Further to Lessing and Sufi Mysticism
This posting is somewhat tangential to the thrust(what thrust he says?) of this thread, but I wrote it today and Lessing was the inspiration. Some readers at this site may find this posting of interest.-Ron Price, Tasmania.
____________________
CALMING LIFE'S WHIRLPOOL
I came across Doris Lessing in an interview on “Books and Writing,” an ABC Radio National program, on 16 January 2000, then again on SBS TV on 18 September 2000. On that latter date she referred to my generation as self-indulgent and unself-critical. With the years, Lessing went on to say, this self-indulgent generation of mine had many casualties as former personal certainties that it had held died and systems, empires and parties lost their credibility, their meaning and even their existence.
Lessing also informed her listeners that she thought most writers were mildly depressed. When asked what her most joyous moments were she said they were “at the beginning of each book.” I agree that a certain melancholia, a certain pensiveness, a certain level of emotion recollected in tranquillity, are present during the writing process. In November 2000 I came across a statement by Lessing in an article entitled: “Writing the Self: Selected Works of Doris Lessing,” Deep South, Vol.2, No.2, Winter 1996, p.12. She had just completed, but not yet published, the second volume of her autobiography Walking in the Shade. Of autobiography, she said: "it helps calm life’s whirlpool." In the next several years I found Lessing's words accurate. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 4 February 2007.
You were just finishing your story,
your two volumes in '94 and '97
while I was just starting to put my
story down. Of course, you'd done
those semi-autobiographical novels,
indeed, you've been writing since I
was a child and recording my first
memories back in '47 and '48 & '49.
Producing our lives we were, Doris,
by an infinite chain of signifiers and
constructs. Some therapeutic self-
discovery as we were spinning our
yarn, as it were, in the current of life.1
You ended your story in '62, just as
I was beginning mine, my pioneering
over four epochs. Finishing your story
at 43 you were and me--starting mine
at 43 and taking it back to the age of 18.
1 Lynda Scott, "Similarities Between Virginia Woolf and Doris Lessing," Deep South, Vol.3 No.2, Winter 1997.
Ron Price
4 February 2007
