The golden notebook
The golden notebook (original title: The Golden Notebook ) is a novel by Doris Lessing , which was published in 1962. The focus of the work is on Anna Wulf, a politically committed, intellectual and emancipated woman, her friend Molly Jacobs and her lovers and children. The action takes place in Rhodesia at the outbreak of World War II, in the Communist Party milieu in England in the 1950s and among intellectuals in London. The book has both fictional and autobiographical elements that are told subjectively and non-linearly in an experimental form . In literary studies, the Golden Notebook is Lessing's main work ; when Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, the work was appropriately recognized.
content
The two protagonists - Anna Wulf and Molly Jacobs - belong to the Communist Party at the beginning of the plot . The duplicity prevailing there between the poles of organizational discipline and the free, even cynical speech about the Stalinist crimes is described. In the further course of the plot, the work depicts the political conflict, the internal turmoil and the slow separation of the two women from the Communist Party. Another, shorter storyline deals with racism in Rhodesia .
Another central theme is how to deal with men who - mostly married - become lovers of the protagonists. In these relationships women do not separate love and sexuality, while men do. Lessing describes the inner and outer experiences of the protagonists, the relative of their convictions and the psychological aspects of their behavior. Doris Lessing wrote that she wanted to show that every generation of intellectuals makes similar mistakes in their youth and is unable to look at the past as a teaching example.
The novel artfully combines this story in four notebooks. The first-person narrator separates the notebooks from each other as follows: “I keep four notebooks, a black notebook that is about Anna Wulf” (the protagonist) “the writer; a red notebook on politics; a yellow notebook in which I make stories out of what I've experienced; and a blue notebook that presents the attempt at a diary. ”In addition, there is a fragment of a novel entitled“ Free Women ”as an internal narrative , the protagonist of which also bears the name Anna Wulf. The individual areas of life are told in separate fragments or notes. The narrator describes female experiences, such as female orgasms and menstruation, which have not been told before from this perspective. In addition, there is the confrontation with the responsibility that both women bear for their respective children.
reception
The work has often been referred to as a classic of feminism ; In 1982 Doris Lessing distanced himself from this point of view in an interview with the New York Times .
In 2003 the literary critic Harold Bloom called the Golden Notebook “Lessing's an undoubted achievement”, which at the same time remains “immensely influential”. Bloom sees a certain irony in this, since the Golden Notebook is a largely conventional novel that neither resembles her early social realism nor her later forays into the gloomy world of fantasy . Although Lessing's work produced “entire host of feminist novels”, it can hardly be assigned to feminism itself. Bloom does not see Lessing on the same level as George Eliot ; her (main) work can best be compared with Iris Murdoch .
In 1976 the work in French translation received the French literary prize Prix Médicis . In 2005, Time Magazine included the Golden Notebook in a list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. In 2015, the Guardian published a list of the 100 best English-language novels , which also included Lessing's novel. Even in the corresponding BBC list is Golden notebook to find. When Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, the Golden Notebook was the only one of her more than 50 works to be named in the official statement:
"Her most experimental novel, 'The Golden Notebook', from 1962, is a study of a woman's psyche and life situation, the lot of writers, sexuality, political ideas, and everyday life."
Since 2008 there has been a web project for the book, thegoldennotebook.org , in which invited people comment on the text of The Golden Notebook page by page . The project, for which Arts Council England contributed the lion's share of the funds, is complemented by a forum for further comments.
expenditure
- Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook . Simon & Schuster, New York 1962, ISBN 978-0-553127591 . (First edition)
- Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook . Harper Perennial Modern Classics, New York 1999, ISBN 978-0061582486 . (Current paperback edition)
- Doris Lessing: The golden notebook , from the English by Iris Wagner . Goverts, Frankfurt am Main 1978, ISBN 978-3-7740-0485-6 . (German language first edition, hardcover)
- Doris Lessing: The golden notebook , from the English by Iris Wagner. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 978-3-596-25396-8 . (Current German paperback edition)
Web links
- Golden Notebook Project website (with full text of the novel in English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ For an overview of the structure see Aakanksha Gaur, Kathleen Kuiper, editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: The Golden Notebook . In: Encyclopaedia Britannica , accessed December 6, 2019.
- ^ Lesley Hazelton: Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and 'Space Fiction' . In: New York Times, July 25, 1982.
- ↑ Harold Bloom: Introduction . In: Derselbe (Ed.): Doris Lessing. Bloom's Modern Critical Views . Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia 2003, ISBN 0-7910-7441-2 , pp. 4-7.
- ^ Lev Grossman, Richard Lacayo: All-TIME 100 Novels . In: TIME of October 16, 2005, republished on January 6, 2010.
- ↑ The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007: Doris Lessing , translation of the passage to the Golden Notebook: “Your most experimental novel, 'Das goldene Notebook' from 1962, is a study of the psyche and situation of a woman, of the fate of women writers, of sexuality , political ideas and everyday life. "