【英文原声版85】Priya Satia： 1984

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Zachary Davis: In 1948, English author George Orwell wrote what would become one of the defining novels of the 20th century, 1984. He was writing in the years following WWII and the beginning of The Cold War. It was a tense time, full of uncertainty and the spectre of Soviet communism loomed. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1948 年，英国作家乔治·奥威尔撰写了《1984》，这部作品后来成为 20 世纪的经典小说之一。它诞生于二战后和冷战刚开始的几年里，那是一个紧张的时期，充斥着不确定性，苏维埃共产主义也如幽灵般时隐时现。

Priya Satia: I think that context is really important to understanding what he was trying to warn readers about with this novel. It's a dystopian novel. So showing us where, you know, the logic of things he's seeing unfold in his time, you know, where that ends if left to itself, if people don't push back while they still can. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：如果读者想要理解这部小说，理解奥威尔试图传递的警告，了解写作的时代背景至关重要。这是一部反乌托邦小说。小说向我们呈现的，是奥威尔在他的年代亲眼所见的事物发展轨迹。如果放任事物自由发展，如果不在尚有机会改变的时候推动改革，那社会将走向何处。

Priya Satia: I'm Priya Satia, and I am professor of history at Stanford, where I teach modern British history and the history of the British Empire. And I also have another title, which is The Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：我是普莉亚·沙蒂娅，是斯坦福大学的历史学教授。我在斯坦福主要教授英国近代史和大英帝国历史。我还有另外一个头衔，雷蒙德 A. 斯普鲁恩斯国际历史学教授。

Zachary Davis: In 1984, Orwell introduced all kinds of terms to describe the dystopian society of his novel, such as “thought police”, “memory hole”, “big brother”, and “unperson.” And in his view, Orwell wasn’t attempting to describe a fantastical world with no correspondence to our own, or even just satirizing the excesses of the Soviet regime. He was sounding a warning to his own society. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：在《1984》中，奥威尔创造了“思想警察”、“记忆洞”、“老大哥”和“非人”等词语来描述他笔下的反乌托邦社会。 奥威尔并非想创造一个与现实毫无关系的奇幻世界，也并非仅仅讽刺苏联政府的滥权。奥威尔是想通过《1984》对社会发出警告。

Priya Satia: So it's a very hopeless, airless kind of dystopian world. But the point of it, and I guess of all dystopian novels, is to inspire action. You know, there's a kind of paradoxical logic to dystopian novels where they're supposed to agitate you to fight for utopian causes. Right?

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔笔下的反乌托邦世界，令人感到绝望窒息。但我想所有反乌托邦小说的目的，都是为了激发实际行动。反乌托邦小说总有一种自相矛盾的逻辑，它们总是想激励读者为乌托邦事业而战。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with professor Priya Satia to discuss George Orwell’s 1984.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：改变你和世界的100书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者讨论一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我将和普莉亚·沙蒂娅教授一起讨论乔治·奥威尔的《1984》。

Zachary Davis: George Orwell is famous for writing about people who are oppressed by systems of power. But he himself was born to the powerful.

扎卡里·戴维斯：塑造权力重压之下的底层人民形象，是乔治·奥威尔作品的鲜明特色。但其实奥威尔生于权贵家庭。

Zachary Davis: His father’s family was English and had for generations worked for the British imperial projects, first in the Jamaica sugar plantations and later in the British Raj.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔的父亲出生于英国本地的大家族，世代为大英帝国工作，先是在牙买加的蔗糖种植园，而后在英属印度。

Priya Satia: His forefathers had old ties to the Empire. They had slaves in Jamaica, his great great grandfather. And then his great grandfather was sort of an absentee landlord for the plantations they had in Jamaica. And the their family was, you know, handsomely compensated when the British abolished slavery in the Empire. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔家族与大英帝国有着千丝万缕的联系。 他的曾曾祖父在牙买加拥有奴隶，而他的曾祖父虽然不在牙买加生活，但在那里拥有自己的种植园出租。 在大英帝国废除奴隶制时，奥威尔家获得了丰厚的补偿。

Zachary Davis: In 1833, Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act which made purchasing or owning enslaved people illegal within the British Empire. Britain’s economy relied heavily on slave labor, so when roughly 800,000 enslaved people were freed, the enslavers took a financial hit. To help ease the transition, the British government shelled out roughly 20 million pounds across the empire to previous enslavers. Orwell’s family inherited some of that wealth.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1833 年，英国通过了废奴法案，该法案认定在大英帝国内购买或拥有奴隶为非法行为。 当时英国的经济发展严重依赖奴隶劳力，当80 万奴隶被解放时，奴隶主遭受了重大的经济损失。 为了帮助奴隶主度过难关，大英帝国政府向曾经的奴隶主们支付了近两千万英镑。 奥威尔的家族也分到了一杯羹。

Priya Satia: And then, you know, Owell's own father was in the opium department of the Indian Civil Service. And his mother had also grown up in South Asia, I guess what we would call Southeast Asia. At that time Burma was part of the British Indian Empire. Her father had been a businessman speculating in teakwood in Burma. So she also had ties to that region. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔的父亲在英属印度的殖民政府工作，隶属于鸦片部门。 他的母亲在南亚长大，也就是我们今天说的东南亚。奥威尔的外祖父是一名商人，在缅甸做柚木生意， 当时缅甸是英属印度的一部分， 所以奥威尔的母亲也和英属印度有联系。

Zachary Davis: In the early 1900s, Orwell’s parents were stationed in the northeast state of British ruled India in a city called Motihari. This is where George Orwell was born. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：在20世纪初，奥威尔的父母在英属印度东北部一个名为莫蒂哈里的城市工作生活。 这就是乔治·奥威尔出生的地方。

Priya Satia: He was born in Present-day, Bihar, in India at the start of the 20th century, I think 1903. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔出生于20世纪初，我记得是1903年，出生在今天的印度比哈尔邦。

Zachary Davis: Orwell was actually his pen name. He was born Eric Arthur Blair. Although he was born in India, he didn’t spend much time there as a child. A year after he was born, his mother moved him and his sister to Oxfordshire, England. His father stayed in India. Orwell attended an all boys British boarding school called St Cyprian's School, in England. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔实际上是他的笔名。 他的原名叫埃里克·亚瑟·布莱尔。 虽然他出生在印度，但他小时候在那里呆的时间并不多。 他出生后一年，他的母亲就带着他和他的姐姐搬回了英国牛津郡。 他的父亲留在印度。 奥威尔就读于圣·塞浦路斯学校，这是一所位于英格兰的英式男子寄宿学校。

Priya Satia: He goes through his schooling and doesn't do well enough to go to university. And so he decides that he'll go back to Burma. And he has an aunt who's still there, so that's why Burma and not some other part of India. And he joins the Imperial Police there. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔完成了学业，但成绩不够好，无法上大学。 于是他决定回缅甸。 他有一个姨妈还在缅甸，这也是为什么奥威尔决定去缅甸而不是英属印度的其他地方。 他在那里加入了帝国警队。

Zachary Davis: Just like his father and his forefathers, young Orwell was working for the British Empire. His time as a police officer would become a pivotal moment in his development. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：年轻的奥威尔走上了和父辈们一样的道路，为大英帝国工作。 他的帝国警察生涯是他今后人生发展的关键点。

Zachary Davis: Through a series of wars, Britain gained full control of Burma in the early 19th century. In the northern part of the country, the British harvested teakwood. In the south, they set up rice plantations. They also mined the country for precious gems. All of this extraction caused environmental destruction and impoverished the local population. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：通过一系列战争，英国在 19 世纪初完全控制了缅甸。 在缅甸北部，英国人种植柚木。 在南部，他们建立起水稻种植园。 他们还在缅甸大肆开采珍贵宝石。 所有这些行为对环境造成了严重的破坏，也使当地居民陷入贫困。

Zachary Davis: This is the world Orwell stepped into when he joined the Imperial Police in Burma. But he wasn’t really cut out for the role. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：这是奥威尔在缅甸加入帝国警队时所面临的现实，他并不能适应帝国警察的角色。

Priya Satia: He never quite fit in with the culture of the you know, the ruling class culture in Burma. He was always a little too much interested in talking to, and getting to know the colonized subjects and their ways of life. He was kind of considered an outsider. He would read a lot. He would not socialize properly with that community of British officials. And he was impressed, you know, in all this time by the kind of everyday brutality and violence of British rule in Burma, in India generally. You know, the way he described it was that the police were the actual machinery of despotism. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：他始终都无法融入缅甸的统治阶级。 他更热衷于与平民交谈，了解他们的生活方式。他的同僚都觉得他是个异类。因为他不太跟其他英国人交流，而是自己一个人读很多书。 他不知道如何正确地与英国官员们相处。 在当时，他目睹了英国统治者在缅甸和印度的残暴行为，这令他印象深刻。用奥威尔的话来说，警察是专制制度的暴力机器。

Priya Satia: So there's this realisation that this is a despotism and that all the kind of whitewashing propaganda about British rule in India, you know, that it's a civilizing mission, that it's about upliftment, that it's benevolent, that all of that is actually whitewashing and just rhetoric. And the reality on the ground is that it's a regime that's just covering for British theft of Indian wealth, Burmese wealth. And that rhetoric just enables all of that. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔意识到这就是专制主义。英国所谓的“殖民有助于文明开化和提升生活质量”，还说什么“殖民是善意的”，这些都是用于美化专制统治的宣传修辞罢了。现实是，英国在盗窃印度和缅甸的财富，帝国政府为此提供了掩护，并用宣传修辞掩饰这一切。

Zachary Davis: Owell felt an enormous amount of shame and guilt for contributing to Britain’s rule over Burma.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔为自己参与了英国对缅甸的殖民统治，深感羞愧和内疚。

Priya Satia: He would describe these moments of rage when he would beat his servants and people like that. So he sees this as, it's his personal complicity, but it's also something systemic. It's like a brutality that's cultivated by the system in anyone who participates in it. So he gets sort of very disillusioned by that experience and wants to have no part in it. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔描绘了自己盛怒之下殴打仆人或其他下人的情形。他认为这是他个人的暴行，但也是系统性暴力的缩影，是在潜移默化中被培养出的暴力。 他在那次殴打仆人的经历后幡然醒悟，不愿继续做暴力机器的一份子。

Zachary Davis: Despite his misgivings, Orwell convinced himself to stay in the job, and he continued to work as a police officer for five years. In this time, he became increasingly distant from his British colleagues and more involved in Burmese culture. He went to local churches, became fluent in Burmese, and began to see imperialism through the eyes of the oppressed.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：尽管心存疑虑，奥威尔还是说服自己继续工作，又当了五年警察。 在这段时间里，他与英国同事渐行渐远，反而更多融入缅甸文化。 他去当地的教堂，讲一口流利的缅甸语，并开始以受迫者的视角审视帝国主义。

Zachary Davis: In September of 1927, Orwell had a turning point. While on holiday with his family in England, he reassessed his life and decided to leave the police force and become a writer. He also decided that he no longer wanted to be on the side of the oppressor. He wanted to live among the oppressed. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1927 年 9 月，奥威尔迎来了人生的转折点。 当他与家人在英格兰度假时，他重新审视了自己的人生，决心离开警队并成为一名作家。 他还决定不再与压迫者同流，并加入受迫者的阵营。

Priya Satia: And for him, it's sort of easier to go native and pass as an oppressed person in Europe than he could in Burma. And so he makes this decision to resign and then starts living undercover under a false name as a tramp in London. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：对奥威尔来说，比起在缅甸，他更容易在欧洲融入受迫者的阵营。 于是他辞掉工作，然后隐去真名，以流浪汉的身份在伦敦开始了伪装生活。

Zachary Davis: Orwell was inspired by American author Jack London, who spent time living among the poor working-class in the East End of London and wrote about his experience in his 1903 book The People of the Abyss. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔受到了美国作家杰克·伦敦的启发。杰克·伦敦曾在伦敦东区的贫困工人阶级中生活了一段时间，并将那一段经历写成 《深渊里的人民》。这本书在1903 年出版。

Zachary Davis: Like Jack London, Orwell spent a year exploring the poorer parts of London, before he moved to Paris to join the working class as a dishwasher. Around this time, he began to write. He started some early sketches of novels, and he had some initial success as a journalist, publishing in various communist and socialist journals.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：像杰克·伦敦一样，奥威尔花了一年时间探索伦敦的贫困地区，然后搬到巴黎，以洗碗工的身份加入工人群体。 大约在这个时候，他开始写作。 他起草了一些小说内容，并以记者的身份，在各种共产主义和社会主义期刊上发表文章，获得初步的成功。

Zachary Davis: This was a time when big political conversations were on everyone’s lips. In Europe and Asia, communism vs liberal capitalism was debated in parliament halls and pubs alike. But Western sympathy for communism took a serious hit once stories of Stalin’s regime began leaking out.  Prison and execution for dissidents, ethnic cleansing, famines and a vice grip on personal and civic freedoms.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：当时，每个人都在谈论重大的政治话题。 在欧洲和亚洲，共产主义与自由资本主义的大辩论，发生在议会大厅，也发生在酒吧之类的场所。 但当西方民众开始了解斯大林政权的所作所为，包括监禁处决异议人士、种族清洗、粮食危机以及限制个人和公民自由，他们对共产主义的认同遭受了严重打击。 

Zachary Davis: Meanwhile, Orwell was finishing up his time in Paris. After about two years, he returned home to his parents’ house in Suffolk, England. He became a high school teacher in London and continued writing. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：与此同时，奥威尔即将结束他在巴黎的时光。 大约两年后，他回到了位于英格兰萨福克的父母家。 他成为伦敦的一名高中教师并继续写作。

Priya Satia: This starts, you know, the beginning of his life as a writer. He's going to write his first book called Down and Out in Paris and London, which comes out in 1933. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：这是奥威尔作家生活的起点，他在 1933 年出版了他的第一本书，《巴黎伦敦落魄记》。

Zachary Davis: Down and Out in Paris and London is a memoir of his time living as a tramp. Orwell wrote this book for middle and upper class audiences—basically, people like him. He wanted to expose them to the reality of poverty in these cities.

扎卡里·戴维斯：《巴黎伦敦落魄记》是奥威尔对自己流浪汉生活的回忆录，是为了像他一样的中上层阶级读者而写的。 他想让他们看到这些城市里真实的贫困生活。

Priya Satia: And he has a new pen name with that book, George Orwell. Until that point, he had been Eric Blair.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：也就是从这本书开始，他用上了“乔治·奥威尔”这个新笔名。 在此之前，他一直以真名埃里克·布莱尔写作。

Zachary Davis: Orwell used a pen name to protect his family. He wanted to avoid any embarrassment they might feel about his choice to live in poverty. After Down and Out, he started writing fiction. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔使用笔名是为了保护自己的家人，免得家人因他选择生活在贫困人群中而感到尴尬。 在《巴黎伦敦落魄记》出版之后，奥威尔开始小说创作。

Zachary Davis: His next work was Burmese Days, set in Burma during the end of the British Empire and intended to expose the dark side of the British Raj. He then wrote A Clergyman's Daughter, a novel about a young woman whose life takes a turn when she develops amnesia. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：他的下一部作品是《缅甸岁月》，故事设定在大英帝国末期的缅甸，旨在揭露英属印度政府统治的阴暗面。 而后，他又出版了《牧师的女儿》，这部小说讲述了一位年轻女子在患上健忘症后，生活发生了彻底的转变。

Zachary Davis: Meanwhile, over in Spain, political tensions were escalating. Those on the left sought trade unions, secularization, and women’s liberation. The right, rather comfortable with the status quo, worried about a communist revolution. Radical groups from both sides began to form and by 1936 The Spanish Civil War broke out.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：与此同时，在西班牙，政治紧张局势逐渐升级。 左翼呼吁人民组织工会、号召社会从宗教价值转向世俗化，以及提倡妇女解放。 右翼则对现状相当满意，担心共产主义革命爆发。两方的激进团体开始萌芽，1936 年西班牙内战爆发。

Priya Satia: The Spanish Civil War for a lot of European intellectuals and for British intellectuals, too, it really made it clear that what had been a sort of theoretical or political argument about this contest between fascism and communism that's emerging in that period, and it's so polarizing among intellectuals, that this is not just a political argument that this is something that one needs to, practically speaking, take sides on. And it's becoming an actual war in Spain. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：在当时法西斯主义与共产主义大辩论的背景下，西班牙内战更多是将英国和欧洲知识分子间，关于理论和政治的争辩，以战争的形态表现出来。当时的知识分子们持有不同观点，愈发极端分化，他们不单单对政治问题展开讨论，还亲身投入，最终逐渐演变为一场全面的战争。

Priya Satia: Many intellectuals join to fight in Spain on the Republican side against the fascists and Orwell goes too. He has a somewhat unique experience in that he fights with the POUM, the P-O-U-M, he doesn't join the International Brigades and the communist units. He's with this smaller kind of anarchist/Trotskyist outfit. And it’s physically extremely trying for him. I mean, he suffers a lot in this war. He’s shot in the throat, and that's why he has to finally leave the war. But it's also disillusioning in the way he sees that the communist side, the Soviet supported side of the war, basically betrays the nonconforming other socialist groups, like the one that he was in the POUM. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：许多知识分子投身西班牙战争，加入共和党阵营，反对法西斯分子，奥威尔也在其中。 他的经历有一些独特，奥威尔加入的是马克思主义工人党，而非国际纵队或西班牙共产党。他加入的是较小规模的无政府主义、托洛茨基主义阵营。 奥威尔在战争中身受重伤，他喉部中枪，不得不因此离开战场。 他也目睹了苏联在战争中支持的共产主义阵营，背叛了不服从自己阵营的其他社会主义团体，例如他所在的马克思主义工人党，这也令他大感失望。

Zachary Davis: The theme from the Spanish Civil War that struck me is that Orwell was a Democratic Socialist or a Social Democrat opposed to oppressive empire and capitalism, but also suspicious of communism. So, I mean, even that early encounter with trying to strike a middle ground of humane, you know, care for liberal political principles maybe, but also socialist, you know, care for the poor, that starts in Spain. Or, I mean it seems like an important moment happens in Spain.

扎卡里·戴维斯：西班牙内战中令我震惊的是，奥威尔作为一个民主社会主义者，或者说社会主义民主党人，他反对专制帝国和资本主义，但也怀疑共产主义。 虽然他早期采取中立的态度，他似乎很关注自由政治的原则，当然他也认同社会主义立场，关心贫苦的人群，不过他的思想似乎在西班牙有过很大的转变。西班牙战争似乎是奥威尔思想发展的重要节点。

Priya Satia: I mean, like his early work, the Down and Out books are more, that book is more documenting poverty and sort of trying to help dispel prejudice amongst the readers who he is assuming are men of a certain class like him. Right. But the politics of it are not clear. Right. But it's in the middle of the 30s in that decade of commitment where all writers are sort of having to be much more explicit about their political commitments as they write and make a clear choice between either socialism or fascism. Like where do you stand in that argument?

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔早期的作品《巴黎伦敦落魄记》，更多是对贫穷的真实记录，是为了帮助像他一样的上层社会的读者消除偏见，但其中的政治主张并不明确。不过在20世纪30年代中期，作家们都不得不在作品中更明确地表达自己的政治立场，比如自己对社会主义或法西斯主义的选择，以及在政治争论中的站队。

Zachary Davis: And how is his writing developing? What are the themes that he keeps returning to?

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔的作品是如何发展的？ 他不断突出的主题是什么？

Priya Satia: Yeah, so in the 1930s, you know, in that polarized atmosphere, it's all either writing about, you know, his firsthand experiences in Spain, arguments in favor of socialism, a lot of book reviews. You know, in one year, he might write 80 book reviews. And as the war starts, the Second World War, there is this kind of moment of despair that comes across in this very famous essay Inside the Whale. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：在20世纪30年代，在那种两极分化的氛围中，奥威尔的作品要么是关于他在西班牙的亲身经历，要么是关于自己支持社会主义的论点，以及很多书评。奥威尔可能在一年里写 80 篇书评。 随着第二次世界大战的开始，奥威尔在他著名的文章《在鲸腹中》中开始流露出绝望情绪。 

Priya Satia: It's almost like he's been so exhausted by arguing in favor of socialism and trying to persuade people to join that cause before it's too late, and then war breaks out. And he's just so devastated and spiritually almost broken that he writes this essay that's ostensibly a review of Henry Miller's book, Tropic of Cancer, but it reads as sort of this call for quietism, like when everything else has failed, all you can do is stay sane and human. And it sticks out against the backdrop of everything else he writes. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔耗尽精力，为社会主义发声，并试图说服人们在为时未晚时加入社会主义事业。第二次世界大战却在此时爆发了，这对奥威尔是毁灭性的打击，他的精神几乎崩溃。他写下了《在鲸腹中》，这篇文章表面上是对亨利·米勒的书《北回归线》的评论，但它其实是对平静的呼唤。当外部环境失灵时，你能做的一切就是保持理智和人性。对比奥威尔其他作品，《在鲸腹中》显得格外突出。

Priya Satia: And during the war, you know, he's continuing with lots and lots of prolific output in terms of columns, in newspapers and magazines and book reviews. But he's also working for the BBC and doing literary programs that are for the BBC Eastern Service that are aimed at an Indian audience. So this is, again, where, you know, his imperial politics are a little complicated, where he's justifying continuing to support British rule in India because he thinks the alternative is that the Nazis are, basically the axis powers will take over India.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：在第二次世界大战期间，奥威尔依旧坚持写报刊专栏和书评。他也为英国广播公司工作，为面向印度观众的英国广播公司东方频道录制文学节目。可以看到，奥威尔对帝国统治的态度有一点复杂，他继续支持英国对印度的殖民统治，原因是他认为如果不是大英帝国，那纳粹轴心国就会接手统治印度。

Zachary Davis: During the second world war, Orwell began working on what would become the first of his two most well known books, Animal Farm. The story is a satirical novella in which he explores revolution and political systems through a decidedly approachable medium—talking animals. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：在第二次世界大战期间，奥威尔开始创作《动物庄园》，这是他日后最为人所知的两部作品之一。《动物庄园》是一部讽刺小说，他以说话的动物为中介，深入浅出，探讨了革命和政治体系的话题。

Zachary Davis:Animal Farm is a very thinly veiled critique of Stalin’s Soviet Union, and how a socialist or communist government can turn into a fascist dictatorship. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：《动物庄园》赤裸裸地批判了斯大林领导的苏联，一个自诩社会主义，或者说共产主义的政府，如何一步步转变为法西斯独裁主义。

Zachary Davis:Orwell published Animal Farm in 1945 and it was an immediate success. Orwell was now internationally famous and financially secure. He spent the next four years writing for various newspapers and literary magazines and writing his next masterpiece, 1984.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔的《动物庄园》在1945年一经出版便大获成功。奥威尔借这部作品闻名全球，也获得了可观的经济回报。接下来的几年时间里，奥威尔一直在为不同报纸和文学杂志写作，也着手创作下一部作品《1984》。

Zachary Davis:The same month Orwell published Animal Farm, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and ended WWII. Almost immediately, a new conflict arose, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the British Empire began to decolonize with the crown jewel of India gaining independence in 1947. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔发表《动物庄园》的同一个月里，美国向日本投掷了两颗原子弹，促成了第二次世界大战的结束。但新的国际冲突随即出现，美国与苏联陷入了冷战。与此同时，大英帝国也开始结束自己的殖民统治，印度在1947年宣告独立。

Zachary Davis: Where did the idea for 1984 come from? When did he write it? 

扎卡里·戴维斯：《1984》的灵感来源于哪里？奥威尔是什么时候开始写这部作品的？

Priya Satia: The idea comes to him a little bit earlier, but the actual writing happens in 1947 to 1949. So, decolonization has started to happen, the reality of the atomic bomb has been made clear, the Cold War has started. So I think that context is really important to understanding what he was trying to warn readers about with this novel. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：这个故事的灵感很早就有了，但奥威尔动笔创作是在1947至1949年间。当时，英国已经结束殖民，原子弹爆炸的真相也已清晰，冷战开始。这些时代背景对于读者理解奥威尔在这部小说中真正想表达的警示，至关重要。

Priya Satia: So, it's a world of oppressive policing. It's a world in which war is endemic and meaningless. War making is an ongoing backdrop that licenses all that internal oppression and policing. It's a world in which language is completely degraded and in which writing can have a revolutionary power. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：那是一个集权的世界。战争不断但毫无用处，无非是政府用来合理化对内压迫统治的幌子。在当时的环境下，交流几乎停止，只有文字还拥有革命性的力量。

Zachary Davis: Could you give listeners a general plot summary?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您能向听众介绍一下故事概要吗？

Priya Satia: It's set in Britain, but Britain is no longer called Britain. It's called Airstrip One, and it's a province of this superstate called Oceana. And there's three superstates that are basically constantly at war, Oceana, East Asia, and Eurasia. And the party controls everything. And there's a possibility, we never know for sure whether Big Brother, who's in charge of the whole thing is a real character or not. We never know. So there's an inner party that really controls everything. And then there's these outer party members. And then beyond them is the bulk of the population where the proles, the proletarians. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：故事背景设置在英国，当然书里不是叫英国，而是被称为第一空降场，是大洋国的一个省份。在小说里，大洋国，东亚国和欧亚国是三个一直在打仗的超级大国。老大哥控制着大洋国大小一切事物，我们无从得知老大哥是否特指一个人物。组织内的核心层掌控所有事物，此外还有像温斯顿一样的外围党员和大量无产群众。

Zachary Davis: The main character is a man named Winston Smith. He’s a member of the outer party. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：小说的主角是一位名为温斯顿·史密斯的男人，他是一名外围党员。

Priya Satia: And these party members are subjected to intense, constant surveillance, these telescreens that watch them all the time. And his job is to kind of rewrite history all the time. So he works in an office where any time the party declares, you know, “Okay, we've been at war against Eurasia, and East Asia was our ally, but now we're at war against East Asia and Eurasia is our ally.” And then he has to go back and find all the old issues of the newspaper, The Times, and change them so that it looks like there has been no change in party policy and that they've always been at war with whoever I just said was, I can't remember, East Asia.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：所有的外围党员受到组织严密、持续的监察，电幕无时无刻不监视着他们的生活。温斯顿的主要工作是重写历史。比如当上级下令“我们曾经与欧亚国交战，东亚国是我们的同盟；但现在我们在与东亚国打仗，欧亚国成为了我们的同盟。”温斯顿需要翻出以前的《泰晤士报》，修改旧文，让人以觉得政策从来没有变化，大洋国一直是在与东亚国交战。

Priya Satia: So that's his job. And, you know, they're always watched and they always have to participate in these rituals of hate against, I guess what's the equivalent of the Trotskyist dissident, you know, rebels against this party order. And he resolves in his mind to rebel in some way. And the first step of that rebellion is that he buys this diary in an old junk shop in the kind of proletarian neighborhood of this place. And he starts writing in it. And it's very difficult to do that because the telescreens are always on and they're being watched. And eventually he starts this kind of torrid love affair with this young girl who is also a party member. She works in the fiction department where these machines basically produce fiction, and they feel their affair in itself is a kind of political act and a form of rebellion against the party. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：这就是他的工作。他一直被监视着，就像反托洛茨基者一样，萌生了对组织指令的憎恨。他下定决心以某种方式反抗，第一步是在无产群众社区的一家旧货铺里，买了一本日记本。他开始写日记。因为电幕的监视，写日记其实是很难的。他与一个年轻女孩产生了热烈的情愫，那个女孩也是组织人员，在专门负责生产小说的小说司工作。温斯顿和女孩都觉得两人间的私情其实是一种政治行动，是一种对组织的背叛。

Zachary Davis: Both Winston and his paramour, Julia, know what they’re doing is against the rules, but they continue on anyway. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：温斯顿和他的情妇茱莉亚都知道他们是在违抗组织的规则，但他们继续这么做了。

Priya Satia: And all this time, he suspects that there is this brotherhood of people who are plotting to, over time, break the power of the party. And he suspects that this one man who he sees occasionally in the party offices named O'Brien, is part of this brotherhood. And in the meantime, he and Julia, they rent a room in that same junk shop upstairs where they can have their assignations. And this carries on for some time. And then sure enough, one day O'Brien connects with him and invites him to his flat, and he and Julia are inducted into this secret brotherhood and they're given a book. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：温斯顿一直觉得有兄弟会在密谋颠覆组织的权力。他也怀疑他偶尔在组织办公室见到的奥勃良是兄弟会的成员。温斯顿和茱莉亚在杂货铺楼上租了一间房间，用来约会。他们的约会持续了一段时间，直到有一天奥勃良找到温斯顿，邀请他来到自己的公寓。奥勃良将温斯顿和茱莉亚招来加入兄弟会，并赠与了他们一本书。

Priya Satia: And this is, again, that familiar kind of disruption you find in a lot of Orwell's books, where there's a book inside the book. So you get the actual text of this manual that is a text for the brotherhood. And so, you know, Julia and Winston read this and they think they're part of this brotherhood. They've pledged to it. And then one day when they're in that rented room, they discover they're being watched. And all along, there was a telescreen hidden behind this picture on the wall and they're completely naked and they’re, you know, arrested.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：在小说中设置一本书的存在是奥威尔常用的写作技法。《1984》中提到的这本书是兄弟会的章程。温斯顿和茱莉亚读完这本手册后，认为自己加入了兄弟会，全身心投入这项事业。直到有一天他们发现，他们一直被监视着，他们租的这间房间，在壁画后隐藏了一幅电幕。他们两人在幽会时被逮捕了。

Priya Satia: And then they're submitted to this long regime of torture in which, you know, the ultimate test is, Winston going to betray Julia? Because as long as he doesn't betray her, he's still human, he thinks. Right. They haven’t utterly destroyed him. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：两人被送交组织，接受拷问。其实最核心的考验是，温斯顿是否会背叛茱莉亚。只要温斯顿不背叛茱莉亚，他还是有人性的，没有被组织彻底腐化。

Zachary Davis: The system wants to mold Winston into the perfect party member—a reliable, pliable pawn. But as long as Winston holds on to his feelings for Julia, he remains free. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：组织试图将温斯顿塑造为一名完美的组织人员，一个可靠的、听话的傀儡。但温斯顿坚持自己对茱莉亚的感情，他在精神上还是自由的。

Priya Satia: And even if he betrays everything about her, you know, what her crimes have been, as long as he doesn't betray his feelings for her, he's still won, he believes. And so he goes through this long, really terrifying process of torture. It's very difficult to read, actually. But it's also like, you have to read it, but you're hating reading it. And then in the end, it turns out that O'Brien reveals himself and says and he finds out that all along there was no brotherhood and that O'Brien is actually a member of the thought police and that he's been sort of framed into all of this thoughtcrime that he's being punished for. And O'Brien is determined to reconstruct him as someone who truly believes in Big Brother, that loves Big Brother and Winston thinks as long as he has these feelings for Julia, you know, he's still winning. And what happens is, in the end, he goes to room 101, which has always been this forbidding, looming room in the Ministry of Love, which is where all this torture takes place.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：温斯顿相信，即使他招供了关于他和茱莉亚的一切，但只要没有背叛自己对茱莉亚的感情，他还是赢了。温斯顿接受了长时间的严刑拷问。这一部分读起来会有强烈的不适感。不过，即使你讨厌阅读这个片段，你还是不得不读下去。最终，奥勃良袒露了自己的身份，温斯顿也终于明白兄弟会并不存在，奥勃良其实是一名思想警察。温斯顿已被认定为思想犯罪，接受惩罚。奥勃良试图将温斯顿再教育成一位完全信仰老大哥的组织人员。温斯顿坚信只要自己坚持对茱莉亚的感情，他还是可以胜利的。直到最终他被带去101号房间，这是大洋国四大部门中最可怕的友爱部里一间神秘的、令人毛骨悚然的房间，是接受严刑拷问的地方。

Priya Satia: And he is forced to confront his worst fear, which is this cage of rats. And this has been built up throughout, that we know that he hates rats. And when the rats surround his face, he finds himself figuring out that if he can just wish that the rats instead attack Julia, that he will be saved. And so he thinks this and he says it out loud, “Put the rats on Julia, not on me.” And then he knows he's betrayed Julia completely. And so the party has won. Big Brother has won. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：温斯顿不得不直面自己最害怕的东西，那就是老鼠。小说之前已经多次铺垫温斯顿最害怕老鼠。当老鼠爬上他的脸颊，温斯顿意识到自己情愿老鼠去攻击茱莉亚，让自己获救。温斯顿大喊道“去咬茱莉亚！不要咬我！”温斯顿知道自己已经完全背叛了茱莉亚，组织赢了，老大哥赢了。

Priya Satia: And then, you know, Julia, we don't see this in the book, but she's been subjected to similar routines. And then eventually they both come out of the Ministry of Love. They do meet by chance. All their feelings are gone. They're broken and defeated. And then the book closes with Winston realizing that he now loves Big Brother and he will accept whatever reality the party says, that two plus two is five, that black is white. You know, he's completely broken and remade as a proper party person. It’s a very, very bleak ending.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：虽然书中没有具体描写，但我们可以想象茱莉亚也经历了类似的一切。两人最终都离开了友爱部，在街头重遇。两人之间的感情已经烟消云散。小说的最后，温斯顿意识到自己迷恋上了老大哥，会认同组织说的一切话，即使组织说二加二等于五，黑色就是白色。温斯顿被彻底打败，被重塑成了彻头彻尾听组织的话的傀儡。这真是一个可悲的结局。

Zachary Davis: It seems like one way of reading Animal Farm and 1984 is that it is an attack and critique on Stalin's Soviet Union specifically. So a question I have for you is, what was at stake in the European or American perception of Stalin, and the challenge that those who wanted socialism, but not Stalinism were facing and kind of how they tried to navigate that.

扎卡里·戴维斯：有人将《动物庄园》和《1984》解读为对斯大林领导的苏联政府的批判。我想问的是，当时的欧洲和美国是如何看待斯大林的？非斯大林主义者的社会主义阵营面临着怎样的挑战？他们又是如何化解的？

Priya Satia: It was for sure, a critique of Stalinism and the way Stalinism, or Soviet communism violates every tenet of communism in the name of communism. And that's exactly what the party's ideology of Ingsoc, as it is called in 1984, they violate every principle of socialism in the name of socialism, that kind of warped logic. So he definitely is attacking that. But he's doing it very much as a member of the left, as someone who's worried about the way Soviet communism has betrayed the actual, totally legitimate, still necessary socialist goals and commitments of the left.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：这两本书无疑是对斯大林主义的批判，小说里面抨击斯大林主义，认为斯大林打着共产主义的幌子，却违背了共产主义的原则。这正是《1984》里呈现的英国社会主义的意识形态，他们用着社会主义的名义，却做着打破社会主义原则的事，多么扭曲的逻辑啊。奥威尔无疑是要反驳这种逻辑。他代表左派思想在攻击这种逻辑，因为左派担心苏联共产主义会背叛左派追求的可行、合法、必要的社会主义目标和承诺。

Zachary Davis: Orwell set the novel in Britain, and not some fictional place, because he saw what was happening with the Soviet Union as a possible reality for Britain.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥威尔将小说背景设置在英国而非一个虚构的地方，是因为他认为在苏联发生的事情也可能在英国发生。

Priya Satia: I mean, he saw the potential for that, where he was, again, building on what he had seen in the British Empire, but also the way Britain had changed during World War Two and the alliance that the British made with the Soviet Union, that also he felt was very dangerous. And the way policing techniques that had always been used in the Empire were being increasingly used in Britain itself as the empire was unravelling, and as you get more non-white immigrants into Britain right then. So the same kinds of surveillance techniques being used at home in a very worrying way to him. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔是认同这样的可能性的，这源于他在大英帝国时期目睹的一切，在二战时期见证的英国的变化，以及战时英国与苏联的联盟。当英国逐渐解放，越来越多有色人种移民涌入时，奥威尔观察到那些一直在大英帝国使用的监察手段变得越来越盛行。他非常担忧英国也会引入监视技术。

Zachary Davis: I think it's easy to look at Stalin and Hitler and be like they were bad because they killed a lot of people. But the critique is deeper than just bodily harm. It's the way it takes over the cultural life of a society and the ability to live as a free and dignified person. The needle that Orwell seems to try to thread in his work is: how do you work collectively towards a common good and yet preserve the dignity of an individual to express truth as they see it?

扎卡里·戴维斯：大家很容易认识到斯大林和希特勒的恶，因为他们杀害了很多人。奥威尔对专制独裁的批判不仅仅是他们带给民众身体上的伤害，而是剥夺了社会的文化生活，剥夺了人民自由、有尊严地生活的权利。贯穿奥威尔作品始终的核心命题是：我们在追求集体利益的同时，如何依旧保持个人的尊严，畅所欲言？

Priya Satia: Yes, absolutely. I think privacy is a concept that's so deeply important to his thought in his work, right. That is the way to secure both those objectives, where you have socialism, a collective existence, you're collectively pushing back against oppression, but there's still a space preserved for private thoughts, expression of individual ideas and opinions. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：我非常同意。隐私是奥威尔作品思想非常重要的一部分。一方面，隐私性有助于社会主义的集体远离集权压迫，另一方面也确保了个体思维、想法和意见的表达。

Priya Satia: I mean, I think reconciling those things, and how to reconcile them, was so central to his work. And he just had a profound faith that it was doable. But then this endless frustration that it was not happening. And I think that's why you see again and again that pessimism, kind of despite himself. And, you know, it's something that obviously people on the left continue to strive for. That's the utopian goal. Right. That's kind of the utopian goal. And you've got to have one. Otherwise, how do you feel motivated to work towards anything?

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：如何调和集体与个人一直是奥威尔作品的中心思想。奥威尔也坚定地相信这是可以实现的。然而现实中，个人和集体的和谐共存并没有发生，令人沮丧，这也就是为什么他不由自主地流露出悲观情绪。这是左派持续追求的乌托邦式的目标，而且你必须要设定这样一个目标，否则怎么激励人们行动起来呢？

Zachary Davis: So what was the reception of the book when it came out? How was it received by East and West?

扎卡里·戴维斯：《1984》出版时的反响如何？东方和西方世界分别是如何看待这部作品的？

Priya Satia: You know, it comes out in June 1949 and Orwell dies six months later. And I don't know if he realized what a tremendous success this book was going to be commercially. I don't actually know about the reception in the Soviet Union or whether it was allowed there or not. I know that at different times the book was banned in different places. But, you know, it's available in China today. It has been for a few decades, easily available. And there are moments in which it will rush to the top, as a best seller again and again when, you know, when in our public conversations Orwell is invoked. And you see him invoked right now while we're having this conversation. He has been invoked a lot, you know, after Black Lives Matter, that protest movement started, and the conversations about statues. And that has prompted a lot of people on different sides of the political spectrum trying to claim Orwell once again for right and left. And that's mostly based on 1984. I think, again, in the U.S. especially, there's sort of “Orwell is 1984”, and maybe Animal Farm, but not a lot of awareness of the trajectory that took him to those two books. So when they mean Orwellian, they mean 1984, they don't mean socialist. They don't mean Burma. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：《1984》在1949年6月出版，仅仅6个月后，奥威尔过世。奥威尔可能不知道，他的这部作品在商业上是多么的成功。我不知道苏联社会怎么看待这本书，甚至这本书有可能没有在苏联发行。这部小说在不同的时间，在不同的地区都被禁过，但在中国，这本书已经出版发行了几十年。这部小说依旧时不时地登上畅销榜首，奥威尔也时常被人提起，比如现在我们的对话就又提到了奥威尔。在最近的“黑人的命也是命”抗议运动开始后，人们讨论被推倒的雕像时，也会时常提起奥威尔。不同政治立场的人试图将奥威尔归入左派或右派，他们的主要判断依据就是《1984》这部小说，这种现象在美国尤其明显。他们狭隘地认为奥威尔只写了《1984》，也许还有《动物农场》，但没有人关注他之前的生平经历。所以他们口中的“奥威尔式”，指的是《1984》，不是指社会主义，也不是指缅甸。

Priya Satia: But yeah, extremely relevant. He's one of the few authors like Kafka who, you know, his name has become an adjective. There's Kafkaesque, there's Orwellian, there are very few, Tolstoyan, Shakespearean. There are not that many. But his name is one of those. But Orwellian can mean a few different things. It can mean dystopian in the sense of 1984, or it can mean a certain kind of writing that's Orwellian, in a much more positive sense. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：但了解他之前的经历对理解他的思想至关重要。奥威尔和卡夫卡一样，他们的名字变成了一种形容词，有卡夫卡式，也有奥威尔式， 但很少有人说托尔斯泰式或莎士比亚式。这种情况并不常见，奥威尔是其中之一。但是奥威尔式有多重含义，它可以指《1984》中呈现的反乌托邦，也可以指奥威尔式的写作技法。

Zachary Davis: Do you think he's a good guide? Do you think that 1984 helps us understand our moment? Or do you think that it's misused in some degree?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您觉得奥威尔是一个好的精神导师吗？您认为《1984》能帮助我们理解当下的社会吗？又或者这本书是不是在某些场合被误读了？

Priya Satia: I think any time there's a questioning of received narratives that were written in the era of imperialism, or the Cold War, and so we know that they're warped and need revision. Any time there's a question about that and anyone wants to change it or challenge it, they start crying Orwell, you know, this is an Orwellian erasure of history, without realizing that those narratives already erased a lot of history and reality and truth. And Orwell himself would have been the first to say that, right? I mean, that was what he always said, that the pukka sahib code of the British ruling class did not allow truth to come out. And I mean, I feel he would have been on the side of those who would revise those narratives. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：任何时候，都会有人质疑在帝国主义时期或冷战时代留下的叙述，我们知道那些叙述是扭曲的，需要修改。每当有人对那些历史提出疑问，或者有人想改变它或挑战它时，他们就会提到奥威尔，说那是奥威尔式的历史删改，但他们没有意识到自己的这些叙述本身也已经抹去了很多历史、现实和真相。 奥威尔本人一定也会第一个站出来这么说的。这就是他一直提到的，英国统治阶级所谓的“精英们”不允许真相示众。我认为他在当时，是站在修改叙述的人这边的。

Priya Satia: So I feel the right is too eager to cry, Orwellian and make claims about history being rewritten and it's too easy, and they use his name, invoke his name in ways that I think, you know, would make him turn over in his grave because he was not on the side of those who celebrated empire in any form.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：我认为右派滥用了“奥威尔式“，他们举起奥威尔的大旗，随意地断定历史被改写了。他们打着奥威尔的名义，这简直能让奥威尔的棺材板都压不住了，因为他从不与帝国主义追随者同流。

Zachary Davis: What influence do you track this book is having besides sort of this the way in which these words have seeped into national consciousness? 

扎卡里·戴维斯：除了书中创造的一些词语，被大众广泛熟知之外，您认为这部作品还有什么影响？

Priya Satia: I mean, I think the book was kind of misused during the Cold War. I think people read it so out of context, and it was co-opted into the Cold War that way. So I think it served, you know, the Western side of that conflict in unfortunate ways. More positively, I do think at the same time, especially in Britain, people who were more maybe aware of the context, wielded it more effectively to criticize forms of encroaching government oppression, you think of rock singers and all who would write songs based on this. But then there's been this kind of almost weird caricaturing of it, like with the reality shows like Big Brother and stuff that I think sort of borrow from this text without being aware of what it was critiquing. And that's very disturbing, actually. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：我认为这本书在冷战期间被误读了，人们断章取义，片面地解读这部作品。 这部作品以不恰当的方式，被冷战中的西方社会引用。 但是在英国，那些对小说背景更了解的人，还是理解了小说对政府压迫侵犯的批判。当时还有摇滚乐手以此为背景创作歌曲。但是后来出现了很多怪异的讽刺漫画，使用了《1984》中的老大哥之类的文字，但那些漫画家根本不了解奥威尔真正想批判的东西。这着实令人烦恼。

Priya Satia: But, you know, in the scandals that have come out in the last couple of decades about government surveillance in the United States, I think people have very rightly drawn on this text, quoted from it, pointed out the similarities, you know, the dangerous direction in which that surveillance is going. And I think this text can be very, very useful in pushing back against that kind of government policing. And that was entirely his intention, I think. That is the purpose of the book. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：但是在过去几十年爆出的美国政府监视丑闻中，人们准确地引用了《1984》中的文字，指出了现实和作品的相似之处，以及监视可能带来的危险后果。我相信这部作品对反抗政府监察很有启发意义，我认为这也是奥威尔写下这本书的目的。

Zachary Davis: 1984 was the last book Orwell wrote. He was near the end of his life, and he was very sick.

扎卡里·戴维斯：《1984》是奥威尔留下的最后一部作品。他创作时已经病得非常严重，生命接近尾声。

Priya Satia: He was suffering physically. And I think that's a really important context, too. And why a darker dystopian novel would be the choice more than something brighter and sunnier, given where he was in his life? And everyone he loved had died, right, his first wife, his parents, his sister. So at that point he had, right before he died, he married again, just literally two months before he died, you know, as a patient. And so this was a dark, dark phase of life. And I think if you're going to write something inspiring, you would then tend towards dystopia more than utopia. That's my guess.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：当时他深受病痛折磨，当然这也是作品的创作背景之一。可能也是因为他的生命接近尾声，他选择创作一部深刻的反乌托邦式小说，而不是轻快的作品。他深爱的家人们，他的发妻、父母和姐姐都已经过世。而在他逝世前两个月，他刚刚在病榻上迎娶了第二任妻子。那段时间是奥威尔人生中的至暗时刻，当他想写一部发人深省的作品，他倾向于反乌托邦式而非乌托邦式的笔法。这是我的猜测。

Zachary Davis: Could you say a word about just his influence on writers?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您会如何评价他对后世作家的影响？

Priya Satia: Yeah, he's an idol for writers. Certain famous phrases like, “Your writing should be clear as a window pane.” He hated theory for that reason. So very empirical writing, also spare. He hated semicolons. He gave, even, a set of rules in his essay Politics and the English Language of sort of good guidance, advice even, for how to be a good writer. But just the attention to ways in which you can often use ready-made phrases and the danger of that. And I know some of the Google technologies do that automatically when you write emails on Google platforms or Google documents. I have my kids disable that. I think everyone should do that and beware of that. I mean, when you allow others to provide you with phrases, you are losing your independence of thought. And I think he was absolutely correct about that. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔是很多作家的偶像。他的名言“你的文字应该像窗户玻璃一样清晰”，这也是他痛恨讲理论的原因。他推崇叙事的、平实的文字，讨厌分号。他甚至在论文《政治和英语语言》中，提出了一套优秀作家的标准和准则，这篇论文主要讨论了使用现成语句的方法及其危险。谷歌就有类似的功能，当你使用谷歌平台写邮件或者用谷歌文档写东西时，谷歌会提供可以自动补全语句的功能。我让我的孩子关闭了这个功能，我也会建议大家关闭。因为当你使用机器向你提供的现成语句，你就失去了独立思考的能力。

Priya Satia: So I think writing what you know, that's again, another way of being highly empirical, spare language, direct language, not a lot of theory, clean prose without too many semicolons. I think that is probably generally good advice, but, you know, doesn't fit everyone. But there are parts of that everyone should borrow. And just the idea of reflecting on your habits as a writer is, I think, extremely helpful and something that every writer ought to do at some point. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：写你所知，使用叙事的、简单的、直接的语言而不是堆砌理论，使用简单的散文结构，不要用太多的分号。我想这些都是奥威尔留给后世作家的好建议。虽然可能不适用于每个人，但值得每个人借鉴。像作家一样反思自己的写作习惯对我们也是极其有帮助的，这也是每一个作家早晚都应该做到的。

Priya Satia: I mean, the reason he favors spare language is it's aesthetically preferable to him, but it's also because of the connection he perceives between truth and language. So when you don't write in a direct way, you will inevitably lose some element, some quotient of truth. It's about truth, it's about public knowledge, and preventing the masses from being duped by the press and by their government. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔推崇平实的文风，不仅仅出于个人审美，也因为文字和事实会有联系。如果你不用平直的文字写作，你就不可避免地会丢失一些事实的细节。奥威尔追求的是事实，是公共知识，是防止民众被媒体和政府所愚弄。

Zachary Davis: Art gives us the power to encounter other minds and other worlds. Orwell hoped his writing would help lead to social liberation. But he ended his life disappointed because the utopia of his dreams seemed to stay lingering at the horizons of his sight, ever out of reach. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：艺术赋予我们与其他思想和文化碰撞的力量。 奥威尔希望他的作品能够助力社会解放。 他在失望中离世，因为他梦想中的乌托邦社会在他脑海中挥之不去，但又遥不可及。

Priya Satia: I think the danger Owell fell into, the problem he fell into, the reason why he would get so defeatist and frustrated is he actually expected liberation to be something that's going to come at the end of struggling and struggling and struggling. And then he was always disappointed. Whereas, you know, someone like Gandhi would say, “It's in this struggle that you're experiencing that liberation. There's never going to be an end to that struggle.” So you have to assume it's always going to be only partially successful or successful in a limited sense and that there's always going to be yet more work to do. And if you start out with that expectation, you're less likely to be disappointed and you're more likely to engage in the struggle for the sake of the struggle, knowing that it's in engaging in that, and in engaging it together with others, that you're together, collectively, experiencing something that's going to be the closest experience of liberation that you can actually find. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：我想奥威尔面临的困境，以及他感到挫败和沮丧的原因，是他始终相信人们会在一轮又一轮的斗争后获得解放。所以他总是很失望。就像甘地说的“人是在斗争中体验解放，但斗争永远不会结束。”所以你必须认识到，斗争只会部分成功，或者说在有限的范围内成功，总会有更多的阻碍要去克服。 如果你抱着这样的想法，你就不太可能会失望，你会更投入，为了斗争而斗争。你知道只有投身其中，与同伴并肩作战，才能最接近你一直追寻的自由。

Priya Satia: He was always waiting for the revolution to happen that would change everything. And he didn't understand that in his own process of urging revolution and in the incompleteness of revolution, there's still a revolution that's happening.

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：奥威尔一直在期待革命发生，颠覆一切。 但他没有注意到，在他敦促革命发生的过程中，在革命尚未完成时，还有一场革命正在发生。

Priya Satia: These were anxieties he felt in 1947, ‘48, ‘49, and we've gone through the Cold War, we've gone through the War on Terror. And I think we're still in that moment in a sense. I mean, none of those issues have been resolved about policing, about war making, you know, forever wars and the degradation of language is, if anything, much, much, much worse now than then. So I guess just to note the contemporary relevance of the book that way, and it's sadly still depicting a dystopia that urgently needs to be warded off. 

普莉亚·沙蒂娅：那些令奥威尔在 1947到1949 年间一直倍感焦虑的问题依旧存在。我们经历了冷战，经历了反恐战争，但在某种程度上我们和奥威尔处在同一个年代。政府监察、战争冲突的问题始终没有得到解决，交流也愈发受阻。 当我们把这本书和当代社会联系起来，会可悲地发现，书中描绘的反乌托邦社会依旧是亟待解决的问题。

Zachary Davis:Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！