Eric Blair aka George Orwell
So, as I've been razzle dazzling my way through Modern British Literature which if not for the wonder that is my poetry tutorial, would far and away be my favorite class seeing as I'm less and in less in love with the ancient world every minute of every day.
So today, we read parts of George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language". And I love George Orwell. I do, I do, I do. Based on other writers I love, I shouldn't really love him, but unlike other writers, sometimes its nice to throw off all of that poetry noise (which is what I read too much because I'm under the clear impression that you are only as good as what you've read.) and just have a writer who won't piffle paffle around. Anyway, what I love is the fact that he wrote this essay in reference to the degradation of the english language by political writers and he wrote it seriously.
Anyway, here's a quote for all of you:
"The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship."
Now, I could write something really cutting about our president and about the way the United States is run today, but I won't.
But believe you me, I am bursting to say something really petty.
So today, we read parts of George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language". And I love George Orwell. I do, I do, I do. Based on other writers I love, I shouldn't really love him, but unlike other writers, sometimes its nice to throw off all of that poetry noise (which is what I read too much because I'm under the clear impression that you are only as good as what you've read.) and just have a writer who won't piffle paffle around. Anyway, what I love is the fact that he wrote this essay in reference to the degradation of the english language by political writers and he wrote it seriously.
Anyway, here's a quote for all of you:
"The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship."
Now, I could write something really cutting about our president and about the way the United States is run today, but I won't.
But believe you me, I am bursting to say something really petty.