(Kermanshah, Irán, 1919) Escritora inglesa. Nacida en Irán, donde su padre era capitán del ejército británico, en 1924 se estableció con su familia en Rhodesia del Sur (hoy Zimbabwe). Los primeros treinta años de su vida transcurrieron en Rhodesia. Allí la pequeña Doris vivió una infancia problemática, condicionada por el paisaje africano y la frustración de unos padres (sobre todo su madre) que no consiguieron realizar sus sueños.
Se educó en varias escuelas de Salisbury (Harare), pero abandonó los estudios a los catorce años y se casó dos veces: primero a los 19, con un funcionario al que dio dos hijos, y en segundo lugar, por conveniencia, con el exiliado alemán Gottfried Lessing en 1944, un camarada del partido comunista con quien tuvo otro hijo, el único que la acompañaría a Londres cuando partió definitivamente en 1949.
El contacto con África y el profundo amor que sintió por esta tierra constituyó la materia narrativa de algunas de sus novelas; el tema de la emancipación de la mujer abunda también en su obra de ficción. En 1950 ya había publicado Canta la hierba, una novela que tuvo buena acogida acerca de la vida en África, a través de la cual se opone a la política racial en años en los que el tema no era bien recibido en Inglaterra. Gracias a esa novela, y sobre todo a su tenacidad, consiguió abrirse camino en el mundillo literario londinense a lo largo de los años cincuenta, al tiempo que pasaba de manera fugaz por el partido comunista británico y consolidaba su imagen de firme detractora de la segregación racial en África del Sur.
En las cinco novelas que componen la serie Hijos de la violencia desarrolló la vida de la protagonista, Martha Quest, en el ámbito racial y social de Sudáfrica, sus esfuerzos para liberarse del círculo familiar, la disolución de su primer matrimonio (Un matrimonio convencional, 1954), su superación personal y su intervención en la política izquierdista de aquel continente, para regresar a Inglaterra en la última novela de la serie, en la que Martha Quest, ya de mediana edad, se ve envuelta en los acontecimientos sociales de su país. Las cinco novelas de este ciclo se titularon Martha Quest (1952), Un matrimonio convencional (1954), Vuelta al hogar (1957), Al final de la tormenta y La costumbre de amar (ambas de 1958).
Aparte de demostrar ser una notable autora de narraciones breves (como en el volumen Cuentos africanos, de 1951), Lessing también incursionó en el terreno de la fantasía como ángulo de observación de la condición humana, un género definido como "space or cosmic fiction". Conopus en Argos. Archivos (1979-83) es el título de este ciclo concebido bajo las leyes de aquel género y que comprende obras como The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980), The Sirian Experimente (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) y The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983). Con este ciclo rompe con el realismo tradicional y describe acontecimientos épicos y míticos de un universo ficticio.
El cuaderno dorado
Pero probablemente sea El cuaderno dorado (1962) la novela que más fama haya otorgado a Doris Lessing. El cuaderno dorado es un relato de sus experiencias colonialistas, sus relaciones con otras mujeres, su vida intelectual en los ambientes progresistas y marxistas de Salisbury y Londres, sus dificultades como novelista y su desencanto revolucionario, paralelo a la madurez y a la angustia ante la soledad.
Doris Lessing
(Kermanshah, Irán, 1919) Escritora inglesa. Nacida en Irán, donde su padre era capitán del ejército británico, en 1924 se estableció con su familia en Rhodesia del Sur (hoy Zimbabwe). Los primeros treinta años de su vida transcurrieron en Rhodesia. Allí la pequeña Doris vivió una infancia problemática, condicionada por el paisaje africano y la frustración de unos padres (sobre todo su madre) que no consiguieron realizar sus sueños.
Doris Lessing en 1956
Se educó en varias escuelas de Salisbury (Harare), pero abandonó los estudios a los catorce años y se casó dos veces: primero a los 19, con un funcionario al que dio dos hijos, y en segundo lugar, por conveniencia, con el exiliado alemán Gottfried Lessing en 1944, un camarada del partido comunista con quien tuvo otro hijo, el único que la acompañaría a Londres cuando partió definitivamente en 1949.
El contacto con África y el profundo amor que sintió por esta tierra constituyó la materia narrativa de algunas de sus novelas; el tema de la emancipación de la mujer abunda también en su obra de ficción. En 1950 ya había publicado Canta la hierba, una novela que tuvo buena acogida acerca de la vida en África, a través de la cual se opone a la política racial en años en los que el tema no era bien recibido en Inglaterra. Gracias a esa novela, y sobre todo a su tenacidad, consiguió abrirse camino en el mundillo literario londinense a lo largo de los años cincuenta, al tiempo que pasaba de manera fugaz por el partido comunista británico y consolidaba su imagen de firme detractora de la segregación racial en África del Sur.
En las cinco novelas que componen la serie Hijos de la violencia desarrolló la vida de la protagonista, Martha Quest, en el ámbito racial y social de Sudáfrica, sus esfuerzos para liberarse del círculo familiar, la disolución de su primer matrimonio (Un matrimonio convencional, 1954), su superación personal y su intervención en la política izquierdista de aquel continente, para regresar a Inglaterra en la última novela de la serie, en la que Martha Quest, ya de mediana edad, se ve envuelta en los acontecimientos sociales de su país. Las cinco novelas de este ciclo se titularon Martha Quest (1952), Un matrimonio convencional (1954), Vuelta al hogar (1957), Al final de la tormenta y La costumbre de amar (ambas de 1958).
Aparte de demostrar ser una notable autora de narraciones breves (como en el volumen Cuentos africanos, de 1951), Lessing también incursionó en el terreno de la fantasía como ángulo de observación de la condición humana, un género definido como "space or cosmic fiction". Conopus en Argos. Archivos (1979-83) es el título de este ciclo concebido bajo las leyes de aquel género y que comprende obras como The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980), The Sirian Experimente (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) y The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (1983). Con este ciclo rompe con el realismo tradicional y describe acontecimientos épicos y míticos de un universo ficticio.
El cuaderno dorado
Pero probablemente sea El cuaderno dorado (1962) la novela que más fama haya otorgado a Doris Lessing. El cuaderno dorado es un relato de sus experiencias colonialistas, sus relaciones con otras mujeres, su vida intelectual en los ambientes progresistas y marxistas de Salisbury y Londres, sus dificultades como novelista y su desencanto revolucionario, paralelo a la madurez y a la angustia ante la soledad.
Se trata sin duda de una de las piezas maestras de la literatura inglesa en lo que va de siglo, con su despiadado análisis de las actitudes políticas, de los tópicos y de los ritos de la vida británica tradicional. La trama, de un marcado cariz autobiográfico, gira en torno a tres temas clásicos: la necesidad de tomar un interés activo en temas políticos, la psicología de la mujer madura y el conflicto generacional.
Lessing estructura la obra en torno a una novela corta, Mujeres libres, protagonizada por Anna Wulf, que es a su vez quien redacta los cuatro cuadernos: negro, rojo, amarillo y azul, a través de los cuales va mostrando diversas parcelas de su realidad y que corresponden a diversos avatares biográficos. En la década de los 50, Anna Wulf, divorciada, reside en Londres con su hija Janet y su amiga Molly, asimismo divorciada y madre de un hijo, Tommy. Éste quedará ciego tras una tentativa de suicidio. Anna atraviesa una honda depresión, de la que le ayuda a salir la entrega a tareas sociales.
Los recuerdos de la prolongada residencia de Anna en África, que constituyen el tema de una novela que ha publicado con éxito, están recogidos en otro de los cuadernos, donde narra su acercamiento a los comunistas y su posterior decepción, así como los ecos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial tal como llegan a la remota colonia británica. Otro de los cuadernos, que completa esta visión calidoscópica de la compleja personalidad de Anna Wulf, contiene las reflexiones íntimas de ésta, sus visitas a una psiquiatra y sus fracasos amorosos. La obra ha sido considerada como la Biblia del feminismo y un clásico de la literatura de esa tendencia por su exploración de la identidad de la mujer y por abordar la crisis emocional y artística de la protagonista.
Sin embargo, la propia autora señaló que su propósito no era político, sino literario: "Cuando se es una escritora perteneciente a la tradición inglesa, una debe ser consciente y sentirse agradecida de un patrimonio que significa no tener que luchar como mujer para ser publicada y valorada. En Inglaterra las mujeres se han ganado la vida como escritoras desde hace siglos y, a veces, protestando con energía contra su destino. Mi agradecida conciencia de este patrimonio es la razón por la que suscribo la máxima de Virginia Woolf, según la cual las escritoras serán libres cuando, sentadas a escribir, no piensen si escriben o no como mujeres".
(Kermanshah, Iran, 1919) English writer. Born in Iran, where his father was a British army captain, was established in 1924 with his family in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The first thirty years of his life spent in Rhodesia. Hence the small Doris lived a childhood problem, conditioned by the African landscape and the frustration of some parents (especially her mother) who failed to realize their dreams. He was educated at several schools in Salisbury (Harare), but abandoned those studies to fourteen years and was married twice: first at 19, with an official who gave two sons, and secondly, for convenience, in exile German Gottfried Lessing in 1944, a comrade of the Communist party with whom she had another son, the only one that would accompany London when finally departed in 1949. Contact with Africa and the deep love she felt for this land was the subject of some of his fiction novels, the theme of women's emancipation also abounds in his work of fiction. In 1950 he had already published Sings the grass, a novel that was well received about life in Africa, through which opposes racial politics in years when the topic was not well received in England. Thanks to this novel, and especially to his tenacity, he managed to break into the London literary scene throughout the fifties, while passing on a fugitive by the British Communist Party and consolidated his image as a strong opponents of segregation racial South Africa.
In the five novels that make up the series Children of Violence developed the life of the protagonist, Martha Quest, in the field of social and racial South Africa, their efforts to rid the family circle, the dissolution of her first marriage (A conventional marriage, 1954) his personal and his involvement in leftist politics of that continent, to return to England in the last novel in the series, in which Martha Quest, and middle-aged, is involved in social events in his country. The five novels from this cycle titled Martha Quest (1952), A conventional marriage (1954), Back Home (1957), at the end of the storm and the habit of loving (both 1958).
Besides prove to be a notable author of short stories (as in the volume of African Tales, 1951), Lessing also ventured into the realm of fantasy as the angle of view of the human condition, a genre defined as "cosmic space or fiction". Conopus in Argos. Archives (1979-83) is the title of this cycle conceived under the laws of that genre and that includes works such as The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980), The Syrian Experiment (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) and The Sentimental Agents in the Empire Volya (1983). With this cycle breaks with the traditional realism and describes events and mythical epic of a fictional universe.
The golden notebook but booklet is probably the gold (1962) the most famous novel that has given to Doris Lessing. The gold book is a story of their colonial experience, their relationships with other women, their intellectual life in the atmospheres of progressives and Marxists Salisbury and London, their difficulties as a novelist and his revolutionary disenchantment, parallel to the maturity and anguish to the solitude.
Doris Lessing (Kermanshah, Iran, 1919) English writer. Born in Iran, where his father was a British army captain, was established in 1924 with his family in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The first thirty years of his life spent in Rhodesia. Hence the small Doris lived a childhood problem, conditioned by the African landscape and the frustration of some parents (especially her mother) who failed to realize their dreams.
(Harare), but abandoned those studies to fourteen years and was married twice: first at 19, with an official who gave two sons, and secondly, for convenience , With the exiled German Gottfried Lessing in 1944, a comrade of the Communist party with whom she had another son, the only one that would accompany London when finally departed in 1949.
Contact with Africa and the deep love she felt for this land was the subject of some of his fiction novels, the theme of women's emancipation also abounds in his work of fiction. In 1950 he had already published Sings the grass, a novel that was well received about life in Africa, through which opposes racial politics in years when the topic was not well received in England. Thanks to this novel, and especially to his tenacity, he managed to break into the London literary scene throughout the fifties, while passing on a fugitive by the British Communist Party and consolidated his image as a strong opponents of segregation racial South Africa.
In the five novels that make up the series Children of Violence developed the life of the protagonist, Martha Quest, in the field of social and racial South Africa, their efforts to rid the family circle, the dissolution of her first marriage (A conventional marriage, 1954) his personal and his involvement in leftist politics of that continent, to return to England in the last novel in the series, in which Martha Quest, and middle-aged, is involved in social events in his country. The five novels from this cycle titled Martha Quest (1952), A conventional marriage (1954), Back Home (1957), at the end of the storm and the habit of loving (both 1958).
Besides prove to be a notable author of short stories (as in the volume of African Tales, 1951), Lessing also ventured into the realm of fantasy as the angle of view of the human condition, a genre defined as "cosmic space or fiction". Conopus in Argos. Archives (1979-83) is the title of this cycle conceived under the laws of that genre and that includes works such as The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980), The Syrian Experiment (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) and The Sentimental Agents in the Empire Volya (1983). With this cycle breaks with the traditional realism and describes events and mythical epic of a fictional universe.
The golden notebook But booklet is probably the gold (1962) the most famous novel that has given to Doris Lessing. The gold book is a story of their colonial experience, their relationships with other women, their intellectual life in the atmospheres of progressives and Marxists Salisbury and London, their difficulties as a novelist and his revolutionary disenchantment, parallel to the maturity and anguish to the solitude.
It is without doubt one of the masterpieces of English literature so far this century, with its ruthless analysis of the political attitudes of the topics and the rites of the traditional British life. The plot, a sharp turn autobiographical, revolves around three classic themes: the need to take an active interest in political issues, psychology of women mature and generational conflict.
Lessing structure the work on a short novel, Free Women, starring Anna Wulf, who is who in turn drafted the four notebooks: black, red, yellow and blue, through which goes to show various plots of their reality and that correspond to various biographical avatars. In the 50s, Anna Wulf, a divorced, lives in London with his daughter Janet and her friend Molly, also a divorced mother of a son, Tommy. This is blind after a suicide attempt. Anna is experiencing a deep depression, which helps you leave the delivery to social tasks.
The memories of the prolonged residence of Anna in Africa, which are the subject of a novel that has published successful, are covered by another of the notebooks, where he tells his rapprochement with the Communists and their subsequent disappointment, as well as the echoes of the World War II as coming into the remote British colony. Another of the books to supplement this kaleidoscopic vision of the complex personality of Anna Wulf, contains the intimate thoughts of it, his visits to a psychiatrist and his amorous failures. The play has been regarded as the Bible of feminism and a classic of the literature of this trend for his exploration of the identity of the woman and to address the emotional and artistic crisis of the protagonist. However, the author stated that his purpose was not political but literary. "When is a writer belonging to the English tradition, one must be aware and appreciative of being a heritage that means not having to struggle as a woman to be released and valued. In England women have earned a living as writers for centuries and, at times, energetically protesting against his fate. My conscience appreciative of this heritage is why we endorse the maxim of Virginia Woolf, that the writers will be free when, sitting to write, not think about whether or not write as women."
In the five novels that make up the series Children of Violence developed the life of the protagonist, Martha Quest, in the field of social and racial South Africa, their efforts to rid the family circle, the dissolution of her first marriage (A conventional marriage, 1954) his personal and his involvement in leftist politics of that continent, to return to England in the last novel in the series, in which Martha Quest, and middle-aged, is involved in social events in his country. The five novels from this cycle titled Martha Quest (1952), A conventional marriage (1954), Back Home (1957), at the end of the storm and the habit of loving (both 1958).
Besides prove to be a notable author of short stories (as in the volume of African Tales, 1951), Lessing also ventured into the realm of fantasy as the angle of view of the human condition, a genre defined as "cosmic space or fiction". Conopus in Argos. Archives (1979-83) is the title of this cycle conceived under the laws of that genre and that includes works such as The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980), The Syrian Experiment (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) and The Sentimental Agents in the Empire Volya (1983). With this cycle breaks with the traditional realism and describes events and mythical epic of a fictional universe.
The golden notebook but booklet is probably the gold (1962) the most famous novel that has given to Doris Lessing. The gold book is a story of their colonial experience, their relationships with other women, their intellectual life in the atmospheres of progressives and Marxists Salisbury and London, their difficulties as a novelist and his revolutionary disenchantment, parallel to the maturity and anguish to the solitude.
Doris Lessing (Kermanshah, Iran, 1919) English writer. Born in Iran, where his father was a British army captain, was established in 1924 with his family in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The first thirty years of his life spent in Rhodesia. Hence the small Doris lived a childhood problem, conditioned by the African landscape and the frustration of some parents (especially her mother) who failed to realize their dreams.
(Harare), but abandoned those studies to fourteen years and was married twice: first at 19, with an official who gave two sons, and secondly, for convenience , With the exiled German Gottfried Lessing in 1944, a comrade of the Communist party with whom she had another son, the only one that would accompany London when finally departed in 1949.
Contact with Africa and the deep love she felt for this land was the subject of some of his fiction novels, the theme of women's emancipation also abounds in his work of fiction. In 1950 he had already published Sings the grass, a novel that was well received about life in Africa, through which opposes racial politics in years when the topic was not well received in England. Thanks to this novel, and especially to his tenacity, he managed to break into the London literary scene throughout the fifties, while passing on a fugitive by the British Communist Party and consolidated his image as a strong opponents of segregation racial South Africa.
In the five novels that make up the series Children of Violence developed the life of the protagonist, Martha Quest, in the field of social and racial South Africa, their efforts to rid the family circle, the dissolution of her first marriage (A conventional marriage, 1954) his personal and his involvement in leftist politics of that continent, to return to England in the last novel in the series, in which Martha Quest, and middle-aged, is involved in social events in his country. The five novels from this cycle titled Martha Quest (1952), A conventional marriage (1954), Back Home (1957), at the end of the storm and the habit of loving (both 1958).
Besides prove to be a notable author of short stories (as in the volume of African Tales, 1951), Lessing also ventured into the realm of fantasy as the angle of view of the human condition, a genre defined as "cosmic space or fiction". Conopus in Argos. Archives (1979-83) is the title of this cycle conceived under the laws of that genre and that includes works such as The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five (1980), The Syrian Experiment (1981), The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1982) and The Sentimental Agents in the Empire Volya (1983). With this cycle breaks with the traditional realism and describes events and mythical epic of a fictional universe.
The golden notebook But booklet is probably the gold (1962) the most famous novel that has given to Doris Lessing. The gold book is a story of their colonial experience, their relationships with other women, their intellectual life in the atmospheres of progressives and Marxists Salisbury and London, their difficulties as a novelist and his revolutionary disenchantment, parallel to the maturity and anguish to the solitude.
It is without doubt one of the masterpieces of English literature so far this century, with its ruthless analysis of the political attitudes of the topics and the rites of the traditional British life. The plot, a sharp turn autobiographical, revolves around three classic themes: the need to take an active interest in political issues, psychology of women mature and generational conflict.
Lessing structure the work on a short novel, Free Women, starring Anna Wulf, who is who in turn drafted the four notebooks: black, red, yellow and blue, through which goes to show various plots of their reality and that correspond to various biographical avatars. In the 50s, Anna Wulf, a divorced, lives in London with his daughter Janet and her friend Molly, also a divorced mother of a son, Tommy. This is blind after a suicide attempt. Anna is experiencing a deep depression, which helps you leave the delivery to social tasks.
The memories of the prolonged residence of Anna in Africa, which are the subject of a novel that has published successful, are covered by another of the notebooks, where he tells his rapprochement with the Communists and their subsequent disappointment, as well as the echoes of the World War II as coming into the remote British colony. Another of the books to supplement this kaleidoscopic vision of the complex personality of Anna Wulf, contains the intimate thoughts of it, his visits to a psychiatrist and his amorous failures. The play has been regarded as the Bible of feminism and a classic of the literature of this trend for his exploration of the identity of the woman and to address the emotional and artistic crisis of the protagonist. However, the author stated that his purpose was not political but literary. "When is a writer belonging to the English tradition, one must be aware and appreciative of being a heritage that means not having to struggle as a woman to be released and valued. In England women have earned a living as writers for centuries and, at times, energetically protesting against his fate. My conscience appreciative of this heritage is why we endorse the maxim of Virginia Woolf, that the writers will be free when, sitting to write, not think about whether or not write as women."
