Orwell's Roses

by Rebecca Solnit

the least political art may give us something that lets us plunge into politics, that human beings need reinforcement and refuge, that pleasure does not necessarily seduce us from the tasks at hand but can fortify us. The pleasure that is beauty, the beauty that is meaning, order, calm. Orwell found this refuge in natural and domestic spaces, and he repaired to them often and emerged from them often to go to war on lies, delusions, cruelties, and follies—and to go to war as a soldier in Spain. In his essay on T. S. Eliot he famously noted that “all art is to some extent propaganda,” insofar as propaganda is advocacy, and every artist’s choices are a kind of advocacy for what matters, what deserves attention, but he was opposed to propaganda in the sense that Blunt called for it: as art and artists subservient to a party’s or state’s agenda. Elsewhere he wrote, “There is no such thing as genuinely non-political literature.”

the least political art may give us something that lets us plunge into politics, that human beings need reinforcement and refuge, that pleasure does not necessarily seduce us from the tasks at hand but can fortify us. The pleasure that is beauty, the beauty that is meaning, order, calm. Orwell found this refuge in natural and domestic spaces, and he repaired to them often and emerged from them often to go to war on lies, delusions, cruelties, and follies—and to go to war as a soldier in Spain. In his essay on T. S. Eliot he famously noted that “all art is to some extent propaganda,” insofar as propaganda is advocacy, and every artist’s choices are a kind of advocacy for what matters, what deserves attention, but he was opposed to propaganda in the sense that Blunt called for it: as art and artists subservient to a party’s or state’s agenda. Elsewhere he wrote, “There is no such thing as genuinely non-political literature.”