Un p’tit tour et puis s’en va

Where possible, i.e. within Britain and Europe, I was accompanied on my travels by my springer spaniel. Confusingly, and named long before I began my three-year tryst with Orwell’s life and his work, he is also called George. I hope it is clear where I am referencing George the dog, rather than Orwell, the writer, but for the avoidance of doubt, any ‘present tense’ references to a ‘George’ will be about my springer and not George Orwell. Given the long and widespread range of travel, from among Scottish Islands to the plains of Spain, I am confident he enjoyed his participation in The Orwell Tour as much as I did.

The Orwell Tour n’est jamais aussi passionnant que lorsque George (le chien) plonge dans une rivière dans laquelle George (l’écrivain) s’est probablement baigné. C’est dire ! Pour toute preuve de son CV, de la Magdalen College School au King’s College en passant par Brackley et la London School of Economics, Oliver Lewis déploie une écriture fleurie jusqu’à l’écœurement. George (le chien) n’a pas vu la curiosité architecturale qui mérite trois paragraphes de description ampoulée, mais George (l’écrivain) a peut-être commis le viol qui est évacué en trois lignes d’un relativisme puant.

Admettons — Lewis n’a jamais prétendu écrire une biographie, mais seulement un travelogue, un carnet de voyage « explorant la vie et l’œuvre de George Orwell à travers les lieux où il a vécu, travaillé et écrit. » Ou, plutôt, les traces des lieux en question. Lewis peine à retrouver les maisons, bute contre des portes fermées, regarde des photos fanées. Tout le monde connait 1984 mais personne ne l’a lu, tout le monde connait Orwell mais personne ne s’en souvient, Lewis fait un p’tit tour et puis s’en va.

Ce recueil d’un échec n’aurait jamais été publié s’il n’avait pas été consacré à Orwell, « marque » qui fait vendre1, alors Lewis multiplie les dissertations sur la pluie et le beau temps pour masquer la vacuité de ses déplacements. Bien qu’il insiste lour-de-ment sur ces deux visages d’Orwell, Lewis ne réconcilie jamais son socialisme internationaliste forgé dans les tranchées catalanes avec son chauvinisme élitiste fossilisé dans ses retraites à Jura.

C’est quand même dingue qu’il soit allé jusque dans les recoins les plus reculés du sous-continent indien, où Eric Blair est né, mais qu’il n’ait pas retenté sa chance dans les petits villages de la campagne anglaise, où George Orwell a grandi. The Orwell Tour n’est finalement qu’un carnet de voyage bourgeois, le récit de vacances au soleil et de la crainte de la bruine britannique. Tout l’inverse de la vie de l’auteur de Down and Out in Paris and London, en somme.

Notes

C’est sûr que ce n’est pas triste pour elle :

One of the saddest aspects of the life of Orwell, ignored in most of the biographies, was what happened to his friendship with Jacintha. It is clear that they were close, but after he departed for Burma in 1922 she never saw him again. Dione Venables, Jacintha Buddicom’s cousin, documents in an epilogue to Eric and Us just how tragically their friendship may have ended. An allegation to be forever unproven, but remaining likely and therefore distressing, is of an attempted rape by Orwell, leading to their immediate estrangement.

Grasping at straws, comme ils disent :

Amusing phrases appeared here and there, a source of comedy for me and the Burmese I was with. Inscribed on the entrance to military buildings were:

‘TATMADAW AND THE PEOPLE, CO-OPERATE AND CRUSH ALL THOSE HARMING THE UNION’

’DEFENCE SERVICES ACADEMY:THE TRIUMPHANT ELITE OF THE FUTURE’

The second can be found at the entrance to the Sandhurst-styled institution founded by the British outside Maymyo, an old hill station and a Raj-era cantonment. These phrases could quite conceivably be heard as instructions via a telescreen, the two-way TVs that are installed in every home in Nineteen Eighty-Four. But the junta strikes me as being desperate to emulate totalitarianism. As for the British before them, total control of a diverse and impoverished agrarian nation is an impossible endeavour. Big Brother could not survive long without technology, a privilege of an industrialised society. Without a country absorbing the cost of investing in it, the outcome is a population on low incomes left standing as the rest of the world progresses.

Lewis confond souvent son opinion avec les faits :

Orwell, who was an occasional communicant in the Church of England, came from just the sort of family where the youngest son would enter the Church. He also insisted on being buried in an Anglican churchyard by its traditional rites in his will, carried out to his wishes after his death. His belief in God, or formal religion, I suspect was placed into some form of abeyance during his transformative experiences in London, Paris, the north of England and Spain. But it would be a mistake to consider that his churchgoing by force of habit (as Dorothy’s becomes following her return to Knype Hill) was disingenuous. Possibly ending his life an agnostic, I suspect that he would have avoided concluding that there is no God, or that all of the mystery and elaborate procedure of the formal churches is a vast waste of time and effort, best put to other uses. It is hard to fully grasp the measure of such a mercurial personality as that of George Orwell.

Une réflexion qui revient souvent, comme si sa plume n’était pas sa voix :

Not everyone was pleased with his contributions, however, with one BBC executive having questioned whether he should remain on air owing to the quality of his voice. It is strange to think that for a writer who worked for a radio station for two years, there is no known recording of his voice. A memo sent by J.B. Clark, controller of Overseas Services, in January 1943 queried ’the basic unsuitability of Orwell’s voice’, which he described as ‘unattractive and unsuitable for the phone’. We may never be able to assess its suitability for ourselves, sadly.

  1. Je me suis laissé prendre ! ↩︎