From the Elephant's Back (52 page)

[37]
. Paraphrased (Miller,
Tropic of Capricorn
322–23).

[38]
.
Broadway Follies of 1943
likely refers to
Ziegried Follies of 1943
on Broadway as well as the 1945 film
Ziegfried Follies
.
Quai de Brumes
(Port of Shadows) is a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Carné considered the best of the Poetic Realism movement.
La Femme de Boulanger
(The Baker's Wife) in a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Pagnol.
The Lost Horizon
is a famous 1937 American film by Frank Capra based on James Hinton's novel of the same name—it is set in Shangri-La amidst highly politicized pre-World War II international tensions.
The Phantom President
is a 1932 American musical film directed by Norman Taurog about a presidential look-alike used to woo voters.
Orage
(Storm) is a 1938 French film by Marc Allégret about infidelity and romantic complications amidst relatively free sensuality.
Un Chien d'Andalou
(An Andalusian Dog) is a very short 1929 French surrealist film directed by Luis Bruñel and co-written with Salvador Dalí—it is probably the most famous of the surrealist film experiments.
Le Sang d'un Poete
(The Blood of a Poet) is Jean Cocteau's 1930 French film and the first part of his Orpheus Trilogy.

[39]
. St. Augustine of Hippo's (354–430)
Confessions
is the first autobiography, as such, and hence influenced Miller's chosen novelistic form significantly. Lao Tse was the central figure of Taoism, and the Gita is the Hindu scripture
Bhagavad Gita
. Honoré de Balzac's (1799–1850) novel
Séraphîta
is based on an androgynous person caught between love relationships with a man and a woman. The Polish ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950) is referred to several times in works by both Durrell and Miller. In a letter to Miller, Durrell recounts, “I always remember the time I brought you back Nijinsky's letters from London—how you took the book, opened it, and walked out of the room (crowded with merry makers) into the street—
there
you absently leaned against a lamp post and read it from cover to cover—or almost” (
Durrell–Miller
201). Vasily Rozanov (1856–1919) was a controversial Russian writer who focused on sexuality. William Blake (1757–1827) was an English Romantic poet often tied to early anarchism, the visual component of his poetic works, and spiritualism. Durrell alludes and refers to Blake frequently in his works.

[40]
. Patagonian is in relation to Ferdinand Magellan's mythic race of giants in South America. Caliban is the monstrous son of the witch Sycorax in Shakespeare's
The Tempest
.

Studies in Genius VI

[1]
.   Durrell first encountered Groddeck's
Book of the It
while in Alexandria and wrote to Miller about it in September 1944: “I'm absolutely bowled over by Groddeck's
Book of the It
—it's simply terrific. I have written England to send you a copy” (Durrell,
Durrell–Miller
175). Groddeck was also greatly admired by W.H. Auden (Mengham 165) who would inscribe and send copies of
The Book of the It
to friends. Since
Horizon
originally published this essay and was co-edited by Auden's close friend Stephen Spender, who was with Auden during the time he discovered Groddeck, it is likely this essay would have been known to him. This essay has also appeared as the introduction to Groddeck's
The Book of the It
, and it refers to Groddeck's other works, from which Durrell borrowed plots for
The Alexandria Quartet
, such as Semira's nose from
The Unknown Self
(Gifford, “Noses” 2–4), and in it Clea discovers with her new hand, “IT can
paint!
” (Durrell,
Alexandria
874). Groddeck is explicitly mentioned in
The Avignon Quintet
. Groddeck is out of favour in psychoanalytic communities and was discounted by Carl Jung (1875–1961) in his brief correspondence with Durrell. For more on Durrell's use of Groddeck, see Christensen's “An Overenthusiastic Response” (63–94) and Sobhy's “Alexandria as Groddeck's It” (26–39).

[2]
.   Most quotations from Groddeck have not been identified. This anti-authoritarian theme in Groddeck may have been a significant part of his appeal to Durrell at this time, which coincides with his publishing several works through anarchist presses, most notably “Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels” (30–32) in George Woodcock's
NOW
in 1947,
Zero and Asylum in the Snow
through Circle Editions 1947, “Eight Aspects of Melissa” (1–8) in
Circle
in 1946, and many poems in the second and third issues of Robert Duncan's
Experimental Review
in 1940–1941.

[3]
.   First published as
Das Buch vom Es
in 1923. Durrell's copy would have been the 1923 printing by Funk & Wagnalls. Durrell's annotated copy of Groddeck's
The Unknown Self
is held by the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria. A later copy, the 1951 Vision printing, is also held by the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, as well as seven other volumes of Groddeck's work. However, the Morris Library's holdings are mainly in French, and only
Exploring the Unconcsious
predates this article in printing (1933). Durrell's first copies appear lost during his travels after Egypt.

[4]
.   Groddeck,
Book of the It
15–16. Durrell quotes this passage in a letter to Henry Miller, February 28, 1946 (
Miller–Durrell
195).

[5]
.   “A writer who, from personal motives, vainly asserts that he has nothing to do with the rigours of pure science. I am speaking of George Groddeck….We need feel no hesitation in finding a place for Groddeck's discovery in the structure of science” (Freud,
The Ego
23).

[6]
.   E. Graham Howe (1896–1975) was a theosophist and psychoanalyst whose works Durrell had reviewed in the 1930s.

[7]
.   René Descartes (1596–1650) famously proposed “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am).

[8]
.   Hermann Graf Keyserling (1880–1946) was a German philosopher who studied under and was treated by Groddeck.

[9]
.   Keyserling 12.

[10]
. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824–1907) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), both scientists, are held up as examples of determinism and Victorian scientific rationalism.

[11]
. Otto Rank (1884–1939) was a psychoanalyst close to Freud whom Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin knew well. Durrell first read Rank's
The Trauma of Birth
in 1938 and wrote an essay on Rank that year—it was declined by
Purpose
, which later published his essay on Howe, “The Simple Art of Truth” (MacNiven 201).
Purpose
also published Groddeck's essays in the 1920s.

[12]
. Groddeck's novel
Thomas Weltlein
was published in 1919 and translated into English as
The Seeker of Souls
. Freud had significant praise for this novel.

[13]
. The Latin term for the triangular bone at the base of the spine and back of the pelvis.

[14]
. Freud derived the term for the Id from Groddeck (
das Es
, literally “the It” in English). Likewise, “Unknown” is
Unbewusst
in psychoanalytic terminology, typically rendered in English as “Unconscious.”

[15]
. Shri Krishna Prem in
The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita
quoting Srimad Bhagavada (167). Shri Krishna Prem was born Ronald Henry Nixon and taught English at Lucknow University but changed his name when he studied under the university's vice-chancellor, Yashoda Ma. The two founded an Ashram at the Radha-Krishna temple they built in Mirtola, India. He was the first Westerner to practice Vaishnavism.

[16]
. The English version of
The Book of the It
has been cut; it is not the full text of the original German edition.

[17]
. This chapter is divided into subsections on “Massage and Psychotherapy,” “The Body's Middleman,” and “Bowel Function.”

Constant Zarian

[1]
.   Zarian (1885–1969) was an Armenian poet and writer whom Durrell first met on Corfu in the 1930s. He escaped the Armenian Genocide by fleeing to Bulgaria but later returned to Istanbul. He taught at Yerevan State University (1922–1925), Columbia University at the same time as the Frankfurt School in exile (1944–1946), and the American University of Beirut (1952–1954). Zarian knew Vladimir Lenin in Geneva, where both lectured, and he befriended Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Céline, and Paul Éluard, among other artists and writers. His autobiography,
Countries and Gods
, covers the period when he was on Corfu in Durrell's company. Also see Vartan Matiossian's “Kostan Zarian and Lawrence Durrell: A Correspondence” (75–101).

[2]
.   Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916) was a Symbolist Belgian poet.

[3]
.   George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) was a passionate supporter of the Armenian cause and the Armenian language. He also wrote
English Grammar and Armenian
and
Armenian Grammar and English
, and he continued to translate Armenian materials until his death.

[4]
.   Respighi (1879–1936) was a famous Italian composer who set several of Zarian's texts to music, though he does not appear to have ever set this specific work.

[5]
.   Zarian was a professor of comparative literature at this time.

[6]
.   Durrell's anti-communist sentiments were already well-established in the 1930s and intensified after his residence in Yugoslavia. Whether this derived from conservative inclinations or his associations with anarchist authors remains a critical debate.

[7]
.   Bloomsbury is an area of London but also identifies a literary group that dominated British Modernism. It was strongly associated with the Fabian Socialists, though it was not as strongly tied to communism, per se.

[8]
.   George Bernard Shaw and J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964) were both prominent socialists, and Haldane eventually became an outspoken communist, though professionally he was a geneticist.

[9]
.   Again, the uncertainty over Durrell's own politics is important here. Durrell often voiced his resentment for socialist, Marxist, as well as conservative and retrograde values. The conflict in which he places Zarian between socialist and reactionary politics suggests an anti-authoritarian, personalist third option. At the time Durrell wrote this article, he was completing four years of service for the British Council in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, following Josip Broz Tito's break with Joseph Stalin and the Cominform in 1948.

[10]
. The Fabian Society is a British Socialist movement famously associated with the Bloomsbury circle of writers and intellectuals. It is closely tied to the Labour Party.

[11]
. Durrell employed these terms in his own work,
The Alexandria Quartet
, only a few years later, such as in the introductory note to
Balthazar
. This suggests he is articulating his own notions here rather than Zarian's.

[12]
. Both works are from the early 1930s. Nearly all the texts by Zarian to which Durrell refers were originally published in Boston in the periodical
Hairenik
.

[13]
. Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was a Russian novelist best known for his satiric work.

[14]
. See Zarian,
Girk‘ diwts‘aznergut‘eants‘
(1978).

[15]
. Given the political nature of Durrell's discussion of Zarian, his alignment with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence, and William Blake is telling. Blake is often regarded, with William Godwin, as a forerunner to modern anti-authoritarian anarchism, as is Shelley, who married Godwin's daughter Mary. Simon Casey has established the link between Lawrence, who was deeply sympathetic to Blake and Godwin, and anarchism (2–12). Byron is the most suitable alignment based on his deep ties to Armenian literature and culture as well as his involvement in revolutionary movements of independence.

[16]
. Robert Southey (1774–1843) and Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) were both English Romantic poets with early ties to supporting the radicalism of the French Revolution but who quickly became conservative Tories with little rebellion to incite their works. Southey was poet laureate for thirty years, and Rogers was vital for supporting other writers, including securing William Wordsworth's sinecure as distributor of stamps and recommending Alfred Lord Tennyson for the position of poet laureate, succeeding Wordsworth in the position, who had succeeded Southey.

Enigma Variations

[1]
.   Pound (1885–1972) was a major American Modernist poet most famous for his epic poem
The Cantos
. By 1957, his reputation had been seriously damaged by his promotion of fascism, anti-Semitism, and charges of treason against him, which led to his incarceration in St. Elizabeths Hospital after an insanity plea. He remained there until 1958. Durrell's wife in 1957 was Claude Vincedon, a Zionist Jew of the Menasce family who wrote a Zionist novel,
A Chair for the Prophet
, which bears many similarities to Durrell's works. That Durrell reviewed Pound at this time, prior to Pound's recanting of his anti-Semitism and while still incarcerated, is striking.

[2]
.   Ezra Pound,
Section: Rock-Drill. Cantos lxxxv–xcv
, Faber, 12s.