By the same author THE WHEEL OF EMPIRE A Study of the Imperial Idea in Some Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Fiction MACMILLAN STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE Laurie Clancy THE NOVELS OF VLADIMIR NABOKOV Clare Hanson SHORT STORIES AND SHORT FICTIONS, 188~1980 David Leon Higdon SHADOWS OF THE PAST IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FICTION Holger Klein with John Flower and Eric Hornberger (editors) THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN FICTION Simon Loveday THE ROMANCES OF JOHN FOWLES Harold Ore! THE LITERARY ACHIEVEMENT OF REBECCA WEST Tony Pinkney WOMEN IN THE POETRY OF T. S. ELIOT Alan Sandison GEORGE ORWELL: AFTER 1984 Lars Ole Sauerberg SECRET AGENTS IN FICTION Linda M. Shires BRITISH POETRY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR Patrick Swinden THE ENGLISH NOVEL OF HISTORY AND SOCIETY, 194<Hlo Eric Warner (editor) VIRGINIA WOOLF: A CENTENARY PERSPECTIVE Anne Wright LITERATURE OF CRISIS, 1910-22 Further titles in preparation George Orwell After 1984 Alan Sandison M~ Longwood Academic Dover, New Hampshire ISBN 978-0-333-38626-2 ISBN 978-1-349-18109-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18109-4 © Alan Sandison 1974, 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1986 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance wi th the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages First edition (entitled The Last Man in Europe: An Essay on George Orwell) 1974 Second edition (entitled George Orwell: After 1984) 1986 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Published in the United States by Longwood Academic, a division of the Longwood Publishing Group Inc, 51 Washington Street, Dover, New Hampshire British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sandison, Alan George Orwell.-2nd ed.-(Macmillan studies in twentieth century literature) 1. Orwell, George-Criticism and interpretation I. Title II. Sandison, Alan. Last man in Europe 823'.912 PR602g.R8Z/ ISBN 978-0-333-38625-5 (Macmillan hardback) ISBN 978-0-333-38626-2 (Macmillan paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sandison, Alan, George Orwell : After I g84. Rev. Ed. of: The Last Man in Europe-1974 Bibliography: p. Includes Index. 1. Orwell, George, 1903-1gso-Criticism and Interpre tation I. Sandison, Alan. Last Man in Europe. II. Title. PR6029.R8Z78 Ig86 828'g120g 85-1g893 ISBN 978-0-89341-575-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-89341-576-1 (paper) To my Mother and Father Contents Foreword IX Acknowledgements X To Prove all Things 2 Operating inside Nature 8 3 A Laborious Calling 30 4 The Frontier of Tragic Conscience 53 5 The Sigh of the Soul 106 6 Operating in History: Ethics and Aesthetics 134 7 Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus 167 Postscript: Ig84 Ig1 Notes 218 Index 231 Foreword Because in what follows considerable stress is laid on a certain religious tradition, it is perhaps desirable to make it clear that the writer is committed neither to it nor any other religion. The object is not to proselytise (in a religious sense, at least) but to seek to describe Orwell's fundamental moral position, and in doing so to clarify the nature of his creative vision. In George Orwell: After 1984, the earlier text of what was then called The Last Man in Europe has been considerably augmented by a chapter entitled 'Postscript: 1984' in which the book's argument is taken further and recent developments in Orwell criticism discussed. A. S. Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: John Beavan, now Lord Ardwick, who comes from a family of South Wales miners, for extracts from The World Review; the estate of the late Mrs Sonia Orwell, Seeker & Warburg and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for extracts from The Road to Wigan Pier, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, A Clergyman's Daughter, Such, were the Joys and © Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell; copyright 1949 © Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; copyright 1953, 1977 Sonia © Brownell Orwell; copyright 1981 Mrs George K. Perutz, Mrs Miriam Gross, Dr Michael Dickson and Executors of the Estate of Sonia Brownell Orwell; the Economist for an extract from an article by Neil Hepburn; The Financial Times for an extract from their issue 10 December 1983; Victor Gollancz and University of Pittsburg Press for an extract from The Road to Miniluv: George Orwell, the State and Godby Christopher Small; Seeker & Warburg and Little, Brown for an extract from George Orwell: A Life by Bernard Crick; Christopher Small for an extract from a letter to Dr Alan Sandison. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportuni ty. 1 To Prove all Things Prove all things, hold fast that which is good I Thessalonians V. 2 I When Martin Luther stubbornly refused to withdraw his criti cism of the Church before the Imperial Diet at Worms in 1521, he was duly made aware of the extreme consequences to him self if he persisted in his recusancy. The warning was delivered by Johann von der Eck, Luther's interrogator before the Diet, who clearly saw himself not just as the secretary representative of the Archbishop of Trier but as the oracle of a prescriptive and systematic absolutism established in the dogma of the Universal Church. To us today the importance of what this voice says - in von der Eck's own carefully edited account - is virtually equalled by how it says it: we are struck by the way it clarifies the contending ideologies, but we are perhaps even more struck by the familiarity of its vocabulary: Even granted that some of your books contain nothing harmful, a point that we do not concede; but cut out your pernicious and poisonous dogmas, cut out the blasphe mous passages, cut out the heresies and what savours of heresy, cut out the passages hurtful to the Catholic faith; then no danger will arise from what is right and proper. His sacred and imperial Majesty is prepared to deal very leniently with these matters; and if you alter your views will prevail upon the supreme pontiff not to destroy and blot out the good with the bad. If, however, you obstinately persist in your notorious errors and heresies as up to the present, most certainly all memory of you will be wiped out, and everything, whether right or wrong, together with their author, will be condemned.!