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Alfred and Emily (2008): Speculation in the Aftermath of Empire
Critical Quarterly Pub Date : 2021-04-14 , DOI: 10.1111/criq.12598
Emma Parker 1
Affiliation  

I have lived in over sixty different houses, flats and rented rooms during the last twenty years and not in one of them have I felt at home. […] The fact is, I don’t live anywhere; I never have since I left that first house on the kopje.

— Doris Lessing, Going Home

Born in the ruinous aftermath of the First World War, raised in southern Africa during the final years of the British Empire and emerging as a writer immediately after the Second World War, Doris Lessing’s memoirs and autobiographies bear witness to life on the hinges of history. Throughout her career Lessing was drawn to the Rhodesian veld of her childhood, writing and rewriting her memories of white settler society. While the autobiographical content of novels such as the Children of Violence (1952–69) series, and The Golden Notebook (1962) leads some critics to discuss these texts as life writing, Lessing’s considerable body of autobiographical non‐fiction – from her earliest travel memoir Going Home (1957) to the final account of her childhood in Alfred and Emily (2008) – also stage frequent returns to her memories of colonial life.11 Susan Watkins rightly notes that whether Lessing’s work is ‘classified as novel, essay, memoir or official autobiography’, she was consistently preoccupied ‘with the blurred dividing lines between fact, truth and fiction’. Susan Watkins, Doris Lessing (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 29.
These memoirs and autobiographies track a series of contradictions, for although Lessing felt that the Southern Rhodesian landscape was ‘her myth country’,22 Doris Lessing, African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe (London: Flamingo, 1993), 35.
she remained fiercely critical of ‘the paranoia, the adolescent sentimentality [and] the neurosis’ of white settler society.33 Doris Lessing, Going Home (London: Panther, 1968), 299.
The circuitous journeys home to Southern Rhodesia made throughout her autobiographical writings, underscore how Lessing’s life writing project is processual; her memoirs and autobiographies return to but are unable to surpass her memories of colonial life. By here returning to Lessing’s final rendition of her upbringing in Alfred and Emily, I track how her abiding preoccupation with colonialism – her entanglements with the British Empire and its aftermath – registers in the form, as well as the content of her life writing.

Alfred and Emily is an unusual text of two halves. The book’s first section (Part I, ‘Alfred and Emily: A Novella’) rewrites the lives of Lessing’s parents – Alfred Tayler and Emily McVeagh – so that they lead separate existences in an alternative twentieth century where the First World War does not take place. It imagines the lives both could have lived, if freed from their fateful encounters with war and empire. Part II, ‘Alfred and Emily: Two Lives’ is a more conventional memoir recording their married lives, as remembered by Lessing, in Southern Rhodesia. By rewriting history in the book’s first half, Lessing swerves away from a biographical reality in which her father was gravely injured shortly before the battle of Passchendaele, met nurse Emily McVeagh while recovering from the amputation of his right leg, before moving his new wife and young children to Persia and later Southern Rhodesia. By writing the First World War out of European history, Lessing reroutes the timeline of events that led to her parents’ union and married lives in Africa, consequently writing herself out of existence. Prior to Alfred and Emily Lessing had written numerous biographical sketches of her family, describing how Alfred ‘had had a country childhood and always wanted to be a farmer’44 Doris Lessing, ‘Impertinent Daughters’, Granta, 14 (1984), 51–68; https://granta.com/impertinent-daughters/
and Emily’s ‘fate should have been to run a large [charitable] organisation’.55 Doris Lessing, ‘My Mother’s Life (Part Two)’, Granta, 17 (1985), 227–38; https://granta.com/autobiography-part-two-my-mothers-life/
Yet while Part I ostensibly fulfils these unrealised futures, the novella is not a final, satisfactory ending to Lessing’s long biographical project. For the speculative account of her parents’ lives is yoked to a memoir – Part II – depicting an embattled, impoverished family struggling to achieve their ambition of profitable enterprise on a colonial frontier.

Alfred and Emily confronts the impossibility of any final conclusion to Lessing’s relationship with Southern Rhodesia and the former British Empire. Although the memoir was described by reviewers as ‘the righting of lives’, it constitutes a practice I term ‘speculative life writing’, wherein an author rewrites their previous memoirs, autobiographies or autobiographical fiction with an alternative outcome.66 Blake Morrison, ‘The Righting of Lives’, The Guardian, 17 May 2008; https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/17/fiction.dorislessing
Far from being an act of ‘righting’ which facilitates a final escape, Alfred and Emily is yet another return to Lessing’s Rhodesian childhood. Elsewhere I have described speculative life writing as a sub‐genre of contemporary life writing in which ‘counterfactual lives [operate] as diversionary routes from actual life narratives’.77 Emma Parker, ‘Penelope Lively’s Speculative Life Writing: A Discussion of Making It Up and Ammonites and Leaping Fish’, Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, 18:1 (2018), 63–78 (p. 64).
These hypothetical lives deviate from the paths established by a writer’s earlier work, only to lead the reader back to an author’s real memories. Catherine Gallagher’s recent study of literary and historical texts that explore ‘history’s cul‐de‐sacs and unfinished projects’ offers a context for reading speculative life writing as a distinctive component in this broader counterfactual turn.88 Catherine Gallagher, Telling It Like It Wasn't: The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 47.
At its core, speculative life writing shares a counterfactualist concern with the dual narratives of ‘what happened and what might have happened’.99 Ibid., 9.
As speculative lives are preceded by earlier acts of self‐representation, such diversions are most likely to occur towards the end of an author’s career, typically offering a late rewriting of the narrative(s) established in their earlier autobiographical work. Understanding speculative life writing as an expression of lateness evokes Edward Said’s argument – which in turn expands Theodor Adorno’s conceptualisation of ‘spätstil’ – that late style refuses to ‘be reconciled or resolved’ with an artist’s earlier creations.1010 Edward Said, On Late Style: Music and Culture Against the Grain (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 7.
Instead late style is disruptive, a contradiction which refuses the harmony of closure.

It is important to note that Lessing was not alone in experimenting with speculative life writing at the beginning of the twenty‐first century; Penelope Lively’s Making It Up (2005) rewrites Lively’s previous memoirs by imagining eight alternative outcomes to her life. These episodes focus upon ‘those climactic moments when things might have gone entirely differently’.1111 Penelope Lively, Making It Up (London: Viking, 2005), 1.
Raised at the opposite end of the African continent to Lessing, Lively’s upbringing in Egypt features prominently in Making It Up, reimagining the lonely, colonial childhood recorded in her earlier memoir Oleander, Jacaranda (1994). While Ruth Prawer Jhabvala did not publish autobiographies, she too was concerned with imagining her ‘alternative destinies’ in later life, publishing My Nine Lives (2004) as ‘chapters of a possible past’.1212 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, My Nine Lives (London: John Murray, 2004), p. vii.
It is vital that none of these counterfactual experiments fully escape their authors’ actual experiences. On the contrary, by exploring the lives that might have been, speculative life writing gestures back towards the lives that were.

Reading Alfred and Emily as speculative life writing reveals that the book is not two discrete texts, but a single act of autobiographical self‐representation. The novella is inseparable from the memoir that follows. While there are clear generic and thematic distinctions between Parts I and II, both rewrite Lessing’s previous accounts of her life, as described in her novels, memoirs and autobiographies, in order to scrutinise her settler upbringing. Lessing described the text as an attempt to give her parents ‘lives as might have been’1313 Doris Lessing, Alfred and Emily (London: Fourth Estate, 2008), p. vii.
that functioned as ‘an antidote to what I actually lived in – Rhodesia at war, the last throbs of the British Empire’.1414 Ibid., 186.
Writing five decades earlier in her first memoir Going Home, she had described white settlerdom as a ‘mass disease’.1515 Going Home, 17.
If Alfred and Emily is an antidote then its counterfactual novella might, at first glance, appear to remedy Lessing’s early, toxic exposure to white supremacy in southern Africa. But instead the text circles back, inexorably, to her family’s house on the kopje, returning to the violent memories of war and empire from which Lessing, even in old age, was still ‘trying to get free’.1616 Alfred and Emily, p. viii.
Even by rerouting history, the narrative does not – or more accurately cannot – bypass Lessing’s memories of settler life. Contrary to previous interpretations of this hybrid text as a reconciliatory conclusion, I outline how speculative life writing explores and exposes life in the aftermath of empire.



中文翻译:

阿尔弗雷德·艾米丽(Alfred and Emily)(2008):帝国后的Spec测

在过去的20年中,我住在60多种不同的房屋,公寓和出租房中,而我却没有其中之一感到宾至如归。[…]事实是,我不住在任何地方;自从我离开第一套房子以来,我再也没有过。

— Doris Lessing,回家

多丽丝·莱辛(Doris Lessing)的回忆录和自传体是第一次世界大战的毁灭性后果,在大英帝国的最后几年在南部非洲长大,并在第二次世界大战后立即成为作家。在她的整个职业生涯中,莱辛被童年时代的罗得西亚风情吸引,写作和重写了她对白人移民社会的回忆。虽然诸如暴力之子(1952–69)系列和《金色笔记本》(1962)等小说的自传内容使一些评论家将这些文本当作生活写作来讨论,但莱辛从她最早的旅行中就拥有相当多的自传非小说体。回忆录《回家》(1957年)讲述了她童年时代阿尔弗雷德Alfred)和艾米丽Emily)(2008)–也经常返回她对殖民生活的回忆。1个1苏珊·沃特金斯(Susan Watkins)正确地指出,无论莱辛的作品是“被归类为小说,散文,回忆录还是官方自传”,她始终被“事实,真相与小说之间的界线模糊”所困扰。苏珊·沃特金斯(Susan Watkins),多丽丝·莱辛Doris Lessing)(曼彻斯特:曼彻斯特大学出版社),29岁。
这些回忆录和自传追踪了一系列矛盾,尽管莱辛认为罗得岛南部的风景是“她的神话国家”,[ 2]2多里斯·莱辛,《非洲笑声:对津巴布韦的四次访问》(伦敦:火烈鸟,1993年),第35页。
她仍然对白人移民社会的“偏执狂,青少年的感性[和]神经症”持强烈批评的态度。33多丽丝·莱辛,《回家》(伦敦:黑豹,1968年),第299页。
整个南罗得西亚在自传体著作中进行的journey回旅程都突显了莱辛的生平写作项目是如何进行的;她的回忆录和自传回到但无法超越她对殖民生活的回忆。通过这里回到莱辛在阿尔弗雷德和艾米丽的成长过程中的最终归宿我追踪了她对殖民主义的持续关注-她对大英帝国及其后果的纠缠-如何以表格的形式记录,以及她一生的写作内容。

阿尔弗雷德·艾米丽是不寻常的两半文本。本书的第一部分(第一部分,“阿尔弗雷德和艾米丽:中篇小说”)重写了莱辛父母的生活-阿尔弗雷德·泰勒和艾米丽·麦克维格,使他们在另一场二十世纪的另类生活中生活,而第二次世界大战并未发生。它想象着,如果从与战争和帝国的命运encounter中解脱出来,他们俩本来可以过着这样的生活。第二部分,“阿尔弗雷德和艾米丽:两条人生”是一部较为传统的回忆录,记录了他们在罗得西亚州南部的婚姻生活。莱辛改写了本书的上半部分的历史,转而摆脱了传记现实,即父亲在Passchendaele战役前不久遭受重伤,在遇到右腿截肢康复的过程中遇到了护士Emily McVeagh,在将他的新婚妻子和年幼的孩子搬到波斯和后来的南罗得西亚之前。通过改写欧洲历史以外的第一次世界大战,莱辛重新安排了导致她的父母团聚并在非洲结婚的事件的时间表,从而使自己失去了生命。先于阿尔弗雷德(Alfred)和艾米丽·莱辛(Emily Lessing)写了许多她的家庭传记,描述了阿尔弗雷德(Alfred)“过着乡下的童年并一直想成为农民” 44多丽丝·莱辛(Doris Lessing),“重要的女儿”,格兰塔( 14)(1984),第51-68页;https://granta.com/impertinent-daughters/
艾米丽(Emily)的命运“应该是经营一个大型(慈善)组织”。55 Doris Lessing,“我母亲的生活(第二部分)”,格兰塔, 17(1985),227–38;https://granta.com/autobiography-part-two-my-mothers-life/
然而,尽管第一部分表面上满足了这些未实现的未来,但中篇小说并不是莱辛漫长的传记项目的最终令人满意的结局。为了回忆她父母的生活,他把回忆录写进了回忆录(第二部分)中,描绘了一个四面楚歌,贫穷的家庭为在殖民地边界上实现盈利事业而奋斗的努力。

阿尔弗雷德·艾米丽(Alfred and Emily)不可能就莱辛(Lessing)与南罗得西亚(Rhodesia)和前大英帝国的关系得出任何最终结论。尽管评论家将回忆录描述为“生命权”,但它构成了我称之为“投机性生活写作”的一种作法,其中作者以另类结果重写了他们以前的回忆录,自传或自传小说。66布雷克·莫里森,“生命的权利”,《卫报》, 2008年5月17日;https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/17/fiction.dorislessing
阿尔弗雷德(Alfred)和艾米丽(Emily)远非促成最终逃脱的“扶正”行为,而是莱辛(Lessing)罗得西亚童年时代的又一次回归。在其他地方,我曾将投机性生活写作描述为当代生活写作的一个子流派,其中“反事实生活[经营]是脱离现实生活叙事的转移途径”。77艾玛·帕克(Emma Parker),《佩内洛普·利弗利(Penelope Lively)的投机性生活写作:关于弥补它炸药和跳鱼的讨论》,《移动的世界:跨文化著作杂志》,18:1(2018),63-78(p.64)。
这些假设的生活偏离了作者早期作品所确立的道路,只是使读者回到了作者的真实记忆中。凯瑟琳·加拉格尔(Catherine Gallagher)最近对文学和历史文本的研究,探索了“历史的死胡同和未完成的项目”,为阅读投机性生活写作提供了一个背景,这是这一更广泛的反事实转折中的一个独特组成部分。88凯瑟琳·加拉格尔(Catherine Gallagher)讲的不是事实:历史小说中的反事实想象(芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,2018年),47。
投机性生活写作的核心是对“发生了什么以及可能发生了什么”的双重叙述的反事实主义者的关注。99同上。 9。
由于投机性生活之前是早期的自我表现,这种转移最有可能发生在作家职业生涯的尽头通常是对他们早期自传作品中确立的叙述进行后期重写。将投机性生活写作理解为迟到的表达,唤起了爱德华·赛义德(Edward Said)的论点-反过来扩展了西奥多·阿多诺(Theodor Adorno)对“spätstil”的概念化-后期风格拒绝与艺术家的早期创作“和好或解决”。1010爱德华·赛义德(Edward Said),《后期风格:反对谷物的音乐和文化》(伦敦:布鲁姆斯伯里,2017年),第7页。
取而代之的是,后期风格具有破坏性,这种矛盾拒绝了封闭的和谐。

重要的是要注意到,莱辛并不是在二十一世纪初尝试投机性生活写作的一个人。佩内洛普·利弗利(Penelope Lively)的《弥补》Make It Up)(2005)通过想象利弗利生活中的八种替代结果,重写了利弗利的先前回忆录。这些情节集中在“事情可能完全不同的那些高潮时刻”。1111佩内洛普·莱弗利(Penelope Lively),《化妆》(make up)(伦敦:维京,2005年),第1期。
在非洲大陆与莱辛(Lessing)相对的另一端,活泼的埃及人的成长在弥补》(Making It Up)中尤为突出,重现了她较早的回忆录《夹竹桃》Oleander,Jacaranda)(1994)中记录的孤独的殖民时期童年。尽管露丝·普拉沃·贾布瓦拉(Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)没有出版自传,但她也很关心在以后的生活中想象自己的“另类命运”,并出版了《我的九个人》My Nine Lives,2004)作为“可能的过去的章节”。1212 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala,《我的九条人生》(伦敦:约翰·默里,2004年),第1页。七。
至关重要的是,这些反事实实验都不能完全摆脱其作者的实际经验。相反,通过探索可能存在的生活,投机性生活写作将姿态朝着曾经的生活返回。

阿尔弗雷德(Alfred)和艾米丽(Emily)作为投机性生活著作,揭示出这本书不是两个离散的文本,而是自传式自我表现的单一行为。中篇小说与随后的回忆录密不可分。尽管第一部分和第二部分之间有明显的通用和主题区别,但它们都重写了莱辛的生平,如她的小说,回忆录和自传中所描述的那样,以便详细审查其定居者的成长过程。莱辛将这段文字描述为试图让父母“过上可能的生活” 1313 Doris Lessing,阿尔弗雷德和艾米丽(伦敦:第四庄园,2008年),第2页。七。
充当“我实际生活的解药–战争中的罗得西亚,这是大英帝国的最后一阵'动”。1414同上,186。
五十年前在她的第一本回忆录《回家》中写道她将白人定居者描述为“大众疾病”。1515 回家, 17。
如果阿尔弗雷德(Alfred)和艾米丽(Emily)是解药,那么乍看之下,它的反事实中篇小说似乎可以弥补莱辛(Lessing)在南部非洲白人至上的早期有毒接触。但是相反,文本无情地回过头来,回到了她家人在科普杰(Kopje)的家中,回到了战争和帝国的暴力记忆中,莱辛甚至在年老时仍从中“试图获得自由”。1616 阿尔弗雷德·艾米丽( Almi)八。
即使通过改变历史路线,该叙述也不会(或更准确地说是无法)绕过莱辛对定居者生活的记忆。与以前对这种混合文本作为和解结论的解释相反,我概述了投机性生活写作是如何探索和揭露帝国之后的生活的。

更新日期:2021-04-15
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