This month we bring you a new short story, this time from the New Writing 15 collection. In my point of view, this is a quite intriguing text and I hope we can explore a wide range of themes, from growing up to gender perspectives, from memories to the role of art in our lives.
    
     Thanks a lot to Sanghita Sen, who suggested working on this story much before Doris Lessing was awarded the Literature Nobel Prize.
    
     You can download the full story and notes visiting New Writing 15-In the National Gallery
    
     You can also browse the National Gallery collection and take a look at the paintings mentioned in the text:
    
     Stubb's Horse
    
     Constable's Salisbury Cathedral
    
     I look forward to hearing from you.
     All the best
     Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear All,
    
     What a delicious dip into so many powerful themes! There seem to be a number of subtexts or levels within this short story. I was struck by all the different points of view portrayed therein, ranging from the narrator's own, both as an observer and interlocutor with the man; his past infatuation with a 16 year old when he was 9; his present-day reaction to the 'pretty young thing' that comes so close, but remains untouchable; the younger man who is defined as 'rough' and storms out of the gallery; even the horse has a point of view and thinks about his painter. Doris Lessing manages to cunningly charge this seemingly quotidian scene with an eroticism which is so subtle it is hardly tangible, remaining, as it does, in limbo between the past, that cannot be changed, and the future, which will never be. There is also an interesting connection between the man and the narrator, who seem to understand one another so well... but that too fails to materialise into anything more substantial. There is also, of course, the stereotype of French schoolgirls... to what extent are we to concede that they are different from schoolgirls the world over?
    
     I look forward to hearing from colleagues about this beautiful text, which I enjoyed the first time I read it (several months ago)... and was thrilled to find in this month's ELT e-reading group... well done, Chris and Sanghita!
    
     Graeme

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

It is a short story of an aged lady , now being recognised in the whole world as Nobel prize winner.Her memory is catching and spacious ,holding so many historical events, names feelings even scents! Storaged-retrieved and reproducted as this story,is tself like a picture of impressionalists:in clouds of mainkind's evolution the mailstones calling back in our memory the name of actress born and brought up in the country of Old Masters, being so french as representative of the country where the Impressionalism was originated ,two symbolic benchmarks of today's cosmopolitan capital observed from the National Gallery , as real silent guides for people, who never have been to London .

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Chris,
     That was really a fascinating story. It is interesting to observe that the author had set his mind on spending an hour in front of a picture. An hour appreciating art. However, the art of life interrupted, or better yet, made his hour more valuable and worth living.
     I see this story as a powerful allegory of how art and life walk together. The French girl that comes in is the same horse they were observing. When she comes and falls asleep in front of them, she allows them to comtenplate their own feelings, their own dreams, and their past. For me it is a reminder of the power of art that can make us reflecting about ourselves, the power of art of revealing, bringing back our most treasured memories or our deepest disapointments and fears.
     I trully believe that art should be seen with the heart, not the mind. Even what I just had said probably has more to do with how this story touched me than with what the author really meant. the power of touchng our souls and hearts is what makes art universal and unique for each one of us.
     Thanks a lot Chris for choosing this wonderful story
     José Antônio

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear All
    
     I'm really glad Jose mentioned the wonderfully woven parallelism between the girl and Stubb's horse. It was the first thing to strike me when I first read the story.
    
     I think art products in general can be divided into two categories, those that strike you and the ones that puzzle you. I remember the first time I went to the National Gallery a couple of years ago with my son - he was 12 at the time. I remember standing in front of Holbein's 'The Ambassadors' and then saying to him, 'What on earth is this, after all?' He looked at me and said, 'It's a skull Mum!' I was quite upset and said, 'Well, this I can see, but what is it doing here?'. He looked at me again, grinned and said, 'I suppose it represents death.' That was a bit too much - I was being patronised by a 12-year old lad!!
    
     The thing is that, differently from my son, my previous experiences and knowledge of portraits of the period prevented me from actually seeing the skull. I could understand a skull on the shelf behind, among the other objects, but I could not really come to terms with that surreal distorted blot in the middle of a 16th-century painting. After reading Stephen Greenblatt's analysis of how 'The Ambassadors' fits into the Renaissance mind-set, my own memories of the painting and of the episode I told you have also been somehow reconstructed.
    
     What I'm trying to say is that our perceptions and the knowledge we bring with us colour our reading, our responses and also our memories. How much of our memories really reflect the facts as they happened in the past: How much of the adolescent memories of the character staring at both the painting and the girl have actually been reconstructed by his retelling of his own story? Could it be that we sometimes dwell in the past just to reshape and refashion it, making it perhaps more interesting or less painful?
    
     Comments welcome :)
     Chris

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Dear Chris! I never have been to England and to London. May be you would laugh but I really asked two English gentlemen from the British Council, who visited as guests our 10th Annual conference of the UzTEA in Tashkent the very naive question about you. How to call you, are you he/she, and got only something like this :Hmmm,Chris Lima.. ,in Argentina... At last, I have the answer in you last reply, reading your dialog with your son!
     Now something much more serious! We all with so different ideas and replies belong to the ELT E-Reading Group, being ourselves English teachers. I like your style of promoting London! Of course , new times demand new promotional tools. Wonderful add ional ICT enabled services are promoting the pictures of the National Gallery an you find yourself immediately walking/observing/even sleeping there! Of course, virtually! I compare this style with the previous one of James Joyce with his "Dubliners", "A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", getting always the added Key to the Map of Dublin to his book. Now about methodic promotions. So many new methods and approaches are creating/developing today everywhere in the globe !Why not to use new innovative assessments tools like creating/developing learners' rubrics, which in the turn can later become the powerful and very effective teaching aids in the form of instructional portfolios? England has a great chance to create/develop something essential and very innovative in this area! Doris Lessing herself with a century life span Memory has decoded the common for every educated person historical, ethnographical events/names/places/scents in her best books , they must be available for every English reader as authentic home reading. New people with new ideas for promotion are here on the corner. We have here in Uzbekistan about 20 universities, where the English literature is taught, also 20 teachers obtaining new relevant knowledge can be the very good promoters for the target audience-about the X00-000 English readers, who dreams sometimes to visit England! But I was so disappointed seeing the same announcement at the door of UzTEA-the Uzbek professional organization of English teachers: Chris invites you to the .... and I heard, that somebody asked :Who is this Chris? I know , I am alive , I am an active member of our reading group , I am a good reflector of my ideas after reading, I am a good achiever , many can be followers and join to our reading activities but ...nobody at the 300 people meeting even mentioned or asked from the local branch of the British Council how the reading is going , what we are reading, even from mushrooming experts from MC Millan Publishing, when I asked, if I can buy some books of Doris there. I am a Marketing Specialist and know ,that books are very unique products and only people, who knows all the features of these specific products can provide effective services. Books of Doris can be published in any country, only the effective marketing is important and sellers have to be the first readers/buyers of these products. I am ready to help you in promotion . It doesn’t need great money, only adequate efforts and efficient marketing strategy can be successful, develop new customers enjoying reading and later buying the familiar product via good organized services. I am an Executive Board member of very reputable International educational NGO , I can organize the appropriate fundraising for the mentioned activities in the form of innovative disseminations. I treat myself as a leader at the tertial /post graduation educational sector of my country and would like to contribute with all my knowledge and resources. I am invited to the LSE conference in April, where I am intending to make a presentation about the economic values of intangible things like reading in English in so far Central Asia.
    
     Halima.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

As I went through my first reading I was then absorbed into "going around" the "National Gallery" and visit Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist... and other art works. Interesting way of making reading into something realistic and tangible.
    
     I feel I'm one of vistors to "National Gallery", thanks for the story and for this virtualy visit I was granted ...
    
     Tanguene

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Hello Everyone,
    
     There are stories that say a lot and we listen....and then there are stories that say so little and we try to listen for more and more. the power of the unsaid in this piece is as poetic as the horse arrested in its flight of glory. the essence that is suffused reminds one of keats' "Ode on a Greacian Urn". the scene in the museum is a tale that the narrator etches and gazes at ---we are reminded of keats attaching and detaching himself from the scenes on the urn. There is a Grecian maiden here (the french girl) who teases her spectators with her 'art'. There is her 'lover' (the man), chasing her in a world where the boughs are evergreen (she reminds him of the time when he was 12, and a film where the heroine is equally coquettish); and of course the observer/storyteller whose own experience merges and collide with the characters in question. and above all the copper-cloured horse standing above thenm all, like the frozen bride of the urn--sexual yet virgin, beautiful yet alive.
    
     "In the National Gallery" is a metaphor for art itself...just initial impressions. more to follow.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

I'm posting this on the behalf of Pilar.
    
     Hi! I´m Pilar from Argentina, I´m a teacher trainer and a literature lover, this story by D Lessing has that something that makes you think about gaps betweeen people, about how impossible communication is between generations, about silences full of unsaid words, about INVISIBILITY in spite of the fact that people are SEEING :"She stood just in front of him. And still she did not look at him. Young things do not see elderly or middle-aged or older people. She might be staring straight at him, but she didn’t see him."

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

How interesting and manyfold/multple choiced are associations, connected to this our online novel! The 88-years old English lady -the author of this novel- an English lady-the facilitator of the online discussion ,Sanghita, the Indian ,of course, may be related to the Nobel prize winner researcher on HRM -Sen, who wrote so many articles about gender issues and his 7 wellknown -advices for eradication/improving the women lives in the southern Asia...What will tell us the now Nobel prize winner in the Literature 2007 on the 10th of December in her inaguration speech?May be, she will recall only partially our e-mails?May be, she can even recognise who is who and from where? I wonder, what will be her Nobel speech like? Like cloudy scarfs of the girls from this novel?Like the dreams of this French girl being so alike the famous american actress from the land of Old masters, who in her films has made real bridges between Russia(Natasha Rostova),Italy(a beautiful princess), and at the end of her life being very sick was an Peace Ambassador in the countries of the Third World.Or may be we think about Austria(like the decoded dreams of S. Freud,remember his sixth sense, his slogan about libido, where the age doesn't play any role in love affairs, where images of youth or unreached wishes/dreams are leading the people their whole life ),or Spain .... Goya and Dali with their paintings about the powers of the sleeping intelligences.English is becoming the international language in today's global village,and everybody can find something related personally to her/him.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

I'm posting this on the behalf of Mostafa.
    
     'Hi all,
     Wow! what a breath-taking text is this "In the National Gallery"!
     It reminds me of D. H. Lawrence's works; It's full of sensuality and instinct. I love the way the narrator lets free his/her thoughts . The stream of consciousness is meandering and taking the reader-me- deep into the unconscious and raw thoughts of the narrator.
     The juxtapposition between the red horse painted by Stubbs and the 60 year old man sitting near the narrator is a dichotomy between sexual force incarnated in the horse and castration and impotence embodied in the old man.
     The same parallelism is also portrayed between the young fresh girls full of life and vivacity and the old lady looking at them.'
    
    

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Great civilizationen were born and originated in the Central Asia, where nations of the Turkish and Pharsi islamic cultures are living for centuries, sometimes difussing/blending with each other in multifold types of multicultural/linguistic hybrids. Everybody is so multicultural/multilinguistic in this areal of the globe.Today not here but abroad are so great fusses about how to understand our mentality/culture/religion ,may be the 88-years old Nobel Prize Winner Doris, born in Central Asia, in the country with Indo-European language,getting the similar name to the famous Enlightener of the 18 century can contribute with her really rich ethnographic inquiry findings, formed and then published as novels, short stories. German Lessing's" Ring's Parabel " is a buzzword in many theatres over the world.This sleeping beauty-"die ewige Weiblichkeit ",observed by the old man in the National Gallery, who dreams about his Youth,like upon hypnosis, why not to remember here Faust of Goethe, who has sold his soul for getting the second youth for realizing his uncomplished wishes.

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator

Hello everyone
    
     Halima Ozimova from Uzbekistan is moderating a readin group in Tashkent and they are also discussing 'In the National Gallery'. She has kindly sent me one of the interesting responses she got in her group and gave me permission to posted it here. This is from Vasilya.
    
     Thanks a lot Vasilya and Halima :)
    
     'I want to express my feelings about the story "In the National Gallery" and ask a few words about the writer Doris Lessing.
     As I said in previous letter I liked the story very much for its simple style, much information and its being very attractive.
     I consider this story to be very close to me, I belong to the
     generation who were captured by films where Audrey Hepburn played the main part in such films as "My fair Lady", "Vacations in Rome". She is a creature whom we, in my youth, wanted to follow. We tried to wear the dresses of her style, to cut our hair in her manner, not speaking of how to behave in different situations, much time has passed since the film appeared
     on the screen. But this actress can be compared with the Stubbs
     "chestnut horse" which remained the masterpiece for ever in spite of the fact that it was created long before, at the beginning of the XIX century or Constable's picture of Salisbury Cathedral.
     The main hero is a person whom the author doesn't give any name. It is said that his age is about sixty. He belongs to the same generation as me and I'm sure that at first he saw the films, with Audrey Hepburn in the main parts and sure he was her fan. At the age of twelve he met a girl of sixteen, she didn't reciprocate him. Many years later when he saw the film again he understood the psychology of a pretty girl how the
     main heroin of the film "walked dawn that long avenue towards her admirer, one after another and he waited for her, +, and she walked past him, nose in the air +, she was rehearsing".
     Many years later when he became old his fate played a bad joke on him.
     When he was in the Picture Gallery a group of girls talking
     loudly and laughing "expecting attention" appeared to be in the same hall with the old, man. Among them was one girl "So French+ with her face which a hundred times being told that was like Audrey Hepburn's. + She was something + with her chic, her dark locks of hair cut to be crooked, dark eyes, slightly angular eyebrows".
     She pretended not to look at him, to fall asleep.
     But when the old man began to stare hard at her "+ she did not look at him, young things do not see elderly or middle - aged or older people. She might be staring straight at him, but she didn't see him". And it is clear that the old man could not withstand, he followed her and "there, was a wildness in the air, unexpressed, and raw, and dangerous".
     The author, shows by her story that time has changed, but women's psychology remains the same, they can weave a rope from a man. The author doesn't say her last word. The conclusion is left for the reader. The story is surely can be used for home-reading, first of all it's new, then it makes a young person think about the life, treat the old.
     The story can be used to revise grammar. There are a lot of phrases with Subjunctive Mood in it. It can be used for upper - intermediate groups.
     To my regret I don't know about the author of the story Doris Lessing. Will you send me her biography, a list of her books and some other stories
    
     Yours sincerely Vasilya
    

Reply to this message

Alert a moderator