Conditions of Use
Conditions of Use
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Happy Birthday, Lawrence Durrell !!!
An announcement for the Tatler (Sydney, London, and San Francisco editions). An early birthday party was held for Lawrence Durrell, his 102nd, in anticipation of February 27th. It was celebrated today on the beach, Bondi Beach, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The charter members of the AALDS gathered together for the festivities. They traveled from far and wide and each made his or her unique contribution. Dr. D., bedecked in saffron kaftan and colorful sandals, brought vegetarian delicacies for the barbie. He was accompanied by a local mermaid, who had swam ashore in a bikini, not unlike Botticelli's Venus on the half shell. The good doctor spoke about the birthday boy's affinity for whales, especially Hilda, "the great sonsy whale" of The Black Book. David and Denise brought their special recipe of octopus in red sauce and many bottles of vin rouge and vin blanc, straight from the vineyards of the Blue Mountrains. Ken and R. W. provided the music and had composed a special piece for the occasion — "Heraldic Ditties Downunder." As the music played, David extemporized a poem on Lord Larry, and Paul read Anaïs Nin's encomium on young Durrell. And Bruce (the other one) simply took it all in, listened to crickets in sheltered places, and admired a sky of hot nude pearl. Nearby, nubile waxed beauties, tattooed bums twitching in the sunlight, watched in amusement. A good time was had by all. — BR
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Durrell at Cambridge
Durrell at Cambridge: A Thought Experiment
by Bruce Redwine
ⓒ2014
"I think the first breath of Europe I got was when I went on a reading party for one final cram or something — I think it was for Cambridge again, which I must have tried about eight times [and failed], I suppose."
— "Lawrence Durrell: An Interview," Paris Review, Autumn-Winter 1960
Lawrence George Durrell, age eighteen, passed his entrance exams on first try and was admitted to King's College, Cambridge. He went to King's knowing Latin and French and was assigned a tutor, Elyot S. Poundsworthy, who specialized in Roman poetry and early French literature. Poundsworthy had published articles on Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Bernart de Ventadorn, and Montaigne.
Tutor and student had their first meeting and enjoyed a cup of tea together. Tutor asked pupil what his areas of interests were, and pupil said he liked the classics but he especially liked modern poetry, beginning with G. M. Hopkins. Tutor nodded and assigned student a selection of poems, all in the original Latin and French, and included Montaigne's essay, "On Vanity," also in French. Then he told him to write an essay on vanity, to integrate all the authors in the assignment into a coherent argument, and to come back in a week. Five pages would do.
Student returns. He has written an essay in over one thousand lines of free verse, with occasional rhymes. The pair enjoy another cup of tea. Then Tutor slowly reads the essay, nods, and compliments student on his spelling, particularly in the original languages. No mistakes. He smiles and remarks that Pope also wrote essays in verse, although in heroic couplets and with considerably more concision. Then he says, "All very interesting, yet a bit prolix, epic, if you will. It's longer than any book in the Aeneid, if that was your intent. I like the images, however, in particular how you compare Catullus's 'fuck face' with Montaigne's 'chamber pots.' But what's your point? I can't find a point." Student waves his arms and says, "How can an essay have a point when the subject matter has no point? Montaigne goes all over the place and never settles on anything. He just rambles, so you never know what he means. If he can get away with that — so can I. Montaigne's mind skips and hops like a stone skimming over a pond, never getting below glittering surfaces." Tutor nods again and says, "That's very good. I like that. I don't agree with it, but I like it. Now, why didn't you say that or even suggest that in your essay? Or are you just interested in trying to be as clever as the authors you write about?"
Three years later, L. G. Durrell obtains his degree from King's, upper second, and soon leaves for the island of Corfu. He now knows about brevity and concision and clear thinking, but he decides to use these tools sparingly and to rely on his instincts, except when talking about French thought and Einstein's Relativity.
Elyot S. Poundsworthy did not go to Italy and broadcast speeches on behalf of Benito Mussolini. Instead, he stayed at King's and eventually became Master. He had a lively career, highlighted by fierce battles with Frankie Leavis over the course of English literature. F. R. L. once challenged E. S. P. to a duel, with collier picks, the ghost of D. H. L. presiding. Elyot always remembered his star pupil, L. G. Durrell, whom he considered brilliant but incorrigible, and always bemoaned the fact the famous poet never learned the lessons of reading Montaigne's "On Vanity." Some people never learn, he would say, shaking his head sadly.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Forster on Durrell
E. M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell admired the city of Alexandria,
Egypt, but mutual admiration did not foster mutual respect.[1] The former lived in Alexandria during World
War I, the latter during World War II. Forster’s
experiences resulted in Alexandria: A History and a Guide (1922), and Durrell’s
culminated in The Alexandria Quartet
(1960). When Durrell lived in the city,
he used a copy of Forster’s book as a guide and would later comment that the work "contains some of Forster’s best prose, as well as felicities of touch such as
only a novelist of major talent could command."[2] The two writers never met, and P. N. Furbank’s
biography, E. M. Forster: A Life (1978), does not mention Durrell.
E. M. Forster, however, did have an opinion about Lawrence
Durrell. Awhile ago Andrew Stewart, an old friend, told me an anecdote. Between
October 1966 and May 1969, he was an undergraduate in Classics at St. Catharine’s
College, Cambridge. Forster was an
honorary fellow at King’s College.
King’s was then renovating its halls and kitchens, and its fellows would
eat at St. Catharine’s. ("A Cat may look
at a King," so went the adaptation of the proverb.) On one occasion, Stewart was invited to the
High Table and sat next to Forster. This
was before Forster went "gaga." Lawrence
Durrell came up in conversation, and Forster's eyes immediately lit up. The old man unleashed a number of unkind
words about Durrell. The gist of the
tirade was that Forster considered Durrell a sloppy writer and guilty of
deplorable Romanticism in his depiction of Alexandria. My friend thought Forster had written up his
opinion in an essay. I haven’t found it. But I do recall D. J. Enright's essay, "Alexandrian
Nights' Entertainments: Lawrence
Durrell’s 'Quartet,'" which says much the same thing and ends with, "[W]hen
Durrell is good he is very good, and when he is bad he is horrid."[3] Enright also graduated from Cambridge, so
there may be another one of those Forsterian "connections."
Notes
[1] My
thanks to Andrew Stewart for permission to relate this anecdote. He is Nicholas C. Petris Professor of Greek
Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
[2] E.
M. Forster, Alexandria: A History and a Guide, Introduction by
Lawrence Durrell, Afterward and Notes by Michael Haag (London, 1986), xv.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Mind and Durrell 2
The following is an edited and fictionalized exchange between Dr. D. and BR. Dr. D. is a psychiatrist in Sydney, Australia, where he founded the Mood School. He is a practitioner of Yoga and has made many trips to India. BR lives in California. He writes fiction and criticism and travels frequently to Southeast Asia. — BR
BR. Durrell was an avid practitioner of Yoga and an avowed Taoist. How do you think he viewed the mind and human consciousness? Brain and mind are two different entities, and the connection between the two is now the center of a big philosophical debate. I've been reading John R. Searle's The Mystery of Human Consciousness (1997), which provides a good summary of the main issues, their origins, and the "state of the art." What do you think of Durrell's "mind's eye?"
Dr. D. What did Larry think of mind-brain models? He was certainly intrigued with consciousness and the brain, neurons, memory, artificial intelligence, mood and dreams. I wonder what concepts he held about his own brain and mind and whether he gained insights during his meditation time and yoga.
BR. Durrell was an avid practitioner of Yoga and an avowed Taoist. How do you think he viewed the mind and human consciousness? Brain and mind are two different entities, and the connection between the two is now the center of a big philosophical debate. I've been reading John R. Searle's The Mystery of Human Consciousness (1997), which provides a good summary of the main issues, their origins, and the "state of the art." What do you think of Durrell's "mind's eye?"
Dr. D. What did Larry think of mind-brain models? He was certainly intrigued with consciousness and the brain, neurons, memory, artificial intelligence, mood and dreams. I wonder what concepts he held about his own brain and mind and whether he gained insights during his meditation time and yoga.
Brain-mind models were sent into a bit of a spin around Larry's time by the confusion about microscopic brain structure. The Nobel prize for neurology research, at the turn of the 19th to 20th century, was given to both Santiago Ramón y Cajal [1852-1934] and Camillo Golgi [1843-1926]. Ironically their respective brain model views being diametrically opposed.
Golgi stated firmly that he had proven the brain is one large open syncytial blob. Whereas Cajal using Golgi's revealing silver stains took a closer look and then stated firmly that there were certainly slim spaces between neurons, they nearly touched but fall just short.
This gap he correctly observed we now know as the synaptic gap. How funny that one of the most important parts of the brain is the "empty" space between cells where they nearly touch!
BR. Ah, "the synaptic gap." I suppose you see some similarities to the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā, the fundamental emptiness of all things?
Dr. D. When I say "empty gaps" I fully accept that the universal presence of "dark-energy" fills this emptiness with potentiality . . . So strictly speaking true and complete "emptiness" is a bit hard to achieve!
BR. Searle would probably discount this line of argument as wild speculation. He thinks there's a biological connection between brain and mind, although how this happens — the exact causal relationship — presently eludes our understanding. But why not speculate and let the imagination drift into dark matter and dark energy? In Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (1994), Roger Penrose argues that the biological basis of "mind" has something to do with quantum mechanics.
Dr. D. Durrell believed in the "unstable ego." I'd say he believed in no-ego, no-self. Does this have any relationship to quantum mechanics? Maybe. Let me quote Osho, the Indian mystic, who died in 1990, the same year Durrell died, which is a little bit of synchronicity: "Once the ego is not there, there is no expectation, frustration, no desire, no despair. Suddenly one finds oneself falling into a deep harmony with the cosmos. And that harmony is God; that harmony is nirvana; that harmony is tao."
BR. So, the famous Zen koan — "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?" The answer: "Mu!" (no, not, nothing, nothingness). I think it's safe to say that whatever Durrell meant by "mind's eye" that his idea was aesthetic and not based on any deep appreciation of the philosophical "mystery of consciousness." As you suggest, the deepest he went into the matter was into the Buddhist or Taoist notion of mindlessness or egolessness Which, however, may be very, very deep indeed — Mu! Durrell also wanted to do away with causality and time, and I have big problems with this program. For example, can you conceive of the self without a sense of time? I can't. This also seems to counter or undercut Durrell's great gift — to locate people and things in an imaginative moment. That seems to me the great achievement of his best poetry and The Alexandria Quartet. On the other hand, maybe this is what Durrell really wanted — maybe in the end what he was really after was self-extinction. Remember, Sappho Jane Durrell said her father was suicidal.
Dr. D. Mu!
Dr. D. When I say "empty gaps" I fully accept that the universal presence of "dark-energy" fills this emptiness with potentiality . . . So strictly speaking true and complete "emptiness" is a bit hard to achieve!
BR. Searle would probably discount this line of argument as wild speculation. He thinks there's a biological connection between brain and mind, although how this happens — the exact causal relationship — presently eludes our understanding. But why not speculate and let the imagination drift into dark matter and dark energy? In Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (1994), Roger Penrose argues that the biological basis of "mind" has something to do with quantum mechanics.
Dr. D. Durrell believed in the "unstable ego." I'd say he believed in no-ego, no-self. Does this have any relationship to quantum mechanics? Maybe. Let me quote Osho, the Indian mystic, who died in 1990, the same year Durrell died, which is a little bit of synchronicity: "Once the ego is not there, there is no expectation, frustration, no desire, no despair. Suddenly one finds oneself falling into a deep harmony with the cosmos. And that harmony is God; that harmony is nirvana; that harmony is tao."
BR. So, the famous Zen koan — "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?" The answer: "Mu!" (no, not, nothing, nothingness). I think it's safe to say that whatever Durrell meant by "mind's eye" that his idea was aesthetic and not based on any deep appreciation of the philosophical "mystery of consciousness." As you suggest, the deepest he went into the matter was into the Buddhist or Taoist notion of mindlessness or egolessness Which, however, may be very, very deep indeed — Mu! Durrell also wanted to do away with causality and time, and I have big problems with this program. For example, can you conceive of the self without a sense of time? I can't. This also seems to counter or undercut Durrell's great gift — to locate people and things in an imaginative moment. That seems to me the great achievement of his best poetry and The Alexandria Quartet. On the other hand, maybe this is what Durrell really wanted — maybe in the end what he was really after was self-extinction. Remember, Sappho Jane Durrell said her father was suicidal.
Dr. D. Mu!
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Kennedy Gammage's Review of Deus Loci (NS13 2012-2013)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT IN DEUS LOCI: THE LAWRENCE DURRELL JOURNAL
13
by Kennedy Gammage
ⓒ2014
ⓒ2014
Congratulations to our fellow LD enthusiasts in the ILDS for publishing
another number in their Lawrence Durrell Journal, covering the years 2012 and
13. It’s a substantial work at 234 pages plus a long introduction, with nine
thought-provoking essays, followed by reminiscences about Durrell, poetry and
reviews. All in all a solid addition to the DEUS
LOCI series.
Guest editor Robert Haslam, the British independent Durrell scholar who ‘gathered
together most of the essays’ in DL13 for Editor Anna Lillios, kicks things off
with an INTRODUCTION TO EMENDED READINGS:
A SURVEY OF BRITISH CRITICISM ON DURRELL – EMENDED
READINGS being the name of his own project to ‘re-evaluate Durrell’s
position in British literature.’ DL13 essentially became that project.
Haslam’s introduction to DL13 persuasively supports his argument that,
though Durrell is perceived to be ‘an English writer,’ that he is much more
popular in France and America (at least on the basis of ‘a substantial corpus
of criticism’) than he is in England. Here we arrive at the possible semantic
confusion between English (a language) and British (a country) – because why
should anyone consider Durrell to be British? He’s not even a ‘British ex-pat’
since his boyhood up to age 11 was spent in India. He rarely lived there and
his visits were brief. The only decent link I can see is that Durrell ‘worked
for’ Britain for some time during and after the war, and of course some of his
best books like Reflections on a Marine
Venus document his earning a paycheck from Pudding Island.
DL13’s first essay is LAWRENCE DURRELL: THE POET AS IDLER by Clive Scott,
who calls idleness Durrell’s ‘presiding muse’ and a lens through which to read
his poems. The late Ray Morrison follows with LAWRENCE DURRELL’S LYRIC, DEUS LOCI, AS THE HERALDIC MIRROR OF HIS
WORLD, a close reading of that delightful poem, comparing it to the Tao. I
welcome the emphasis on his poetry. Dipping into it now, I too find much to
admire and enjoy.
Dianne Vipond explores THE POLITICS OF LAWRENCE DURRELL’S MAJOR FICTION
and finds him to be ‘much more politically progressive than is commonly
acknowledged.’
[BTW, as an aside, I just searched Amazon for a copy of Personal Landscape and they have one
collector’s copy at $60. Unfortunately I’m caught a bit short this month.
However, I plan to pick up a copy of The
Black Book next time I go to the used book store. I should at least give it
a go. ]
I really enjoyed Michael Haag’s THE
ALEXANDRIA QUARTET: FROM ONE VOLUME TO FOUR which details the amazing
Alexandrian history of Claude Vincendon’s family, the well-to-do Menasces –
which clearly inspired Durrell and helped him create volumes two through four
of the AQ.
Fiona Tomkinson follows with THE MYTH OF PTAH AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE
AVIGNON QUINTET – very interesting, though by this juncture I am so far beyond
the idea of Blanford ‘creating’ Sutcliffe, Bruce and the Ogres that it seems
mere blather to me: commonplaces repeated ad nauseum until no one bothers to
challenge them anymore. It would make much more sense to just consider Blanford
insane and call it a day.
The next essay is “MANUFACTURING DREAMS”1 OR LAWRENCE
DURRELL’S FICTION REVISITED THROUGH THE PRISM OF DE CHIRICO’S METAPHYSICAL
PAINTING by Corinne Alexandre-Garner and Isabelle Keller-Privat, the doyennes
of French Durrell studies. In the passages they quote describing Constance’s
dream, I was puzzled by all the asterisks (“He had taken his ***** in quiet
fingers…” etc.) and wondered if the authors had censored it for some reason –
but no, it’s right there in the book (from Chapter Nine Tu Duc Revisited,) the only place in Constance where it appears – sadly, with no explanation. I was
hoping the authors would mention it, but if they did I missed it.
Mary Byrne uncovers THE NEO-BAROQUE IN DURRELL’S MAJOR NOVELS – another
lens into the master’s work. What follows next is perhaps my favorite essay,
WEAVING EAST AND WEST: THE QUINCUNCIAL STRUCTURE IN MONSIEUR – A READER’S GUIDE by Robert Haslam. This has a lot of
good information in it. I wasn’t aware, for instance, of Marcabru the
Troubadour. But I am puzzled by this reference to Lord Banquo as “another name
reference, this time to Ophelia’s brother and her possible lover.” Of course
Banquo is from Macbeth, not Hamlet – is he thinking of Laertes?
Finally, MATERIALIZING THE POETIC: LAWRENCE DURRELL’S AN IRISH FAUSTUS by Ralph Yarrow rounds
out the essays. Sadly, another gap in my reading – but I plan to remedy
someday. What follows are a series of delightful Reminiscences about LD, from
Paul Gotch, Barbara Robinson, Frederic Jacques Temple, Anthea Morton-Saner,
Paula Wislenef, Mary Byrne, Peter Baldwin, Ralph Steadman, Richard Pine and
others. Brief notes of my own meeting with Ralph Steadman in 1984:
Past
Kentish Town and Camden Road, a junkyard and the rooftops of North London, we
arrive at Highbury and take the tube to Embankment. Across the Hungerford
footbridge and into the Royal Festival Hall for the Ralph Steadman exhibit. The
artist is here,being interviewed for television. I get a minute alone with him.
"Mr.
Steadman, a brief question: are you still friends with Dr. Thompson?"
"Oh
indeed yes," he replied in a cultured British accent.
"I
had the opportunity to hear him speak in Berkeley about a month ago."
"Oh really," he replied, interested. "And what did he say?"
"He
mostly talked about politics and the necessity of defeating Mr. Reagan, but I
think he was dissatisfied with the caliber of the audience response."
"Yes,
they're all rather conservative now, aren't they? Future business executives
and all that." I smiled.
"I'm
afraid you're right," I replied, walking off.
"Nice talking with you," he called
after. What a wild talent!
What follows to end the issue are the poems (my favorite is “Waterbury”
by Jerome L. Wyant, though I think he should have capitalized Chevy) and then
Pamela Francis reviews the delightful Autumn
Gleanings by Dr. Theodore Stephanides. Lovely little book. Contributor
notes and that’s it. But the good news is, there may be a #14 in the works.
Thanks - Ken
Incest
I wrote the following introduction to the perplexing relationship between Sappho Jane Durrell and her father Lawrence Durrell. The full essay appears in A Café in Space: The Anaïs Nin Literary Journal, volume 11 (2014). The link to that issue follows. — BR
http://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Space-Anais-Literary-Journal-ebook/dp/B00IFQKEZ2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1392574282&sr=1-1&keywords=cafe+in+space+11
http://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Space-Anais-Literary-Journal-ebook/dp/B00IFQKEZ2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1392574282&sr=1-1&keywords=cafe+in+space+11
Tales of Incest: The Agony of Saph and Pa Durrell
by
Bruce Redwine
©2014
Agon
In Autumn
of 1991, Granta, a literary journal edited
by Bill Buford, published a selection of Sappho Jane Durrell’s diaries, poetry,
and correspondence.[1]
That issue of Granta was devoted to “The Family.”
Buford likes to shock; on the cover of the periodical, he announces his
theme: “They fuck you up,” a half line
taken from the beginning of Philip Larkin’s short poem, “This Be The Verse”
(1971). The full line reads, “They fuck
you up, your mum and dad.” The final
stanza (unquoted) ends with the message:
Man hands
on misery to man.
It deepens
like a coastal shelf.
Get out
as early as you can,
And don’t
have any kids yourself.[2]
Larkin’s poem was
especially relevant to Sappho, although this is unclear from Buford’s subsequent
remarks.
Sappho’s
father was the famous writer Lawrence Durrell; her mother was his second wife,
Yvette (Eve) Cohen, a native of Alexandria, Egypt. They married in 1947; Sappho was born in 1951. Yvette had a history of mental illness and an
episode of schizophrenia diagnosed in 1953.
The parents separated in 1955 and divorced in 1957. Sappho was raised by her mother in London.[3] She affectionately signed her letters to her
father as “Saph” (Gr., 74), often
sent him “lots of love” (Gr., 88‑89),
frequently lived with him during holidays, and apparently had a “close
relationship” with his third wife, Claude‑Marie Vincendon (Gr., 57).
The
published materials date from about 22 March 1979 to 10 July 1982. Buford takes most of the excerpts from 1979. In these selections, Sappho relates a troubled
relationship with her “Pa” or “pap” (Gr.,
73) — whom she describes as “an aggressive and demonic drunkard [who] has
always lived on the edge of madness” (Gr.,
62) — and details her extensive therapy with Patrick Casement, a London
psychoanalyst. Sappho’s characterization
of her father is entirely plausible. Biographers
provide ample evidence that Durrell was in fact prone to violence and suffered
from alcoholism in his latter years.[4] She also refers to Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), a novel about incest and
“nymphets,” as though it has personal relevance, and she insinuates incestuous relations
with her father, culminating perhaps “around the age of fifteen” (Gr., 68), which would have been in 1967. During that year, she spent the Christmas holidays
with her father at his home in Sommières, France. Durrell was then fifty‑five and a recent
widower. Claude‑Marie had died of cancer
on 1 January 1967.
The extracts
of Sappho’s diaries are often discursive, confused, and opaque. They do, however, tell a story of a
distraught and lonely person on the way to self‑destruction. In 1983, she attempts suicide with an
overdose of sleeping pills; her mother Yvette intervenes, and doctors save her
life. Then, on 1 February 1985, Sappho
commits suicide by hanging herself. She
was thirty‑three.
Sappho’s
insinuations are serious and damaging.
But how seriously should they be taken?
Should they be ignored, as Candace Fertile does in her article on incest
in Durrell’s oeuvre?[5] Should they be dismissed as the ramblings of
a neurotic or schizophrenic personality?
This is the usual view of such cases.
Disbelief has long been the reaction of legal and psychiatric
authorities from John Henry Wigmore to Sigmund Freud, who referred to accounts
of familial incest as largely “sexual fantasy.”[6] And incredulity is the reaction of Bill
Buford, Ian S. MacNiven, Durrell’s authorized biographer, and other literary
critics. They pay little attention to the
complex relationship between Durrell and his daughter. Her side of the story, however approximate,
deserves better treatment than being ignored, dismissed, or buried alive in a
long footnote, as MacNiven does.[7]
Feminist
scholars question the usual approach to incest.
Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School. She conducted
part of her research in a “clinical study” and forcefully argues that father‑daughter
incest is not a fantasy, rather a “common occurrence.” She further argues that “the greater the
domination of the father, and the more the caretaking is relegated to the
mother, the greater the likelihood of father‑daughter incest.” Durrell’s household fits this profile in its
broad outline. Herman submits these
definitions:
Incest
was defined to mean any sexual relationship between a child and an adult in a
position of paternal authority . . . We
further defined a sexual relationship to mean any physical contact that had to
be kept a secret.
She also examines
two types of incest: one in which the
father commits “overt” incest and another in which he exhibits seductive
behavior or “covert incest.” Herman
defines “seductiveness on the part of fathers to mean behavior that was clearly
sexually motivated, but which did not involve physical contact or a requirement
for secrecy.”[8]
Durrell seems closest to the latter
type.
In 1979, Sappho
read Herman’s early article on incest, published by the New York Academy of
Sciences, and wrote to the psychiatrist a perfectly sane and professional
letter requesting further information on the subject (Gr., 82).[9] In 1981, Herman published her full study on
incest. Sappho may have read this book,
and the extent of its influence is open to debate and awaits further research. Given Herman’s work on the subject, however, it
is hard not to conclude that outright dismissal is outright negligence. The matter deserves serious consideration. I therefore propose that Lawrence Durrell’s literary
treatment of incest, that is, his obsession with the issue, be examined closely
as an insight into his and his daughter’s motivations.
The
problem baffles and teases. On the one hand,
we have a talented but unstable daughter whose insinuations of paternal incest
are provocative but unverifiable; on the other, we have a mercurial and
authoritarian father whose writings wallow in incest and suicide. Sappho appears to play out her father’s
fantasies — with disastrous consequences.
In a perverted sense, what might be said of her is what Ben Jonson said
of his son Benjamin: “his best piece of
poetry.”[10] Daughter Sappho might be called Lawrence Durrell’s
best (or worst) creation. I shall argue
that Sappho Jane Durrell may have been a victim of her father’s weird
obsessions, sexual and thanatological, which include such curiosities as
quoting the Marquis de Sade in the epigraphs to each of his novels comprising The Alexandria Quartet (1957‑1960).[11]
[1] Sappho Durrell, “Sappho Durrell: Journals and Letters,” Granta 37 (Autumn 1991): 55‑92. Hereafter cited in text as Gr.
[2] Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems: Philip
Larkin, ed. Archie Burnett (New York, 2012), p. 88.
[3] Brewster Chamberlin, A Chronology of the Life and Times of
Lawrence Durrell: Homme de Lettres
(Corfu, 2007), pp. 41, 47, 49, 53, 58. I
take all dates associated with Durrell’s life from Chamberlin’s chronology.
[4] For a summary of Durrell’s personality,
see Gordon Bowker, Through the Dark
Labyrinth: A Biography of Lawrence
Durrell, rev. ed. (London, 1998), pp. 425-37. See also, Chamberlin, Chronology, pp. 53 n. 111,
79, 82, 83, 92, 93, 94.
[5] Candace Fertile, “The Meaning of Incest in the
Fiction of Lawrence Durrell,” Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal (NS4
1995-96): 105-23..
[6] For a discussion of the historical denial of
incest, see Judith Lewis Herman with Lisa Hirschman, Father‑Daughter Incest (1981; Cambridge, MA, 2000), p. 11. John Henry Wigmore, an American law
professor, wrote a major study on the law of evidence. Herman writes, “John Henry Wigmore’s Treatise on Evidence (1934), set forth a
doctrine impeaching the credibility of any female, especially a child, who
complained of a sex offense.” On Freud’s
rejection of various accounts of incest, see The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904,
trans. and ed. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Cambridge, MA, 1985), p. 264. Freud’s letter is dated 21 September 1897.
[7] Ian S. MacNiven, Lawrence Durrell: A Biography
(London, 1998), pp. 759-60, n. 218.
[9] The article’s full citation: Judith Herman and Lisa Hirschman, “Incest
Between Fathers and Daughters,” The Sciences 17 (issue 7, Nov. 1977): 4-7.
[10] Ben
Jonson and the Cavalier Poets:
Authoritative Texts and Criticism, ed. Hugh Maclean (New York, 1974), p. 8. Epigrams,
XLV: “On My First Son.”
[11] Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet: Justine,
Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea, [rev. ed.] (London, 1962), pp. 15, 208, 396,
656. Hereafter cited in text as AlQ.
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