George Orwell Always in the News: Number 6

John Sutherland, George Orwell and English Rhyme

‘Was Shakespeare gay, and does it matter?’ by John Sutherland

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/28/shakespeare-gay-plays-scholars-tls

Contains this paragraph: ‘Sonnets, one should note in passing, are hard to read – particularly as they move on to the “sestet”, or last six lines. They are also particularly hard to write in English. As George Orwell noted, the cross that English poets have to bear is too few rhyme words (how many for “love”? glove / dove / above – that’s it). There are infinitely more in Italian – the home of the sonnet.’

Where did Orwell say this? Actually, he didn’t. The paucity of rhymes in English is discussed by Ampleforth and Winston Smith in the cells of the Ministry of Love:

‘Ampleforth,’ he said.

There was no yell from the telescreen. Ampleforth paused, mildly startled. His eyes focused themselves slowly on Winston.

‘Ah, Smith!’ he said. ‘You too!’

‘What are you in for?’

‘To tell you the truth — ‘ He sat down awkwardly on the bench opposite Winston. ‘There is only one offence, is there not?’ he said.

‘And have you committed it?’

‘Apparently I have.’

He put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for a moment, as though trying to remember something.

‘These things happen,’ he began vaguely. ‘I have been able to recall one instance — a possible instance. It was an indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word “God” to remain at the end of a line. I could not help it!’ he added almost indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. ‘It was impossible to change the line. The rhyme was “rod”. Do you realize that there are only twelve rhymes to “rod” in the entire language? For days I had racked my brains. There was no other rhyme.’

The expression on his face changed. The annoyance passed out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased. A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has found out some useless fact, shone through the dirt and scrubby hair.

‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ he said, ‘that the whole history of English poetry has been determined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?’

No, that particular thought had never occurred to Winston. Nor, in the circumstances, did it strike him as very important or interesting.

(Nineteen Eighty-Four Part Three Chapter One)

So Orwell wrote it, but he did not say, it is a subject discussed by his characters. All of which is odd, because the original subject that Sutherland is discussing is a spat between two aged academics, one of whom think that Shakespeare wrote gaily because he was gay, the other who thinks that the gay voice was adopted as a persona by the poet and not his actual feelings. So in his reference to Orwell on English rhymes Sutherland is actually adopting the position of one of his academic subjects rather than remaining neutral; an error, surely?

Read more about the role of literary revisionism in Peter Davison’s Orwell Society article: ‘Parallel Worlds: George Orwell and Vasily Grossman’, including references to Ampleforth’s errors

By LJH