APCOM

A posthumous, but still a very valuable victory, for he who created a scandal among the conformists and uncovered the most tragic ghost of the 2oth century: totalitarian rule. This the value which the English author, and critic Christopher Hitchens gives to George Orwell, in the book "Orwell's victory", which Scheiwiller has now published in Italian. In Milano, to present his essay, Hitchens, who is always passionate and involving, explained the point of his reasoning. "Orwell, the writer said, was able to fight against and win a series of battles, without ever having a stable job, a fixed editor, and with no money, living for most of his 46 years, poor and sick. His conquest, Hitchens added, was showing how much a single person can do, with the only resource being his moral courage. A lesson which destroys the excuses of those who live in a dictatorship and say that a single person alone can do nothing."

Hitchen's reading of the works and life of Orwell goes through important passages represented by books such as "Animal Farm" and "1984", but also through the direct experiences of the Britannic colonial domain in Burma. This is the conclusion reached by the writer, it's clear, even if posthumous. "We can proclaim Orwell's victory, Hitchens said, because even if there can't be a final victory, we can say that the battle continues." A battle which the passionate writer, also known for his attacks against Henry Kissinger and Mother Teresa, brings to our days, and in particular to those of Burma. For Hitchens, Orwell was capable of grasping the dynamics of power, which today just as in Orwell's time, declares himself disapproving towards the Asian country.

"The Burmese regime, Hitchens said, prefers to see its people die rather than accepting international aid. We should never have to see such a terrible show again. I've met some Burmese opponents who said Orwell wrote three books on their country: one is 'Burmese days', and the other two are 'Animal Farm' and '1984'. A trilogy on Burma."

But the universality of the Orwellian message is such , that it goes beyond the borders of post-colonial Asia and adapts perfectly to European history. "Orwell, Hitchens said, understood the relationship between owner and slave, already anticipated in Nietzsche, and described it in a very clear and not hypocritical manner." In particular the writer thinks about European fascism. "In his analysis Orwell grasped the will of power and that of obeying, the compliant instinct of the human being." The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz remembered Hitchens, he couldn't understand how Orwell could have so perfectly described the world of real socialism without ever having stepped foot in it. "It is the nicest compliment ever made by a writer to the other in the 20th century. But Hitchens added, that Orwell had a direct experience with totalitarian regimes not only in Barcelona with the Stalinist police and not only in the racist contest of colonialism, but also in a very brutal school where all the acknowledgment went to scholars who bent to the authorities. Hitchens assures that this behavior, is exactly the opposite of Orwell's lesson, whose victory towards all that culture which had refused, hated and denounced his anti totalitarian ideas, appears today as even more uncontestable and precious.