Victor Hugo's Intellectual Autobiography Book

It is easy to get so caught up in the reviewing and criticism of other people's works that we forget the implications of criticism. In one sense, all literary criticism is profoundly unethical. We take the works of another person and we often find them wanting in at least some respects.

Lest we forget, these works are a reflection of the individual who produced them, and in critiquing their works we are to some extent offering a judgement on that person, based on our own values. Even if we confined that criticism to the quality of the writing, we are making a judgement about that person - their choice of language, and their manner of expression.

However, the reality is that most of us are unable to resist offering some kind of comment about the content of the work as well as the style. Those comments reflect our own values, some of which are influenced by the age in which we live.

I was struck by this while reading Orwell's essay on Gulliver's Travels, in which his analysis of the book's flaws reflect the political realities of his age, which in turn have changed today. I first read it when I was at university. In one passage, Orwell likens the world of the Houyhnhnms to that of totalitarian states, even in their willingness to pressure people by means of 'persuasion', rather than coercion. In the margin, a student or lecturer had protestingly wrote, 'Come on, George!' This shows how the criticisms of yesterday seem harder to swallow in a later age.

Orwell's essay on Tolstoy and King Lear reflects the same pattern, and he is unable to resist opposing Tolstoy's pacifist principles as being another form of authoritarianism, an attitude that Orwell had strongly felt (perhaps with some justice) during the War.

For writers of critical reviews, there can be a certain glee in denigrating a writer's work. It is a kind of cathartic revenge for reading something that the reviewer loathed, and it is not always a pleasant response. In the end, a critical review is little more than an opinion.

We see this clearly when we read negative or lukewarm reviews of something that we love. The review inspires outrage in us, and a feeling that the reviewer is being unfair. To some extent that feeling is justified since the reviewer is only expressing a personal dislike, but is doing so in language that seems designed to spoil everyone else's enjoyment of the item under review.

However, fair or not, such judgements are unavoidable. Everyone who reads a book is an amateur critic of some sort. We all feel a like or dislike of the book based on our own subjective prejudices, all the worse when expressed as if those complaints represent some kind of objective truth. I am guilty of it, and perhaps you are too.

George Orwell is guilty of it as well, but we can at least admire his attempts to be even-handed. Orwell recognises that a book can be aesthetically good, even when it does not reflect his own opinions. Indeed, Orwell has some criticism to spare for most of his favourite writers whilst still expressing his enjoyment of their works.

One thing that is clear from Orwell's writings is that he had an immense love of reading and good literature. Overall, his tastes are fairly sound. The writers that he extols are still read today, and it is only occasionally (e.g. with Graham Greene's Heart of the Matter) that he is down on a work that is now accepted as a classic, though his criticisms are justified.

Some of this even-handedness extends to Orwell's attitude to important political figures. After years of denigrating Gandhi in private letters, we finally get to see his public thoughts in an essay. On the whole, the essay is complimentary, though Orwell's distaste of many aspects of Gandhi's character is still visible. While Orwell remained sympathetic to the ruling Labour Party, he is still capable of handsomely complimenting Winston Churchill.

For Orwell, the greatest moral qualities (if one is to judge from his non-fiction) are courage and honesty. It is more important for a writer or prominent person to express their genuine opinions and beliefs than it is for him to agree with them, and he will compliment his worst political enemies if they are at least sincere.

In that sense, Orwell prefers a conservative, Catholic or politically apathetic person who openly admits their prejudices or selfishness, than a pacifist or communist sympathiser who changes their opinions to match the policies of the Soviet Union.

It is far more reprehensible to argue the exact opposite opinions to those you held last week for motives of political expediency, or to judge a person's artistic worth by political criteria than it is to honestly hold the wrong opinions.

There is also an unwavering commitment to democratic socialism, combined with a hatred of the totalitarian ideologies that were then so strong. Orwell was pessimistic about the future, fearing imminent use of nuclear bombs, but still thought the world was worth fighting for. It is slight comfort to us now that this pessimism was misplaced, and offers us a little hope against the worst pessimistic predictions of our own age.

Indeed, if I had to give this book an alternative title, I would call it The Road to 1984. Orwell's concerns about communism (unchanged since the 1930s) are strongly evident in this book, and we can see his fears about the damage that politics does to language or about how the world may become divided into three blocs. Both of these ideas would find their way into 1984.

There are plenty of allusions to the writing of 1984 in Orwell's letters. Orwell seemed convinced that his ill health had ruined the book, and that he would have made the ending a little more hopeful if he had the chance. I doubt that the ending would have been much better if he had, but I suppose we will never know.

In fact, Orwell's work on a full-scale novel is all the more remarkable, because this was a period of ill health for him. The road was not just to 1984. The letters record his fight with tuberculosis, and it is hard not to feel sadness after reading four volumes of his non-fiction, dating back to the 1920s. It is almost like watching a lifelong friend die.

The number of essays and reviews begins to thin out and to be replaced by letters, many of them dealing with Orwell's health. We watch him struggling with his illness. Sometimes he seems to feel better and more hopeful, but we know that he is going to lose this fight.

Finally, a few months before his death, the letters disappear too, and we are left with only a few notes relating to articles that Orwell had wanted to write, but was prevented by poor health. The voice of one of the twentieth century's greatest left-leaning liberals had been silenced forever.

We will never know what he made of the re-election of the Conservatives in the 50s, the greater sexual freedoms of the 60s, the economic slump of the 70s, the resurgence of capitalism in the 80s and the collapse of communism in the 90s.

It would be impossible to agree with all of Orwell's opinions or to like all aspects of his personality, as glimpsed in his non-fiction. However, there is more to admire than deplore. George Orwell was not a hero, and he would never have wished anyone to see him as one. However, he demonstrated the honesty, fairness and courage that he so much admired in others. The world was better for having men like him during an age when freedom was under threat.