A Daughter Of Kermanshah Nobelized
10/15/07
By
Darius KADIVAR, Paris
Doris
Lessing to be Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007(*)
Doris
Lessing was born in Kermanshah, Iran on
October 22nd ,
1919 (photocomposition ©DK)
The
novels and short stories of Persian (Iranian)-born British writer Doris Lessing
are largely concerned with people caught in the social and political upheavals
of the 20th century. Central themes in Lessing's works are feminism as was the
case for other major female authors such as Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedman,
Germaine Greer, Marilyn French, the battle of the sexes, individuals in search
of wholeness, and the dangers of technological and scientific hubris. Doris
Lessing will be awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Since 1949, she has
lived in England but she is
also considered an African writer because she grew up and was educated in
Zimbabwe (former
Rhodesia).
Doris
Lessing spent her early childhood in Kermanshah,
Persia (now
Iran). Her English-born father,
Alfred Cook Tayler, who had lost his leg and health in World War I, was a bank
clerk with the Imperial Bank of Persia. Emily McVeagh, Lessing's
mother, had been trained as a nurse. In the mid-1920s the family bought with
their life savings a maize farm in the district of Banket, in the Lomagundi area
of Southern Rhodesia, where Lessing grew up
with her younger brother Harry. Her childhood was lonely, the nearest neighbors
were miles away and there was no real roads between the farms.
In 1926 Lessing was sent to a convent school in Salisbury (now Harare), where the Roman Catholic teachers
tried to convert her from the family's Protestant faith. "I was cripplingly
homesick," Lessing later said. She left the Girls' High School at the age of
fourteen and then earned her living as a nursemaid, telephone operator and
clerk. At nineteen she married Frank Wisdom, a civil servant; they had two
children. The marriage ended in 1943. For some years Lessing was an active
member of the Communist Party, which was formally banned in Southern Rhodesia. This period of her life is reflected in
A RIPPLE FROM THE STORM (1958) of the five-volume sequence Children of the
Violence, the first four of which were set in a fictional African colony,
Zambesia. In 1943 Lessing married the German political activist Gottfried
Lessing, a member of the inner circle of the Rhodesian Communist Party. He was
the model for Anton Hesse in A Ripple from the Storm and Willi Rodde in THE
GOLDEN NOTEBOOK (1962). Gottfried Lessing became later the German ambassador to
Uganda; he and his third wife were
murdered in the 1979 revolt against Idi Amin.
The
Daughter of Kermanshah and lover of Cats was a
leading
feminist author of the XXth century. (photocomposition
©DK)
Lessing's second marriage also failed and in 1949 she moved to
England with her youngest child and
the manuscript of her first novel, The Grass is Singing, which appeared in 1950.
The story, set in Rhodesia, focused on a poor white
farm woman, Mary Turner, and her weak husband. She has a relationship with her
African servant, Moses, who eventually kills her.
From
the 1950s onwards Lessing supported herself and her son by writing.
Disillusioned with Communist policies in England, Lessing
left the party in the mid-1950s. She underwent Jungian analysis and also studied
Sufism under the guidance of Idres Shah. In 1979 Lessing set up a Sufi Trust for
one hundred thousand dollars.
Many critics consider Children of Violence, Lessing's
semi-autobiographical series of novels about Martha Quest, her most substantial
work. FOUR-GATED
CITY (1969), the last
volume, closes with Martha's death in destroyed world at the end of the
twentieth century. It has been said that Children of Violence and more The
Canopus in Argos
reflect the influence of Sufist thought on Lessing's literary work and concern
with the union of the soul with a Higher Being.
Shirine Ebadi Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate 2003
with Host Stars Catherine
Zeta Jones & husband
Michael
Douglas at Nobel Prize Good
Will
Concert © Nobelinstituttet
Arne Knudsen
VIVE LA LITERATURE !
& KERMNASHAHIS ! ;0)
Authors Notes:
(*) Bio and Review of Books see full article and for Doris Lessing’s Nobel
Prize Announcement see BBC
report
Official Website for Nobel Prize Foundation
Particularly Cats by Doris Lessing first
published in 1967 is an insightful outlook on Cat behaviors and their human
partners.
Recommended Readings:
About
the Author: Darius KADIVAR is a
Freelance Journalist, Film Historian, and Media Consultant.
