518
PAR,TISAN REVIEW
The significant point is that Winston yields. The force to which
he is subjected is overwhelming, any man would crack. Yet
in
novels
all actions are willed; the force that seems to break the will is in reality
the rationalization of its action. Winston's breakdown covers a multiple
suicide. There is first of all Orwell's own suicide, committed, accord–
ing to the reports one hears, in the course of writing the novel and in
the year that followed, when he neglected his health and remained ac–
tive, though with two best-sellers he must have had the means for
a change of climate and complete rest. Winston's yielding is reminiscent
also of Ippolit's suicide, which the consumptive bungled only that his
death might occur as so much the greater an indignity. There is defiance
in this indignity, deliberately sough!. Both Winston and Ippolit rebel
against a world in which everything is possible, in which 2+2 no longer
equal 4-by yielding. The defiance is marked by the extent of the
yielding. Though Winston hasn't even a squeak of defiance left, so much
the more defiant is it, as though he were to say, "Take away my last
shred of decency, will you? Then here-take everything. Here's lungs
and liver, mind and heart and soul!" Everything goes, nothing is
saved. "He loved Big Brother."
This is Orwell finally yielding up the life-long image, the char–
acter and style and habits of reason and restraint. I cannot conceive
of a greater despair, and
if
it falls short of the magnificent it is only
because Orwell was not a genius. But the mild journalist had at last
attained art, expressing the totalitarian agony out of his own, as no
English writer had done. He encompassed the world's sickness in his
own: in this way, too, it may happen to a man to see totalitarianism
"from inside." Whether Orwell's vision was true or false, consistent or
not, or even adequate to reality, is a separate question, and not, it
seems to me, very important in his case. All that matters is the force of
the passion with which the man, who began as a writer in a small
way, at last came through. The force with which he ended is the one
with which greatness begins. This force, it will be observed, was enough
to kill
it
man.
Isaac Rosenfeld
the hans hofmann school of fine arts
52
west
8th
street
new york city
phone gramercy 7-3491
provincetown, mass.
june 12 - sept. 1 approved G.I. Bill of Rights
summer session
personally conducted
by mr. hofml!l' nn
