1903

George Orwell (from The Guardian).

Yesterday, the United Kingdom commemorated for the first time the George Orwell Day, observed in his death anniversary (in 1950) and coinciding with his 110th birthday (1903). To mark the occasion, Penguin Books (the major promoter of the celebration, along with the Orwell Estate and the Orwell Prize, awarded to the piece that matches as closely as possible Orwell’s intention of making “political writing into an art”) will launch new editions of some of his books, copies of his popular essay “Politics and the English Language” were given away and, in collaboration with the BBC, a month-long season of special programs is scheduled. Ideally, activities will continue throughout this year.

Although he wrote prolifically, Orwell’s place in literature and in politics is secured to a very large extent thanks to the books Animal Farm and 1984. Famously, he denounced the excesses into which Stalin and his version of the Soviet revolution had fallen, and drew a detailed account of the scope of power under a totalitarian regime. Furthermore, when talking about politics he tended to go around the idea of the enormous differences that can exist between speech, which will usually be nice and appealing, and action, which can drive to the worse horrors in recent history.

An apparent problem with many authors who wrote in response or in reaction to events of their time is that future readers might hold them as witnesses of epochs past. Obviously, totalitarianism, at least in its 20^th century fashion, is now gone and, arguably, it is not going to return in those same terms. But some of its problems persist, such as the vacuum sometimes so easily found in political discourse, or the abuse of power in trying to change societies. Furthermore, these features of political life were not unique to Nazism of Communism, but have always been present in one way or another in the public space. Under this light is that Orwell’s work can be re-read at the beginning of the 21^st century, when democracy faces challenges by regimes so called in name, but clearly dictatorial in practice.