Polemic (magazine)

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Polemic was a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics." In its eight issues between 1945 and 1947, however, some of George Orwell's most well-known essays were published. "The Prevention of Literature" is both a spirited attack on the "distortion in writing" caused by the "poisonous impact on 'English intellectual life' by Stalinist and fellow travelling apologists for Soviet actions and a strong defense of freedom of expression." Swingler, a minor English communist poet in his 1930s, attacked Orwell for writing this article ‘through a fog of vagueness and through a hailstorm of private hates,’ equating Orwell (and Koestler) with the anti-Soviet "HEARST PRESS." Polemic's editors allowed Orwell to respond to Swingler in sidebars almost as long as the article. In "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" Orwell dredges up and dismisses a long forgotten pamphlet by Leo Tolstoy in which the Russian author judged William Shakespeare as "not even an average author." Orwell used Tolstoy's pamphlet to condemn those who would practice coercion in support of their beliefs, no matter how principled or noble these might be. Both Polemic essays have been anthologized in various Orwell collections.