The Cleft by Doris Lessing

Author:Doris Lessing [Lessing, Doris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Now, reading the words that were first spoken by people who were not so far removed from the time, we came up against…

‘And then…’ ‘But when?’

‘Next…’ ‘After what?’

‘Soon…’ ‘How long after…?’

And now this historian, previous historians and all future chroniclers must find ourselves brought to a stop. The records, crabbed and cracked and faulty as they are, tell some kind of tale, with that internal logic, not always perceived at once, that seems a guarantee of verisimilitude. And then–the story stopped. Certain themes continued, for instance, the enmity of the Old Ones towards the new. The growing together in mind and cooperation of the two kinds of people, Clefts and their offspring–for the former Monsters in the valley were that. These were prosperous, easy-living, comfortable communities, and for a long time the eagles watched over them all. But then–the records ended. But we must remember what ended. If history depended on oral records, on Memory, on the Memories, then no easy process terminated. First of all, a community, a people, must decide what sort of a chronicle must be kept. We all know that in the telling and retelling of an event, or series of events, there will be as many accounts as there are tellers. An event should be recorded. Then it must be agreed by whoever’s task it is that this version rather than that must be committed to memory. The tale must be rehearsed–and we may amuse ourselves imagining how these must have been, often, acrimonious, or at least in dispute. Whose version of events is going to be committed to memory by the Memories? So, at last, the tale, the history is finished, to the point where no one will actively dispute it. Then comes the process of listening, while the history is spoken aloud. In a cave somewhere? At least well away from the sounds of the sea or of a forest when a wind is blowing. The tale is told, is lodged in the minds of the Memories, probably several of them. And at specified intervals someone–or several–asks for the history to be told again to be checked by people who had lived through it all. Is the tale still there? It has not become blurred? Nothing has been forgotten? And then this checked and verified tale is told carefully to the next in the line to hold the tribes’, the people’s, history. This is quite a process, is it not, and one that involves everyone.

No, an oral history must, as soon as you think about it at all, be the creation and then the property of a people. Imagine, for instance, who–and how–agreed to record the contest between the Old Females and Maire, whoever she was that held that name in that time. We may be sure that Old Shes would not agree with Maire’s version of events. Who made the decision that this and that Cleft, and not another or others, should hold the history in her mind? And the same is true for our people, the boys.

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