Lawrence Durrell Books

This is one of the most remarkable, thought provoking, profound, and-- to put it bluntly-- gut wrenchingly tragic plays I have ever read. This great play seems to have been relegated to obscurity because it was written in verse by an outsider to theatre who's much better known as a novelist. In the immediately post World War II era, the pathos of the times found more of a theatrical voice in absurdism. While this play takes essentially the same dark philosophical view with very modern ideas, its verse style and ancient Greek setting must have seemed outdated. It probably smelled too much of literature and poetry to attract interest then. I sincerely hope it eventually will be resurrected and given the recognition that I feel it's due; for I continue to get more out of it at each reading, and I would dearly love to see it staged.

Set in 7th century B.C. Lesbos, the play is a very complex interaction of many characters who each represent different attitudes concerning the nature of the world at large and the role of the individual within that world. Some are proactive; others withdrawn; others self-centered. All have different ideals, and all become victims of real world circumstances that they could not foresee. Most of the play is an intricate, engaging, at times poetic and philosophical, at times passionate dialogue on the dilemma of how to live in an imperfect world. The tragedy is felt when even the noblest attempts fail miserably. The play seems to argue that any kind of idealism is hopeless. It is a very dark view, but elegantly and piercingly supported by the development of the plot and characters. This is only the main theme. There is much more to the play than this, and I strongly encourage everyone to read it for themselves.

Just a quick note to those who appreciate the historical Sappho as a woman who loved other women: the character Sappho in this play has only male lovers. We know so little about her that, in spite of the evidence of her poetry, this may not be unrealistic. This is in no way relevant to what the play is about, and I mention it only to prevent some Sappho fans from being disappointed.

A Smile In His Mind's Eye: A Study Of The Early Works Of Lawrence Durrell is an examination of a truly multicultural 20th century author. Durrell (1912-1990) spent his childhood in India and his adult life in France and Greece; his writing included novels, poetry, travel writing, essays, and drama; perhaps his best known work is "The Alexandria Quartet", and he is remembered for blending Western concepts of time and space with Eastern metaphysics. A Smile In His Mind's Eye studies Durrell's oft-neglected work prior to the Second World War, with particular interest in his embrace of Taoism and his shift away from Western patriarchal framework to a more Eastern, feminine-centered point of view. Chapters analyze "Pied Piper of Lover", "Panic Spring", and "The Black Book" in particular, as well offering a broader digestion of how Durrell's early work evolved and what this says of him. A welcome and erudite treatise of literary criticism.

The blurbs on this volume give the game away: the notices (one from Newsweek and one from the long-defunct New York Herald Tribune) date from its release a half-century or so ago. Indeed, the Alexandria Quartet hasn't aged well, but between its puerile conceits and purple prose, I find it hard to believe it was ever well received. (I asked an older friend how it had managed to gain a reputation and he attributed its success to the boredom of the late 50s. "Could that explain Mailer too?" quipped another friend of mine.) I was drawn to the Quartet because I was intrigued by its structure: four volumes recounting roughly the same events from four different perspectives employing various narratorial devices. Also, as a fan of Proust, the promised psychological approach and, yes, lurid subject matter appealed to me. But 70 pages in, stuck in a novel-within-a-novel even worse than the actual one, I couldn't bear it anymore. If you're thinking of buying this book, read the opening paragraphs, with their multiple ellipses and exclamation points, to give you a taste of what you'd be in for. If you're in the mood for a multivolume meditation on love and friendship that vividly depicts a time and place--and is witty to boot--check out Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time or the big guy, Proust himself.

The Alexandria Quartet was an attempt to tell the same story from different points of view, without puting the reader to sleep with repetition. It was also four very fine novels.
I recommend a facsimile edition, if any exist, so as to get the original type font, which is evocative without getting in the way of the reading. Nothing, in fact, gets in the way of the reading--not Durrell's ambitions plan for the four novels, nor his numerous opinions on life, people, and literature, nor the most exotic setting for any great novel that I can remember.
If you don't care much for great literature, read this for its readability, and for a look at two things that seemed permanent when the books were written, but are now vanished: the British Empire, and the separate world of "the East," spreading from Turkey to Japan.

Well... i read the Alexandrea Quartet many years ago and i was completely amazed by the way Durrell could recreate the real and external world of a group of friends who lives in Alexandria while their internal peregrination. In my personal opinion the best characters are Justine and Clea. And not because i am a woman but because they are sharp and also round and full of shades. Eventhough you can read each book separeted it is much better if you read the whole quartet.

Yes, I thoroughly agree that this is a well-penned novel exploring what Durrell calls "modern love". It is also, perhaps above all, a beautiful, harrowing description of a love for a place and time, prewar and immediate postwar Alexandria. My primary problem with the work lies in the author's stated intent in composing this work, as stated in the Introductory Note to Balthazar, epitomised in one sentence: "This in not Proustian or Joycean method-for they illustrate Bergsonian "Duration" in my opinion, not 'Space-Time'."--Whatever can he mean? I asked myself when first reading this asseveration. Now, having completed my reading, I ask myself if it means anything at all, this putative appropriation of Einsteinian science to literature.

For this novel is nothing if not Proustian--Indeed, many of the introspective digressions are almost verbatim quotes from Proust. I don't see how Joyce enters into the picture at all. This is so clearly a work infused with French and expat French culture intermingling with English and Arabic, that its affiliation with Proust is even more accentuated. Furthermore, Joyce was never influenced by the Bergsonian notion of "Duration." And, though many who write about Proust contend that he was so influenced-He certainly read Bergson, anyway.-the connexion seems very tenuous to me, having read them both myself.

There are a few other problems. At times, this work seems like a pastiche of other works. The Dickensian-named Pusewarden, for instance, is so obviously, in his style and his philosophy a pale copy of the Doctor from Djuna Barnes's "Watchman, What of the Night!" chapter of her brilliant book, Nightwood, that it's almost embarrassing to read his declamations. Of course, he lets his real poetic genius be known to Darley in those letters, subsequently burned. But we never get to read them!

If Durrell's purpose was to usurp Proust's place as the authority on the prismatic, shape-shifting character of love, modern or otherwise, then he has signally failed. All one has to do is read Proust to see this.

If, on the other hand, his ambition was to create a delicious, brilliantly wrought and worded, portait of a certain time and place and a depiction of the ever-elusive qualities of the lives and loves therein, he has smashingly succeeded. Thus, all quibbles aside, it's well worth the read.

With its non-linear structure, sensuous prose, and cast of characters buffeted and beleaguered by love, this tetralogy is one of the masterworks of the twentieth century, and remains the finest work of literature to emerge from Alexandria.

Durrell jotted notes toward his "Alexandria novel" in the tower of the Ambron Villa, but began writing Justine, which he initially called his "Book of the Dead," in Cyprus in 1953. Soon after their arrival in Cyprus, Eve Cohen, Durrell's second wife, became depressed, then psychotic. Durrell had her confined in a hospital in Germany, and brought his mother to Cyprus to help him with Sappho, his daughter with Eve. Rising at four-thirty am, he wrote in longhand so as not to wake Sappho, before leaving to start teaching at seven. He typed out his week's work on weekends. In a letter to Henry Miller, he noted "never have I worked under such adverse conditions," but commented also: "I have never felt in better writing form."

Justine investigates its characters by laying down scenes and moments with little concern for chronology; instead, like a mosaic, the pieces link up to form a whole. This broken, cluttered style echoes the love lives of the characters, who are continually floundering within relationships: deceitful, forlorn, exhausted, cynical. Justine, the central character, is based on Eve, to whom the book is dedicated, and it is her portrait that emerges most fully, though there are no caricatures in the Quartet. The prose is miraculous, the metaphors always fresh, ideas and images crushed together to form an angular beauty.

Eve left Durrell before he had finished Justine, but he shortly thereafter met Claude Vincendon, who had grown up in Alexandria. Inspired by her love and memories, he completed Justine, and conceived the idea of a series of books "using the same people in different combinations." Balthazar is the equal of Justine in its imagery and investigation of character; of the tetralogy, these two are closest in spirit. Mountolive, more traditional in its storytelling, relates the love affair between David Mountolive, a British civil servant, and Leila, a married Copt. Clea, an homage to Claude, and dedicated to her, moves forward in time. Darley, the narrator of Justine, returns to Alexandria after the war, where he falls in love with Clea Montis, and they reminisce about their acquaintances. Less successful than the previous three in some ways, it nevertheless contains some vivid scenes, and the writing remains delicious.

Justine was an instant critical and popular success upon its publication. The Quartet cemented Durrell's reputation and made him a perennial favorite for the Nobel Prize.

I may have a soft spot for this book because it's the first of his I read, but this comes off as no less than his finest hour. The first fifty or so pages are almost unbeatable. Miller nails the very essence of the American character down with an unflinching vitriol that hasn't really been matched in anything else I've read. Given how banal much of the literature that comprises the curriculum in public schools is, I was somewhat shocked and completely mesmerized by someone exposing the degradation and absence of ethics in the the modern workplace so openly. Reading it well after the year 2000, it still was spot on in spite of taking place in 1920s New York.

Sure, much has changed since then. Racism and sexism have become more veiled and subtle, but are still present in oblique and diluted forms. On closer inspection, I have come to think that the book tacitly makes the point that racism always was partially a red herring. The real enemy was a system that treated people as mere statistics and robbed us all of our humanity.

A lot of people like Cancer better, but I have to disagree. This book is everything he was trying to do in Cancer and then some. Whatever style he was trying to formulate in Cancer, which while still very good basically only described a sort of expatriate hipster aesthetic. That isn't without its merits, but Capricorn was the book that looked not only looked America right in its hideous face, but saw Miller making "the only true journey which is to the self" (paraphrased). The sexual aspect of the book gets overplayed again and again, but it was only part of a larger transparency in Miller's writing. He wrote graphically and directly about sex in a time when it was utterly unacceptable to do so in popular discourse. His ability with the English language is largely unmatched in American prose. It was in this book, where he wanted to lay out his thoughts in the most naked manner possible, that he hit full stride stylistically.

Unsentimental, deliriously descriptive, and brilliant.

"For there is only one great adventure and that is inward, toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor deeds even matter" (4).


Miller's two tropics - CANCER AND CAPRICORN- are essentially manuals for the creative life. They present Miller's transformation from lay-schmuck working in the belly of the beast that is the American economy - jobs such as his position with the Western Union Telegraph company, which he refers to as the "Cosmococcic / Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company" - to his evolution as en expatriate writer living in Paris. The books are really designed to be read together to magnify the metamorphosis, the rite of passage. While CANCER chronicles the latter portion of Miller's experience abroad, the prequel, CAPRICORN, written five years later in 1939, is the more developed and more seminal of the two and elucidates with much greater detail the affects of his epiphany.

Most artists will immediately recognize the struggle Miller endures. Married to the "wrong" woman and with a young child in tow - a relationship which he finds stifling to his creative development - Miller faces tenable employment situations to support this life. Those jobs he does find do little to allow him to prosper; rather he finds himself as a cog on a wheel of Hell. His transformation from the morass of what society deems sound and true is painful. Anyone who has ever made such sacrifices to pursue the unspoken dreams to create from what grows inside of them will sympathize with Miller's dilemma. To pursue a life of an artist is frightening enough: to do it behind the rancorous veil of the American dream is horrifying. Miller recognizes the banal existence of modern America with its machines, its backward corporate policies, its worship of the unthinking and mechanical and he also knows he must break from its fetters.

Part of Miller's disenchantment with America is organic to his being just as much as it is experiential. As a child, Miller feels a unique disassociation with his peers and even his family. This self-possessed knowledge of his unique intelligence leaves Miller with a feeling of disorientation. As an adolescent, he sees his drunken father convert to piety when wooed by the charisma of a local minister. Miller, Sr. then falls from grace when the minister is called to another location and as a result of this perceived abandonment, cycles back to his earlier state of crapulousness. The event seems to have intimated to Miller the importance of being self-reliant upon a constant wellspring of inspiration so that disappointment in other people does not interrupt the flow of creativity.

Miller describes the evolution of the artist as riding "on the ovarian trolley." In fact, those very words are what preface CAPRICORN. For Miller there are really two births the artist experiences before his final descent into a world riddled with isolation, hunger and anticipation. Of course, there is the physical birth but this is more a symbolic representation than Miller's actual recognition of his square-peg, round-hole emotional relationship with the world at large: this is the first stage of birth. The second stage comes years later out of the "Land of F@ck" as Miller coins it, the place where the "spermatozoon reigns supreme" (198). These phrases, as they would first seem (and were seen for many years that the book was banned from U.S. publication), are not some sordid and gratuitous account of Miller's perceptions of the world or his conquests. Rather, he uses the extended metaphors and kennings to give the reader an understanding to the visceral almost primordial conditions from whence the artist arises. For Miller, spiritual ascension is a process biologic as well as intellectual.

"Once this fact is grasped there can be no more despair. At the very bottom of the ladder, chez the spermatozoa, there is the same condition of bliss at the top, chez God. God is the summation of all the spermatozoa come to full consciousness. Between the bottom and the top there is no stop, no halfway station" (199).

There is an almost funereal quality about Miller's cognizance here: this idea of exploring one's complete "ANNIHILATON" before metaphysical resurrection. Miller understands the need for an eradication of the former self before the rebirth of the artist as he moves from the "terra firma" to the "terra vague." Along with this laying waste of the individual comes the erasure of connections to the self: friends, family, lovers - all abandoned to pursue the freedom to express unhindered utterance*. To this point, Miller's use of "Tropic of" in the titles of CANCER and CAPRICORN now begins to make more sense as he asserts himself to be on the boundary between this land of the physical and the spiritual; the place where men aspire to be God for a period of time just before the flash-point of creative impulse.

He brings the idea of the "ovarian trolley" full circle when he talks about the importance of discovering Dostoevsky - this being the first glimpse of a man's soul - and then later in a book called CREATIVE EVOLUTION by Henri Bergson. He carries the latter book with him everywhere and extols its virtue upon any man or woman who would hear the new standard version on the gospel of solitude.

TROPIC OF CAPRICORN should be standard reading for anyone in the arts, for any artist who has ever felt the pang of isolation, who truly believes in the necessity of sacrifice, a higher calling and commitment to one's creative endeavors. Miller's importance to world literature is vastly underrated and in many cases. Writers are simply too intimidated to face the truth in what he espouses. Miller operates as an Overman and as such, it is right that he should pose a certain condition of tremulousness in his readership: he has forged his own society, he has forged his own being into something closer to what history had intended for him since his first phone call into the horn of the fallopian. This is discomfiting for most and is intended to show how the application of introspection for an artist can lead to becoming an acolyte of unconventional philosophy: how a writer emerges as "e pluribus unum." Henry Miller's doctrine is reserved for the initiate, the mad few who choose separation from the masses as a means for creative growth. Miller's epitaph should simply be, "My name? Why just call me God - God the embryo."

© 2005-06 Edward J. Carvalho

NOTES:
* A phrase I have incorporated from listening to many extemporaneous speeches of creative rebellion from Squawk Coffeehouse co-founder, Lee Kidd.

WORKS CITED:

1.Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press, 1961.

Like Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn is part autobiography, part memoir, part polemic, part fiction, part fantasy, and part poetry, written in near stream of consciousness as Miller experiences one epiphany after another.

As with the prior book, Miller's ramblings are the source and the result of his efforts to define himself as an artist. Other contemporary American writers, for example, F. Scott Fitzgerald, seem fascinated by their significance as artists and by the future importance of their art. In the Tropic books, Miller makes his consciousness of himself as an artist the subject of his art. In some ways, reading the Tropic books is like watching someone obsessively paint his self-portrait over and over, all with the title, Self-Portrait of the Artist.

According to Miller, "Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show . . . The surface of your being is constantly crumbling; within, however, you grow hard as a diamond." He says he "was perhaps the first Dadaist in America, and I didn't know it. Nobody understood what I was writing about or why I wrote that way. I was so lucid that they said I was daffy." The focus is not on the art (what he is writing about) but on himself as the artist, with an anonymous readership ("nobody," "they") who doesn't understand him. As if his own belief in himself as an artist were not enough to convince us, he quotes a series of friends who insist that he should become a writer.

While Miller lacks objectivity and security, he has moments of insight into the current human condition. "Now we are eating of the same bread, but without benefit of communion, without grace. We are eating to fill our bellies and our hearts are cold and empty. We are separate but not individual," following an anecdote about sour rye, is a brilliantly simple description of a world he sees as cold and mechanical, when progress and war have robbed men of their humanity. "The smell of a dead horse . . . is still a thousand times better than the smell of burning chemicals . . . the sight of a dead horse with a bullet hole in the temple . . . is still a better sight than that of a group of men in blue aprons coming out of the arched doorway of the tin factory . . ." Honest death and decay, "after life," are better than "death from the roots, isolating men, making them bitter and fearful and lonely, giving them fruitless energy . . ."

Superior to Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn still shows a lack of discipline, or a contempt for it. Separating the poetic gems are long, rambling passages that are sometimes pointless and sometimes nonsensical. He continues the use of incoherent metaphors such as, "Inwardly they are filled with worms. A tiny spark and they blow up." Sometimes his attempts to play with words and prose are more childish than literary or artistic, for example, " . . . deeper and deeper in sleep sleeping, the sleep of the deep in deepest sleep, at the nethermost depth full slept, the deepest and sleepest sleep of sleep's sweet sleep," and so on.

Tropic of Capricorn is uneven, ranging from the lively and the lovely to the self-conscious and tedious. It's unfortunate that Miller expended so much effort trying to convince the reader (and himself) of his status as an evil monster and artist (perhaps with the idea that they are synonymous) and so little culling the irrelevant and refining the rest. Miller's perspective and vision are interesting, even compelling, when not muddied by his fascination with himself and by his need to stand out.

An entertaining book! Miller is probably the most cynical person in the universe. Only problem I had with the book is that this author rants on in a mystical sort of way every now and then, and then it spans a few pages at a time. I found these "rants" incomprehensible, I did not care for them.

Out of idle curiosity and a desire to reread (third time) Miller's Tropic novels, I checked the consumer reviews of Tropic of CANCER first. I am interested in new generations discovering the stuff that I read going back to the early 60s. I found the reviews surprisingly dense, repeating the old cliches and personal prejudices.
Those of TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, on the other hand, are pointed and intelligent. Moreover, they recognize one of Miller's great traits--- humor. One reviewer pointed out the book's "hilarity", an apt characterization. Another emphasized Miller's description of the Cosmodemonic messenger service at which he worked. This is one of the most memorable sections of any book I have read: hilarious, biting satire, and (before Miller departs) a great New York book.
I have always thought Miller was, among other things, a parodist, and thus those who take him too literally (from Norman Mailer to the guy who showered after reading CANCER)are missing one of our outstanding writers, or certainly mistaking the author for the narrator.

It is my great pleasure to let Amazon readers know about the exploits of Alexandra David-Neel, the explorer of Tibet, which the Fosters chronicle so vividly in the biography, THE SECRET LIVES OF ALEXANDRA DAVID-NEEL. This bio reads more like a novel or adventure tale due to the wonderfully-detailed scenes with such authentic touches I felt as if I were truly there, and often worried about David-Neel's ability to survive. Obviously the Fosters have done their research incredibly well and write graceful,lucid prose; I was captivated from the first sentence and actually resented having to put down the book to take care of chores. This is is one of the best biographies I have ever read. The story cries out to be told visually on the big screen.

Little known crossdressing Victorian Frenchwoman undertakes a dangerous journey of discovery in forbidden country disguised as a monk and lives to tell her tale to the world. Thoroughly well researched,and well crafted The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel is the biography of a remarkable woman. A woman born to the mannered and circumscribed Victorian era who chose to strike out on her own initiative to explore the spiritual secrets and she was among the first Europeans to report about it from inside to the rest of the world.
I found it a fascinating read about a remarkable woman of whom I knew nothing, a woman who accomplished amazing things in her life. I recommend this biography by Barbara and Michael Foster to anyone interested in tales of high adventure in exploration, in the golden age of exploration and of unknown exotic lands. If the story of resolutely fearless woman pursuing her dream of exploring Forbidden Tibet whets your appetite I recommned you read this well crafted biography. I can recommend it without reservation. ZaneMason

Little known crossdressing Victorian Frenchwoman undertakes a dangerous journey of discovery in forbidden country disguised as a monk and lives to tell her tale to the world. Thoroughly well researched,and well crafted The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel is the biography of a remarkable woman. A woman born to the mannered and circumscribed Victorian era who chose to strike out on her own initiative to explore the spiritual secrets and she was among the first Europeans to report about it from inside to the rest of the world.
I found it a fascinating read about a remarkable woman of whom I knew nothing, a woman who accomplished amazing things in her life. I recommend this biography by Barbara and Michael Foster to anyone interested in tales of high adventure in exploration, in the golden age of exploration and of unknown exotic lands. If the story of resolutely fearless woman pursuing her dream of exploring Forbidden Tibet whets your appetite I recommned you read this well crafted biography. I can recommend it without reservation. ZaneMason

Alexandra David-Neel is reputed to be the first Western woman to reach the forbidden city of Lhasa, Tibet. She did so in 1924, a small woman in her mid-50s, disguised as a beggar and accompanied only by her adopted Tibetan son. This was the highlight of a life that lasted until 1969 when she died at age 100.

As the authors point out, however, practically nothing can be said with surety about Mme. David-Neel. One biographer has even claimed that she fabricated the whole story of visiting Lhasa. Probably not -- although she fabricated a lot and was hardly of unimpeachable character. As a matter of fact, although the authors are very respectful of her, she seems a thoroughly selfish, self-centered and repellent person.

David-Neel was a serious student of Buddhism and wrote many books on the subject. One of the juiciest parts of the book concerns the question of whether she participated in group Tantric sex rituals. The authors conclude she probably did.
David-Neel's religion had nothing to do with morality, and it seems unlikely that she ever found inner peace from her Buddhist rituals as she suffered from an endless variety of mental and physical ills. Still, living to be 100 is quite an accomplishment...

Alexandra David-Neel was an opera singer, a hardy and determined traveler, a student of religion, a writer, and a public figure of some note. Some of her papers are still unreleased so the final word about her character and achievements is still to be said. In the meantime this is an entertaining and well-researched biography.

Smallchief

The best chapters of 'The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel:'
owe much to Alexandra's own account of her journey to Lhasa. Her own books are wonderful to read, all of them , but in particular her 'My Journey to Lhasa' Beacon Press republished it as a paperback in 1993, ISBN 0-8070-5903-X
I can guarantee you will have a most enjoyable read.

The second in Durrell,s Alexandria Quartet, Balthazar further develops this story of infidelity, jealousy, and murder. Balthazar, the foppish little Alexandrian, reveals secrets that further add to the story started in Justine. Balthazar introduces us to the beautiful and sensitive Clea but the story centers around the sensous and bi-sexual Justine.

"Balthazar" is the second of the sibling tomes of Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet". The novel allows the reader to dive again deep into Alexandrian life and see everything what happens already in "Justine" from a different angle.

Darley, the narrator, still living in seclusion on the remote Greek Island, has sent the story (i.e. Justine) to one of the Alexandrian friends, Balthazar, the Jewish, gay doctor interested in philosophy and theology, initiator of the Kabbalah group, suspected of spying activity. Balthazar during his short visit on the island gives Darley the manuscript back together with a substantial amount of notes, which (with Darley's comments) are reconstituted in this volume. Darley was prompted to add a lot of the notes, as, reflecting upon them, he realized that despite his doubts, expressed in "Justine", many things he took for granted are completely different than he thought.

Balthazar sees the events described in "Justine" from his own point of view, and, having often more information or just different sources than Darley, his versions of events add to or change the descriptions from the first volume. New characters are introduced, and those, who were merely mentioned or hinted upon (Pursewarden, Mountolive, Leila, Narouz), become central, and their preoccupations and emotions are at the first plane. These shifts, instead of clarifying things that were blurred and mysterious in "Justine" make the narrative even more slippery and allusive. New avenues open for each event, tales within tales are discovered, which need their own explanation, and the atmosphere is even more dreamy... The motivations of ome characters, especially Nessim, seem to change completely from what Darley perceived, as new events are revealed. The search for the truth obviously cannot end here, so the reader needs to proceed to "Mountolive".

Alexandria becomes even more of a main character in this novel, and definitely the one with the strongest and versatile personality. Most of the other characters, struck by destructive love (again the analysis of love is one of the main themes, although the secret service intrigue gets more momentum), are impressionable, prone to spontaneous, sudden behaviors, and transient. The climactic event, as the hunting party was in Justine, is this time the carnival ball, where the reader roams the streets together with the characters in disguise... and is a witness to another death.

"Balthazar" is even more full of aphorisms than "Justine" - there seems to be a sentence for any occasion, and whereas the generalizations of love may appear trivial, childish even, the truths about literature and theoretical background of Durrell's enterprise to create a novel which would reflect its times, are amazingly formulated and put into the mouth of the surprising number of the writer characters (look especially for what Pursewarden has to say).

In summary, this is another delightful volume, different than "Justine" and only giving the reader the appetite for more of Durrell's Alexandria!

BALTHAZAR, the second novel in Lawrence Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, is a less daunting proposition than its predecessor, JUSTINE. The author points out that the first three novels (these two plus MOUNTOLIVE) all overlap in time, looking at the same events from different perspectives; only the fourth book, CLEA, is a true sequel. Nonetheless, it is essential to read JUSTINE first; the greater clarity and expansiveness of BALTHAZAR is possible only because the reader already knows most of the characters and events; there is not enough explanation for the story to stand on its own.

The set-up is simple. The narrator (who now has a name, Darley) receives a surprise visitor to his Greek island, Balthazar, the doctor who had played a secondary role in the earlier novel. He bears with him the manuscript of JUSTINE, which Darley had sent him for comment, and has just time to return it together with his own interleaved notes and marginalia, before his ship leaves again. So Darley/Durrell is left with this huge volume of new material, which he calls "the great Interlinear" as though it were a sacred text. He realizes that several of his assumptions in the original story were mistaken, and so is forced to tell it again, sometimes quoting Balthazar directly, sometimes reimagining it in his own voice.

The book is clearer than JUSTINE in several respects, as though emerging from smoke into light. Durrell seems to use fewer unexplained foreign words, though he still breaks into French at the drop of a hat. The chapters are shorter and more clearly marked. The narrative dwells longer on a few connected characters, or a linear sequence of events. While the climactic duck shoot was the only action set-piece in the earlier book, there are many here: Nessim's ride into the desert with his brother Narouz, the street festival of Sitna Mariam, the Venetian-style masked carnival, and several others. The effective addition of a second narrator (Balthazar) means that not everything is filtered through Darley's sensibility, so other characters develop greater individuality through the cross-lighting. I am not sure that they all become more likeable -- in particular, there is one scene with Clea near the end which strains my previous view of her as a hovering angel -- but it is easier to understand them. There is also more use of direct speech, so that the two older British characters, the writer Pursewarden and Scobie the old sailor, develop distinct (and rather funny) voices.

Add there is still the rich color and cadence of Durrell's descriptive language, a little overdone perhaps, but full of surprising word-choices and sharp observations, especially when capturing sounds: "From the throat of a narrow alley, spilled like a widening circle of fire upon the darkness, burst a long tilting gallery of human beings headed by the leaping acrobats and dwards of Alexandria, and followed at a dancing measure by the long grotesque cavalcade of gonfalons, rising and falling in a tide of mystical light, treading the peristaltic measure of the wild music -- nibbled out everywhere by the tattling flutes and the pang of drums or the long shivering orgasm of tembourines struck by the dervishes in their habits as they moved towards the site of the festival." No longer does this writing overwhelm the narrative it contains, nor does it merely decorate; rather, it articulates and propels the action, as this four-book sequence comes to seem less an outré experiment and more like a true novel of impressive scope.

Like "Justine", written in a hauntingly sensual style, but far more readable. Took me a much shorter time to read it. There are so many memorable passages of beauty and wisdom in both, one could fill a small notebook - on love and the human condition, and the beauty of nature. Durrell certainly had an alert and unusually articulate mind, writing both with poetry and precision. Published in 1957, yet timeless, as all classics are. I think it is supposed to take place before World War II. "Balthazar" has far more excitement than "Justine", moves at a quicker pace. Here we see all the same characters, yet all in a new light; we see farther and grasp what we see with new understanding. We get fresh info about Pursewarden, Nissim, Narouz, Justine, Darley (the narrator), Melissa, Clea, Pombal, Amaril, Leila, Mountolive, and the outrageous comic scenes built around Scobie. Throughout the entire four volumes that comprise "The Alexandria Quartet", Durrell is constantly backfilling, a technique I particularly love, until at the last, all is revealed. That same technique was also used by Sir Charles Percy Snow in his 11 volume series "Strangers and "Brothers", but perhaps to a lesser extant. Durrell is the master here in letting us see only so much, no further, until the last volume. A rave review

I admit that I have not read "Justine", the first novel of Durrell's famous Alexandria Quartet. Perhaps if I had started at the beginning, I might have had a more favorable impression. Yet I do feel that BALTHAZAR can stand alone as a novel, even if a reader were to be better served by reading all four in order. Durrell's writing is fabulous. Lemon-scented, mauve, pearly Alexandria with the white stalks of its minarets, "the town that breaks open at sunset like a rose"; beggars beside the Rolls Royces, the human flotsam of the Mediterranean, the tawdry revels of the Christian carnival---all appear so pleasingly haunting and decrepit. Durrell's novel is full of "wisdom"--perhaps a lifetime's supply of epigrams on every conceivable subject, saved over the years by the author as he thought of them on sleepless nights, or written down as he heard them at the cafes and salons of the Middle East. To paraphrase the author, "reading joins you to a work, then divides you". I plunged headlong into BALTHAZAR, hoping for a good read, but came out worse off. I felt I had been offered a plate of decadence and cynicism, and not wanting to play the chicken, taken several bites. I didn't like the taste. What I felt, most of all, was that I was an outsider; the observer of a clique or in-group. The author/narrator knew, all the characters knew, but I didn't know. The prose was designed to keep me from knowing. I had to guess or intrigue with myself in order to find out where this novel was going and who all these people were. I did not enjoy the experience very much, though I admit that it might be just the ticket for some. I repeatedly asked myself, "Is it worth finding out ? Do you really care ? Or are these just a bunch of people hopelessly sunk in jealousy, perversion, sex and substance abuse, who prize infidelity above all ? Is this what the author considers usual life ? Why should I try to discover who really loved or cared about whom ?" I concluded that it didn't matter to me very much.

The group broke apart through death, anger, jealousy, and fatigue. BALTHAZAR traces the collapse of this in-grown little society within colonial Alexandria, before the tides of nationalism drowned its international, "Levantine" character forever. If you admire style, eliptical narrative, and skillful description laced with epigrams, this could be a five star novel. Not for me.

Lawrence Durrell set himself a huge challenge in his ALEXANDRIA QUARTET: three volumes looking at the same events from different angles, and a fourth that would extend the story forward in time; he intended it as an analogy to the three dimensions of space and the one of time. I had found it a little difficult to get into the first volume, JUSTINE, because the combination of the almost incestuous doings of a cosmopolitan coterie in Alexandria in the late 1930s, coupled with Durrell's perfumed prose, was too exotic a cocktail for me at first. But by the end of the first volume, I was wanting more, and read its successors, BALTHAZAR and especially MOUNTOLIVE, with increasing enjoyment. There only remained this fourth novel, CLEA, to complete the story and make a fitting capstone to the whole impressive edifice. Unfortunately, I feel it fails to live up to the challenge.

After the clarity of the third-person narrative of MOUNTOLIVE, it was a shock to return to the author's own voice once again -- or rather that of Darley, as the writer calls himself in the novels. Durrell still writes well; there is a marvelous set piece early in the book when he approaches Alexandria during a wartime blackout, only to have it suddenly appear out of the darkness in the flare of searchlights, tracer bullets, and incendiary bombs. But I found myself resisting the cloying atmosphere and verbal navel-gazing that I had thought were a thing of the past. I am sure this is deliberate, though; when Darley again meets Justine, his siren from the first novel, she has spilt a bottle of perfume over herself, and the entire encounter is bathed in its almost nauseating aroma. The scene is a pair for the one at the end of MOUNTOLIVE when David finally sees Leila again; Durrell's characters, it seems, cannot just revisit former loves and part as friends; there needs to be an additional twist of the knife as well.

For the most part, the promise to carry the story forward in time takes the form of "Whatever happened to so-and-so?" I am reminded of sitting in on my mother's tea-parties as a child, hearing her catch up with news of old friends from school or college days, people that meant nothing to me. True, we have met all these characters in the earlier books, but MOUNTOLIVE in particular has brought them into the light of the real world; I am no longer interested in re-entering the darkness of their self-obsessions. And so many of this catching-up is handled obliquely: we hear stories passed on by a third person; we read long confessional letters; no less than three separate people, apparently endowed with the power of ventriloquism, give imitations of the dead Scobie, telling tall stories in his voice. Only a very few characters are allowed to speak directly of their experiences, and remarkably little happens in this book that is new -- though when something does, in the swimming party near the end, Durrell at least equals the exciting climaxes of his other novels.

Durrell said that he wanted to explore the many varieties of love. As though to swell the catalogue, MOUNTOLIVE has a brief mention of incest, which is picked up again here. Not in much detail or with any prurience (or very believably either), but that is relatively unimportant. For it is a perfect symbol for a book that is itself incestuous. There is a long excursus in the middle of the book ostensibly taken from the journals of the novelist Pursewarden, in which he describes his impressions of Darley. From the beginning, I felt that this figure was introduced as a slightly comic alter ego for the writer, and indeed he propounds many of the theories that Durrell himself attempts in the QUARTET. MOUNTOLIVE achieves the feat of pulling Pursewarden out of comedy and giving him true stature as an individual. But the Darley of CLEA returns to a lesser avatar of Pursewarden, as a kind of fun-house mirror for himself. So we have a thirty-page passage of one writer dissecting another, both alter-egos of the author. How's that for navel-gazing? What is it if not incestuous?

It is incestuous, too, for an author to manipulate his characters instead of letting the story be driven by their personalities; there is an arbitrary quality to most of the resolutions here. Even the central relationship between Darley and Clea seems to come about too easily, rather than as the product of the interplay of personalities revealed in this novel; and when the relationship later encounters difficulty, that too is largely arbitrary and unexplained. As for the rest, it is as though Durrell lined up his characters like pieces on a board, saying "Let's see, who have I not yet paired with whom?" Indeed, in an appendix entitled "Workpoints," Durrell offers further character combinations that the reader can develop for himself if he cares to do so. The author, it seems, has become a mere gamesman. A pity, for this great undertaking had promised so much more.

I am numbed, bedazzled, and incredibly sad to have finished this exquisite world Durrell has created. Must rank with "Memoirs of Hadrian" by Marguarite Yourcenar, as one of the very best things I have ever read. Spellbinding is a good word, for his words truly weave a spell within the mind. "Clea", like all the rest, was stunning. Is there something about delta cities?

Durrell further explores not only another love for Darley, but what art is and what it ought to be. Of course, descriptions are lush. One can almost hear hear the music of the closing festival and the beating of its drums.

Clea and Darley's relationship is embroidered over a wartime background. Durrell uses their beautiful private island experiences to echo and foreshadow the rise and fall of this relationship.

And we see how Clea develops as an artist. We are given Pursewarden's posthumous discourse on the philosophy of art. He gives is a lot to think about.

Sometimes I think that Durrell is Pursewarden, and then I wonder if he is making fun of himself in the Darley character. And in reality I find that I wish I could meet and know Durrell.

Clea is another must read.

What can one say about perfection? One does not just look at the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel as a great work of art but rather as perfection personified, merely mediated by paints and gilt. This book is exactly the same, its perfection is personified not by pigments and gold, but by ink and prose.

It is indeed rare that an artist pours their all into their work,but when it does occur, be it in the 9th Symphony of Beethoven or Kubrick's 2001, it is unilaterally hailed as a magnum opus.

Clea, in my opinion is just such a work. The way in which Durrell contrasts the blunt style of description with the uncompairable beauty of the subject matter pushes the book deeper into the sanctum sanctorum of literary perfection.

In thinking about this review, perfection seems too cold and metallic a word to be applied to such a beautiful work of art. There seems to be no word that accurately describes the flawless beauty of this book, but these are the limitations of language. Perhaps if I spoke Italian.

heey, this is CLEA. I was named after this excellent book. I've read it thrice...it's cool!! I love it!

I came across an old paperback edition of Stiff Upper Lip and Esprit de Corps--they were not what I had expected of Durrell, but I was so happy to find them. Today, both of these collections would no doubt be considered terribly politically incorrect, but I loved them. Acerbic wit, nicely drawn characters, or rather cariacatures. Perfect light entertainment a few years ago, now somewhat poignant given the conflicts and atrocities in the region during the last few years.

As I was reading "Esprit de Corps," I realized that it had been a very long time since I read a book that evoked more than silent amusement or even a transient smirk. Durrell's razor-sharp prose, which moves effortlessly between the sublime and the ridiculous, caused me not only to chuckle and chortle but also to cackle and croak with hiccups of hilarity. Written in 1957, an era when humor was untrammeled by the shackles of political correctness, "Esprit" lampoons life in the corps diplomatique in Tito's Yugoslavia. Sparing no nation, Durrell punctures pretension wherever he finds it. Much of the pretentiousness pours out of the mouth of Antrobus, a retired British diplomat, who regales the narrator, a press attaché, with stories from `those happy days passed in foreign capitals "lying abroad" for our country.'

If you have ever lived any length of time in a foreign country and if you enjoy the British sense of wry humor, you will certainly enjoy this book.

This slim volume carries nine of Durrell's brilliantly funny sketches about diplomatic life in Communist Yugoslavia. From the "Ghost Train", a terrifying socialist-inspired train ride from Belgrade to Zagreb through "Call of the Sea", a side-splitting account of a diplomatic party on a wayward raft floating down the Danube, Durrell's accounts can easily be about life in a modern day American or European embassy. The eccentric characters ring true in any age. The prose is as dryly humorous as a New Yorker cartoon. This is Durrell at his comic best.

This novel revolves around a cast of characters that find their destinies awaiting them in Crete. In a kind of "Ship of Fools" scenario they meet aboard a ship and exchange life histories and ironies. There's a character that is a spiritualist (disgraced) that made me rethink my opinions on the subject of mediums. There's a wonderfully morose bookseller occultist type, a disaffected painter, a satyr-like piccasoid greek, and an oddball existential psychotherapist, among others. As an aside. Durrell prophesied pre-publication to Henry Miller that the critics would pan this book as too disjointed because they wouldn't understand it, which in fact, they did. If you like real literature, like Cyril Connolly for example, and you dig occultish, artist, post WWII stuff, you'll enjoy this one. Consider reading this book with Fowles "The Magus" if you have way too much time on your hands.

Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet) originally published this "adventure" under another name, but it's pure Durrell; multiple character's find their appropriate discovery in the labyrinth under Crete, and an O.Henry style conclusion offers new possibilities. Deeper than you think.

Lawrence Durrell did "go gently into that good night," and this book serves as a document to that peaceful passage. Like his novels, this book is a mixture of the poetic, the prosaic and especially the erotic motifs that preoccupied him throughout his literary career.

Like Mayles after him, Durrell had a deep afffection for the region and for the Provenceaux. Both Mayles and Durrell are great guides to take along on either a literal or imaginary excursion through the region. Mayles is the more humorous of the two and will keep you constantly entertained. Durrell will give you a clearer understanding of the Provencal history, telling you who built monuments such as the Pont du Gard and something about their effect on a visitor: "Yet there are surprises for us even here, for even a functional artefact like the Pont du Gard is so huge in conception that its magniloquence is the equal of Westminster Abbey. But we must remember that it was dedicated to water and water was a God. The best description of the Pont is by Rousseau. It took a great deal to shut a man like him up, but the emeregence of this mastadon from the featureless garrigues which house the spring that feeds it deprived him of coherent speech, so uncanny did it seem." This is an example of what distinguishes Durrell's book. He will take you to an oft-visited site and in a few strokes, with the occasional literary allusion thrown in for good measure, produce a vivid enough image that even before you travel to the site you will have a pretty good notion of what to expect.

The only part of the book I found distracting was the uneven quality of the poems that Durrell inserts throughout the narrative. Sometimes they work seamlessly, at other times they obtrude and sound more like literary exercises than spontaneous outbursts. In other words, imagine your tour guide sometimes breaking into melifluous song and other times whistling out of tune.

If you really want to know something about the history of the region, from an informed visitor (it was his home base for his last thirty years), by all means put this book on your list. If you want a more congenial look at the region and its highly colorful inhabitants, stick to Mayle.

I read "Provence" by Lawrence Durrell before I stumbled onto more recent works by other authors. For my money, this is the book for arm chair and real travelers, and history buffs who are interested in Provence. Durrell lived there for over 30 years and his writing depicts a place he found filled with the spirits of past civilizations. His chapters cover a number of them, including the Greeks, Romans, and Medieval times.

The chapter I have remembered the longest is "The Story of Marius." Gaius Marius was one of the greatest generals Rome ever produced. He was married to Julius Caesar's aunt, and was responsible for "saving" Rome from northern invaders driven from their own homes by flood and famine. Marius' successor Sulla, tried to destroy his reputation by erasing many of his monuments, but Julius Caesar restored them when he came to power. Durrell takes you to visit a site in ancient Les Baux marked for an unknown event in Marius' life. Durrell says, "There is much else we might like to know about Marius which would bring him more fully to life in these pages, but history is never eloquent enough about her children.." (Coleen McCullogh writes great fiction about these times, see "The First Man in Rome.")

In spite of it's Roman past, Durrell finds Provence more Medieval than anything else. He says "Provence is a strange place..with withdrawn Protestant communities who live out a life of secret repudiation." He suggests a certain melancholy, a "deep introspective undertow" permeates the land.

Narbonne, Avignon, and Nimes are rich with Roman relics. Here one can see the Roman tombs with "funery stone of freedman's caps." When the noble Roman died, he freed some of his slaves to make himself eligible for the Afterworld. The cap symbolizing this freedom has come down through history in many forms including Robin Hood's peaked hat and in the various artistic renderings of Miss Liberty's head gear. The city of Marseilles is in Provence--from whence during the French Revolution came the serfs wearing the 'freedom' caps.