Edward Allworth: Cultural Revival and the Role of Writers

Extract

We have come to the human dimension in this discussion. It would, therefore, be useful for us to consider two different ways of approaching this. One is talking about people at arm's length, in the way we have been doing most of the day; to a certain extent we have had to do so, as social scientists or even as humanists. I am going to try the other approach, namely, to talk about a few individuals to see if there is anything there that might help us in understanding the nationality question. My subject is literature and language. First, I will cover literature as an instrument, as something of interest to social scientists; and then I will discuss certain important individuals. As far as the nationality question is concerned, the individual does matter, although, it seems, the Party places that aspect at the bottom of its list of nationality concerns deemed important.