(Birth)marks, representality, “beastly” Art

As has been mentioned in many of the posts, I found it interesting that Orwell is deliberately reductive – he emphasizes the exterior, stereotypes, literary tropes – in Burmese Days. On one hand, this leads to some skilful puncturing of tired images and words in two of Orwell’s biggest concerns: contemporary English writing and the colonial project in general. For example, I found the description of Verrall rather hilarious: the emphasis of his “gleam[ing]” whiteness and martial appearance on a horse evokes the quintessentially British image of St George, but is subverted by his spear being “like a needle in his hand” and his resemblance to “a rabbit, perhaps, but a tough and martial rabbit”.

On the other hand, the notion of quintessence and representality in art is a vexed issue throughout Orwell’s text. Flory’s birthmark is both a literal mark of Cain and a physical, symbolic aspect of himself that his self struggles with constantly. Significantly, it is the only part of him that Elizabeth remembers after their estrangement, while it fades to a “faint grey stain” only after his death. A project, whether artistic or colonial, that tries to essentialize things in their representation is both inevitable and necessarily flawed.

But this creates a dilemma for the artist, who fundamentally traffics in representation: how is one to make art then? Orwell satirizes this dilemma in Flory and Elizabeth’s exchange on the pwe dance. Elizabeth’s dismissal of “the hated word Art” is juxtaposed against Flory the consummate artist (and proto-Orwell), who looks for the ‘higher’ values in objects and life; for him, “the whole life and spirit of Burma is summed up in the way [the dancer] twists her arms”. But as we see in Shooting an Elephant and Burmese Days, representation is much more complex than that for Orwell, particularly when it comes to representing the native – perhaps why he resorts to stereotypes. What then are we to make of his rounded, sympathetic portrayal of Flory and the narrator in Shooting – is it really an attempt at revising representality or does Orwell have other objectives in mind (since it’s a lost cause anyway)?