Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool

Shooting an Elephant, and Other Essays | 1947 | George Orwell

[general_re]

It defends itself by surviving

But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it, come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social passion for doing good. As in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words: "To render an intelligent being yet more intelligent!" so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson: "To make reason and the will of God prevail!"

The moment culture is considered not merely as the endeavour to see and learn about the universal order, but as the endeavor, also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, and beneficent character of culture becomes manifest.

-- Matthew Arnold

[ricpic]

Let me get this straight; Tolstoy hates King Lear because Tolstoy is King Lear. This is the stuff of second rate psychobabblers and is unworthy of Orwell.
But I guess the crime of being a great man (which Tolstoy was, for all his faults) must be punished.
Orwell, who had his own moments of greatness, is being merely clever (although I grant you far more clever than Tolstoy ever was) in this essay.
It is an ironclad law of life and literature that the clever must, simply must cut the great down to size.