By Sol Biderman
Doris Lessing who has just turned 86, is considered by some, including this critic, as the best living writer in the English language. In the words of John Wain, Mrs. Lessing "is one of the superb writers of the language. She never puts a foot wrong and there is nothing in her work that needs to be altered. For sheer poise I don‘t think there has been an author to touch her since Jane Austen."
She was a driving force behind the Word Seminar earlier this year bringing together leading writers from all over the world at readings and seminars in greater London After the second volume of her autobiography was recently published - she hinted she may not write the third volume since she doesn‘t want to hurt many of the protagonists who are still alive. Her readers, including this one, hope that her life story from 1962 onward would some day get into print. Her books are roadmaps of our time.
Denis Donahue commented that her most famous book. "The Golden Notebook" gained "critical attention by questioning the assumptions of the realism Mrs. Lessing has variously preached, practiced and disavowed. Normally, we think of realism as art that keeps up the pretence of being life. But "The Golden Notebook" issued from Mrs. Lessing‘s intuition, provisional and belated indeed, that realism isn‘t in a privileged relation to nature; it is a convention like any other. Indeed, one of the problems with her new novel is that the scene it tries to evoke has already been lodged in our minds by television programs and newspaper photographs. The book rehearses images long congealed in our memories, and tries to make us imagine afresh what journalists and cameramen have so often delivered. Words are not, however, the most memorable form in which images of mess and riot are projected."
If one called her the grand dame of modern English literature she wouldn‘t like it. She was never part of the establishment - and she only moved to England when she was 30. But she might prefer to be called the gadfly of modern English literature - always provoking. She has always been on the outskirts of officialized literature. Wherever she travels she meets the underprivileged, the outsiders, the repressed. Her visit to Brazil 12 years ago was no different. With tireless energy she visited communities of Indians and other groups dispossessed of their rights between her stints at signing books and giving talks at the auditorium of O Estado de Sao Paulo. She has been in the forefront of human rights movements all over the world .Ever since her early 20s she has been fighting for African independence. In The Golden Notebook one of the characters passes petitions around the table for her lunch guests to sign. No doubt the character was modeled after Doris Lessing herself
Born in Persia, she was raised in what is today Zimbabwe (in those days Southern Rhodesia) Her works on Africa capture the spirit and odours of that continent. In the words of the Sunday Times "She puts it down on paper so that it may become real and tangible to those who have never set foot on African soil. This is perhaps her greatest achievement. "Her novels often center on a free woman-but she rejects the role as a militant in the woman's liberation lib. The Golden Notebook for example, described many female emotions of aggression hostility and resentment and put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed," she commented. The novel, considered by some her best, mirrors the lack of cohesion of modern life, but written in coherent and nakedly honest terms.
In her interview with this writer 12 years ago she spoke about memory - and dreams of doorways and empty rooms - doorways are portals to memory, she said. Dreaming of empty rooms we dream of entering our own egos. The theme of entering in oneself ,understanding oneself through the portals of memory are prevalent in her two biographies. What surprises her is the working of memory - why some incidents are remembered and others are forgotten. She questions our belief that the world owes us a living. Why, she asks do we believe that the world owes us the right to a freer, more honest, more comfortable life, always better?
Without being dialectic she poses questions and gives no answer - just describes her feelings, her grief and joy as a baby in Iran, her parents part of the Empire establishment, her harrowing trip through Russia at the age of 5, when her mother was lost on the train trip and little Doris kept combing her teddy bear's hair over and over again in a desperate effort to keep control of the situation. She provides us with a journey with maps of the growth of her awareness as a child on a poor farm in what was then Southern Rhodesia, the pains of growing up in a wooden shack while her mother tried to keep up pretences with a silver tea set and Liberty curtains, her struggle against the disciplinarians of the white educational system in the colonies. As a teenager at school she was known as: Tigger Tayler, after her first marriage she became Tigger Wisdom (after marrying a colonial named Frank Wisdom and bearing him two children) after her second Tigger Lessing, or Comrade Tigger to the local members of the miniscule Communist Party. One of the leaders of the party was Gottfried Lessing, a brilliant German communist, who later returned to East Germany where he played a certain role in the communist government set up there after World War II. The father of their son Peter, Gottfried later became a diplomat stationed in East Africa where he was killed in an armed rebellion.
Mrs. Lessing describes how the shadow of World War I cast a gloom over the world - and precipitated World War II. In her second part of her autobiography she brings us up to 1962, covering her move to South Africa then to England , still on rations, which had not yet recovered from the rubble of World War II, her visits to the Soviet Union Writers Conference, her acquaintance with the right the left the center, and cultural figures of her time, and her struggles with her mother, who moved back from Africa in a somewhat vain effort to be nearer her daughter. Many of these incidents are narrated in the series "Children of Violence". In the 60s and 70s she wrote a series of space novels then returned to a more traditional form in The Good Terrorist and The Fifth Child, while continuing to write non fictional books about her travels and observations in England, Afghanistan and Africa.
In her 1987 visit to Brazil she commented on some similarities between the country and Zimbabwe. "One of the first things I noticed in Brazil was that the sun sets around six o‘clock in the evening and rises around 6 'o clock in the morning, a full day as in Rhodesia, not like in England where it sets at 4 in the winter and 9 in the summer. The light here reminds me of my childhood in Rhodesia.
In The Golden Notebook she describes one gigolo's method of forcing girls to lose their self-respect, making them feel ashamed and guilty before enslaving them in a prostitution network. "This precise process of breaking someone down is used in prisons everywhere. A lot is known about it now. It is usually done before a conditioning process starts. These psychological methods are also used in the arm which breaks down a recruit to become a good army bloke., Certain cultural and religious groups use similar processes. The South African gigolo in The Four Gated City didn‘t even know he was aware of what he was doing."
Doris Lessing has captured the spirit of her time and the spirit of our time as no other writer has done in recent history. Her readers are grateful.
Previous articles by Sol Biderman:
Brazil Art Review: Raquel Cararo
Brazil Art Review: Guilherme de Faria
Brazilian Art: Rimbaud and the music of colors in Stephen Henriques
Brazilian Art: A tale of 3 Angelicas
Aravena and Aravenism in Chile and Brazil
Sao Paulo Hotel Guide: L‘Hotel
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