The Prevention of Literature - Summary

Summary

Orwell introduces his essay by recalling a meeting of the PEN Club, held in defence of freedom of the press, in which the speakers appeared to be interested primarily in issues of obscenity and in presenting eulogies of Soviet Russia and concludes that it was really a demonstration in favour of censorship. In a footnote he acknowledges that he probably picked a bad day but this provides an opportunity for Orwell to discuss attacks on freedom of thought and the enemies of intellectual liberty. He declares the immediate enemies of freedom of thought in England to be the concentration of the press in a few hands, monopoly of radio, bureaucracy and the unwilllingness of the public to buy books. However he is more concerned with the independence of writers being undermined by those who should be its defenders. What is at issue is the right to report contemporary events truthfully. He notes that 15 years previously it had been necessary to defend freedom against Conservatives and Catholics, but now it was now necessary to defend it against 'Communists' and fellow-travellers declaring that there is "no doubt about the poisonous effect of the Russian mythos on English intellectual life".

Orwell cites the Ukrainian famine, the Spanish Civil War and Poland as topics that the pro-soviet writers fail to address because of the prevailing orthodoxy and sees organised lying as integral to totalitarian states. Orwell notes that prose literature is unable to flourish under totalitarianism just as it was unable to flourish under the oppressive religious culture of the Middle Ages. However there is a difference which is that under totalitarianism the doctrines are unstable, so that the lies always have to change to keep up with a continual re-writing of the past. This is leading to an age of schizophrenia rather than an age of faith.

Orwell suggests that, for various reasons, poetry can survive under totalitarianism, whereas prose writers are crippled by the destruction of intellectual liberty. Speculating on the type of literature under a future totalitarian society Orwell predicts this to be formulaic and low grade sensationalism, but notes that one factor is that general populace is not prepared to spend as much on literature as on other recreations. In criticising the Russophile intelligentsia Orwell complains of the uncritical and indifferent attitude of scientists, who anyway have a privileged place under totalitarian states. For Orwell, literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes, but the direct attack on intellectuals is coming from intellectuals themselves.