Abstract

These drawings are by British artist Kevin Petrie who has been researching how the writing of Iris Murdoch might inspire creative practice. Petrie’s previous practice focused on drawing from life and often in the landscape. This recording of experience through looking and drawing might be seen as a form of ‘attention’ – a very ‘Murdochian’ concern. Recently, Petrie has shifted away from observational art to more imaginative approaches. Reading Iris Murdoch has offered him a new kind of ‘landscape’ to explore through the making of images. These images are not illustrations for the novels as such but independent works of art that take the novels as starting points. In general, the drawings are presented here to pose questions about both their own meaning and passages that inspired them.

Deus Ex Machina is a quarterly literary magazine featuring poetry, prose, essays, interviews and visual arts. This edition focuses on Iris Murdoch. The publishers say of this edition, "Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was a phenomenon. She was among the first generation of women to study and teach at Oxford University and wrote the first English-language book on the philosophy and novels of Jean-Paul Sartre. She also wrote an awe-inspiring literary oeuvre of no fewer than twenty-six (!) novels. Despite a life full of achievements, the name Iris Murdoch seems to be fading from the Dutch-language cultural-collective memory. Deus Ex Machina wants to turn the tide. That is why DEM 192 focuses on Murdoch's many-faceted writing life as a novelist, philosopher, letter writer and poet. In addition to essays on Murdoch's prose and philosophy, letters to the author and her characters and visual work inspired by her, this issue contains a world premiere: the very first translation of some of Murdoch's unpublished poems. This Deus Ex Machina forms half of a duo project and is published together with the first Dutch reissue of The Italian Girl in five decades. This edition was realized by literary publisher Cosimo, who has been publishing forgotten classics since 2020. Together with this issue, The Italian Girl is the perfect opportunity to (re)discover this completely unique literary-philosophical voice".

To celebrate the reissue of 'The Italian Girl' Kevin Petrie produced a new drawing 'Hestia' especially for this edition of Deus Ex Machina.