"The National Past" in Joyce's 'The Dead' and Orwell's '1984' + his essay 'Poltics and the English Language' - Part IV
- "The National Past" in Joyce's 'The Dead' and Orwell's '1984' + his essay 'Politics and the English Language'
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
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III) Orwell’s viewpoint per evidence from:
B) Politics and the English language
Orwell’s nationality is a nationality of the language, his beloved English, about whose decay, deprivation through foreign influences and modern-day corruption he is so much concerned and worried. According to him language functions as an authority. And like authority it exercises a great influence on us. Language – to Orwell – is not just a ‘modernist’ type of ‘signifier’ depleted from any meaning, serving the whim and fancy purpose of its user of the moment. On the contrary, it has a stabilizing effect upon man (within the ‘national’ boundary of a society by which it is spoken). It embodies ‘virtues’ like:
a) source of orientation (and thus a ‘future’)
b) clarity in simplicity and straightforwardness > no vagueness, ambiguity,
ambivalence or equivocation
c) purity > no superfluous, unnecessary extra words, such as far-fetched Latinisms, and
the like
d) cultural, national heritage in a wider sense , which apart from art and history includes
habits of people, such as d1) listening to classical music on a [rainy] Sunday morning
to read several Sunday papers thereafter, d2) pottering about in the garden, d3) keeping
yourself to yourself, which is always the best thing to do, d4) having a cup of tea in
between times, d5) not starting work before 9 o’clock, which means filling the first
hour of your ‘work’ with reading a daily so that in actual fact you begin work not
before 10 a.m., d6) overall motto: enjoy yourself and watch it!
e) trashy, threadbare phrases that have become habitual should be avoided
f) ‘dead’ metaphors (i.e. those devoid of any [concrete] sense) should be ignored and
thus eliminated/removed from language
Why does Orwell see himself as the ‘Lord Protector’ and ‘Defender’ of all these qualities forming a ‘national faith’, so to speak?
Orwell wrote this essay in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, at a time the British Empire had already fallen apart, and what was left of it transformed and been saved into what became known as the Commonwealth of Nations,
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communist Russia had shaped out as a world power (superpower) number II whilst Europe was seemingly in a state of transition - of which nobody quite knew of what kind and to what end exactly – if not utter turmoil. It is this political disorder (and upheaval) that Orwell sees reflected in the dilapidation of the English language.
If language is the ‘soul’ of the body, then politics is the active ‘mind’ of it. And that is what Orwell perceives, the inextricability of politics and language. Both phenomina are inseparably interlinked with each other, one presupposes and pre-conditons the other. So when Orwell remarks “the present political chaos is connected with the decay of the language…”[2] it is the task of the English language to restore ‘order’, not just limited to a ‘national’ level, but ‘order’ in a more global, universal sense in as far as the world-wide community of English-speaking people(s) are concerned.
IV) Conclusion: final assessment of the two authors
with focus on what relates them to ‘modernism’
What both writers have in common is the feeling to have lost something, something they miss, they cannot replace, which fact makes them suffer. And it is this loss that contradicts the uniqueness of art, its not being subject to the changes of time, its immortal significance. Or is this (view) a dichotomy in itself?
If literature holds up a mirror to us, and if literature is unquestionably a form of art, then art is indispensable. We cannot do without it, we cannot afford to ‘miss’ it. Or is our belief, our assumption that we have lost something just self-deception? Is not art subject to the same laws of nature as is human life in general? Is artifice steering away from art, and art from life, history? So who or what is responsible for the loss of art the way it used to be? This raises the question/point whether art cannot be fixed to a concept of its own definition rising from never-changing conventions innate to society. Obviously this view hasn’t got a leg to stand on. Both writers are aware of the fact that time changes, and with it art, i.e. its concepts, the notions of what it should be, its methods, devices, styles, means to bring it about, to create it. And this is the point at which both writers send out their diverging messages to the public.
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Whereas Orwell uses language as a means of art to criticize politics, Joyce is less pessimistic, is open to liberalism and progressivism (to be equated with ‘modernism’ in a sense of its own?) and tries to find ways to adjust art to the needs of time. Thus Joyce blends the past (→ Ireland and Catholicism) with the present (cf. the multicultural open-mindedness of/on the Continent Gabriel feels lured to) and experiments with the recovery of the novel along new lines, away from the constraints of conventional society.
In this respect the two writers each want to save something: Orwell the ‘Englishness’ in democracy and individual freedom and creativity of the mind, Joyce the novel (and tangibly other literary genres, too) through what has become known as ‘stream of consciousness technique’.
The warning signals of both authors (in Joyce “the faintly falling snow”, for instance), their misgivings and at the same time attempts to rescue what has been lost mark them as ‘modernist’ writers.
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My tutor’s comment on the paper, the grades he gave me for it and my performance in class consisting of (the quality of) my written and oral contributions, including one major oral presentation on Beckett’s Endgame, and last but not least the results from the mid-term exam all participants had to take:
You do a nice job of sketching out the two national traditions each author invokes here. You also have some interesting things to say about modernism, particularly regarding the connection between a lost national past and the lost language that modernism begins with. You also give a nice reading of Gabriel’s conflicted response to Ireland and his wife, though I’m afraid I still don’t see him as being quite as generous toward his homeland as you make him. It is Ireland and the past that have obstructed his modernism in my view – you still see Ireland as a home that Joyce needs to carry forward.
My only real complaint here is about the organization. While it is well-documented, this is less an essay than a linked series of points, most of them particularly perceptive and well-articulated, but not necessarily building up toward your conclusion.
Excellent work over the course of the class. I really appreciated your presence.
paper: A-
class: A
[1] Joyce's ambivalent attitude to the Church in conjunction with his indisputably
national position towards Ireland can best be summed up in the following quotation
from A. Nicholas Fargnoli and Michael Patrick Gillespie, James Joyce A To Z,
The Essential Reference to the Life and Work, Oxford University Press, New York
and Oxford, 1995, p.30, article on "Catholicism", left-hand column:
By his early twenties, Joyce voiced an ardent dissatisfaction with Catholic
religious doctrines and the larger Church-dominated social system that
he believed victimized the citizens of Ireland. He rejected the Church and
claimed that it "is still, as it was in the time of Adrian IV [ Nicholas
Breakspear, the only English pope, 1154-59], the enemy of Ireland"
(Letters II.187).
Joyce did not, however, minimize the place of religion in his work. In
numerous ways - many not at all complimentary to the Church - his writings
reflect the Catholic culture in which his mind was formed.
…
References to the mass, the sacraments, funeral rites, veneration of
saints, the cult of the Virgin Mary, religious retreats, sermons and
other Catholic practices abound in Joyce's work, not as decorative
devices but as important aspects of his overall thematic intentions.
[2] “Politics and the English Language”, p.170, in: George Orwell, A Collection of
Essays, A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace & Company, San Diego, New York,
London, 11981.