Durrell, Geopolitics, Idealizing the Beloved

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.

2. In a prefatory note to Balthazar, Durrell claims his Alexandria novels are “based on the relativity proposition. Three sides of space and one of time constitute the soup-mix recipe of a continuum.” The first three (Justine, Balthazar and Mountolive) are “siblings,” not sequels, as they cover the same events from different angles. The fourth (Clea) situates the events in a longer span of time. Durrell distinguishes his method from Proust’s and Joyce’s: “they illustrate Bergsonian ‘duration’ in my opinion, not ‘Space-Time.’” In other words, Durrell is moving beyond Proust’s or Joyce’s immersion in subjectivity by means of collage or mosaic.

3. I think Steuckers’ image of “superimposed strata” gets nearer the heart of the matter than Durrell’s Einsteinian allusions. In the Alexandria novels, Durrell builds up and peels back layers in the following way:

a. Justine and Balthazar are love-stories. The first layer is Darley’s view on his relationships with Melissa and Justine.

b. The second layer is Balthazar’s long letter, in which (part of) the “truth” of the matter is revealed to Darley. Of course, there is no simple truth in such matters: the effect of Balthazar is impressionistically to indicate the irreducible complexity of love-life (the medium, the fleeting, disconnected impression, is the message).

c. In both books, as many have said, “the city is the real (or main) character.” The way in which the city moulds character, or how the individual dissolves into collective life is another layer.

d. Fitfully in Balthazar, then more fully in Mountolive, the political events on which the love-story supervenes are revealed (Coptic and Zionist insurgencies in an Arab world under British supervision). Justine’s relationship with Darley is revealed to be (entirely?—certainly not “simply”) a political affair; love-life supervenes on geo- and ethnopolitics.

e. Durrell develops a powerful idea—a leading idea-image of the whole work—in Clea: the possibly, probably delusional image of the loved one which leads one to act, which becomes the very condition of action. “[His love] invented an image on which to feed”; “the picture was coloured after the necessities of the love which invented it.” The personality as a simple or integrated thing—“the thrall of personality,” “the bondage of ourselves” (Balthazar)—has been demolished in the foregoing volumes: we are a tangle of “wills and desires […] clad in bodily forms” (ibid.). Personality is untethered; motive, interest, character, etc., shift like sands in the delta. We act, rather, for an idealized image of the beloved. Nessim and Justine are the prime examples. We hear of “the lies which keep love going” (ibid.). Love “invent[s] an image on which to feed”: “the picture [is] coloured after the necessities of the love which invented it” (Clea).

4. To run a little with the last two ideas: the ethno- and geopolitical substrate; and the idealized beloved as the motive for action. In Bitter Lemons, Durrell’s memoir of his time as a Foreign Office man in Cyprus during the beginning of Grivas’ (“Dighenis’”) and Makarios’ struggle for Cyprus’ nationhood, the ethno- and geopolitical stratum is close to the surface. The book is in part a rationalization—or, better, justification as an aesthetic phenomenon—of Durrell’s small complicity in the deliberate and systematic betrayal of Cyprus by Britain. (Christopher Hitchens discusses Durrell and British Cyprus policy in his Preface to Hostage to History.) And he does this in part by reference to a possibly, probably delusional ideal-image of his beloved Cypriots. In the book’s closing words, Durrell records, or ventriloquizes, a taxi-man saying: “Dighenis, though he fights the British, really loves them.” Bitter Lemons is the memoir of a man in deep, sensuous love with the Mediterranean—its landscapes, women, moeurs—who is required to take part in Perfidious Albion’s great games of divide-and-rule. To what extent is this true of the Alexandria novels?

5. An unrelated final question. Did Durrell know of Julius Evola and/or Arturo Reghini? Or did he read Sibilla Aleramo’s portrayal of Evola and Reghini in Amo dunque sono? I ask because that book fictionalizes the Italian alchemist and purported “baron” Julius Evola and portrays Reghini as a mage living in a tower by the sea; and I was reminded of this when reading Capodistria’s recollections of the Italian alchemists, one a baron, the other living in a tower by the sea (in Clea). (I’m going on second-hand accounts of Aleramo’s novel; so if I have things wrong, please do correct me.)