THE MAKING OF THE REPRESENTATIVE FOR PLANET 8

The fourth novel in Lessing's Canopus in Argus series is the shortest, the simplest, and (though frequently given over to long, lyric/philosophical monologues) the most fable-like. The narrator is Doeg, a "Representative" on Planet 8 who recalls "the times of The Ice"—when the beautiful, temperate little planet (a colony of Canopus) slowly began to freeze to death. Half the planet soon becomes an icy wasteland; the other half, protected by a great black wall, which has been built according to orders from Canopean agent Johor (cf. Shikasta), suffers more gradually. And Joher promises that the people of Planet 8 will eventually be "spacelifted" to paradisical planet Rohanda. So Doeg and the other Representatives labor to keep their weakening, greying people going until salvation comes: there's a harrowing journey to the cold side in search of food sources (the people have had to switch to an all-meat diet); a sacred lake is reluctantly violated—also in search of food; the Representatives go house to house, urging the people to resist torpor, to refrain from crime (which is escalating). But then Johor arrives with the worst of news: there will be no mass spacelift to Rohanda; though the Representatives may be rescued, millions will simply be left to die with the planet. And so—while the lake freezes, the black wall crumbles, and the icy apocalypse approaches—Johor, Doeg, and the other Representatives engage in a colloquy on the nature of existence: the relationship of the individual to all humanity; the elusive, perhaps illusory essence of "meness"; the place of a single life or memory in the endless universe, of a single thought in "this system of fine and finer" particles. None of these ruminations is particularly fresh, of course—and the longwinded exchanges sometimes become droningly static. But often here, with near-Biblical rhythms and imagery (and a spiritual-transfiguration finale), Lessing achieves the sort of primal resonances which weren't possible in the more intricately sociological Canopus books. And this time the ambivalent symbolism—again paternal, hapless Canopus seems to represent both empire-building Britain and God—is more provocative than confusing. (To get really confused, however, read Lessing's afterword—which explains the connections between the last two Canopus novels and Scott's Antarctic expeditions.) So: perhaps the least ambitious or demanding of Lessing's visionary parables—but one with moments of great, dirge-like, roughly poetic power.