The British
author George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, b. Motihari,
India, June 25, 1903, d. London, Jan. 21, 1950, achieved prominence in the
late 1940s as the author of two brilliant satires attacking totalitarianism.
Familiarity with the novels, documentaries, essays, and criticism he wrote
during the 1930s and later has since established him as one of the most
important and influential voices of the century.
Orwell's parents were members of the Indian Civil Service, and, after an
education at Eton College in England, Orwell joined (1922) the Indian
Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that later found expression in the
novel Burmese Days (1934). His first book, Down and Out in Paris
and London (1933), was a nonfictional account--moving and comic at the
same time--of several years of self-imposed poverty he had experienced after
leaving Burma. He published three other novels in the 1930s: A
Clergyman's Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936),
and Coming Up for Air (1939). His major works of the period were two
documentaries: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), a detailed,
sympathetic, and yet objective study of the lives of nearly impoverished
miners in the Lancashire town of Wigan; and Homage to Catalonia
(1938), which recounts his experiences fighting for the Loyalists in the
Spanish Civil War. Orwell was wounded, and, when the Communists attempted to
eliminate their allies on the far left, fought against them and was forced
to flee for his life.
Orwell's two best-known books reflect his lifelong distrust of autocratic
government, whether of the left or right: Animal Farm (1945), a
modern beast-fable attacking Stalinism, and Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949), a dystopian novel setting forth his fears of an intrusively
bureaucratized state of the future. The pair of novels brought him his first
fame and almost his only remuneration as a writer. His wartime work for the
BBC (published in the collections George Orwell: The Lost Writings,
and The War Commentaries) gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic
hypocrisy and may have provided the inspiration for his invention of
"newspeak," the truth-denying language of Big Brother's rule in Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
Orwell's reputation rests not only on his political shrewdness and his sharp
satires but also on his marvelously clear style and on his superb essays,
which rank with the best ever written. "Politics and the English Language"
(1950), which links authoritarianism with linguistic decay, has been widely
influential. The four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of
George Orwell was published in 1968.
Franz Kafka was born into an upwardly mobile Jewish family in Prague, where, except for traveling, he spent his entire life. His domineering father placed great pressure on his shy and sensitive only son to grow up into a robust businessman like himself. Kafka, however, was more interested in creative and literary pursuits and, consequently, struggled his entire life under the shadow of his father's disappointment. At college, Kafka briefly studied chemistry and philosophy before taking his degree in law in 1906. Kafka met Max Brod, another student with literary interests and ambitions, who became his life long friend and was responsible for introducing his friend's genius to the world. After graduation, Kafka worked briefly as a law clerk before entering the confusing and nightmarish world of an insurance institute where he calculated the costs and probabilities of all sorts of human misery and calamity. When not working, Kafka visited cafes where he was introduced to the Prague literati and Yiddish theater. He had begun writing in school and published a book of short impressionistic sketches with help of Brod, who immediately felt that Kafka was a genius. Despite the strains of his job, he took advantage of the short hours and lenient vacation schedule to travel and devote more time to his writing. At 29, he met Felice Bauer, a German secretary in Berlin, and began a long distance relationship that lasted five years and produced two broken engagements. The same year, Kafka experienced a breakthrough and within the next three years wrote the majority of his major works, most of which appeared in Brod's short lived literary journal, despite Kafka's reticence about publication. Throughout his life, this health conscious vegetarian suffered from insomnia and a variety of other ailments that often required extended stays in sanitariums around Europe. In 1917, Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis and, shortly afterward, resigned his position and made his final break with Felice. He spent the rest of his life living in various sanitariums, where he continued to write, took up gardening and, later, devoted himself to the study of his Jewish heritage. During this time he started a relationship with Milena Jeneska, a married Czech woman who had translated some of his works. Though she was in many ways his ideal match, intelligent, well-read and independent, Kafka suffered greatly because of her refusal to leave her unfaithful husband. Later Kafka became involved with Dora Dymant, a lively young Jewess with whom he found happiness and hoped to live with once he recovered. Though he never physically recovered, he experienced some sense of spiritual salvation (not religious) before succumbing to his disease on June 3, 1924. Brod disobeyed his friend's request to burn his works and over the few next decades edited and published Kafka's unfinished stories.
