The gap

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Doris Lessing , Nobel Prize for Literature 2007, at a reading at the Lit.Cologne 2006 in Cologne

Die Kluft (in the original The Cleft , 2007) is a narrative work by Doris Lessing , in which origin myths are analyzed for their ideological intentions. On the one hand, the first-person narrator comments on his actions in a self-reflective manner and, on the other hand, as a historian, he does not seem to notice how, based on his own life as a self-confident (married) man, he infer what he believes to be reliable for the past.


Eagles play a special role in this work because they act as mediators between the human groups of the clefts and the monsters. At the time the narrative takes place, eagles are worshiped in Rome, according to the narrator's account. The cover of the English edition shows a flying eagle (watercolor in black tones) and in the book itself eagles appear as icons in certain sections, where the small graphics are used in pairs as a frame.

The Cleft is the author's penultimate major work and was published in the same year in a German-language version by Barbara Christ with the subtitle Roman by Hoffmann and Campe .

content

Opening credits

At the beginning, a first-person narrator describes a scene that seems to take place in a previous time, with wine, olives and an ox cart. Like the house slaves, the narrator looks out of the window of a house in Rome, where the atmosphere is festive. He reports that he sees Lolla wooing the erotic attention of Marcus, who has just arrived with a loaded cart. It is clear that the two will spend the next night together, regardless of what Marcus would have preferred. This scene seems like the summary of a truth about the relationship between women and men.

The next section is the first-person narration of another person, called Maire, who says she was born into the Cleft Watchers family like her mother and mother. The cleft is a rock and you yourself are the rock that is a venue for rituals at the beginning of spring. Babies are simply born and nothing has been done by anyone to make them arise. It is difficult to remember what they thought when it came to the children. She thinks the clefts meant it was the moon or a big fish. But as they thought it was never part of their story, just what happened. The narrator had said in the introduction that although this was not the oldest document, it was interesting as a report and therefore he put this first. In this report, Maire tells of how monsters were born instead of the usual offspring. They did not want to keep these kinds of babies, so they left them on the rock, where eagles fetched them. At some point they would have seen such a monster on the beach near the Eagle Rock and how it had been covered in the place that they had found so ugly. And that they wondered how the monster survived without the milk from their breasts. And a story was told how one of the younger clefts secretly went out to give milk to little monsters from their breasts. Maire briefly recounts another story that she was told and that she finds “fanciful”, “but something like that, I suppose, happened.” It is about the fact that two of them watched his swimming like a fish Put the tube into another fish and eggs came out. In this document, Maire addresses someone with “you”. The end reads: "And some time after that, we, the Clefts, lost the power to give birth without them, the Monsters - without you."

In the third section of the opening credits the narrator reports that the Christians (a sect that currently exists in Rome) insist that the first female human was brought out of the body of a male and comments: “Very suspect stuff, I think. Some male invented that - the exact opposite of the truth. ”And now he will finish his explanations and devote himself to“ my attempt at a history ”.

"The History"

This part of the work consists of three different stories that are sometimes more, sometimes less interwoven. All three are essentially arranged chronologically. The narrator's comments, in which he reveals his worldview and his conception of the coexistence of the sexes, interrupt the other two stories here and there more or less abruptly.

Essentially, the senator tells from his life: how his first wife died as well as his two sons, whom he had hardly taken care of for career reasons and whom he longed for after they had been killed as soldiers in the war. That he married a young woman on the condition that she gave birth to two children, in turn conceived with him, but otherwise leaving her all freedom in the higher circles that she is now looking for and to which he belongs. How he speculates that now in old age he could have a new big house built, but that it would probably not be worth it because Nero would confiscate it anyway. And how he goes with one of his male slaves to worship the goddesses whose statues are on his property and how he sees in them something of the personalities of those women about whose lives he tells from his "sources". At the end of the main part, the narrator compares the eruption of Vesuvius with one of the mythical events, but one point remains incomprehensible to him. Whereupon he sums up: “There is a great deal it seems we do not know, though we Romans like to behave as if we know everything. Pliny , my old friend, was in pursuit of knowledge - and died for his efforts. "

Another story is about the phase of mankind, in which Maire sets out as the second to explore what the monsters are all about and finds them living near the forest in wooden containers resembling a hut. The first woman, nameless, to go to see the monsters had been raped to death. Maire is doing better and she lets in Astre, who begins to regularly leave the Clefts' home with Maire to deal with the smaller monsters (or "squirts" as they are called more and more in the course of the story) are) properly cared for according to their standards and not neglected. Maire and Astre are the ones who discover that the cubs were adopted as infants by a doe and thus survived. When she dies, the human women take over. The narrator writes that the way in which the Squirts gradually learned the language of women is unanimous in the male and female annals. Maire and Astre bring more women with them and the narrator writes: "They copulated all the time, as if this was what the girls had come for."

Between the second and the third story there is a passage by the narrator in which he utters general passages like this: “We all know that in the telling and retelling of an event, or series of events, there will be as many accounts as there are plates. An event should be recorded. Then it must be agreed by whoever's task it is that this version rather than that must be committed to memory. "

Chronologically after the second, the third story begins with the fact that in both “histories” something stands above “noise”, which “in fact” was a storm, a catastrophe. The following episode lasts until the end of the main part. It speaks of ongoing and violent negotiations between Maronna as mother and Horsa as one of her sons. Horsa is the leader and sets out with the other boys and men along the coast, away from the previous location, because of the consequences of the storm and because of predators, from which they were allegedly discovered as prey. The older ones take a vehicle to the water, the younger ones walk ashore. At first there are a few women, but they will turn back at some point. Horsa starts a crossing with someone else because he sees something on the horizon that he thinks is land and seems to be a promising attraction. The companion perishes and Horsa limps from now on, after barely getting back on land alive. At first his authority seems to have faded, but soon he is back in charge. In the meantime, some of the younger ones have perished while exploring the cave passages. Horsa begins to suspect that one day there will be an argument with Maronna because of this and he is afraid to tell her. The men and boys make their way back and successfully experiment with something that ends in an explosion. They later try this on the cleft as well, with the result that the women are forced to leave the place for good and live with the men.

construction

The work begins with three pages that precede the main part. The first page is about half filled with prose and it seems the author herself is speaking when it says at the end: "Here is one of the tales about what might have happened when Clefts first gave birth to a baby boy." on this first page of the work reference was made to a more recent scientific article: "In a recent scientific article it was remarked that the basic and primal human stock was probably female and that males came along later, as a kind of cosmic afterthought."

On the second page is a quote from Robert Graves : "Man does, woman is."

The third page reproduces the ending of James Elroy Flecker's drama , Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand (1922). In it, dealers set out in a caravan to Samarkand with big plans, "For lust of knowing what should not be known".

A separate title page with The Cleft on it shows the beginning of the main part. There is an opening credits of around 25 pages, which sensitive minds are advised not to read: “People wishing to avoid open to their sensibilities may start the story on p. 29. “On these pages it is described, among other things, how the genitals of the“ monsters ”were cut off. Then comes the longest part, The History , which goes to the end of the work without any credits.

The main part is made up of a multitude of unnumbered sections which are of two types and alternate.

Here and there are small eagle silhouettes that are two lines high. They appear as a frame for sections that are set in a slightly smaller font. The opening section of The Cleft is already an example. It begins with: “I saw this today.” Sections of this type contain mostly notes from the narrator, for example: “[This historian is allowing Astre tears, though none was ever recorded in any document we have]”, “Some events this summer make me resume my comments ”,“ Once again I have to intervene ”,“ an old man talking ”,“ And that capacity certainly hasn't been lost! says your present historian. "

Artisanal commentary can also appear in sections of up to 20 pages that are not framed by eagle icons. For example, the beginning of The History reads : “Complied from ancient verbal records, written down many ages after their collection.” Sections in smaller font that are not framed by eagle icons can also occur. In these cases, they seem to be part of the passages with the other font size and hardly stand out typographically.

Statements of the author about the work

"My ideal reader would see the novel as a gimmick and take care of the sexes with humor", Lessing is quoted on the occasion of her reading in Hamburg in October 2007 about Die Kluft . She smiled mischievously when she said: " The gap is an attempt in which men have a difficult time and run away because women are always grumbling at them."

reception

The gap has been received controversially in German-speaking countries. Lessing describes, full of humor, a world without men, "in which women are fat and fat and just lie lazily in the sun," said 2013 in the news of Doris Lessing's death in some of the obituaries based on a dpa- Message have been written. Lessing describes gender identity as nature and relates the social behavior patterns of her groups to this supposed nature. "The women lie lazily on the cliffs by the sea, the men live out their urge to conquer, explore foreign coasts, return battered to the women and recover thanks to their emotional affection," says Angela Krewani. The website of the German publisher states that it is a novel about the origins of mankind, in which an aging Roman senator writes down the history of human creation and tells of a society without men, free from intrigue, jealousy and rivalry - until the first male children are born.

The author works “unrestrainedly with the stereotypical clichés about male and female characteristics,” says Elske Braul about Die Kluft , in a radio report on NDR before the announcement of the Nobel Prize. It is "a pretty fantastic story", a "very humorous adventure story from the prehistoric times of mankind." You have to accept the clichés. "In the end, the two genders come to terms with each other and get along halfway, as they do today," is the conclusion of the work from Braul's point of view.

Vivian Minnear Malkowsky wrote in an article from 2007 that this is hearty reading material that is about a conservative Roman senator in the first century AD and his literary and historical ambitions, who is ambitious and wants to decipher something without having scientific evidence Many of our contemporaries are just as willing to “take legends that one would like to believe in to be real results of traditional knowledge”. Research into the modern myths of our modern society, the “urban legends”, would “uncover an astonishing amount of“ scientific evidence ”for the greatest humbug.” Malkowsky finds the novel fascinating, extremely entertaining and ironically humorous. Each of the scenes that deal with “the arduous coexistence of man and woman” is “a small attack on ideological prejudices - both of feminism and machismo.” Lessing shines with her dry and humorous way in which one can feel I like to be captured by their fantastic scenery and their freaky ideas, to which every reader would react with astonishment, such as the "wondrous lunar parthenogenesis and the rearing of boys, which is remotely reminiscent of the Romulus myth ." The skepticism of the readers is enough Malkowsky said there was no limit to the fact that “they would like to put the book aside in annoyance”.

Burkhard Müller put the novel aside, confused and disappointed by this poor, drifting novel. He cannot imagine what the author is getting at. At the beginning, Müller read a thesis of female superiority and in the end it no longer exists because the female beings are too self-centered and the male ones ensure progress. The author makes too little of the idea of ​​having a Roman senator report on his attempt to depict the Incarnation on the basis of written sources that reproduce orally transmitted information. The novel seems "almost absent-minded", regrets Müller.

In her obituary for Lessing, Ulrike Baureithel writes in the Tagesspiegel that the gap is no longer a literary highlight. It reminds them "very much of former matriarchal enthusiasm " when "peaceful women's communities [...] are disturbed by the appearance of men".

In Die Kluft , work is carried out with seemingly mystical means, says Hendrik Werner in Die Welt , because a peaceful women's commune is described here, "in which problems only find their way through a male invasion". For Werner, that sounds like “commitment and rough schematism”, the author's “two defining attributes”.

In her contribution from 2007, Angela Krewani also explores the question of how this work is to be understood “against the background of decades of feminist and gender-theoretical discourses” and believes that the form provides information, since in this way a parable-like narrative is enriched by complexity . Due to the chosen narrative perspective, the subject of the novel becomes a “review of original myths and the quality of cultural memories. In this sense, the novel characterizes the constructed gender attribution as a function of historical access: only imperfect fragments are handed down, which receive their definitional value in the process of historiography, ”concludes Krewani.

For the English-speaking world, Susan Watkins notes in her 2010 study of Lessing's oeuvre that Ursula K. LeGuin was relatively typical in her review in The Guardian because the work focuses on apparently essentialist gender stereotypes and on misogynistic differences between the sexes have. Watkins writes that Lessing's last creative phase was about questioning the ranking that exists when choosing a certain genre when something is to be told. Lessing argued that the following convention needed to be revised: autobiography is truth , a novel is fiction and an essay is opinion . Lessing's work is an example of all three forms. A certain facet of Doris Lessing's late work was mostly completely ignored in the reviews of The Cleft : that Lessing writes about telling and remembering personal and political history. In this case, the focus is on how the senator seeks meaning in human history in the context of the Roman Empire and tells that story, Watkins said.

More German-language reviews

expenditure

  • Doris Lessing, The Cleft , 260 S., Fourth Estate, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-00-723343-4 (hardcover)
  • Doris Lessing, The Cleft , 260 S., Harper Perennial, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-00-723344-1 (paperback)
  • Doris Lessing, The Chasm. Roman , translated from English by Barbara Christ, 238 pp., 2nd edition, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-455-40075-5 (hardcover)
  • Doris Lessing, The Chasm. Roman , translated from English by Barbara Christ, approved paperback edition, 238 pages, 1st edition, btb, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-442-73845-8 (paperback edition)
  • Doris Lessing, The Chasm. Roman [electronic resource], translated by Barbara Christ, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-455-81212-1 (ebook)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Angela Krewani, Fragmentarized Life Experiences . Why Doris Lessing's novels are more complex than the critics think , literaturkritik.de, December 6, 2007.
  2. ↑ book cover
  3. ^ "What kind of a man I am is not really of importance in this debate ..." (page 6 of the English paperback edition)
  4. ↑ "This little scene seems to sum up a truth in the relations between men and women." (Page 6)
  5. ↑ James Elroy Flecker, Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand , gutenberg.org , last accessed on March 19, 2014
  6. ↑ Special news topic: Doris Lessing receives the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Portrait, background information, expert assessments and reactions, ( Memento from October 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) haus-der-literatur.com, 11./12. October 2007.
  7. ↑ For example here: Nobel Prize Winner. The writer Doris Lessing is dead , stuttgarter-zeitung.de, November 17, 2013.
  8. ↑ Information on the publisher's website ( Memento from March 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Elske Braul, The Gap ( Memento of 16 March 2014 Internet Archive ), ndr.de 26 September, 2007
  10. ↑ Vivian Minnear Malkowsky, Doris Lessing: Die Kluft, ( Memento from June 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) literaturkreisel.de , 11/2007.
  11. ↑ according to the review note at perlentaucher.de, Müller wrote this in his review for the issue of the Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 20, 2007.
  12. ↑ Ulrike Baureithel, On the death of Doris Lessing. Between anger and dignity , tagesspiegel.de , November 18, 2013
  13. ↑ Hendrik Werner, The regrettable choice of Doris Lessing , welt.de , October 11, 2007
  14. ↑ Ursula K Le Guin, Saved by a Squirt. Doris Lessing's parable of slobbering walrus-women, The Cleft, puzzles Ursula K Le Guin , theguardian.com , February 10, 2007, accessed March 26, 2014
  15. ^ Susan Watkins, Doris Lessing , Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7190-7481-3

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