human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly even expected to do so by the reader. Whe n one critic writes, 'The outstanding features of Mr X's work is its living quality,' while another writes, 'The immediately striking thing about Mr X's work is its peculiar deadness,' the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Man y political words are similarly abused. Th e word Fascism has now no meaning
4. Respectively: dead end (French), former system more homely word and a vague feeling that the of government (French), the god from the machine Greek word is scientific [Orwell's note]. (Latin), with the necessary changes (Latin), the 6. Example: 'Comfort's catholicity of perception existing state of things (Latin), standardization of and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, political institutions among authoritarian states almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, (German), and philosophy of life (German). continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric 5. An interesting illustration of this is the way in accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably which the English flower names which were in use serene timelessness . . . Wrey Gardiner scores by till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, aiming at simple bullseyes with precision. Only snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not they are not so simple, and through this contented becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any prac-sadness runs more than the surface bitter-sweet of tical reason for this change of fashion: it is prob- resignation.' (Poetry Quarterly.) [Orwell's note]. ably due to an instinctive turning-away from the
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238 8 / GEORGE ORWELL
except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.' Th e words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain1 was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are:
class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
No w that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit 3, above, for instance,
contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I
have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence
follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illus
trations?race, battle, bread?dissolve into the vague phrase 'success or fail
ure in competitive activities'. This had to be so, because no modern writer of
the kind I am discussing?no one capable of using phrases like 'objective
consideration of contemporary phenomena'?-would ever tabulate his
thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern
prose is away from concreteness. No w analyse these two sentences a little
more closely. Th e first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its
words are those of everyday life. Th e second contains 38 words of 90 syllables:
18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence
contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ('time and chance') that could
be called vague. Th e second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and
in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning
contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence
7. French army officer (1856?1951), head of the Vichy government that collaborated with Germany in World War II.
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POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE / 238 9
that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to m y imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long
