Animal Fairm Illustratit edition by Thomas Clark sampler

thomas clark
that precedes even democracy, the enablin condition for aw we
are or howp tae be. Oor language.
Cause whit shocks us aboot Animal Fairm tae this verra day
isnae the fact o Napoleon’s dictatorship, or the dreidfu ends tae
which it leads. Wha, in the wrack o post-war Europe, could still
lat on tae ignorance o the cruelty an corruption o the pouerful?
Even noo, ye cannae walk the length o yersel without fawin ower
some wid-be Napoleon in oor culture or in the warld it purports
tae represent, some hauf-bricht brute whase political USP is a
total misregaird for personal integrity or moral norms. Na, it’s
no whit Napoleon an his cronies get up tae that stoonds us noo.
It’s the wey they gang aboot it. Pooder an cudgel – aye, baith
hae their place on Napoleon’s fairm. But the preferred weapon
o the rulin cless isnae maucht. It’s wirds.
Whit sets Napoleon an his pigs aff frae the lave, in baith the
first an the final instance, is that they can scrieve, read, interpret
an – in the end – revise. The oral traditions o the ither animals,
their sangs an stories, are nae match for the divine mutability o
the written wird. Through their dour, stieve thrapple-haud on the
language o the fairm, the pigs win authorship an haudin-in-hale
o past, present an future.
The pen is michtier than the swuird? Kind o, but no really.
Whit Orwell wis flaggin up wisnae the strength o language, but
its weakness – the ease wi which its fundaments can be sweepit
awa, like Napoleon’s windmill, by ony shouer o gangsters wi
lowders an some dynamite. Language, tae Orwell, wisnae some
staunin moniment, an impregnable peel-touer against the teemin
hordes. It wis, an is, a fragile thing, tae be biggit, an rebiggit, an
defendit at aw costs.
We ken weel whit Orwell thocht, in this context, o the ettlin
o translation. The lengths the mannie went tae in makkin siccar
his wark wis available tae awbody that had a mind tae read it
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