The Alexandria Quartet (147 page)

Those eyes, the magnificent eyes …

Or was it perhaps in September … in the dog days …

Irrevocably blue, yes, bluer than

A sapphire's mineral gaze.

free translation from C. P. Cavafy

* Page 704

ONE OF THEIR GODS

Moving through the market-place of Seleukeia

Towards the hour of dusk there came one,

A tall, rare and perfectly fashioned youth

With the rapt joy of absolute incorruptibility

Written in his glance; and whose dark

Perfumed head of hair uncombed attracted

The curious glances of the passers-by.

They paused to ask each other who he was,

A Greek of Syria perhaps or some other stranger?

But a few who saw a little deeper drew aside,

Thoughtfully, to follow him with their eyes,

To watch him gliding through the dark arcades,

Through the shadow-light of evening silently

Going towards those quarters of the town

Which only wake at night in shameless orgies

And pitiless debaucheries of flesh and mind.

And these few who knew wondered which of Them he was,

And for what terrible sensualities he hunted

Through the crooked streets of Seleukeia,

A shadow-visitant from those divine and hallowed

Mansions where They dwell.

free translation from C. P. Cavafy

* Page 761

CHE FECE … IL GRAN RIFIUTO

To some among us comes that implacable day

Demanding that we stand our ground and utter

By choice of will the great Yea or Nay.

And whosoever has in him the affirming word

Will straightway then be heard.

The pathways of his life will clear at once

And all rewards will crown his way.

But he, the other who denies,

No-one can say he lies; he would repeat

His Nay in louder tones if pressed again.

It is his right — yet by such little trifles,

A ‘No' instead of ‘Yes' his whole life sinks and stifles.

free translation from C. P. Cavafy

* Page 812

The incidents recorded in Capodistria's letter have been borrowed and expanded from a footnote in Franz Hartmann's
Life of Paracelsus
.

A Biography of Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell's work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet's completion,
Life
called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time.”

Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.

Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel,
Pied Piper of Lovers.
He also read Henry Miller's
Tropic of Cancer
and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller's advice and work heavily influenced Durrell's provocative third novel,
The Black Book
(1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell's first book of note,
The Black Book
was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn't appear in print in Britain until 1973.

In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassy. He also wrote
Prospero's Cell,
a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.

Durrell met Yvette Cohen in Alexandria, and the couple married in 1947. They had a daughter, Sappho Jane, in 1951, and separated in 1955. Durrell published
White Eagles Over Serbia
in 1957, alongside the celebrated memoir
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
(1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize,
and Justine
(1957), the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet Capitalizing on the overwhelming success
of Justine,
Durrell went on to publish the next three novels in the series —
Balthazar
(1958),
Mountolive
(1958), and
Clea
(1960) — in quick succession. Upon the series' completion, poet Kenneth Rexroth hailed it as “a tour de force of multiple-aspect narrative.”

Durrell married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon, who died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973 to Ghislaine de Boysson, which ended in divorce in 1979.

After a life spent in varied locales, Durrell settled in Sommières, France, where he wrote the Revolt of Aphrodite series as well as the Avignon Quintet. The first book in the Quintet,
Monsieur
(1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize while
Constance
(1982), the third novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Durrell died in 1990 at his home in Sommières.

This photograph of Lawrence Durrell aboard his boat, the
Van Norden,
is taken from a negative discovered among his papers. The vessel is named after a character in Henry Miller's
Tropic of Cancer.
(Photograph held in the British Library's modern manuscripts collection.)

One of Nancy Durrell's photographs from the 1930s. Pictured here is the
Caique,
which they used to travel around the waters of Corfu. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin, property of the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

This photograph of Nancy and Lawrence Durrell was likely taken in Delphi, Greece, in late 1939. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin and the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

A 1942 photograph of Lawrence Durrell with his wife, Nancy, and their daughter, Penelope, taken in Cairo. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

This manuscript notebook contains one of two drafts of
Justine
acquired by the British Library as part of Lawrence Durrell's large archive in 1995. (Notebook held in the British Library's modern manuscripts collection.)

A page from Durrell's notebooks, or, as he called them, the “quarry.” This page introduced his notes on the “colour and narrative” of scenes in
Justine.
(Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Durrell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.)