Ecclesiastes Vs. Modern English: George Orwell Shows How Simple Words Evoke Vivid Images

Photo by Steven Fernandez

Pretentious words are the enemy of poetic writing, and vague images are the enemy of clear writing. Both pretentiousness and vagueness are to be blamed for the following prose disaster, as shared by George Orwell.

Poetic, Elegant Writing

In his classic essay, Politics And The English Language, Orwell translated "a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort," as he put it. He cited a famous passage from the Bible, King James Version--Ecclesiastes 9:11:

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

That is a poetic, elegant sentence that concisely expresses a profound insight on the nature of human life.

Pretentious, Modern Writing

Orwell decided to rewrite this verse from Ecclesiastes into modern English (he wrote this in the 1940's), and here's the result:

"Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

Yes, his rewrite is over the top, but he used the type of writing that many people then and now consider to be "intelligent" and "professional."

Breaking It Down

Orwell elucidates:

"The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyse these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ('time and chance') that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first."

The sentence from Ecclesiastes is simple, clear, direct and filled with everyday words--it's extremely elegant and profoundly poetic.

The modern English version is filled with pretentious words and utterly lacking in vivid imagery--it's terrible writing that doesn't convey its message memorably at all.

The Bottom Line

Try to create concrete images in your writing by using real, "earthy" words, words that describe actual things actually.

Ironically, by focusing on expressing your message clearly and simply (and honestly), you stand a much better chance of producing something elegant than you ever will by trying to write elegantly in the first place, as that often ends up devolving into pretension.