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> From William Empson, _Milton's God_ (London, 1961).
*****
An interesting survey of British political novel-writing by Mr Gerber, in the Critical Quarterly for Spring 1959, discussed briefly among others the horrible book _1984_ which George Orwell wrote while dying. The critic presumed that it was merely another attack on Communism, but foundin it a more intersting aspect:
the individualistic, rational, liberal and humanist conception of man is opposed. not only to party collectives, but also to the complete unconditional surrender to the transcendental, paradoxical nature of God. It almost seems as if Orwell, being gradually broken down bodily and on the point of death, had filled his political satire with unconscious meanings of another kind.
An excellent selection of details from the book was then given to prove that its satire
has the age-old symbolic structure, and even phraseology, of resistant man's breakdown to some power which we generally call by the name of God.
I heard nothing from George Orwell after leaving England early in 1947, but I well remember how dreadful he could make you feel if he considered your political understanding of a question inadequate. Passionately indignant with Stalin's betrayal of the Left, he considered that one of the most shocking things about it was that Communis had nearly got back to being as bad as Christianity. Communism had no need to do this, not being a system of torture-worship. . . .The political forecast of _1984_ is that the two warring sides will become indistinguishable; that is why the author refuses to mention whether the London in view is a post-Communist or a post-Christian one. . . .The story (I still agree) becomes tiresomely incrdible; but only because the author is determined to make his allegory apply to both Communism and Christianity at once. All the details of likeness found by the critic in the magazine article were correct; he was only wrong in presuming that the author must have been partially unconscious of them. . . .But George Orwell very positively thought it the ultimate shame for a man to yield his conscience to an authority which craves to torture him and can only be restrained by renunciation of thought, whether the authority is Stalin or God the Father. ***** pp. 234-36)
It is from the chapter "Christianity"; roughly, Empson is arguing that the doctrine of Hell is utterly destructive of human thought and feeling. Is thesis about PL is the poem is so good because God is so bad.
Carrol