From the Elephant's Back (48 page)

[6]
.   André Breton (1896–1966) was the founder of Surrealism, and Durrell's ties to Surrealism and English Surrealism were significant both for his own works and for English Surrealism in general (Gifford, “Surrealism's” 36–64).

[7]
.   
The Mousetrap
is the play within the play in
Hamlet
through which Hamlet believes “the play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King” (II.ii.531–32).

[8]
.   Durrell misquotes here, likely from memory: “The time is out of joint, Oh, cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right” (I.v.885–86). The same misquotation is ubiquitous in works on Shakespeare.

[9]
.   Generally known as the “bad Quarto,” Quarto 1 (Q1) is likely a pirated version of the play published in 1603, followed by Quarto 2 (Q2) and Folio 1 (F1). Typically, modern editions of
Hamlet
are based on a compromise between Q2 and F1. At the time, Q1 was generally only available in facsimile and not a modernized text—in general, Durrell's quotations are in the original spelling for Q1 and in modernized spellings for F1.

[10]
. Durrell's argument here is the revision hypothesis, which views Q1 as an early version of the play later revised by Shakespeare (or an actor). This contradicts J. Dover Wilson's 1934 argument in
The Manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet
, which is likely why he has already dismissed Wilson's work. Also see Kathleen Irace's Introduction to
The First Quarto of Hamlet
(1–27).

[11]
.
Hamlet
V.i.3471–81.

[12]
.
Hamlet
Q1 xiii.2495–96.

[13]
. A reference to Michael Fraenkel, with whom Henry Miller wrote
Hamlet
, a collection of their correspondence. See Fraenkel's
Bastard Death: The Autobiography of an Idea
(1936).

[14]
.
Hamlet
, F1 III.v.2210.

[15]
.
Hamlet
, F1 IV.v.2945. This line is also in Q1 but lacks the same surrounding materials and removes the verb “His beard as white as snowe” (17.2945).

[16]
. This is Eliot's “Hamlet and His Problems” in which he famously argues, “So far from being Shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure” (98).

[17]
. This is a dry joke on the grave digger scene in
Hamlet
.

[18]
. “Doubt that in earth is fire, / Doubt that the starres doe moue, / Doubt trueth to be a liar, / But doe not doubt I loue” (Q1 vii.1144–47).

[19]
. The line breaks and modernized spelling are Durrell's own (Q1 vii.1148–49).

[20]
. Capitalization and line breaks are Durrell's own (II.ii.1148–52). Polonius is reading aloud Hamlet's purloined letter, though the identity of the speaker changes between Q1 and Q2/F1. Durrell refers to the same passage again in 1974 in his novel
Monsieur
(205), but he blends the two variants in that instance. He discusses the nature of the word “machine” in this passage again in 1947 in “From a Writer's Journal” (52).

[21]
. It literally both is and is not: the personal Hamlet and not the social figure of the State of Denmark.

Hamlet, Prince of China

[1]
.   “This letter was addressed by Mr. Durrell to Henry Miller regarding the book,
Hamlet
, by Michael Fraenkel and Henry Miller to be published next year.” (Durrell's original note). Durrell's letter was originally sent from Corfu in mid-January 1937 (Durrell and Miller 42).

[2]
.   Michael Fraenkel (1897–1957) was an American poet and critic who corresponded extensively with Miller.

[3]
.   Durrell developed the notion of the English Death in his novel of the same year,
The Black Book
, which Miller would have already read in typescript by this time.

[4]
.   Durrell's notion of the Heraldic Universe had already been articulated in his September or October 1936 letter to Miller (dated August in MacNiven's edition), in which the notion is closely aligned with refuting Herbert Read's temporary support for communism during the London International Surrealist Exhibition (Durrell,
Durrell–Miller
17–19; Miller, “Henry Miller's” 33).

[5]
.   Corfu Town, Greece.

[6]
.   The language here is very close to Durrell's letter to Miller in which he rebuts Herbert Read's communism in contrast to the anarchism Miller espouses. Only four months earlier Durrell wrote to Miller as an interlocutor in his correspondence with Read: “What I propose to do, with all deadly solemnity, is to create my HERALDIC UNIVERSE quite alone. The foundation of which is being quietly laid. I AM SLOWLY BUT VERY CAREFULLY AND WITHOUT ANY CONSCIOUS THOUGHT DESTROYING TIME” (Durrell,
Durrell–Miller
18).

[7]
.   Durrell later uses a similar phrase to finish his “The Heraldic Universe,” which appears in this volume (103–05).

[8]
.   Durrell makes the same comment, alluding to Thomas Arne's “Rule Britannia,” in “The Prince and Hamlet: A Diagnosis” (this volume 63–71).

[9]
.   Miller published his novel
Tropic of Cancer
in 1934 and the follow-up collection of short prose
Black Spring
in 1936.

[10]
. Nancy Hodgkin, née Myers, Durrell's first wife.

[11]
. D.H. Lawrence's novel
Sons and Lovers
, perhaps his best novel.

[12]
. A year earlier, Durrell alluded to Thomas Dekker's Elizabethan play of 1599,
The Shoemaker's Holiday
(Durrell,
Panic
17).

[13]
. Thomas Lodge's (1558–1625) satirical prose work of 1595.

[14]
. The structure of this phrase, and its repetition in the final paragraph, are akin to Durrell's alter ego's realization on the final page of
Pied Piper of Lovers
that “I know something, though, that's very startling—absolute mental dynamite. That is: ‘I am, and quite soon I will not be.' Isn't that enough?” (253).

[15]
. The same phrase appears at the opening of Durrell's short story “Zero” published a year after this essay (8).

[16]
. Durrell uses the same notion of colonizing death nearly forty years later in his novel
Monsieur
: “Even death has its own precise texture, and the big philosophers have always entered into the image of the world it exemplifies while still alive, so to become one with it while their hearts were still beating. They colonised it” (21).

[17]
. Latin: “Where are you going?” The phrase is primarily in the Christian tradition, John 13:36, “Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” The phrase was also the title of a famous historical novel,
Quo Vadis: A Narrative in the Time of Nero
, by Henryk Sienkiewicz, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905.

Prospero's Isle

[1]
.   Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) and Robert Greene (1558–1592) were English playwrights, and both were involved in extensive pamphleteering campaigns, ranging from religious to artistic and satiric topics.

[2]
.   Shakespeare's
Two Gentlemen of Verona
I.iii.307.

[3]
.   James Howell (1594–1666) was a Welsh writer, and Durrell is referring to his 1642 book
Instructions for Forrainne Travell
(13).

[4]
.   Anthony Munday (1553–1633) was a dramatist who collaborated with Shakespeare on the play
Sir Thomas More
. He was known for his Italianate interests and for having taken the Grand Tour of Europe on foot beginning in 1578, which led to his
The English Romayne Lyfe
in 1582.

[5]
.   Unton (–1553) was knighted at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533. Durrell appears to be inventing this history since Unton pre-dates the use of the umbrella, per se, in England.

[6]
.   Thomas Coryat (1577–1617) is known for this travel writings, mainly
Coryat's Crudities Hastily Gobbled up in Five Months Travels in France, Italy, &c
and
Coryats Crambe, or His Coleworte Twice Sodden
(1611), both set in Europe, and his Mediterranean, Persian, and Indian letters in
Greetings from the Court of the Great Mogul
(1616).

[7]
.   Coryat,
Coryat's Crudities
(1). Durrell's personal copy of this volume is the two-volume edition by James MacLehose and Sons with Macmillan, 1905, held in the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

[8]
.   This is a longstanding critical debate, beginning with Ben Jonson pointing out that there was no seacoast. Dozens of critical works had debated this problem and noted that Robert Greene's play
Pandosto: The Triumph of Time
, Shakespeare's source, used the seacoast of Sicily, though it also uses the Isle of Delphos.

[9]
.   Howell 45.

[10]
. A mythical king ruling over a lost Christian nation in the Orient.

[11]
. George Sandys (1577–1644), William Lithgow (1582–1645), Coryat, and Fynes Moryson (1566–1630) were all Elizabethan travellers and writers.

[12]
. The coast of North Africa.

[13]
. Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice
I.iii.346–48.

[14]
. III.vii.1883–86.

[15]
. Howell 83.

[16]
. Howell 50.

[17]
. Howell 53.

[18]
. Howell 56.

[19]
. Webbe (1568–1591) was a well-known English critic and translator at the time. Durrell's source is uncertain, and little is known of Webbe.

[20]
. As previously, Durrell's source is unknown, but this passage is quoted in Thomas Secombe's
The Age of Shakespeare (1579–1631)
(208), as is the previous quotation from Howell (206).

[21]
. Eliot published this work in Latin in 1593. Durrell may have learned of it through F. Yates's 1931 article “The Importance of John Eliot's
Ortho-Epia Gallica
” (419–30), and he is certainly referring to the reprinting of Eliot's work in extract form in English in 1928 as
The Parlement of Pratlers
, edited by Jack Lindsay, which bears the subtitle
A Book on the Corect Pronunciation of the French Language
.

[22]
. Eliot,
The Parlement of Pratlers
, n. pag.

[23]
. Jourdain's pamphlet was first published in 1610 and is frequently referred to in attempts to date Shakespeare's
The Tempest
.

[24]
.
The Tempest
I.ii.345–48. This passage is often modernized to “still-vexed Bermudas.”

[25]
. A wind on the Mediterranean from the Sahara desert.

[26]
.
The Tempest
I.ii.461–62.

[27]
.
The Tempest
II.i.762.

[28]
.
The Tempest
II.i.763–64.

[29]
. John Dowland (1563–1626) was a famous composer and lutenist who also had patronage from Denmark at the time of
Hamlet
's first performance. The speculation is that Dowland could have offered information about Denmark and Elsinore at the time.

[30]
.
The Tempest
II.i.1720–27.

[31]
.
The Tempest
I.ii.472–73.

[32]
. Christopher Marlowe's (1564–1963) play
Doctor Faustus
(1594). The Abbey Thélème appears in the first portion of François Rabelais's (1494–1553)
Gargantua and Pantaguel
.

[33]
. Matthew 11:15, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Durrell plays off this same passage repeatedly in his contemporary short story “Asylum in the Snow.”

[34]
.
The Tempest
Epilogue, 2321–39.

Ideas About Poems

[1]
.   This short piece appeared at the beginning of the first issue of
Personal Landscape
, the periodical edited in Cairo during World War II by Durrell, Robin Fedden, and Bernard Spencer. Each subsequent issue included an “Ideas About Poems” segment that personalized rather than politicized poetry, despite their proximity to, and the immediate threat of, the war. The kindred terminology of “Ideas About Poems” to the “Attitudes” about Personalism adopted by the New Apocalypse poets in the following year, 1943, is suggestive. G.S. Fraser, who contributed to
Personal Landscape
and was a friend to the three editors, was also an important contributor to the original New Apocalypse anthologies in London in the preceding years. The personalist nature of both groups appears anti-authoritarian in the same manner as Herbert Read's notion of the politics of the unpolitical.

Ideas About Poems II

[1]
.   This stanza is later modified to become Durrell's poem “Echo” (1943).

The Heraldic Universe

[1]
.   The New Apocalypse revised its manifesto to adopt a position of anarchist “Personalism” the following year and used a similar description that rebuffs allusions to T.S. Eliot's impersonal theory of poetry in “Tradition and the Individual Talent”: “[the artist's] own personality must transmute the artistic materials presented to it, must give form and life where none had existed before” and “Does the artist search for a completion, a pattern, a purpose in the world about him…? Does he use his creative personality to bring about such a pattern…? If he does, he is a Personalist artist” (Treece 217, 219).