From the Elephant's Back (50 page)

[10]
. Durrell's translations of Cavafy appear several times in
The Alexandria Quartet
, most prominently at the end of
Justine
, which also contains a variant of one of these translations completed by a character. Durrell translated Cavafy a number of times. See Anthony Hirst's “‘The Old Poet of the City': Cavafy in Darley's Alexandria” (69–94).

[11]
. Literally “good minded” but implying a conservative or orthodox viewpoint.

[12]
. This is something of a self-allusion here to Durrell's first notebooks for
The Alexandria Quartet
, which he later integrated into the final form of the novel as the novel
Moeurs
written by the character Arnauti.

[13]
. George Savidis (1929–1995) was a professor of Greek literature at Harvard University and the Artistotle University of Thessaloniki as well as an important editor and critic.

Introduction to Wordsworth

[1]
.   Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) was the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and was also a poet and biographer.

[2]
.   Coleridge 93.

[3]
.   This verse by J.K. Stephen (1859–1892) is itself a parody of Wordsworth's own “Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland.” Durrell appears to be quoting from memory a compressed version of Stephen's “A Sonnet”:

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;

It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody
,

Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea
,

Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:

And one is of an old half-witted sheep

Which bleats articulate monotony
,

And indicates that two and one are three
,

That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:

And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times

Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes
,

The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:

At other times—good Lord! I'd rather be

Quite unacquainted with the A.B.C
.

Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst
.

[4]
.   Durrell is likely referring to Mary Moorman's two-volume
William Wordsworth: A Biography
.

[5]
.   This comment, and a good deal of the Introduction, speaks as much to Durrell's wishes for his own works as it does to Wordsworth.

[6]
.   Wordsworth visited France during the Revolution and felt a strong attachment to the Republican movement; however, he was highly distressed during the Reign of Terror when he left France.

[7]
.   Annette Vallon, who bore their child Caroline Vallon in 1792.

[8]
.   A common paraphrase from Freud's “Dostoevsky and Parricide” in
The Future of an Illusion
, in which he writes, “
The Brothers Karamazov
is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly. Before the problem of the creative artist analysis must, alas, lay down its arms” (177).

[9]
.   Paul Valéry (1871–1945) was a French poet whose works Durrell was very familiar with. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) was an Austrian poet whose works Durrell wrote on and helped to publish in the 1940s in English translations. Durrell refers to W.B. Yeats's (1865–1939) poetic works frequently.

[10]
. Durrell used a paraphrase of the same quotation as the epigraph to the final novel of his career,
Quinx
. This often misquoted passage derives from Wordsworth's May 21, 1807 letter to Lady Beaumont: “Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.”

[11]
. Famously chaste lovers. Héloïse d'Argenteuil (1101–1164) was a highly learned French nun and Pierre Abélard (1079–1142) was a French philosopher and theologian. They had a love affair, a child, and married, but when Héloïse's uncle Fulbert discovered it, he became abusive to her and eventually had Abélard castrated. Their subsequent love letters ultimately lead to a resignation and acceptance of love as a brother and sister.

[12]
. Wordsworth's
The Prelude
(10:908–21).

[13]
. John Willinsky makes a similar argument based on the same lines from
The Prelude
as a way of reading the scene of instruction in “Tintern Abbey” (Willinsky 47).

[14]
. It is difficult to not regard this as Durrell commenting on himself rather than Wordsworth, as often seems the case in this essay. Durrell's early works from the 1930s to 1948 frequently aligned with the anarchist trends in his contemporaries and most notably through Henry Miller, but after his time in Yugoslavia from 1949 to 1952 followed by four years on Cyprus during the Enosis struggle, he began to adopt more conservative rhetoric, even though his 1968
Tunc
and 1970
Nunquam
are strongly anti-corporate and critique cultural hegemony. This relationship between revolution or rebellion and later conservatism is an unresolved conflict in Durrell's career.

[15]
. Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867) was a diarist whose posthumous
Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence
(1869) is an important source of information on many Romantic English writers.

[16]
. From a letter by Robinson to Sir George Beaumont, May 29, 1812 (Batho 169).

[17]
. De Quincey 117. Since Thomas de Quincey's (1785–1859)
Recollections
was republished by Penguin in 1970, and Durrell organized this collection of Wordsworth's poetry for Penguin in 1973, it is likely he has drawn on the De Quincey collection in the 1970 printing. De Quincey is best known for his autobiographical
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
(1821).

[18]
. Wordsworth was granted a Doctor of Civil Law from Durham University in 1838 and from the University of Oxford in 1839.

[19]
. Robert Southey (1774–1843) was another English Romantic poet and a “Lake Poet” like Wordsworth.

[20]
. The name Dorothy (as with Theodora) is literally gift of the gods.

[21]
. The first several lines of Wordsworth's “Surprised by Joy.”

[22]
. Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged in 1810 due to Coleridge's addiction to opium.

[23]
. Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865), the Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. The two corresponded for many years. Durrell notes their meeting and friendship in his “The Poetic Obsession of Dublin” in 1972 as well, the year before this work.

L'amour, Clef du Mystère?

[1]
.   This title is taken from Durrell's publication of an eclectic, partial version of this piece in French translation. The return of the essay to English here is reconstructed from his original English typescript of his UNESCO lectures, which are held at the Bibliothèque Lawrence Durrell, l'Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre. These contain more errors and the repetitions more typical of a spoken presentation than the partial publication in French. The second portion is much cleaner work than the first, but they are presented together here for the sake of completeness. The lecture was given on November 13, 1964 but is based on his draft in 1962 (MacNiven 542). I have taken liberties with punctuation to clarify what would have read aloud well but would cause confusion to the eye. Spelling is also corrected throughout. Most repetitions have been retained from the manuscript of the speech, but those most obviously for spoken presentation are silently elided.

[2]
.   George Chapman (1559–1634) was a playwright contemporary with Shakespeare who is best known for his translations of Homer, which inspired John Keats's famous sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.”

[3]
.   Thomas Kyd (1558–1594) was an Elizabethan playwright whose
Spanish Tragedy
is one of Shakespeare's sources for
Hamlet
. There is also much speculation that Kyd wrote a play titled
Hamlet
prior to Shakespeare's.

[4]
.   Greene's 1592 pamphlet
Groats-worth of Witte
.

[5]
.   Famously, heads decorated the posts of London Bridge as well. It is worth comparing this political discussion with that adopted by Durrell two years earlier in his essay “No Clue to Living” included in this volume (37–46).

[6]
.   Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a French writer and philosopher who represented Marxism and existentialism in France. Sartre later became explicitly anarchist but at this time was Marxist (though he never belonged to the Communist Party). He also had a long-running public dispute with the French critic Louis Althusser in the 1960s. Althusser held an anti-humanist Marxist position whereas Sartre was adamantly humanist.

[7]
.   A film director.

[8]
.   This repetition from the previous section likely reflects the structural division of the lecture given in two parts, hence this reminds the audience of what the previous section had covered.

[9]
.   Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) is a French Renaissance writer most famous for his essays.

[10]
. As above, these repetitions appear designed to remind the audience in this second part of the lecture of the concepts and content discussed in the first.

[11]
. Dee (1527–1608) was a mathematician and occultist who tutored Elizabeth I and acquired the largest library in England, perhaps all of Europe at the time.

[12]
. Henry Wriothesley (1573–1624). Shakespeare's first poetic works were dedicated to Wriothesley, and hence speculation leads many to posit his role in the sonnets.

[13]
. Durrell's typescript omits the ninth line.

[14]
. Shakespeare, Sonnet XX. Oscar Wilde famously uses the same sonnet for the same evidence in his novella “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”

[15]
. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was a military leader in the English Civil War and was Lord Protector of the United Kingdom during the Interregnum.

[16]
. As reported by Richard Baines in “the Baines Note,” which contains many varied claims about Marlowe (Hopkins 15–17).

[17]
. Edmund Spenser's (1552–1599)
The Shepheardes Calender
, first published in 1579. This refers to the January eclogue in which Hobbinol loves Colin Clout who loves Alexis; however, the anonymous commentary by “E.K.” in the poem denies a sexual component (Fone 158–61).

[18]
. An allusion to Vladimir Nabokov's famous pedophiliac novel
Lolita
, in which his narrator, Humbert Humbert, falls in love with a “nymphet” approximately the same age as Dante's Beatrice.

[19]
. Durrell also used the same phrase a few years earlier in the opening note to his novel
Balthazar
. He had wanted
Justine
described as “an investigation of bisexual love,” but this was not suitable for publication and reappears in his drafts for the prefatory “Note” to
Balthazar
only as “My topic is a[n] investigation of modern love; the bisexual psyche.” I am indebted to Charles Sligh of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga for further archival evidence—these materials appear in the Durrell fonds in the Morris Library of Southern Illinois University, ICarbS 42/12/1 (enumerated by MacNiven as A.44—A.47). A.44 reads as I have quoted, A.45 is a typed duplicate, A.46 is a typed copy revised in pencil that adds “of Freud” to “the bisexual psyche,” and A.47 is then a typed copy identical to the final published Note, which reads, “The central topic of the book is an investigation of modern love” (
Balthazar
9). The lateness of this revision is further demonstrated by the proof copy of the novel, which is held at the University of Victoria, in which the A.44–A.47 materials from Carbondale are finalized in typescript and then pasted into the proofs for the novel, placed directly over a previous and entirely different version of the same Note (see item 2.3 in the Durrell fonds).

[20]
. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a Danish philosopher often seen in the existentialist school. He questioned the importance of non-being and impotence to the notion of the self. Durrell referred to Kierkegaard's works as early as the 1930s.

[21]
. John Leslie Hotson (1897–1992) advances this theory in
Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated and Other Essays
(1949). Durrell's earlier comments on Shakespeare being the son of a wool dealer also derive from Hotson. Hotson did not publish his famous
Mr WH
(1964) until two years after Durrell's piece appeared in print. Durrell follows Wilde closely here.

[22]
. See Wilde's novella “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” first published in 1889 but expanded for publication in
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
in 1891.

[23]
. Lee (1859–1926) was a major Shakespeare scholar and biographer. He taught at Balliol College, Oxford, and edited Oxford University Press's facsimile of the First Folio. Durrell is likely referring to his 1904 book
Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century
.

[24]
. This is speculative and relates to Durrell's own working method with his notebooks.

[25]
. Durrell refers to this passage several times (Freud,
Future
177).

[26]
. Wilder (1897–1975) was an American playwright and novelist most famous for his play
Our Town
. He met with Freud in 1935.