What do you think?
Rate this book
Nobel ödüllü yazar Doris Lessing'in (1919-2013) iki ciltlik otobiyografisinin ilk cildi Tenimin Altında, yazarın İran'daki bir İngiliz ailesinin kızı olarak doğumu, Güney Rodezya'ya gidişi ve oradaki hayatını konu alarak yaşamının 1949'a kadar olan kısmını kapsıyor. Lessing bu kitapta bir birey olarak bilincinin, bir kadın olarak cinselliğinin ve modern insan olarak siyasi kimliğinin gelişimine ağırlık verirken, bir yandan da 20. yüzyıldaki dünya savaşlarının sıradan insanların üzerinde sebep olduğu onulmaz yıkım ve sömürge topraklarındaki ırkçılığa dair kendi hatıralarından kesitler sunuyor. Otobiyografinin ikinci cildi Gölgede Yürümek ise yazarın savaş sonrası İngilteresi'ne kucağında oğlu Peter ve elinde ilk romanı Türkü Söylüyor Otlar'ın taslağıyla gelişiyle başlıyor. Lessing bu kitapta komünizmin 1950'lerin entelektüel yaşantısını hâkimiyeti altına alışını ve sonraları kendi neslinin öteki entelektüellerinin çoğu gibi radikal jargon ve siyasetten hayal kırıklığına uğrayarak bu ideolojiyi nasıl ardında bıraktığını anlatıyor. Bunların yanı sıra Lessing genç, yalnız bir anne ve bohem bir yazar olarak tecrübelerine, arkadaşlarına, sevgililerine, siyasal aktiviteleri ve tiyatrodaki deneyimlerine dair hayatından çarpıcı kesitler sunuyor. Doris Lessing'in bu iki ciltlik otobiyografisi, okuyucuya bir yazara ve onun yazın sürecinin derinliklerine temas etme fırsatı vererek, bunun yanı sıra Soğuk Savaş döneminin siyasal, sanatsal ve toplumsal yaşantısına dair eşsiz bir portre çiziyor.
852 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
50 people are currently reading
1261 people want to read
About the author
Doris Lessing
478 books3,204 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).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
April 10, 2019
“Here we are at the core of the problem of memory. You remember with what you are at the time of remembering.”
“Every novel is a story, but a life isn’t one, more of a sprawl of incidents.”
“How do you know that what you remember is more important than what you don’t?”
As might be expected, the first volume of Nobel-Prize-winning author Doris Lessing’s autobiography (covering her birth in Kermanshah, Persia, and her childhood, youth, and early adult years—to the age of 30–in Southern Rhodesia) is a stimulating read, often rewarding and wise, but occasionally frustrating, too. In my opinion, the first half of the book is the better. It considers the time before Lessing’s involvement with the Rhodesian Communist Party and her early, rather strangely cobbled marriages (to men she didn’t love and who, likewise, had no great feeling for her).
Lessing observes that children and grown-ups do not live in the same sensory world. The early years of life are marked by their “intense physicality”. Time passes differently for children, and what one experiences when young leaves the greatest impression. Lessing provides many details about her life in a stone house in a mountainous region of western Iran and on the Rhodesian veldt. Her descriptions of the times after she left her parents’ farm in her mid-teens to work first as an au pair and then as a legal secretary pale by comparison. I think I was expecting more intensity in Lessing’s account of her adolescence—i.e., a description of a burgeoning life of the mind (à la Simone de Beauvoir). I can’t say I got it.
Lessing begins by considering her parents and their families of origin. Throughout the book she regularly returns to The Great War, which, she says, ruined her parents’ lives. Those who survived it, she writes, “lived lives wrenched out of their proper course.” Maude McVeagh, Lessing’s “ferociously energetic”, capable mother, who had defied her controlling and aspirational father to become a nurse, lost her great love, a doctor to the war. His ship went down after being torpedoed by the Germans. Maude nursed Alfred Tayler, Lessing’s father, in the London Free Hospital. A soldier whose injury required a leg amputation, Alfred also suffered from shell shock and would be haunted for the rest of his days by his experiences in the trenches. He never got over his country’s betrayal of a generation of young men and was contemptuous of “the complacent crooks who had got rich out of the war.” From early on, Lessing was aware of her father’s demons: “I used to feel there was something like a dark, grey cloud, like poison gas, over my early childhood.” As for her mother: “I was in nervous flight from her ever since I can remember anything”. Lessing determined that hers would be a life entirely different from theirs. “I will not. I will not [be trapped]” became her mantra.
After the war, Lessing’s father worked as a banker in Kermanshah and then Tehran for about five years, providing his status-conscious wife and two young children with something approximating a middle-class way of life. However, he felt shackled and unhappy in such an existence. He was bored by the life of “dinner parties and musical evenings” that his wife thrived on. On a home leave from Persia, he jumped at the opportunity of making a go at farming in Rhodesia. The move to Africa presented his daughter and son with ample opportunities to enjoy the natural world. They were relatively free of the constraints that middle-class children in England typically experienced.
Lessing’s African upbringing no doubt fostered some of the independence of spirit that she would later be known for. Her mother, however, was initially deeply unhappy in Africa. There were no “nice” people near the Tayler farm. Maude’s genius for society was starved, and her energy was subsequently funnelled into the lives of her children. Hers became “the pathetic identifications of a woman whose gratification is only in her children.” She had a breakdown and took to her bed for months, undergoing “that inner reconstruction which most of us have to do at least once in a life. You relinquish what you had believed you must have to live at all.” Eventually, being the capable woman that she was, she pulled herself together and threw herself into the hard work that life on the land demanded. In spite of the Taylers’ efforts, however, the farm was never a success. Maize did not bring money. Neither did tobacco. Quests for gold and precious minerals on the property also yielded nothing. Soon enough, Lessing’s father was battling serious illness, diabetes, in a time when medical science hadn’t figured out how to properly administer insulin. Tending to him as he wasted away over many years became his wife’s full-time job.
While I had a vague idea of the outline of Lessing’s life before reading this first volume of her autobiography, I’ll admit that I was surprised by what she reveals about her marriages. These were not love (or apparently even lust) matches. Indeed, it is hard to understand quite what was motivating Lessing. Her first marriage was to Frank Wisdom, a civil servant. A decade older than Lessing, Frank was a member of a sports club she frequented, and he, too, was involved in the progressive political scene that attracted her. An “unregenerate”, she married him in an act of “female ruthlessness”, for he was, in fact, already engaged to a girl in Britain. Before long, knowing she “was not going to stay in this life”, Lessing ended up leaving him and her two young children. She writes: “There is no boredom like that of an intelligent young woman who spends a day with a very small child.” Yes, she admits she “commit[ted] the unforgivable”, but goes on to say that if she had not, she would’ve had a breakdown or become an alcoholic. Her eldest son, John Wisdom, would later tell her that although he understood the reasons for her leaving, he nevertheless resented her having done so.
Lessing’s union with Gottfried Lessing, an ideological, “purist” communist, German-Jewish refugee, and scion of a wealthy Eastern European industrialist family, is even more baffling. Lessing supplies a number of explanations for this second marriage. The two were the only unpaired members in their political circle, so they more or less fell together by default, she says. Later, though, she opines that the marriage was “forced by circumstance”. In a third take on the relationship, Lessing states that she married Gottfried in order to mitigate Salisbury society’s view of him as an enemy alien. She describes the rigid and orderly Gottfried dispassionately, as she would a character in one of her novels. Lessing acknowledges that he was a generous and mostly reasonable man, albeit one with little tolerance for the subjects that engaged her: psychology, psychoanalysis, and the world of dreams, myths, and fairy tales. He sounds like quite a trial: a humourless, dry stick of a man, a number of whose traits might have placed him on the autism spectrum were he alive today. Whatever led to the marriage, both Gottfried and Doris knew going in that they would eventually divorce.
I was surprised to read of Lessing’s cavalier (even careless) attitude to conceiving and bearing children. When she tells her father she is having a third baby (with Gottfried, whom she has every intention of divorcing), Alfred wonders why she’d do this, given that she’s already abandoned two young children. (He’s not the only one who wonders. I do, too.) Looking back, Lessing concludes that she was more or less fulfilling a biological imperative. As a healthy, fertile young woman living at a time when the population was still recovering from The Great War’s decimation, she did as Nature bid. Ultimately, though, she had her tubes tied, which she acknowledges was one of the smartest things she ever did.
I was underwhelmed and slightly frustrated by what I saw as Lessing’s somewhat superficial treatment of her youthful communist years. I felt that I got only an impressionistic sense of her thinking during that period. It seems that in the second half of her book, she was unable to resist writing novelistic descriptions of her friends and “comrades” in the cause. The reader doesn’t get much on her interior life. Early in the autobiography she had observed: “The older I get the more secrets I have, never to revealed . . .” Maybe she didn’t want to hold up the contents of her mind for viewing. Possibly she could not clearly recall what she was thinking as a young woman. Perhaps she felt her fiction, especially the novels in the Children of Violence series and The Golden Notebook, had already done an adequate job exploring or exposing the truth of those times.
If part of the measure of a good literary biography is the degree to which it makes the reader want to read or return to the writer’s body of work, Under My Skin is a great success. Throughout the book, Lessing regularly takes the time to link key people and incidents in her life to the characters and events in her fiction. Having completed the book, I am eager to approach the many works of hers I haven’t yet read and rediscover those I have.
“Every novel is a story, but a life isn’t one, more of a sprawl of incidents.”
“How do you know that what you remember is more important than what you don’t?”
As might be expected, the first volume of Nobel-Prize-winning author Doris Lessing’s autobiography (covering her birth in Kermanshah, Persia, and her childhood, youth, and early adult years—to the age of 30–in Southern Rhodesia) is a stimulating read, often rewarding and wise, but occasionally frustrating, too. In my opinion, the first half of the book is the better. It considers the time before Lessing’s involvement with the Rhodesian Communist Party and her early, rather strangely cobbled marriages (to men she didn’t love and who, likewise, had no great feeling for her).
Lessing observes that children and grown-ups do not live in the same sensory world. The early years of life are marked by their “intense physicality”. Time passes differently for children, and what one experiences when young leaves the greatest impression. Lessing provides many details about her life in a stone house in a mountainous region of western Iran and on the Rhodesian veldt. Her descriptions of the times after she left her parents’ farm in her mid-teens to work first as an au pair and then as a legal secretary pale by comparison. I think I was expecting more intensity in Lessing’s account of her adolescence—i.e., a description of a burgeoning life of the mind (à la Simone de Beauvoir). I can’t say I got it.
Lessing begins by considering her parents and their families of origin. Throughout the book she regularly returns to The Great War, which, she says, ruined her parents’ lives. Those who survived it, she writes, “lived lives wrenched out of their proper course.” Maude McVeagh, Lessing’s “ferociously energetic”, capable mother, who had defied her controlling and aspirational father to become a nurse, lost her great love, a doctor to the war. His ship went down after being torpedoed by the Germans. Maude nursed Alfred Tayler, Lessing’s father, in the London Free Hospital. A soldier whose injury required a leg amputation, Alfred also suffered from shell shock and would be haunted for the rest of his days by his experiences in the trenches. He never got over his country’s betrayal of a generation of young men and was contemptuous of “the complacent crooks who had got rich out of the war.” From early on, Lessing was aware of her father’s demons: “I used to feel there was something like a dark, grey cloud, like poison gas, over my early childhood.” As for her mother: “I was in nervous flight from her ever since I can remember anything”. Lessing determined that hers would be a life entirely different from theirs. “I will not. I will not [be trapped]” became her mantra.
After the war, Lessing’s father worked as a banker in Kermanshah and then Tehran for about five years, providing his status-conscious wife and two young children with something approximating a middle-class way of life. However, he felt shackled and unhappy in such an existence. He was bored by the life of “dinner parties and musical evenings” that his wife thrived on. On a home leave from Persia, he jumped at the opportunity of making a go at farming in Rhodesia. The move to Africa presented his daughter and son with ample opportunities to enjoy the natural world. They were relatively free of the constraints that middle-class children in England typically experienced.
Lessing’s African upbringing no doubt fostered some of the independence of spirit that she would later be known for. Her mother, however, was initially deeply unhappy in Africa. There were no “nice” people near the Tayler farm. Maude’s genius for society was starved, and her energy was subsequently funnelled into the lives of her children. Hers became “the pathetic identifications of a woman whose gratification is only in her children.” She had a breakdown and took to her bed for months, undergoing “that inner reconstruction which most of us have to do at least once in a life. You relinquish what you had believed you must have to live at all.” Eventually, being the capable woman that she was, she pulled herself together and threw herself into the hard work that life on the land demanded. In spite of the Taylers’ efforts, however, the farm was never a success. Maize did not bring money. Neither did tobacco. Quests for gold and precious minerals on the property also yielded nothing. Soon enough, Lessing’s father was battling serious illness, diabetes, in a time when medical science hadn’t figured out how to properly administer insulin. Tending to him as he wasted away over many years became his wife’s full-time job.
While I had a vague idea of the outline of Lessing’s life before reading this first volume of her autobiography, I’ll admit that I was surprised by what she reveals about her marriages. These were not love (or apparently even lust) matches. Indeed, it is hard to understand quite what was motivating Lessing. Her first marriage was to Frank Wisdom, a civil servant. A decade older than Lessing, Frank was a member of a sports club she frequented, and he, too, was involved in the progressive political scene that attracted her. An “unregenerate”, she married him in an act of “female ruthlessness”, for he was, in fact, already engaged to a girl in Britain. Before long, knowing she “was not going to stay in this life”, Lessing ended up leaving him and her two young children. She writes: “There is no boredom like that of an intelligent young woman who spends a day with a very small child.” Yes, she admits she “commit[ted] the unforgivable”, but goes on to say that if she had not, she would’ve had a breakdown or become an alcoholic. Her eldest son, John Wisdom, would later tell her that although he understood the reasons for her leaving, he nevertheless resented her having done so.
Lessing’s union with Gottfried Lessing, an ideological, “purist” communist, German-Jewish refugee, and scion of a wealthy Eastern European industrialist family, is even more baffling. Lessing supplies a number of explanations for this second marriage. The two were the only unpaired members in their political circle, so they more or less fell together by default, she says. Later, though, she opines that the marriage was “forced by circumstance”. In a third take on the relationship, Lessing states that she married Gottfried in order to mitigate Salisbury society’s view of him as an enemy alien. She describes the rigid and orderly Gottfried dispassionately, as she would a character in one of her novels. Lessing acknowledges that he was a generous and mostly reasonable man, albeit one with little tolerance for the subjects that engaged her: psychology, psychoanalysis, and the world of dreams, myths, and fairy tales. He sounds like quite a trial: a humourless, dry stick of a man, a number of whose traits might have placed him on the autism spectrum were he alive today. Whatever led to the marriage, both Gottfried and Doris knew going in that they would eventually divorce.
I was surprised to read of Lessing’s cavalier (even careless) attitude to conceiving and bearing children. When she tells her father she is having a third baby (with Gottfried, whom she has every intention of divorcing), Alfred wonders why she’d do this, given that she’s already abandoned two young children. (He’s not the only one who wonders. I do, too.) Looking back, Lessing concludes that she was more or less fulfilling a biological imperative. As a healthy, fertile young woman living at a time when the population was still recovering from The Great War’s decimation, she did as Nature bid. Ultimately, though, she had her tubes tied, which she acknowledges was one of the smartest things she ever did.
I was underwhelmed and slightly frustrated by what I saw as Lessing’s somewhat superficial treatment of her youthful communist years. I felt that I got only an impressionistic sense of her thinking during that period. It seems that in the second half of her book, she was unable to resist writing novelistic descriptions of her friends and “comrades” in the cause. The reader doesn’t get much on her interior life. Early in the autobiography she had observed: “The older I get the more secrets I have, never to revealed . . .” Maybe she didn’t want to hold up the contents of her mind for viewing. Possibly she could not clearly recall what she was thinking as a young woman. Perhaps she felt her fiction, especially the novels in the Children of Violence series and The Golden Notebook, had already done an adequate job exploring or exposing the truth of those times.
If part of the measure of a good literary biography is the degree to which it makes the reader want to read or return to the writer’s body of work, Under My Skin is a great success. Throughout the book, Lessing regularly takes the time to link key people and incidents in her life to the characters and events in her fiction. Having completed the book, I am eager to approach the many works of hers I haven’t yet read and rediscover those I have.
January 18, 2021
I really appreciate Doris Lessing's novels, but unfortunately I can't do anything with her autobiography.
Lessing writes that she wanted to write her biography herself because she has made the experience that what others write about her is mostly wrong and that her statements are always misunderstood or misinterpreted.
Now she begins with her family history and her earliest childhood. In doing so, she ties the story to minimal early childhood memories (which may not even be real memories) and rolls out little things over many pages.
The family history in itself is actually interesting. The family moves from England to Persia, then back to England, then to Southern Rhodesia (in today's Zimbabwe). Her parents come from the middle class and the mother, although competent, is mercilessly narrow-minded.
Doris Lessing was born in 1919 and certainly owed to that time, her view of the world was racist. She is not an aggressive, outward-looking racist, but her deep-seated racism is evident in so many of her statements.
Unfortunately, after a third of the book, I feel that I do not particularly like Doris Lessing or her family as a person.
I also feel that the author produces an incredible amount of text from a few and small events and presents it in an extremely convoluted way.
This is just not a book for me and that's why I'm abandoning it at 30 %.
And since I didn't like it at all, I will rate it 1 star.
-----------------------------------------------------
Ich schätze Doris Lessings Romane wirklich sehr, mit ihrer Autobiographie kann ich aber leider so gar nichts anfangen.
Lessing schreibt, sie wollte ihre Biographie selbst schreiben, weil sie die Erfahrung gemacht hat, dass das was andere über sie schreiben zumeist nicht stimmt und ihre Aussagen immer falsch verstanden oder missinterpretiert werden.
Nun beginnt sie mir ihrer Familiengeschichte und ihrer frühesten Kindheit. Dabei macht sie die Geschichte an minimalen frühkindlichen Erinnerungen fest (die möglicherweise nicht einmal echte Erinnerungen sind) und walzt Kleinigkeiten über viele Seiten aus.
Die Familiengeschichte an sich ist eigentlich interessant. Die Familie zieht von England nach Persien, dann wieder nach England, dann nach Südrhodesien (in das heutige Simbabwe). Ihre Eltern entstammen der Mittelklasse und die Mutter ist, obwohl kompetent, gnadenlos engstirnig und verspießert.
Doris Lessing ist 1919 geboren und sicherlich auch der damaligen Zeit geschuldet in ihrer Weltsicht rassistisch geprägt. Sie ist keine aggressive, nach aussen gewandte Rassistin, aber dennoch tritt ihr tiefsitzender Rassismus in so vielen ihrer Aussagen zutage.
Mir geht es leider nach einem Drittel des Buches so, dass ich weder Doris Lessing noch ihre Familie als Personen besonders gut leiden kann.
Außerdem empfinde ich es so, dass die Autorin aus wenigen und kleinen Ereignissen unglaublich viel Text produziert und diesen äußerst unübersichtlich darstellt.
Dies ist einfach kein Buch für mich und deshalb breche ich es nun nach einem Drittel ab.
Und da es mir überhaupt nicht gefallen hat, bewerte ich es mit 1 Stern.
Lessing writes that she wanted to write her biography herself because she has made the experience that what others write about her is mostly wrong and that her statements are always misunderstood or misinterpreted.
Now she begins with her family history and her earliest childhood. In doing so, she ties the story to minimal early childhood memories (which may not even be real memories) and rolls out little things over many pages.
The family history in itself is actually interesting. The family moves from England to Persia, then back to England, then to Southern Rhodesia (in today's Zimbabwe). Her parents come from the middle class and the mother, although competent, is mercilessly narrow-minded.
Doris Lessing was born in 1919 and certainly owed to that time, her view of the world was racist. She is not an aggressive, outward-looking racist, but her deep-seated racism is evident in so many of her statements.
Unfortunately, after a third of the book, I feel that I do not particularly like Doris Lessing or her family as a person.
I also feel that the author produces an incredible amount of text from a few and small events and presents it in an extremely convoluted way.
This is just not a book for me and that's why I'm abandoning it at 30 %.
And since I didn't like it at all, I will rate it 1 star.
-----------------------------------------------------
Ich schätze Doris Lessings Romane wirklich sehr, mit ihrer Autobiographie kann ich aber leider so gar nichts anfangen.
Lessing schreibt, sie wollte ihre Biographie selbst schreiben, weil sie die Erfahrung gemacht hat, dass das was andere über sie schreiben zumeist nicht stimmt und ihre Aussagen immer falsch verstanden oder missinterpretiert werden.
Nun beginnt sie mir ihrer Familiengeschichte und ihrer frühesten Kindheit. Dabei macht sie die Geschichte an minimalen frühkindlichen Erinnerungen fest (die möglicherweise nicht einmal echte Erinnerungen sind) und walzt Kleinigkeiten über viele Seiten aus.
Die Familiengeschichte an sich ist eigentlich interessant. Die Familie zieht von England nach Persien, dann wieder nach England, dann nach Südrhodesien (in das heutige Simbabwe). Ihre Eltern entstammen der Mittelklasse und die Mutter ist, obwohl kompetent, gnadenlos engstirnig und verspießert.
Doris Lessing ist 1919 geboren und sicherlich auch der damaligen Zeit geschuldet in ihrer Weltsicht rassistisch geprägt. Sie ist keine aggressive, nach aussen gewandte Rassistin, aber dennoch tritt ihr tiefsitzender Rassismus in so vielen ihrer Aussagen zutage.
Mir geht es leider nach einem Drittel des Buches so, dass ich weder Doris Lessing noch ihre Familie als Personen besonders gut leiden kann.
Außerdem empfinde ich es so, dass die Autorin aus wenigen und kleinen Ereignissen unglaublich viel Text produziert und diesen äußerst unübersichtlich darstellt.
Dies ist einfach kein Buch für mich und deshalb breche ich es nun nach einem Drittel ab.
Und da es mir überhaupt nicht gefallen hat, bewerte ich es mit 1 Stern.
February 5, 2013
Reading this 21-chapter autobiography, “Under My Skin,” by Doris Lessing was inspiringly and interestingly enjoyable to me. One of the reasons is that she’s been destined to be a literary titan since around 64-65 years ago when she arrived in London with “the typescript of her first novel, The Grass is Singing, in her suitcase” (back cover); moreover, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Therefore, I found it formidable to write on her memoir since I’ve been one of her readers living in another country who read it as my first encounter, in other words, time flies so I would like to say something to share with my Goodreads friends.
Her narratives are unexpectedly inspiring because she’s included some ideas we might have never read or heard before. For instance, she simply wrote, “I read, I read, I read. I was reading to save my life.” (p. 399) Comparatively, as for her first sentence, it seemingly reminds us of the famous one by Caesar: I came, I saw, I conquered. We would leave it at that for some readers to reflect and focus on the next one which looks simple. However, we could not help wondering how with a possible gesture of doubt or disbelief. Thus, we should have a look at what and how she read from this excerpt:
… I was reading poetry, chanting – silently as it were under my breath – lines of Eliot, of Yeats, like mantra. I read Proust, who sustained me because his world was so utterly unlike anything around me. … Proust describes, in an eleven-volumes-long irony, how the aristocratic Guermantes at last absorbed people they had despised so much they would not even meet them. … (pp. 399-400)
As for us common readers, I think, we could read to survive by means of how we should keep going on with the daily life, safe and sound. Reading could be our consolation to the mind from those who know, that is, they keep encouraging us calmly without any harsh word or tone. Whenever we become tired of reading, we naturally leave it anywhere we want and continue as soon as we wish.
Incidentally, I came across and liked some unique sentences she wrote and, as far as I could recall, it was my first time to read them happily; I thought such sentences could be the outcome of her reflective/intuitive thinking, for instance: “Words indeed have wings.” (p. 109), “The flying dreams, so enjoyable, were grounding me in anxiety, …” (p. 297), “..., Kurt because it was written in English: he agreed with Joseph Conrad that it is a language unsuitable for novels, and only French has the necessary clarity.” (p. 336), etc.
These sentences are quite rarely heard or read anywhere, we can accept them for granted, at face value, and think they look simple with their own meanings. However, I don’t think that is the point because each sentence needs its interpretation according to its context and our experience for application in everyday life. Therefore, reading for some unique sentences or even words would be satisfactorily sufficient for those who love reading.
Arranged chronologically, there are twelve pages of thirty black-and-white photographs in which, I think, its readers would not help admiring them since each of them could rightly and aptly supplement her narratives with our understanding and imagination. Moreover, I liked each chapter’s length which helps one’s reading conveniently manageable because each one is not too brief or lengthy, for example: we read 9.5 pages in Chapter 1, 6 pages +7 lines in Chapter 2, 21 pages + 10 lines, etc. Of course, the length varies, more or less, in each chapter; presumably, it depends on the writer’s plan and scope related to the preceding chapters.
In sum, this book is worth reading to our hearts' content if we admire her writing expertise and unique character that have long shaped her formidable works till the Oslo Committee awarded her the prestigious Nobel Prize in her 90’s, her literary stature was at last deservedly recognized with her jubilation and the joys of her admirers and the writing world remain with her for ever.
Her narratives are unexpectedly inspiring because she’s included some ideas we might have never read or heard before. For instance, she simply wrote, “I read, I read, I read. I was reading to save my life.” (p. 399) Comparatively, as for her first sentence, it seemingly reminds us of the famous one by Caesar: I came, I saw, I conquered. We would leave it at that for some readers to reflect and focus on the next one which looks simple. However, we could not help wondering how with a possible gesture of doubt or disbelief. Thus, we should have a look at what and how she read from this excerpt:
… I was reading poetry, chanting – silently as it were under my breath – lines of Eliot, of Yeats, like mantra. I read Proust, who sustained me because his world was so utterly unlike anything around me. … Proust describes, in an eleven-volumes-long irony, how the aristocratic Guermantes at last absorbed people they had despised so much they would not even meet them. … (pp. 399-400)
As for us common readers, I think, we could read to survive by means of how we should keep going on with the daily life, safe and sound. Reading could be our consolation to the mind from those who know, that is, they keep encouraging us calmly without any harsh word or tone. Whenever we become tired of reading, we naturally leave it anywhere we want and continue as soon as we wish.
Incidentally, I came across and liked some unique sentences she wrote and, as far as I could recall, it was my first time to read them happily; I thought such sentences could be the outcome of her reflective/intuitive thinking, for instance: “Words indeed have wings.” (p. 109), “The flying dreams, so enjoyable, were grounding me in anxiety, …” (p. 297), “..., Kurt because it was written in English: he agreed with Joseph Conrad that it is a language unsuitable for novels, and only French has the necessary clarity.” (p. 336), etc.
These sentences are quite rarely heard or read anywhere, we can accept them for granted, at face value, and think they look simple with their own meanings. However, I don’t think that is the point because each sentence needs its interpretation according to its context and our experience for application in everyday life. Therefore, reading for some unique sentences or even words would be satisfactorily sufficient for those who love reading.
Arranged chronologically, there are twelve pages of thirty black-and-white photographs in which, I think, its readers would not help admiring them since each of them could rightly and aptly supplement her narratives with our understanding and imagination. Moreover, I liked each chapter’s length which helps one’s reading conveniently manageable because each one is not too brief or lengthy, for example: we read 9.5 pages in Chapter 1, 6 pages +7 lines in Chapter 2, 21 pages + 10 lines, etc. Of course, the length varies, more or less, in each chapter; presumably, it depends on the writer’s plan and scope related to the preceding chapters.
In sum, this book is worth reading to our hearts' content if we admire her writing expertise and unique character that have long shaped her formidable works till the Oslo Committee awarded her the prestigious Nobel Prize in her 90’s, her literary stature was at last deservedly recognized with her jubilation and the joys of her admirers and the writing world remain with her for ever.
October 2, 2015
She sees herself and others so clearly and is so honest about herself, that it is hard to see much point in someone writing her biography. Early in the book she discusses the problems of telling the truth about other people in her life:
"I have known not a few of the famous, and even one or two of the great, but I do not believe it is the duty of friends, lovers, comrades, to tell all. The older I get the more secrets I have, never to be revealed and this, I know, is a common condition of people my age."
I enjoyed the book very much and look forward to reading the second volume. She has lived a rich, complex, creative and fulfilling life, which is fascinating for itself, and also for how she wove her experiences into her novels.
And beside all that, I just liked Doris Lessing so much!
"I have known not a few of the famous, and even one or two of the great, but I do not believe it is the duty of friends, lovers, comrades, to tell all. The older I get the more secrets I have, never to be revealed and this, I know, is a common condition of people my age."
I enjoyed the book very much and look forward to reading the second volume. She has lived a rich, complex, creative and fulfilling life, which is fascinating for itself, and also for how she wove her experiences into her novels.
And beside all that, I just liked Doris Lessing so much!
January 20, 2021
Súper buena autobiografía y también súper cándida y honesta. Le pongo tres estrellas no porque no sea bacán, sino que porque para mí estuvo bien pero no el mejor libro ever. Creo que para los contemporáneos o los historiadores (hay harta historia) o para los fans reales, debe ser algo increíble, pero para mí, una hija de vecina nacida varias décadas después, fue más costoso.
Es que hay MUCHA información y MUCHOS detalles. Y es largo. Y, aunque hay cosas que son universales a toda la especie humana, son otros tiempos. La señora nació hace literalmente más de 100 años (1919) y si bien su historia es un testimonio muy completo y muy correcto, hay referencias de canciones o de cosas que hoy no siempre se entienden tanto, sobre todo desde la segunda mitad. Además de hartas vivencias muy personales, referencias a amigos perdidos, etcétera, que tienen su tono y su belleza, pero que como cualquier diario de vida al final solo le importan a ella. Jejeje.
A mí me gustó, aunque a veces me cansó. Hay partes que son fomes y monotemáticas, o que abarcan demasiado en muy poco, pero después... hay unas que son maravillosas. Y me gusta, además, que ella tenga pensamiento propio, que sea capaz de ser crítica y autocrítica y de cambiar de idea a lo largo de la vida sin inmovilizarse.
Sus ideas sobre el comunismo me parecieron especialmente interesantes. Yo no comparto el amor por esa visión política, y ella al principio sí lo hacía, y yo, bueno, estaba dispuesta a oír todo lo que dijera porque un libro, en especial una autobiografía, no es para leerlo a medias. Quién hubiera pensado que luego lo dejaría atrás diciendo que sí, las intenciones de fondo pueden ser buenas, pero que hay un montón de problemas y un montón de hipocresía. Y también toma un montón de decisiones en su vida muy poco comunes y me gusta que ella es quien es, y que transita por su propia vida en paz. O al menos así lo parece. No trata de justificarse, sino a lo más de explicarse. No trata de parecer quien no es.
En fin, que lo disfruté bastante. Aunque no tanto como ese libro que leí sobre esta mujer que cuida a una señora mayor, "La buena vecina". Que es uno de los mejores que haya leído JAMÁS.
Algunas citas:
1, de cuando sus papás decidieron irse a África a vivir del campo.
Aquella exposición de 1924, que atrajo a mi padre a África... cuántas veces me la he encontrado en memorias, novelas, diarios. Cambió la vida de mis padres, y marcó el curso de la mía y de la de mi hermano. Como las guerras y las hambrunas y los terremotos, las exposiciones configuran futuros.
Aparte de comprar en Harrods, Liberty's y los Almacenes de la Marina y el Ejército, les sacaron la dentadura a los dos. Así lo recomendaron el dentista y el médico. Los dientes eran la causa de innumerables enfermedades y calamidades, a nadie le servían de nada y, además, no habría ningún buen dentista en Rhodesia del Sur (No era cierto). Esta salvaje automutilación era corriente en aquella época.
2, de las monjas del internado donde la mandaron de chica.
Contemplábamos en romántico trance el ataúd, en forma de violín, blanco y rosa brillante, como un pastel con inscripciones de letras doradas. Hermana Harmonia, Novia de Jesucristo, RIP.
Era muy joven para morir, decían las otras hermanas. Que tener dieciocho, veinte años, se considerara joven, nos sorprendía por nuestra corta edad, puesto que resultaba difícil creer que alguna vez seríamos tan mayores como aquella mujer muerta.
Ahora pienso que aquellas muchachas murieron de pena. Casi todas eran pobres campesinas de Alemania. El Convent en Salisbury, Rhodesia del Sur, era una prolongación de las condiciones económicas de Europa. Alemania no se había recuperado de la Primera Guerra Mundial y las indemnizaciones. Como siempre había sucedido en las familias pobres de Europa, una o dos hijas se hacían monjas, para ahorrar a sus familias la carga de alimentarlas. Se encontraban a miles de kilómetros del hogar, en este país exótico, sometidas a un duro trabajo corporal, como habían estado toda su vida, pero en el calor, y sin ninguna perspectiva de volver a ver a sus familias. Quizá su único consuelo fuese saber que su soledad y su exilio facilitaban las cosas en casa.
En una ocasión, cuando me encontraba en la enfermería, entró una monja y se sentó junto a mi cama (contra las reglas) mientras la campana del Ángelus llamaba a la oración y el cielo era una llama roja, y se echó a llorar, y se santiguó, se santiguó y lloró, diciendo que añoraba a su madre. Luego se puso de pie de un salto, pidió a la Virgen que la perdonara, me dijo que olvidara lo que me había contado y se fue corriendo. Tenía dieciocho años.
3.
Cuando tenía casi sesenta años y sucumbí al dolor, pensé: Dios mío, esto es lo que pasé de niña, y había olvidado lo terrible que fue.
¿Qué añoraba? El hogar. Quería estar en casa. Quería a mi madre, a mi padre y a mi hermanito, que se quedó en casa hasta los ocho años. Quería a mis perros y a mi gato. Quería estar cerca de los pájaros y animales de la jungla. Quería... añoraba... ansiaba, que aquella angustia acabara.
He intercambiado recuerdos con hombres a los que mandaron a colegios en Inglaterra a los siete años, y algunos recuerdan aquel peso de sufrimiento. Deben de contarse ya por centenares los libros de memorias, las autobiografías que atestiguan el sufrimiento de niños de corta edad que enviaron demasiado jóvenes al colegio.
Es algo terrible enviar a niños pequeños a un pensionados. Todos lo sabemos. No obstante, la gente que recuerda muy bien lo que padecieron cuando los sacaron de la casa a los siete u ocho años, hacen lo mismo con sus hijos. Resulta un dato bastante revelador sobre la naturaleza humana. O sobre los británicos.
4.
No había pasado ni una semana cuando decidí que yo no estaba enferma, me negué a volver a caer enferma nunca más. Desde aquella distancia podía ver claramente que en mi casa aquellas dos personas infelices y desesperadas utilizaban sus enfermedades reales e imaginarias para hacer que la vida fuera soportable. ¡Nunca más!
5.
Más adelante, en los años setenta, escribí una narración titulada "One off the Short List", y en ella se habla de una mujer que tiene matas de pelo dorado en los sobacos.
Un editor norteamericano, y luego unas revistas, se negaron a editar el cuento debido a esta alusión. No obstante, en Norteamérica se puede narrar todo tipo de asesinatos, torturas, violaciones, horrores de la guerra, crueldades. Pero nada de pelo de sobaco en una historia sobre seducción y sexo.
6.
El instinto de las mujeres de agradar, que confunde a los hombres, también confunde a las mujeres.
7, la primera de varias citas sobre el comunismo, que me parecieron muy interesantes e increíblemente actuales.
Decimos cosas de este tipo: "Stalin asesinó a nueve millones de personas en la forzada colectivización de los campesino de Ucrania". "Stalin asesinó a millones durante las purgas". "En China, Mao asesinó..." a los millones de la Larga Marcha, la Revolución Cultural... por mencionar sólo dos baños de sangre. Pero estos asesinatos los llevaron a cabo jóvenes activistas, abnegados miembros del Partido Comunista. Gente como...
Durante años me he dicho para tranquilizarme: No, no, yo no lo habría hecho, no hubiera podido hacer esto. ¿Puedo imaginarme contemplando cómo millones de campesinos hambrientos, arrancados de sus tierras, o a quienes han arrebatado su comida por la fuerza, se van al campo, abarrotan estaciones de ferrocarril, mueren multitudes, masas, hordas? ¿Habría podido decir "No se puede hacer una tortilla sin romper los huevos"?
Bien, que yo sienta que no podía haber hecho algo semejante significa decir, también: "Soy mucho mejor que todos aquellos centenares de miles de personas, en su mayoría jóvenes, que asesinaron, torturaron, practicaron malos tratos, en la Unión Soviética, en China y en todas partes". ¿Por qué, cómo puedo pensar esto? ¿Creer esto? En mi época he observado una y otra vez a masas de gente así arrastradas por la emoción, con tanta oportunidad de decir "no" como la que tienen los peces en una inundación.
No sólo lo que hemos observado nos dice que estamos indefensos contra tales mareas. Algunos experimentos realizados en universidades famosas lo confirman. Los famosos experimentos Milgram, por ejemplo, nos dicen que la mayoría de la gente llevaría a cabo órdenes para torturar, matar. Bien, muy bien, murmuro, pero era una mayoría, ¿no? Yo no habría tenido que formar parte de aquella mayoría, ¿no? ¿Podía haber sido un alma pura, como Osip Mandelstam, como su esposa Nadezha?...
Pero no, tengo que enfrentarme al hecho de que yo y todos mis queridos camaradas altruistas, tanto los de aquel quimérico partido de Rhodesia del Sur, como muchos que he conocido desde entonces, algunos de los cuales aún arrastran consoladoras certezas heredadas de pasadas certezas del comunismo... todos eran de la calaña de aquellos asesinos con una clara conciencia. Nosotros tuvimos suerte, eso es todo.
8.
El paraíso, en consecuencia, se encontraría en el orden del día del mundo, y pronto. ¿Quién haría avanzar al mundo? Evidente: personas como nosotros, los comunistas, la vanguardia de la clase obrera, destinados a interpretar este papel por la Historia. Exactamente la misma estructura mental que la de mis padres, que se creían representantes de la voluntad divina, trabajaban por encargo del Imperio Británico, o por el bien del mundo. (...)
En segundo lugar, no existía otro camino hacia al paraíso más que el de la Revolución... con pocas excepciones. Era moralmente superior creer en la Revolución, y quienes no creían en ella eran, por lo menos, unos cobardes. Nos unía la superioridad de carácter, porque éramos revolucionarios y buenos. Nuestros adversarios eran malos. A la gente que no creía en el socialismo no se les concedían buenas intenciones: una forma de pensar que aún hoy sigue vigente. Es satisfactorio creer en la inferioridad moral de los adversarios.
Que la gente que apoyaba al Partido Unido de Rhodesia del Sur o a los Tories [conservadores]en Gran Bretaña en realidad pudiera creer que su política sería la mejor para la humanidad, sencillamente no se admitía. Tan fuerte es la necesidad de creerse mejor que uno mismo que, en fecha tan reciente como 1992, después de todas las tormentas de asesinato, tortura, deliberado genocidio a cargo de comunistas, una roja me lo reprochó diciendo: "¿Cómo puedes dar la espalda a la Verdad? Creía que eras una buena persona".
9.
Dábamos por descontado que cuando la clase trabajadora - o los negros o cualquier grupo en situación desventajosa - tomara el poder, sólo la inspirarían los más puros y desinteresados ideales. De todos los absurdos en los que creíamos éste quizá era el peor. Si alguien osaba mencionar la "naturaleza humana", razonábamos pacientemente con él, le explicábamos que no había comprendido los poderes regeneradores y transformadores del Comunismo.
10.
Sabíamos que todos los que estaban relacionados con los negocios, de cualquier tipo, eran moralmente inferiores. "Hombre de negocios" era una expresión de desprecio (...). No obstante, "negocios", comercio, capitalismo, en pocas palabras, eran, para nuestro canon, necesarios y buenos en ocasiones.
No recuerdo que hiciéramos ninguna tentativa para reconciliar, ni siquiera discutir, estas "contradicciones".
11.
La Cámara Minera había realizado cierta propuesta para su contingente laboral. Este camarada, John Miller se llamaba, permaneció en silencio durante tanto tiempo que atrajo nuestra atención, y luego: "En situaciones como ésta, camaradas, basta que nos preguntemos ¿Qué quiere la Cámara Minera? ¿Cuál sería su prioridad? Establecer ese dato y entonces...". Una pausa, mientras sube la tensión. Ríe descaradamente. "Y, por supuesto, nuestra línea tiene que ser la opuesta".
Estalla una tormenta de aplausos. Sí, éste era en verdad el nivel de nuestro pensamiento político.
12.
Muchos años más tarde conocí a un hombre con mucha experiencia en el proceso de gobierno, y me dijo que se puede apaciguar a la mayoría de los revolucionarios ofreciéndoles puestos. Casi todos son gente de capacidad sin estrenar o infrautilizada. No se dan cuenta de que sufren de frustración. El puesto ofrecido debe elegirse cuidadosamente, sin cinismo, dejando espacio para ese talento del crítico hacia la reforma útil.
Si me hubieran expresado esa idea entonces, la habría arrumado con una letanía de calificativos despectivos, pero ahora me pregunto si será cierta. Si hay algo que hoy en día, mirando atrás, no nos pueda dejar indiferentes es la cantidad de desprecio y asco que proyectábamos sobre cualquiera que no fuera de los nuestros. "Quien no está con nosotros, está contra nosotros". La religión una vez más.
13.
Una escena: media docena sentados alrededor de una mesa escribiendo cartas para pedir dinero para varias organizaciones que controlamos. Todos nos regocijamos y reímos con nuestras burlas de la gente a la que pedimos dinero, nuestros "respetables patrocinadores".
Por ser una ciudad pequeña, nunca hay bastante filántropos a quienes pedir, por lo que nos canjeamos a nuestros patrocinadores como naipes (...). La mayoría aparecía en los membretes de todas las organizaciones. "Le arrancamos un billete de cinco libras la última vez". " Pues que escupa otros cinco. Al fin y al cabo sólo lo hacen para aparecer en el membrete".
¿Qué habían hecho nuestros "respetables patrocinadores" para merecer semejante desprecio? Por definición, eran gente de éxito. No eran jóvenes. Lo peor: no eran revolucionarios. Las personas que creían en el triunfo del socialismo e incluso en la posibilidad de conseguir una sociedad justa a través de medios pacíficos, eran cobardes lacayos de la clase dirigente, como mínimo".
Es que hay MUCHA información y MUCHOS detalles. Y es largo. Y, aunque hay cosas que son universales a toda la especie humana, son otros tiempos. La señora nació hace literalmente más de 100 años (1919) y si bien su historia es un testimonio muy completo y muy correcto, hay referencias de canciones o de cosas que hoy no siempre se entienden tanto, sobre todo desde la segunda mitad. Además de hartas vivencias muy personales, referencias a amigos perdidos, etcétera, que tienen su tono y su belleza, pero que como cualquier diario de vida al final solo le importan a ella. Jejeje.
A mí me gustó, aunque a veces me cansó. Hay partes que son fomes y monotemáticas, o que abarcan demasiado en muy poco, pero después... hay unas que son maravillosas. Y me gusta, además, que ella tenga pensamiento propio, que sea capaz de ser crítica y autocrítica y de cambiar de idea a lo largo de la vida sin inmovilizarse.
Sus ideas sobre el comunismo me parecieron especialmente interesantes. Yo no comparto el amor por esa visión política, y ella al principio sí lo hacía, y yo, bueno, estaba dispuesta a oír todo lo que dijera porque un libro, en especial una autobiografía, no es para leerlo a medias. Quién hubiera pensado que luego lo dejaría atrás diciendo que sí, las intenciones de fondo pueden ser buenas, pero que hay un montón de problemas y un montón de hipocresía. Y también toma un montón de decisiones en su vida muy poco comunes y me gusta que ella es quien es, y que transita por su propia vida en paz. O al menos así lo parece. No trata de justificarse, sino a lo más de explicarse. No trata de parecer quien no es.
En fin, que lo disfruté bastante. Aunque no tanto como ese libro que leí sobre esta mujer que cuida a una señora mayor, "La buena vecina". Que es uno de los mejores que haya leído JAMÁS.
Algunas citas:
1, de cuando sus papás decidieron irse a África a vivir del campo.
Aquella exposición de 1924, que atrajo a mi padre a África... cuántas veces me la he encontrado en memorias, novelas, diarios. Cambió la vida de mis padres, y marcó el curso de la mía y de la de mi hermano. Como las guerras y las hambrunas y los terremotos, las exposiciones configuran futuros.
Aparte de comprar en Harrods, Liberty's y los Almacenes de la Marina y el Ejército, les sacaron la dentadura a los dos. Así lo recomendaron el dentista y el médico. Los dientes eran la causa de innumerables enfermedades y calamidades, a nadie le servían de nada y, además, no habría ningún buen dentista en Rhodesia del Sur (No era cierto). Esta salvaje automutilación era corriente en aquella época.
2, de las monjas del internado donde la mandaron de chica.
Contemplábamos en romántico trance el ataúd, en forma de violín, blanco y rosa brillante, como un pastel con inscripciones de letras doradas. Hermana Harmonia, Novia de Jesucristo, RIP.
Era muy joven para morir, decían las otras hermanas. Que tener dieciocho, veinte años, se considerara joven, nos sorprendía por nuestra corta edad, puesto que resultaba difícil creer que alguna vez seríamos tan mayores como aquella mujer muerta.
Ahora pienso que aquellas muchachas murieron de pena. Casi todas eran pobres campesinas de Alemania. El Convent en Salisbury, Rhodesia del Sur, era una prolongación de las condiciones económicas de Europa. Alemania no se había recuperado de la Primera Guerra Mundial y las indemnizaciones. Como siempre había sucedido en las familias pobres de Europa, una o dos hijas se hacían monjas, para ahorrar a sus familias la carga de alimentarlas. Se encontraban a miles de kilómetros del hogar, en este país exótico, sometidas a un duro trabajo corporal, como habían estado toda su vida, pero en el calor, y sin ninguna perspectiva de volver a ver a sus familias. Quizá su único consuelo fuese saber que su soledad y su exilio facilitaban las cosas en casa.
En una ocasión, cuando me encontraba en la enfermería, entró una monja y se sentó junto a mi cama (contra las reglas) mientras la campana del Ángelus llamaba a la oración y el cielo era una llama roja, y se echó a llorar, y se santiguó, se santiguó y lloró, diciendo que añoraba a su madre. Luego se puso de pie de un salto, pidió a la Virgen que la perdonara, me dijo que olvidara lo que me había contado y se fue corriendo. Tenía dieciocho años.
3.
Cuando tenía casi sesenta años y sucumbí al dolor, pensé: Dios mío, esto es lo que pasé de niña, y había olvidado lo terrible que fue.
¿Qué añoraba? El hogar. Quería estar en casa. Quería a mi madre, a mi padre y a mi hermanito, que se quedó en casa hasta los ocho años. Quería a mis perros y a mi gato. Quería estar cerca de los pájaros y animales de la jungla. Quería... añoraba... ansiaba, que aquella angustia acabara.
He intercambiado recuerdos con hombres a los que mandaron a colegios en Inglaterra a los siete años, y algunos recuerdan aquel peso de sufrimiento. Deben de contarse ya por centenares los libros de memorias, las autobiografías que atestiguan el sufrimiento de niños de corta edad que enviaron demasiado jóvenes al colegio.
Es algo terrible enviar a niños pequeños a un pensionados. Todos lo sabemos. No obstante, la gente que recuerda muy bien lo que padecieron cuando los sacaron de la casa a los siete u ocho años, hacen lo mismo con sus hijos. Resulta un dato bastante revelador sobre la naturaleza humana. O sobre los británicos.
4.
No había pasado ni una semana cuando decidí que yo no estaba enferma, me negué a volver a caer enferma nunca más. Desde aquella distancia podía ver claramente que en mi casa aquellas dos personas infelices y desesperadas utilizaban sus enfermedades reales e imaginarias para hacer que la vida fuera soportable. ¡Nunca más!
5.
Más adelante, en los años setenta, escribí una narración titulada "One off the Short List", y en ella se habla de una mujer que tiene matas de pelo dorado en los sobacos.
Un editor norteamericano, y luego unas revistas, se negaron a editar el cuento debido a esta alusión. No obstante, en Norteamérica se puede narrar todo tipo de asesinatos, torturas, violaciones, horrores de la guerra, crueldades. Pero nada de pelo de sobaco en una historia sobre seducción y sexo.
6.
El instinto de las mujeres de agradar, que confunde a los hombres, también confunde a las mujeres.
7, la primera de varias citas sobre el comunismo, que me parecieron muy interesantes e increíblemente actuales.
Decimos cosas de este tipo: "Stalin asesinó a nueve millones de personas en la forzada colectivización de los campesino de Ucrania". "Stalin asesinó a millones durante las purgas". "En China, Mao asesinó..." a los millones de la Larga Marcha, la Revolución Cultural... por mencionar sólo dos baños de sangre. Pero estos asesinatos los llevaron a cabo jóvenes activistas, abnegados miembros del Partido Comunista. Gente como...
Durante años me he dicho para tranquilizarme: No, no, yo no lo habría hecho, no hubiera podido hacer esto. ¿Puedo imaginarme contemplando cómo millones de campesinos hambrientos, arrancados de sus tierras, o a quienes han arrebatado su comida por la fuerza, se van al campo, abarrotan estaciones de ferrocarril, mueren multitudes, masas, hordas? ¿Habría podido decir "No se puede hacer una tortilla sin romper los huevos"?
Bien, que yo sienta que no podía haber hecho algo semejante significa decir, también: "Soy mucho mejor que todos aquellos centenares de miles de personas, en su mayoría jóvenes, que asesinaron, torturaron, practicaron malos tratos, en la Unión Soviética, en China y en todas partes". ¿Por qué, cómo puedo pensar esto? ¿Creer esto? En mi época he observado una y otra vez a masas de gente así arrastradas por la emoción, con tanta oportunidad de decir "no" como la que tienen los peces en una inundación.
No sólo lo que hemos observado nos dice que estamos indefensos contra tales mareas. Algunos experimentos realizados en universidades famosas lo confirman. Los famosos experimentos Milgram, por ejemplo, nos dicen que la mayoría de la gente llevaría a cabo órdenes para torturar, matar. Bien, muy bien, murmuro, pero era una mayoría, ¿no? Yo no habría tenido que formar parte de aquella mayoría, ¿no? ¿Podía haber sido un alma pura, como Osip Mandelstam, como su esposa Nadezha?...
Pero no, tengo que enfrentarme al hecho de que yo y todos mis queridos camaradas altruistas, tanto los de aquel quimérico partido de Rhodesia del Sur, como muchos que he conocido desde entonces, algunos de los cuales aún arrastran consoladoras certezas heredadas de pasadas certezas del comunismo... todos eran de la calaña de aquellos asesinos con una clara conciencia. Nosotros tuvimos suerte, eso es todo.
8.
El paraíso, en consecuencia, se encontraría en el orden del día del mundo, y pronto. ¿Quién haría avanzar al mundo? Evidente: personas como nosotros, los comunistas, la vanguardia de la clase obrera, destinados a interpretar este papel por la Historia. Exactamente la misma estructura mental que la de mis padres, que se creían representantes de la voluntad divina, trabajaban por encargo del Imperio Británico, o por el bien del mundo. (...)
En segundo lugar, no existía otro camino hacia al paraíso más que el de la Revolución... con pocas excepciones. Era moralmente superior creer en la Revolución, y quienes no creían en ella eran, por lo menos, unos cobardes. Nos unía la superioridad de carácter, porque éramos revolucionarios y buenos. Nuestros adversarios eran malos. A la gente que no creía en el socialismo no se les concedían buenas intenciones: una forma de pensar que aún hoy sigue vigente. Es satisfactorio creer en la inferioridad moral de los adversarios.
Que la gente que apoyaba al Partido Unido de Rhodesia del Sur o a los Tories [conservadores]en Gran Bretaña en realidad pudiera creer que su política sería la mejor para la humanidad, sencillamente no se admitía. Tan fuerte es la necesidad de creerse mejor que uno mismo que, en fecha tan reciente como 1992, después de todas las tormentas de asesinato, tortura, deliberado genocidio a cargo de comunistas, una roja me lo reprochó diciendo: "¿Cómo puedes dar la espalda a la Verdad? Creía que eras una buena persona".
9.
Dábamos por descontado que cuando la clase trabajadora - o los negros o cualquier grupo en situación desventajosa - tomara el poder, sólo la inspirarían los más puros y desinteresados ideales. De todos los absurdos en los que creíamos éste quizá era el peor. Si alguien osaba mencionar la "naturaleza humana", razonábamos pacientemente con él, le explicábamos que no había comprendido los poderes regeneradores y transformadores del Comunismo.
10.
Sabíamos que todos los que estaban relacionados con los negocios, de cualquier tipo, eran moralmente inferiores. "Hombre de negocios" era una expresión de desprecio (...). No obstante, "negocios", comercio, capitalismo, en pocas palabras, eran, para nuestro canon, necesarios y buenos en ocasiones.
No recuerdo que hiciéramos ninguna tentativa para reconciliar, ni siquiera discutir, estas "contradicciones".
11.
La Cámara Minera había realizado cierta propuesta para su contingente laboral. Este camarada, John Miller se llamaba, permaneció en silencio durante tanto tiempo que atrajo nuestra atención, y luego: "En situaciones como ésta, camaradas, basta que nos preguntemos ¿Qué quiere la Cámara Minera? ¿Cuál sería su prioridad? Establecer ese dato y entonces...". Una pausa, mientras sube la tensión. Ríe descaradamente. "Y, por supuesto, nuestra línea tiene que ser la opuesta".
Estalla una tormenta de aplausos. Sí, éste era en verdad el nivel de nuestro pensamiento político.
12.
Muchos años más tarde conocí a un hombre con mucha experiencia en el proceso de gobierno, y me dijo que se puede apaciguar a la mayoría de los revolucionarios ofreciéndoles puestos. Casi todos son gente de capacidad sin estrenar o infrautilizada. No se dan cuenta de que sufren de frustración. El puesto ofrecido debe elegirse cuidadosamente, sin cinismo, dejando espacio para ese talento del crítico hacia la reforma útil.
Si me hubieran expresado esa idea entonces, la habría arrumado con una letanía de calificativos despectivos, pero ahora me pregunto si será cierta. Si hay algo que hoy en día, mirando atrás, no nos pueda dejar indiferentes es la cantidad de desprecio y asco que proyectábamos sobre cualquiera que no fuera de los nuestros. "Quien no está con nosotros, está contra nosotros". La religión una vez más.
13.
Una escena: media docena sentados alrededor de una mesa escribiendo cartas para pedir dinero para varias organizaciones que controlamos. Todos nos regocijamos y reímos con nuestras burlas de la gente a la que pedimos dinero, nuestros "respetables patrocinadores".
Por ser una ciudad pequeña, nunca hay bastante filántropos a quienes pedir, por lo que nos canjeamos a nuestros patrocinadores como naipes (...). La mayoría aparecía en los membretes de todas las organizaciones. "Le arrancamos un billete de cinco libras la última vez". " Pues que escupa otros cinco. Al fin y al cabo sólo lo hacen para aparecer en el membrete".
¿Qué habían hecho nuestros "respetables patrocinadores" para merecer semejante desprecio? Por definición, eran gente de éxito. No eran jóvenes. Lo peor: no eran revolucionarios. Las personas que creían en el triunfo del socialismo e incluso en la posibilidad de conseguir una sociedad justa a través de medios pacíficos, eran cobardes lacayos de la clase dirigente, como mínimo".
February 13, 2016
"I dreamed every night about the sea, washing in and out of my sleep in sad slow tides of nostalgia, of longing."
December 11, 2017
Doris Lessing erscheint als selbstbewusste (und sich ihrer Reize stets bewusste), kluge, selbstständige Frau, die gleichzeitig ein unglaubliches Bedürfnis nach Babys hat – was manche Konstellationen in den Romanen, die ich gelesen habe (Das Fünfte Kind, Und wieder die Liebe) erklärt. Manchmal hat es mich verärgert, dass sie auf ihre frühen Romane verweist, wenn man Näheres über eine bestimmte Lebensphase erfahren will. Hatte dann immer das Gefühl jetzt enthält sie mir innerhalb der Autobiographie etwas vor. Ihre Beschreibungen der politischen Verhältnisse in Rhodesien sind immer auch für den Laien gut verständlich, aber irgendwie auch ein wenig oberflächlich. Gut gefallen hat mir dagegen, wie sie die Wahrhaftigkeit ihrer Autobiografie, die sich wandelnde Sichtweise auf Ereignisse ihres Lebens zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten, reflektiert. Auch der lebenslange Konflikt mit ihrer Mutter, den sie gleichzeitig zu beschreiben und zu analysieren versucht, hat mich gefesselt. Freue mich drauf, den zweiten Band zu lesen.
December 12, 2020
Non pensavo sarei mai riuscita ad amare di più Doris Lessing, ma con questa autobiografia ci è riuscita.
Premetto che avevo già letto la prima parte dell'autobiografia che originariamente era divisa in due volumi, la recensione del primo volume lo trovate in questo blog. Qui mi dedicherò soprattutto alla seconda parte, quella che va dal 1949 al 1962, che inizia con il trasferimento a Londra dell'autrice e la sua vita nella capitale inglese. Doris Lessing arriva a Londra dopo aver scritto il suo primo romanzo, L'erba canta, e con un figlio piccolo, Peter, lasciando gli altri due in Sudafrica.
Questa seconda parte è divisa in parti a seconda del suo indirizzo e quello che successe nelle diverse case. E' una autobiografia talmente ricca che sarebbe impossibile farne una recensione che possa restituirle giustizia. L'autrice parla della sua esperienza politica nel partito comunista, di amicizia, di sesso, dei suoi libri, del mondo dell'editoria, dell'essere madre, dei suoi genitori, dell'amministrazione della città di Londra. E tutto questo viene raccontato con grandissima intelligenza e sincerità, senza peli sulla lingua come tutti ci siamo sempre immaginati la scrittrice, soprattutto dopo il famosissimo video in cui le viene annunciato di aver vinto il premio Nobel per la letteratura e la sua reazione. E' un'autobiografia a tutto tondo, estremamente interessante e sincera.
Non so se esista una sua autobiografia che copra anche gli anni più recenti, dagli anni Sessanta fino alla morte. La leggerei con grande felicità.
Premetto che avevo già letto la prima parte dell'autobiografia che originariamente era divisa in due volumi, la recensione del primo volume lo trovate in questo blog. Qui mi dedicherò soprattutto alla seconda parte, quella che va dal 1949 al 1962, che inizia con il trasferimento a Londra dell'autrice e la sua vita nella capitale inglese. Doris Lessing arriva a Londra dopo aver scritto il suo primo romanzo, L'erba canta, e con un figlio piccolo, Peter, lasciando gli altri due in Sudafrica.
Questa seconda parte è divisa in parti a seconda del suo indirizzo e quello che successe nelle diverse case. E' una autobiografia talmente ricca che sarebbe impossibile farne una recensione che possa restituirle giustizia. L'autrice parla della sua esperienza politica nel partito comunista, di amicizia, di sesso, dei suoi libri, del mondo dell'editoria, dell'essere madre, dei suoi genitori, dell'amministrazione della città di Londra. E tutto questo viene raccontato con grandissima intelligenza e sincerità, senza peli sulla lingua come tutti ci siamo sempre immaginati la scrittrice, soprattutto dopo il famosissimo video in cui le viene annunciato di aver vinto il premio Nobel per la letteratura e la sua reazione. E' un'autobiografia a tutto tondo, estremamente interessante e sincera.
Non so se esista una sua autobiografia che copra anche gli anni più recenti, dagli anni Sessanta fino alla morte. La leggerei con grande felicità.
February 3, 2009
After Lessing won her Nobel, I began reading her work, as well as whatever interviews and videos were available. I loved the straightforward way she told her stories, I liked the intelligence she put into them, and I appreciated the scope and breadth of her oeuvre. When I learned that she had a two-volume autobiography published I pick it up immediately. It is as frank and enjoyable as you would ever hope it to be. It was fascinating for me to read the story of a proper young girl who would later grow up to be a world-renowned author and Nobel laureate. Lessing always tells her story with honesty and candor, sparing no details and taking no victims. I haven't started on her second volume yet, but after the first one I feel like I know her quite well, and have infinite respect for her as an artist. She writes with a non-nonsense intellectualism that stands out in world literature. Read her.
September 24, 2008
Doris Lessing is brutally honest and tells her story with anger, pride, and great wit. I have loved her writtings for so long and was taken aback at the decisions she has made in her life. I was almost disappointed in her but years after reading the book can look back and think wow what a couragous woman for telling her tale.
January 5, 2009
One of the best biographies I've ever read. Lessing is not only one of the great writers in English of the 20th century, she is certainly also one of the most vivid. Highly recommended, and especially if you don't usually read autobiographies.
July 16, 2011
This autobiography feels very honest by the Nobel Laureate author, Doris Lessing. I have only read one book by Lessing before - the Golden Notebook - which I absolutely loved. And I remember as I read that, I thought, I bet this woman has had a life that is really interesting. It seems my prediction was right.
I am amazed how often I read something that made me think - that's just how I felt as a child, as a teenager and as a young adult. While my life is in no way especially similar to Lessing's, I really identified with her. I wish I could sit down and have a really long chat with her, as she wishes she could chat with Granny Fisher (not sure I've got the name right).
A couple of lines really rang out loud and clear to me: "Is there such a thing as a gene for the condition, being born with a skin too few" (p30). A few times she mentions how thin skinned she was/is; she even has a counter personality for public consumption who she refers to as Tigger. I totally know that feeling! And almost at the end of the book she talks of how life would have been different if she had been alone in London's Soho: ""I can too easily see myself, again drinking too much, as I had hardly done at all since 1942 and the end of my first marriage. And then I would be in love with one of those painters and poets. Not beecause they were glamerous, but because they were lost souls. Irresistable." (p410) I read that and felt like Lessing had been rooting around in my head finding source material!
I recommend this for anyone interested in the post WW1 period, in Africa's history, communism in the forties or who has been impressed by Lessing's work and status as Nobel Laureate. And everyone else may find something in there too :)
I am amazed how often I read something that made me think - that's just how I felt as a child, as a teenager and as a young adult. While my life is in no way especially similar to Lessing's, I really identified with her. I wish I could sit down and have a really long chat with her, as she wishes she could chat with Granny Fisher (not sure I've got the name right).
A couple of lines really rang out loud and clear to me: "Is there such a thing as a gene for the condition, being born with a skin too few" (p30). A few times she mentions how thin skinned she was/is; she even has a counter personality for public consumption who she refers to as Tigger. I totally know that feeling! And almost at the end of the book she talks of how life would have been different if she had been alone in London's Soho: ""I can too easily see myself, again drinking too much, as I had hardly done at all since 1942 and the end of my first marriage. And then I would be in love with one of those painters and poets. Not beecause they were glamerous, but because they were lost souls. Irresistable." (p410) I read that and felt like Lessing had been rooting around in my head finding source material!
I recommend this for anyone interested in the post WW1 period, in Africa's history, communism in the forties or who has been impressed by Lessing's work and status as Nobel Laureate. And everyone else may find something in there too :)
April 18, 2014
I wish I were more familiar with Lessing's many other works. She won the Nobel Prize in 2007. It would be useful to see how the raw material of one's life is crafted into art. In this autobiography, she frequently notes which stories or novels are based on certain episodes or people she knew growing up in Rhodesia. She is writing this as an older woman, so either she kept a good journal of her early years as a writer, Communist, mother, and free thinker, part of a white minority in the country that would be come Zimbabwe...or this book is a combination of memory and creative writing. I really wished for more of a story. As Lessing herself observed, "Every novel is a story, but a life isn't one, more of a sprawl of incidents." That's how I experienced this book, a sprawl.
December 21, 2011
I don't agree with Lessing about everything, nor do I like everything she has written. With that disclaimer, I feel free to say that this is a great memoir. From her early life as a child of white immigrants to "Northern Rhodesia" to her life in South Africa first as a fairly conventional wife and mother and later as a divorced, remarried communist activist, Lessing is honest, witty and thoughtful. Interesting insights into the time period and also into the life of an extraordinary woman.
September 22, 2021
It's indicative of how over-stuffed and self-indulgent this book is that chapter nine, page 155, begins: "My fourteenth was a make or break year." My fourteenth! And yet Doris Lessing is always interesting, never boring, though she certainly takes her time remembering everything she ever did or said over her entire childhood.
March 15, 2013
a very long book, but knowing nothing of colonial southern Africa, i found it pretty interesting. also, the portrait of a woman who so easily shrugged off her own children was a little odd. but if men can do it, why not women.
February 9, 2021
This is a fabulous biography. All my reviews are rated five stars. Thing is, put down books I don't think much of. Self aware: full of immeasurable perception, tells you how the twentieth century panned out.
August 14, 2014
La parte de la infancia es interesante por las cuestiones geográficas.
Pero mejor es cuando se va de su casa y se hace comunista, se casa, y tiene hijos mientras termina la guerra y empieza la posguerra.
Cuenta y trata de entender las razones y sinrazones, las suyas y las de los demás.
Pero mejor es cuando se va de su casa y se hace comunista, se casa, y tiene hijos mientras termina la guerra y empieza la posguerra.
Cuenta y trata de entender las razones y sinrazones, las suyas y las de los demás.
February 6, 2009
I like Doris Lessing's novels but this memoir was disappointing.
March 28, 2018
Mielenkiintoinen, vyöryvä, toisenlainen - Doris Lessingin elämä toden totta on ollut jotakin aivan muuta kuin meidän keskiluokkaiset turvalliset nykyelämämme. Vähemmän kuin selityksiä, elämäkerran ensimmäinen osa tarjoaa näköaloja ja vuoristoratamaista etenemistä. Kyydissä on vaikea pysyä mutta onneksi se ei ole tarpeenkaan, vaikutelmat, tunnelmat, ajatukset, mielipiteet, ajankuvat ja ihmiskuvaukset ovat aivan riittävästi.
Nykyfeministille ja omistautuneelle äidille kirja on myös vaikeaa luettavaa. Käsitys feminismistä ja käsitys äitiydestä on niin kaukainen ja perustelut niin hataria ja höttöisiä tai puuttuvia että välillä tekee mieli ravistella - miksi teet noin? Miksi hylkäät lapsesi? MItä nyt oikein ajattelit? Samoin suhteet miehiin, miksi ne olivat noin tärkeitä ja toisaalta noin yhdentekeviä?
Odotan jatkoa mutta en taida jaksaa tarttua siihen aivan heti. Tässä on sulattamista pitkäksi aikaa.
Nykyfeministille ja omistautuneelle äidille kirja on myös vaikeaa luettavaa. Käsitys feminismistä ja käsitys äitiydestä on niin kaukainen ja perustelut niin hataria ja höttöisiä tai puuttuvia että välillä tekee mieli ravistella - miksi teet noin? Miksi hylkäät lapsesi? MItä nyt oikein ajattelit? Samoin suhteet miehiin, miksi ne olivat noin tärkeitä ja toisaalta noin yhdentekeviä?
Odotan jatkoa mutta en taida jaksaa tarttua siihen aivan heti. Tässä on sulattamista pitkäksi aikaa.
December 21, 2020
Vol. 1 de la autobiografía de la escritora. Abarca su infancia, adolescencia y primera juventud en África (lo que fue Rhodesia del Sur). Sus padres se instalan como colonos en medio de la selva. Ella convive con la selva, los libros, y más adelante con una sociedad racista. Excelente relato histórico-social y familiar.
December 12, 2014
It was a happy chance that this came into my hands, [thanks again to the splendid municipal libraries of Turin, Italy], for I am rarely tempted by autobiographies (or biographies). Usually, the single subject gets boring. Lessing is different: there is not a dull moment in this book. She breathes life not only into her former self/selves but into everyone and every place she encountered. For anybody who has lived in post-colonial Africa, her portrayal of colonial Africa is a revelation: an evocation of a lost world that will make you both sick and sympathetic (to the people, not to their pretensions). The book is marvellously written; it offers a stream of insights into life, the universe(s) and everyone; but it suffers from a flaw built into the medium of autobiography: the writer acts as judge, jury and presenter of all the evidence. Lessing attempts a brutal frankness; at times she seems too harsh on her young self for not having had the hindsight and maturity of the grown woman. But when she explains how she abandoned her first two children in a vain search for freedom and her self, and when she states that she later deliberately got pregnant again to pass the time before divorcing her second husband, you cannot but wonder about the judgements you have been endorsing with a kind of delight for hundreds of pages. Nevertheless, this is a book that anyone who lived in the mid-20th century, or is curious about it, will be glad to have read.
July 30, 2022
Boring. Back in the 1990s I read and enjoyed some of her novels but I found her autobiography dull. For some reason I didn’t trust her as narrator of her own story and was left thinking she was a difficult person and is better off focusing on fiction.
December 18, 2013
Brilliant, as to be expected from such a writer. I was enthralled by her childhood, her battles with her mother, her tragic memories of her father and WWI, her general statements on life et al. Like others who have commented here, I found the least interesting part to be her political activities with the Communist Party in south Africa. What a basically useless group of intellectuals, doing so little to protest apartheid itself and thinking they were of importance! And no mention of black radicalism or leaders. Pretty shocked by her abandonment of her first two children, but not surprising given her own emotionally fraught beginnings. It's interesting that the kind of people who would have castigated her brutally for this are able to accept men doing the same thing with much less if any criticism. In many ways, she behaved like a man throughout her life, fighting to be true to herself as opposed to giving in to the demands of others. Daughters, wives and mothers are under constant pressure to put their own needs second. She battled that inequity from start to finish. A life well lived.
July 9, 2021
Quiero que me guste Doris. Parece tan enfadada. No puedo seguir leyendo, ni me apetece analizar porque me desagrada tanto. Lo devuelvo a la biblioteca. Dear Doris, I will try again.
January 9, 2010
Sometimes I have to read everything by a writer--everything--before I can be satisfied (Laura Ingalls Wilder, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Alice Munro). I've been in a Doris Lessing state of mind since fall 2007, and thankfully I have plenty of work still ahead of me. Now that I no longer have my law school mentor to guide & inspire me on a daily basis, I find myself increasingly dependent on Doris Lessing's wisdom, anger and common sense. I read her out loud to Andy. And I wrestle with the decisions she made in her young life in Southern Rhodesia; abandoning her two young children to join the Communist Party, blithely entering into another loveless marriage, having a child with that man while continuing to have affairs, and then leaving with that child for Britain. I fear that she had to do those things to escape a society that was intellectually barren and oppressively racist. And what does that say about the choices we must make now?
December 11, 2013
An amazing memoir that chronicles Lessing's childhood in Southern Rhodesia, two failed marriages and three pregnancies. Overall, it demonstrates how she refused to be trapped by circumstances; you get a glimpse of where the themes from her novels come from, like the political disillusionment and embracing of insanity. It feels very honest and reflective. It's the same period of her life covered in the first three books of The Children of Violence series, and this is just as good.
January 3, 2023
lessing was a part of the times, which i think makes her story compelling. she was born to parents badly affected by the first world war (one lost a fiance, and one lost a leg) and they tried to make a life in the british colony of southern rhodesia. she grew up in the interwar 'slump' and then became a communist during ww2. the story ends there and i very much look forward to the second half of her life.
January 16, 2010
The great strength of the first volume of Lessing's autobiography is that she's reflecting from 60 years on, and brings substantial perspective to the historical currents she lived through in mid-20th-century Africa (Rhodesia). She's uber-dark, and very critical. Really interesting person. It bogs down a bit in the second half ...
July 7, 2016
Il primo volume dell'autobiografia della mia amatissima Doris.
Divisibile, per quanto mi riguarda, in due parti: la prima, riguardante la sua infanzia, più lunga e un po' più noiosa. La seconda, in cui Doris è più grande e matura, in cui c'è il suo formarsi di una coscienza politica e di una coscienza femminile, molto più interessante.
Divisibile, per quanto mi riguarda, in due parti: la prima, riguardante la sua infanzia, più lunga e un po' più noiosa. La seconda, in cui Doris è più grande e matura, in cui c'è il suo formarsi di una coscienza politica e di una coscienza femminile, molto più interessante.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews