CREATIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE USES OF THE IMAGINATION IN DORIS LESSING (ZIMBABWE)

Doris Lessing uses artists and other individuals who possess "extra sensitivity and perception" to dramatize creative and destructive uses of the imagination. An examination of artists in the short stories provides an overview of the questions Lessing raises about artistic creativity and suggests that it is important to understand how people use or fail to use various capacities of imagination in life, as well as art. Lessing probes the limits and the destructive potential as well as the creativity of imagination.;In the Golden Notebook, Anna Wulf's struggles with writer's block are part of the larger dilemma of how the imagination may be used to find new ways of comprehending and responding to the human situation, especially to the escalating violence of life in mid-century. Anna's work seeking "a new imaginative comprehension" indicates the difficulty of this task. Artistic creation in The Four-Gated City is subordinated to the problems of survival. Lessing aligns Jimmy Wood, Lynda Coldridge, Mark Coldridge, and Martha Quest with different capacities of constructive and destructive imagination. Through Martha's work enhancing her own capacities of perception and imagination, Lessing provides limited hope that people may learn to use the imagination to discover more constructive ways of living.