Who was George Orwell?
Exhibition text
George Orwell became world famous for his two novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but his complete work, his life and his paradoxical personality are known only to a few. The aim of the 2003 Orwell-Year is to draw a more thorough and nuanced picture of the writer, whose intellectual legacy is alive and useful even today, and still effective for interpreting the world´s topical socio-political phenomena. On the 100th anniversary of Orwell’s birth, at By means of relics, manuscripts, photos, films and sound recordings, the exhibition recalls moments in a lonely man´s life; the secrets, fears and joys of Orwell, the novelist, essayist, war-correspondent. The exhibition was opened by Mária Schmidt, Director-General of the House of Terror Museum.
Opening Address by Mária Schmidt: Sobriety, willingness to make sacrifices, love of justice, empathy with the downtrodden and patriotism (the way Orwell defined love of one´s country and its national culture), are all attributes which form the basis of human history´s finest traditions. However, they can only prevail in their totality, because what is the use of empathy towards the downtrodden, if it doesn´t go hand-in-hand with a willingness to make sacrifices, or sobriety without a love of justice? George Orwell, who was born 100 years ago, encompassed all these attributes; hence all his life he remained an unsuccessful loner. Eric Arthur Blair´s greatest experiment was George Orwell. He adopted the name at the age of thirty-one and gave it up voluntarily at forty-seven, when he shed the name George Orwell in his last will and testament. Eric Arthur Blair requested a religious funeral choosing a church-yard for his final resting place. Similarly to one of his best friends, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell went full-circle not only in theory, but in practice as well: he recognized social injustice, fought against it, and had sufficient courage also to recognize that under the ˝New Heaven˝ an even greater misery was born on the ˝New Earth˝. The notables of the socialist ideal soon came to dislike Orwell; already in his sociography, The Road to Wigan Pier written in 1936, he refused to follow the instructions of his commissioning publisher, who wanted him to present a positive and idealized picture of the British working class. In his Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm and 1984, Orwell did not leave any doubt about the fact that he made no distinctions in favour of any form of totalitarianism. Orwell´s life was continually imbued with the war; I don´t think it is an exaggeration to say that the role of war correspondent comes closest to his personality. Orwell was a voracious reader of newspapers, he was an avid listener of the radio, he relentlessly took notes, prepared radio commentaries. His week-by-week analyses of the crucial years of the war were transmitted by the BBC from December 1941, immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, to February 1943, when the tide had finally turned after the Red Army´s victory at Stalingrad. Singapore, Mandalay, Mersa-Matruk, the Coral Sea were just as important and familiar theatres of war to him, because Orwell never lost sight of the fact that the world was round! Anyone leafing through the texts of Orwell´s radio commentaries for the BBC will get a taste of what was really at stake, what the terms world war and world history really mean. My dear friends! Who was George Orwell? Not enough time has passed yet since his death and the world hasn´t changed that much for us not to be able to see in him an old acquaintance. We are still near enough to him to conjure up his memory. By our exhibition we are attempting to summon his spirit: we are emphasizing not only the ˝then˝, but are also endeavouring to evoke in our visitors a sense of the ˝now˝. Because I am convinced that George Orwell has given us, East Central Europeans, much more, than to peoples living in happier parts of the world. At the exhibition commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the world-famous British author, I cannot pass up the opportunity of asking the question why, despite what George Orwell has meant to the Hungarian intelligentsia over the decades, is he not more popular? Why do they refer so rarely to him? Why don´t they show their gratitude for what he gave them? Anyone who takes the time and trouble to read his literary output, his essays, cannot fail to be struck by the sayings, and ideas, some of which can be seen on the walls of this hall. You can find more on the interactive monitor. We have managed to collect a huge number – if by no means all – of George Orwell´s ever-valid, quotable aphorisms. The central theme of his oeuvre is not love or death, but that factor, which in the course of the twentieth century has intruded – sometimes by force, at other times by flattery – into our private lives: politics. Or rather a political ideology, an idea, whose advocates regarded themselves as the possessors of the ultimate truth, and who in due course acquired total power, and encroached on and violated the past. Perhaps that is why Orwell is still so embarrassing; even today the claim to possession of the ultimate truth, sometimes its tradition, is wont to crop up in our social arguments and political fights. George Orwell is still relevant today, because the psychology of the supposedly dormant totalitarian power, its functioning, of which Orwell has written, has not changed. The Twentieth Century Institute is devoting a full year of programs to George Orwell´s memory, of which today´s opening exhibition is but one highlight. In the autumn we shall be opening another display, entitled 1984, in whose framework we intend to evoke Orwell´s year of 1984. I cannot pass in silence over the fact that only very few of the organizations we have invited are taking an active part in this work. Some even shied away from being mentioned in the same breath with George Orwell. The Greats of human culture can often be discomforting creatures. Not only their contemporaries, but even future generations can have trouble with them, because, like their personalities, their work too is implacable, unswerving and disconcerting. Yet it is they, who unite humanity like an invisible link. Those of us, who are assembled here, are all tied together in a bond of friendship through George Orwell, however our thinking might differ. I declare the exhibition open. Thank you for joining us! |
George Orwell became world famous for his two novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, but his complete work, his life and his paradoxical personality are known only to a few.
