Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [194]

It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 194

Note

The asymmetry — you can fabricate a past but not a present — is a genuinely startling observation, and it drags the whole chapter’s implication outward: if Ogilvy’s existence rests on ‘the same evidence’ as Charlemagne’s, the novel has found its chilling figure for the truth-status of all recorded history. The tone is speculative, almost wondering, which makes the nihilism land softly.