Tuesday's books - Diana-Alice Ramsauer
«Big Brother is watching you». It's an expression that's become part and parcel of Western culture. So much so that the book 1984 is used around the world as a symbol to denounce anything and everything. But let's start by reading it before brandishing it. Because while the issue of surveillance is indeed one that concerns us today, George Orwell's message obviously goes much further. Bestial desire, the dictatorship of the «bienpenser» and the standardization of opinion are also at the heart of this pamphlet.
To be honest, I started 1984 three times. On the first two attempts and after fifty pages, I pitifully tucked the book into my bag, telling myself «when I've got five minutes on the train, I'll get back to it». Finally, I took it out, all battered and smeared with Tupperware drippings, and forgot it again on the shelf (next to the books that suffered the same fate). Or something like that. Twice. Ten years apart.
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So when you open the bestseller a few weeks ago, in a third attempt, I was a little apprehensive. Am I going to close it sadly, telling myself that all those people around me who quote Orwell are geniuses with a passion for literature? Or am I really going to like this book, and recognize what it can bring to our analysis of today's world?
As I'm writing these lines, you'll have no doubt that it's the second proposition that has turned out to be true.
So let's start at the beginning. What did I know about 1984 before reading it? That it features a «Big Brother», the all-seeing, all-monitoring leader of the totalitarian party. That the hero's name is Winston (Smith, I might add). And that it's a critique of totalitarianism (to be more precise, an anti-Stalinist pamphlet written by a socialist). If we want to go a little further in the analysis, allow me to divulge a little.
«Nitroglycerine, that hooch!»
Let's start with the writing. For it was this new translation, released in 2018, that made me love the story. If a few puritans wanted to «throw in jail» translator Josée Kamoun for replacing «Novlangue» with «Néoparler», «Police de la pensée» with «Mentopolice» and abandoning the past simple in favor of the present tense, it's obviously because these same puritans didn't understand the very message of this dystopian tale: a call to freedom.
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Let's put it plainly and simply: this new version is much more fast-paced and enjoyable to read than its predecessor, and according to the translator[1] In itself, it allows us to «free ourselves from the literal to extend the interpretation». In terms of aesthetics, take this sentence, for example, which describes the effect of «Victory Gin» on the narrator.
Translation from 1950: «The beverage was like nitric acid, and what's more, swallowing it felt like being hit on the back of the neck with a rubber boner».
2018 translation: «Nitroglycerine, that hooch, a hard-on for the back of the neck».
A more direct, stronger and, yes, perhaps more modern style. And while I still wouldn't say it's a masterpiece of poetry, this translation at least allowed me to finish the book.
So much for literary considerations. As far as the story is concerned, we can simply describe Winston Smith as an average citizen, living and working in 1984. He has no special inclinations towards the omniscient, all-powerful Party. He doesn't have a highly developed critical mind (the totalitarian system has taken care of erasing it). He is monitored day and night by Big Brother, through screens in public spaces and in his own home. The «Mentopolice» tracks down all his bad thoughts. And even though his job is to rewrite the past and present so that the Party is never wrong in its official statements, nothing in his daily life seems particularly problematic.
«We're going to abolish the orgasm»
Gradually, however, our hero comes to realize that a world existed before the Party began to control humanity. Several stages in his life lead him to take a stand against this system. First, he starts a diary in which he writes what he could never say aloud. Then he meets a woman, Julia, who introduces him to feelings that no longer really existed in his daily life - an everyday life where only hatred is allowed. «The aim of the Party is not only to prevent men and women from forming alliances that would escape its control. Its true, if unavowed, aim is to empty the sexual act of all pleasure.» In conclusion, «the successful sexual act is an act of rebellion».
Because, as you may not be aware, the 1984, is also a love story. Not in the romantic sense of the word, but it's that feeling of uncontrolled, sometimes debilitating animal desire that drives Winston to rebel. «Raw desire. Here it is, the force that will blow up the Party». Together, Julia and Winston decide to join the Brotherhood, the organization that opposes Big Brother's totalitarianism.
At this stage, everything seems possible: the overthrow of the Party, the return of freedom, the development of public debate, the overcoming of censorship, the rediscovery of democracy. And yet, poor Smith ends up tortured in the basement of the Ministry of Love. «If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot crushing a human face - indefinitely». His convictions are destroyed, his allies turn out to be enemies, and we finish reading with that very unpleasant feeling that can simply be called: despair.
Some, like the author of The Scarlet Handmaiden Margaret Atwood qualifies this ending, pointing out that there is, at the end of the book, a kind of appendix that would suggest that the totalitarian world as presented by Orwell has been overturned. Perhaps, but that's not the feeling that lingers with me after reading one of the last passages describing how a Party cadre inflicts excruciating suffering on Winston Smith in the hope of teaching him that 2 +2 = 5. But I'll let you be the judge. After all, that's what freedom is all about.
Fake news and surveillance 2.0
For many, this control society can be compared to certain elements of our 21st-century lives.th century. In the USA, when Donald Trump was elected, the book enjoyed a resurgence of interest. The American president's rewriting of reality is reminiscent of Orwell's Party methods. Technology, the smartphone and GAFAMs, which enable companies and governments to monitor their activities at all times, are also echoes of what is presented by 1984. And recently, to criticize measures against Covid, (false) excerpts have been used by politicians.
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It's clear, then, that Orwellian theories have entered our everyday Western culture. And yet, there is perhaps one area of today's world that compares very little with the world of 1984. Certainly simply because many of those who claim to be George Orwell have not read George Orwell.
From Big Brother to push open doors
I'm talking about the tyranny of ideology and the lack of tolerance that goes with it. What can you do when dogma forbids free debate? At present, this risk can be found in all strata of the population and in all political circles (right and left). Let's throw the book at the Chinese and their surveillance 2.0. Let's criticize the American president for his undemocratic procedures. And let's question the state's pandemic-related measures. That's good, but it's easy. What's more difficult, however, is to nurture debate and contradiction.
Let's not fall into the cancel culture which is nothing more than a public lynching under the guise of progressivism. Let's not destroy the works of the past because they show sexism or represent slavery. Let's not denigrate values opposed to our own, let's argue. Otherwise: «Imposing complete obedience to the will of the state, but also perfect uniformity of opinion on all subjects [would become] possible.»
[1] Quoted in the Mail September 11, 2020.
Write to the author: diana-alice.ramsauer@leregardlibre.com
Photo credit: DR
George Orwell
1984
Translation by Josée Kamoun
Editions Gallimard
2018
384 pages
French 
German 
English