seemed that happy events in her personal life would extend her term for the writer, however, this was not enough. A couple of months after the wedding, namely on January 21, 1950, the man died in a hospital bed at the age of forty-six.

Political views of the writer

Everything political ideas, the views of the writer were reflected in his books. So, "Animal Farm" is just an allegorical coverage of the events that took place on the territory of the USSR in 1917. It is known that Mr. Orwell spoke openly about his disappointment in Stalin, as the main revolutionary at that time.

He was sure that the revolution did not achieve the absence of classes, but brought to power one of them that turned out to be stronger. Tyranny, despotic attitude, ruthlessness, unscrupulousness - such characteristics were given by the publicist in his statements to people who survived during the revolutionary actions. He did not consider the new political system in the USSR to be socialist, and therefore he was openly indignant when he was called as such.

Despite the fact that the USSR helped Britain recover from the defeat inflicted by the fascist troops, Orwell could not come to terms with the political system that had been established there. He dreamed that his beloved homeland would accept socialism as he and his followers saw it, however, this did not happen. Some familiar publicists said that this state of affairs hastened his death, since Orwell could not survive the doom of the future.

Soviet response to Orwell

Until 1984, the story "Animal Farm" was not published or distributed among the inhabitants of the Soviet Union. However, there was an opinion that secret service agents still received copies of the work in order to familiarize themselves with it. Subsequently, the authorities did a great job of "whitening" the name of George Orwell. To some extent, the people who came out at that moment to fight against imperialism identified themselves with the writer. And at the moment when the process of "whitening" was practically completed, the Soviet Union collapsed, censorship was removed and the publicist's book fell into the general readership. It is difficult to say that she was popular at that moment, however, some of the inhabitants of the post-Soviet space considered her very interesting.

A person who became a famous publicist, writer, had different hobbies. He not only followed the political events in the world, took part in hostilities, but also studied different languages, For example. So, in addition to English, the writer spoke Hindi, Latin, Greek, Burmese, French, Catalan, and Spanish. To others interesting facts about the personality of Eric Arthur Blair include:

• love for tea drinking - every day the writer drank tea at the same time, arranging a whole ceremony out of this, even if he was alone with himself;
• love for collecting beautiful things - it is known that the man had a collection of mugs that were dedicated to the holiday in honor of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, as well as a large number of postcards and newspaper clippings. In addition, he had a handmade Burmese sword on his bedroom wall;
• love for handicraft - a man often made furniture according to his own sketches. And although it turned out to be awkward, he found real pleasure in the process of creating it.

In addition, it is known that the writer belonged to the number of superstitious atheists, he learned a lot of literary techniques from Mikhail Zamyatin, and until a certain point he was a fan of HG Wells. George Orwell was not just an outstanding personality, fond of and interesting person. He could be called a lazy perfectionist, one who combines the incongruous. That is why his articles and works are widely known throughout the world and have a sufficient number of fans.

George Orwell - list of all books

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George Orwell (born 1903 - died 1950) was an English writer and essayist.

Eric Blair was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari (India) in the family of a British sales agent. Orwell studied at St. Cyprian, in 1917 he received a nominal scholarship and until 1921 attended Eton College. From 1922 to 1927, he served in the colonial police in Burma, then lived for a long time in the UK and Europe, making odd jobs, at the same time he began to write fiction and journalism. From 1935 he published under the pseudonym "George Orwell". Member of the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 (book "In Memory of Catalonia", 1938, essay "Remembering the War in Spain", 1943, fully published in 1953), where he closely encountered manifestations of factional struggle among the left.

Each generation considers itself smarter than the previous one and wiser than the next.

Orwell George

After returning from Spain, he wrote a book about Spanish civil war, however, his longtime publisher Viktor Gollants refused to publish it, citing the fact that the book could harm the cause of the fight against fascism.

Wrote many essays and articles of socio-critical and culturological character. During World War II, he hosted an anti-fascist program on the BBC.

During the Spanish Civil War, Orwell fought on the side of the Republicans in the ranks of the POUM units. About these events, he wrote a documentary story "In memory of Catalonia" (Eng. "Homage to Catalonia") - 1936.

Nine times out of ten, the revolutionary is a rock climber with a bomb in his pocket.

Orwell George

In the story Animal Farm (1945) he showed the rebirth of revolutionary principles and programs: Animal Farm is a parable, an allegory for the 1917 revolution and subsequent events in Russia.

The dystopian novel 1984 (1949) became a continuation of Animal Farm. Orwell portrayed a possible future world society as a totalitarian hierarchical system based on sophisticated physical and spiritual enslavement, permeated with universal fear and hatred. In this book, for the first time, the well-known expression “Big Brother is watching you” was heard, and the terms “doublethink”, “thought crime” and “newspeak” that became widely known were also introduced.

Despite the fact that many see Orwell's works as a satire on the totalitarian system, the authorities themselves have long been suspected of close ties with the communists. As the dossier on the writer declassified in 2007 showed, the British counterintelligence MI-5 from 1929 until almost the writer's death in 1950 kept him under surveillance. For example, in one of the dossier notes dated January 20, 1942, Agent Sgt Ewing describes Orwell as follows: “This man is spreading communist beliefs, and some of his Indian friends say that they often saw him at communist meetings . He dresses bohemian both at work and at leisure. "(Eng. "This man has advanced communist views, and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at communist meetings. He dresses in bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours"). According to the documents, the writer did indeed take part in such meetings, and he was described as "sympathetic to the communists."

George Orwell photo

George Orwell - quotes

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 faithfully served the British Crown until his retirement in 1912, the family did not make a fortune, and when Eric was eight years old, he was not without difficulty assigned to a private preparatory school in Sussex. A few years later, having shown outstanding academic abilities, the boy receives a competitive scholarship for further study at Eton, the most privileged private school in the UK, which opened the way to Oxford or Cambridge. Later, in the essay Why I Write, Orwell recalled that 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 off the beaten track 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 the London poor quarter, 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 experience and impressions that writer George Orwell would later melt into novels and numerous essays.

The first book by J. Orwell "Burmese everyday life" (on the site "Days in Burma" translated by V. Domiteva - Burmese days) was published in 1934 and chronicles his years in service 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 a wide variety of issues - politics, art, literature. J. Orwell has always been 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 destitute. Orwell seriously doubted their sincerity and revolutionary spirit.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the socialist sympathies of the writer led him to the ranks of the Spanish republicans when the civil war broke out there. He went to Spain at the end of 1936 as a correspondent for the BBC and the London newspaper The Observer. Orwell was fascinated by the atmosphere of equality and fighting fraternity that he felt upon his arrival in Barcelona. Socialism seemed to be a reality, and, having passed the initial military training, the writer goes to the front, where he receives a serious throat wound. Orwell described those days in the documentary book "In honor of Catalonia" (on the site "Memory of Catalonia" - Homage to Catalonia, 1938), where he sang friends in arms, the spirit of brotherhood, where there was no "blind obedience", where there was "almost complete equality of officers and soldiers." After being wounded in the hospital, Orwell will write to a friend: "I have witnessed amazing things and, finally, really believed in Socialism - which was not the case before."

However, the writer also learned another lesson. In the same place, in Catalonia, the newspaper La Batalla, the organ of the Spanish United Marxist Labor Party, in whose ranks J. Orwell fought, back in 1936 stigmatized 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 "the onset of capitalism", but was "a disgusting perversion of Socialism" .

With the passion of a neophyte, Orwell defended the original "moral concepts of socialism" - "freedom, 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 practice of Stalinist repression 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, the desire to rule over their 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 not easy (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 publishers, was able to publish it only in 1945. Publishers were frightened off by the frankly anti-Stalinist (according to Orwell himself) nature of the book. But there was a war, and in the face of the threat of fascist slavery, Moscow political processes and the Soviet-German non-aggression pact were relegated to the periphery of 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 on the fighting Russia, despite the fact that Orwell defined his attitude towards fascism back in the 30s, taking up arms to defend republican Spain. George Orwell worked for the BBC during World War II, then as a literary editor for a newspaper, 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 the general reader in 1988, when three satirical dystopias were published in different magazines: “We” by E. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by O. Huxley and “Animal Farm” by J. Orwell. During this period, not only Soviet, but also Russian literature abroad and the work of foreign authors were being reassessed. The books of those Western writers who were excommunicated from the Soviet mass reader, as they allowed themselves critical statements addressed to us, those who were turned away 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 specifics of their mocking and caustic muse, are the first to make a diagnosis, noticing signs of public ill health.

In the same period, a long-term taboo was lifted from another anti-utopia 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 have written 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 peoples, the truth about the humiliation of the human spirit, mockery of free thought, (about the atmosphere of suspicion, the practice of denunciations and many, many other things that historians and publicists have revealed to us The works of A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Grossman, A. Rybakov, M. Dudintsev, D. Granin, Y. Dombrovsky, V. Shalamov and many others told about it. alternatives: born in captivity does not notice it.

Apparently, it is possible to exasperate 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 of about forty-five, with a thick black mustache, rough, but masculinely attractive... On each platform, 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 go. "BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU"- the inscription read "[hereinafter quoted from:" 1984 ", Novy Mir: No. 2, 3, 4, 1989. Translation: V. P. Golyshev], a clear allusion to the "father of peoples" was able to dull the sharpness of critical perception works.

But the paradox is that in Why I Write, Orwell defines his task as a critique of socialism from the right, not an attack on the left. He admitted that every line he had written since 1936 "has been 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 about the difficulties and problems that the construction of any just society may face, no matter what the beautiful-hearted ideals of its leaders. Exorbitant ambitions, hypertrophied egoism and hypocrisy can lead to perversion and betrayal of these ideals.

The characters of 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 that everyone must strictly follow. But the inhabitants of the Animal Farm will pass their first idealistic phase, the phase of egalitarianism, very quickly and will 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 slogans-commandments is gradually changing. When the pigs occupy Jones's bedroom, thus 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 the substitution of slogans and the shift of concepts takes place, but also the restoration status quo ante, only in an even more absurd and perverted form, for the "enlightened" power of man. is replaced by 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, who looked like wolves with their ferocious appearance.

Painfully recognizable events take place in the barnyard: Napoleon's rival in incendiary political debate Snowball, nicknamed Cicero, is expelled from the farm. He is being stripped of awards honestly won in the historic Battle of the Cowshed, won by free animals over farmer neighbors. Moreover, Cicero is declared a spy for Jones - and fluff and feathers (literally) are already flying on the farm, and even heads that are chopped off stupid chickens and ducks for "voluntary" confessions of "criminal" connections with the "spy" Cicero. The final betrayal of "Animalism" - the teachings of the late theorist, a boar named Major - comes with the substitution of the main slogan "All animals are equal" with the slogan "All animals are equal, but some of them are more equal than others." And then the anthem "Cattle, livestock without rights" is banned and the democratic appeal "comrade" is abolished. In the last episode of this incredible story the surviving inhabitants of the farm contemplate with horror and amazement through the window a pig's feast, where the worst enemy of the farm, Mr. Pilkington, proclaims a toast to the prosperity of the Animal Farm. Pigs stand up on their hind legs (which is also forbidden by the commandment), and their snouts are already indistinguishable among the drunken faces of people.

As befits in a satirical allegory, each character is the bearer of a particular idea, embodies a certain social type. In addition to the cunning and treacherous Napoleon, the system of characters in Animal Farm includes the political projector Cicero; a pig named Squealer, a demagogue and a sycophant; the young filly Molly, ready to sell her newfound freedom for a piece of sugar and bright ribbons, because even on the eve of the uprising, she was occupied with the only question - “Will there be sugar after the uprising?”; a herd of sheep, out of place and out of place singing "Four legs - good, two legs - 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 lyrics, appeals to the mind, and not to feelings. Orwell manages to combine the seemingly incompatible. Pity and compassion are caused by the narrow-minded, but endowed with great power, the horse Boxer. He is not tempted in political intrigues, but honestly pulls his shoulder and is ready to work for the benefit of the farm even more, even harder, until the mighty forces leave him - and then he is taken to the knacker. In Orwell's sympathy for the hardworking Boxer, one cannot but see his sincere sympathy for the peasantry, whose simple way of life 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 "upper middle class". Orwell believed that the true custodians of traditional values ​​and morality are ordinary people, and not intellectuals vying for power and prestigious positions. (However, the attitude of the writer to the latter was not so unambiguous.)

Orwell is an English writer to the core. His "Englishness" manifested itself in everyday life, in his "amateur" (Orwell did not receive a university education); dress in an eccentric manner; in love with the earth (her own goat walked in her own garden); in closeness to nature (he shared the ideas of simplification); in adherence to tradition. 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 the political life of not only Europe, but also other continents, and always referred to himself as a "political writer".

With particular force, his political engagement manifested itself in the novel "1984", a dystopian novel, a warning novel. There is an opinion that "1984" for English literature of the 20th century means the same thing as for the 17th century - "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes is a masterpiece of English literature. political philosophy. Hobbes, like Orwell, tried to solve the cardinal question for his time: who in a civilized society should have power, and what is the attitude of society to the rights and duties 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 arose - 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 "Wonderful new world by Aldous Huxley 1932) and 1984 by George Orwell (1949).

Isaac Deutscher in the 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 of acquaintance with the novel "We" Orwell had already matured the concept of his own satirical utopia. The American professor Gleb Struve, an expert on Russian literature, told Orwell about Zamyatin's novel and then sent him a French translation of the book. In a letter to Struve dated February 17, 1944, Orwell writes: "I am very interested in literature of this kind, I even take notes myself for my own book, which I will write sooner or later."

In the novel "We" Zamyatin draws a society that is a thousand years away from the 20th century. The Earth is dominated by the United State, which conquered the world as a result of the Bicentennial War and fenced off from it by the Green Wall. Rules over the inhabitants of the United State - the 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 One State is rationalized, regulated, regulated. The goal of the State is "an absolutely exact solution to the problem of happiness." True, according to the confession of the narrator (mathematician), number D-503, the United State has not yet been able to fully solve this problem, because there are “Personal Clocks established by the Tablet”. In addition, from time to time "traces of a still elusive organization that sets itself the goal of liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State" are found.

The author of a satirical utopia, as a rule, is based on contemporary trends, then, using irony, hyperbole, grotesque - this " construction material satire, projects them into the distant future. The logic of the intellectual, the keen eye of the writer, the intuition of the artist allowed E. I. Zamyatin to foresee many things: the dehumanization of man, his rejection of Nature, dangerous trends in science and machine production that turns a person into a “bolt”: if necessary, a “bent bolt” could always be "throw 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 Society is "Community, Identity, Stability". This society seems to be a new round in the development of the Zamyatin United State. Expediency and its derivative, caste, reign here. Children are not born, they are hatched by the "Central London Hatchery and created in the 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 fantasy 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." Brainwashing in the "brave new world" is a whole army of hypnopeds who inspire alphas, betas and everything else with recipes for happiness, which, 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 get rid of them, or "a super-singing, synthetic-speech, color stereoscopic sensory film with synchronous-smell 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 anti-utopias admit the possibility of at least hypnopedic and synthetic “happiness” for future generations. Orwell rejects the idea of ​​even an illusory social welfare. Despite advances in science and technology, "the dream of a future society—incredibly wealthy, leisurely, orderly, efficient, a gleaming, antiseptic world of glass, steel, and snow-white concrete" could not be realized "partly because of the impoverishment caused by the long 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 highly regulated society” [cited in: Novy Mir, No. 3, 1989, p. 174] whose contours Orwell, who had a remarkably sharp political eye, was already discerning on the European horizon. In a society of this type, a small clique rules, which, in fact, is a new ruling class. “Frantic nationalism” and “deification of the leader”, “constant conflicts” are integral features of an authoritarian state. Only "democratic values, the guardians of which are the intelligentsia," can resist them.

Orwell's indefatigable fantasy was fed by themes and plots not only of Soviet reality. The writer also uses "pan-European plots": the pre-war economic crisis, total terror, the extermination of dissidents, the brown plague of fascism creeping through the countries of Europe. But, to our shame, in "1984" much of our recent Russian history is foreseen. Some passages of the novel almost verbatim coincide with the samples of our best journalism, which told about spy mania, denunciations, falsification of history. These coincidences are mostly factual: neither a deep historical understanding of this or that negative phenomenon, nor its angry statement can compete in terms of the power of denunciation and impact on the reader with effective satire, in the arsenal of which are mocking irony and caustic sarcasm, caustic mockery and striking invective. But in order for satire to take place, to hit the target, it must be connected with humor, ridicule through the general category of the comic, and thereby cause rejection, rejection of a negative phenomenon. Bertolt Brecht argued that laughter is "the first improper manifestation of a proper life."

Perhaps the leading means of satirical comprehension in "1984" is the grotesque: everything in the "Angsoc" society is illogical, absurd. Science and technological progress serve only as an instrument of control, management and suppression. Orwell's total satire strikes all the institutions of a totalitarian state: the ideology of the party slogans read: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength); the economy (the people, except for 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 “thought police” spies on the inhabitants of Oceania, and for a “thought crime” or “personal crime” the convict can be not only crippled morally or physically, but even “sprayed”).

The telescreen continuously "spewed fabulous statistics, processing mass consciousness". Half-starved people, stupefied by a meager life, out of 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 said, was "rapidly rising to new and new heights." [cited in: Novy Mir, No. 2, 1989, p. 155.] In the Ingsoc society, the party ideal depicted “something gigantic, formidable, 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, and all look the same.”

And again, Orwell's satirical arrows reach their goal - we recognize ourselves, yesterday, "forged labor victories", "fought on the labor front", entered into "battles for the harvest", reported on "new achievements", marched in a single column "from victory to victory ”, Recognizing only “unanimity” and professing the principle of “all as one”. Orwell was surprisingly insightful, noticing the pattern between the standardization of thought and the cliché of language. Orwell's "Newspeak" was intended not only to provide symbolic means for the worldview and mental activity of the adherents of "Angsots", but also to make any dissent impossible. It was assumed that when Newspeak was established forever, and Oldspeak was forgotten, unorthodox, i.e., alien to Angsots thought, 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 was supposed to utter "correct" judgments automatically, "like a machine gun firing a burst."

Fortunately, Orwell did not guess everything. But the author of the warning novel should not have striven for this. He only brought the socio-political trends of his time to a 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 it? O. Doug (2001)), but the warnings and exhortations of George Orwell should not be ignored. History tends to repeat itself.

Cand. philol. Sciences, Associate Professor
N. A. Zinkevich, 2001

____
N. A. Zinkevich: "George Orwell", 2001
Published:
Animal Farm. Moscow. Publishing house "Citadel". 2001.

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", too "rustic" and "rude" for his "aristocratic" name. Such a combination of first and last name was more characteristic of some English worker than of 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 in which he was born was not rich, did not make a special fortune, and when Eric was eight years old, he was not without difficulty assigned to a private preparatory school in Sussex. A few years later, Eric Arthur Blair shows remarkable abilities in his studies, the boy receives a scholarship on a competitive basis for further education at Eton, the most privileged private school in the UK, which opened the way to Oxford or Cambridge. But later he leaves this educational institution forever to work as a simple policeman in India, and then in Burma. There, perhaps, George Orwell was formed.

The spirit of adventure opened to him the lower classes of English society, familiar to the layman except perhaps from Dickens's "Pickwick Papers". The same desire - to know life in all its diversity - made Orwell go to Spain in 1936, where a civil war was raging. As a war correspondent for the BBC, Orwell joins the revolutionary struggle against the Nazis, is seriously wounded in the throat and returns to England. There and begin to appear it best books. In November 1943 - February 1944, George Orwell wrote the most unusual work for himself - a fairy tale about Stalin "Animal Farm". The satire was so frank that the tale was refused to be printed both in England and in America; it was published only in 1945. In 1945, Orwell's wife died unexpectedly 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 shop. 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 switched 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 the year of George Orwell by UNESCO. In addition to them, the writer publishes a lot of novels, articles, newspaper notes, reviews (and George Orwell is still considered one of the best publicists and reviewers of the 20th century).

In the 1960s-1970s. Orwell's glory reaches the borders of the USSR. There was no question of publishing his works in a Soviet publishing house - they were too politically biased, the protest against the communist system was too bright. There were only two usual ways - "samizdat" and "tamizdat". And here is a typical picture from dissident times: some Soviet intellectual, for example, a simple assistant from a scientific research institute, at night by the light of a table lamp, straining his eyesight, quickly reads, sorting through a stack of pale typewritten sheets with a trembling hand - they gave the tenth copy, and only for one night - to be in time before dawn. Orwell can be imprisoned, but how to break away, how to force yourself to believe the leaders and general secretaries after this? True, "1984" was published in a small edition for those in power, marked "for official use" - and they also listened there. He firmly entered the circle of samizdat reading - along with Andrei Platonov, Evgenia Ginzburg, Anna Akhmatova, Vasily Grossman, Andrei Bitov, Varlam Shalamov, Dmitry Galkovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Voinovich and many others who were closed to print in their homeland. And I did not want to believe that he was a stranger, that he was an Englishman - for thousands and thousands of people he became his own, became a Russian writer, although he had never been on Soviet soil. (And, to be honest, I wrote "1984" by no means about the USSR of Stalin's time.)

Since then, his name has become so loud, he was quoted, the unforgettable "newspeak" and "doublethink" were forever registered in the Russian lexicon. And in 1984, when, in fact, the action of the socialist nightmare of the novel of the same name takes place, Literaturnaya Gazeta arranged a cheerful persecution of Orwell - well, they say, but it still didn’t work 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 in the very late 1980s and early 1990s they began to publish a lot of it, and, as a rule, in hundreds of thousands of copies, the collections also contained two more dystopias - Zamyatin's "We" and Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World! .." . But "1984" made the greatest impact on the reader. George Orwell, despite the 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 he is included in the 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. Afraid to disappoint the reader? Perhaps, but there is 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 many see Orwell's works as a satire on the totalitarian system, the authorities themselves were suspected for a long time of having close ties with the communists. As the dossier on the writer declassified in 2007 showed, the British counterintelligence MI-5 from 1929 until almost the writer's death in 1950 kept him under surveillance. 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 they often saw him at communist meetings. He dresses bohemian both at work and during leisure hours.

According to the documents, the writer did indeed take part in such meetings, and he was described as "sympathetic to the communists."

*George Orwell is known not only for his famous novel "1984", but also for his fierce fight against the communists. He took part in the Spanish Civil War and fought on the side of the Republicans. All his life, Orwell hated the communist system and Stalin, whom the writer is guilty of all troubles. In 1949, seriously ill with tuberculosis, Orwell 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 sympathize with the Stalin regime and provide support Soviet Union. Eric Blair (this is the real name of the writer) believed that all the citizens of America indicated by him should be carefully interrogated for sympathy for the communists and put on record.

The list of enemies of the 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 decides to turn her attention to Orwell. By the way, the list was taken seriously, and all the people listed on it were checked. For example, 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 Prize "" in the category "Novel" for the story "Animal Farm". The prize was awarded retrospectively - for 1946.