Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"

Orwell, never an amiable curmudgeon, here takes on the role of linguistic dictator. This essay isn't exactly a list of recommendations or suggestions, nor is it a set of instructions, rather, it is Orwell's own set of commandments: "Follow these rules, or else!" Or else what? If we fail to follow Orwell's example, at best we run the risk of sounding like literally every other professional hack writer around, at worst, we have Orwell's disapproval to deal with... Oh well.

Of course, this isn't to say I find nothing valuable in this essay at all, but I do think Orwell has built his podium a bit high for his own stature. We must remember that Orwell is first and foremost a political writer with political aims, as is clear in 1984 and Animal Farm. While Orwell's writing (and this essay in particular) does demonstrate the virtues of clear, concise prose, a reader would want so much more in actual literary writing. What if Faulkner or Joyce or Proust had decided to do away with rambling, gnarled, expansive sentences for their pygmy relatives (in this case, a dwarf sentences)? Their writing would cease to breath, the blood would quit flowing through sentences, leaving their paragraphs with clogged arteries and congested passages. Orwell cannot write like Faulkner, but then again Orwell doesn't need to write like Faulkner, for Orwell is more a political pamphleteer than a writer with political concerns (there is a difference).

Still, some parts of the essay prove rather illuminating (even more so in our time of mass-media consumption and political skullduggery). One need not look far for "dying metaphors" or "pretentious diction", a quick glance at the Sunday Times book review, style section, or travel section will do the trick. It is quite humorous then, when Orwell makes precisely the same mistakes, i.e. "sheer humbug", etc. This is hardly an actual mistake, but by Orwell's standards, it falls into a forbidden zone.

It is clear by the end of the essay that Orwell really has no interest in what would be considered a "good prose style", also evident in his fiction writing. Instead, Orwell's writing is politically mimetic, by which I mean that Orwell's prose style (concise, bare, transparent, sincere) moves toward the same goals as his political views do. Politics (for Orwell) needs to be cleaner, more concise, more sincere, and overall less deceitful, less violent, less opaque. If our writing (at least in the non-literary sense) exemplifies these virtues, so will our politics. All the worse for imaginative fiction, then. One only needs to recall Oscar Wilde's comment that all bad poetry is sincere. I fear to think what poetry written by Orwell would be like.