11. The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.
    11)西班牙内战以及1936至1937年之间的其他事件扭转了这种状况，从此我认准了我的立场。1936年以来，我以严肃认真态度创作的作品中的每一行，都是间接或直接为反对极权主义，拥护我所理解的民主社会主义而写的。认为在我们这样的时代，作家可以回避这种题材，在我看来是无稽之谈。每个人都以这样那样的方式写这个题材。这其实就是站在哪一边，取什么态度的问题。一个人越是意识到自己的政治态度，他越是有可能按政治行事而又不牺牲自己美学和思想上的气节。

    12. What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book I do not say to myself, "I am going to produce a work of art." I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the world-view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
    12)在过去的10年中，我最大的愿望是把政治色彩的写作变成艺术创造。我的出发点总是一种党派意识，一种对非正义的敏感。我坐下来写书时，不会自语道：“现在我要创造一个艺术作品了。”我著述是为了揭露某种谎言，为了让人们重视某些事实。我的初衷总是赢得听众。然而，写作必须同时又是一种美感经验。否则，我就无法完成著书的工作，甚至连一篇长篇的报刊文章都写不成。任何一位有心细读我的作品的读者都会发现，即使作品是直截了当的宣传鼓动，也包含着许多职业政客会视为节外生枝的点缀。我不能，也不愿完全放弃我在童年时养成的世界观。只要我健在，我仍会继续讲究文笔风格，热爱大地的山川胜景，对具体的物品和无用的传闻感到欣悦。要压制我这方面的本能是无济于事的。我的任务是把个人根深蒂固的好恶与时代强加于我们大家的政治活动协调起来。