Jose Oliva
Barcelona (Spain), March 4. British journalist Dorian Lynskey, author of “The Ministry of Truth”, an essay on “1984”, considers George Orwell’s most popular novel to be “the cornerstone of dystopian literature” and that its author “has no not predict the future”, reflected a reality that is repeated today because “technology changes but power always behaves the same”.
In an interview with EFE, Lynskey, music critic for The Guardian and writer specializing in the intersection of popular culture and politics, comments that the author of ‘1984’ “has described and satirized what had already happened in Europe, with some innovations, such as the telescreen or newspeak”
In Lynskey’s view, “what we’re going through right now, whether it’s the surveillance in China, the nationalistic aggression from Russia, or the intimidating assault on the very truth by the likes of (Donald) Trump, (Jair) Bolsonaro and (Víktor) Orban, has performed before in different forms and appears in ‘1984’”.
For this reason, the essayist warns, the book continues to be a powerful warning, especially to democracies, not to take their freedoms for granted.
Orwell set his novel just 35 years after it was written unlike most dystopias, which are set centuries later, and did so “to remind readers just how possible it was”.
Like many, Lynskey first read ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ when he was around 13, an age when “many subtleties” are not understood but “the key prose and ideas are direct and powerful”. .
At 20, he rediscovered Orwell through his non-fiction books and essays and realized “the breadth of his ideas about politics, art, language, society, and human nature.”
For the essay “The Ministry of Truth” (Captain Swing), the author read Orwell’s complete works, including letters and diaries; and in previous research he realized that “Orwell was curious about recurring dystopian themes.”
ORWELL’S LEGACY
In his essay, Lynskey explains Orwell’s thought and influences, as well as his legacy after his death, and in fact, he notes, “just as I was writing the book proposal, Donald Trump became President and many of Orwell’s ideas have taken on a new and urgent relevance.
He also wanted to shatter some “misconceptions, like the myth that the title is a 1949 game, or that the ending is only pessimistic because Orwell was sick.”
Lynskey describes ‘1984’ as a ‘cornerstone’ of dystopian literature and, in fact, recalls, ‘more people today read this work of Orwell than those of HG Wells, Yevgeny Zamyatin or ‘ Brave New World’, because the storytelling and language is as compelling as the ideas, and all subsequent fictional dystopias are reminiscent of that in some way.”
And he adds that “1984” is “the first attempt at a theory of totalitarianism, published shortly before Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism'”.
According to him, although it is often considered a fiction or a prophecy, “almost all the horrors described by Orwell had already taken place in Hitler’s Germany or in Stalin’s Russia”.
Orwell’s work is, precisely, several things at the same time: a satire, a science fiction thriller, a political thesis, a love story, a nightmare, and its success lies in the fact of having invented “phrases like Big Brother, Police Thinking and doublethinking, which are familiar even to those who have never read the book.”
Orwell started planning “1984” in 1943 with the title “The Last Man in Europe”, but two years later Nazi Germany was defeated so the book ended up taking over Russia from Stalin: “The USSR was still a powerful and oppressive regime which called for criticism”.
VOLUNTEER IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
After volunteering in the Spanish Civil War to defend the Republic, Orwell realized, according to Lynskey, that “there was a civil war within a civil war: Soviet-backed Communists were persecuting Trotskyists, anarchists and independent socialists”. comrades and friends of Orwell; and this great betrayal taught him that Stalin and Hitler were two sides of the same totalitarian coin. »
To his horror, he adds, he found that the majority of the British left did not want to accept him and refused to publish his writings on Spain. “Exposing Stalin’s cruelty, violence, and deceit became a personal mission that produced both ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’.”
Asked about the different artistic versions of Orwell’s work, Lynskey thinks that Michael Radford’s film is excellent as a direct adaptation and that its protagonist John Hurt is the perfect Winston Smith.
Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s stage version is just as good, but radically different, “very cleverly using modern surveillance technology and delving into the mysteries and contradictions of the text”.
David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” album, which began as an attempt to make a “1984” musical, does not, in his view, reflect the spirit of Orwell, but “shows all that can be done with the basic ingredients of the book”. ECE
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