“I hate solitude, but I’m afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It’s already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.”—Iris Murdoch/Under the Net
I resemble that remark, but, interestingly given its message, Murdoch was married for a long time, over 40 years, to writer and critic John Bayley. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t a loner, though, does it? No, it does not. Doesn’t mean she didn’t have a secret self – or selves – that she kept away, in dark corners, hidden from others, including her husband. Doesn’t mean she didn’t have entire worlds separate from that relationship, or extracurricular affairs, a.k.a. lovers, because she definitely did, although – if it’s in Wiki, does that means she was up front about the affair/s with him? Hm. More research is needed. Doesn’t even mean they were that intimate (those secrets and secret selves again) but, and, however, Under the Net is a novel, and an early one, her first published full-length work – it’s possible she changed her mind, and/or was merely musing on self and intimacy in character, one, perhaps, far from herself.
Iris Murdoch was an Irish-British novelist and philosopher whose fiction I have loved, and enjoyed, gobbling up her novels back in the day (the 90s) – although I haven’t ever read her philosophic works, the most well-known of which is 1970’s The Sovereignty of Good. Do I have to read it? No, I don’t; permission to skip granted. Phew! Because, let’s be honest, while I enjoy reading about philosophy, and have a persistent interest in learning sh*t, no, just no. There are too many other, newer, more interesting books to read, by a factor of many.
I did, however, love Murdoch’s novels; The Sea, The Sea is my favorite, but I also really enjoyed The Bell, The Black Prince, The Unicorn, The Green Knight, and An Unofficial Rose. She shares with A.S. Byatt the kind of intellect that is deeply embedded in myth, fairy tale, psychology, poetry, folk tales – you name it – that makes me feel as though I am learning and expanding my own wee brain as I read, spending time inside a truly small ‘c’ catholic brain (irony of ironies, small ‘c’ catholic means broad, capacious, wide, as the papist church is hardly that – broad minded, or in allowing ‘broads’ to priest it up). Was it The Bell or The Green Knight that caused me to feel as though my insides were churning, confused, confounded? Hm. More research needed? Nah. Let it go. The 90s were a long time ago, but I respect her work, and her words, perking up whenever they pop up on various sites or in other people’s writing, quoted as I have above and below.
Both Judi Dench and Kate Winslet played her in a film, Iris, from 2001, so enviable, with Jim Broadbent (Horace Slughorn in the Potter films, among many others) playing her husband as an older gent, and Hugh Bonneville (a.k.a. Lord Grantham) as young John. Sigh.
“Youth is a marvelous garment. How misplaced is the sympathy lavished on adolescents. There is a yet more difficult age which comes later, when one has less to hope for and less ability to change, when one has cast the die and has to settle into a chosen life without the consolations of habit or the wisdom of maturity, when, as in her own case, one ceases to be une jeune fille un peu folle, and becomes merely a woman, worst of all, a wife. The very young have their troubles, but they have at least a part to play, the part of being very young.” – Iris Murdoch, The Bell