乔治·奥威尔和卡尔·魏特夫

今年是英国小说家乔治·奥威尔百岁诞辰。国内外都出版有关著作纪念他 ,尤其在西方。他的名著《一九八四》以反对“极权主义”著称 ,载誉至今 ,并引起争议。若干年前 ,同样反对“东方极权主义”的美国史家卡尔·魏特夫的百岁诞辰却是冷冷清清的 ,形成鲜明对照。他和他的代表作《东方专制主义》早已风光不再。本文对这两位名家以及他们不同的遭遇进行了分析。     

George Orwell and the Palestine Question

This article discusses George Orwell’s attitude to Zionism and the Palestine question, a controversial and emotional subject in left-wing circles in his time and since. There have been a number of studies on Orwell’s attitude to Jews and anti-Semitism and some of these have touched upon Orwell’s approach to Zionism. However, his stance on the Palestine question specifically deserves further exposition. This is so, not least because on this subject too Orwell’s views—largely anti-Zionist—differed from the prevailing, passionate beliefs of most left-wing intellectuals of his time, including some of his closest friends and political allies. Furthermore, Orwell’s views were expressed at a time when the Palestine conflict peaked during the last decade of the British Mandate with results which resound to this day.     

Oppressive Rhyming: George Orwell on Poetry and Totalitarianism

In George Orwell’s 1984, the poet Ampleforth observes that “the whole history of English poetry has been determined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes.” In this article I connect Ampleforth’s observation to Orwell’s many other writings on language and political control and then show how Orwell’s discussion of poetry’s resistance to political manipulation enhances Tocqueville’s and Burke’s accounts of totalitarianism. Specifically, Orwell illustrates how an easily “rhyming” polity is particularly vulnerable to totalitarian politics, while a society containing considerable disorder in its language and politics can be strongly resistant to such tyranny.     

George Orwell on Political Realism and the Future of Europe

George Orwell perceived the possibility of a postwar united Europe, based on regional integration along social-democratic lines, as a means of survival in a world struggle rather than as a preamble to peace. This was the logical conclusion of his understanding of political realism: his endorsement of its assumption that violence is endemic to social life and that the force-wielding sovereign cannot be done away with. Yet Orwell also had reservations about realism. He argued that a purely realist analysis that was not normatively connected to any values outside itself would go astray because analysts would be unable to factor in their own positions and would thus lose the analytic distance from their objects of study. Orwell was thus as suspicious of a politics managed by experts as of the utopian anticipation of a violence-free world. His world-view, rooted in realist necessity while leaving room for the values of democracy and socialism, offered a vision of a postwar united Europe that fostered the spirit of solidarity and could endure the existential struggles of world politics.     

George Sigerson: Charcot's translator

Senator George Sigerson (1836-1925), Dublin's first neurologist, was also a significant contributor to Anglo-Irish literature. His medical career and literary accomplishments are outlined, the focus of the article being Sigerson's friendly relationship with Charcot (with whom he corresponded), and whose Le?ons sur les maladies du système nerveux he translated.     

George Horton: the literary diplomat

Abstract

George Horton was a man of letters and United States Consul in Greece and Turkey at a time of social and political change. He writes of the re-taking of Smyrna by the Turkish army in September 1922. His account, however, goes beyond the blame and events to a demonization of Muslims, in general, and of Turks, in particular. In several of his novels, written more than two decades before the events of September 1922, he had already identified the Turk as the stock-in-trade villain of Western civilization. In his account of Smyrna, he writes not as historian, but as publicist.     

George Sigerson: Charcot's translator*

Abstract

Senator George Sigerson (1836–1925), Dublin's first neurologist, was also a significant contributor to Anglo‐Irish literature. His medical career and literary accomplishments are outlined, the focus of the article being Sigerson's friendly relationship with Charcot (with whom he corresponded), and whose Leçons sur les maladies du système nerveux he translated.