Golden Notes

Author: (British) Doris Lessing
Publisher:
Publishing Date: October 1, 2002
Features: Form and content are the two fundamental elements of literature, and their relationship is that of carrier and carried. Since literature entered human life, these two concepts have never been confused, because their functions and definitions are very clear and distinct. However, when literature entered the 20th century, some artists attempted to break through the established boundaries in their artistic practice, giving form a greater function. This highly innovative artist is the British contemporary female writer Doris Lessing, and the artistic work that brought new vitality to literature is the "Golden Notebook," published in 1962. From a purely linguistic perspective, "The Golden Notebook" seems quite plain; you hardly find any descriptions with lavish vocabulary or a strong literary flavor. Lessing's language is everyday spoken language, simple and lively, unlike Shakespeare and Milton, whose works leave you feeling burdened and mentally stimulated after just a few lines. Those readers who are fond of reading strange love stories or adventure stories will also be disappointed with the plot of "The Golden Notebook": it is fragmented, lacks a continuous and complete story, and fails to inspire the desire to read it through in one sitting. Some might even find it unbearable to read, as it is like a jumble of mixed dishes with various flavors, making it difficult to find its place in the usual culinary repertoire. However, "The Golden Notebook" enriched the art of the novel through a great innovation, and its successful artistic experiment established its position in the field of literary art. Even if the 20th-century British literature is almost forgotten one day, I believe "The Golden Notebook" will still remain in people's memories. History is ruthless and will only discard what lacks creativity and wisdom, but for labor with a revolutionary significance, later generations will not easily abandon it.
Below is an introduction to this work: "The Golden Notebook" is not divided into chapters but consists of a story and five notebooks. The story is titled "Free Women," with the protagonist being Anna Wulf. The story seems connected, but the author divides it into five parts, inserting black, red, yellow, and blue notebooks between each part, respectively. The final two parts feature the golden notebooks, which appear after the four notebooks and before the story "Free Women." If we take "Free Women" as the warp and the black, red, yellow, and blue notebooks as the weft, the structure of the novel resembles a net covering the content. Since the structure itself has great significance, it directly takes on the role of revealing the theme, and the content of the novel has second place, becoming merely an annotation and proof of the form. Form serves content, and here the basic principles of literature have been inverted!
Imagine the original form of "The Golden Notebook": a manuscript of about 60,000 words titled "Free Women," divided into five parts, with five notebooks of mixed content inserted between them. The black notebook records Anna's experiences as a writer in Africa, with many descriptions involving colonialism and racism. The red notebook details Anna's political life, documenting her journey from idealizing to disillusionment with Stalinism. The yellow notebook is a love story created by Anna based on her own life experiences, titled "The Shadow of the Third Party." The blue notebook is Anna's diary, recording the spiritual crisis of the female protagonist, with a significant portion consisting of news reports directly clipped from newspapers like The Times and The Evening Standard. The final golden notebook is Anna's summary of life. All five notebooks are written in the first person, with Anna Wulf as the nominal author. Except for the events described in the golden notebook, which are limited to 1957, the other four notebooks span from 1950 to 1957. The protagonist of "The Shadow of the Third Party" is Ella, who is the shadow of the third party and also the shadow of Anna. "Free Women" is written in the third person. According to clues provided in the golden notebook, it is the result of Anna reaching a compromise with the external world. Such a structure, such a layout—where are the norms of traditional novels? At first glance, it seems nothing more than a pile of disorganized, unrefined literary materials. However, this peculiar layout is precisely what the author deliberately pursued, and this impression of chaos is also intentionally crafted. Lessing herself was proud of the form of "The Golden Notebook." In a letter to her publisher, she claimed it was "an attempt to break through form, an attempt to break through certain ideological concepts and go beyond them." After the novel's publication, various critiques followed. Some said it promotes feminism, while others claimed the author was merely expressing personal life experiences. In response to these misplaced comments, Lessing stated in a press interview in 1964, "I am very annoyed by the reviews of The Golden Notebook. They all treat it as a novel about personal life—but that is only part of it. It is a highly structured and carefully planned novel. The key to this book lies in the relationships between its parts. Yet they insist on calling it 'Doris Lessing's confession.'"
The author herself has the final say; she knows what she is doing. The seemingly chaotic structure is actually a carefully designed outline of the novel's main theme. Once you understand this outline, you will grasp the author's intentions. The author clearly believes that the form of the novel can also serve as a space to convey consciousness. "The key to this book lies in the relationships between its parts." Here, the "key" I suspect refers to the novel's grand theme. Lessing did not intend to be deliberately provocative or obscure in her artistic attempt. It was measured, well-grounded, and practically applicable. A "Free Women," along with the black, red, yellow, and blue notebooks and the golden notebook—such a structure first gives the impression of "chaos." This is a key word. Lessing wanted to use the "chaos" of art to symbolize the chaos of the external world and the resulting chaos of the human spirit. The 1950s was a turbulent and disharmonious world: the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima had just dissipated, while the Korean War had erupted with flames. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union were all busy preparing for war. It seemed as if people were not satisfied with the number of deaths and the cruelty of atomic bombs; hydrogen bombs, far more powerful, were being hurriedly developed. In the United States, McCarthyism had caused widespread panic. On March 6, 1953, Stalin died; Khrushchev came to power, convened the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and passed the secret report. The British Communist Party began to split. The above are some historical events mentioned in The Golden Notebook (mostly pasted as clippings in the blue notebook). The black, red, yellow, and blue notebooks in the novel symbolize a world of multiple races and ideologies. Although we cannot mechanically say that black corresponds to colonialism (or racism), red to communism, yellow to capitalism, etc., the author clearly implies this meaning. In the 1972 edition of the preface, the author frankly admitted her creative motives: in the UK, it was difficult to find a work as comprehensive as Tolstoy's Anna Karenina or Stendhal's The Red and the Black, which fully depicted the "spirit and moral climate of the era." In view of this, she intentionally wanted to learn from these artistic masters and fill this gap in British literature. The Golden Notebook was written to fill this gap. In a sense, she went even further than her models: Tolstoy's novel reflected the Russia of the late 1860s and early 1870s, and Stendhal's focus was only on the social customs and consciousness of the country he lived in—France. Doris Lessing attempted to depict the of the entire world in the mid-20th century. The scene of the black notebook is set in Africa; while the main stage of the other notebooks is in the UK, the author has already expanded the scope to many countries through the form of clippings, including the United States, France, Russia, China, North Korea, Japan, Cuba, and others. These clippings cleverly set the scene for the novel. Of course, due to ideological differences, any reader's interpretation of the ideas expressed in The Golden Notebook can vary—one way or another, the courage and boldness of this attempt to illustrate the entire world and compile an "encyclopedia across nations" are commendable and admirable. At least no other master of art had such a broad vision and extraordinary ambition before her. It can be said that The Golden Notebook is a truly world literature!
If the depiction in The Golden Notebook had only remained on the objective external world, it would have been classified alongside Balzac's novels in the archives of realistic literature. However, the symbolic meaning of the black, red, yellow, and blue notebooks is not solely aimed at the external world; its other end also targets the subjective world. Its variety reflects the multiple and diverse forms of the protagonist Anna's thoughts—a disoriented, weightless soul. Anna is an artist who wrote a novel titled Edge of War. She is also an idealist who participated in a Communist organization in Africa in the early 1950s. However, this organization did not approach the Black African masses but talked about national liberation with racial prejudice. Upon returning to Europe, she joined some peripheral organizations of the British Communist Party, engaging in meaningless work. At this time, although she believed in Marxism, her spirit was extremely empty. She was dissatisfied with the existing social system and values but fundamentally doubted Stalinism. Especially after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, she completely lost faith in everything she had once believed in. She could no longer do anything; as a writer, she suffered from writer's block; as a woman, she could not find a man who could meet her emotional needs. Her spirit was on the brink of collapse. To save herself, to prevent herself from going mad or committing suicide, she accepted psychological treatment, but it had little effect. Instead, these four notebooks became her cure. Through them, she could divide her complete personality into four parts, weakening her will to die and dissolving its powerful destructive force. The black, red, yellow, and blue colors thus become the reflections of an restless soul: black represents her life as a writer, red her political life, yellow her love life, and blue her spiritual life. Up to this point, the external, objective symbolism of the four notebooks has completed its transformation into internal, subjective symbolism. As for the golden notebook, it is different from the other four in that its significance does not lie in reflecting the external or internal world but in philosophical expression and a summary of life. The golden notebook is not long; it tells of some events that occurred after Anna meets the American writer Saul Bellow. They both had similar dispositions, deeply thoughtful intellectuals. After experiencing the storms of life, they reluctantly but accept the fact that life is imperfect and that the world is a whole composed of chaotic elements. The progress of human history is like a large group of people pushing a huge boulder up a mountain; despite their exerting all their strength and intelligence, they can only push it up by a small inch. In many cases, wars or misguided revolutionary movements can even cause this progress to regress. Fortunately, this regression does not go all the way down but stops just above the starting point. The people pushing the boulder continue their efforts, although it is a distant goal to push it to the summit (the author does not mention when people can expect to see the boulder on the summit), they persevere. Where is the value of life? Perhaps it lies in this relentless effort. Although success is minimal, the effort itself is valuable—the author does not explicitly say this, but we can clearly understand it this way. If everyone abandons this effort, the boulder will roll down the mountain, crushing and flattening everyone. In this sense, those pushing the boulder, even though they cannot push it to the summit and even though the boulder may regress, are not losers. They do not need to be discouraged or to give up on themselves, because the world is just like this—you should not demand that it adapt to you but should instead adapt to it. You should compromise with this imperfect and chaotic world and coexist peacefully with it. Never argue with it, and even more so, do not commit suicide like the young, hot-blooded Tom in Free Women (Molly's son), who cannot tolerate this chaos! It can be said that the "golden" of the golden notebook symbolizes "truth." The protagonist Anna finally understands this truth. Her writer's block is cured without treatment. In the end, she promises Saul to start writing again. Saul writes the opening sentence of Anna's future novel. Anna also writes an opening sentence for Saul's novel. Saul's novel is later published and receives good reviews. Anna's sentence for Saul's novel is: "On a dry slope in Algeria, a soldier gazes at the moonlight shining on his rifle." Saul's story is written in Anna's golden notebook and is a short story. But in Lessing's The Golden Notebook, only a synopsis remains: an Algerian soldier is captured on the battlefield, subjected to severe torture by the French. Later, he escapes from prison, rejoins the army, and is responsible for guarding French prisoners. One of the French prisoners under his guard is a philosophy student who discusses Freud and Marx with him, complaining that he has always blindly followed the teachings of his predecessors and has never had his own thoughts. The two talk more and more animatedly, but unfortunately, they are caught by their commanding officer. The officer assumes the Algerian soldier is a spy and orders that both be shot. This story illustrates the absurdity of life: the roles of the criminal and the guard can be reversed at any moment, and life and death are not things one can predict. The author has already described this idea more vividly in the blue notebook earlier: Anna has a dream in which an officer stands against a wall with his eyes covered, with six soldiers holding guns in front of him. Just waiting for their commanding officer to give the order to execute. The seventh (the executioner) need only lower his hand, and the six soldiers will immediately shoot. However, at that moment, shouts of "We win!" come from outside. The executioner hears this and walks over to release the prisoner, standing in the place where the prisoner just was. The criminal and the executioner smile at each other like brothers. Finally, the commanding officer lowers his hand, and the gunshot rings out. The criminal falls dead at the foot of the wall. Anna had found it unbearable to tolerate such a reality with no clear standards, but after understanding the truth of life, she can face this cruel, bloody game of life with calmness.
Let's return to look at the sentence Saul writes for Anna's novel: "Two women live alone in an apartment in London." If we pay a little attention, we can notice that this sentence is also the opening sentence of Free Women! This means that Free Women is a text written after Anna has reached a compromise with reality. This is very important. It is the key to clarifying the relationship between Free Women and the black, red, yellow, and blue notebooks, as well as the golden notebook. The two women in Free Women (i.e., the protagonists, Anna and Molly) are both single women after divorce. Each has a child: Anna's daughter is Janet; Molly's son is Tom. The two women, though different in personality, both claim female freedom. They consciously stand on the opposite side of men, always believing that their misfortunes are caused by men. Judging from the surface, it is easy to mistakenly view Free Women as the main theme of the entire book and place feminism in an inappropriate position. British writer and literary critic Anitra Brookner wrote an article in The London Review of Books calling Lessing the "pioneer of primitive feminist self-consciousness." Since she was a female writer of the same generation as Lessing, her words seem to carry considerable weight. In reality, she did not hit the mark. Through the examination above of the relationships between the four notebooks and the golden notebook, we know that the author's vision is far broader than people can imagine. Her ambition is to describe the moral climate and political landscape of the entire world in the 1950s. Capitalism, socialism, racism—these are all fundamental themes in her work. It cannot be said that Free Women does not discuss feminism, but it is not the main theme of the entire novel. What leads the female protagonist to split personality and suffer from writer's block is the core of the novel. Calling The Golden Notebook a feminist work is like feeling blind to an elephant, only mentioning one part without the whole.
When we limit our discussion to Free Women (and regardless of the five notebooks), calling Lessing a pioneer of feminist self-consciousness is also inappropriate. Lessing is neither a pioneer nor a warrior who strongly advocates feminism; she is a pessimist when it comes to feminism. "Free Women" is merely an ironic term in her work. Like Cervantes, who negated chivalry by imitating it, Lessing also wanted to use the guise of claiming female freedom to prove that such freedom is unrealistic and even absurd. Her writing is not as sharp or forceful as Cervantes's, but rather more gentle and subtle. The world of men and women is an interconnected whole; men cannot do without women, and women cannot do without men. There are no absolutely free women. Anna herself is an imperfect person, and she tries to find a perfect man to her defects, which is itself unrealistic. In the end, after a period of struggle, both women compromise with reality: Molly remarrys, and Anna, though she does not remarry, has also moved beyond her self. The author clearly wants to leave the impression that feminism cannot help women achieve true freedom; discussing feminism without men is meaningless itself, and furthermore, the many problems humanity faces are far more important, and feminism is far from being on the agenda. The relationship between the five notebooks and Free Women is actually the relationship between the major theme and the minor theme. The world is so chaotic, and your strength is so small that you can neither change the world nor push that huge boulder to the summit. You are not the one looking down from the summit as the crowd below pushes the boulder (such people are few in number), but rather one of the many striving at the bottom. Then, do your part. As long as you fulfill your responsibilities and do what you should do, that is enough. As a writer, you should continue writing your book. Since you cannot untangle the mess of capitalism and socialism, do not try to. The world is chaotic, so you should survive in the chaos and should never abandon your right to self-preservation because of it. This may be what Lessing wanted to convey but did not say when she allowed the female protagonist to overcome writer's block. It is also what Saul expected when he wrote the sentence "Two women live alone in an apartment in London" for Anna.
In terms of writing style, Free Women adopts completely traditional narrative literary methods, while the four notebooks mix various techniques, such as psychoanalysis and news reporting, often used in conjunction with documentary methods. This is also what the author intentionally arranged. This makes the four notebooks more layered and chaotic (of course, the author herself is not chaotic at all), making the traditional return of Free Women even more striking. The author gives a certain meaning to the silent form here: after a period of confusion, the protagonist returns to the norm, to the reluctant, seemingly mundane reality, but with a chaotic inner life.
The translation of The Golden Notebook was completed in collaboration with my colleague Liu Xinmin. I translated up to the third part of the yellow notebook, and the rest was handled by Liu. Originally, I planned to take it on myself, but I was sent by the State Education Commission to study Old English and Middle English literature at the University of Cambridge. I did not want to do the same work that could have been done in a poor study in China in that literary and scientific land of destiny, so I asked Liu for help to complete the remaining part. Fortunately, Liu has been my partner for many years, and we have happily translated The Shakespearean Poems together. After finishing this book, we have a deeper understanding of Lessing's works and feel even more strongly that The Golden Notebook is indeed a major work of 20th-century British literature. Calling it a revolutionary work may be too strong, but at least it is a book that can withstand the test of time and endure for a long time.
Chen Caiyu
Translated May 2, 1999