WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.799 OK, let's jump right into the deep end. We are 00:00:02.799 --> 00:00:07.780 attempting to synthesize one of the most complex, 00:00:07.960 --> 00:00:11.519 contradictory and just expansive literary careers 00:00:11.519 --> 00:00:14.019 of the 20th century. Yeah. That of Doris Lessing. 00:00:14.039 --> 00:00:17.620 Right. And this isn't just a biography. I think 00:00:17.620 --> 00:00:19.239 we have to see this as more of an intellectual 00:00:19.239 --> 00:00:21.480 expedition. We're following an author who was 00:00:21.480 --> 00:00:24.460 constantly changing her political, her spiritual 00:00:24.460 --> 00:00:27.679 and even her literary zip codes. it's a truly 00:00:27.679 --> 00:00:30.800 fascinating assignment because lesson she just 00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:34.579 refused to be one thing ever Right. You know, 00:00:34.579 --> 00:00:36.259 you say she's a British novelist. And yes, that's 00:00:36.259 --> 00:00:38.859 true. But she was born in Kermanshah in Persia. 00:00:38.939 --> 00:00:40.960 A long way from London. A very long way. And 00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:42.859 she spent all her formative years navigating 00:00:42.859 --> 00:00:46.420 the isolation, the racial tensions of a colonial 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:48.700 farm in what was then southern Rhodesia. Only 00:00:48.700 --> 00:00:51.000 to completely resurface in London as what, a 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.039 radical communist? A radical communist, then 00:00:53.039 --> 00:00:55.840 a pioneer of psychological realism in the novel. 00:00:55.920 --> 00:00:57.920 And then and this is the part that threw everyone. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:00.780 She ends her career as an epicist, writing what 00:01:00.780 --> 00:01:03.920 she called space fiction. That journey. From 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:06.819 a colonial maize farm to interstellar societies 00:01:06.819 --> 00:01:10.599 is precisely why we need to do this. It's why 00:01:10.599 --> 00:01:13.060 we have to dedicate a thorough deep dive into 00:01:13.060 --> 00:01:16.140 the sources on her life. And of course, the capstone 00:01:16.140 --> 00:01:19.219 to this whole incredible career was the 2007 00:01:19.219 --> 00:01:23.150 Nobel Prize in Literature. At 87 years old. 87. 00:01:23.390 --> 00:01:25.969 She was the oldest person ever to receive that 00:01:25.969 --> 00:01:28.430 particular prize at the time. Which, I mean, 00:01:28.430 --> 00:01:30.150 that in itself says something about the sheer 00:01:30.150 --> 00:01:32.030 endurance and scope of her work, doesn't it? 00:01:32.090 --> 00:01:34.730 It absolutely does. And the Nobel citation itself 00:01:34.730 --> 00:01:37.790 is the perfect mission statement for our discussion 00:01:37.790 --> 00:01:40.310 today. What did they say exactly? The Swedish 00:01:40.310 --> 00:01:43.790 Academy called her an epicist of the female experience 00:01:43.790 --> 00:01:46.810 who, with skepticism, fire, and visionary power, 00:01:47.069 --> 00:01:49.730 has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. 00:01:49.870 --> 00:01:52.250 A divided civilization. That phrase is everything. 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:54.659 It's the constant theme. It doesn't matter if 00:01:54.659 --> 00:01:56.879 she was scrutinizing apartheid in Rhodesia in 00:01:56.879 --> 00:01:59.219 the 40s or, you know, some kind of galactic bureaucracy 00:01:59.219 --> 00:02:02.400 in the cosmos in the 80s. It's always about the 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:05.019 divided civilization. OK, so let's unpack this. 00:02:05.219 --> 00:02:08.439 The material we have on Lessing, it doesn't paint 00:02:08.439 --> 00:02:11.979 a picture of one single consistent writer. Not 00:02:11.979 --> 00:02:14.620 at all. It's more like three, maybe even four 00:02:14.620 --> 00:02:18.780 really distinct literary personalities that evolved 00:02:18.780 --> 00:02:21.219 across these. totally different political and 00:02:21.219 --> 00:02:23.620 spiritual frameworks. So our goal here is to 00:02:23.620 --> 00:02:25.939 trace the radical life choices that drove those 00:02:25.939 --> 00:02:29.900 shifts. We have to go from her really fraught 00:02:29.900 --> 00:02:32.960 colonial upbringing and her subsequent radical 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:35.680 politics. Right. Through that psychological phase 00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:38.099 of her most famous work. And then finally land 00:02:38.099 --> 00:02:41.219 in her deep immersion in mystical traditions 00:02:41.219 --> 00:02:43.900 like Sufism. We'll start by following the geography, 00:02:44.139 --> 00:02:46.300 right? The geographical and political movements 00:02:46.300 --> 00:02:49.099 that really defined her early years because those 00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:51.740 initial displacements they created the raw material 00:02:51.740 --> 00:02:54.099 for all of her realism and then from there we 00:02:54.099 --> 00:02:55.979 can move into the major thematic shifts in her 00:02:55.979 --> 00:02:58.759 writing so the abandonment of political dogma 00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:01.199 for something more internal exactly for internal 00:03:01.199 --> 00:03:03.699 psychological truth and then finally that eventual 00:03:03.699 --> 00:03:06.199 cosmic exploration that really defined her late 00:03:06.199 --> 00:03:09.240 career It's a journey that starts a very, very 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:12.879 long way from the London literary salons. To 00:03:12.879 --> 00:03:15.319 really understand the intensity of Doris Lessing's 00:03:15.319 --> 00:03:18.500 drive, her need to constantly break away, we 00:03:18.500 --> 00:03:21.099 have to start not just with her birth, but with 00:03:21.099 --> 00:03:23.419 the specific highly charged environment of her 00:03:23.419 --> 00:03:25.900 parents. Right. She was born Doris May Taylor 00:03:25.900 --> 00:03:29.620 in Kermanshah, Persia on October 20th, 1919. 00:03:30.509 --> 00:03:33.110 And her father, Captain Alfred Taylor, he was 00:03:33.110 --> 00:03:35.449 a World War I veteran. A severely injured one, 00:03:35.569 --> 00:03:37.729 he lost a leg in the war, and he actually met 00:03:37.729 --> 00:03:40.650 her mother, Emily Maud McVeigh, who was a nurse, 00:03:40.750 --> 00:03:43.069 while he was recovering at the Royal Free Hospital 00:03:43.069 --> 00:03:45.849 in London. So that parental backstory is already... 00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:48.800 I mean, it's just fundamental to the psychological 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:51.000 tension that Lessing would explore in her work 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:53.939 for decades. Absolutely. Her father, he's seeking 00:03:53.939 --> 00:03:55.599 a fresh start. He's been through this incredible 00:03:55.599 --> 00:03:57.979 trauma. And he's lured by the promise of a new 00:03:57.979 --> 00:04:01.039 life, a colonial life. He takes a job as a clerk 00:04:01.039 --> 00:04:03.039 for the Imperial Bank of Persia. Which is why 00:04:03.039 --> 00:04:05.800 she was born there. Exactly. But it was the next 00:04:05.800 --> 00:04:08.400 move, the big move in 1925, that truly defined 00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:10.879 her perspective. It provided the setting for 00:04:10.879 --> 00:04:14.139 her entire first literary phase. And that move 00:04:14.139 --> 00:04:16.790 was to the British colony. of southern Rhodesia, 00:04:16.910 --> 00:04:19.129 which is now, of course, Zimbabwe. Right. They 00:04:19.129 --> 00:04:21.990 were going to farm maize, other crops on this 00:04:21.990 --> 00:04:25.589 huge thousand acre plot of land that Alford had 00:04:25.589 --> 00:04:27.949 bought. And the sources, they really highlight 00:04:27.949 --> 00:04:30.610 a crucial contrast here, a clash between the 00:04:30.610 --> 00:04:32.569 dream and the reality that would just deeply, 00:04:32.689 --> 00:04:35.209 deeply influence the young Doris. Precisely. 00:04:35.209 --> 00:04:37.949 You have her father, the injured war hero, chasing 00:04:37.949 --> 00:04:40.589 this sort of romanticized colonial agricultural 00:04:40.589 --> 00:04:43.769 dream. A new Eden. Kind of. But then you have 00:04:43.769 --> 00:04:46.839 her mother, Emily. who was carrying all the baggage 00:04:46.839 --> 00:04:50.459 of an aspirational, sophisticated Edwardian lifestyle. 00:04:50.920 --> 00:04:53.879 She expected culture. She expected social standing, 00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:56.160 refinement. And she gets a dusty farm instead. 00:04:56.379 --> 00:04:58.360 She gets a dusty farm that was delivering, and 00:04:58.360 --> 00:05:00.860 this is quote, very little income. So these highbrow 00:05:00.860 --> 00:05:03.399 expectations just utterly clashed with the rough, 00:05:03.459 --> 00:05:05.980 isolated reality of the bush. You can just imagine 00:05:05.980 --> 00:05:08.360 it. Lessing was raised right in the crucible 00:05:08.360 --> 00:05:10.319 of that aspirational failure. There was this 00:05:10.319 --> 00:05:12.939 constant tension between the romanticized promises 00:05:12.939 --> 00:05:16.060 of the British Empire. and the just grinding 00:05:16.060 --> 00:05:19.519 poor reality of their life. And that economic 00:05:19.519 --> 00:05:22.680 reality, it seems to have directly curtailed 00:05:22.680 --> 00:05:25.459 her formal schooling. Oh, for sure. She attended 00:05:25.459 --> 00:05:27.519 the Dominican Convent High School and then just 00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:29.620 one year at the girls' high school in Salisbury. 00:05:29.800 --> 00:05:32.319 And then she was done at age 13. Left school 00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:36.509 entirely at 13. And that decision... To leave 00:05:36.509 --> 00:05:40.129 formal education so early, it's absolutely key 00:05:40.129 --> 00:05:42.689 to her development as this fiercely independent 00:05:42.689 --> 00:05:45.230 thinker. Because it meant she escaped the system. 00:05:45.350 --> 00:05:47.389 It meant she escaped the rigidity of the colonial 00:05:47.389 --> 00:05:51.149 social... structures and also her mother's frustrated 00:05:51.149 --> 00:05:54.370 Edwardian ambitions. She had to become self -educated, 00:05:54.389 --> 00:05:56.009 you know, she had to chart her own intellectual 00:05:56.009 --> 00:05:58.569 course. Which set the precedent for her entire 00:05:58.569 --> 00:06:01.149 life, really. A lifelong rejection of established 00:06:01.149 --> 00:06:03.550 authority. And she exercised that independence 00:06:03.550 --> 00:06:07.589 very early. At 15, she just left the farm, left 00:06:07.589 --> 00:06:09.899 her parents to go work as a nursemaid. And this 00:06:09.899 --> 00:06:11.819 isn't just a biographical detail, is it? This 00:06:11.819 --> 00:06:13.879 is a real turning point. It was everything. Because 00:06:13.879 --> 00:06:16.000 it was while working for this family that she 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:19.220 was exposed to completely new ideas. Her employer 00:06:19.220 --> 00:06:21.660 gave her reading material on politics and sociology. 00:06:22.120 --> 00:06:24.560 And that was it. That was the moment her intellectual 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:27.459 and literary path really began. So her early 00:06:27.459 --> 00:06:29.980 adult life in Salisbury, it seems characterized 00:06:29.980 --> 00:06:33.319 by this rapid succession of decisions that... 00:06:33.579 --> 00:06:36.060 all prioritized her own intellectual development 00:06:36.060 --> 00:06:38.680 over any kind of domestic stability. 100%. She 00:06:38.680 --> 00:06:41.180 had two early marriages. The first was to Frank 00:06:41.180 --> 00:06:44.639 Wisdom from 1939 to 1943. They had two children, 00:06:44.819 --> 00:06:47.360 John and Jean. And then almost immediately after 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:49.420 she married again. Right, to Gottfried Anton 00:06:49.420 --> 00:06:53.199 Nikolai Lessing from 1943 to 1949. And they had 00:06:53.199 --> 00:06:56.120 one son, Peter. And here is where we hit one 00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.300 of the most controversial and I think one of 00:06:58.300 --> 00:07:01.040 the most illuminating decisions of her entire 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:03.860 life. It reveals her absolute, almost ruthless 00:07:03.860 --> 00:07:06.439 commitment to her own professional and political 00:07:06.439 --> 00:07:08.560 identity. The move to London. The move to London 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:11.600 in 1949. When she divorced Gottfried to pursue 00:07:11.600 --> 00:07:14.040 her writing and her socialist politics, she only 00:07:14.040 --> 00:07:16.160 took her youngest son Peter with her. Leaving 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:18.439 the two older children, John and Jean, with their 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:20.579 father, Frank Wisdom, back in southern Rhodesia. 00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:23.699 This choice, I mean, it caused a huge amount 00:07:23.699 --> 00:07:25.860 of public scrutiny throughout her life, especially 00:07:25.860 --> 00:07:28.399 after she became famous. But the source material 00:07:28.399 --> 00:07:32.019 gives us her raw, unfiltered rationale later 00:07:32.019 --> 00:07:34.860 in life. And it is brutally honest about her 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:38.259 priorities. It really forces you to pause and 00:07:38.259 --> 00:07:40.839 reexamine all the traditional ideas of maternal 00:07:40.839 --> 00:07:43.579 sacrifice. She said, and this is a direct quote. 00:07:52.680 --> 00:07:55.980 Can you imagine saying that publicly today, let 00:07:55.980 --> 00:07:58.660 alone back then? It's an articulation of a choice 00:07:58.660 --> 00:08:01.699 that many women felt but couldn't. or wouldn't 00:08:01.699 --> 00:08:04.879 dare to express. She elaborated on it too. She 00:08:04.879 --> 00:08:06.519 said she felt she wasn't the right person to 00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:08.680 raise them. And crucially, she believed that 00:08:08.680 --> 00:08:10.560 if she had stayed in that confining domestic 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:13.600 role, she would have ended up an alcoholic or 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:16.040 a frustrated intellectual like my mother. That 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:18.100 connection back to her mother is critical, isn't 00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:20.879 it? It's everything. She saw the outcome. She 00:08:20.879 --> 00:08:22.699 saw what happened to a talented, intelligent 00:08:22.699 --> 00:08:25.779 woman who was constrained by marriage and colonial 00:08:25.779 --> 00:08:29.259 society. And she decided she had to make a radical, 00:08:29.399 --> 00:08:31.980 some would say selfish, break for her own intellectual 00:08:31.980 --> 00:08:34.940 survival. So you have to ask as a reader, was 00:08:34.940 --> 00:08:38.360 that decision just pragmatic, a kind of intellectual 00:08:38.360 --> 00:08:42.799 necessity? Or was it also a form of radical emotional 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:45.450 avoidance? I think it was probably both. It was 00:08:45.450 --> 00:08:47.850 pragmatic for sure. It freed her to move to London 00:08:47.850 --> 00:08:49.789 to join the intellectual circles that launched 00:08:49.789 --> 00:08:52.850 her career. But it was also radical because she 00:08:52.850 --> 00:08:55.409 was essentially placing her own self -actualization 00:08:55.409 --> 00:08:58.549 above the supreme social expectation of motherhood. 00:08:58.669 --> 00:09:00.929 Exactly. She recognized that her particular genius 00:09:00.929 --> 00:09:03.669 required a massive amount of uninterrupted focus 00:09:03.669 --> 00:09:06.210 and intellectual stimulation. The southern Rhodesian 00:09:06.210 --> 00:09:08.850 environment could not provide that. So this decision, 00:09:08.909 --> 00:09:11.070 it perfectly encapsulates her lifelong refusal 00:09:11.070 --> 00:09:13.529 to be pigeonholed. First as a colonial farmer's 00:09:13.529 --> 00:09:15.809 daughter and now as a traditional mother. She 00:09:15.809 --> 00:09:18.169 demanded intellectual freedom above... Everything 00:09:18.169 --> 00:09:20.450 else. And that drive, it led her immediately 00:09:20.450 --> 00:09:23.289 into her next major phase, political activism 00:09:23.289 --> 00:09:26.950 and literary realism. So that radical break in 00:09:26.950 --> 00:09:30.029 1949 was really fueled by this political awakening 00:09:30.029 --> 00:09:32.370 that had already taken hold back in southern 00:09:32.370 --> 00:09:34.269 Rhodesia. Right. And this launched what we call 00:09:34.269 --> 00:09:37.210 her communist phase, which was also her first 00:09:37.210 --> 00:09:40.720 great phase of literary realism. Her political 00:09:40.720 --> 00:09:42.879 journey seems deeply intertwined with her second 00:09:42.879 --> 00:09:45.779 marriage. It was. She met Gottfried Lessing, 00:09:45.919 --> 00:09:48.960 who was a German Jewish communist refugee through 00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:51.179 the local community built around the Left Book 00:09:51.179 --> 00:09:53.960 Club in Salisbury. She had joined that back in 00:09:53.960 --> 00:09:56.100 1942. And that must have been like water in the 00:09:56.100 --> 00:09:58.759 desert for her. Oh, absolutely. It provided the 00:09:58.759 --> 00:10:01.600 intellectual structure, the community, the debate 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:03.600 that she had been starving for out on the farm. 00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:05.639 And she quickly became more than just a member, 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:07.820 didn't she? She was an active and very outspoken 00:10:07.820 --> 00:10:11.620 voice. Very. developed this strong, unwavering 00:10:11.620 --> 00:10:15.039 opposition to apartheid in South Africa and also 00:10:15.039 --> 00:10:18.580 to the burgeoning nuclear arms race. And this 00:10:18.580 --> 00:10:21.279 activism had very real, tangible consequences 00:10:21.279 --> 00:10:24.019 for her. Yeah. In 1956, she was officially banned 00:10:24.019 --> 00:10:26.179 from both South Africa and southern Rhodesia. 00:10:26.480 --> 00:10:29.600 A ban that lasted for many, many years. She was 00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:31.980 publicly recognized by the colonial regimes as 00:10:31.980 --> 00:10:35.179 a major political agitator. So this wasn't just, 00:10:35.179 --> 00:10:37.700 you know, theoretical armchair activism. No, 00:10:37.720 --> 00:10:40.200 this was real world dissent that literally shut 00:10:40.200 --> 00:10:43.080 her out of the entire geographical region that 00:10:43.080 --> 00:10:44.840 had defined her youth. And the sources reveal 00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:46.960 that her political profile was even higher than 00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:49.460 we might assume for a novelist in waiting. It 00:10:49.460 --> 00:10:51.840 was confirmed in 2015 that Lessing was under 00:10:51.840 --> 00:10:53.679 intense surveillance by British intelligence 00:10:53.679 --> 00:10:56.240 agencies. Which is just a fascinating detail. 00:10:56.399 --> 00:10:58.960 It's incredible. A five -volume secret file on 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:02.220 her, compiled by both MI5 and MI6, was made public. 00:11:02.340 --> 00:11:05.820 MI5 and MI6. Both. And this surveillance began 00:11:05.820 --> 00:11:08.659 way back in the early 1940s and continued for 00:11:08.659 --> 00:11:12.059 two decades. It focused specifically on her associations 00:11:12.059 --> 00:11:14.779 with communist organizations and her political 00:11:14.779 --> 00:11:17.759 activities, both in Africa and later in the UK. 00:11:18.019 --> 00:11:19.200 So what does that tell you? you it tells you 00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:21.259 she wasn't just casually attending a few meetings 00:11:21.259 --> 00:11:24.220 not at all She was viewed as a genuine threat 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:26.200 or at the very least a person of significant 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:29.480 interest to the state security apparatus. She 00:11:29.480 --> 00:11:31.360 was already defying the establishment before 00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:33.539 she had even published her biggest literary hits. 00:11:33.720 --> 00:11:36.100 The establishment was watching the activist even 00:11:36.100 --> 00:11:38.320 before the literary world was celebrating the 00:11:38.320 --> 00:11:41.000 author. Exactly. And meanwhile, when she arrives 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:44.820 in London in 1949, her fiction career just explodes 00:11:44.820 --> 00:11:48.500 almost immediately. It demonstrates the immense 00:11:48.500 --> 00:11:50.799 creative energy she had unleashed by shedding 00:11:50.799 --> 00:11:53.549 all those earlier. constraints. Her first novel, 00:11:53.690 --> 00:11:57.210 The Grass is Singing, published in 1950. It's 00:11:57.210 --> 00:12:00.129 a landmark work of colonial literature set entirely 00:12:00.129 --> 00:12:02.629 in southern Rhodesia. We have to pause here and 00:12:02.629 --> 00:12:04.889 just look at this novel because it really set 00:12:04.889 --> 00:12:07.509 the tone for all of her early realism. It's a 00:12:07.509 --> 00:12:10.190 devastating book, a psychological study of racial 00:12:10.190 --> 00:12:12.409 and sexual anxiety in that colonial environment. 00:12:12.710 --> 00:12:15.730 It tells the story of Mary Turner, a white woman 00:12:15.730 --> 00:12:17.909 who's trapped in a loveless marriage on a failing 00:12:17.909 --> 00:12:21.190 farm. Sounds familiar. Very. And she finds herself 00:12:21.190 --> 00:12:24.049 unable to cope with the isolation and the strict 00:12:24.049 --> 00:12:26.990 racial codes of the time. The whole narrative 00:12:26.990 --> 00:12:29.529 is driven by her growing psychological decline 00:12:29.529 --> 00:12:32.889 and her really unsettling, complex relationship 00:12:32.889 --> 00:12:35.970 with her black servant, Moses. The power of that 00:12:35.970 --> 00:12:39.090 novel, it lies in its unflinching focus on the 00:12:39.090 --> 00:12:41.309 white psyche disintegrating under the pressures 00:12:41.309 --> 00:12:43.389 of maintaining that colonial structure. It's 00:12:43.389 --> 00:12:45.809 not just a critique of apartheid from the outside. 00:12:46.460 --> 00:12:49.419 It's a deep dive into how colonialism warps and 00:12:49.419 --> 00:12:52.659 destroys the colonizers themselves, often leaving 00:12:52.659 --> 00:12:55.440 them incapable of basic human connection or even 00:12:55.440 --> 00:12:57.779 survival. And that focus on Southern Rhodesia 00:12:57.779 --> 00:12:59.980 continued through her early short fiction, right? 00:13:00.059 --> 00:13:02.740 The stories collected in African Stories. Yes, 00:13:02.740 --> 00:13:04.620 all those works capture the atmosphere of the 00:13:04.620 --> 00:13:07.399 country, the heat, the poverty, the social stagnation, 00:13:07.399 --> 00:13:11.559 with just this unflinching, brutal clarity. This 00:13:11.559 --> 00:13:14.659 was her phase of political and geographic specificity. 00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:16.919 However, this rigorous political alignment, the 00:13:16.919 --> 00:13:19.799 whole communist phase, it didn't last. No. Again, 00:13:20.100 --> 00:13:22.080 Lessing demonstrated that she was intellectually 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:24.700 nomadic. She couldn't stay in one place. The 00:13:24.700 --> 00:13:28.000 year 1956 seems to have been the major turning 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:31.179 point for her politics, just as 1949 was for 00:13:31.179 --> 00:13:33.659 her personal life. That's the year she left the 00:13:33.659 --> 00:13:36.240 Communist Party of Great Britain. And she did 00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:39.169 so. following the brutal Soviet suppression of 00:13:39.169 --> 00:13:41.429 the Hungarian Revolution. Which was a classic 00:13:41.429 --> 00:13:44.769 ideological rupture for so many Western intellectuals 00:13:44.769 --> 00:13:47.629 who had clung to that Soviet idealism. It was. 00:13:47.710 --> 00:13:49.990 And for Lessing, it was the moment where the 00:13:49.990 --> 00:13:52.769 rigid doctrine she had embraced just failed the 00:13:52.769 --> 00:13:56.289 test of human reality and historical truth. It 00:13:56.289 --> 00:13:58.490 broke. And that skepticism, it stuck with her. 00:13:58.799 --> 00:14:01.879 She continued to call out Soviet abuses, voicing 00:14:01.879 --> 00:14:04.139 strong opposition to actions like the invasion 00:14:04.139 --> 00:14:06.879 of Afghanistan in the 1980s. So she wasn't just 00:14:06.879 --> 00:14:08.700 shifting from one political camp to another. 00:14:08.799 --> 00:14:11.240 She was developing this overarching skepticism 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:14.620 towards any rigid political structure or dogma. 00:14:14.700 --> 00:14:17.159 And that intellectual transition from the political 00:14:17.159 --> 00:14:20.240 exterior to the spiritual interior is so critical. 00:14:20.399 --> 00:14:22.539 The sources note that once she turned away from 00:14:22.539 --> 00:14:25.100 Marxist political philosophy, she became, and 00:14:25.100 --> 00:14:33.590 I'm quoting, She needed a new framework. A new 00:14:33.590 --> 00:14:35.870 framework for understanding the chaos of the 00:14:35.870 --> 00:14:38.639 divided civilization. And this sets the stage 00:14:38.639 --> 00:14:41.100 perfectly for her most celebrated and also her 00:14:41.100 --> 00:14:44.679 most controversial works. This transition leads 00:14:44.679 --> 00:14:46.940 us directly into what is often called her psychological 00:14:46.940 --> 00:14:51.580 phase. It spans roughly from 1956 to 1969. And 00:14:51.580 --> 00:14:54.379 this period is just dominated by two massive 00:14:54.379 --> 00:14:57.179 literary achievements. You have the five novels 00:14:57.179 --> 00:14:59.519 in the Children of Violence series and then the 00:14:59.519 --> 00:15:02.419 one single work that brought her global watershed 00:15:02.419 --> 00:15:04.860 attention. The Golden Notebook. But before we 00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:06.980 jump into The Golden Notebook, we really need 00:15:06.980 --> 00:15:08.980 to... We need to give due time to Children of 00:15:08.980 --> 00:15:12.120 Violence because it truly chronicles that ideological 00:15:12.120 --> 00:15:14.720 and geographic journey we've been describing. 00:15:14.860 --> 00:15:16.580 Oh, absolutely. It follows the life of Martha 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:18.480 Quest from her youth on a southern Rhodesian 00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:21.080 farm through her political awakening in the city, 00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:23.679 her moves to London, and her ongoing intellectual 00:15:23.679 --> 00:15:26.080 and psychological search for meaning. It's a 00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:28.539 huge series. It is. The Martha Quest series, 00:15:28.840 --> 00:15:31.419 it's Martha Quest, then A Proper Marriage, A 00:15:31.419 --> 00:15:33.879 Ripple from the Storm, Landlocked, and finally 00:15:33.879 --> 00:15:36.820 The Four -Gated City in 69. It is essentially 00:15:36.820 --> 00:15:39.759 her own psycho -political autobiography rendered 00:15:39.759 --> 00:15:42.519 as fiction. So Martha is searching for a meaningful 00:15:42.519 --> 00:15:45.440 way to live. She's rejecting the societal constraints 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.259 of colonial life, of marriage, and eventually 00:15:48.259 --> 00:15:51.200 the limitations of communism itself. The theme 00:15:51.200 --> 00:15:53.480 throughout is the individual's struggle against 00:15:53.480 --> 00:15:56.179 the overwhelming, often violent pressures of 00:15:56.179 --> 00:16:00.059 society. Martha's quest is to find self -definition 00:16:00.059 --> 00:16:03.179 in a world that is constantly trying to impose 00:16:03.179 --> 00:16:05.840 definitions upon her. It's an epic undertaking. 00:16:06.059 --> 00:16:07.899 It shows the development of her consciousness 00:16:07.899 --> 00:16:11.279 from a sort of dreamy adolescent in the colonies 00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:15.440 to a deeply skeptical adult in a fragmented modern 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:17.779 world. But the work that broke the mold, the 00:16:17.779 --> 00:16:19.360 one that became an international phenomenon, 00:16:19.419 --> 00:16:23.059 was The Golden Notebook, published in 1962. It 00:16:23.059 --> 00:16:25.879 is, I mean, it's undeniably a masterpiece of 00:16:25.879 --> 00:16:28.220 modern literary structure. And as the sources 00:16:28.220 --> 00:16:30.120 all confirm, it's considered a feminist classic 00:16:30.120 --> 00:16:33.080 by so many scholars and cultural commentators. 00:16:33.279 --> 00:16:35.220 Which brings us to... that major fascinating 00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:38.159 point of contention, Lessing's staunch, even 00:16:38.159 --> 00:16:40.700 aggressive rejection of the feminist label. It 00:16:40.700 --> 00:16:43.080 raises such an important question. When a piece 00:16:43.080 --> 00:16:45.639 of art has a revolutionary cultural impact, does 00:16:45.639 --> 00:16:48.200 the author's original intent still matter? Lessing 00:16:48.200 --> 00:16:51.779 would argue definitively yes. Yes, it does. She 00:16:51.779 --> 00:16:53.860 felt critics were just reducing the complexity 00:16:53.860 --> 00:16:56.539 of her work to a simple political agenda. And 00:16:56.539 --> 00:16:59.769 she said this repeatedly. Over and over. She 00:16:59.769 --> 00:17:01.710 said that critics overlooked the novel's true 00:17:01.710 --> 00:17:04.910 main theme, which was mental breakdown as a necessary 00:17:04.910 --> 00:17:08.009 means of healing and freeing oneself from false 00:17:08.009 --> 00:17:10.789 assumptions, from illusions. It was an exploration 00:17:10.789 --> 00:17:13.809 of fragmentation and the search for wholeness. 00:17:13.930 --> 00:17:16.410 And this search for wholeness is where the quote 00:17:16.410 --> 00:17:18.789 exceptional structure she mentioned comes in. 00:17:18.869 --> 00:17:21.009 For anyone listening who hasn't encountered the 00:17:21.009 --> 00:17:23.730 book, we need to explain why that structure is 00:17:23.730 --> 00:17:26.410 so revolutionary and why she was so frustrated 00:17:26.410 --> 00:17:28.730 when critics. just ignored it. The structure 00:17:28.730 --> 00:17:31.109 itself mirrors the fragmentation of the central 00:17:31.109 --> 00:17:34.109 character, Anna Wolf. Anna is trying to hold 00:17:34.109 --> 00:17:36.089 her life together by recording her experiences 00:17:36.089 --> 00:17:38.950 across four distinct color -coded notebooks. 00:17:39.269 --> 00:17:41.710 Okay, so what are they? You have the black notebook, 00:17:41.869 --> 00:17:44.029 which is for her past in Africa, her colonial 00:17:44.029 --> 00:17:47.670 experience. Then the red notebook for her communist 00:17:47.670 --> 00:17:50.430 political life. The yellow notebook is for her 00:17:50.430 --> 00:17:52.609 emotional and fictional life. She writes a novel 00:17:52.609 --> 00:17:55.190 within the novel there. And finally, the blue 00:17:55.190 --> 00:17:58.690 notebook is her personal diary, her daily reality. 00:17:59.500 --> 00:18:02.079 So these four narratives are all fragmented. 00:18:02.079 --> 00:18:04.720 They're contradictory. They represent the divisions 00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:07.299 within Anna's own identity. The political self, 00:18:07.480 --> 00:18:10.240 the artistic self, the maternal self, the historical 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:13.630 self. all separate and the fifth and final book 00:18:13.630 --> 00:18:16.349 is the golden notebook itself which is where 00:18:16.349 --> 00:18:17.789 she tries to bring it all together that's where 00:18:17.789 --> 00:18:19.849 she attempts to pull all these fragmented parts 00:18:19.849 --> 00:18:23.569 together into one unified whole narrative it's 00:18:23.569 --> 00:18:26.009 a structural experiment in trying to find coherence 00:18:26.009 --> 00:18:28.710 amidst chaos so by focusing only on the book's 00:18:28.710 --> 00:18:32.210 critique of gender dynamics critics in lessing's 00:18:32.210 --> 00:18:34.809 view were just ignoring the innovative form they 00:18:34.809 --> 00:18:36.630 were ignoring the central philosophical question 00:18:36.630 --> 00:18:46.599 which was She was interested in the unity of 00:18:46.599 --> 00:18:49.140 the psyche, not just the division between men 00:18:49.140 --> 00:18:51.640 and women. Her rejection wasn't just aesthetic. 00:18:51.740 --> 00:18:54.839 It was profoundly intellectual. We have to revisit 00:18:54.839 --> 00:18:57.779 that powerful quote she gave about the feminist 00:18:57.779 --> 00:19:00.619 expectations that were imposed on her. It cuts 00:19:00.619 --> 00:19:02.700 right to the heart of her skepticism towards 00:19:02.700 --> 00:19:19.769 any organized movement. She observed, Wow. That's 00:19:19.769 --> 00:19:21.470 a fascinating connection she's making there, 00:19:21.569 --> 00:19:23.910 comparing the fervor of a political movement 00:19:23.910 --> 00:19:26.130 to religious dogma. She's essentially saying 00:19:26.130 --> 00:19:28.589 that feminism, at least in its most rigid form, 00:19:28.710 --> 00:19:31.420 required faith. It required a commitment to simplified 00:19:31.420 --> 00:19:33.779 binaries, which she had already rejected in communism. 00:19:34.119 --> 00:19:36.099 It was just another rigid doctrine demanding 00:19:36.099 --> 00:19:38.500 an oversimplified narrative. Her lifelong mission 00:19:38.500 --> 00:19:41.319 was to resist reduction. Exactly. She wasn't 00:19:41.319 --> 00:19:43.119 just interested in the plight of women. She was 00:19:43.119 --> 00:19:45.539 interested in the plight of the individual consciousness, 00:19:46.059 --> 00:19:49.839 male or female, under extreme stress. And there's 00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:51.819 a small detail in the sources about the inspiration 00:19:51.819 --> 00:19:54.180 for one of the characters, Molly, being based 00:19:54.180 --> 00:19:56.329 partly on her friend Joan Rodker. Right. The 00:19:56.329 --> 00:19:58.549 daughter of the modernist poet and publisher 00:19:58.549 --> 00:20:01.390 John Rodker. Yeah. And that reinforces this idea. 00:20:01.529 --> 00:20:04.549 She saw herself in a lineage of literary modernism 00:20:04.549 --> 00:20:07.170 that prioritized form and psychological depth 00:20:07.170 --> 00:20:11.309 over mere social commentary. So we see the transition 00:20:11.309 --> 00:20:14.869 from the external political fight against apartheid 00:20:14.869 --> 00:20:17.430 and colonialism to this internal psychological 00:20:17.430 --> 00:20:20.549 fight for coherence and truth within her own 00:20:20.549 --> 00:20:23.769 mind, exemplified by the fragmentation of the 00:20:23.769 --> 00:20:25.890 Golden Notebook. But even that was still not 00:20:25.890 --> 00:20:27.670 enough for her. She needed a larger philosophical 00:20:27.670 --> 00:20:30.849 umbrella to put it all under. And that intellectual 00:20:30.849 --> 00:20:33.490 vacuum, the one created by her disillusionment 00:20:33.490 --> 00:20:35.910 with all these rigid political structures, it 00:20:35.910 --> 00:20:38.490 wasn't filled by simple secular philosophy. No. 00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:41.240 It was filled by a deep, sustained engagement 00:20:41.240 --> 00:20:44.099 with mysticism. And this marked the beginning 00:20:44.099 --> 00:20:47.259 of her third major phase. The phase often called 00:20:47.259 --> 00:20:50.559 her Sufi phase, or her embrace of space fiction, 00:20:50.819 --> 00:20:54.220 starting in the 1970s. Moving from Marxist political 00:20:54.220 --> 00:20:59.059 theory to interstellar society is, well, it's 00:20:59.059 --> 00:21:01.240 arguably the most radical transformation of her 00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:03.819 entire career. What was the intellectual mechanism 00:21:03.819 --> 00:21:06.339 that allowed her to make that jump? The mechanism 00:21:06.339 --> 00:21:09.660 was her realization that Marxism, because it's 00:21:09.660 --> 00:21:11.740 fundamentally materialistic, it just ignored 00:21:11.740 --> 00:21:15.000 the vast importance of spiritual issues, of transformation, 00:21:15.380 --> 00:21:17.819 of consciousness itself. So she went looking 00:21:17.819 --> 00:21:19.720 for a system that didn't ignore them. And she 00:21:19.720 --> 00:21:22.359 found it. She became devoted to the Sufi tradition, 00:21:22.539 --> 00:21:24.900 which is the mystical inner dimension of Islam. 00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:27.099 It's focused on the search for objective truth 00:21:27.099 --> 00:21:28.920 and direct personal knowledge of the divine, 00:21:29.160 --> 00:21:31.579 often through esoteric practices and constant 00:21:31.579 --> 00:21:33.680 self -observation. And she didn't come to this 00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:36.049 alone, did she? The source material identifies 00:21:36.049 --> 00:21:39.190 her good friend and teacher Idris Shah. Yes, 00:21:39.329 --> 00:21:42.509 who introduced her to Sufism in the mid -1960s. 00:21:42.509 --> 00:21:45.009 And Shah was an incredibly influential figure 00:21:45.009 --> 00:21:48.069 in bringing Sufi ideas to the West. It's a critical 00:21:48.069 --> 00:21:50.490 point that needs a bit more context. Unlike some 00:21:50.490 --> 00:21:53.470 Western esoteric traditions, Sufism often emphasizes 00:21:53.470 --> 00:21:56.210 working within the world, you know, seeing it 00:21:56.210 --> 00:21:59.119 as a process of accelerated evolution. It focuses 00:21:59.119 --> 00:22:01.539 on practical learning, not just abstract meditation, 00:22:01.819 --> 00:22:03.960 and that must have resonated so strongly with 00:22:03.960 --> 00:22:06.339 the former political activist in Doris Lessing. 00:22:06.460 --> 00:22:09.460 The sources also connect her work to the philosophical 00:22:09.460 --> 00:22:13.220 approach of G .I. Gurdjieff, specifically his 00:22:13.220 --> 00:22:16.400 work All and Everything. Right. For you, the 00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:18.599 listener, Gurdjieff was a mystical teacher who 00:22:18.599 --> 00:22:21.519 developed a system known as the Fourth Way, and 00:22:21.519 --> 00:22:24.339 it aimed at accelerating human evolution by integrating 00:22:24.339 --> 00:22:27.279 the body, the mind, and the emotional states 00:22:27.279 --> 00:22:29.599 right in the middle of everyday life. So the 00:22:29.599 --> 00:22:32.200 key shared concepts here between Lessing's new 00:22:32.200 --> 00:22:35.599 framework, Sufism, and Gurdjieff are what? The 00:22:35.599 --> 00:22:37.799 idea that humans are essentially asleep, that 00:22:37.799 --> 00:22:40.799 we're living under illusions, and that true meaningful 00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:43.299 change has to come from an inner evolution of 00:22:43.299 --> 00:22:45.700 consciousness, often guided by external, more 00:22:45.700 --> 00:22:47.940 evolved forces. So the external political fixes 00:22:47.940 --> 00:22:50.400 she had sought in Rhodesia and London were now 00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:52.660 replaced by this internal mandate to transform 00:22:52.660 --> 00:22:55.579 oneself. Exactly. And that transformation became 00:22:55.579 --> 00:22:58.980 the engine of her third literary phase. The five 00:22:58.980 --> 00:23:02.400 novels published between 1979 and 1983, collectively 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:06.039 known as Canopus in Argos, archives. And she 00:23:06.039 --> 00:23:08.079 saw this as a natural progression, even if the 00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:10.500 genre changed so drastically. She did. She explicitly 00:23:10.500 --> 00:23:12.900 preferred the term space fiction, which was a 00:23:12.900 --> 00:23:15.339 designation she shared with C .S. Lewis, actually, 00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:17.980 regarding his own philosophical novels. For her, 00:23:18.019 --> 00:23:20.359 this was just social fiction elevated to a universal 00:23:20.359 --> 00:23:23.789 plane. So the thematic content is dense. It's 00:23:23.789 --> 00:23:26.289 using these Sufi concepts to explore the efforts 00:23:26.289 --> 00:23:28.549 of an advanced interstellar society, Canopus. 00:23:28.789 --> 00:23:30.970 Which is trying to manage and accelerate the 00:23:30.970 --> 00:23:33.829 evolution of other less developed worlds, including 00:23:33.829 --> 00:23:36.269 Earth. Earth is viewed as a sort of chaotic, 00:23:36.430 --> 00:23:39.650 messy experiment. A failed experiment in many 00:23:39.650 --> 00:23:42.130 ways. You can see her lifetime of scrutiny just 00:23:42.130 --> 00:23:45.039 elevated to a cosmic scale. Instead of Lessing 00:23:45.039 --> 00:23:46.819 observing the failures of British colonialism, 00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:49.720 she's now observing the failures of all of Earth 00:23:49.720 --> 00:23:51.960 civilization through the eyes of an advanced, 00:23:52.079 --> 00:23:54.880 benevolent, but often ruthless galactic administrator. 00:23:55.240 --> 00:23:58.140 Earlier works, like the dystopian memoirs of 00:23:58.140 --> 00:24:01.319 a survivor and the psychological deep dive briefing 00:24:01.319 --> 00:24:04.259 for a descent into hell, they really laid the 00:24:04.259 --> 00:24:06.180 groundwork for this, didn't they? They did. They 00:24:06.180 --> 00:24:08.720 explored inner reality and societal breakdown 00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:11.339 on a smaller scale before she went truly cosmic. 00:24:11.960 --> 00:24:13.920 But this shift, this did not sit well with the 00:24:13.920 --> 00:24:16.000 mainstream literary establishment. Not at all. 00:24:16.079 --> 00:24:18.759 They often viewed genre fiction, especially science 00:24:18.759 --> 00:24:22.240 fiction, as inherently inferior. It caused a 00:24:22.240 --> 00:24:26.019 huge critical debate. John Leonard's 1982 critique 00:24:26.019 --> 00:24:28.539 of The Making of the Representative for Planet 00:24:28.539 --> 00:24:33.009 8 is infamous. He accused her of Propagandizing 00:24:33.009 --> 00:24:35.289 on behalf of our insignificance in the cosmic 00:24:35.289 --> 00:24:38.150 razzmatazz. Critics felt she had just abandoned 00:24:38.150 --> 00:24:40.369 serious literature for what they deemed trivial 00:24:40.369 --> 00:24:42.910 fantasy. But Lessing, having already rejected 00:24:42.910 --> 00:24:45.289 the feminist label, was perfectly ready to defend 00:24:45.289 --> 00:24:47.589 her new genre choice. Oh, she was absolutely 00:24:47.589 --> 00:24:49.750 unrepentant. She challenged the critics' narrow 00:24:49.750 --> 00:24:52.609 definition of literary merit, stating very clearly 00:24:52.609 --> 00:24:54.910 what they didn't realize was that in science 00:24:54.910 --> 00:24:57.250 fiction is some of the best social fiction of 00:24:57.250 --> 00:24:59.289 our time. And she backed this up with specific 00:24:59.289 --> 00:25:02.690 examples. She did. He cited Greg Baer's novel 00:25:02.690 --> 00:25:05.650 Blood Music as evidence of high -quality, serious 00:25:05.650 --> 00:25:08.109 writing within the field. That defense is so 00:25:08.109 --> 00:25:11.289 crucial because it's not a concession. It's an 00:25:11.289 --> 00:25:13.910 assertion that the genre provides the necessary 00:25:13.910 --> 00:25:17.210 intellectual freedom to address humanity's biggest 00:25:17.210 --> 00:25:19.690 questions without the constraints of political 00:25:19.690 --> 00:25:22.799 realism or traditional literary form. And she 00:25:22.799 --> 00:25:25.160 put her money where her mouth was, too. She appeared 00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:28.019 as the writer guest of honor at the 1987 World 00:25:28.019 --> 00:25:30.480 Science Fiction Convention. She even blurred 00:25:30.480 --> 00:25:32.799 the lines further when describing memoirs of 00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:36.160 a survivor, a dystopian novel featuring the collapse 00:25:36.160 --> 00:25:39.000 of society, calling it an attempt at an autobiography. 00:25:39.059 --> 00:25:41.180 Which highlights her view that the inner subjective 00:25:41.180 --> 00:25:44.039 reality of collapse was just as true, just as 00:25:44.039 --> 00:25:46.819 real as any factual account. And this commitment 00:25:46.819 --> 00:25:48.880 to the cannabis material wasn't just restricted 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:51.869 to novels. She ensured that these cosmic narratives 00:25:51.869 --> 00:25:55.190 transcended the literary format. Right. She wrote 00:25:55.190 --> 00:25:57.809 two opera libretti, based on the series, with 00:25:57.809 --> 00:26:00.269 music by the great Philip Glass. the making of 00:26:00.269 --> 00:26:03.109 the representative for Planet 8 in 1986, and 00:26:03.109 --> 00:26:05.829 the marriages between Zones 3, 4, and 5 in 1997. 00:26:06.390 --> 00:26:08.789 She was determined to legitimize these ideas 00:26:08.789 --> 00:26:11.769 across the highest art forms. Lessing's persistent 00:26:11.769 --> 00:26:14.130 skepticism, her desire to challenge assumptions, 00:26:14.369 --> 00:26:17.170 it just never waned, even as she became this 00:26:17.170 --> 00:26:20.230 established, grand literary figure. And this 00:26:20.230 --> 00:26:22.890 is most powerfully demonstrated by her famous 00:26:22.890 --> 00:26:25.950 experiment in the 1980s, the creation of her 00:26:25.950 --> 00:26:28.829 alter ego, Jane Summers. This wasn't just a fun 00:26:28.829 --> 00:26:48.869 li - She wanted to test a hypothesis. Was literary 00:26:48.869 --> 00:26:51.490 merit or established celebrity the true engine 00:26:51.490 --> 00:26:54.029 of the publishing industry? And the results were 00:26:54.029 --> 00:26:56.349 pretty conclusive. Oh, yeah. Both novels were 00:26:56.349 --> 00:26:58.789 summarily rejected by her regular UK publisher, 00:26:58.990 --> 00:27:01.109 Jonathan Cate. Her own publisher didn't recognize 00:27:01.109 --> 00:27:03.589 her writing. Didn't recognize it at all. The 00:27:03.589 --> 00:27:05.730 books were eventually accepted by other publishers, 00:27:06.069 --> 00:27:08.609 Michael Joseph in the UK and Alfred A. Knopf 00:27:08.609 --> 00:27:11.710 in the US, but only after really struggling to 00:27:11.710 --> 00:27:14.089 find a home. And then she revealed a whole deception 00:27:14.089 --> 00:27:17.099 in 1984. And it immediately exposed the inner 00:27:17.099 --> 00:27:19.099 workings of the literary machine. It showed how 00:27:19.099 --> 00:27:21.660 dependent critics and editors are on brand recognition, 00:27:21.900 --> 00:27:24.880 on pre -established sales figures, on the author's 00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:27.799 past reputation, rather than on the text itself. 00:27:28.099 --> 00:27:30.279 It just validates her long -held belief that 00:27:30.279 --> 00:27:32.619 the institutions surrounding art, whether they're 00:27:32.619 --> 00:27:35.210 political, critical, or commercial, are often 00:27:35.210 --> 00:27:38.150 motivated by superficial concerns, not genuine 00:27:38.150 --> 00:27:40.589 intellectual value. And when the books were finally 00:27:40.589 --> 00:27:43.289 re -released under one cover, the diaries of 00:27:43.289 --> 00:27:46.289 Jane Summers, the name Doris Lessing, had to 00:27:46.289 --> 00:27:49.009 be explicitly featured on the cover to give them 00:27:49.009 --> 00:27:51.630 the clout they deserved. That skepticism, it 00:27:51.630 --> 00:27:53.650 extended directly to the recognition offered 00:27:53.650 --> 00:27:55.730 by the very establishment she was born into. 00:27:56.059 --> 00:27:58.299 Lessing had this extraordinarily complex, almost 00:27:58.299 --> 00:28:00.839 transactional relationship with the British honor 00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:03.779 system. She had some very notable, very public 00:28:03.779 --> 00:28:08.140 refusals. In 1977, she declined an OBE, an Officer 00:28:08.140 --> 00:28:10.359 of the Order of the British Empire. And then, 00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:13.599 even more pointedly, she declined a DBE, a damehood, 00:28:13.640 --> 00:28:17.380 in 1992. And when she was asked why, she specifically 00:28:17.380 --> 00:28:20.299 said that the honor was linked to a non -existent 00:28:20.299 --> 00:28:24.470 empire, which is just. It's a clear reference 00:28:24.470 --> 00:28:26.809 to the colonial structures she had spent her 00:28:26.809 --> 00:28:29.769 entire life dismantling. Absolutely. Yet years 00:28:29.769 --> 00:28:32.750 later, she did accept an honor. In 1999, she 00:28:32.750 --> 00:28:34.650 accepted an appointment as a member of the Order 00:28:34.650 --> 00:28:36.869 of the Companions of Honor. This is the exception 00:28:36.869 --> 00:28:38.890 that proves the rule, isn't it? It is, because 00:28:38.890 --> 00:28:40.869 the Companions of Honor is given for a constiguous 00:28:40.869 --> 00:28:43.450 national service in arts, science, and public 00:28:43.450 --> 00:28:45.869 service. It has no ties to the colonial past. 00:28:46.279 --> 00:28:48.200 So that distinction shows she wasn't rejecting 00:28:48.200 --> 00:28:50.839 honor per se. She was just rejecting titles associated 00:28:50.839 --> 00:28:53.420 with an outdated hierarchical imperial structure. 00:28:53.859 --> 00:28:55.920 She's willing to accept recognition from the 00:28:55.920 --> 00:28:58.359 nation, but not from the empire. Her recognition 00:28:58.359 --> 00:29:01.180 ultimately spanned the globe, which really underscores 00:29:01.180 --> 00:29:03.680 the breadth of her impact across all these genres 00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:06.819 and cultures. Beyond the Nobel, she won the Somerset 00:29:06.819 --> 00:29:09.920 Maugham Award way back in 1954 and the David 00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:12.480 Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British 00:29:12.480 --> 00:29:16.099 literature in 2001. And perhaps the most poignant 00:29:16.099 --> 00:29:19.420 honor came late in her life, the Order of Vapungubwe, 00:29:19.599 --> 00:29:23.460 Category 7 gold, awarded by South Africa in 2008. 00:29:23.930 --> 00:29:25.490 Given that she was banned from that country for 00:29:25.490 --> 00:29:27.670 decades because of her anti -apartheid activism, 00:29:28.029 --> 00:29:30.509 receiving the nation's highest civilian honor 00:29:30.509 --> 00:29:33.569 was just this powerful, official acknowledgement 00:29:33.569 --> 00:29:35.509 that she had been on the right side of history 00:29:35.509 --> 00:29:38.569 all along. In her final years, physical ailments 00:29:38.569 --> 00:29:40.930 slowed her down, but they didn't seem to stop 00:29:40.930 --> 00:29:43.930 her. A stroke in the late 1990s prevented her 00:29:43.930 --> 00:29:46.130 from traveling, but she remained immersed in 00:29:46.130 --> 00:29:48.210 London's cultural life, attending the theater 00:29:48.210 --> 00:29:50.779 and the opera. She apparently spent her last 00:29:50.779 --> 00:29:53.720 year's focus on the final phase of human consciousness, 00:29:54.059 --> 00:29:56.339 death, and whether she would have time to finish 00:29:56.339 --> 00:29:58.640 her latest book. She passed away in London in 00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:01.789 2013 at the age of 94. But while her physical 00:30:01.789 --> 00:30:04.450 presence is gone, her scholarly legacy is incredibly 00:30:04.450 --> 00:30:07.150 robust. It's supported by things like the Doris 00:30:07.150 --> 00:30:09.730 Lessing Society and its academic journal, Doris 00:30:09.730 --> 00:30:12.490 Lessing Studies. And crucially for us, and for 00:30:12.490 --> 00:30:14.630 anyone wanting to do their own deep dive, we 00:30:14.630 --> 00:30:17.130 have the immense physical archive of her life. 00:30:17.430 --> 00:30:20.089 The sources decale the sheer scope of material 00:30:20.089 --> 00:30:23.250 that exists for scholars to continue their scrutiny 00:30:23.250 --> 00:30:26.200 of her scrutiny. The Harry Ransom Humanities 00:30:26.200 --> 00:30:28.200 Research Center at the University of Texas at 00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:31.099 Austin holds nearly all of her extant manuscripts 00:30:31.099 --> 00:30:36.099 and typescripts up to 2008. It's 76 huge archival 00:30:36.099 --> 00:30:39.319 boxes. 76 boxes. While she reportedly kept few 00:30:39.319 --> 00:30:41.700 of her very early drafts, the volume of material 00:30:41.700 --> 00:30:44.400 documenting her middle and late career is just 00:30:44.400 --> 00:30:47.019 astonishing. But it's the personal archive, the 00:30:47.019 --> 00:30:49.099 one held by the University of East Anglia's British 00:30:49.099 --> 00:30:51.559 Archive for Contemporary Writing, that really 00:30:51.559 --> 00:30:53.819 provides the material to understand the woman 00:30:53.819 --> 00:30:58.089 behind That archive contains decades of professional 00:30:58.089 --> 00:31:00.670 correspondence, yes, but also 40 years of her 00:31:00.670 --> 00:31:03.309 intensely personal diaries. 40 years of diaries. 00:31:03.450 --> 00:31:05.630 And perhaps most revealingly, something called 00:31:05.630 --> 00:31:08.430 the Whitehorn Letters. 90 love letters written 00:31:08.430 --> 00:31:12.539 between 1943 and 1949. The exact period when 00:31:12.539 --> 00:31:14.140 she was married to Gottfried Lessing, becoming 00:31:14.140 --> 00:31:16.700 radicalized and making the decision to leave 00:31:16.700 --> 00:31:19.299 her first two children. Exactly. These letters 00:31:19.299 --> 00:31:22.220 to an RAF serviceman named John Whitehorn, they 00:31:22.220 --> 00:31:24.880 offer an intimate, unfiltered look into the mind 00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:27.480 of the person who is making those seismic, life 00:31:27.480 --> 00:31:30.480 -altering choices. So when we step back, what 00:31:30.480 --> 00:31:32.720 does this all mean? When we look back at the 00:31:32.720 --> 00:31:35.099 three distinct phases of Doris Lessing's life, 00:31:35.279 --> 00:31:38.380 the political realist, the psychological pioneer, 00:31:38.519 --> 00:31:41.420 and the cosmic visionary, we see a career defined 00:31:41.420 --> 00:31:44.299 by relentless intellectual evolution. Her journey 00:31:44.299 --> 00:31:46.519 just demonstrates that true depth of knowledge 00:31:46.519 --> 00:31:49.000 often requires the willingness to discard your 00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:51.119 foundational beliefs. Right. She was constantly 00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:53.160 questioning and shedding labels, whether they 00:31:53.160 --> 00:31:55.599 were geographical, like Rhodesian settler, or 00:31:55.599 --> 00:31:58.799 political, like communist or genre -based, like 00:31:58.799 --> 00:32:01.799 feminist writer. Her work across all of those 00:32:01.799 --> 00:32:04.640 phases, it was unified not by a single ideology, 00:32:04.839 --> 00:32:08.240 but by this intense, fiery scrutiny of civilization 00:32:08.240 --> 00:32:11.799 and its tendency toward dogma and division. For 00:32:11.799 --> 00:32:14.180 you, the learner, Lessing's story is really the 00:32:14.180 --> 00:32:16.339 perfect case study in intellectual independence. 00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:18.980 She showed that the most profound insights come 00:32:18.980 --> 00:32:21.799 from the ability to radically shift your viewpoint. 00:32:22.039 --> 00:32:24.440 From the isolated colonial farm to the London 00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:26.819 activist rally. From the confines of Marxist 00:32:26.819 --> 00:32:29.549 doctrine to the Sufi mystics study. And ultimately 00:32:29.549 --> 00:32:31.829 from the psychological trauma of the self to 00:32:31.829 --> 00:32:34.549 the grand observation deck of the cosmos. And 00:32:34.549 --> 00:32:38.289 that profound journey leads us to our final provocative 00:32:38.289 --> 00:32:40.609 thought for you to take away. Lessing dedicated 00:32:40.609 --> 00:32:43.269 her career to dismantling political and social 00:32:43.269 --> 00:32:46.569 structures. She famously rejected honors tied 00:32:46.569 --> 00:32:49.450 to the non -existent empire. Yet her most intimate 00:32:49.450 --> 00:32:52.250 history, her personal diaries and those 90 revealing 00:32:52.250 --> 00:32:54.329 love letters from her most volatile years in 00:32:54.329 --> 00:32:57.450 Rhodesia, are now categorized, stabilized, and 00:32:57.450 --> 00:33:00.450 meticulously preserved by the very academic institutions 00:33:00.450 --> 00:33:03.809 and nations in Texas and the UK that represent 00:33:03.809 --> 00:33:06.210 the establishment she spent her life critiquing. 00:33:06.289 --> 00:33:09.029 So if Lessing was so intent on proving the system 00:33:09.029 --> 00:33:11.470 was flawed, what does this tell us that her ultimate 00:33:11.470 --> 00:33:14.410 lasting legacy is now entirely curated by the 00:33:14.410 --> 00:33:16.829 very system she sought to dismantle? Something 00:33:16.829 --> 00:33:17.529 to mull over.