Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)
József Hruby: Two "Last Men in Europe": A. Koestler's Darkness at Noon and G. Ornwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
62 As it has already been mentioned, the past is a natural enemy of the totalitarian state. To create the past, we need memories. Love and the sexual act are abundant sources of memories. The Anti-Sex Legaue serves the very purpose of stifling the sexual instinct. The sexual act is not collective, the relationship is between individuals and not between the individuals and the state. The act is always the same, the experience and the ecstasy are always different, but the most important thing from the point of view of the state is, that, it cannot be controlled. A new, twisted morality has been created: to be "abstinent" means to be "virtous". The only legitimate pretext for having sex is procreation. To ensure that this should not be otherwise, the Party seeks to abolish the orgasm. Sex wich can provide love for the present and lives for the future and links with the past is, by necessity, anathema to such regimes. The regime of Nineteen Eighty-Four is putting tremendous effort into doings away with the majority of the vocabulary of the language. Whit it is doing is a plot against human consciousness. The deeds of our ancestors, their knowledge and culture what we can base our present spiritual life on are communicated to us through the medium of language. If the state does violence to language» it, consequently, violates the past. A twofold war is conducted against language: the Party disires an ever-diminishing vocabulary and parallel to it, words that mean more than one tiling (the majority of words are such) are being "purged" from the language. Connotations are especially frowned upon by the totalitarian "linguists", since connotative meanings are especially suitable for evoking moments of the past. Syme, Wintston's colleauge, describes the aim of Newspeak as follows; "In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rightly defined and all subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten". 2 0 The "cleansing" process must go on until words become incapable of evoking memories, both the past, and communication, in general, is reduced to the barest minimum. Memory and hope can most efficiently be done away with through language. The new consciousness lives locked up in the moment, the momenc which is practically a protracted present. Ingsoc strives to bring history to a standstill Rubashov's and the commissars seif-deception finally gave rise to the ail pervasive double-think in Nineteen Eighty-Four, just as the shifts in allegiance Koestler refers to led to the enormous allegiance against all peoples of the world.
