A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
(I am about to read another Burgess novel and digging around his name on my bookshelves I came across A Clockwork Orange; as I hadn't read it for a long time I spent a few days re-reading some parts to refresh my memories. And if so I thought I might as well write about it. )
There is no need to introduce Anthony Burgess.
The critical feedback of his novels is usually quite abundant - however, some critics remark that while he can recognize (and verbalize) the most problematic issues of our world he cannot show us solutions, and anyhow, he is too pessimistic, too nihilistic, too this or that. As for me I agree with his being a pessimist, but need to add also that his attitude towards these issues and his conclusions seem to be undoubtedly true and authentic.
One of the reasons for Anthony Burgess' huge success is evidently his constant experiments in creative writing. To mention a few: the Napoleon Symphony (1974) is a literary translation of the structure of Beethoven's Eroica symphony - the "movements", the moods but even the ratio of the different parts of the novel are very strictly based on this musical piece. Another one, the first Burgess novel I read in the beginning of the 80s, One Hand Clapping (1961) was built from the magical slogans of our consumer society: television ads. (Supposedly "the entire vocabulary ... amounts to approximately 800 words".) So mostly and seemingly it is the language itself that makes Burgess "Burgess": the author often confesses that he is obsessed with linguistics. Reading A Clockwork Orange surely convinces us of this. The question is: what lies beneath?
There are innumerous essays, reviews and such on A Clockwork Orange (published in 1962), Stanley Kubrick directed a great (although very controversial) movie based on it and all and all the novel has undeniably become one of the modern classics. If we manage to overcome our natural creeps while reading the novel, we are rewarded with a long list of fundamental questions of life that only the greatest and most important works can raise.
But be aware: if we try to prove that the "real" world and the world of A Clockwork Orange are basically the same, we probably would fail (although now and then a terrible possibility appears that somewhere somehow its nightmarish vision might come true): Burgess does not hold up a mirror in front of us, rather makes us look into his special telescope. The scene we see is a dystopia (an anti-utopia if you like) - just like in Huxley's Brave New World and mainly of course Orwell's 1984.
In spite of many dark touches A Clockwork Orange is an absolutely enjoyable pageturner (although it takes a while till we get used to Nadsat1 - the language they speak). Burgess said he tried "to make comic novels about man's tragic lot". It is a mystery indeed why we cannot take the story's monstrosities dead soberly. Why does it make us laugh and shiver at the same time? The author helps us solve this paradox feature: first of all he passes a judgement on der stand der dinge2 by placing the story, told in past tense, in a vague future, although unlike Orwell and Huxley, Burgess does not even tell us exactly when his novel takes place. (We learn that men have already been on the Moon, and a letter from 1960 is considered to be "starry" - old). Another thing that helps us understand the novel's paradox mentioned above, is Burgess' brilliant linguistic trouvaille3 that lets us take the comfortable role of an outsider, an observer only. It is hard to grab the exact moment of the reader's (the "receiver's") giving up their reluctance - but the use of the Russian-like slang in the English context is so natural and evident that after a short while we are totally convinced: it is indeed the only form Burgess can use for telling his story.
The novel's genius slang Burgess created also gives us some ideas about time (when the events take place). These words are mostly bizarre and weird mixtures of Russian and English and indicate that we are probably after a time when the two dominant empires (the US and the Soviet Union) have been united with all the disadvantages and worst features of both. This fusion hints at a very scary fact (from that time period): the opposite sides are not really antagonistic at all, what's more, their fundamental characteristics are practically the same.
There are some other linguistic inventions of Burgess that are more than just clever tricks. Even the title of the book includes one of the most important messages embedded in a word play: "orange" refers to the Malay word for man ("orang" - like in "orangutan") and so we get quite a clear vision from the very beginning ("the automated man" or "man of a mechanical device", etc.) what we encounter with in the novel. The connection between the protagonist and the writer's name (Alex and F. Alexander) is evident (and it is not too far fetched to discover the cross-reference in it to Alexander the Great as well). But there is more here than meets the eye: lex is the root of the Greek word lexis (word, phrase) and the a is an affix (also in Greek) meaning "without / not with". And even more: in Latin lex means "law". Here, you've got it all: Alex's name itself includes two of his most important personal characteristics: he is an autonomous young man who is not willing to fear any law, and as he is not a man of words either he reacts to everything by acting immediately and spontaneously. In this time, the time of the novel, reading books is not "cool", nobody knows about Mozart, the classical European (humanist) utopia is distorted and Alex becomes the proprietor (rather: a mutation) of culture, moral guidelines, ideals of freedom and aesthetic norms. Although Alex's views of life are rather bizarre (to say the least), they are at least coherent, and real art with stable values has a substantial effect on him. His violence-loving personality attracts and puts us off at the same time: in the novel's world violence is paradoxically the only way to save his dignity - the State forces everyone into a numb, conformist, automatic, zombie state, of which brainwashing is an everyday, ordinary tool. In this sense animal instincts taking over anyone seems to be quite human indeed.
______________________________
1 It might be interesting for some of you that for a (more than 40 year-old) person from Hungary (that used to be a part of the so called "Soviet-controlled communist block") Nadsat is far easier to get used to than for somebody who has never studied Russian. Russian was a compulsory language to learn at school in Hungary up until 1989. So most of the Nadsat words sound way familiar and the novel gave me almost no difficulty to understand from the very first sentence. But I can see it might be hard for a lot of new readers (even in Hungary as Russian is practically out of schools there).
2 The state of things. Originally the title of a Wim Wenders-movie (1982).
3 Idea, inspiration (fr)
There is no need to introduce Anthony Burgess.
The critical feedback of his novels is usually quite abundant - however, some critics remark that while he can recognize (and verbalize) the most problematic issues of our world he cannot show us solutions, and anyhow, he is too pessimistic, too nihilistic, too this or that. As for me I agree with his being a pessimist, but need to add also that his attitude towards these issues and his conclusions seem to be undoubtedly true and authentic.
One of the reasons for Anthony Burgess' huge success is evidently his constant experiments in creative writing. To mention a few: the Napoleon Symphony (1974) is a literary translation of the structure of Beethoven's Eroica symphony - the "movements", the moods but even the ratio of the different parts of the novel are very strictly based on this musical piece. Another one, the first Burgess novel I read in the beginning of the 80s, One Hand Clapping (1961) was built from the magical slogans of our consumer society: television ads. (Supposedly "the entire vocabulary ... amounts to approximately 800 words".) So mostly and seemingly it is the language itself that makes Burgess "Burgess": the author often confesses that he is obsessed with linguistics. Reading A Clockwork Orange surely convinces us of this. The question is: what lies beneath?
There are innumerous essays, reviews and such on A Clockwork Orange (published in 1962), Stanley Kubrick directed a great (although very controversial) movie based on it and all and all the novel has undeniably become one of the modern classics. If we manage to overcome our natural creeps while reading the novel, we are rewarded with a long list of fundamental questions of life that only the greatest and most important works can raise.
But be aware: if we try to prove that the "real" world and the world of A Clockwork Orange are basically the same, we probably would fail (although now and then a terrible possibility appears that somewhere somehow its nightmarish vision might come true): Burgess does not hold up a mirror in front of us, rather makes us look into his special telescope. The scene we see is a dystopia (an anti-utopia if you like) - just like in Huxley's Brave New World and mainly of course Orwell's 1984.
In spite of many dark touches A Clockwork Orange is an absolutely enjoyable pageturner (although it takes a while till we get used to Nadsat1 - the language they speak). Burgess said he tried "to make comic novels about man's tragic lot". It is a mystery indeed why we cannot take the story's monstrosities dead soberly. Why does it make us laugh and shiver at the same time? The author helps us solve this paradox feature: first of all he passes a judgement on der stand der dinge2 by placing the story, told in past tense, in a vague future, although unlike Orwell and Huxley, Burgess does not even tell us exactly when his novel takes place. (We learn that men have already been on the Moon, and a letter from 1960 is considered to be "starry" - old). Another thing that helps us understand the novel's paradox mentioned above, is Burgess' brilliant linguistic trouvaille3 that lets us take the comfortable role of an outsider, an observer only. It is hard to grab the exact moment of the reader's (the "receiver's") giving up their reluctance - but the use of the Russian-like slang in the English context is so natural and evident that after a short while we are totally convinced: it is indeed the only form Burgess can use for telling his story.
The novel's genius slang Burgess created also gives us some ideas about time (when the events take place). These words are mostly bizarre and weird mixtures of Russian and English and indicate that we are probably after a time when the two dominant empires (the US and the Soviet Union) have been united with all the disadvantages and worst features of both. This fusion hints at a very scary fact (from that time period): the opposite sides are not really antagonistic at all, what's more, their fundamental characteristics are practically the same.
There are some other linguistic inventions of Burgess that are more than just clever tricks. Even the title of the book includes one of the most important messages embedded in a word play: "orange" refers to the Malay word for man ("orang" - like in "orangutan") and so we get quite a clear vision from the very beginning ("the automated man" or "man of a mechanical device", etc.) what we encounter with in the novel. The connection between the protagonist and the writer's name (Alex and F. Alexander) is evident (and it is not too far fetched to discover the cross-reference in it to Alexander the Great as well). But there is more here than meets the eye: lex is the root of the Greek word lexis (word, phrase) and the a is an affix (also in Greek) meaning "without / not with". And even more: in Latin lex means "law". Here, you've got it all: Alex's name itself includes two of his most important personal characteristics: he is an autonomous young man who is not willing to fear any law, and as he is not a man of words either he reacts to everything by acting immediately and spontaneously. In this time, the time of the novel, reading books is not "cool", nobody knows about Mozart, the classical European (humanist) utopia is distorted and Alex becomes the proprietor (rather: a mutation) of culture, moral guidelines, ideals of freedom and aesthetic norms. Although Alex's views of life are rather bizarre (to say the least), they are at least coherent, and real art with stable values has a substantial effect on him. His violence-loving personality attracts and puts us off at the same time: in the novel's world violence is paradoxically the only way to save his dignity - the State forces everyone into a numb, conformist, automatic, zombie state, of which brainwashing is an everyday, ordinary tool. In this sense animal instincts taking over anyone seems to be quite human indeed.
______________________________
1 It might be interesting for some of you that for a (more than 40 year-old) person from Hungary (that used to be a part of the so called "Soviet-controlled communist block") Nadsat is far easier to get used to than for somebody who has never studied Russian. Russian was a compulsory language to learn at school in Hungary up until 1989. So most of the Nadsat words sound way familiar and the novel gave me almost no difficulty to understand from the very first sentence. But I can see it might be hard for a lot of new readers (even in Hungary as Russian is practically out of schools there).
2 The state of things. Originally the title of a Wim Wenders-movie (1982).
3 Idea, inspiration (fr)
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