“I’d been saying that I’m a writer and all this and I had short stories. But in fact, I hadn’t written a novel and there was in fact that moment – I was working in a lawyer’s office. I said: Enough now, I’m going to write this novel. And I went in to see my boss, Mr Hill, and I said: Mr Hill, I’m going to leave you and I’m going to write a novel, at which of course he fell about laughing because of how I left him. And I wrote a novel but while this sounds quite … we now embark on 10 years of difficulty.”
Doris Lessing – awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature - speaks about what compelled her to write her first novel ‘The Grass Is Singing’. Read the rest of the story in our interview with her from 2008: https://bit.ly/3Idi02V
。。。。。
The main city library in Harare, Zimbabwe is about to receive Doris Lessing's entire book collection. The Nobel prize-winner, who died last year, made the bequest to the country where she lived for a quarter of a century and where she did much work to encourage literacy. She made this moving speech when accepting her Nobel prize for Literature at the age of 88:
"Remember, a good paperback from England costs a month's wages in Zimbabwe. Now, with inflation, it would cost several years' wages. But having taken a box of books out to a village - and remember there is a terrible shortage of petrol - I can tell you that the box was greeted with tears."
It's a talking point on BBC Newsday from 0200 GMT and we're keen to hear your thoughts:
http://bbc.in/1ryrP36
http://bbc.in/1ryrP36
Doris Lessing, writer, died on November 17th, aged 94
For 30 years, by her reckoning, people had expected that she would get the prize. She hated expectation: that burden that made you a prisoner of circumstances and dragged you along like a fish on a line. The expectation when a child that she would behave, and not try to pull down her itchy stockings or burst into tears. The expectation that she would be a good wife (as she tried twice), pushing prams all day long, instead of leaving her two small children behind to start a new life. The expectation that the Communist revolution would usher in Utopia, when it was all “a load of old socks”. Why did people expect such things? Who had promised them? When?
Most frustrating was the public’s expectation that she, as a writer, would keep to one path. After the success of her first novel, “The Grass is Singing” (1950), packed in manuscript in her suitcase when she arrived, almost penniless, in Britain from Southern Rhodesia, she could have kept on writing about Africa. But in “The Golden Notebook” (1962) she plunged instead into the world of a woman’s dreams and mental disintegration, to wide dismay. In “The Good Terrorist” (1985) she expanded on her theory that acts of terror could be blundered into, rather than ruthlessly planned: again, alarums and confusion. Her five-book “Canopus in Argos” series (1979-83) ventured into science fiction, chronicling moral and ecological disaster on a planet, Shikasta, that was Earth in thin disguise. Many of her fans thought she had gone bonkers. She insisted that it was the best writing she had ever done.
Her name for that, for it wasn’t really science fiction, was “space fiction”: suddenly the old literary constraints were lifted, and she could write with breadth about universal themes. It was like sliding out of a stuffy room (she always noticed smells, whether of animal hide, lice, peas, unwashedness) to thrust her nose into cool fresh air, or running out into the bush of her Rhodesian childhood, with its miles of tawny grass shining in the sun. Or, in her London life, coming out of the flat where she had paced round and pecked at the typewriter all day to wander for hours through the night-time streets.
For too long she had played the game of being pleasant, fitting in. From childhood she was called “Tigger”, the bouncy beast, the jolly good sport. Good old Tigger, who underneath it all was in a rage of hatred against her mother and aching to run away as, at 15, she did. Another persona was “the Hostess”, so generous and talkative to the lefty and literary flotsam who crammed into her London flats, when inside she would be crushed from some unwise love affair or other, or just wanting to be alone. Everyone was a chameleon; hence “The Golden Notebook”, in which a woman’s life was narrated in discrete notebooks, emotional, political and everyday, which eventually tangled into one. Feminists seemed mostly to notice that it mentioned menstruation. They made it their handbook in the sex wars of the 1960s, which hadn’t been her aim at all.
Myth and truth
A small part of her was feminist, just as a small part was Communist
in the 1950s, and Sufi later. Every ideology collapsed into something
else, just as her frail family farmhouse of mud and thatch would fade
back into the bush in time. She never gave her whole self to anything,
except to one lover, “Jack”, in the 1960s—and to her third child, Peter,
whom she cared for until he died, of diabetes, this year. As a writer
she stood outside, “wool-gathering” and observing with sly eyes, like
one of her cats. Much of her heart, though, lay in Africa, and her
writing soared when recounting the labour of blacks, the easy bigotry of
little-Englander whites (like her parents) and the sights and sounds of
the place, from the smoke-mist of dawn to the rustling, creeping noise
at night that revealed itself as rain. Rhodesia was her “myth country”.She wrote “The Grass is Singing” to expose a truth: that white women could desire black men. It made a shocking scene when Moses, the cook-boy, was seen through the window buttoning up Mary Turner’s dress with “indulgent uxoriousness”. And she could spring the hard truth in dozens of smaller touches: describing a new mother as “a sack of bruised flesh”, or the “silky black beards” of underarm hair.
There was a true Doris, too, somewhere. This “aliveness” was where the stories came from, and it was buried deep. As she plumped herself wearily down on the doorstep to answer questions, that Nobel morning in 2007, she seemed to show an authentic, unbrushed side to the world’s press. But the real Doris was saying, as she had every day for decades, Run away, you silly woman, take control, write.
Doris Lessing dies aged 94
Tributes pour in for Nobel prize-winning author of over 50 novels including The Golden Notebook
The literary world mourned on hearing that Doris Lessing,
the Nobel-prize winning author of The Golden Notebook and The Grass is
Singing, among more than 50 novels covering subjects from politics to
science fiction, had died peacefully at her London home aged 94.
Her younger son, Peter, whom she cared for through years of illness, died three weeks ago.
The biographer Michael Holroyd, her friend and executor, said her contribution to literature was "outstandingly rich and innovative". He called her themes "universal and international … They ranged from the problems of post-colonial Africa to the politics of nuclear power, the emergence of a new woman's voice and the spiritual dimensions of 20th-century civilisation. Few writers have as broad a range of subject and sympathy.
"She is one of those rare writers whose work crosses frontiers, and her impressively large output constitutes a chronicle of our time. She has enlarged the territory both of the novel and of our consciousness."
The American author Joyce Carol Oates said: "It might be said of Doris Lessing, as Walt Whitman boasted of himself: I am vast, I contain multitudes. For many, Lessing was a revolutionary feminist voice in 20th-century literature – though she resisted such categorisation, quite vehemently. For many others, Lessing was a 'space fiction' prophet, using the devices and idioms of the fantastic to address human issues of evolution and the environment.
"And for other readers, Lessing was a writer willing to explore 'interior worlds', the mysterious life of the spiritual self. Though it is perhaps a predictable choice, my favourite of her many novels is The Golden Notebook. And my favourite of her many wonderful stories is her most famous – To Room Nineteen."
Nick Pearson, her editor at HarperCollins/4th Estate, said: "I adored her."
Born in Iran, brought up in the African bush in Zimbabwe – where her 1950 first novel, The Grass is Singing, was set – Lessing had lived in London for more than 50 years. In 2007 she came back to West Hampstead, north London, carrying heavy bags of shopping, to find her doorstep besieged by reporters and camera crews. "Oh, Christ," she said, on learning that at 88 she had just become the oldest author and the 11th woman to win the Nobel prize in literature. Pausing rather crossly on her front path, she said: "One can get more excited", and went on to observe that since she had already won all the other prizes in Europe, this was "a royal flush".
Later she remarked: "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."
The citation from the Swedish Academy called her "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Pearson, her editor at the time, recalled the doorstep moment vividly: "That was what she was like. That was vintage Doris.
"When I took over looking after her books, she had a fairly formidable reputation, and the first time I went to meet her I was terrified, but she was always completely charming to me. She was always more interested in talking about the other writers on our list, what the young writers were working on – and reading – than in talking about her own books."
Lessing's last novel, although several earlier books have since been re-released as e-books, was Albert and Emily, published in 2008. Pearson said: "That was a very interesting book for her, revisiting the early life of her mother and her father and how they had been touched by the first world war.
"At the time she said to me 'this is my last book', and we accepted that. She was already at a great age, and I could see she was tired."
The publisher's UK chief executive, Charlie Redmayne, added: "Doris Lessing was one of the great writers of our age. She was a compelling storyteller with a fierce intellect and a warm heart who was not afraid to fight for what she believed in. It was an honour for HarperCollins to publish her."
Her younger son, Peter, whom she cared for through years of illness, died three weeks ago.
The biographer Michael Holroyd, her friend and executor, said her contribution to literature was "outstandingly rich and innovative". He called her themes "universal and international … They ranged from the problems of post-colonial Africa to the politics of nuclear power, the emergence of a new woman's voice and the spiritual dimensions of 20th-century civilisation. Few writers have as broad a range of subject and sympathy.
"She is one of those rare writers whose work crosses frontiers, and her impressively large output constitutes a chronicle of our time. She has enlarged the territory both of the novel and of our consciousness."
The American author Joyce Carol Oates said: "It might be said of Doris Lessing, as Walt Whitman boasted of himself: I am vast, I contain multitudes. For many, Lessing was a revolutionary feminist voice in 20th-century literature – though she resisted such categorisation, quite vehemently. For many others, Lessing was a 'space fiction' prophet, using the devices and idioms of the fantastic to address human issues of evolution and the environment.
"And for other readers, Lessing was a writer willing to explore 'interior worlds', the mysterious life of the spiritual self. Though it is perhaps a predictable choice, my favourite of her many novels is The Golden Notebook. And my favourite of her many wonderful stories is her most famous – To Room Nineteen."
Nick Pearson, her editor at HarperCollins/4th Estate, said: "I adored her."
Born in Iran, brought up in the African bush in Zimbabwe – where her 1950 first novel, The Grass is Singing, was set – Lessing had lived in London for more than 50 years. In 2007 she came back to West Hampstead, north London, carrying heavy bags of shopping, to find her doorstep besieged by reporters and camera crews. "Oh, Christ," she said, on learning that at 88 she had just become the oldest author and the 11th woman to win the Nobel prize in literature. Pausing rather crossly on her front path, she said: "One can get more excited", and went on to observe that since she had already won all the other prizes in Europe, this was "a royal flush".
Later she remarked: "I'm 88 years old and they can't give the Nobel to someone who's dead, so I think they were probably thinking they'd probably better give it to me now before I've popped off."
The citation from the Swedish Academy called her "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Pearson, her editor at the time, recalled the doorstep moment vividly: "That was what she was like. That was vintage Doris.
"When I took over looking after her books, she had a fairly formidable reputation, and the first time I went to meet her I was terrified, but she was always completely charming to me. She was always more interested in talking about the other writers on our list, what the young writers were working on – and reading – than in talking about her own books."
Lessing's last novel, although several earlier books have since been re-released as e-books, was Albert and Emily, published in 2008. Pearson said: "That was a very interesting book for her, revisiting the early life of her mother and her father and how they had been touched by the first world war.
"At the time she said to me 'this is my last book', and we accepted that. She was already at a great age, and I could see she was tired."
The publisher's UK chief executive, Charlie Redmayne, added: "Doris Lessing was one of the great writers of our age. She was a compelling storyteller with a fierce intellect and a warm heart who was not afraid to fight for what she believed in. It was an honour for HarperCollins to publish her."
多麗絲·萊辛:追尋人類內心深處的拉鋸戰
文學2013年11月19日
多麗絲·萊辛,1981年。
Sophie Bassouls/Sygma, via Corbis
在她十分漫長而飄搖的事業中,多麗絲·萊辛(Doris Lessing)幾乎涉及各個領域,從自然主義到心理現實主義,從後現代實驗小說到道德寓言,從科幻小說到恐怖小說。她描寫年輕時待過的非洲,戰後的倫敦,以及外太空的寒冷地帶。
她記錄了20世紀人們對一些重要理念的烏托邦式追求——不管是共產主義、女性主義還是心理學——以及這些理念對努力尋找自身價值的女性產生的影響。
萊辛在羅德西亞度過的童年似乎讓她深刻意識到了種族和階級的不平等,以及政治和個人之間無法迴避的聯繫。儘管她的書背景各不相同,但總是圍繞着下面這些主題:個人和社會的聯繫,家庭生活和自由之間的矛盾,責任和獨立之間的衝突,人類意志與愛、背叛以及思想信仰的力量之間的拉鋸戰。所以她的書中充滿了災難即將到來的氣氛和嚴肅的陰鬱,裡面的人物充滿了問題,而不是夢想,人們像是落入網中的魚,在20世紀非洲和英國狂亂的時代大潮中掙扎。
在她的自傳《在我皮膚之下》(Under My Skin)的第一卷中,萊辛描繪了她很小的時候在羅德西亞的鄉村看到的一幕:父母並肩坐在房前,臉色凝重,充滿焦慮:「他們一起被困在那裡,受制於貧窮,更糟糕的是,受制於他們十分不同的背景所帶來的秘密的、不被接納的需求。在我看來,他們讓人難以忍受、十分可悲,而正是他們的無助讓我難以忍受。」她發誓永遠不能忘記這一幕,永遠不能像她的父母那樣:「意思就是,」她寫道,「永遠不要讓自己被困住。也就是說,我拒絕接受人類的處境——被環境束縛的處境。」
萊辛,1962年,也是出版《金色筆記》那一年。
Oswald Jones/Abergavenny Museum
萊辛筆下的很多女主人公都下過類似的決心,從《暴力的孩子們》(Children of Violence)系列中的瑪莎·奎斯特(Martha Quest)到《金色筆記》(The Golden Notebook, 1962)中的安娜·沃爾夫(Anna Wulfa),她們發現聰明和天分不能確保你擁有成功或控制力,當「女人們的情感仍適用於那個不再存在的社會」時,她們必須「克服萬難,爭取做自由女性的機會」。瑪麗·麥格羅里(Mary McGrory)曾說,萊辛「用西蒙娜·德·波伏娃(Simone de Beauvoir)式的不屈不撓來描寫自己的性愛,用約翰·奧哈拉(John O』Hara)式的坦誠和細緻來描寫性愛本身」。
《金色筆記》被很多批評家稱讚為萊辛的代表作,它的革新之處不僅在於其心理敏銳度——它描寫了一個女人害怕混亂和崩潰的心理細節;而且在於它不同尋常的結構——它把安娜的經歷分成四本筆記(黑色、紅色、黃色和藍色),描寫她人生的各個不同的方面。萊辛認為,某種新的、變革性的東西能從這些筆記中衍生出來,形成第五本金色的筆記本,在那裡「事情匯聚到一起,區分被打破」,能看到統一的希望。
1988年,萊辛在她紐約的辦公室。
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
20世紀80年代,萊辛放下她審視人類心理的顯微鏡,拿起指向遙遠星球和星系的望遠鏡,出版了《阿哥斯的老人星:檔案》(Canopus in Argos: Archives),那是一系列以外太空為背景的幻想小說,受蘇菲神秘派信仰啟發。雖然這些小說含有一些抒情描寫的段落——這與她一貫的實用主義文風很不一致——但是這些故事幾乎完全沒有她早期作品中對人類學的強烈興趣。有些故事是關於善惡的道德寓言;還有些是喬納森·斯威夫特(Jonathan Swift)式的社會政治諷刺故事。萊辛1999年的小說《瑪莎和丹恩》(Mara and Dann)採用了類似的手法,這個寓言故事以遙遠的未來為背景,講述的是冰河紀毀滅人類文明幾百萬年之後的事。
在她的後期作品,比如《本在世界上》(Ben, in the World)、《最甜蜜的夢》(The Sweetest Dream)和《祖母們》(The Grandmothers)中,萊辛努力把她的天分整合到一起:比如她從第一本小說《野草在歌唱》(The Grass Is Singing)便表現出來的,在不動聲色中構想出一個特定時空的能力;她在《瑪莎·奎斯特》系列小說中磨練出來的心理洞察力和社會細節觀察力;以及後來她對童話式寓言和科幻式漫遊的偏愛。
萊辛本人說過,她認為自己在不同體裁和風格中的所有冒險都是一個金色連續統一體的構成部分。「我覺得內心世界和外太空是彼此的反映,」她曾宣稱,「我不認為它們是對立的。就像我們同時研究亞原子粒子和行星系一樣——我們同時研究宏大和微小的東西——所以內部和外部是相通的。」
Tracing the Internal Tug of War at the Heart of Human Life
An AppraisalBy MICHIKO KAKUTANINovember 19, 2013
In the course of her very long and peripatetic career, Doris Lessing has done just about everything, from naturalism to psychological realism, from postmodern experimentation to moralistic fable-making, from science fiction to horror stories. She has evoked the Africa of her youth, postwar London and the chilly latitudes of outer space.
She has chronicled the 20th century’s utopian search for defining ideas — be they communism, feminism or psychology — and the fallout that such ideas have had on the lives of women trying to find an identity of their own.
Ms. Lessing’s childhood in Rhodesia seems to have heightened her awareness of the inequities of race and class and the inescapable connection between the political and the personal. And regardless of their setting, her books have tended to pivot around certain persistent themes: the relationship between the individual and society; the tension between domesticity and freedom, responsibility and independence; and the tug of war between human will and the imperatives of love, betrayal and ideological faith. This dynamic has often resulted in books with an air of impending disaster and humorless gloom, featuring people who are defined more by their problems than their dreams, people caught, like fish in a net, in the tumultuous, troubled zeitgeist of 20th-century Africa and England.
In the first volume of her autobiography, “Under My Skin,” Ms. Lessing described herself as a young girl, watching her parents sitting side by side in front of their house in the Rhodesian countryside, their faces tense and full of anxiety: “There they are, together, stuck together, held there by poverty and — much worse — secret and inadmissible needs that come from deep in their two so different histories. They seem to me intolerable, pathetic, unbearable, it is their helplessness that I can’t bear.” She vows never to forget this scene, never to be like her parents: “Meaning,” she wrote, “never let yourself be trapped. In other words, I was rejecting the human condition, which is to be trapped by circumstances.”
A similar determination informs the choices made by many of Ms. Lessing’s heroines, from Martha Quest in the “Children of Violence” series through Anna Wulf in “The Golden Notebook” (1962) — women who find that intelligence and talent do not ensure success or control, women who must grapple with “the hazards and chances of being a free woman” at a time when “women’s emotions are still fitted for a kind of society which no longer exists.” Ms. Lessing, Mary McGrory once observed, “writes about her own sex with the unrelenting intensity of Simone de Beauvoir, and about sex itself with the frankness and detail of John O’Hara.”
“The Golden Notebook,” acclaimed by many critics as Ms. Lessing’s masterpiece, was innovative not only in its psychological acuity, providing an emotionally detailed portrait of a woman frightened of chaos and breakdown, but also in its unorthodox structure, separating Anna’s experiences into four notebooks (black, red, yellow and blue), dealing with disparate aspects of her life. Out of these pieces can come something new and transformative, Ms. Lessing suggested: a fifth, golden notebook, where “things have come together, the divisions have broken down” and there is the promise of unity.
In the 1980s, Ms. Lessing traded in the microscope she’d trained on the human psyche for a telescope aimed at distant stars and galaxies, producing “Canopus in Argos: Archives,” a cycle of visionary novels set in outer space and fueled by a belief in Sufi mysticism. Though some of these novels contained passages of lyrical writing — quite at odds with her customarily utilitarian prose — the stories evinced little of the passionate interest in the human anthropology that had animated her earlier books. Some of them were moralistic fables about good and evil; others were more social-political satires in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. Ms. Lessing took a similar tack in her 1999 novel “Mara and Dann,” a fable set in the distant future, thousands and thousands of years after a great ice age has destroyed civilization.
In later books like “Ben, in the World,” “The Sweetest Dream” and “The Grandmothers,” Ms. Lessing struggled to integrate her gifts: her matter-of-fact ability to conjure a specific place and time, already on display in her first novel “The Grass Is Singing,” her psychological insight and eye for sociological detail honed in the Martha Quest novels and her later penchant for fairy-tale allegories and sci-fi perambulations.
Ms. Lessing herself has said she sees all her forays into different genres and styles as part of a single, golden continuum: “I see inner space and outer space as reflections of each other,” she once declared. “I don’t see them as in opposition. Just as we are investigating subatomic particles and the outer limits of the planetary system — the large and the small simultaneously — so the inner and the outer are connected.”
萊辛個性隨和,受訪時表情變化多。(法新社) |
文學獎得主萊辛得獎後受訪。(法新社) |
萊辛受訪時表情十足,談笑風生。(路透) |
榮獲今年諾貝爾文學獎的英國女作家萊辛,十一日在媒體蜂擁來到她倫敦北區的住所外時,就隨興坐在門前階梯接受訪問。(美聯社) |
〔編譯鄭寺音/綜合斯德哥爾摩十一日外電報導〕今年的諾貝爾文學獎十一日晚間揭曉,得主是八十七歲的英國作家多麗斯.萊辛。瑞典學院表示,筆耕五十多年的萊辛是「女性經驗的史詩家」,在多部作品中以「懷疑、熱情與洞察力,仔細審視一個分裂的文明」,因而獲此殊榮。
萊辛是繼二○○五年的品特後,三年來第二位贏得文學獎的英國作家,也是第十一位榮獲文學獎肯定的女性,更是文學獎歷來年紀最長的得主。自一九○一年以來,共有三十四位女性榮獲諾貝爾各獎項桂冠。
筆耕超過半世紀 歐洲所有獎項都拿過
文學獎揭曉時,萊辛出外購物,直到兩個多小時後回到位於北倫敦的寓所,才從等在家門外的記者口中得知獲獎消息。她告訴記者:「三十年,歐洲所有獎項我都拿過了,很高興我拿了把同花順。」
童年時期的非洲經驗,讓萊辛培養出擅長描寫黑人與白人隔閡的洞察力,在一九五○年的處女作「青草在歌唱」中,萊辛以尖銳角度描述白人農夫之妻與黑人僕人的關係,對種族迫害與殖民主義有深刻研究,瑞典學院稱此書為「愛與恨的悲劇,也是對不可解的種族衝突的研究」。
萊辛的作品除了半自傳式的「暴力之子」外,代表作是一九六二年的「金色筆記」,瑞典學院表示,此書被女性主義視為開創性創作,也是形塑二十世紀男女關係觀點的代表作品。萊辛其他重要著作還包括一九七三年的「黑暗前的夏日」、一九八八年的「第五個孩子」等。
瑞 典學院在頌詞中說,「全球大災難迫使人類回到較原始生活的前景,特別吸引萊辛,該主題近年來不斷出現在她的書中」,「從崩壞與混亂浮現出的基本價值,讓萊 辛得以保留人類的希望」,一九九九年的「瑪拉與丹」和二○○五年此書的續集「丹將軍與瑪拉之女葛蘿伊特與雪狗的故事」,即為此類創作。
女性主義表率 批判女性主義
編譯俞智敏/特譯
諾貝爾文學獎得主、英國作家萊辛數十年來一直試圖逃離不愉快的家庭生活,並拒絕各種文學與政治標籤,這些歷程都成為她扣人心弦的小說作品內容。
萊辛作品的主題涵蓋了她在英國非洲殖民地的童年生活、女性主義及一九六○年代的倫敦政治,甚至是科幻小說,讓數個世代的讀者為之風靡。
儘管她最為人熟知的作品「金色筆記」早在一九六二年就讓萊辛成為女性主義的表率,但萊辛本人一直拒絕被貼上「女性主義」的標籤,還強調她的作品並無直接政治意涵。
現年八十七歲的萊辛一九一九年出生於波斯(現伊朗),隨後舉家搬到英屬南羅德西亞(現辛巴威),萊辛就是在當地的農場上長大。萊辛後來回憶說,那是段「寂寞得要命」的成長過程。
一 九三九年,年方二十的萊辛迫不及待地與第一任丈夫魏斯頓結婚,兩人育有兩名子女,旋即於一九四三年離婚。萊辛後來又嫁給德國政治運動人士萊辛,兩人於一九 四九年離婚後,萊辛即帶著幼子與處女作「青草在歌唱」的手稿定居英國。這部內容尖銳的小說檢視了種族壓迫與殖民主義,出版後立刻造成轟動。
萊辛的激進政治傾向曾促使她加入英國共產黨,不過一九五六年匈牙利起義遭蘇聯軍隊無情鎮壓後,萊辛決定就此退出共黨。
萊辛於一九五二年至一九六九年間完成了「暴力之子」系列小說,奠定了她身為女性主義者與作家的聲望,但萊辛一直堅持,她在六○年代並非活躍的女性主義者,並批評女性主義運動過度受限於意識形態,所以她從未喜歡過女性主義運動。
到了一九八○年代,萊辛的名聲稍顯褪色,她決定測試作家名號在出版業的重要性,因此用假名投稿新作,果然遭到退稿,等到她披露真實身分後,這部作品才有問世的機會。
她於一九八五年出版的作品「可敬的恐怖份子」,描述一名年輕女性決定在倫敦發動炸彈攻擊,今日讀來尤能引發共鳴。
近 年來萊辛定居在倫敦,並發表多部科幻小說作品。萊辛的書迷還替萊辛在廣受年輕人歡迎的交友網站MySpace上設立了個人網頁,網頁上註明這位「八十七歲 的女性」在站上共有一百三十六個朋友,雖然萊辛本人並不上網,但她知道網頁的存在,也會定期收到網友透過網頁傳達的訊息。
(取材自法新社)
文學獎最高齡得主 關心年輕世代
〔編譯羅彥傑/綜合十一日外電報導〕榮獲二○○七年諾貝爾文學獎的英國女作家萊辛本月二十二日就要過八十八歲生日。根據諾貝爾基金會網站的資料,萊辛是諾貝爾文學獎有史以來最高齡的得主,也是諾貝爾歷來各獎項中,年紀排行第二大的得主。
萊辛曾認為她永遠不會得獎,而且說這三十年來針對她會不會得獎的爭辯很「無聊」。
在此之前,最老的文學獎得主是丹麥作家狄奧多.蒙森,一九○二年獲獎時已八十五歲。美國科學家雷蒙德.戴維斯在二○○二年獲物理獎時,高齡八十八歲,也是歷來最年邁的得獎人。萊辛到今年十二月十日領獎時,年紀只比戴維斯年輕八天。
萊辛先前接受德通社訪問時說:「我從不提它(指諾貝爾獎)。我敢說他們不喜歡我,否則我早就該得了。當你名氣太響亮時,就會引來太多矚目。有許多優秀作家根本無人聞問。」
曾說過「長大並不好玩」的萊辛,一直相當關注年輕一代,而且對於年輕女孩仍會蜂擁跑來聽她讀諸如「青草在歌唱」、「金色筆記」等非洲系列小說,表示非常感動。
(目前萊辛在台灣出版的書有六本,分別是時報的「金色筆記」、「貓語錄」、「特別的貓」,天培文化的「第五個孩子」、「浮世畸零人」,以及一方的「我把我的心遺忘在遠方」與「一封未投郵的情書」。)
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本年諾貝爾文學獎英國文學大師多麗斯‧萊辛(Doris Lessing),是一位愛貓成癡的作家,她的生命似乎永遠不乏貓咪緩步經過的景象。台灣的時報文化就出版兩本萊辛有關貓的「特別的貓」和「貓語錄」。其它多本知名著作,台灣出版社都有翻譯中文出版。
時報文化介紹多麗斯.萊辛,1919生於波斯(今伊朗),父母皆為英國人,五歲時隨家人遷往南非羅德西亞(今辛巴威)。她的家人原希望在南非務農致富,不過事與願違,萊辛的母親原期待能過著維多利亞式的文化生活,將女兒送到天主教女子學校就讀。 然而萊辛在非洲的原野中成長,對嚴格管教的教會學校難以適應,十四歲便輟學,之後不再接受正式教育,但她博覽群書充實自己。 1939年和法蘭克.惠斯頓結婚,育有一男一女,1943年離婚;二次大戰期間認識德國難民葛提弗烈德,1945年結婚,生子,1949年離異,此後一直單身。 1949年萊辛攜帶她的第一部小說手稿初回英國,這部名為「青草在歌唱」的小說是她的處女作,1950年在英國出版,一舉成功,同時在美國及十個歐洲國家出版發行。她的國際聲譽由此建立,創作一發而不可收。 萊辛在「特別的貓」這本書裡細數曾經讓她歡欣也讓她憂愁的貓。故事從萊辛在非洲的童年開始,她以勞倫斯對生物觀察的精神,書寫這些貓的生命景觀,像是童年 時衝進她家農田的貓,週末和父親兩人和大約四十隻貓相處,充滿個性的「灰貓」與「黑貓」、大難不死的流浪貓等。灰貓是被寵愛的美人,喜愛炫耀賣弄、自私虛 榮;黑貓活在現實世界中,審慎穩重,高度發展肉體本能;流浪貓有倖存者的特質。 萊辛有極度具象、栩栩如生的想像以及冷靜精確的觀察,她筆下的貓,充滿著生命感的世界。至於「金色筆記」這本書,是英國文學最具女性主義象徵的大師級作品。全書以「自由女性」的一部短篇小說為骨架,也可獨立成篇,而短篇小說又分別以黑色、紅色、黃色和藍色四部筆記呈現。 萊辛另外兩本著作,則由天培文化出版的「第五個孩子」和「浮世畸零人」。「第五個孩子」是萊辛最具影響力、最扣人心弦的著作之一,「浮世畸零人」是續集。 這是一部介於自然主義敘述式的家庭生活記錄與科幻小說的寓言之間的故事,情節緊緊扣住讀者的心,如坐針氈,直到高潮迭起的結局來臨為止。 時報文化詳細介紹萊辛的著作,包括十多部長篇小說,其中代表作有五卷本的「暴力的孩子」系列、最負盛名的「金色筆記」、「黑暗來臨前的夏季」、「倖存者的 回憶錄」等;短篇小說集「五」曾獲得毛姆文學獎。1981年獲奧地利的歐洲文學國家獎,1982年獲得德意志莎士比亞文學獎。五卷本的小說系列「南船老人 屋」的第一部「希卡斯塔」於1979年出版。長篇小說「好恐怖主義者」獲得1985年的W‧H‧史密斯文學獎。 |
Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press
Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose deeply autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social and political issues of her time, on Thursday won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” The award comes with a 10 million Swedish crown honorarium, about $1.6 million.
Ms. Lessing, who turns 88 later this month, never finished high school and largely educated herself through voracious reading. She has written dozens of books of fiction, as well as plays, nonfiction and two volumes of her autobiography. She is the 11th woman to win a Nobel Prize in literature.
Ms. Lessing learned of the news from a group of reporters camped on her doorstep as she returned from visiting her son in the hospital. “I was a bit surprised because I had forgotten about it actually,” she said. “My name has been on the short list for such a long time.”
As the persistent sound of her phone ringing came from inside the house, Ms. Lessing said that on second thought, she was not as surprised “because this has been going on for something like 40 years,” referring to the number of times she has been on the short list for the Nobel. “Either they were going to give it to me sometime before I popped off or not at all.”
Stout, sharp and a bit hard of hearing, after a few moments Ms. Lessing excused herself to go inside. “Now I’m going to go in to answer my telephone,” she said. “I swear I’m going upstairs to find some suitable sentences which I will be using from now on.”
Although Ms. Lessing is passionate about social and political issues, she is unlikely to be as controversial as the previous two winners, Orhan Pamuk of Turkey or Harold Pinter of Britain, whose views on current political situations led commentators to suspect that the Swedish Academy was choosing its winners in part for nonliterary reasons.
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 abandon their own 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.”
Although she has been held up as an early feminist icon, Ms. Lessing later disavowed that she herself was a feminist, earning the ire of some British critics and academics.
Clare Hanson, professor of 20th century literature at the University of Southampton in Britain and a keynote speaker at the second international Doris Lessing Conference this past July, said: “She’s been ahead of her time, prescient and thoughtful, immensely wide-ranging.”
Ms. Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in 1919 in what was then known as Persia (now Iran). Her father was a bank clerk and her mother was trained as a nurse. Lured by the promise of farming riches, the family moved to Rhodesia where Ms. Lessing had what she has described as a painful childhood.
She left home when she was 15 and in 1937, she moved to Salisbury (now Harare) in Southern Rhodesia, where she took jobs as a telephone operator and nursemaid. At 19, she married and had two children. A few years later, feeling imprisoned, she abandoned her family. She later married Gottfried Lessing, a central member of the Left Book Club, a left wing organization, and they had a son together.
Ms. Lessing, who joined the Communist Party in Africa, dropped out of the party in 1954 and repudiated Marxist theory during the Hungarian crisis of 1956, a view for which she was criticized by some British academics.
When she divorced Mr. Lessing, she and her young son moved to London, where she began her literary career. She debuted with the novel “The Grass is Singing” in 1949, chronicling the relationship between a white farmer’s wife and her black servant. In her earliest work, Ms. Lessing drew upon her childhood experiences in colonial Rhodesia to write about the collision of white and African cultures and racial injustice.
Because of her outspoken views, the governments of both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa declared her a “prohibited alien” in 1956.
When “The Golden Notebook” was first published in the United States, Ms. Lessing was still unknown. Robert Gottlieb, then her editor at Simon & Schuster and later at Alfred A. Knopf, said it sold only 6,000 copies. “But they were the right 6,000 copies,” Mr. Gottlieb said by telephone from his home in New York. “The people who read it were galvanized by it and it made her a famous writer in America.”
Speaking from Frankfurt during the annual international book fair, Jane Friedman, president and chief executive of HarperCollins, which has published Ms. Lessing in the U.S. and Britain for the last 20 years, said that “for women and for literature, Doris Lessing is a mother to us all.”
Ms. Lessing’s other novels include “The Good Terrorist” and “Martha Quest.” Her latest novel is “The Cleft,” published by HarperCollins in July. She has dabbled in science fiction and some of her later works bear the imprint of her interest in Sufi mysticism, which she has interpreted as stressing a link between individual fates and the fate of society.
In a review of “Under My Skin,” the first volume of Ms. Lessing’s autobiography, Janet Burroway, writing in the New York Times Book Review, said: “Mrs. Lessing is a writer for whom the idea that ‘the personal is the political’ is neither sterile nor strident; for her, it is an integrated vision.”
On her doorstep, Ms. Lessing said she was still writing—“but with difficulty because I have so little time,” referring to the regular visits she is making to the hospital to visit her son.
同アカデミーはレッシング氏について「女性性の経験を描く抒情詩人。懐疑的視点と情熱、深い洞察力をもって、分断された文明を厳しく見つめた」と評した。
1919年10月22日生まれで、次週88歳を迎えるレッシング氏は、1901年創設のノーベル文学賞受賞者として史上最高齢。同賞では女性作家として11人目の受賞となる。また、ノーベル賞全体を合わせても史上2番目に高齢の受賞だ。
11日、受賞が発表された瞬間、レッシング氏は買い物に出かけていた。談話を求めたAFP記者に、同氏の代理人Jonathan Clowes氏は「業績が高く評価されて光栄だ。われわれは心から喜んでいるが、本人は買い物に行っていてまだ知らない。彼女がニュースで知ってしまう前にどうにか連絡を取ろうとしているところだ」と語った。受賞を伝えた後、レッシング氏から談話を発表してもらいたいと述べた。
レッシング氏の扱うテーマは幅広い。最も著名な1962年の作品『黄金のノート(The Golden Notebook)』で、レッシング氏はフェミニスト作家とみなされるようになったが、常にこうした「レッテル貼り」を拒絶し、自分の作品が直接的に政治的役割を演ずることはないと語ってきた。
■レッシング氏経歴
レッシング氏は1919年に現在のイランのKhermanshahで、ドリス・メイ・テイラーとして生まれた。1927年に両親が当時の南ローデシア(現ジンバブエ)へ移り、人格形成期をその農場で過ごした。後に「地獄のように孤独な」育ち方だったと回想している。1939年、実家から逃げ出すようにフランク・ウィズドム(Frank Wisdom)氏と結婚。1943年に離婚するまでに2人の子どもをもうけた。
2人目の夫はドイツ人の政治活動家ゴットフリード・レッシング(Gottfried Lessing)氏だったが、1949年にまだ幼い息子と1作目『草は歌っている(The Grass Is Singing)』の草稿を手に英国へ渡り、同氏とも離婚した。人種的抑圧と植民地主義を焼け付くような鋭さでつぶさに描いた同作は翌年出版され、大きな成功を収めた。
ラジカルな政治傾向を有していたレッシング氏は英国共産党に入党するが、ハンガリー動乱の1956年に離党し、以降決別している。
1952年から69年の間に、マーサ・クエストと名付けた主役をめぐる5部作『暴力の子供たち(Children of Violence)』 を出版し、作家とフェミニストという2つの評価を確立した。この評価について、レッシング氏はかたくなに否定し続け、「私は60年代もそれ以降も、活発な フェミニストではなかった。(フェミニスト運動は)イデオロギーに依拠しすぎていて好きではなかった。さまざまな主張があったが、私にとっては真実として 響かなかった」と述べたことがある。
1980年代に人気にかげった時期、レッシング氏は出版における知名度の重要度を試してみたいと思い、別名で小説を投稿したところ、まったく相手にされなかった。この小説は後に、作者が彼女であることが明らかにされた後、出版された。
徐々にアフリカに関する積極的な発言も増え、特にアフリカ諸国の政府の腐敗や横領を辛らつに批判してきた。南アフリカはアパルトヘイト撤廃後の1995年まで再訪することはできなかった。
小さなテロリスト集団に加わった若い女性を描いた85年の作品『The Good Terrorist(善きテロリスト)』には、現在も強い反響がある。
近年は英国ロンドン郊外のハムステッド(Hampstead)に住み、サイエンス・フィクションも手掛けていた。
また、インターネットの会員制サイト「MySpace」では、およそ最高齢の利用者のひとりとして自分のページを開設している。最近では「女性、87歳」と掲げた下に、「ドリス・レッシングには136人の友人がいる」と書いている。
■喜びのコメント
受賞の知らせを受けたレッシング氏はこれを歓迎。「これで欧州ですべての賞を受賞したことになる。どれもすばらしいもので、それらすべてを受賞できて光栄だ。30年越しで文学賞の『ロイヤル・フラッシュ』を決めた」とロンドンの自宅前で記者団に語った。
レッシング氏はこれまでに「メディシス賞(Prix Medicis)」(1976年)、「ロサンゼルスタイムズ(Los Angeles Times)ブック賞」(1995年)などを受賞している。(c)AFP
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