DORIS LESSING AND LANGUAGES

 I am trying to put together a chapter on Doris Lessing (1919-2013) for my Literatura en lengua inglesa III (Editatum, 2023, 2025, and 2026). What first surprises me is the linguistic side to her biography. Born in Persia (now Iran), where she lived till age 6, she then moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she lived till age 30, when she settled in London in 1949. J. M. Coetzee reviews her autobiography in his book Stranger Shores, but does not dwell on linguistic questions. What I find surprising is that she spoke only English. There is little evidence that she ever acquired either Farsi or Shona beyond a few words and expressions. True that the British recreated abroad, in the colonies, their home way of life and shunned local languages and ways of life, but the fact that Lessing, as a child and adolescent, did not even try to learn the local languages shocks me. After all, her English was acquired outside the United Kingdom, in exotic countries. What intrigues me is not merely where Doris Lessing lived, but the fact that geography appears to have left so little trace on her linguistic identity. And not all Britons turned their backs on native languages, of course. Think of Captain Sir Richard Burton, for example. Well, let me tackle the piece on Doris Lessing. For reasons I cannot quite explain, I suspect it is going to be a difficult chapter to write.