More George Orwell
Dec. 1st, 2004 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ziasudraI love George Orwell...!
Besides the part on his political development, which I have yet to go through, it's uncanny how similar he and I are. I know what he's talking about!
"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."
Why I Write (1946)
A Collection of Essays, pp. 309-316.
"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer."
~ He just knows. *envies*
"Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside."
~ The "inner drive" of writers.
"I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose."
They are:
(1) Sheer egoism
"After the age of about thirty [people] abandon individual ambition...and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful [sic.] people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class."
(2) Esthetic enthusiasm
"Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed."
(3) Historical impulse
"Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity."
(4) Political purpose
"Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after."
~ Orwell claims to be more the first three than the last one, although he admits to developing a sense of political awareness because the time he lived in has forced it upon him. What shaped his political views were working for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, a time of poverty and failure, Hitler, and the Spanish civil war. This would be during his 20s and early 30s.
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."
"When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing."
"It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write."
"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mysetery."
Besides the part on his political development, which I have yet to go through, it's uncanny how similar he and I are. I know what he's talking about!
Why I Write (1946)
A Collection of Essays, pp. 309-316.
"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer."
~ He just knows. *envies*
"Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside."
~ The "inner drive" of writers.
"I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose."
They are:
(1) Sheer egoism
"After the age of about thirty [people] abandon individual ambition...and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful [sic.] people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class."
(2) Esthetic enthusiasm
"Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed."
(3) Historical impulse
"Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity."
(4) Political purpose
"Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that they should strive after."
~ Orwell claims to be more the first three than the last one, although he admits to developing a sense of political awareness because the time he lived in has forced it upon him. What shaped his political views were working for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, a time of poverty and failure, Hitler, and the Spanish civil war. This would be during his 20s and early 30s.
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."
"When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing."
"It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write."
