译者序

年少时，余读西学为用，总读不甚明了，曾一度怪译者水平。及长，亲自读原著，方知非译者之罪，实东西学本无一一对应关系。待余大胆尝试翻译，绞尽脑汁，搜肠刮肚，总觉难以表达西学万分之一时，方叹读书之少，正所谓：“书到用时方恨少，事非经过不知难”。

本书写于1949年，和新中国同岁成长，于今有76载。作者当然是George Orwell，George,本名 Eric Blair, （1903-1950），英国小说家及散文家，imaginative British writer concerned with social justice，富于想象的英国作家，关注社会正义。

George Orwell颇像中国的金庸先生，人们只知有Orwell，并不知他之真名叫Eric Blair，Orwell仅仅是笔名。说来颇为奇特，倘若查Eric Blair，我们甚至都查不到任何信息。Orwell生于印度，长与英国伦敦，念的当然是英国有着号称“黄冈中学”的伊顿公学名校（应该是黄冈中学更像伊顿公学，毕竟伊顿公学历史更悠久，只不过作为中国人的70-80-90后，可能更加对黄冈中学有深刻印象，这里故用黄冈中学来比拟之）。可惜小Eric学业平平，没考上大学。转而投身英国公务，加入英缅police，参军5年，后流浪天涯。

Orwell在英国属于中下层阶级，虽然自称中层阶级，却也知道家穷无产，故而吃尽生活之苦，做过洗碗工、教师、书店店员和码头工人，可是，良好的名校熏陶，让他很难真正融入下层老百姓生活，他就像一个“夹心饼干”，处在中间，两头受气。好在他同情老百姓，并非一直处在云端之上。故而他关注公平、正义。要接近老百姓，抽烟喝酒自然也沾染了一些，特别是烟不离口，这也为他的肺结核，埋下了巨大隐患。以至于多年后，年仅47岁，死于肺病，如果用一句话概括奥威尔，那就是：

匆匆过客一生忙，两部作品留人间。

除了《一九八四》，Orwell还有《动物庄园》，如果有时间，余亦想一睹为快，当然是读一点原著。我这人一向是原著粉，对于翻译一向挑剔，中学时代，凡是读西学小说，总嫌枯燥乏味，及至多年后，我读原著时，却从未觉得腻味。可见最初读西学，总要读翻译大师的作品，譬如王佐良的《青春》，譬如许渊冲翻译的英诗法诗，譬如张振玉译的《苏东坡传》和《吾国与吾民》等等。

当然，如今再读西学，已不再挑剔，毕竟有少许西学基础。近来读张学治译自英国传记

文学家Fiona Stafford的《简奥斯汀：短暂的一生》，我也读得津津有味，读李玉龙等译自两位美国数学教授的Mathematics All Around Seventh Edition也读得酣畅淋漓，读钟毛、李园莉译自德国卡尔·芬克的《数学简史》，也读得入迷三分。

《一九八四》关注的话题是正义是极权和公平，不得不让我想起另一部欧美经典——柏拉图的《理想国》Utopia。两者主题类似，但表现方式稍异。不同于《理想国》的辩论方式，《一九八四》更像是一部科幻小说，毕竟作者写于1949年，那么这个书名就颇为悬疑万分了，这是想预言25年后的故事。

结合写作年代的二十世纪四十年代末，美苏争霸的战争阴云密布全球，始终挥之不去。一直到25年后的1984年始，世界才有了一丝和平曙光。比如说，中英接触发表联合声明，比如说苏联进行最后倔强宣布抵制当年的洛杉矶奥运会后，中国在奥运会上取得不俗成绩，再如设计师在此年南下视察三个经济特区等等，人们才不至于紧张兮兮，朝不保夕。如果说之前是时刻准备着，那么这之后就是越加放下戒备，开始携手共进。再之后，苏联解体，两德一统，中国改开，解放思想，战争危机暂时解除，人们上紧的发条，终于松懈下来。

如果非要让我来解释这本《一九八四》，毋宁把它看作是二战后，作者对三战担忧的一个集中体现。其实，对照现实世界，我们可以把小说套用在每一处极端的社会之下，他是对人性的最无情揭露，这是一部典型的反战小说，反威权小说，批判性思维窥探。我们不拿意识形态做文章的话，倒是可以把它简单作为一本宣传和平书籍。世界需要和平，不需要战争，它将是永远值得我们反思，和阅读的一本世界名著。

所以，《一九八四》很难不让我们思考，作者可能是在讽刺当时的两个对立阵营。很讽刺的事，小说写出来后，不论美苏都把它当做禁书，苏联把奥威尔作为反苏代名词还情有可原，而英国特工一直严密监视其动向，就很可笑。可是，结合奥威尔出生，也很难不让英国高层，把他作为反资产阶级的代表，毕竟他本身，更多的是和中下层老百姓接触多。

最后，译者水平初浅，不当之处，在所难免，倘有错谬之处，还烦请广大读者予以纠正，本人不胜感激之至。闲话少叙，敬请期待，如下文。

Nineteen Eighty-four(Excerpt chapter 2)
Writer：George Orwell
《一九八四》—乔治·奥威尔

As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. It was an inconceivably stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet.

随着他把手伸向门把手，温斯顿看到他已经离开桌上打开的日记本。“打倒老大哥”，被写满笔记本，用足够大的字母，写在整个房间明处。这真是一件不可想象的蠢事。但，他意识到——即使是在恐惧中，他也不想弄脏光洁的纸张，只因墨迹未干，他不想合上书。

He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colourless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was standing outside.

他吸了一口气，打开门，立即向他涌来一股温暖的信仰气浪。一个面容阴沉的女人正站在外面，只见她面无表情，头发束起，满布皱纹。

“Oh, comrade,” she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, “I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at our kitchen sink? It’s got blocked up and--”

“哦，同志！”她以一种阴沉哀怨口吻开头道，“我想，我听到你进门了。你认为你能穿过屋子查看我们厨房的洗涤池吗？它堵塞了，而且……”

It was Mrs. Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same floor. (“Mrs.” was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party --you were supposed to call everyone “comrade” --but with some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs, except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years.

原来是帕森斯夫人——同层邻居的妻子(“夫人”是被党卫所轻视的一个词——你可以称呼任何人“同志”，而不是本能地用这个夫人)。她是个大约30岁女人，但看上去更老。任何一个人都能从她脸上看到那层厚厚的腻子粉。温斯顿跟着她走上廊道。这些业余修理琐碎工作，几乎就是他每天的恼怒日常。胜利公馆是种老式公寓楼，建于1930年或者前后，而且，正大量倒塌成碎片。灰泥逐渐从天花板和墙壁上脱落，管子在每个严冬腊月爆裂，屋顶在每一个雪夜漏水。供暖系统一直用着半截蒸汽，还在努力跑着。出于经济的某些动机，它也完全不可能停工。缝缝补补，除非为你自己做一些事，否则定要被遥远的委员会制裁。因为这些委员会有责任支撑起来一切，哪怕是用了两年的窗玻璃修补琐事，他们也要插手管起来。

“Of course it’s only because Tom isn’t home,” said Mrs. Parsons vaguely.

帕森斯夫人轻声说道:“当然，仅仅因为汤姆不在家。”

The Parsons’ flat was bigger than Winston’s, and dingy in a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had just been visited by some large violent animal. Games impedimenta -- hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out --lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage smell, common to the wholebuilding, but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which -- one knew this at the first sniff, though it was hard to say how --was the sweat of some person not present at the moment. Inanother room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen.

帕森斯公寓比温斯顿家更大，而且，不同的是光线暗淡，脏乱不堪。一切东西破旧和品相残败，好像刚刚被某种巨大的野蛮动物摧残过。“游戏”结局——一对曲棍球竿、一双拳击手套、一个裂口足球、一双汗臭的短裤，被翻个底朝天——丢得到处都是。并且，在桌子上，脏盘子随意丢弃，夹杂着卷角的健身书籍。墙壁上，贴着青年联盟和间谍会深红色标语，以及老大哥的全轮廓海报。通常一股煮熟的菜叶味道，弥漫整个房间；但很快又被强烈的汗液恶臭味击中。来人知道，这还只是第一次吸气闻到的，然而，这也很难讲，这股汗臭味，就不是如今这一刻人们自带的。另一间屋里，有人用梳子和厕纸，正试图跟上从“铁幕”发出的军歌。

“It’s the children,” said Mrs. Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance at the door. “They haven’t been out today. And of course--”

“是孩子。”帕森斯夫人说着话，带着半是忧虑的眼神望着门，“他们今天都出门了。而且，当然……”

She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was always liable to start him coughing❶. Mrs. Parsons looked on helplessly.

她总是习惯话说到一半停下。厨房的洗涤池几乎充满了肮脏的绿水，那味道简直比曾经的卷心菜味道还令人反胃。温斯顿曲膝检查水管连接处。他讨厌用手干活，讨厌屈膝弯腰，因为总是引起咳嗽。帕森斯夫人无助地看着他。

“Of course if Tom was home he’d put it right in a moment,” she said. “He loves anything like that. He’s ever so good with his hands, Tom is.”

“当然，如果汤姆回家，他一定能轻松搞定。”她说，“他从不被琐事困扰，他永远善于用灵巧的双手。汤姆就是这样一个人。”

Parsons was Winston’s fellow-employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms --one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.

帕森斯是温斯顿的同事搭档，他们共同服务于真理部。他身材偏旁，但积极参与各种大批傻瓜做的蠢事——他们贡献苦力完全深信不疑——甚至比思想警察还要卖力。他们也是党卫信赖稳定的基本盘。

At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, savings campaigns, and voluntary activities generally.

35岁时，他才刚刚不情愿地退出青年联盟，并且，在加入青年联盟之前，他在谍报所待了一年，当时他还不够法定年龄。在真理部，某种程度上，他是被安排的次要职位，主要收集一些不太紧急的情报，但是另一方面，他又是娱乐委员会重要人物，所有人员都参与进集体远足、无意识游行、工资抗议和大部分自发活动。

He would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the Community Centre every evening for the past four years. An overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life, followed him about wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.

在举烟斗的呼吸之间，他会以异常骄傲口吻告诉你——过去四年的每个晚上，他已树立起社团核心人设。这就仿佛一股无法忍受的汗臭味，一种被生活刁难的无意识证明。这种不便一直无时无地伴着他，甚至哪怕他退会，也在背后影响他。

“Have you got a spanner?” said Winston, fiddling with the nut on the angle-joint.

“这里有扳手吗？”温斯顿一边问，一边略微修理连接处的螺丝。

“A spanner,” said Mrs. Parsons, immediately becoming invertebrate. “I don’t know, I’m sure. Perhaps the children--”

“扳手啊！”帕森斯夫人说着话，立刻变得唯唯诺诺，“我……我不知道啊，我肯定可能孩子们——”

There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the children charged into the living-room. Mrs. Parsons brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the tap and went back into the other room.

这时，一声脚踏的声音传来，并且，从孩子们那里，传来重击房子而产生的另一个爆炸声。帕森斯夫人带来扳手。温斯顿修通了水管，清除了烦人的头发堵塞。他用水龙头尽力清洗手指，然后回到另一间房里。

“Up with your hands!” yelled a savage voice.

“举起双手。”一个凶残的怒吼声响起。

A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, greyshirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy’s demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.

一个漂亮但长相粗野的9岁男孩，突然从桌子后冒出来，并且，他用自动玩具手枪威胁温斯顿，这时，小两岁的妹妹，用一截木头做着同一个手势。俩孩子穿着蓝色短裤、灰色衬衣和谍报所制服的红色肩章。温斯顿把双手举过头顶，但带着心神不宁的感觉——男孩行为如此恶毒，那就不完全是一个游戏。

“You’re a traitor!” yelled the boy. “You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!❷”

“你是个叛徒。”男孩呕吼道，“你是个思想犯，你是个欧亚间谍。我要射杀你。我要消灭你。我要把你送到煤矿劳改。”

Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting “Traitor!” and “Thought-criminal!” the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.

突然，俩孩子都跳过来围住他，呼喊道:“叛徒”、“思想犯。”小女孩努力地模仿哥哥每一个动作。不知怎的，这真有点恐怖，就像两只没牙的小老虎嬉戏，好像马上就要长大成为吃人的野兽。在小男孩眼睛里，闪烁着一种算计般的凶残，好像有种相当明显的欲望，想去暴打和脚蹬温斯顿，而且是有着足够大的清醒意识这样做。温斯顿心想，幸亏小孩举的不是真手枪。

Mrs. Parsons’ eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children, and back again. In the better light of the living-room he noticed with interest that there actually was dust in the creases of her face.

帕森斯夫人，用眼睛紧张地掠过三个人，又回头扫视他们。在屋里越发明亮的灯光下，他感兴趣地注意到，她脸上的褶皱实际上部着一层灰。

“They do get so noisy,” she said. “They’re disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the hanging, that’s what it is. I’m too busy to take them. and Tom won’t be back from work in time.”

“他俩真是太闹腾。”她说，“他们太失望了，因为他们不能去看绞刑，就是这回事。我太忙没时间带他们。汤姆又不能及时从单位回来。”

“Why can’t we go and see the hanging?” roared the boy in his huge voice.

“为什么我们不能去看绞刑？”男孩用巨大的声音咆哮道。

“Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!” chanted the little girl, still capering round.

“就想去看行刑，就要去看绞刑。”小女孩反复念叨，一边还仍然急得转蹦跳转圈。

Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamoured to be taken to see it. He took his leave of Mrs. Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed into him. He spun round just in time to see Mrs. Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult.

温斯顿想起来，一些欧亚囚犯和战争罪犯，在那天晚上，将在公园被行使绞刑。这事每个月都有一次，已经成为一个流行的奇观。孩子们总是大声求着被带去参观现场。他离开帕森斯家，然后关上门。但是，他还没下去楼道六步台阶，从后脖颈传来一记重击，让他吃痛得喊出来。似乎是一截新电线戳到他。温斯顿正好转身看到，帕森斯夫人把儿子拖回屋内，男孩口袋里揣着一把弹弓。

“Goldstein!” bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman’s greyish face.

“戈尔茨坦！”随着门被关上，男孩嘴里大声喊道。但是，最震憾温斯顿的是，女人苍白脸色那恐惧又无助的表情。

Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which had just been anchored between lceland and the Faroe lslands.

回到公寓，他迅速越过“铁幕”，并再次坐到桌子跟前，好像电线仍在脖子上摩擦。从“铁幕”传来的音乐，已经停止;取而代之的是播报齐整的军阵声，有种残暴的味道，描述着一种新移动堡垒军备，它们正好布置在冰岛和法罗群岛之间。

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible.

温斯顿想着那个可怜的女人，带着这些孩子，必定过着可怕的生活。他年——比如说两年，他们将一直看着她，日夜过着不太正常的生活特征。现今，几乎所有孩子，都令人讨厌到恐怖。

What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party.

所有事中最糟糕的，是借助于诸如谍报所的组织，他们被有系统地转向少量未开化的野蛮人，可是，不论他们如何背叛档的原则，也还没有在他们中产生趋势。

On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big Brother --it was all a sort of glorious game to them.

相反，他们崇拜dǎng，任何事都能附会到dǎng的方面。歌曲、财富、横幅、徒步、步枪假把式操练、吆喝口号、对老大哥膜拜——它们全都是这种荣誉性游戏。

All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.

他们所有暴行都是对外，也即是反对国家的敌人，反对老外、叛徒、阴谋家、思想犯。已超过三十年，他们的孩子被恐吓，几乎是常态。

And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eaves dropping little sneak --“child hero” was the phrase generally used --had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.

然而，找个好借口，一周很难通过一次稿，《泰晤士报》绝不会写一段间谍们在屋檐下偷偷摸摸——“童星”是个被常用的词——在思想警察那里，偶尔听到有一些秘密的评论和告发父母事件，。

The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write in the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O’Brien again.

被弹弓打中的刺痛逐渐减轻，温斯顿几近铭记在心地捡起笔，想知道自己还能记住更多的东西，以便记在日记本上。突然，温斯顿再一次想起了奥布莱恩。

Years ago -- how long was it? Seven years it must be -- he had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed: ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.’ It was said very quietly, almost casually --a statement, not a command.

多年前——几年呢？一定是七年——他已梦到过，他正走过一件黑洞洞的房间。当他经过坐在里面的某人时，那人说:“我们将在不再黑暗的地方会面。”这声音漫不经心，并且平静——一句陈述，而不是命令。

He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much impression on him. It was only later and by degrees that they had seemed to take on significance.

他继续走，不做停留。当时，令人好奇的是——在梦里的话没有给他多少印象。仅仅之后，好像给他感觉有某种重要的程度。

He could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that he had seen O’Brien for the first time, nor could he remember when he had first identified the voice as O’Brien’s. But at any rate the identification existed. It was O’Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark.

他现在记不起，是否做梦前后有初次见过奥布莱恩；他也记不起，自己什么时候能够辨认出奥布莱恩的声音。但是，这种身份识别的进度是存在的。可以肯定，奥布莱恩在在黑暗之外对他说过话。

Winston had never been able to feel sure -- even after this morning’s flash of the eyes it was still impossible to be sure whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding between them, more important than affection or partisanship. “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,” he had said. Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way or another it would come true.

The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into thestagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:

“Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabarfront. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash--”

Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.

Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a deflated feeling. The telescreen -perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost chocolate -- crashed into “Oceania, ’tis for thee”. You were supposed to stand to attention. However, in his present positionhe was invisible.

“Oceania, ’tis for thee” gave way to lighter music. Winston walked over to the window, keeping his back to the telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at present.

Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished. Ingsoc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure for ever? Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him:

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette packet --everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed --no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombswould not batter it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the past --for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death butannihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?

The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.

Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are

different from one another and do not live alone --to a time when truth exists and

what is done cannot be undone:

From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big

Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings!

He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step.The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long aspossible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an old-fashioned pen, what he had been writing --and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.

He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust anddeposited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken off if the book was moved.