1. A paragraph on Durrell from Robert Steuckers, “Pour donner des fondements philosophiques à la ‘N.D.,’” c.5, Vouloir, 146–8 (Autumn 1999), translated by me:
Lawrence Durrell, born in India, living in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, his great homeland of choice, sings the Greek and Cypriot landscapes, sketches ironical and comical rustics who are true men of flesh and blood, develops an almost Joycean vision of the real formed of superimposed strata communicating vaguely amongst one another and implying the extreme relativity of all facts of the matter: for there is simultaneously imbrication and juxtaposition, general mixture and hermetic contingency, so that each phenomenon is unique in itself, the product of a fusion or of an unparalleled originality; no schematic thought can succeed in grasping the essence of all these phenomena; no dry and prescriptive morality can succeed in taming them, submitting them, choking their influence. They escape the classifications of the schematisers. Ultimately, for Durrell, as for [D. H.] Lawrence and his friend [Henry] Miller, sexual experiences are veritable initiations into earthly pleasures.
