Orwell and Machines

Abstract Orwell’s essay on Tolstoy ends with a cacophonous military attack on William Shakespeare. The Russian writer is at the helm of a battleship transferring all the fervour of his late-life disgruntlement at the bard into gunfire, and Shakespeare’s legacy crackles with bullets. Nevertheless, Orwell assures us, Shakespeare is safe and will remain so whatever his readers may say, for just as it is impossible to reproduce in paraphrase what makes his work beautiful and significant, it is impossible to destroy these qualities by denying their existence. Art, when genuine, is immune to interference: it cannot be recreated for the purposes of argument and cannot be arbitrarily put to death. It has the vitality and life lust, Orwell says, of a child ‘jumping up and down’ who never gets old or tired. This was March 1947, when Orwell’s own tubercular body was in rapid decline. My chapter for this volume reflects on the types of resistance that art and creative labour may oppose to the mechanical assaults of modern life.