Bertrand Russell as a Great Prose Writer: Comment, and Discussion

Bertrand Russell was a prominent literary figure of Modern times. He had great abilities, awarded with a Noble Prize in literature in 1950. He was a political activist, social critic, noble laureate, writer, mathematician, philosopher, logician, historian, and polymath. He was born in British on 18 May 1872 in Monmouth shire in an aristocratic family in the UK. He died on 2 February 1970. Bertrand Russell’s early life was full of tragedy. He was very young when his parents died. After them, he was given in the custardy of his grandparents. His adolescence was very lonely. He spent most of his time in isolation without any interaction with other fellows of his age. Because of all loneliness, he thought of suicide but with the growing age and his developing interests, he left that idea of suicide. This idea was left especially due to mathematics. His keenest interest was in nature and books and later on, he absorbed in mathematics. Then moreover, he was introduced to the work of Euclid from his brother which was according to him one of his great events.

Moreover, he was feeling so sympathetic for P. B. Shelley after reading his works. All his life’s tragedies and thinking took him to the conclusion that there is no free will, there is no life after death and he left Christianity and became an atheist. He was known as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. His first philosophical works were written in his adolescence. He was one of the founders of analytical philosophy. His philosophical essay On Denoting was considered a paradigm of philosophy. He was widely known as one of the premier logicians. His Principia Mathematica was an attempt to create a logical basis for mathematics, it was the most perfect and typical example of classical logic. Except for all these philosophies, logic, etc. he was more known as an antiwar campaigner. Because of his pacifism, he was prisoned during World War 1. He has championed humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought in his varied and significant writings. His works were influenced by so many fields example artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy of language, computer science, linguistics, mathematics, set theory, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology.

He was married four times and all his marriages were not much successful. He had so many affairs with different women. His published work was begun in 1896. He has published almost seventy books and about two thousand articles. He was writing on social, political, and moral subjects. He was a productive prose writer. He has selected the topics of human interest and maybe there is no topic left that was not touched by him. He has written on almost every topic of human life. His style of writing is unique, so much beautiful and fine and it is all because he clarifies thoughts, with this there is no complexity and confusion in his writings. He was in a habit of choosing a systematic way to write every topic productive. He says about his writing method: “If I were to write upon some rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about is with very great interest—— the great intensity of which I am capable—– for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed under the ground. After some months, I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done. Before I had discovered this technique, I used to spend the intervening months worrying because I was making no progress, I arrived at the solution none the sooner for this worry and the intervening months were wasted, whereas now I can devote to other pursuits. (The Conquest of Happiness, page 50). There are so many salient features of his writing style. Let us discuss some of them. The first feature of his writing style is the;

Unity of Thoughts

All of his writings have this very feature. This principle is because of his knowledge of logic and mathematics. Because of this knowledge, he was able to unite his thoughts. Before writing on a topic he used to think. Then he developed an assumption, after the assumption was made it was proved logically step by step in his works. And it is also concluded with a logical argument. The second feature of his writings is his use of exact words. He was in a habit of using pure and exact words in his works. All of those words were free of almost every ambiguity but if there was any ambiguity left, he used to clear that in that very sentence. This ability to use exact and pure words is because of his inclination to scientific knowledge. His words are exact and brief but they are very rich in meaning. To maintain the unity of his thoughts he was in a habit of using long sentences. This is also one of the features of his writing. Usually, long sentences are boring and dull, they break the fluency of writing but he had the vast knowledge to use these long sentences in such a way that they are maintaining the unity of his thoughts and there is sweetness in them with all the necessary coherence.

The simplicity of the language is also one of the features of his writing style. His language is very much simple which can be easily understood by almost every reader. This is because everybody should take interest in his works and read them with the core of their heart. This simple language is very much effective and this language is used to write long sentences to maintain the fluency of his thoughts. This line is an example of simplicity: “Happiness depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself” His writing style is somehow serious but with this, he has used a humorous tone also because the seriousness usually bores people that is why there should be some humor to attract the attention of the readers. This humor is also with some limits because so much humor sometimes makes work less important and far away from its real purpose. So to make his works important and attractive he has used humor with some limitations.

 So all of Russell’s work are argumentative and thoughtful and with all these arguments and thoughts the clarity and fluency remain constant. There is great magic in his pen that all the flow of the thoughts are united and the language is simple and attractive in such a way that readers read his works with great interest. A great example of his writing which is descriptive is his autobiography. All the features which are present in his writing styles such as harmony, unity of thoughts, fluency, clarity, and simplicity lead to this conclusion that he is one of the greatest prose writers of the 20th century. He has touched mostly all the topics of daily routine life and the topics which are related to human life with his great writing skills.

Contributor, Adeeb Ahmed Baloch, is a student of MA-English at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.

Interesting Thing!

Why Francis Bacon is famous? We searched a lot and finally reached at the conclusion. Francis Bacon was basically well-known for his Writing Style. You can go through and enhance your knowledge.