Assistance was then burst into a chorus singing deep and slow rhythmic BB! ... BB! ... BB! ... - Again and again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first "B" and the second. It was a heavy murmur sound curiously savage, behind which seemed to echo the sound of bare feet and beating of tom-toms. The song lasted maybe thirty seconds. It is a refrain we hear often at times of overwhelming emotion. It was partly a kind of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother but it was still more an act of personal hypnosis, a deliberate suppression of the consciousness by rhythm.
1984, George Orwell
(translated from English by Amelia Audiberti, 1950)
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