by Maria Popova
“I do not wish to comment
on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.”
In 1995, more than twenty years after his irreverent illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, the
beloved British cartoonist Ralph Steadman put his singular twist on a
very different kind of literary beast, one of the most controversial books ever
published. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first American
publication of George Orwell’s masterpiece, which by that point had sold
millions of copies around the world in more than seventy languages, Steadman
illustrated a special edition titled Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (public library),
featuring 100 of his unmistakable full-color and halftone illustrations.
Accompanying Steadman’s illustrations is
Orwell’s proposed but unpublished preface to the original edition, titled “The Freedom of the Press” — a
critique of how the media’s fear of public opinion ends up drowning out the
central responsibility of journalism. Though aimed at European publishers’
self-censorship regarding Animal Farm at the time, Orwell’s words ring
with astounding prescience and timeliness in our present era of people-pleasing
“content” that passes for journalism:
The chief danger to freedom of thought and
speech at this moment is not the direct interference of … any official body. If
publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it
is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are
frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the
worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face.
Portrait of George Orwell by Ralph Steadman
Alas, this exquisite edition is no longer in
print, but I was able to track down a surviving copy and offer a taste of
Steadman’s genius for our shared delight.
Also included is Orwell’s preface to the 1947
Ukrainian edition, equally timely today for obvious geopolitical reasons. In
it, he writes:
I understood, more clearly than ever, the
negative influence of the Soviet myth upon the western Socialist movement.
And here I must pause to describe my attitude
to the Soviet régime.
I have never visited Russia and my knowledge
of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers.
Even if I had the power, I would not wish to interfere in Soviet domestic
affairs: I would not condemn Stalin and his associates merely for their
barbaric and undemocratic methods. It is quite possible that, even with the
best intentions, they could not have acted otherwise under the conditions
prevailing there.
But on the other hand it was of the utmost
importance to me that people in Western Europe should see the Soviet régime for
what it really was…
I have been convinced that the destruction of
the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement.
Orwell concludes with a note on his often
misconstrued intent with the book’s ultimate message:
I do not wish to comment on the work; if it
does not speak for itself, it is a failure. But I should like to emphasize two
points: first, that although the various episodes are taken from the actual
history of the Russian Revolution, they are dealt with schematically and their
chronological order is changed; this was necessary for the symmetry of the
story. The second point has been missed by most critics, possibly because I did
not emphasize it sufficiently. A number of readers may finish the book with the
impression that it ends in the complete reconciliation of the pigs and the
humans. That was not my intention; on the contrary I meant it to end on a loud
note of discord, for I wrote it immediately after the Teheran Conference which
everybody thought had established the best possible relations between the USSR
and the West. I personally did not believe that such good relations would last
long; and, as events have shown, I wasn’t far wrong.
Steadman’s Animal Farm: A Fairy Story is
spectacular in its entirety, should you be so fortunate to snag a used copy.
Complement it with his illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland and his inkblot dog drawings, then be
sure to take a closer look at Orwell’s “The Freedom of the Press.”
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/04/25/animal-farm-ralph-steadman/
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