Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [182]

Winston’s greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem – delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 182

Note

The estrangement in ‘his greatest pleasure in life was in his work’ — forgery as the one absorbing, self-respecting intellectual challenge available — makes the tragedy precise. The ‘depths of a mathematical problem’ figure recasts the falsifier as a kind of aesthetician, a portrait that will become unbearable once he learns the Party wants him to say nothing of his own.