capa da 1º edición orixinal 1962 |
The
shape of this novel is as follows:
There
is a skeleton, or frame, called Free Women, which is a conventional
short novel, about 60,000 words long, and which could stand by itself. But it
is divided into five sections and separated by stages of the four Notebooks,
Black, Red, Yellow and Blue. The Notebooks are kept by Anna Wulf, a central
character of Free Women. She keeps four, and not one because, as
she recognizes, she has to separate things off from each other, out of fear of
chaos, of formlessness — of breakdown. Pressures, inner and outer, end the
Notebooks; a heavy black line is drawn across the page of one after another.
But now that they are finished, from their fragments can come something new, The
Golden Notebook.
Throughout the Notebooks people have discussed, theorized, dogmatized, labelled, compartmented — sometimes in voices so general and representative of the time that they are anonymous, you could put names to them like those in the old Morality Plays, Mr Dogma and Mr I-am-Free-Because-I-Belong-Nowhere, Miss I-Must-Have-Love-and-Happiness and Mrs I-Have-to-be-Good-At-Everything-I-Do, Mr Where-is-a-Real-Woman? and Miss Where-is-a-Real-Man?, Mr I’m-Mad-Because-They-Say-I-Am, and Miss Life-Through-Experiencing-Everything, Mr I-Make-Revolution-and-Therefore-I-Am, and Mr and Mrs If-We-Deal-Very-Well-With-This-Small-Problem-Then-Perhaps-We-Can- Forget-We-Daren’t-Look-at-The-Big-Ones. But they have also reflected each other, been aspects of each other, given birth to each other’s thoughts and behaviour — are each other, form wholes. In the inner Golden Notebook, things have come together, the divisions have broken down, there is formlessness with the end of fragmentation — the triumph of the second theme, which is that of unity. Anna and Saul Green the American ‘break down’. They are crazy, lunatic, mad — what you will. They ‘break down’ into each other, into other people, break through the false patterns they have made of their pasts, the patterns and formulas they have made to shore up themselves and each other, dissolve. They hear each other’s thoughts, recognize each other in themselves. Saul Green, the man who has been envious and destructive of Anna, now supports her, advises her, gives her the theme for her next book, Free Women — an ironical title, which begins: ‘The two women were alone in the London flat.’ And Anna, who has been jealous of Saul to the point of insanity, possessive and demanding, gives Saul the pretty new notebook,The Golden Notebook, which she has previously refused to do, gives him the theme for his next book, writing in it the first sentence: ‘On a dry hillside in Algeria a soldier watched the moonlight glinting on his rifle.’ In the inner Golden Notebook, which is written by both of them, you can no longer distinguish between what is Saul and what is Anna, and between them and the other people in the book.
This theme of ‘breakdown’, that sometimes when people ‘crack up’ it is a way of self-healing, of the inner self’s dismissing false dichotomies and divisions, has of course been written about by other people, as well as by me, since then. But this is where, apart from the odd short story, I first wrote about it. Here it is rougher, more close to experience, before experience has shaped itself into thought and pattern — more valuable perhaps because it is rawer material.
But nobody so much as noticed this central theme, because the book was instantly belittled, by friendly reviewers as well as by hostile ones, as being about the sex war, or was claimed by women as a useful weapon in the sex war.
I have been in a false position ever since, for the last thing I have wanted to do was to refuse to support women.
To get the subject of Women’s Liberation over with — I support it, of course, because women are second-class citizens, as they are saying energetically and competently in many countries. It can be said that they are succeeding, if only to the extent they are being seriously listened to. All kinds of people previously hostile or indifferent say: ‘I support their aims but I don’t like their shrill voices and their nasty ill-mannered ways.’ This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them. I don’t think that Women’s Liberation will change much though — not because there is anything wrong with its aims, but because it is already clear that the whole world is being shaken into a new pattern by the cataclysms we are living through: probably by the time we are through, if we do get through at all, the aims of Women’s Liberation will look very small and quaint.
www.lettersofnote.com |
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
1962
texto traducido ao galego por Eva Almazán e publicado como
o caderno dourado
Vigo, Galaxia, 2009
A forma desta novela é a seguinte:
Hai
un esqueleto, ou unha armazón, que baixo o título Mulleres liberadas constitúe unha novela breve convencional, dunhas
60.000 palabras, e que podería sosterse por si mesma. Aparece dividida, non
obstante, en cinco partes, mediante a intercalación das fases dos catro
cadernos, negro, vermello, amarelo e azul. Os cadernos escríbeos Anna Wulf,
unha das protagonistas de Mulleres
liberadas. Redacta catro cadernos, e non un, porque percibe a necesidade de
discriminar, movida polo temor do caos, da amorfia, da desintegración. As
presións, tanto internas coma externas, marcan a fin dos cadernos: unha grosa
raia negra acaba atravesando a páxina de todos eles, un detrás do outro. Xa
abandonados, non obstante, dos seus fragmentos pode xurdir algo novo: O caderno dourado.
Nas
páxinas dos cadernos a xente teoriza, dogmatiza, etiqueta, compartimenta, as
veces con voces tan xerais e tan representativas da súa época que resultan
anónimas, que poderían recibir nomes ao modo das moralidades medievais, o señor
Dogma e o señor Son-libre-porque-non-teño-lugar-fixo, a señorita
Teño-que-atopar-o-amor-e-a-felicidade e a señora
Teño-que-sobresaír-en-todo-canto-fago, o señor Onde-van-asmulleres-de-verdade e
a señorita Onde-van-os-homes-de-verdade, o señor
Estou-tolo-porque-os-demais-din-que-o-estou e a señorita
Vivir-é-experimentalo-todo, o señor Fago-a-revolución-logo-existo e o
matrimonio
Se-resolvemos-moi-beneste-problemiña-daquela-igual-damos-esquecido-que-non-ousamos-enfrontarnos-aos-grandes.
Mais esas persoas tamén se reflicten entre si, son facetas uns dos outros,
paren os pensamentes e os comportamentos dos demais, son os outros, forman
totalidades. No caderno dourado do interior encáixase todo, esboróanse as
divisións, chega a amorfia coa fin da fragmentación; é o triunfo do segundo
motivo, a saber, a unidade. Anna e o americano Saul Green
"esboróanse". Están tolos, loucos, dementes: chámaselle o que se
queira. "Esboróanse" e os anacos dun mestúranse cos do outro, caen
dentro doutras persoas, rachan coas pautas falsas en que converteron o seu
pasado, disólvense os modelos e as fórmulas que os dous crearon como
apuntalamento de si mesmos. Oen os pensamentos do outro, recoñecen o outro en
si mesmos. Saul Green, o home que envexou a Anna e desexou destruíla, apóiaa
agora, dálle consello, fornécea dun tema para o seu seguinte libro, Mulleres liberadas -irónico título-, que
comeza así: "As dúas mulleres estaban soas no piso de Londres". E
Anna, cuxos celos por Saul chegaron ao extremo da demencia, que se mostrou
posesiva e esixente, regálalle a Saul o precioso caderno novo, o cadera dourado
que anteriormente lle negara, e proporciónalle o tema do seu seguinte libro ao
escribirlle nel a primeira frase: "Na ladeira reseca dun monte alxeriano,
o soldado contemplaba o escintileo do luar no rifle". No caderno dourado
do interior, que escribiron entrambos os dous, xa non se pode distinguir o que
é Saul do que é Anna, nin separalos a eles das outras persoas do libro.
Este
tema do "esboroamento", a idea de que ás veces a
"crebadura" das persoas constitúe unha forma de autocuración, o
motivo do eu interior que desbota as falsas dicotomías e divisións, xa foi
tratado desde entón, non cabe dúbida, por outros escritores, entre eles eu
mesma. Mais este texto foi o primeiro -con excepción dalgún relato breve- en
que escribías sobre ese tema. O tratamento é máis basto, máis próximo á
experiencia, antes de que adoptase forma de idea e modelo; talvez por ser un
material menos elaborado sexa tamén máis valioso.
Mais
ninguén chegou sequera a recoñecer que ese era o tema central do texto, pois o
libro foi degradado instantaneamente, tanto polos críticos eloxiosos coma polos
hostís, á categoría de novela sobre a guerra de sexos, ou foi brandido polas
mulleres como arma práctica nesa guerra.
Desde
entón encóntrome nunha situación comprometida, porque o último que desexei
nunca foi negarlles o meu apoio as mulleres.
capa da edición galega |
Saquemos definitivamente do medio a cuestión da
liberación feminina: estou a favor, por suposto, porque as mulleres somos
cidadás de segunda, tal e como elas mesmas están a expresar con enerxía e
competencia en moitos países. Pódese dicir que a iniciativa ten éxito, aíndá
que so sexa porque conseguen que as escoiten e as tomen en serio. Todo tipo de
persoas que no pasado as vían con hostilidade ou con indiferenza din agora:
"Eu apoio os seus obxectivos, pero desagrádanme as súas voces estridentes
e os seus insidiosos malos modos". Trátase dunha fase inevitable e perfectamente
recoñecible de calquera movemento revolucionario incipiente: os reformadores
han de contar co repudio daqueles que gozan con grande alegría do que outros
conquistaron para o seu beneficio. Con todo, non creo que a liberación feminina
vaia mudar demasiado as cousas, e non por haber eivas nas súas metas, senón
porque xa quedou claro que o mundo enteiro está a acomodarse nun novo modelo
por obra das sacudidas cataclísmicas que experimentamos: para cando saiamos
desa fase, se algún día saímos, é probable que as, metas da liberación feminina
nos parezan insignificantes e pintorescas.