Iris murdoch

(b. 1919)­

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Iris Murdoch may well be considered the initiator of the genre of the philosophical novel. In her novels one can find the most typical examples of correlation between philos­ ophical ideas and life.

She was born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish family She

graduated from Oxford University and after the war lec­ tured in philosophy both at Oxford and Cambridge. In her philosophical studies she followed Sartre, a famous French philosopher, and his existentialism.

The main problem in art, as Murdoch sees it, is the problem of man's personality The novel, in her opinion, should touch upon the complicated moral aspects of man's life and the enigma of his individuality. Philosophical truths, she thinks, should be presented not in the form of abstract ideas but through well-drawn portraits of charac­ ters. Yet her method of portrayal is far from realistic. Nor does she ever give a concrete setting to her novels, it is usually only some small detail that helps the reader realize the time and place of action. Her early novels are practical­ ly devoid of a coherent plot and consist of a number of disunited episodes, reflecting the chaos characteristic of the modern world.

All her novels have a more or less similar composition: they contain a set of five or six personages who intercon­ nect and interact with each other.

Murdoch values a romantic dreamer in man. Such is

Jake Donaghue in her first novel Under the Net ( 1954). The

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novel tells the story of his wanderings about Bohemian London and Paris. Jake attempts to find his own way in life. He wants to get away from the net of conventional ideas and notions and work out his own mode of thinking. The author's attention is concentrated on the psycholog­ ical analysis of her hero's inner world, the world which is ruled not by laws but by man's strivings and aspirations.

In her second novel The Flight from the Enchanter (1956) the author deals with a different sort of illusion. All the characters are under spells and enchantments, they are

held in a kind of emotional captivity. The principal charac­ ter, Misha Fox, exercises a spell over other people, yet he feels no responsibility for the effects of his influence.

The title of the novel The Sandcastle (1957), like those of her other works, is symbolic. The love between a married schoolmaster and a young teacher, whose name is Rain,

cannot last; it is a castle of sand. Human beings are unable to build anything lasting out of their deceptive dreams, and the castles of their dreams either crumble or are washed

away.

In Murdoch's novel The Bell ( 1958) a group of people in a religious community attempt to place a bell on the

tower of the nearby abbey, but accidentally it falls into the lake. Thus, the bell becomes part of another illusion, the image of another unsuccessful human attempt to build some sort of happiness.

For the first time the author takes up a historical sub­

ject in her novel The Red and the Green (1965), which deals with the Easter Rebellion of 1916, a major event in the Irish

national liberation movement. However, we cannot call the

novel a historical one. All its characters are fictitious; the only real name is that of Patrick Pearse, a teacher and a poet, who was executed by the English after the Easter Rebellion. The author concentrates her attention on the psychology of the fighters, on their patriotism. Through their characters Murdoch shows the romance of the con­ temporary national liberation movement.

In the late 1960s there came a change in Murdoch's philosophical orientation. She took up the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato and tried to work out some positive ethical ideals. In her lectures as well as the novels of the period- The Nice and The Good (1968), Bruno's Dream ( 1969), A Fairly Honourable Defeat ( 1970)- Mur­ doch asserted that good deeds were the most powerful means to overcome one's loneliness. An illustration of this

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thesis is Diana's (Bruno's Dream) resolution to dedicate herself entirely to the care of her decrepit old father-in-law­ after her dramatic separation from her husband.

Another cornerstone of her nco-platonic philosophy is

the problem of love. Murdoch investigates different mani­ festations and aspects of this human feeling. She shows selfish and disinterested, passionate and rational love, love verging on hatred and self-sacrificing love. The most elevated form of love, m Murdoch's opinion, is the one that inspires man for artistic creation. Characteristic of the writer's preocupation with this theme is the novel The Black Prince.

THE BLACK PRINCE

The main themes in the novel The Black Prince

{ 1973) are those of love and chance. It seems that every­ thing in people's lives happens by chance, that there is something fatal that influences people's destinies. In the

author's opinion this fatality is created by the people themselves, by their passions, their deeds and intentions.

Bradley Pearson, the main character of the novel, is,

quite by chance, a person who influences the lives of all

other personages, especially, of the Baffin family. Arnold Baffin is a prosperous commercial novelist. His private life is one of routine. Rachel, his wife, once persuades herself that she has fallen in love with Bradley Pearson, who seems attached to her Very soon, however, Pearson understands that he loves Julian, Baffin's daughter

The action of the novel develops quite rapidly. Bradley and Julian have a few happy days together. Then due to her parents they are forced to separate. Bradley Pearson is unjustly accused of the murder of Arnold Baffin. He is put into prison and dies there. It is there that he creates his best novel, in which he tells of his life.

The following short extract from the novel renders

Pearson's, and, evidently, Murdoch's own idea of the pre-­

sentday world and man's destiny in it:

The world is perhaps ultimately to be defined as a place of suffering. Man is a suffering animal, subject to ceaseless anxiety and pain and fear the endless unsatisfied anguish of a being who passionately desires

only illusory goods

This is the planet where cancer reigns, where people regularly and automatically and almost without comment die like flies from floods and famine and disease, where people fight each other with hideous weapons

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to whose effects even nightmares cannot do jus lice, where men terrify and torture each other and spend whole lifetimes telling lies out of fear This is where we live.

Since the 1970s Murdoch's novels such as A Word Child ( 1975 ), The Sea, the Sea ( 1978), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983). The Book and the Rotherhood (1987) and others have acquired a more definite social background. The construction of the plot has become less schematic, the characters have grown more life-like and their actions have become more socially motivated though the relations be­ tween the personages of her novels are as always compli­ cated and entangled.

Murdoch is a contradictory writer A search for moral values goes in her novels side by side with the assertion that the world is a place of continuous suffering where

there is no room for any sort of lasting ties or relations. Alongside a truthful presentation of life she creates a mystical world. Her work is marked with an original en­ deavour to reflect the complicated relations between people in the world of today.