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Canopus in Argos #2
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five
The second novel in the Classic series "Canopus in Argos: Archives". A tale of love and the anicent battle between men and woman.
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
36 people are currently reading
1338 people want to read
About the author
Doris Lessing
476 books3,194 followersDoris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.
During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.
In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.
In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.
She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).
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April 7, 2021
The second book in Canopus in Argos, the pentology. In this entire novel there was no mention of Canopus, Puttiora, or Sirius. In fact, I see no reason why this can't stand alone as a soft s-f novel capsule. It reads nothing like Book 1. It reads like the work of a different writer actually.
What new layers will be revealed in the next 3 books? By this point, it is clear that the satire or "speculative" element is rather subtle. The latter half of Book 1 was full of references to earth-like conditions. This non-continuation was far more intimate in scope, with a much closer narrative distance. This novel can be read independently, without acquaintance with the previous world building. No characters are reused. She relegates the cultural critiques to several "Zones" here. We only ever hear about the 3 zones in the title, though most of the book takes place in one of them. The territories are ill-defined, indistinguishable except by the habits and proclivities of their people, along with a few random side effects for transition between them. We are treated to a strange introduction, a marriage of politics. The domestic difficulties result instantly, morphing into a bizarre family melodrama. It is an alien analogue to human marriage in a sense, but it is distinctly human in its sympathies, and obviously feminist in its slant.
The entirety retains a dreamlike atmosphere, an incantatory rhythm, thanks to Lessing's breathless narration. You could call this kind of writing awful if it came from an unknown writer. But written this deliberately, with such exaggerated quirky inefficiency, it could only have been done by a practiced hand. It is pre-modern, exotic, but extremely simple. A translator's vocabulary. A heavy management of emotion goes on in the background, and a delicate descriptive touch graces the stark setting. These things characterized her writing during portions of the first book, but not to the extent you will find here. It reads as slowly as ancient epics, convoluted, sepia-toned, and mawkish.
Marriage has long been a political ceremony in certain human cultures at specific times. The tone of Lessing's version of this is detached, historical, factual. You can read deeply into it, or you can just read it for pleasure. There's a lighter injection than in Shikasta, a more tolerable insanity. It is a clear and ruthless novel, unhelpfully raw, with a medieval flavor, dwelling on serious conversations, people in armor, horses, dry mountains, desert settlements, rough bedroom-floor coupling, a stark division between classes, sweat, anxiety, wind-whipped, hard-tanned faces wearing stern, uptight grimaces. Main characters are king and queen of respective realms, who reconcile, before the twist revealed in the product description tears their relationship apart. It makes for a human drama of dry domesticity. The writing possesses the quality of a translation from an alien language, right? We are supposed to conflate these characters with human beings. You won't last long trying to picture them as anything but that. Yet, there are odd differences - the air in differing regions is not necessarily breathable unless you carry a "shield." Technology is never adequately explained, especially the casual mention of "death rays." Of course, mating between regions is permitted for the sake of political posturing. There is a lot of polygamy, discussion of values, very little religion, minuscule philosophical jabs, almost no economics, trade, commerce, backstory, or greater exploration of themes established in the earlier novel. Why did she leave all this out? I actually wanted more world building. I did get slightly caught up in the queen's thoughts and actions, but I felt teased. My sense of creativity was weaned. My desire for closure was taunted, my heart was not in this claustrophobic staging.
A book about child-rearing, about household troubles, that's what we're left with. A bit disappointing, in my opinion, but surprising, audacious, with enough tidbits of weirdness to keep most people intrigued. Speaking with animals, the brazen queen's behavior, the unpredictable Ben Ata, the unexplainable bullet point next to peoples' names... Helmets which are worn as punishment to take away peoples' ability to look up at sacred mountain peaks? Yeah.
We are often reminded of the chroniclers who have retold this story countless times, turning it into a national legend. War, cultural stuntedness, love, lowest common denominator politics, how gender and class dynamics are built into the language, a few stirring scenes of unaccountable behavior. Meh.
Her deliberately limited vocabulary, her restrained stylistic purview resonate, grate on me, wear me down, but I can't deny that the forceful communication is there. I'm left wondering if this volume was strictly necessary. It certainly contributed little to my understanding of the Canopus universe. However, it struck me as a very authentic account from a skillfully skewed perspective. I think Doris Lessing was a remarkably good writer, who didn't take the easy route, wrote whatever the heck she wanted, broke the mold, then emerged from a literary chrysalis formed into some hybrid artist so brutally hideous and beautiful, so simultaneously confounding as to demand immediate recognition as a revolutionary of belle lettres.
What new layers will be revealed in the next 3 books? By this point, it is clear that the satire or "speculative" element is rather subtle. The latter half of Book 1 was full of references to earth-like conditions. This non-continuation was far more intimate in scope, with a much closer narrative distance. This novel can be read independently, without acquaintance with the previous world building. No characters are reused. She relegates the cultural critiques to several "Zones" here. We only ever hear about the 3 zones in the title, though most of the book takes place in one of them. The territories are ill-defined, indistinguishable except by the habits and proclivities of their people, along with a few random side effects for transition between them. We are treated to a strange introduction, a marriage of politics. The domestic difficulties result instantly, morphing into a bizarre family melodrama. It is an alien analogue to human marriage in a sense, but it is distinctly human in its sympathies, and obviously feminist in its slant.
The entirety retains a dreamlike atmosphere, an incantatory rhythm, thanks to Lessing's breathless narration. You could call this kind of writing awful if it came from an unknown writer. But written this deliberately, with such exaggerated quirky inefficiency, it could only have been done by a practiced hand. It is pre-modern, exotic, but extremely simple. A translator's vocabulary. A heavy management of emotion goes on in the background, and a delicate descriptive touch graces the stark setting. These things characterized her writing during portions of the first book, but not to the extent you will find here. It reads as slowly as ancient epics, convoluted, sepia-toned, and mawkish.
Marriage has long been a political ceremony in certain human cultures at specific times. The tone of Lessing's version of this is detached, historical, factual. You can read deeply into it, or you can just read it for pleasure. There's a lighter injection than in Shikasta, a more tolerable insanity. It is a clear and ruthless novel, unhelpfully raw, with a medieval flavor, dwelling on serious conversations, people in armor, horses, dry mountains, desert settlements, rough bedroom-floor coupling, a stark division between classes, sweat, anxiety, wind-whipped, hard-tanned faces wearing stern, uptight grimaces. Main characters are king and queen of respective realms, who reconcile, before the twist revealed in the product description tears their relationship apart. It makes for a human drama of dry domesticity. The writing possesses the quality of a translation from an alien language, right? We are supposed to conflate these characters with human beings. You won't last long trying to picture them as anything but that. Yet, there are odd differences - the air in differing regions is not necessarily breathable unless you carry a "shield." Technology is never adequately explained, especially the casual mention of "death rays." Of course, mating between regions is permitted for the sake of political posturing. There is a lot of polygamy, discussion of values, very little religion, minuscule philosophical jabs, almost no economics, trade, commerce, backstory, or greater exploration of themes established in the earlier novel. Why did she leave all this out? I actually wanted more world building. I did get slightly caught up in the queen's thoughts and actions, but I felt teased. My sense of creativity was weaned. My desire for closure was taunted, my heart was not in this claustrophobic staging.
A book about child-rearing, about household troubles, that's what we're left with. A bit disappointing, in my opinion, but surprising, audacious, with enough tidbits of weirdness to keep most people intrigued. Speaking with animals, the brazen queen's behavior, the unpredictable Ben Ata, the unexplainable bullet point next to peoples' names... Helmets which are worn as punishment to take away peoples' ability to look up at sacred mountain peaks? Yeah.
We are often reminded of the chroniclers who have retold this story countless times, turning it into a national legend. War, cultural stuntedness, love, lowest common denominator politics, how gender and class dynamics are built into the language, a few stirring scenes of unaccountable behavior. Meh.
Her deliberately limited vocabulary, her restrained stylistic purview resonate, grate on me, wear me down, but I can't deny that the forceful communication is there. I'm left wondering if this volume was strictly necessary. It certainly contributed little to my understanding of the Canopus universe. However, it struck me as a very authentic account from a skillfully skewed perspective. I think Doris Lessing was a remarkably good writer, who didn't take the easy route, wrote whatever the heck she wanted, broke the mold, then emerged from a literary chrysalis formed into some hybrid artist so brutally hideous and beautiful, so simultaneously confounding as to demand immediate recognition as a revolutionary of belle lettres.
March 5, 2023
This is less absurdly ambitious and more readable than its predecessor Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta. The symbolic and interpretive threads tying it to that novel are numerous, but it is very much a standalone story. If on one level, this is a fairly ordinary, somewhat under-developed high fantasy yarn—on another level, it’s a savage exploration of gender, sexual norms and sexual violence, and spiritual and social development.
If on one level, this is the kind of strident, gender-essentialist feminist battle cry that proved such a vital shot in the arm to 1970s literature, but hasn't always aged well—on another level, Lessing's perspective on gender and marriage is many-layered, far from straightforward, and riddled with moments of uncomfortable and disarming honesty. What does it mean to be enlightened? To make a better world, or a happier marriage? And is one possible without the other?
A lovely, thought-provoking, frustrating book. I’m very much looking forward to continuing with The Sirian Experiments.
If on one level, this is the kind of strident, gender-essentialist feminist battle cry that proved such a vital shot in the arm to 1970s literature, but hasn't always aged well—on another level, Lessing's perspective on gender and marriage is many-layered, far from straightforward, and riddled with moments of uncomfortable and disarming honesty. What does it mean to be enlightened? To make a better world, or a happier marriage? And is one possible without the other?
A lovely, thought-provoking, frustrating book. I’m very much looking forward to continuing with The Sirian Experiments.
July 14, 2019
The second in Lessing’s Canopus in Argos space fiction series, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five shifts from the galactic view of human evolution, history, and the eventual chaotic upheaval on Earth (a.k.a. Shikasta) to an on-the-ground account of two regents—Al-Ith, the queen of Zone Three, and Ben Ata, the king of Zone Four—who are ordered by “the Providers” to marry.
As always in Lessing, the melodramatic arc here of the battle of the sexes is driven in, rather repetitively, but to succinct effect; almost like a chamber play, The Marriages… shows readers of the Canopus saga what happens to “humans” who travel outside their Zones; who are forced to acknowledge that they may have been ruling their people ineffectively; and who always seem to long and pine for more—in Al-Ith’s case, it is the longing for whatever Zone Two represents—and yet who are trapped in the script written for them by Providers they cannot name, describe, or even remember.
It is, very much, like a rewriting of the story of Genesis, of wondering how to get back to the garden without recalling what the garden even represents… or if one ever stepped foot in it in the first place. Lacking divine guidance, Al-Ith and Ben Ata descend into the myriad pathologies of being “human” which, in the world of The Marriages… means perpetuating mythologies or reasons for behaviors, deeds, and practices, while, at the same time, being wholly ignorant of their origins. While Al-Ith’s journey into Zone Four to marry the misogynistic and martial Ben Ata forces her to face a Zone unlike her more matriarchal and tranquil one, it also causes her to long for a Zone beyond her own Zone: a very human longing that Lessing describes achingly well, especially when she uses the Chroniclers’ and Memory Keepers’ to outline how stories get translated into visual art, song, and ritual—and also how distant from the original story such representations always are. The prose and the structure here are both very rooted in the Old Testament, but owe just as much to folk tales, philosophy, tribal history, and hybrid ethnographies.
The Marriages… is not as in-your-face or wide in scope as Shikasta, but, from a glance at the blurb for book 3 in the Canopus series, it seems that we are back to the galactic scale from that point forward. As such, it’s interesting to make conjectures about why Lessing feels the need to give us an on-the-ground account of “humans” and the war between Zones (as well as genders) in this second book. To say that humans have and always will long for something larger than themselves, for some cosmology to explain various phenomena, and to attain truth or knowledge (whatever that might mean for them) are, of course, philosophical questions that underpin much of The Marriages…, and yet these are human predicaments that the novel never fully fleshes out.
Some may prefer this book to Shikasta for its more straightforward narrative, its sheer chronology; but that’s where I found it to be the most problematic, after the literal chaos of Shikasta’s structure, and how well that worked for Lessing’s vision of how the world might have been created by alien races as an experiment that goes awry. While The Marriages… humanizes the Providers’ impact by focusing on on those living in and across the Zones, it also reads a bit dated and essentialist in its examinations of gender, marriage, and motherhood. Still, this feels like a stepping stone to book 3, and, after I’ve recovered a bit from this volume (these always take ages to read, for some reason), I certainly plan to see what else Lessing has up her sleeve in these space fictions of hers.
As always in Lessing, the melodramatic arc here of the battle of the sexes is driven in, rather repetitively, but to succinct effect; almost like a chamber play, The Marriages… shows readers of the Canopus saga what happens to “humans” who travel outside their Zones; who are forced to acknowledge that they may have been ruling their people ineffectively; and who always seem to long and pine for more—in Al-Ith’s case, it is the longing for whatever Zone Two represents—and yet who are trapped in the script written for them by Providers they cannot name, describe, or even remember.
It is, very much, like a rewriting of the story of Genesis, of wondering how to get back to the garden without recalling what the garden even represents… or if one ever stepped foot in it in the first place. Lacking divine guidance, Al-Ith and Ben Ata descend into the myriad pathologies of being “human” which, in the world of The Marriages… means perpetuating mythologies or reasons for behaviors, deeds, and practices, while, at the same time, being wholly ignorant of their origins. While Al-Ith’s journey into Zone Four to marry the misogynistic and martial Ben Ata forces her to face a Zone unlike her more matriarchal and tranquil one, it also causes her to long for a Zone beyond her own Zone: a very human longing that Lessing describes achingly well, especially when she uses the Chroniclers’ and Memory Keepers’ to outline how stories get translated into visual art, song, and ritual—and also how distant from the original story such representations always are. The prose and the structure here are both very rooted in the Old Testament, but owe just as much to folk tales, philosophy, tribal history, and hybrid ethnographies.
The Marriages… is not as in-your-face or wide in scope as Shikasta, but, from a glance at the blurb for book 3 in the Canopus series, it seems that we are back to the galactic scale from that point forward. As such, it’s interesting to make conjectures about why Lessing feels the need to give us an on-the-ground account of “humans” and the war between Zones (as well as genders) in this second book. To say that humans have and always will long for something larger than themselves, for some cosmology to explain various phenomena, and to attain truth or knowledge (whatever that might mean for them) are, of course, philosophical questions that underpin much of The Marriages…, and yet these are human predicaments that the novel never fully fleshes out.
Some may prefer this book to Shikasta for its more straightforward narrative, its sheer chronology; but that’s where I found it to be the most problematic, after the literal chaos of Shikasta’s structure, and how well that worked for Lessing’s vision of how the world might have been created by alien races as an experiment that goes awry. While The Marriages… humanizes the Providers’ impact by focusing on on those living in and across the Zones, it also reads a bit dated and essentialist in its examinations of gender, marriage, and motherhood. Still, this feels like a stepping stone to book 3, and, after I’ve recovered a bit from this volume (these always take ages to read, for some reason), I certainly plan to see what else Lessing has up her sleeve in these space fictions of hers.
March 9, 2011
Like Shikasta, this book is also a bit of a mess, but with some brilliant moments. My favorite scene occurs near the beginning. Al·Ith (I don't know how you're supposed to pronounce it either), the proud, independently-minded queen of Zone Three, has somehow been obliged to marry Ben Ata, the coarse, soldierly king of Zone Four. They know nothing about each other. He tries a couple of unsuccessful conversational openings, then, frustrated, pushes her over on her back, holds her down, and efficiently rapes her. This leaves him feeling even more frustrated.
"I love you," he says angrily.
"I need to get hold of a dictionary," she replies.
"I love you," he says angrily.
"I need to get hold of a dictionary," she replies.
January 1, 2013
I re-read The Marriages Between Zones ... over Christmas, and was no less impressed than when I read the book in 1980. The more interesting and gritty character is Ben Ata, representing a static patriarchal zone functioning within a strict structure, initially dramatised as is the way of fables. Ben Ata is both repelling and fascinating to Al Ith, who represents a static matriarchal zone, where intuition, while highly valued, has created a trance of harmony. Destiny (the Providers) call them to engage in a marriage relationship in Ben Ata's zone. The physical togetherness of the couple is pledged by a drumbeat sounding in the atmosphere of the place specially designed as their home in zone four. When the drumbeat stops at intervals, they must part and reflect. The reader too, is allowed to reflect on the gradual changes of perception occurring in both zones.
This is a sensitive exploration of the creative conflict between opposed energies, the receptive intuitive and the active rational, with their specific politics and language.
This conflict wars in each individual human being, irrespective of gender. Though some readers may understand the fable as a gender conflict tale it is much more than that. I read it in a wider sense as showing the dependencies of these energies on each other, for humanity to remain dynamic and alive, these dependencies that are there in order to achieve manifestation as well as the expansion of consciousness.
This is a sensitive exploration of the creative conflict between opposed energies, the receptive intuitive and the active rational, with their specific politics and language.
This conflict wars in each individual human being, irrespective of gender. Though some readers may understand the fable as a gender conflict tale it is much more than that. I read it in a wider sense as showing the dependencies of these energies on each other, for humanity to remain dynamic and alive, these dependencies that are there in order to achieve manifestation as well as the expansion of consciousness.
November 14, 2014
-En Shikasta también es muy popular el enfrentamiento entre el feminismo militante y la misoginia activista. Y el marcador suele terminar igual que aquí-.
Género. Narrativa Fantástica
Lo que nos cuenta. Segundo Libro de la Serie Canopus en Argos: Archivos, en el que los dirigentes del Imperio de Canopus conciertan el matrimonio entre la reina de la zona tres y el rey de la zona cuatro del planeta Shikasta, territorios con idiosincrasias y situaciones diametralmente opuestas.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Narrativa Fantástica
Lo que nos cuenta. Segundo Libro de la Serie Canopus en Argos: Archivos, en el que los dirigentes del Imperio de Canopus conciertan el matrimonio entre la reina de la zona tres y el rey de la zona cuatro del planeta Shikasta, territorios con idiosincrasias y situaciones diametralmente opuestas.
¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
January 31, 2008
I believe The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four, and Five is one of the best books I have read in my entire life.
April 1, 2012
How do you set a novel in the afterlife while avoiding hackneyed formulae derived from spiritism or theology? Jean Paul Sartre gave us a memorable example in his play, No Exit where hell is a hotel with endless rooms. In science fiction, Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld Series presents an engineered afterlife. Many SF writers followed that model, presenting prosaic variations on our world. Closer to Scotland, is Neil Gunn’s Green Isle of the Great, a dystopian Garden of Eden ruled by fascists, with an absent God who only occasionally pops in to see how things are going. Very few writers attempt to include anything like a mystical vision, and for good reason. It’s difficult to do credibly without getting mushy. Mysticism and science fiction have never blended well.
In the Marriages between Zones 3,4, and 5, the second novel in the Canopus in Argos series, Doris Lessing makes such an attempt. Already in Shikasta, she presents the Earth’s spiritual bodies as a series of zones. The dense Zone 6 is the entrance and exit to our world, a place of ghosts and illusions akin to the Tibetan Bardo. Then come Zones 5,4, 3 etc. each a self-contained world with its own rules. Zone 5 is ruled by a warrior woman and is involved in endless wars with Zone 4. Zone 3 is a mountainous pastoral place, but its inhabitants know nothing of what lies outside its borders. They can’t breathe the air in lower Zones. Zone 2 is only a fable. A children’s counting song runs,
“Great to Small
High to Low
Four into Three
Cannot go.”
When Al-Ith, the queen of Zone 3 is told to go and wed the warlike king of Zone 4, the command is for her a death sentence. But, this is the afterlife, and the orders, issued by its mysterious powers, cannot be disobeyed. She leaves her idyllic home to find a bleak land with an ill-mannered King, just as dismayed at the prospect of the marriage. She longs to return, but her way home is blocked. Also, that in Zone 4 she's forbidden to look up at the blue mountains of Zone 3. Transgressors are forced to wear a heavy helmet to stop them from looking up. She soon finds allies in a secret circle of women who sneak out at night and practice looking at the Zone 3 mountains. When she suggests to her husband, Ben Ata that his endless wars never resolve anything, he’s shocked by the novel suggestion. A world without war? Impossible. but he listens to her. He also removes the ban on looking-up. They fall in love, have a child. He learns to appreciate Al-Ith’s more mystical ways, while she learns to love him.
Just when things are going well, a new order is issued. Al-Ith must return to Zone 3, leaving behind even her young boy. Ben Ata must go to Zone 5 to wed its warrior queen. Upon returning to Zone 3, Al-Ith finds that she no longer belongs there. Through her marriage to Ben Ata she has grown in awareness, and can no longer live in the idyllic land whose residents are unbearably superficial. The only place where she finds comfort is the wilderness where she can glimpse Zone 2. It’s an ethereal land of light beyond the borders where no one with a heavy body can enter. Those who do never return. That land soon becomes her destination. If Lessing gives us few details of Zone 2, it’s because it can’t be described using our language. Yet we receive enough hints to know what it is.
The Marriages Between Zones 3,4 and 5 is ultimately a fable. Courageous in that it dares to state, without New Age language or traditional religious imagery, that there’s more to our existence than our physical life on this Earth. In so far as her vision is in the form of an accessible story, it goes where no religious or theological text could take you. This is science fiction at its best.
In the Marriages between Zones 3,4, and 5, the second novel in the Canopus in Argos series, Doris Lessing makes such an attempt. Already in Shikasta, she presents the Earth’s spiritual bodies as a series of zones. The dense Zone 6 is the entrance and exit to our world, a place of ghosts and illusions akin to the Tibetan Bardo. Then come Zones 5,4, 3 etc. each a self-contained world with its own rules. Zone 5 is ruled by a warrior woman and is involved in endless wars with Zone 4. Zone 3 is a mountainous pastoral place, but its inhabitants know nothing of what lies outside its borders. They can’t breathe the air in lower Zones. Zone 2 is only a fable. A children’s counting song runs,
“Great to Small
High to Low
Four into Three
Cannot go.”
When Al-Ith, the queen of Zone 3 is told to go and wed the warlike king of Zone 4, the command is for her a death sentence. But, this is the afterlife, and the orders, issued by its mysterious powers, cannot be disobeyed. She leaves her idyllic home to find a bleak land with an ill-mannered King, just as dismayed at the prospect of the marriage. She longs to return, but her way home is blocked. Also, that in Zone 4 she's forbidden to look up at the blue mountains of Zone 3. Transgressors are forced to wear a heavy helmet to stop them from looking up. She soon finds allies in a secret circle of women who sneak out at night and practice looking at the Zone 3 mountains. When she suggests to her husband, Ben Ata that his endless wars never resolve anything, he’s shocked by the novel suggestion. A world without war? Impossible. but he listens to her. He also removes the ban on looking-up. They fall in love, have a child. He learns to appreciate Al-Ith’s more mystical ways, while she learns to love him.
Just when things are going well, a new order is issued. Al-Ith must return to Zone 3, leaving behind even her young boy. Ben Ata must go to Zone 5 to wed its warrior queen. Upon returning to Zone 3, Al-Ith finds that she no longer belongs there. Through her marriage to Ben Ata she has grown in awareness, and can no longer live in the idyllic land whose residents are unbearably superficial. The only place where she finds comfort is the wilderness where she can glimpse Zone 2. It’s an ethereal land of light beyond the borders where no one with a heavy body can enter. Those who do never return. That land soon becomes her destination. If Lessing gives us few details of Zone 2, it’s because it can’t be described using our language. Yet we receive enough hints to know what it is.
The Marriages Between Zones 3,4 and 5 is ultimately a fable. Courageous in that it dares to state, without New Age language or traditional religious imagery, that there’s more to our existence than our physical life on this Earth. In so far as her vision is in the form of an accessible story, it goes where no religious or theological text could take you. This is science fiction at its best.
October 13, 2024
Absolutely brilliant (if you get the real implications).
Sufi texts have layers and layers of meanings beneath what the average reader thinks they are about. This book is the same, but it surpasses in ambition and complexity any Sufi text I have read before.
If I had any doubts before that Lessing was enlightened (in the Buddhist or Hindu sense of the word) when she started writing this series, now I am 100% sure she was. The metaphors and analogies she uses to talk about reality are very subtle, but oh, so damn clever.
Sufi texts have layers and layers of meanings beneath what the average reader thinks they are about. This book is the same, but it surpasses in ambition and complexity any Sufi text I have read before.
If I had any doubts before that Lessing was enlightened (in the Buddhist or Hindu sense of the word) when she started writing this series, now I am 100% sure she was. The metaphors and analogies she uses to talk about reality are very subtle, but oh, so damn clever.
August 28, 2018
"Kanopus Arşivleri" dizisinden, kadın-erkek ilişkilerine dair ilginç bir kitap. Şikeste'den sonra biraz alakasız gibi görünebilir ama Doris Lessing'in tam anlamıyla bir alegori evreni kurduğunu düşünürsek, istediği konuyu o evrene yedirişine de anlam verebiliriz.
April 24, 2022
Quite unusual, this one. Inexplicable, largely, and in this way (but perhaps only this way) it bears some familiarity or resemblance with Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta, the book which precedes it in the series if not in any clear chronology. Which is perhaps sensible. It would seem as though even the concept of chronologies is quite below the cosmology that Lessing has built for us with this series.
Here we have a story, or history - perhaps? - that tells of how the discrete zones of Three, Four, and Five, shifted dramatically their borders and relationships through a series of two transformative marriages between kings and queens. What it contains, as a result, is an exceptional telling of how relationships, particularly those that are most intimate to us, can produce dramatic changes in how we think, how we behave, what values we hold, and what visions we have for how the world can be. They can be transformative and lead to substantive consequences for ourselves and then also for our world.
We watch this transformation initially in Al*Ith, the wife in the first marriage, and then in Ben Ata, the husband in the first and second, and then once again - though differently and in a very different way - with the second wife Vahshi. But, because this is Lessing and her political thinking is almost always broader than individual relationships, we also watch as the shifts in these kings and queens produce shifts in their realms. These changes come with consequences and new forms of division; in Zone Four it is a movement away from a complete orientation towards war and the consequences this has on the day-to-day lives of its citizens, in Zone Three in it grappling with how the shifts in Al*Ith and then some of the people in her realm are unwanted, undesirable, and are to be guarded against.
In this way the often intimate story of a marriage (or two) becomes the story of relationships between nations, and then of how new relationships can produce new forms of strife. It is a politically mindful telling of consequences and all-too-human responses to them.
Does the science fiction side of all of this succeed? I haven't really got a notion of that, to be fair; and neither did Doris, I suspect. I also doubt that she thought it was really all that consequential. What she is telling here is something more like a fable or a legend, the sort of story that is - tellingly - told by chroniclers and story-tellers from generation to generation around fires and at feasts, or reproduced in murals on the wall of great halls and government builders. It that way is succeeds immensely.
And throughout your are treated to reading Doris Lessing's prose. I don't know if I have said this before, but I'll say it now - I think she was an enigmatic writer who waffled between great successes and great curiosities in her work. In this case, I would place her writing in both categories; but I think that is much of what makes it really great. We watch the inner intimacies of these characters, especially Al*Ith, as they wrestle with responsibility, consequence, changes, sadness, and moments of incredible joy. Surprisingly, I remember portions of this book for how they impacted me emotionally or for how they reflected my own experiences as somebody who has felt like an exile returning home, or who has felt the rapture of romantic love succeeding or the uncertainty of how to make a relationship work through across an immense cultural gap, or even the excitement of a great social change that feels fated but reveals itself to be a catch 22. There is a great deal captured here, and it is captured here wonderfully.
An example, which spoils nothing but reveals something of Lessing's art:
And it continues on.
I would recommend this book, heartily, and moreso than I would recommend Shikasta (which I would also recommend, heartily). It is more relatable in its content and much more recognizable in its form and ideas. It also contains and originality, lightness, and pleasantry of reading that Shikasta rejects. If you're curious to see what Lessing was able to do when she gave up on telling something about reality, this is probably the place is to start.
Here we have a story, or history - perhaps? - that tells of how the discrete zones of Three, Four, and Five, shifted dramatically their borders and relationships through a series of two transformative marriages between kings and queens. What it contains, as a result, is an exceptional telling of how relationships, particularly those that are most intimate to us, can produce dramatic changes in how we think, how we behave, what values we hold, and what visions we have for how the world can be. They can be transformative and lead to substantive consequences for ourselves and then also for our world.
We watch this transformation initially in Al*Ith, the wife in the first marriage, and then in Ben Ata, the husband in the first and second, and then once again - though differently and in a very different way - with the second wife Vahshi. But, because this is Lessing and her political thinking is almost always broader than individual relationships, we also watch as the shifts in these kings and queens produce shifts in their realms. These changes come with consequences and new forms of division; in Zone Four it is a movement away from a complete orientation towards war and the consequences this has on the day-to-day lives of its citizens, in Zone Three in it grappling with how the shifts in Al*Ith and then some of the people in her realm are unwanted, undesirable, and are to be guarded against.
In this way the often intimate story of a marriage (or two) becomes the story of relationships between nations, and then of how new relationships can produce new forms of strife. It is a politically mindful telling of consequences and all-too-human responses to them.
Does the science fiction side of all of this succeed? I haven't really got a notion of that, to be fair; and neither did Doris, I suspect. I also doubt that she thought it was really all that consequential. What she is telling here is something more like a fable or a legend, the sort of story that is - tellingly - told by chroniclers and story-tellers from generation to generation around fires and at feasts, or reproduced in murals on the wall of great halls and government builders. It that way is succeeds immensely.
And throughout your are treated to reading Doris Lessing's prose. I don't know if I have said this before, but I'll say it now - I think she was an enigmatic writer who waffled between great successes and great curiosities in her work. In this case, I would place her writing in both categories; but I think that is much of what makes it really great. We watch the inner intimacies of these characters, especially Al*Ith, as they wrestle with responsibility, consequence, changes, sadness, and moments of incredible joy. Surprisingly, I remember portions of this book for how they impacted me emotionally or for how they reflected my own experiences as somebody who has felt like an exile returning home, or who has felt the rapture of romantic love succeeding or the uncertainty of how to make a relationship work through across an immense cultural gap, or even the excitement of a great social change that feels fated but reveals itself to be a catch 22. There is a great deal captured here, and it is captured here wonderfully.
An example, which spoils nothing but reveals something of Lessing's art:
This so ordinary scene, of people at ease, was nevertheless punishing their poor overwhelmed hearts. Taken detail by detail there was nothing so remarkable: a man telling a small child how to sit well at the table, a women smiling at a man - her husband? If a husband, certainly not like one from Zone Four! - but looked at as a whole, it all seemed suffused with a clear fine pale light that spoke to them of the longing that is the inner substance of certain dreams: it was the knowledge of a bitter exile.
They told themselves that they were looking at - pleasure. This is what they saw. Well-being without purpose or pressure or reproof. But the word pleasure had to be dismissed. Dabeeb said to them that Al*Ith had had this air of ease, at least when she first came to them: this is what had struck her, Dabeeb, at first and immediately: Al*Ith's largeness and freedom of being. But that had not been pleasure, had not been, even, delight: thought what Dabeeb had taken back to her own bare little house from that first meeting with Al*Ith had been an awed, even triumphant, conviction that happiness was possible...
And it continues on.
I would recommend this book, heartily, and moreso than I would recommend Shikasta (which I would also recommend, heartily). It is more relatable in its content and much more recognizable in its form and ideas. It also contains and originality, lightness, and pleasantry of reading that Shikasta rejects. If you're curious to see what Lessing was able to do when she gave up on telling something about reality, this is probably the place is to start.
December 31, 2015
My feeling about this book is that Ursula Le Guin would have done it better, because she’s a real science-fiction writer and so understands that science fiction is not simply about letting your imagination run free. Ok, so in a way it is: despite the genre’s name, you can make up any sort of futuristic anything you would like without having to base it in science at all. But the flow always has to be from the invention — an new technology, a new society, whatever — to the story. That’s why the genre is sometimes referred to as “speculative fiction”: you speculate about something, and then write a story to help answer the resulting questions. However, in “The Marriages”, Lessing works exactly backwards: she starts with a story and then uses the science-fictional elements to force it to work. She needs to have a pacifist society exiting side-by-side with a militaristic one without the latter conquering the former? Fine, make it so that the people from one society can’t breathe the air of the other (except they can apparently adapt to it, which doesn’t really make sense, and sometimes it seems like she just forgets entirely about this restriction). However, she needs the ruler of the pacifist society (Zone Three) to marry the ruler of the militaristic one (Zone Four), so she creates a set of vague entities with God-like powers called the Providers who can issue commands directly to the brains of the inhabitants of the Zones. And to ensure that the rulers are not inclined to rebel against the command that they marry, it turns out that some unidentified malaise is affecting the people and animals of both Zones, one which is mysteriously resolved by this marriage. None of these elements are motivated in the least: Lessing just uses them as conveniences to overcome problems with her story, which weakens it considerably. Other science-fictional story elements are just under-conceptualized: Al-Ith, the ruler of Zone Three, is said to be in some way connected to the whole Zone, or representative of the Zone, but it’s not clear how this works or what it means, nor is it explained why Ben Ata, the ruler of Zone Four, has no similar connection. Also, nobody in the book really seems to age (except children) — indeed, you get the impression that Al-Ith was some sort of eternal ruler — which is never really explained or confronted. And the energy beings or whatever who inhabit Zone Two are basically tossed off and then left hanging, with no explanation of how it is that the mostly ordinary people who live in Zone Three could become such a being (as some of them apparently do). All in all, Lessing would’ve done better to avoid science fiction, as she’s not very good at it.
One could imagine the book overcoming these handicaps, but the fact is that the central story just isn’t that interesting. Basically Al-Ith uses her civilizing influence to convert the barbarian Ben Ata into an enlightened king, which is apparently the only way that Zone Four can hope to escape the poverty it has been reduced to by its almost total militarization. (Le Guin would have done a better job with the politics of this book as well as its science fiction.) Supposedly this marriage has benefits for Al-Ith (and Zone Three, because of the mysterious affliction mentioned above) as well: I won’t spoil the story by revealing them except to say that they seem pretty questionable to me. To be fair, Al-Ith and Ben Ata are decent characters, though basically exactly as you would expect them to be, and their interactions are well done. Plus, Lessing gets in some good shots at the smug self-satisfaction of many of the inhabitants of Zone Three. Still, the story contains zero surprises, except that it’s surprising how little it contains that’s at all new, and the way that Lessing tries to shoehorn Zone Five in at the end is just kind of silly. “The Marriages” strikes me as more of a late-career folly than anything else. Read Le Guin instead: “The Eye of the Heron”, “The Dispossessed”, “The Telling”, and “Four Ways to Forgiveness” all do something similar to what Lessing is trying for here, only much better.
One could imagine the book overcoming these handicaps, but the fact is that the central story just isn’t that interesting. Basically Al-Ith uses her civilizing influence to convert the barbarian Ben Ata into an enlightened king, which is apparently the only way that Zone Four can hope to escape the poverty it has been reduced to by its almost total militarization. (Le Guin would have done a better job with the politics of this book as well as its science fiction.) Supposedly this marriage has benefits for Al-Ith (and Zone Three, because of the mysterious affliction mentioned above) as well: I won’t spoil the story by revealing them except to say that they seem pretty questionable to me. To be fair, Al-Ith and Ben Ata are decent characters, though basically exactly as you would expect them to be, and their interactions are well done. Plus, Lessing gets in some good shots at the smug self-satisfaction of many of the inhabitants of Zone Three. Still, the story contains zero surprises, except that it’s surprising how little it contains that’s at all new, and the way that Lessing tries to shoehorn Zone Five in at the end is just kind of silly. “The Marriages” strikes me as more of a late-career folly than anything else. Read Le Guin instead: “The Eye of the Heron”, “The Dispossessed”, “The Telling”, and “Four Ways to Forgiveness” all do something similar to what Lessing is trying for here, only much better.
December 2, 2014
The first volume Shikasta was an alternative history of Earth and a more general contemplation on 'good' and 'bad'. This second volume is more specific. The focus is on 'men' and 'women'. While in Shikasta, different civilizations incorporated the extremes, these extremes - if you can call genders extremes - are represented this time by different zones presumably of Shikasta although the name is never mentioned in this book.
Marriages is not so much space fiction anymore. Canopus is only addressed a few times in the form of 'providers' giving directions. Instead, on the outside it's a fantasy love story. The queen of zone 3, Al-Ith, and the king of zone 4, Ben Ata, are ordered by the providers to marry. When they are together drums are beating. From time to time these stop, ordering them to split apart which at first they do happily while later on they suffer. Finally, they split and Ben Ata is ordered to marry a chieftain of a warrior tribe from zone 5.
Each zone embodies traits commonly considered male or female. Zone 3 represents compassion, peacefulness, arts. Zone 4 is militaristic, strong, orderly, dutiful. To complete the picture, there's the barbarian zone 5. From the former volume we know that zone 6 is the netherworld, the place of souls waiting for another incarnation or lost souls. Zone 2 is introduced as a higher place, advanced characters like Al-Ith are yearning to get there.
Bringing together the individuals from the different zones at first seems to cripple the special skills of each individual while it' actually raising them to a higher level of understanding. Before they weren't a whole, only together they form an entity.
While I really liked Shikasta, I struggled through this volume. Too much preaching the message of love and diversity, too much political correctness, too much feminism. I also didn't like the fantasy background used here.
Marriages is not so much space fiction anymore. Canopus is only addressed a few times in the form of 'providers' giving directions. Instead, on the outside it's a fantasy love story. The queen of zone 3, Al-Ith, and the king of zone 4, Ben Ata, are ordered by the providers to marry. When they are together drums are beating. From time to time these stop, ordering them to split apart which at first they do happily while later on they suffer. Finally, they split and Ben Ata is ordered to marry a chieftain of a warrior tribe from zone 5.
Each zone embodies traits commonly considered male or female. Zone 3 represents compassion, peacefulness, arts. Zone 4 is militaristic, strong, orderly, dutiful. To complete the picture, there's the barbarian zone 5. From the former volume we know that zone 6 is the netherworld, the place of souls waiting for another incarnation or lost souls. Zone 2 is introduced as a higher place, advanced characters like Al-Ith are yearning to get there.
Bringing together the individuals from the different zones at first seems to cripple the special skills of each individual while it' actually raising them to a higher level of understanding. Before they weren't a whole, only together they form an entity.
While I really liked Shikasta, I struggled through this volume. Too much preaching the message of love and diversity, too much political correctness, too much feminism. I also didn't like the fantasy background used here.
June 19, 2008
I loved the Canopus in Argos series. All the parts complemented each other, and although externally the books seemed unrelated, at the end, when you've read the last page of the last book, the pattern emerges loud and clear - Wake up humans, you are destroying your planet and your life.
March 22, 2017
The first book in Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives series, Shikasta, is unimpressive upon reading, but impresses upon reflection. Lessing puts a thoughtful and intriguing spin on our understanding of humankind's origins. The second volume, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five is unimpressive upon reading and almost impossible to reflect upon with interest. The bellicose inhabitants of Zone Five are unsophisticated, 'masculine' and heavy. The arty inhabitants of Zone Four are loving in an all-inclusive creepy way, 'feminine' and smug. So let's marry the dopey queen of Zone Four to the blustering king of Zone Five and see what happens. Galadriel sets about doing good works, and thinking maybe she should toughen-up a bit. Sauron gets all confused by his feelings. End of story.
January 10, 2021
Què passa quan en un món dividit per zones, totalment aïllades, s'obliga a dos reis d'aquestes zones diferents a casar-se? És una novel·la amb uns personatges molt ben construïts, que reflecteixen molt bé la societat del lloc on viuen. El problema és que està escrit com si fos una narració oral i això fa que l'acció a vegades es desenvolupi molt a poc a poc i d'altres molt ràpidament. Li anava a posar un 3, però el final que és una oda a la globalització m'ha semblat una meravella.
October 10, 2019
Warning: Spoilers
This is the second novel in Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives series, and for me the most moving of the five books. Lessing said she wrote it quickly because it came from a deep place she had been trying to reach for some time. You don't need to know the rest of the series to appreciate this fable-like story of basic human drives, but I think it helps to know about the Zones the characters live in. Lessing's alternate earth, called Shikasta, (also the title of the first book in the series - I have a review of Shikasta on my blog at https://www.scifimind.com/doris-lessi...) is surrounded by six mysterious zones. They seem to present life in different stages of spiritual development and type of civilization.
There is a necessity that seems to rule this universe, and its messages arrive through an awareness people feel that something must change. Such a message arrives in this psychic manner to the Queen of Zone 3, a peaceful world where the women rulers are closely attuned to the inner lives of all their subjects. She must marry the king of Zone 4. That is a male dominated militaristic society where women must draw strength from their secret rituals and songs. The marriage forces both rulers to change radically.
The man is drawn into the deeper physical and mental life of the Queen and forced to see the emptiness of the strangely ineffective militarism of his world. The Queen is initiated into the secret rituals the women of this society rely on for their own strength. But the relationship they have reluctantly come to accept is broken when the “message” is received that the ruler of Zone 4 must now marry the queen from Zone 5, a world of tribal warfare where a wild warrior has asserted her dominance over rivals.
The Queen of Zone 3 returns to her world only to find that her place has been taken and that she no longer has the psychic bond with her people that once guided her life. She journeys to the border of Zone 2, which seems to be a more ethereal world, but she cannot enter. Lessing captures the sense of longing for a different kind of fulfillment, one which the woman herself can neither articulate nor achieve. This is a gripping story of inner change and awakening at a level of basic human longing. Lessing brings this fantasy/scifi world to life as she always does by vividly evoking the deepest needs of her characters.
This is the second novel in Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives series, and for me the most moving of the five books. Lessing said she wrote it quickly because it came from a deep place she had been trying to reach for some time. You don't need to know the rest of the series to appreciate this fable-like story of basic human drives, but I think it helps to know about the Zones the characters live in. Lessing's alternate earth, called Shikasta, (also the title of the first book in the series - I have a review of Shikasta on my blog at https://www.scifimind.com/doris-lessi...) is surrounded by six mysterious zones. They seem to present life in different stages of spiritual development and type of civilization.
There is a necessity that seems to rule this universe, and its messages arrive through an awareness people feel that something must change. Such a message arrives in this psychic manner to the Queen of Zone 3, a peaceful world where the women rulers are closely attuned to the inner lives of all their subjects. She must marry the king of Zone 4. That is a male dominated militaristic society where women must draw strength from their secret rituals and songs. The marriage forces both rulers to change radically.
The man is drawn into the deeper physical and mental life of the Queen and forced to see the emptiness of the strangely ineffective militarism of his world. The Queen is initiated into the secret rituals the women of this society rely on for their own strength. But the relationship they have reluctantly come to accept is broken when the “message” is received that the ruler of Zone 4 must now marry the queen from Zone 5, a world of tribal warfare where a wild warrior has asserted her dominance over rivals.
The Queen of Zone 3 returns to her world only to find that her place has been taken and that she no longer has the psychic bond with her people that once guided her life. She journeys to the border of Zone 2, which seems to be a more ethereal world, but she cannot enter. Lessing captures the sense of longing for a different kind of fulfillment, one which the woman herself can neither articulate nor achieve. This is a gripping story of inner change and awakening at a level of basic human longing. Lessing brings this fantasy/scifi world to life as she always does by vividly evoking the deepest needs of her characters.
September 14, 2016
I really, really wanted to give Canopus on Argos another chance. After reading Shikasta, I was disappointed, but at the same time strangely interested. Overall the book didn't work that well, but there were certain aspects that resonated with me anyway. However, after this book, I think I can put this series to a rest for now.
This book repeats a pattern I have already described with Shikasta, that is, wrapping some high level message which I agree with (This time it is "Always aspire to greatness, even if you think you're already great.") with some kind of story that is not actually that great. So let's put the high level message aside, and look at the story, shall we?
I would like you to first read and think about this quote (it's not from this book):
"You should be proud of yourself for how much I changed you!"
This quote brilliantly exploits the cliché seen in so many "teen dramas with "strong female characters"" (Yes, that is a double quote. Yes, it is amazing.) - the heroine drags the male interest from intellectual void into enlightenment with her exquisite arguments and wit. (I have no idea whether this was a cliché back in 1980, but I'll assume at least a little.)
This brings up a question: Why should she? Well, she loves him. Of course she loves him.
The problem is, this isn't the typical "love on the first sight romance". When AlIth and Ben Ata first meet, they both despise each other. But for some miraculous reason, after he beats her and rapes her a few times, they fall in love so deep you would have to send a submarine down there to find out why. And since I don't have a submarine, I shall remain forever clueless.
To simplify: Think Daenerys Targaryan and Khal Drogo. But instead of a gradual, painful transformation from an abusive relationship to mutual respect, they just have sex a lot and then sit in silence until it clicks.
Ok, so it's one of those stories. So what?
Well, what bugs me is that this is somehow perceived as feministic. Because AlIth is a strong independent woman that can take a beating but still love her man, right?! Ok, that got dark fast.
Yes, these situations do exist and they deserve to be written about. But not like this.
Also: What the f*** was that thing about mothers wanting to f*** their children?! Is that a thing?!
Verdict: The genitals, Ben Ata supposed, were his own, he recognized them
This book repeats a pattern I have already described with Shikasta, that is, wrapping some high level message which I agree with (This time it is "Always aspire to greatness, even if you think you're already great.") with some kind of story that is not actually that great. So let's put the high level message aside, and look at the story, shall we?
I would like you to first read and think about this quote (it's not from this book):
"You should be proud of yourself for how much I changed you!"
This quote brilliantly exploits the cliché seen in so many "teen dramas with "strong female characters"" (Yes, that is a double quote. Yes, it is amazing.) - the heroine drags the male interest from intellectual void into enlightenment with her exquisite arguments and wit. (I have no idea whether this was a cliché back in 1980, but I'll assume at least a little.)
This brings up a question: Why should she? Well, she loves him. Of course she loves him.
The problem is, this isn't the typical "love on the first sight romance". When AlIth and Ben Ata first meet, they both despise each other. But for some miraculous reason, after he beats her and rapes her a few times, they fall in love so deep you would have to send a submarine down there to find out why. And since I don't have a submarine, I shall remain forever clueless.
To simplify: Think Daenerys Targaryan and Khal Drogo. But instead of a gradual, painful transformation from an abusive relationship to mutual respect, they just have sex a lot and then sit in silence until it clicks.
Ok, so it's one of those stories. So what?
Well, what bugs me is that this is somehow perceived as feministic. Because AlIth is a strong independent woman that can take a beating but still love her man, right?! Ok, that got dark fast.
Yes, these situations do exist and they deserve to be written about. But not like this.
Also: What the f*** was that thing about mothers wanting to f*** their children?! Is that a thing?!
Verdict: The genitals, Ben Ata supposed, were his own, he recognized them
July 23, 2023
In this novel, Lessing seemed to be working out themes to which she would later return, in a different way, in the much later novels Mara and Dann (1999) and The Cleft (2007). The return is not repetitive and The Marriages makes for a fine precursor.
There is also something incredibly intriguing about this fictional world's aesthetic. I feel that there is a sense of a strange connection to Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, which came out the very same year, and whose fictional setting similarly mixes elements reminiscent of the Bronze Age, the Middle Ages, and unknown technology. If in Wolfe, the reader emerges from a deep confusion into seeing the past returned in a far-future world, in Lessing, the direction is reversed.
The worlds of Al-Ith (there should be a dot between the two parts of the name), the queen of Zone Three and Ben Ata, who rules Zone Four, develop in a deep past, as if in our reality's gestational period, where possible trajectories of societal development are tested, almost but not quite as if in a lab. Al-Ith's world is one of natural abundance and beauty, and her people live in a social organization that can be described as predominantly matriarchal, but perhaps also indifferent to stronger passions and bonds, organized around "getting along" with everyone without too-deep engagements. Ben Ata's Zone, on the other hand, contains deserts and real threats of destitution and scarcity, and more extreme contrasts between the bonds that are possible between those you hold dear and strangers. It is men who organize society there and women are subordinated to them, keeping their cultural impact oblique or even clandestine. It is a kind of patriarchy reminiscent of ancient Greece.
When the two monarchs are summoned to marry by the mysterious Providers who rule reality itself, their two realms are in a state of imbalance difficult to describe and quantify: people and animals struggle to reproduce and both Zones seem at risk of a quiet collapse.
In her introduction to the first volume among the Canopus in Argos novels, Lessing describes the cycle as driven by a desire to inform her science fiction with an Old Testament spirit -- and indeed, both novels seem haunted by an unknowable deity exerting a powerful will. Here it bears the name of The Providers and takes the form of drumbeat and messages that arrive in people's thoughts and dreams as signs and supposed summons. It's a fascinating device -- a play upon deus ex machina that puts the reader in a space of agnosticism and doubt about the source and purpose of deep beliefs, as they often come to be enmeshed in various power schemes.
Five years later, in Always Coming Home, Ursula Le Guin would juxtapose utopia with a proposed "cold utopia" that replaces unmitigated drive toward progress with Taoist balance. Lessing is even more skeptical of utopian ideas, positing that what on the surface may appear to be balance, might in fact be complacency (a quality with which the culture of Zone Three seems suffused) or resignation (that characterizes the women of Zone Four ). Knowledge is not simply positive or negative, and it leads into the unknown, the heretofore not imaginable but suddenly desirable.
What do the Zones gain from the marriage, then? The answer will depend on how we may weigh the value of understanding -- or the price of it. As I read on, I was reminded of Jane Hirshfield's introduction to the poems of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba:
This is what happens in both Zones in the course of the novel: a long arc of disillusionment that arrives through, first, the two monarchs, then, through small groups of interested people as they try to understand the other Zone, the other way of living and conceiving of reality and its necessary and not-so necessary constraints.
The reader comes to share in this growing disillusionment and elusive understanding through the work of the chronicler, who is the novel's narrator:
To the difficulty of the chronicling in pursuit of truth against the limitations of one's knowledge and imagination Lessing will return in The Cleft. The uncomfortable truths -- not inevitabilities but highly likely (if unfortunate) outcomes that are difficult to avoid on a societal level -- will figure powerfully in the story of Mara and Dann. These themes are like streams digging into the rock of preferred assumptions and beliefs -- they often bring the kind of knowledge about which the chronicler from Zone Three warns that we may choose to look away from it.
In the two Canopus novels I've read so far, and in the two later novels I've kept returning to in this review, I had a sense of a pursuit of the kind of knowledge Elizabeth Bishop writes about in the poem "At the Fishhouses":
Lessing's treatment of these complex topics increasingly amazes me. Does a storyteller not fare better if she chooses to tell a story she knows others might want to hear? But Lessing prefers ambiguity, questionable gains, and real, deeply felt losses. And I keep reading, hoping to get to more of this philosophical sci-fi cycle and worried that I won't be able to. Shikasta I got in what looks like a new re-edition from Vintage, but The Marriages I was only able to find used. The deeper into Canopus in Argos, the more difficult it is to find the volumes.
Lessing is not a novelist for a didactic age, and it often seems to me that we're getting deeper into such a period. Her novels are not a "This I believe" exposition but rather an examination that tries to tease out the blind spots of ideals, assumptions, and driving forces.
I hope that the rest of the Canopus cycle gets a re-release.
There is also something incredibly intriguing about this fictional world's aesthetic. I feel that there is a sense of a strange connection to Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, which came out the very same year, and whose fictional setting similarly mixes elements reminiscent of the Bronze Age, the Middle Ages, and unknown technology. If in Wolfe, the reader emerges from a deep confusion into seeing the past returned in a far-future world, in Lessing, the direction is reversed.
The worlds of Al-Ith (there should be a dot between the two parts of the name), the queen of Zone Three and Ben Ata, who rules Zone Four, develop in a deep past, as if in our reality's gestational period, where possible trajectories of societal development are tested, almost but not quite as if in a lab. Al-Ith's world is one of natural abundance and beauty, and her people live in a social organization that can be described as predominantly matriarchal, but perhaps also indifferent to stronger passions and bonds, organized around "getting along" with everyone without too-deep engagements. Ben Ata's Zone, on the other hand, contains deserts and real threats of destitution and scarcity, and more extreme contrasts between the bonds that are possible between those you hold dear and strangers. It is men who organize society there and women are subordinated to them, keeping their cultural impact oblique or even clandestine. It is a kind of patriarchy reminiscent of ancient Greece.
When the two monarchs are summoned to marry by the mysterious Providers who rule reality itself, their two realms are in a state of imbalance difficult to describe and quantify: people and animals struggle to reproduce and both Zones seem at risk of a quiet collapse.
In her introduction to the first volume among the Canopus in Argos novels, Lessing describes the cycle as driven by a desire to inform her science fiction with an Old Testament spirit -- and indeed, both novels seem haunted by an unknowable deity exerting a powerful will. Here it bears the name of The Providers and takes the form of drumbeat and messages that arrive in people's thoughts and dreams as signs and supposed summons. It's a fascinating device -- a play upon deus ex machina that puts the reader in a space of agnosticism and doubt about the source and purpose of deep beliefs, as they often come to be enmeshed in various power schemes.
Five years later, in Always Coming Home, Ursula Le Guin would juxtapose utopia with a proposed "cold utopia" that replaces unmitigated drive toward progress with Taoist balance. Lessing is even more skeptical of utopian ideas, positing that what on the surface may appear to be balance, might in fact be complacency (a quality with which the culture of Zone Three seems suffused) or resignation (that characterizes the women of Zone Four ). Knowledge is not simply positive or negative, and it leads into the unknown, the heretofore not imaginable but suddenly desirable.
What do the Zones gain from the marriage, then? The answer will depend on how we may weigh the value of understanding -- or the price of it. As I read on, I was reminded of Jane Hirshfield's introduction to the poems of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba:
We also see in this story [i.e. the Biblical account of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon] that wisdom is not given but taken, that it is obtainable only by the breaking of a taboo, and that the price of knowledge is the end of virginity and innocence.
This is what happens in both Zones in the course of the novel: a long arc of disillusionment that arrives through, first, the two monarchs, then, through small groups of interested people as they try to understand the other Zone, the other way of living and conceiving of reality and its necessary and not-so necessary constraints.
The reader comes to share in this growing disillusionment and elusive understanding through the work of the chronicler, who is the novel's narrator:
We Chroniclers do well to be afraid when we approach those parts of our histories (or natures) that deal with evil, the depraved, the benighted. Describing, we become. We even--and I've seen it and have shuddered--summon. The most innocent of poets can write of ugliness and forces he has done no more than speculate about--and bring them into his life. (...) Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: without this sting of otherness, of--even--the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness: the ordinary, the decent--these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth from their shadow sides. (...) I rely on us all knowing what the extremes of poverty and deprivation breed: always meanness and spitefulness and cruelty and threadbareness of spirit... except for the few in whom poverty flowers in giving and compassion.
To the difficulty of the chronicling in pursuit of truth against the limitations of one's knowledge and imagination Lessing will return in The Cleft. The uncomfortable truths -- not inevitabilities but highly likely (if unfortunate) outcomes that are difficult to avoid on a societal level -- will figure powerfully in the story of Mara and Dann. These themes are like streams digging into the rock of preferred assumptions and beliefs -- they often bring the kind of knowledge about which the chronicler from Zone Three warns that we may choose to look away from it.
In the two Canopus novels I've read so far, and in the two later novels I've kept returning to in this review, I had a sense of a pursuit of the kind of knowledge Elizabeth Bishop writes about in the poem "At the Fishhouses":
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
Lessing's treatment of these complex topics increasingly amazes me. Does a storyteller not fare better if she chooses to tell a story she knows others might want to hear? But Lessing prefers ambiguity, questionable gains, and real, deeply felt losses. And I keep reading, hoping to get to more of this philosophical sci-fi cycle and worried that I won't be able to. Shikasta I got in what looks like a new re-edition from Vintage, but The Marriages I was only able to find used. The deeper into Canopus in Argos, the more difficult it is to find the volumes.
Lessing is not a novelist for a didactic age, and it often seems to me that we're getting deeper into such a period. Her novels are not a "This I believe" exposition but rather an examination that tries to tease out the blind spots of ideals, assumptions, and driving forces.
I hope that the rest of the Canopus cycle gets a re-release.
October 3, 2011
The idea that human civilisation be divided in accordance with stages of "spiritual" evolution is fascinating, and I could really sense the longing of each "Zone" for the learning and beauty of the next higher one. In a way, this resembles the religious devotee's longing for heaven, or God, or Brahman, the scientist's longing for Answers. And most of us have experienced this desperate urge to reach out to that which is "higher" than us.
I picked this book because I did enjoy Shikasta, no matter that it meandered in parts - I've got to say, The Marriages... meanders far further than Shikasta ever did. The plot in itself is extremely interesting, and I expect it to fuel much imagining and philosophising on my part. But it could've been much shorter without losing any of its beauty and truth. As it were, descriptions of several scenes (including Al-Ith and Ben Ata's lovemaking!) had me yawning.
Nevertheless, one identifies with the characters, feels the pain and longing of Al-Ith and the confusion and self-doubt of Ben Ata. Jealousy, rage, lust, sadness, fear of loss - all thrown into sharp relief in this study of what humans are like, and what vast potential they contain to be both better and worse than they are.
I picked this book because I did enjoy Shikasta, no matter that it meandered in parts - I've got to say, The Marriages... meanders far further than Shikasta ever did. The plot in itself is extremely interesting, and I expect it to fuel much imagining and philosophising on my part. But it could've been much shorter without losing any of its beauty and truth. As it were, descriptions of several scenes (including Al-Ith and Ben Ata's lovemaking!) had me yawning.
Nevertheless, one identifies with the characters, feels the pain and longing of Al-Ith and the confusion and self-doubt of Ben Ata. Jealousy, rage, lust, sadness, fear of loss - all thrown into sharp relief in this study of what humans are like, and what vast potential they contain to be both better and worse than they are.
January 1, 2023
This is my first book from Doris Lessing and my first time reading a novel that is not chaptered. It is quite refreshing to be captivated by a book because of how it is written. I am quite familiar with the writing styles of my favorite writers but this is illuminating and distinct. I didn't even know that this is a part of a series because it feels like a standalone.
Overall, this is done just right. It certainly is a food for thought.
June 7, 2020
After the first one, I was expecting a bit more. Nevertheless it was a great and sad study of human relations and bridges of class and gender.
April 17, 2015
boy, they just don't write 'em like that any more.
well, but of course they do.
still, we are talking about Doris Lessing here.
i recently was reminded of this series. i'd read them when they first came out. of all of them i remember finding this one the most accessible, the story most appealing. i am re-reading them one by one and shall report... but now, this one.
how is it she could set up such obvious stereotypes and still make them breathe? the brutish lout of a husband, the wife a victim with such delicate (well, comparatively) sensibilities. normally my eyes would not stop spinning in my skull. but Lessing makes them breathe. you can sit right down next to them and feel their inner struggles, their conflicts with what they have been taught by their societies in contrast to the evidence before them.
none of us can, as adults, ever really learn anything but the hard way. and Lessing doesn't give anybody in the book an easy way out.
it's not a perfect book. the limitations Lessing sets up in the disparate cultures she describes hamstring the book in the end--there's really only two ways for it to go, so no surprises there. the deus of the "Providers" and their ordering about are horribly convenient.
but in this book, it's not really the cultures or the larger schemes or the events that happen in the world that matter--it's the events that happen in Al Ith, and Ben Ata, and between the two of them that do. and those are just quite perfectly drawn.
well, but of course they do.
still, we are talking about Doris Lessing here.
i recently was reminded of this series. i'd read them when they first came out. of all of them i remember finding this one the most accessible, the story most appealing. i am re-reading them one by one and shall report... but now, this one.
how is it she could set up such obvious stereotypes and still make them breathe? the brutish lout of a husband, the wife a victim with such delicate (well, comparatively) sensibilities. normally my eyes would not stop spinning in my skull. but Lessing makes them breathe. you can sit right down next to them and feel their inner struggles, their conflicts with what they have been taught by their societies in contrast to the evidence before them.
none of us can, as adults, ever really learn anything but the hard way. and Lessing doesn't give anybody in the book an easy way out.
it's not a perfect book. the limitations Lessing sets up in the disparate cultures she describes hamstring the book in the end--there's really only two ways for it to go, so no surprises there. the deus of the "Providers" and their ordering about are horribly convenient.
but in this book, it's not really the cultures or the larger schemes or the events that happen in the world that matter--it's the events that happen in Al Ith, and Ben Ata, and between the two of them that do. and those are just quite perfectly drawn.
Want to read
October 14, 2007One of a dozen or so books by recent Nobel literature prizewinner Doris Lessing. I WANT TO READ THIS ONE, ESPECIALLY SHORT STORY "THE FIFTH CHILD" (paperback) AND "THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK."
Quoting NY TIMES' reporters Motoko Rich & Sarah Lyall:
"Ms. Lessing’s strongest legacy may be that she inspired a generation of feminists with her breakthrough novel, “The Golden Notebook.” In its citation, the Swedish Academy said: “The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.”
Ms. Lessing wrote candidly about the inner lives of women and rejected the notion that they should limit their lives to marriage and children. “The Golden Notebook,” published in 1962, tracked the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wanted to live freely and was, in some ways, Ms. Lessing’s alter ego.
Because she frankly described anger and aggression in women, she was attacked as “unfeminine.” In response Ms. Lessing wrote, “Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.”
Quoting NY TIMES' reporters Motoko Rich & Sarah Lyall:
"Ms. Lessing’s strongest legacy may be that she inspired a generation of feminists with her breakthrough novel, “The Golden Notebook.” In its citation, the Swedish Academy said: “The burgeoning feminist movement saw it as a pioneering work, and it belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.”
Ms. Lessing wrote candidly about the inner lives of women and rejected the notion that they should limit their lives to marriage and children. “The Golden Notebook,” published in 1962, tracked the story of Anna Wulf, a woman who wanted to live freely and was, in some ways, Ms. Lessing’s alter ego.
Because she frankly described anger and aggression in women, she was attacked as “unfeminine.” In response Ms. Lessing wrote, “Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.”
December 28, 2017
I read this book slowly, having pauses, because there is a lot of description of stagnation or waiting, of not knowing how to proceed, and it felt so very close to my own situation in life, and was thus almost painful to read. Luckily, my situation was just professional hesitations, not fulfilling a destiny determined by a super deity/force- what ever the Providers are. It's been a while from the first book, and I just remember it was awesome. This book is slow, we participate into to relentless, tedious change of the characters. It is well written,and has one can find correlations in societies existing today. I'm curious how this cosmology continues. This book was good, not great, but and excellent account of the psychological movements of the mind.
July 8, 2011
A little too gender-normative, but interesting nonetheless. An exploration in prose of the limits of absolute femininity and masculinity and the intersections between these idealized, romanticized and poetic realms. Lessing is a fantastic writer, but the absolute nature of her genders - here rather essentialist for sake of argument - was a bit frustrating. Lessing advocates a social meld between masculine and feminine tendencies for a perfect, harmonious society, but whether she wishes this to be on a societal or individual level is unclear. The book suggests these fluctuations happen only on on a social level, leaving men and women stuck in their gender roles.
March 29, 2021
Beautiful
A deep moving allegory.
Manages to evoke that eerie feeling of important things forgotten, states of being just out of reach, denied. And you have to ask ... why? An important second part to the series. And beautifully written.
Once again - in the series - the ebook is published with around the last 50% of it stuffed with promos and excerpts. Which is very annoying.
A deep moving allegory.
Manages to evoke that eerie feeling of important things forgotten, states of being just out of reach, denied. And you have to ask ... why? An important second part to the series. And beautifully written.
Once again - in the series - the ebook is published with around the last 50% of it stuffed with promos and excerpts. Which is very annoying.
August 21, 2022
I cried over this book. I haven’t read something so moving in years. Hard science fiction this is not. It’s more of a fable of humans coming to terms with hard choices that destiny makes for you. Executed in light, masterful strokes, Lessing shows great restraint in her world-building, so as not to overpower the drum of hearts at the core of the story. The writing is gorgeous. There’s a gem of a sentence on every page in the last quarter of the book. Psychological, deep, spiritual.
November 21, 2014
more fantasy than the sci-fi i was expecting. there were certainly well-handled moments that made me feel insight into & compassion for the characters, but these were inevitably countered by moments of gender essentialism or just plain wtf??-ness.
July 22, 2017
A meandering and sometime confusing tale of a marriage arranged by a mysterious overseer between the queen of a peaceful zone and the king of a warlike zone. Well written and entertaining but defied logic at times.
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