See also: Blair

George Orwell , of her true name Eric Blair , (Motihari, India, June 25th, 1903 - London, January 21st, 1950), is an English writer, whose work carries the mark of its engagements, which find themselves to a large extent their source in the personal experience of the author: against the British Impérialisme, after its engagement of youth like police officer colonial in Burma; for social justice, after having observed and having shared the conditions of existence of the working classes in London and Paris; against the “Totalitarianism S” Nazi and Soviet, after his participation in the war of Spain.
Witness of its time, Orwell was in the Années 1930 and 1940 chronicler, critical literary and novelist. Of this varied production, two works which had the most durable success are two texts published after the Second world war: the Farm of the animals and especially 1984 , novel in which it creates the concept of Big Brother, since passed in the current language of the criticism of modern technologies of monitoring. The adjective “orwellien” is also frequently used in reference to the totalitarian universe imagined by the English writer.

Biography

An English education

Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25th, 1903 with Motihari (old Présidence of Bengal and current Bihar), in a family belonging to English middle class. He is the son of Richard Walmesley Blair, a civil servant of the administration of the Indies in charge of the Control of the Opium (the trade of opium, primarily in direction of China, was at the time a state monopoly) and of Ida Mabel Blair. He has two sisters, Marjorie (the elder one) and April (the junior). He turns over to England in 1904 in company of his mother and his sister. Eric re-examines his father only in 1907, at the time of a three months permission granted to this last, which will definitively join its family only in 1911, after his setting in retirement.

At that time, the young person Eric Blair was already boarder of the preparatory school of St Cyprien, which will inspire to him well later, in the years 1946-1947, an account, which it will present as being autobiographical and which will be published only after its death: Such, Such were the Joys , in which it describes which “terrible nightmare” were for him these years of boarding school. Eric Blair was nevertheless a pupil shining and worker (it passed near his comrades for a “intellectual”), that its Masters justified by recalling him that it was with a purse that it owed his admission with St Cyprien.

Sign of its school excellence, Blair obtains a purse with the college of Eton, most famous of the public schools , where he studies 1917 with 1921. Orwell will have enough a good memory of these years, during which he works little, passing gradually from the statute of brilliant pupil to that of poor pupil, and making watch of a readily rebellious temperament (rebellion which seems it is not related at all to claims of a political nature or ideological). At that time, it has two ambitions: to become a famous writer (he writes news and poems - poor - in a review of the college ), and to turn over in the East, which he especially knows via the memories of his mother.

With the service of the Empire

(Relative) the prosperity of the Blair family was closely related to the British imperialism: in addition to his father, one can quote the paternal great-grandfather of the future George Orwell (owner of slaves in Jamaica) or his maternal grandfather (commercial of Teck in Burma). Also, even if it is about a not very glorious conclusion with a schooling carried out in also prestigious establishments, is this thus quite naturally that the young person Eric Blair endorses the uniform and goes back to the Indies in 1922 to become sergeant in the imperial police force in Burma.
The situation on the spot is at this time, if not always explosive, at least often tended between the Burmeses and their colonizers: Burmese nationalism then takes its rise, marked by several strike movements, in general violently repressed. The mission of the British is, according to the word of a former assistant governor of Burma, “to make reign the law and the order in cruel areas. ”

Orwell will qualify later its time of service like having consisted of “five years of trouble to the sound of the bugles. ” After having carried out its nine lawful months at the school of drive of the police force, he knows six different places of employment, in general little reluisants. He will leave the image of a famous silent and solitary young man, occupying the major part of his spare time to the reading. Among anecdotes that one can quote concerning this period, one will note that it would have one day witnessed a capital execution, which will inspire the test to him an hanging , “its first writing which testifies to a distinctive style and talent of Orwell. ”

One does not know either with certainty the detail of the interior evolution which makes it pass from the trouble to the dislike of its function like wheel of the colonial administration. But it is allowed to think that these remarks of Flory, the anti-hero of a Burmese history , should not be very distant from what the police officer Eric Blair thinks about 1927: “The civil servant maintains the Burmese with ground while the business man makes him the pockets”
At all events, to the end of the year 1927, it throws sponge: asserting health reasons (about which we do not know anything), it returns to England and gives its resignation. He then announces with his family that he decided to devote himself to the writing. Throughout the twenty-two years that it remains to him to live, there will remain a declared enemy of the British imperialism.

Difficult beginnings of writer

It seems that Eric Blair hardly had particular gifts for the writing, if one believes of it the testimony of those which he attends at the time: he thus works steadily, written poems on news and multiplies the outlines of novels.

In parallel, with the autumn 1927, it explores the London hollows, inquiring into the most stripped living conditions of, follows them on the roads and in the disasters night shelters: he hopes to draw the matter from it from a work on the living conditions of the poor. He tries by there exorcizing the culpability which corrodes it “to have been the executant of and an oppression operating system” in Birmanie.
In spring 1928, it decides to go to settle in Paris (where one of his/her aunts saw) to write. There remain eighteen months there, during which we do not know large-thing of what he made, if it is only with the autumn 1929, money court and after having given some English lessons, he makes plunges it during a few weeks in a luxury hotel of the street of Rivoli. During this period, it episodically publishes articles in communist newspapers (such as Le Monde , weekly magazine directed by Henri Barbusse). Near total of its writings of this period, it remains nothing. It turns over to England in December 1929, just in time to pass the festivals of Christmas with his family. Mown, not having published anything promising, its health put at evil by a Pneumonie contracted the previous winter, the equipped Parisian one seems a integral fiasco .

It takes again its exploration of bottoms funds of the English company next spring, sharing the life of the vagrants and the tramps, sometimes a few days, sometimes a week or two. But it is constrained to put a term at its forwardings a few months later: it does not have any more financial means the sufficient ones to continue its vagrancies!

It decides to accept a post of teacher in a private school, in a small town where it is bored (Beam, in the Middlesex). It benefits from it to complete In Dèche in Paris and London , which appears with the beginning of the year 1933. It is on this occasion that it takes the pseudonym of George Orwell. Even if criticisms are good, the sales are poor. Who more is, the editor of Orwell (Victor Gollancz) fears the lawsuit in slandering for a Burmese history (whose drafting with the autumn 1934 is completed) which for this reason is first of all published in the United States. At this period, Orwell is filled with enthusiasm for the Ulysses of James Joyce and contracts a new pneumonia, which obliges it to give up its load of teacher (or rather, who releases it).

With the meeting of the proletariat

At the end of the autumn 1934, Orwell finishes in the pain the drafting of its second novel, a girl of Pasteur , of which it is shown not very satisfied: “It was an good idea, explains it with one of its correspondents, but I fear to have completely wasted it. ” There still, the precision of the references to the places and real characters makes fear in Victor Gollancz whom the work is not continued in slandering. It decides however to publish it, together with minor corrections, with the beginning of the year 1935.

Meanwhile, Orwell settled in London, where it finds an employment with the bookstore “Booklover' S Corner”, in the district of Hampstead, “which was, and remains, a district of intellectuals (real or alleged)”. It meets Eileen O' Shaugnessy, which it marries in June 1936. Orwell before published another novel, “the last of its books consciously " littéraires" ”, according to Bernard Crick, And lives will aspidistra it! , it also went in the north of England where, to deliver an order which Victor Gollancz passed to him, it studied the living conditions of the minors of the industrial areas. It draws from this report a book: the Quay of Wigan , which will be published whereas Orwell is in Spain. Very polemic in its second part, in which the author analyzes the reasons of the failure of the left to gain the working classes with the socialist cause, it appears with a settling hostile of Victor Gollancz who, initiating of the project, disunites himself of sound aboutissement.
This meeting with the proletariat of the mine fields marks especially the “conversion” of Orwell to the socialist cause. This one occurs brutally, like an obviousness, vis-a-vis the spectacle of the social injustice and the misery of the English proletariat.

Orwell in Spain

At the end of 1936, whereas made rage the War of Spain which puts at the catches the republicans with the military coup attempt of State carried out by the “Caudillo”, Francisco Franco, Orwell and his wife join, via the Independent Labor Party, which gave to them of the letters of introduction, the militia of POUM, after a short turning by Paris, where Orwell returns visit to Henry Miller, which in vain tries to dissuade it to go to Spain.

Orwell, on its arrival in Barcelona, is fascinated by the atmosphere that it finds there: he there which it previous year was afflicted to be able to break the barrier of class which separates the middle-class man who it is of these proletarians that it had gone to meet, preventing any true meeting between all and sundry, discovers a company in which this barrier, so that it seems to him, is crumbling. The militia of the POUM, in particular, in which it is named instructor (thanks to the experience gained in this field at the time of its Burmese years), seem to him being “a kind of microcosm of classless society”.

After having spent some time on the face of Aragon, Orwell goes back to Barcelona, where it takes part in the “disorders of May” which oppose the revolutionary forces to the Catalan government and PSUC and which will see the victory of the latter. It turns over to the face where it is wounded with the throat. Demobilized, constrained clandestinely to leave Spain not to be stopped (the POUM, denounced like a “fascistic party” by the propaganda of the PSUC, is declared illegal on June 16th, 1937), Orwell and its wife gain France, from where they join England.

Orwell, on its return to London, is dismayed by the way in which the intellectuals of left (in particular those which belong or are close to the Communist party) return account from what occurs to Spain, and in particular by the calumnies spread on the account of the POUM, systematically shown to be either a fascistic organization, or an organization handled by the fascists: it is in optics to restore the truth as for the events of which it was pilot that it then undertakes to write its Hommage to Catalonia that it makes appear, with some difficulties, in April 1938. As from this moment, he in 1946 will write, “all it wrote the serious one was written, directly or indirectly, and until in the least line, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism”.

Revolutionary patriotism

Whereas the threat of a new European conflict is done more and more specifies, Orwell defends a position antiguerre and critical the antifascism of the popular fronts: this war would be useful, according to him, only to reinforce the European imperialisms, which have good game to arise, vis-a-vis the fascistic threat, like democracies, whereas they exploit without shame “six hundred million private human beings of straight”

A few months later, however, it radically changes its position on the subject: whereas the Communist party (which called before with the fight against the fascistic dictatorships) is discovered pacifist following the Pacte Germano-Soviet, Orwell discovers that, in the content, he was always a patriot.

Opposing the desire which it had to engage in the army, its low health makes it reform. In spite of this one, it engages in 1940 in the Home Guard (militia of volunteers organized by the State and created with an aim of resisting the invasion Nazi if the Germans would manage to unload in Great Britain). In addition, in 1941, it is engaged as producer with BBC, diffusing cultural emissions and comments of war bound for the Indies.

Parallel to these activities, Orwell regularly sends articles (“Letters of London”) to the American review of inspiration Trotskiste The Partisan Review. Indeed, the patriotism of which it makes watch since the beginning of the war therefore did not make him give up its revolutionary aspirations. Quite to the contrary, it estimates that the victory of Great Britain over the fascistic dictatorships will necessarily pass by the social revolution to England, revolution of which it sees the harbingers in the dissatisfaction growing with the popular classes vis-a-vis the deprivations due to the state of war (which do not strike the roadbases of the company) and to the military setbacks of the English army, reverses caused according to him by the incurie of the military and political leaders. From this point of view, the Home Guard appears to him as being these people of weapons which will reverse, at the need by the force, the capacity places from there before demolishing the armies hitlériennes (it develops these points of view in his test entitled the Lion and the Unicorn , which appears in 1941 in the Searchlight collection, of which he is the cofounder).

In November 1943, Orwell resigns of its post office in B.B.C.Il then becomes director of the literary pages of the weekly magazine of the Labor left The Tribune and starts the drafting of the Farm of the animals .

Last years

Orwell completes the writing of the Farm of the animals in February 1944. The work will however appear only one year later, in August 1945. Meanwhile, the book was refused by four editors: the radical calling into question of the USSR was premature, at one moment when the hostilities to Germany hitlérienne were not completed yet.

In 1945 always, Orwell, which resigned of its station to the Tribune , becomes special correspondent of The Observer in France and Germany, where it is charged to comment on the political life. It is with Cologne, in March, when it learns that his wife, attack of a Cancer, has just died. It returns to London and starts the drafting of what will become its most famous work: 1984 .

In parallel, from August 1945, it becomes vice-president of “Freedom Defense Committee” (chaired by the anarchistic poet Herbert Read), which had been fixed for task “to defend fundamental freedoms of the individuals and the organizations, and to come to assistance of those which are persecuted to have exerted their rights to freedom to be expressed, to write and act. ” Orwell will support the committee until its dissolution in 1949.

In this same year 1949, it publishes 1984 , that it completed with the preceding end of the year. He marries in second weddings Sonia Brownell the October 13rd, whereas, seriously patient of the Tuberculose, he was allowed the previous month in University College Hospital of London, where he takes notes for a future novel.

He dies the January 21st 1950 of the continuations of a tuberculosis.

Orwell is buried in the small cemetery of the church of Sutton Courtenay, close to Abingdon in the Oxfordshire, although it does not have any bond with this village. It had however left like instructions: “After my death, I do not want to be flaring. I want simply to be buried in the cemetery nearest to the place of my death. ” But its death having had place in the center of London and any the London cemeteries not having enough place to bury it, its widow, Sonia Brownell, fearing that its body is not incinerated, had required of all his/her friends to contact the priest of their village of origin to see whether their church would have in his cemetery a place for burying there. Thus it was, by mere chance, buried with Sutton Courtenay.

On its tomb these simple words:

Eric Arthur Blair

born the dead on June 25th, 1903,

on January 21st, 1950

Without any mention neither with its works, nor with its pen name: “ George Orwell . ” After her death, its widow made publish a collection of her articles, tests, correspondences like some news under the title of Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters (1968).
The Supplements Works George Orwell off (twenty volumes), first edition of complete works of Orwell, was completed of publication in England in 1998.

Anecdotes

Orwell informer?

July 11th, 1996, an article was published in the English daily newspaper The Guardian explaining why George Orwell, in 1949, had collaborated with the Information Research Department (a section of the British Ministry for Foreign Affairs related to the intelligence services) via a civil servant of this one: Celia Kirwan. Orwell had delivered to this agent a list of names of journalists and intellectuals “crypto-communists”, “fellow travellers” or “sympathizers” of the Soviet Union. The reality of this collaboration is proven by a document déclassifié the day before by the Public Record Office .

Information was relayed in France mainly by the daily newspapers Le Monde (July 12th and 13rd 1996) and Libération (July 15th, 1996). The French public learned on this occasion that the author of 1984 “denounced in Foreign Office the " cryptocommunistes" ” ( Le Monde , July 13rd, 1996). In its number of October 1996, the magazine the History went still further, explaining why Orwell “had spontaneously taken part in hunting for the witch” organized against the communist intellectuals by Foreign Office.

On the other hand, these articles omitted to mention that Orwell was a personal friend of Celia Kirwan (sister-in-law of the writer Arthur Kœstler, it in 1945 had pushed back the proposal of Orwell, widower for a few months). This one, at the time of a visit which it had made with the author of the Homage to Catalonia , had entrusted to him that it worked at this time for a governmental service charged to recruit writers and intellectuals likely to produce anti-Soviet propaganda. Orwell, after him to have given the names of some people of its knowledge who appeared ready to him to be recruited, proposed in Celia Kirwan to communicate to him, private basis, the names of other people who it was, for much notoriety public and because of their political convictions, useless to approach.

The famous list, déclassifiée in 2003 (but which, curiously, was already mentioned in the biography of Crick published in 1980) does not say another thing, and all leaves think that the “collaboration” of Orwell was reduced to that. John Newsinger, in his “political biography” of Orwell, in addition recalled that George Orwell had on several occasions expressed, at the end of the Années 1940, his hostility with any attempt to found a “Maccarthysme English”.

One finds the detail of this business in the Pamphlet Orwell in front of his slanderers , published by the Encyclopedia of the harmful effects to the Ivrea editions. In a briefer way, Simon Leys tackles the question in the republication of his test Orwell or the horror of the policy (2006).

George Orwell and Aldous Huxley in Eton

The future author of the Meilleur of the worlds briefly taught French with Eton (to replace a full professor left to the war), where among its pupils the future author of 1984 appeared. Apparently, Orwell appreciated Huxley, which learned to them “from the rare and strange words, in concerted an enough way”, remembers Steven Runciman (friendly and school-fellow of Orwell at that time), which adds that he was “a professor of a total incompetence. It did not manage to make respect the discipline and was so short-sighted that it did not see what occurred, so that he was constantly chahuté”, which passably irritated Orwell “which found that it was cruel”.

Runciman however concludes that the courses exempted by Aldous Huxley were not useless to young people: “The taste of the words, their use precise and meaning remained us. In that, we have a great debt towards him”.

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