It was, so they called her peers, ”The brightest woman in England” Iris Murdoch (Dublin, 1919 -oxford, 1999). A writer who gave a good wicked British post -war literature for a false appearance of bourgeois and conventional novels in which failed marriages, adultery, death and betrayal (many, many betrayal) with which he revealed the contradictions of human state. Because just like the exact philosopher that was also, There was nothing to be interested in more than human condition And the moral concepts of good and evil that World War II decreased to debris.
After a long time when he was missing in the bookstore, he was released again “Elegia and Iris” (Elba), “Memoir” John BayleyThe prestigious literary critic, who has been his legal husband for more than four decades, in the last years of the writer in which the mind who was so extraordinary became a crazy girl lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s Bahen. Book, a portrait of Murdoch and a unique couple who created Is not liberated from humor and distance Because for Bayley she has always had her mysterious areas. It hurts to read the story of the joy that “Teletubbies” produced in a television apparatus that entered the married house only a year before his death. AND Exhibition of pathetic Miserias Some are interpreted as a betrayal of the proverbial discretion, with which Murdoch has always brought his intimacy.
Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley in recent years of the writer. / Archive
Among other revelations, the husband realized different romantic and sex life – Active, with men and women- that his wife claimed before your marriage and the one who would continue to maintain laterWith the full acceptance of it, always properly informed, so these sets did not reduce the participation and affection they had kept throughout their lives.
And the sexual revolution of 60 years, which, according to the poet Philip Larkin, was among the publications in the UK “Lady Chaterley’s Lover” and the appearance “please, me, according to poet Philip Larkin, there was the first album Beatles. Transformed sex ”for sportAlways in search of new brands, “as Bayley’s ice contempt, which would follow two more devoted Murdochu, served as the basis for” Iris “, the unsuccessful film of Richard Eyre, who wanted to lock the writer for many readers in the drama and in the sensation of her love life.
Kate Winslet and Judi Dench, characterized as Iris Murdoch in two phases of writer life, in the film “Iris” by Richard Eyre. / Archive
It’s a strange case. On the one hand it was One of the most nicth and popular British novelist With a similar glory at that time as Graham Greene, because it usually appeared on the pages of newspapers and magazines of the moment, as well as in BBC cultural programs. In addition, in the period of about 10 years, he devoted himself to the distribution of a number of masterpieces that began with “Bruno’s dream” (1969), “Black Prince” (1973), “Sacred and Profile Love” (1974), “Henry and Cato” (1976) and “Sea El Mar” (1978).
On the other hand, it may be one of the most misunderstood because after the plots of love and heart break always beats Murdoch’s other great profession, philosophyIt was an excellent exponent in terms of ethics, which led to our time of platonic thesis of good and evil that the prevailing thought, the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre a little behind. And yet, Murdoch’s novels are like MilehoSas, we must not Recognize each of their layers Enjoy its taste.
After the plots of love and heart break his novels, always another great profession of the author, philosophy, of which he was an excellent exponent in terms of ethics
The daughter of Irish Protestants hit London – barely lived the first months of her life in Dublin – using the gap open for World War II, emptied by Oxford’s men’s office. So good it turned out that when they return from them, No one hunted its value. However, 35 AS was an important career of thinker believed that philosophy was limited when it reflected the complexity of life, and although never left thought books, it left them in the background in favor of 26 novels that came to write. The novels that pulled philosophical sambenito.
Iris Murdoch, youth. / Archive
María Gila, author of the “daughter of words”, one of the few studies about Murdoch in Spanish, is very clear that it is clear The concept of a philosophical novel, understood as a novel of work, was not interested in The author. “If your novels are described in this way, this is because your characters often think about philosophical questions and apparently deal with the problems that Murdoch interests him; but they can hardly be understood as a spokesperson for their author.
Pure reason and spirit
Murdoch’s novels are definitely Strange works. All, They seem to be realisticSomething magical that escapes us. This is one of the qualities that most appreciates one of his great readers, the novelist Pilalar Adón, who, when he began to read it in his adolescence, could not imagine that he would end up as his editor. And here you have to thank you to prevent work on the release of a good part of your work, collecting a witness to the Allianza or Lumen, which remained halfway.
“Its is A high -strength and intelligent mixture of pure reason – Adon says with those intellectual and grid characters who still have a spiritual element that leads you to an exceptional emotional literary transcendence. “He is considering Adon, translator and prologist” something from the other world “that when the reader stands in the hands of Murdoch, he is told from the first pages regardless of circumstances. Its style “fresh and narrative pulse” “The one who emphasized Harold Bloom, who included him in his book “Genia”.
“It is a masterful and intelligent mixture of pure reason with those intellectual and quadriculated characters, but they have a spiritual element that leads you to exceptional emotional transcendence,” says Pilalar Adón Pilalar
Toxic relationship
The writer’s characters travel with different names and similar qualities from one work to another. There we find sacrificed and/or desperate women, lay people, hidden homosexuals, wives of double life, and those, especially Luciferian beings, which as manipulative magicians control the lives of others. This character has a greater development in an exceptional “sea, sea”, with his egocentric protagonist Charles Arrowby, retired playwright who lives in the house next to the cliff who wanted to see the Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti.
Murdoch met him when he expelled in London. With him kept and Toxic relationship before and after your marriage with BayleyAs can be seen from the canonical biography of Peter Conradi, it is not translated in Spain. There it is explained that Canetti and she had sex, while the evidence, the wife, prepared food that the three of them would share later. The session of this Missan’s relationship was the discovery of notes that Canetti, short, ugly and mischievous, left the author: “Iris Murdoch could be defined as Oxford Rag. How much do I despise the English life“The commentary appeared posthumously in the” Fiesta under the Bombs “(Gutenberg Galaxy), when the daughter” Mass and Power “decided to break the father’s desire by publishing these and other poisonous opinions in 2003.
Elias Canetti and his wife Vya in 1937. / Archive
Man / woman
Twenty -five years after her death is the temptation to appreciate the writer in the light Gender perspectiveBut even Murdoch makes it easier. It was one of the first to deal with problems such as homosexuality, abortion or sexual freedom, but He said he wasn’t a feminist. María Gila says: “He issued a statement that today would be quite controversial. He identified the problems of people with a proper man while Women’s problems assimilated them on minorities And he considered himself that the holding of them would be subject to the vision that his novel would offer. As if she identified a male with universal, it was no longer a conditional vision … “She adds another thing that today a woman can be considered a reference for feminism today.” Especially with regard to such a small role that women occupy in the history of philosophy. At this point, I think it is important to claim it. ”
Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent, such as Iris Murdoch and John Bayley in “Iris”. / EPC
IN lThe Spanish iteratura, a trace that the author left is not deep but very significant. In this league there are Pilalar Adón; Gonzalo Torné, whose novels are a mirror in the novels of Murdoch; Álvaro Pombo, who read it very carefully in his lonely London years and in some work of Rafael Chirbes. “Old Friends” made me think of “book and brotherhood” – says María Gila – in which we speak to what extent the past connects us with certain people, shared ideals, and then frustrated and abandoned. ”
In 1990, when he had left his best work behind, Murdoch received a visit to the “Paris revision” and replied that if they asked what effect they wanted their books to have: “I would like readers to enjoy reading. A readable novel is a gift for humanity“Murdoch is. A gift.”
