The Orwell Diaries - Day 13
Note: Each day that one was written, The Orwell Prize will be posting an entry from Orwell’s Diaries on the 70th anniversary of its composition. You can read the AuthorScoop preview here.
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Today’s entry:
Overcast & chilly. Heavy rain last night. Dahlias now in full bloom.
AuthorScoop
August 29th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I find these so interesting, and yet, several of the comments in the Orwell Diaries blog are negative. “Why was he talking about fruit? The weather? Why did he bother documenting these things?” and one even asks, “why am I still reading this?”
I want to ask them what they expected him to write about in a diary day in and day out?
I happen to find it very soothing. It appears he took comfort in the world around him. That there was something meticulous and precise and true about nature that was pleasing to him. And he may have been the type to go back to such a diary the following year and compare notes on season changes and crop changes. A personal almanac.
So, he’s talking about the weather…we all do sometimes, don’t we?
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August 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
He had pretty severe tuberculosis, which ultimately killed him at a very early age. I wonder if his notice (and recording) of the mundane, ephemeral things of daily life was in part because he felt his life slipping away.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
i would also suggest that a man who was recovering from a life-threatening gunshot to the throat might take a moment to “smell the roses”, as it were.
August 29th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Chris, I have to wonder right along with you. That would make a lot of sense and I really don’t understand anyone grousing about his private notes. For most of us reading them, it’s about getting closer to the mind of someone we admire. We knew going in it was a diary.
How boring would mine be?
Dear Diary,
I was going to make scrambled eggs today. It wasn’t until I got the pan heated and buttered up that I discovered there were only two left…
August 29th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
i have to say that there’s also for me a sense of anticipation. this is a man who was a political animal through and through, had just been seriously wounded fighting facism and has now retreated to the country… in 1938.
i have no doubt that we’ll see a deepening sense on his part of what was happening in europe as hitler began invading germany’s neighbors.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I agree, William. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is one of my favorite books. It shows his political mind at work learning quickly about the brutal infighting on the Republican side. It’s a nice antidote for Malraux’s Man’s Hope (although I do love that book, too, but for other reasons).
August 29th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I should add that a lot of 1984 is foreshadowed in Homage to Catalonia.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:43 am
The more we discuss it, the more fascinating I find it.
He wasn’t writing this to an audience. (Much like your comment, Jamie, I know my daily diary wouldn’t be filled with deep thoughts on big things. It would say things like, “The fishing was good today; Jack got his line tangled, Kyle caught a small bluegill. Pizza for dinner,” and other days it would just be about the weather, or work. How thrilling.
This diary wasn’t intended as literature. He wrote it for himself.
If this is a picture of his mind at rest from those bigger things, and he is “smelling the roses” as you suggest, William, then isn’t it good to see that he wasn’t in constant turmoil about the political every single day?
Like I said, I find it soothing, and while I don’t suspect that these are the things that occupied his thoughts the entire day, these are the things he chose to notice. It says a lot about him.
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