From sumantranag at airtelbroadband.in Wed Apr 11 03:50:51 2007 From: sumantranag at airtelbroadband.in (Sumantra Nag) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:20:51 +0530 Subject: [ilds] Fw: The Lawrence Durrell reading group Message-ID: <00bb01c77c27$46a78160$cab9a37a@abc> I was very happy to receive this mail from the moderators of Lawrence Durrell reading group. May I request that my email address is please changed to sumantranag at gmail.com. I would be most grateful for a confirmation. Regards Sumantra Nag ----- Original Message ----- From: Sumantra Nag To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 9:50 PM Subject: Re: [ilds] The Lawrence Durrell reading group Very glad to hear about the revival of the reading. Regards Sumantra Nag ----- Original Message ----- From: william godshalk To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 12:51 AM Subject: [ilds] The Lawrence Durrell reading group Welcome to the Lawrence Durrell reading group: Justine Some years ago, we opened the Durrell reading group with a careful and sequential reading of Justine. We had given ourselves the opportunity to read the novel episode by episode. The group was eager, and the comments and observations were excellent. However, the project was lost in the summer sun. We would like to revivify it. To begin, we welcome your observations, comments, and questions regarding the first episode of the novel. Please use RG in the subject line of your email so that future readers can simply search for "[RG]" to find the salient posts. For example, a comment on the first episode of Justine would read RG Justine 1.1. Send all contributions to ilds at lists.uvic.ca There is, of course, the initial question of "which Justine will we read?" As you may know, there are various editions of the novel with different page numbers. But Durrell divided Justine into four parts, and designated the episodes by dividing the text with asterisks or other printing symbols. To negotiate the various pagination schemes of the printings by Faber, Dutton, Penguin, Cardinal, &c., we suggest that Durrell readers and scholars use a shorthand system (developed by Charles Sligh) by referring to Part and to Episode --e.g., Justine 1.3 starts with "Notes for landscape tones. . . ."; in Justine 2.2 Balthazar asks the unnamed Darley to look for his watch-key. This system has the virtue of creating a translation code across most of the texts. We hope that the reading group will utilize this shorthand system as a starting point to elaborate and to ponder the peculiar textual diversity of Justine and, eventually, Durrell's other works. We have long since shrugged off the illusion of constructing a "definitive" Justine, and our reading group at its best can remind us all that this work cannot be located entirely in a British Library notebook or in the fifth imprint of the Faber first edition or in the 1962 single volume Quartet. Rather, Justine the work is all of these, as well as all of the past conditions and contexts for its production, the writing, revising, printing, marketing, reviewing, reading, teaching and scholarly attention. We welcome your suggestions, contributions, and comments. The Moderators Charles Sligh James Gifford Bill Godshalk *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/397a12c2/attachment.html From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Wed Apr 11 05:44:09 2007 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 05:44:09 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 -- "again" Message-ID: <24226478.1176295449457.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/fe7d1804/attachment-0001.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Wed Apr 11 06:17:32 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:17:32 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again Message-ID: <0147732B-E82F-11DB-8ED7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> 'The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring.' The word 'again' draws attention to the fact that the narrator has been here before. When? In the opening pages of The Black Book: 'The agon, then. It begins. Today there is a gale blowing up from the Levant.' ... 'This is the day I have chosen to begin this writing, because today we are dead among the dead...' 'I could not have begun this act in the summer ...' The imagery of death and the need for rebirth is the same as in the opening pages of Justine, eg in The Black Book 'the death we have escaped'. The narrator, and for that matter Durrell, has returned to that familiar struggle. It is uncanny how much of the imagery in these opening pages of The Black Book is Egyptian: 'the evocative smells of the dust, and the nascent fust of the tombs'. Of course Durrell on Corfu had been reading The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and now as he embarks upon Justine he has not forgotten that, and much surrounding that. In so many ways it is 'again'. :Michael From slighcl at wfu.edu Wed Apr 11 07:28:17 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:28:17 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again Message-ID: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> Like Michael, I find that /Justine /carries within so many it tidelike returns upon LD's other work. /Prospero's Cell/ (1945) seems especially present again--or even refracted with a difference--for me in /Justine /1.1. In /Justine/, a "sick" and "wounded" narrator sits on the "bare promontory" of his island and looks back upon his memories of the time in Alexandria. In /Prospero's Cell/, I am recalling the "Epilogue in Alexandria"--cf. the way in which another wounded narrator sits amid "black compromise" in the "unfamiliar element" of Africa and looks back upon his memories of Greece and that "unregretted" white house sitting out on the "bare promontory": The sightless Pharos turns its blind eye upon a coast, featureless, level and sandy. . . . The last landmark on the edge of Africa. The battleships in their arrowed blackness turn slowly in the harbour. The loss of Greece has been an amputation. All Epictetus could not console one against it. Exile again and again; islands redux; cf. Richard Pine and other excellent addresses of islomania in the novels. Turning battleships will re-turn soon. . . . One might even take a fancy and use the perspectivism ready-at-hand to imagine the narrator of /Prospero's Cell/ involved with Darley's Alexandria and Alexandrians. Of course before too long we must note another line of connection between /Justine /and LD's interest in "Prospero"--"I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child"--we have a replaying of the Prospero-Miranda story to talk about in different ways. . . . CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/e56fa5a5/attachment.html From schneider at alumni.stjohnscollege.edu Wed Apr 11 08:18:22 2007 From: schneider at alumni.stjohnscollege.edu (Schneider) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:18:22 -0600 Subject: [ilds] Listserv Formatting Practices (was Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 24) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On behalf of busy layperson readers following at home, the following two requests, which are standard procedure on most listservs: #1 - Please trim (delete) from your posting all text from previous postings except that to which you are directly replying. The first message in ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 24 contains 1 new line and 63 lines that have already been on the list, some more than once; the third message, a two-line post about changing an e-mail address, includes the entire 50-line welcome message. This practice chews up the bandwidth and hard-drive space of others unnecessarily. (Please, however, do not trim/delete so much of the previous post that the author is not clearly identified.) #2 - Please do not 'top-post,' or add your reply to the top of the text to which you are replying. Instead, add your new text beneath the (trimmed) quoted text. This promotes the practice of readers being able to briefly skim down the page in a natural reading manner to see what you are responding to that has already been said, and refamililarize themselves with it, before taking in your new words. If anyone needs help in learning how to format e-mail messages economically, the should feel free to e-mail me off-List. Regards, Schneider From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Wed Apr 11 09:26:03 2007 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:26:03 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again Message-ID: <11027085.1176308763977.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> So there's a play on "agon" and "again?" I like that. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead is a series of spells and incantations on how to negotiated through the underworld, with all its dangers, and successfully achieve rebirth in some blessed land -- that's why it was depicted on the walls of the royal tombs of the New Kingdom. All of which fits in with the beginning of a long and perilous journey. Bruce -----Original Message----- >From: Michael Haag >Sent: Apr 11, 2007 6:17 AM >To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca >Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again > > > >'The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the >midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring.' > >The word 'again' draws attention to the fact that the narrator has been >here before. When? In the opening pages of The Black Book: > >'The agon, then. It begins. Today there is a gale blowing up from the >Levant.' ... 'This is the day I have chosen to begin this writing, >because today we are dead among the dead...' 'I could not have begun >this act in the summer ...' > >The imagery of death and the need for rebirth is the same as in the >opening pages of Justine, eg in The Black Book 'the death we have >escaped'. The narrator, and for that matter Durrell, has returned to >that familiar struggle. > >It is uncanny how much of the imagery in these opening pages of The >Black Book is Egyptian: 'the evocative smells of the dust, and the >nascent fust of the tombs'. Of course Durrell on Corfu had been >reading The Egyptian Book of the Dead, and now as he embarks upon >Justine he has not forgotten that, and much surrounding that. In so >many ways it is 'again'. > >:Michael > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >ILDS mailing list >ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From slighcl at wfu.edu Wed Apr 11 11:43:30 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:43:30 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Listserv Formatting Practices (was Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 24) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <461D2C52.20206@wfu.edu> Dear ILDS listserv subscribers: Schneider's posting on standard listserv formatting and protocol bears keeping in mind. Type your original comments and questions at any length--we'll never prohibit new news and info--but please do recall that, like all genres, email comes with its own set of rhetorical procedures and audience expectations. Clarity and focus are not aided by endless stringing of old posts. Use selective <> of past mailings if necessary. For broader reference, simply refer your readers to the emails kept in the new ILDS listserv Archive and digest-features. Merrily onward-- CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** From godshawl at email.uc.edu Wed Apr 11 12:48:55 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:48:55 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <0147732B-E82F-11DB-8ED7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <0147732B-E82F-11DB-8ED7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <20070411194827.INLA20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/c1e2e2e0/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Wed Apr 11 13:35:50 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:35:50 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <20070411194827.INLA20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <0147732B-E82F-11DB-8ED7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <20070411194827.INLA20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <461D46A6.8050903@wfu.edu> Bill asks: > But those books, what's in them? Are they books of magic? Those questions remind us that creative acts of the imagination can bear critical fruit. Magical fruit, even. What books might we imagine holding a place in Darley's little island library? Cavafy. Eliot. Various writings by Nessim, Arnuati, Justine, &c. Shax and the Elizas. Pursewarden's Trilogy. Freud and Sade. Forster's Alex guide. We have already pointed out that somehow the narrator has memories of /The Black Book/ and /Prospero's Cell/. (Realism and chronology be hanged. If we need be sticklers, we can suggest that the author of those two books somehow lifted lines and echoes from the narrator's ms for what he eventually titles "Justine.") By the way, /Justine /1.1 has an interesting afterlife. Cf. Kathy Acker's /Don Quixote, Which was a Dream/ (1989): 'One of my legs is extending outwards. You're owning me. A sky of hot nude pearl until . . . crickets in these sheltered places . . . the wind ransacks the great planes[. . . .] 'I'm alone again . . . on this island. I've my books around me. I don't know why I feel lonely[. . . .]' (58) The Acker text is searchable in google books. I like the fact that it reminds me that the good Don and Prospero were contemporary bibliophiles. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/03b73bcc/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Wed Apr 11 14:38:52 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:38:52 +0200 Subject: [ilds] I was at first delighted and enthusiastic... Message-ID: <461D556C.3010806@interdesign.fr> I was at first delighted and enthusiastic to see this renaissance of discussion. Soon I was at a loss as to what the "edu" were saying; way above my head: yes I am but an "ordinary" reader (but maybe LD was not targeting me!?), on this list simply because I have read, and reread LD with increasing pleasure for 45 years.... but suddenly lost in the discourse (which seemed to me, people polishing each others brass, belly buttons (b,b,b - is it a catching disease)... then came some posts that I had the pretension to understand... all from MH. Sorry if I upset some... I cannot stop myself asking whether there are others like me who simply are (were) blown over enthusiasts of LD's mastery of words and writing (w, w) who understood that to write so richly, one had to have experienced a good part of what was put into words! (Google-books didn't exist then). Perhaps I am wrong and only "edu" should be on this list? It would indeed be a pity and a waste, but I ask someone to plunge and say YES or NO. I hope the answer is NO! Marc Piel, Paris, france. From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Wed Apr 11 15:32:41 2007 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:32:41 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 Message-ID: <14312795.1176330761186.JavaMail.root@elwamui-royal.atl.sa.earthlink.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/ada17ec0/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Wed Apr 11 15:45:42 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:45:42 -0400 Subject: [ilds] I was at first delighted and enthusiastic... In-Reply-To: <461D556C.3010806@interdesign.fr> References: <461D556C.3010806@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <461D6516.2070404@wfu.edu> No need for misgivings, Marc. All that is required here is a book, a keyboard, keen eyes and ears, and an appreciative enthusiasm. And now that you have braved the waters, showing that you have those qualities, I think that you will find it all a bit less daunting than you make it: <> Yes, indeed. That certainly is true for me now after 20 years. I do not find any postings so far that have not expressed that same sort of rapture and excitement that you are recalling. Even those pesky "edu" postings that you mention seem to be emoting quite a bit, marvelling at the possibiliies that LD's works open up. LD encouraged his readers to think of the /Quartet /as open to extension in any number of directions. Here is to newness transpiring in all of its forms. A very hearty welcome, Marc--we'll see you in the lists. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/f745c5fb/attachment.html From Ctbastien at aol.com Wed Apr 11 15:52:02 2007 From: Ctbastien at aol.com (Ctbastien at aol.com) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:52:02 EDT Subject: [ilds] (no subject) Message-ID: I can't believe all the crap I've read about those few lines at the beginning of Justine. And then........ Your message generated more! ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/1af789e5/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Wed Apr 11 17:24:38 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 01:24:38 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 re Sinuhe In-Reply-To: <20070411194827.INLA20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <32AE6B20-E88C-11DB-982D-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> The death of the twelfth dynasty pharaoh Ammenemes inspired two classic Middle Kingdom literary works which were studied and copied by Egyptian schoolboys for hundreds of years to come. In the Instruction of Ammenemes the king appears to his son Sesostris in a dream and tells how he was attacked by the palace guard. 'It was after supper when night was come, I took an hour of repose, lying upon my bed. All of a sudden weapons were brandished, and I awoke to fight. But no one is strong at night. No one can fight alone.' With a winning touch of vulnerability, he warns his son of the heavy burdens of kingship, saying 'No man has adherents on the day of distress'. In The Story of Sinuhe a secret message is sent to Sesostris who is away campaigning in Libya, telling him of his father's murder and urging his immediate return to Ijtawy. The message is overheard by Sinuhe, a young court official, who fearful that he will be drawn into the intrigues of rival claimants to the throne flees to the desert and dwells among the Bedouin, eventually becoming their chieftain. Further travels bring Sinuhe to Byblos where he marries the local prince's daughter, is granted land and becomes extremely wealthy. But in his old age Sinuhe longs to return to Egypt and to be buried there according to the religion of his people. Sesostris welcomes him, clears him of any wrongdoing, and honours Sinuhe with a magnificent tomb. Apart from their appeal as drama and adventure, these stories played upon Egyptians' attachment to tradition while skilfully justifying Sesostris' right to rule and portraying him as a wise and benevolent king. :Michael On Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 08:48 pm, william godshalk wrote: > I'd like to suggest two other possible sources for the opening of > Justine 1.1. The first is Ovid who was exiled to Tomis, modern > Constanta, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. He too looked back > at the "City" (Rome, of course, not Alexandria), and kept writing. I > will not mention Ovid's Island where he is supposed to have been > buried. Yes, I got this idea reading the TLS review of Ovid's Poems of > Exile. > > In 1949, Naomi Walford translated Mika Waltari's novel The Egyptian > into English. It was a best seller, and made into a movie. Sinuhe is > the narrator: "I begin this book in the third year of my exile on the > shores of the Eastern Sea. . . ." He calls out: "Turn, O you years -- > roll again, you vanished years . . . and bring again my youth. Not one > word will I alter, not my least action will I amend. O brittle pen, > smooth papyrus, give me back my folly and my youth!" The parallel is > not very close, but Durrell may have been taken by the title -- and > read the first few pages from which the above sentences are taken. > > And, yes, Charlie, you are right. Shakespeare's The Tempest must > surely have been one of Durrell's sources. And Prospero's Cell may > indicate on which island the narrator and the child live. But those > books, what's in them? Are they books of magic? > > Bill_______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3155 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/9984bc0a/attachment-0001.bin From dtart at bigpond.net.au Wed Apr 11 14:55:22 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:55:22 +1000 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Great to read of one of Durrell's island books being mentioned: Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, along with Portrait of a Marine Venus and Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most enchanting writing - and that side of his personality which endeared him to others; the champagne cork being popped. Durrell's Island books and his Antrobus stories seem to me to be frequently overlooked in favour of the heavy and mysterious Quartet and, especially the Quintet which I ploughed through recently (mon dieu). I am afraid I concur with Durrell's publisher who favoured him continuing with his island type book rather than the ponderous Quintet. Durrell claimed to dislike academics. Whether this is true or not, it appears he wrote the Quartet and the Quintet to be taken seriously by them. For my money he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell fans agree? DG Denise Tart & David Green 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 +61 2 9564 6165 0412 707 625 dtart at bigpond.net.au ----- Original Message ----- From: slighcl To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 12:28 AM Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again Like Michael, I find that Justine carries within so many it tidelike returns upon LD's other work. Prospero's Cell (1945) seems especially present again--or even refracted with a difference--for me in Justine 1.1. In Justine, a "sick" and "wounded" narrator sits on the "bare promontory" of his island and looks back upon his memories of the time in Alexandria. In Prospero's Cell, I am recalling the "Epilogue in Alexandria"--cf. the way in which another wounded narrator sits amid "black compromise" in the "unfamiliar element" of Africa and looks back upon his memories of Greece and that "unregretted" white house sitting out on the "bare promontory": The sightless Pharos turns its blind eye upon a coast, featureless, level and sandy. . . . The last landmark on the edge of Africa. The battleships in their arrowed blackness turn slowly in the harbour. The loss of Greece has been an amputation. All Epictetus could not console one against it. Exile again and again; islands redux; cf. Richard Pine and other excellent addresses of islomania in the novels. Turning battleships will re-turn soon. . . . One might even take a fancy and use the perspectivism ready-at-hand to imagine the narrator of Prospero's Cell involved with Darley's Alexandria and Alexandrians. Of course before too long we must note another line of connection between Justine and LD's interest in "Prospero"--"I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child"--we have a replaying of the Prospero-Miranda story to talk about in different ways. . . . CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/639dd68e/attachment.html From leadale at mts.net Wed Apr 11 19:38:54 2007 From: leadale at mts.net (Lea Stogdale) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:38:54 -0500 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 Message-ID: <01C77C81.CE7D92F0.leadale@mts.net> In connection with the dedication to Eve: Quote from Wikipedia: "During the war, Durrell served as a press attache to the British Embassies, first in Cairo and then Alexandria. After the war he held various diplomatic and teaching jobs. It was in Alexandria that he met Eve (Yvette) Cohen, who was to become the model for Justine." Is this correct? He separated from Eve in 1955 and published Justine in 1957. Did Justine partially pay for the separation? Do I not recall LD saying that it took 2 books to pay for each separation? Lea -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 269.2.0/757 - Release Date: 4/11/07 5:14 PM From Ctbastien at aol.com Wed Apr 11 20:10:04 2007 From: Ctbastien at aol.com (Ctbastien at aol.com) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:10:04 EDT Subject: [ilds] Fwd: (no subject) Message-ID: ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/53e41b01/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Ctbastien at aol.com Subject: (no subject) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:09:15 EDT Size: 1798 Url: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/53e41b01/attachment.mht From shotspur at shaw.ca Wed Apr 11 20:37:35 2007 From: shotspur at shaw.ca (MAUREEN MATTHEWS) Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:37:35 -0700 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 In-Reply-To: <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: I am not an academic, but I am a poet and a lover of books. Though I enjoyed the two early volumes of the Quartet without qualification, I found the final two grew more and more labored, and my interest flagging. Then, after a hiatus of many years from Durrell's fiction, I returned to read Tunc and Numquam, and found it frankly difficult, nay, nearly impossible, to believe that these two books had been written by the same man who had authored the Quartet. Dull dull dull. I am not a particular student of Durrell, but I tend to agree with the judgment I read in Kenneth Rexroth's essay on Durrell that he erred in giving in to pressure from publishers, and hurried the Quartet into publication before he had allowed it to mature sufficiently to maintain the high quality reached in Justine and Balthazar. A great loss, I think. I've never had the courage to weather the disappointment I imagine awaits if I wade into the Avignon Quintet. Garry Eaton -------------- next part -------------- Great to read of one of Durrell's island books being mentioned: Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, along with Portrait of a Marine Venus and Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most enchanting writing - and that side of his personality which endeared him to others; the champagne cork being popped. Durrell's Island books and his Antrobus stories seem to me to be frequently overlooked in favour of the heavy and mysterious Quartet and, especially the Quintet which I ploughed through recently (mon dieu). I am afraid I concur with Durrell's publisher who favoured him continuing with his island type book rather than the ponderous Quintet. Durrell claimed to dislike academics. Whether this is true or not, it appears he wrote the Quartet and the Quintet to be taken seriously by them. For my money he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell fans agree? DG Denise Tart & David Green 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 +61 2 9564 6165 0412 707 625 dtart at bigpond.net.au ----- Original Message ----- From: slighcl To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 12:28 AM Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again Like Michael, I find that Justine carries within so many it tidelike returns upon LD's other work. Prospero's Cell (1945) seems especially present again--or even refracted with a difference--for me in Justine 1.1. In Justine, a "sick" and "wounded" narrator sits on the "bare promontory" of his island and looks back upon his memories of the time in Alexandria. In Prospero's Cell, I am recalling the "Epilogue in Alexandria"--cf. the way in which another wounded narrator sits amid "black compromise" in the "unfamiliar element" of Africa and looks back upon his memories of Greece and that "unregretted" white house sitting out on the "bare promontory": The sightless Pharos turns its blind eye upon a coast, featureless, level and sandy. . . . The last landmark on the edge of Africa. The battleships in their arrowed blackness turn slowly in the harbour. The loss of Greece has been an amputation. All Epictetus could not console one against it. Exile again and again; islands redux; cf. Richard Pine and other excellent addresses of islomania in the novels. Turning battleships will re-turn soon. . . . One might even take a fancy and use the perspectivism ready-at-hand to imagine the narrator of Prospero's Cell involved with Darley's Alexandria and Alexandrians. Of course before too long we must note another line of connection between Justine and LD's interest in "Prospero"--"I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child"--we have a replaying of the Prospero-Miranda story to talk about in different ways. . . . CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070411/5dd3ba1e/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Wed Apr 11 23:53:41 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:53:41 +0200 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 In-Reply-To: References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: <461DD775.9020300@interdesign.fr> Hmmmmm.... I couldn't put down Mountolive... even after the fifth reading had to finish it. If I am not mistaken Prospero's Cell was written in Alexandria, with Eve sitting watching him. At the same time he was making notes for AQ. His life, his love, his literature, his environment, ... All are part of his talent. Not many have been able to do this... only great writers. Marc Piel, Paris, france. MAUREEN MATTHEWS wrote: > I am not an academic, but I am a poet and a lover of books. Though I enjoyed the two early volumes of the Quartet without qualification, I found the final two grew more and more labored, and my interest flagging. Then, after a hiatus of many years from Durrell's fiction, I returned to read Tunc and Numquam, and found it frankly difficult, nay, nearly impossible, to believe that these two books had been written by the same man who had authored the Quartet. Dull dull dull. I am not a particular student of Durrell, but I tend to agree with the judgment I read in Kenneth Rexroth's essay on Durrell that he erred in giving in to pressure from publishers, and hurried the Quartet into publication before he had allowed it to mature sufficiently to maintain the high quality reached in Justine and Balthazar. A great loss, I think. I've never had the courage to weather the disappointment I imagine awaits if I wade into the Avignon Quintet. > > Garry Eaton > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Great to read of one of Durrell's island books being mentioned: > Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, along with Portrait of a > Marine Venus and Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most > enchanting writing - and that side of his personality which endeared him > to others; the champagne cork being popped. Durrell's Island books and > his Antrobus stories seem to me to be frequently overlooked in favour of > the heavy and mysterious Quartet and, especially the Quintet which I > ploughed through recently (mon dieu). I am afraid I concur with > Durrell's publisher who favoured him continuing with his island type > book rather than the ponderous Quintet. Durrell claimed to dislike > academics. Whether this is true or not, it appears he wrote the Quartet > and the Quintet to be taken seriously by them. For my money he need not > have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell fans agree? > > DG > > > > > > Denise Tart & David Green > 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 > > +61 2 9564 6165 > 0412 707 625 > dtart at bigpond.net.au > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: slighcl > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca > Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 12:28 AM > Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again > > Like Michael, I find that Justine carries within so many it tidelike > returns upon LD's other work. Prospero's Cell (1945) seems > especially present again--or even refracted with a difference--for > me in Justine 1.1. > > In Justine, a "sick" and "wounded" narrator sits on the "bare > promontory" of his island and looks back upon his memories of the > time in Alexandria. In Prospero's Cell, I am recalling the > "Epilogue in Alexandria"--cf. the way in which another wounded > narrator sits amid "black compromise" in the "unfamiliar element" of > Africa and looks back upon his memories of Greece and that > "unregretted" white house sitting out on the "bare promontory": > > The sightless Pharos turns its blind eye upon a coast, > featureless, level and sandy. . . . The last landmark on > the edge of Africa. The battleships in their arrowed > blackness turn slowly in the harbour. The loss of Greece > has been an amputation. All Epictetus could not console one > against it. > > Exile again and again; islands redux; cf. Richard Pine and other > excellent addresses of islomania in the novels. > > Turning battleships will re-turn soon. . . . One might even take a > fancy and use the perspectivism ready-at-hand to imagine the > narrator of Prospero's Cell involved with Darley's Alexandria and > Alexandrians. > > Of course before too long we must note another line of connection > between Justine and LD's interest in "Prospero"--"I have escaped to > this island with a few books and the child"--we have a replaying of > the Prospero-Miranda story to talk about in different ways. . . . > > CLS > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 00:13:53 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:13:53 +0200 Subject: [ilds] I was at first delighted and enthusiastic... In-Reply-To: <461D6516.2070404@wfu.edu> References: <461D556C.3010806@interdesign.fr> <461D6516.2070404@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <461DDC31.2070601@interdesign.fr> Thank you CLS, I was fraid I might have overstepped. But I was compelled as I felt that some of those posts were just ... Thank you anyway. Marc Piel, Paris, France. N.B: LD said in an interview that the french version of the AQ was better than the english, because his translator was a better author than he. slighcl wrote: > No need for misgivings, Marc. All that is required here is a book, a > keyboard, keen eyes and ears, and an appreciative enthusiasm. And now > that you have braved the waters, showing that you have those qualities, > I think that you will find it all a bit less daunting than you make it: > > < simply are (were) blown over enthusiasts of LD's mastery of words and > writing (w, w) who understood that to write so richly, one had to have > experienced a good part of what was put into words!>> > > Yes, indeed. That certainly is true for me now after 20 years. I do > not find any postings so far that have not expressed that same sort of > rapture and excitement that you are recalling. Even those pesky "edu" > postings that you mention seem to be emoting quite a bit, marvelling at > the possibiliies that LD's works open up. > > LD encouraged his readers to think of the Quartet as open to extension > in any number of directions. Here is to newness transpiring in all of > its forms. > > A very hearty welcome, Marc--we'll see you in the lists. > > CLS > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 00:50:02 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:50:02 +0200 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 re Sinuhe In-Reply-To: <32AE6B20-E88C-11DB-982D-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <32AE6B20-E88C-11DB-982D-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <461DE4AA.6020609@interdesign.fr> Hello again, Several times i have seen the word "sources" used and every time it shocks me. Surely there are better words like "influence, inspriration" and so on... an encyclopedia is a source, but surely meeting someone, or a pi?ce of literature is not the same. Best regards, Marc Piel Michael Haag wrote: > The death of the twelfth dynasty pharaoh Ammenemes inspired two classic > Middle Kingdom literary works which were studied and copied by Egyptian > schoolboys for hundreds of years to come. In the Instruction of > Ammenemes the king appears to his son Sesostris in a dream and tells how > he was attacked by the palace guard. 'It was after supper when night was > come, I took an hour of repose, lying upon my bed. All of a sudden > weapons were brandished, and I awoke to fight. But no one is strong at > night. No one can fight alone.' With a winning touch of vulnerability, > he warns his son of the heavy burdens of kingship, saying 'No man has > adherents on the day of distress'. In The Story of Sinuhe a secret > message is sent to Sesostris who is away campaigning in Libya, telling > him of his father's murder and urging his immediate return to Ijtawy. > The message is overheard by Sinuhe, a young court official, who fearful > that he will be drawn into the intrigues of rival claimants to the > throne flees to the desert and dwells among the Bedouin, eventually > becoming their chieftain. Further travels bring Sinuhe to Byblos where > he marries the local prince's daughter, is granted land and becomes > extremely wealthy. But in his old age Sinuhe longs to return to Egypt > and to be buried there according to the religion of his people. > Sesostris welcomes him, clears him of any wrongdoing, and honours Sinuhe > with a magnificent tomb. Apart from their appeal as drama and adventure, > these stories played upon Egyptians' attachment to tradition while > skilfully justifying Sesostris' right to rule and portraying him as a > wise and benevolent king. > > :Michael > > > On Wednesday, April 11, 2007, at 08:48 pm, william godshalk wrote: > > I'd like to suggest two other possible sources for the opening of > Justine 1.1. The first is Ovid who was exiled to Tomis, modern > Constanta, on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. He too looked > back at the "City" (Rome, of course, not Alexandria), and kept > writing. I will not mention Ovid's Island where he is supposed to > have been buried. Yes, I got this idea reading the TLS review of > Ovid's Poems of Exile. > > In 1949, Naomi Walford translated Mika Waltari's novel The Egyptian > into English. It was a best seller, and made into a movie. Sinuhe is > the narrator: "I begin this book in the third year of my exile on > the shores of the Eastern Sea. . . ." He calls out: "Turn, O you > years -- roll again, you vanished years . . . and bring again my > youth. Not one word will I alter, not my least action will I amend. > O brittle pen, smooth papyrus, give me back my folly and my youth!" > The parallel is not very close, but Durrell may have been taken by > the title -- and read the first few pages from which the above > sentences are taken. > > And, yes, Charlie, you are right. Shakespeare's The Tempest must > surely have been one of Durrell's sources. And Prospero's Cell may > indicate on which island the narrator and the child live. But those > books, what's in them? Are they books of magic? > > Bill_______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From knabb at bopsecrets.org Thu Apr 12 08:13:14 2007 From: knabb at bopsecrets.org (Ken Knabb) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:13:14 -0700 Subject: [ilds] Rexroth essay on Durrell References: Message-ID: <002a01c77d15$19590c80$f700fea9@VALUED7B9600FA> > I am not a particular student of Durrell, but I tend to agree with the > judgment I read in Kenneth Rexroth's essay on Durrell that he erred in > giving in to pressure from publishers, and hurried the Quartet into > publication before he had allowed it to mature sufficiently to maintain > the high quality reached in Justine and Balthazar. The Rexroth essay (actually a series of four reviews covering the "Alexandria Quartet", "The Black Book" and "Selected Poems") is online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/durrell.htm The same website includes several Rexroth essays on Henry Miller -- http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/henrymiller.htm and http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/henry-miller.htm -- as well as many others re Blake, D.H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, etc.: http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/index.htm From slighcl at wfu.edu Thu Apr 12 08:57:05 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:57:05 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 -- Rexroth again Message-ID: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> Responding to Gary Eaton, Ken Knabb usefully points us in the direction of the contemporary 1957 reception of /Justine/. I am particularly wondering about Rexroth's attention to parsing the difference between LD's "authorial style" and the rather rich and evocative prose style of unnamed narrator: /Justine /is at least the equal of /The Black Book/, from the comic irony of its title to the tour de force of a tour de force that is its style. It is an imitation of what the French call a /r?cit /of a weak, pretentious schoolmaster and amateur of the sensibility, who is very busy writing fine writing about his ridiculously self-conscious amours. But the take-off on fine writing is itself fine writing -- very fine writing indeed, and the two qualities, the real and its satirical mirror image, are so blended and confused that the exact nature of the "aesthetic satisfaction" is impossible to analyze. http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/durrell.htm I would like to think about Rexroth's observations in relation to /Justine /1.1. Although I must have read this essay a number of times in the past, I have to say that I am quite impressed with Rexroth's very quick insight that the "fine" prose style of /Justine /is meant to be taken as ironic, with a grain of salt, so that "the two qualities, the real and its satirical mirror image, are so blended and confused that the exact nature of the 'aesthetic satisfaction' is impossible to analyze." Are there any hints of this "comic irony" in that first episode, /Justine /1.1? Why do readers regularly conflate or confuse the narrator's prose style in /Justine /with LD's? How can we move toward a better appreciation of LD's many styles--one of which, of course, is written in the persona of this as-yet-unnamed narrator? CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/db6225e5/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Thu Apr 12 09:33:01 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 12:33:01 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 source or influence In-Reply-To: <461DE4AA.6020609@interdesign.fr> References: <32AE6B20-E88C-11DB-982D-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <461DE4AA.6020609@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <20070412163243.RCUI15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/88ac6420/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Thu Apr 12 10:25:15 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 18:25:15 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 Message-ID: Durrell was certainly not obliged by his publishers to write a quartet nor to write the second, third and fourth volumes as fast as he did. The initiative was entirely Durrell's. He worked on Justine from 1943 to 1956 -- thirteen years -- while each of the other volumes was knocked out in less than a year, sometimes very much less than a year. Opportunism is an interesting theme to pursue when discussing Durrell. :Michael From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 10:56:29 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 19:56:29 +0200 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 source or influence In-Reply-To: <20070412163243.RCUI15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <32AE6B20-E88C-11DB-982D-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <461DE4AA.6020609@interdesign.fr> <20070412163243.RCUI15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <461E72CD.9090405@interdesign.fr> Hello Bill, May I say that I don't like "intertextuality" either because it is very subjective. Either there are definitive arguments with proof, or conjectures: and the latter should be honest, and surely, without pretension! Marc Piel william godshalk wrote: > Yes, Marc "source" is a rather dated word. As you suggest, influence is > the better word. Some edu.s might prefer to talk about "intertextuality" > or the relationship between texts. > > Bill > >> Several times i have seen the word "sources" used >> and every time it shocks me. Surely there are >> better words like "influence, inspriration" and so >> on... an encyclopedia is a source, but surely >> meeting someone, or a pi?ce of literature is not >> the same. > > > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 11:01:24 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:01:24 +0200 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <461E73F4.3060806@interdesign.fr> Great Michael, Some ideas can take a long time to mature and once mature they can explode like the "inventions of spring". Marc Piel Michael Haag wrote: > Durrell was certainly not obliged by his publishers to write a quartet > nor to write the second, third and fourth volumes as fast as he did. > The initiative was entirely Durrell's. He worked on Justine from 1943 > to 1956 -- thirteen years -- while each of the other volumes was > knocked out in less than a year, sometimes very much less than a year. > Opportunism is an interesting theme to pursue when discussing Durrell. > > :Michael > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > From eahunger at charter.net Thu Apr 12 14:07:09 2007 From: eahunger at charter.net (Edward Hungerford) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:07:09 -0700 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 In-Reply-To: References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: <9a5532d922d4748f7409720dd1b807ea@charter.net> To G Eaton: I am sending you a reply --already written-- to your personal email address. To DG and others--- The comments on the Island books were refreshing--I too have always been continually fascinated by them, and especially by Prospero's Cell. Ed Hungerford ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------------------- On Apr 11, 2007, at 8:37 PM, MAUREEN MATTHEWS wrote: > I am not an academic, but I am a poet and a lover of books. Though I > enjoyed the two early volumes of the Quartet without qualification, I > found the final two grew more and more labored, and my interest > flagging. Then, after a hiatus of many years from Durrell's fiction, I > returned to read Tunc and Numquam, and found it frankly difficult, > nay, nearly impossible, to believe that these two books had been > written by the same man who had authored the Quartet. Dull dull dull. > I am not a particular student of Durrell, but I tend to agree with the > judgment I read in Kenneth Rexroth's essay on Durrell that he erred > in giving in to pressure from publishers, and hurried the Quartet into > publication before he had allowed it to mature sufficiently to > maintain the high quality reached in Justine and Balthazar. A great > loss, I think. I've never had the courage to weather the > disappointment I imagine awaits if I wade into the Avignon Quintet. > > Garry Eaton > Great to read of one of Durrell's island books being mentioned: > Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, along with Portrait of > a Marine Venus and Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most > enchanting writing - and that side of his personality which endeared > him to others; the champagne cork being popped. Durrell's Island books > and his Antrobus stories seem to me to be frequently overlooked in > favour of the heavy and mysterious Quartet and,?especially the?Quintet > which I ploughed through recently (mon dieu). I am afraid I concur > with Durrell's publisher who favoured him continuing with his island > type book rather than the ponderous Quintet. Durrell claimed to > dislike academics. Whether this is true or not, it appears he wrote > the Quartet and the Quintet to be taken seriously by them. For my > money he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell fans agree? > ? > DG > ? > ? > ? > ? > ? > Denise Tart & David Green > 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 > ? > +61 2 9564 6165 > 0412 707 625 > dtart at bigpond.net.au >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: slighcl >> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca >> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 12:28 AM >> Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 - again >> >> Like Michael, I find that Justine carries within so many it tidelike >> returns upon LD's other work.? Prospero's Cell (1945) seems >> especially present again--or even refracted with a difference--for me >> in Justine 1.1.? >> >> In Justine, a "sick" and "wounded" narrator sits on the "bare >> promontory" of his island and looks back upon his memories of the >> time in Alexandria.? In Prospero's Cell, I am recalling the "Epilogue >> in Alexandria"--cf. the way in which another wounded narrator sits >> amid "black compromise" in the "unfamiliar element" of Africa and >> looks back upon his memories of Greece and that "unregretted" white >> house sitting out on the "bare promontory": >>>> The sightless Pharos turns its blind eye upon a coast, featureless, >>>> level and sandy. . . .? The last landmark on the edge of Africa.? >>>> The battleships in their arrowed blackness turn slowly in the >>>> harbour.? The loss of Greece has been an amputation.? All Epictetus >>>> could not console one against it. >> Exile again and again; islands redux; cf. Richard Pine and other >> excellent addresses of islomania in the novels.? >> >> Turning battleships will re-turn soon. . . .? One might even take a >> fancy and use the perspectivism ready-at-hand to imagine the narrator >> of Prospero's Cell involved with Darley's Alexandria and >> Alexandrians.?? >> >> Of course before too long we must note another line of connection >> between Justine and LD's interest in "Prospero"--"I have escaped to >> this island with a few books and the child"--we have a replaying of >> the Prospero-Miranda story to talk about in different ways. . . . >> >> CLS >> -- >> ********************** >> Charles L. Sligh >> Department of English >> Wake Forest University >> slighcl at wfu.edu >> ********************** >> >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5996 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/0b03b4d8/attachment.bin From dtart at bigpond.net.au Thu Apr 12 14:07:25 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:07:25 +1000 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <461DD775.9020300@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <004b01c77d46$925dc4f0$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Marc, No one, least of all me, is denying that LD was a great artist. All his works are fascinating and exhale the vast character of their author (although my wife thinks he was a selfish yobbo, addicted to drink) and if we are fascinated by the LD universe then all his books have merit. What we are talking about here is preferences and emphasis. Since I have been on the LD list, the emphasis appears to be on the great cycles - both AQs if you like - whereas I, and it seems one others, prefer different works such as the island books and the Antrobus stories. I would particularly direct readers to Bitter Lemons (of Cyprus) which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. "He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation...Eschewing politics, it says more about them than all our leading articles..in describing a political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty" - Kingsley Martin. Bitter Lemons is written with Durrell's sensative, evocative muscular prose and it is funny too, in places. Voices at the Tavern Door is an excellent chapter in which Durrell avoids a punch up with the peasant Frangos by telling him that his brother, Gerald, died fighting for Greece at the Battle of Thermopylae. The classical and medieval past inhabits much of Durrell's fiction, including lies told to illiterate but large and menacing peasants in a Cypriot wine bar. David Green Sydney, Australia Denise Tart & David Green 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 +61 2 9564 6165 0412 707 625 dtart at bigpond.net.au ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Piel" To: Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 4:53 PM Subject: Re: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 > Hmmmmm.... I couldn't put down Mountolive... even > after the fifth reading had to finish it. > > If I am not mistaken Prospero's Cell was written > in Alexandria, with Eve sitting watching him. At > the same time he was making notes for AQ. > > His life, his love, his literature, his > environment, ... All are part of his talent. > Not many have been able to do this... only great > writers. > Marc Piel, > Paris, france. From slighcl at wfu.edu Thu Apr 12 14:22:34 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:22:34 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 -- narrator In-Reply-To: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> References: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <461EA31A.10309@wfu.edu> In response to the Rexroth essay and in pursuit of what things we learn early on about the "character" of the narrator, I note the following: I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child--Melissa's child. I do not know why I use the word 'escape'. The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way. . . . /Justine /1.1 gives us precious little info that is clear and direct. We do get a wonderfully evocative setting, but almost everything factual opens up more questions than answers. (E.g., the name of the island and ocean; the identity of Melissa, Justine, Nessim, Balthazar; the exact relations of these "friends" and the "child" to the narrator and to each other, along with the specific nature of the "conflicts" for which they might be "judged" in some other, more exacting moral economy. All of this evokes more than it tells.) What we do get--and what can be seen in the paragraph copied out above--is a narrator learning to overhear himself and come to a better understanding of his pretensions. I find it telling that immediately following upon the ripe, polished sentences in the first paragraph--"sky of hot nude pearl" &c.--the narrator suddenly pulls back and questions his own heightened, dramatic prose--"I do not know why I use the word 'escape'." Immediately after that, he recalls that he is neither living nor writing in a vacuum: first, there are his neighbors, those "villagers," making their little jokes about the "sick man"; and then he invokes the second person "you," calling us into an awareness that we--like those villagers--are not passive, but active presences, involved in making meanings out of the text. I think that this second paragraph tells us much about 1. who the narrator is--he is someone learning, criticizing himself, tearing down, rebuilding--moving "so far away" from his Alexandrian self so that he can gain some critical distance and "understand it all." It certainly does not spoil anything to note that, like this early self-revision of "escape," the narrator's present attempt to understand it all in his "Justine" manuscript will have to be reconsidered and revised at the opening of /Balthazar/, itself a revision of the opening of /Justine/. 2. what kind of audience LD expects for his book--that is, to follow Pursewarden's Obiter Dicta in /Balthazar/, one who is "not too lazy to use a knife" on his author. Let us recall Pursewarden again: "I refer the reader to a blank page in order to throw him back upon his own resources--which is where every reader ultimately belongs." Let us also recall the epigraph from Sade: I ask whether there can be any hesi- tation, lovely Th?r?se, and where will your little mind find an argument able to combat that one? CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/33f38bc6/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Thu Apr 12 14:35:20 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:35:20 -0400 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 In-Reply-To: <9a5532d922d4748f7409720dd1b807ea@charter.net> References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <9a5532d922d4748f7409720dd1b807ea@charter.net> Message-ID: <461EA618.8060103@wfu.edu> On 4/12/2007 5:07 PM, Edward Hungerford wrote: > The comments on the Island books were refreshing--I too have always > been continually fascinated by them, and especially by Prospero's Cell. I am in agreement. If I had to choose the proverbial "desert island books," the LD book taken along would most certainly be /Prospero's Cell/. It has a finished style, an architectural balance, and a range of human experience at once personal and historical that I think that even the /Quartet /as a total work cannot match. One of the great meditations on Time, Place, and the mortality of Love. It has this Swinburnean's vote. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/89e724e6/attachment-0001.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 14:46:42 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:46:42 +0200 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 In-Reply-To: <004b01c77d46$925dc4f0$0202a8c0@MumandDad> References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <461DD775.9020300@interdesign.fr> <004b01c77d46$925dc4f0$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: <461EA8C2.9060304@interdesign.fr> Hello Denise and David, Yes LD's rhetoric to his surroundings and the individuals (including their culture and influences) is so fine as to be unique, plus his talent of expression and onomatopoeia is so strong that many tend to misinterpret it and give it other meanings. Each piece of writing must be read in the context it belongs to. This surely makes it hard and adventurous, to compare one piece with another. Why is comparison necessary? Surely each pi?ce has it's own value??? The only piece that left me cold was Antrobus Stories; but I quickly understood that this was a difference in cultural issues that had nothing to do with with talent or writing skill. best regards Marc Piel Denise Tart & David Green wrote: > Marc, > > No one, least of all me, is denying that LD was a great artist. All his > works are fascinating and exhale the vast character of their author > (although my wife thinks he was a selfish yobbo, addicted to drink) and if > we are fascinated by the LD universe then all his books have merit. What we > are talking about here is preferences and emphasis. Since I have been on the > LD list, the emphasis appears to be on the great cycles - both AQs if you > like - whereas I, and it seems one others, prefer different works such as > the island books and the Antrobus stories. I would particularly direct > readers to Bitter Lemons (of Cyprus) which won the Duff Cooper Memorial > Prize. > > "He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and > landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation...Eschewing politics, it > says more about them than all our leading articles..in describing a > political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty" - Kingsley Martin. > > Bitter Lemons is written with Durrell's sensative, evocative muscular prose > and it is funny too, in places. > > Voices at the Tavern Door is an excellent chapter in which Durrell avoids a > punch up with the peasant Frangos by telling him that his brother, Gerald, > died fighting for Greece at the Battle of Thermopylae. > The classical and medieval past inhabits much of Durrell's fiction, > including lies told to illiterate but large and menacing peasants in a > Cypriot wine bar. > > David Green > Sydney, Australia > > Denise Tart & David Green > 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 > > +61 2 9564 6165 > 0412 707 625 > dtart at bigpond.net.au > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Marc Piel" > To: > Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 4:53 PM > Subject: Re: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 > > > >>Hmmmmm.... I couldn't put down Mountolive... even >>after the fifth reading had to finish it. >> >>If I am not mistaken Prospero's Cell was written >>in Alexandria, with Eve sitting watching him. At >>the same time he was making notes for AQ. >> >>His life, his love, his literature, his >>environment, ... All are part of his talent. >>Not many have been able to do this... only great >>writers. >>Marc Piel, >>Paris, france. > > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 14:50:35 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:50:35 +0200 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 -- narrator In-Reply-To: <461EA31A.10309@wfu.edu> References: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> <461EA31A.10309@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <461EA9AB.7010505@interdesign.fr> Surely this is more an author (fisherman) baiting his readers, rather than "a narrator learning to overhear himself"??????? Marc Piel slighcl wrote: > In response to the Rexroth essay and in pursuit of what things we learn > early on about the "character" of the narrator, I note the following: > > I have escaped to this island with a few books and the > child--Melissa's child. I do not know why I use the word > 'escape'. The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would > choose such a remote place to rebuild. Well, then, I have come > here to heal myself, if you like to put it that way. . . . > > Justine 1.1 gives us precious little info that is clear and direct. We > do get a wonderfully evocative setting, but almost everything factual > opens up more questions than answers. (E.g., the name of the island and > ocean; the identity of Melissa, Justine, Nessim, Balthazar; the exact > relations of these "friends" and the "child" to the narrator and to each > other, along with the specific nature of the "conflicts" for which they > might be "judged" in some other, more exacting moral economy. All of > this evokes more than it tells.) > > What we do get--and what can be seen in the paragraph copied out > above--is a narrator learning to overhear himself and come to a better > understanding of his pretensions. I find it telling that immediately > following upon the ripe, polished sentences in the first paragraph--"sky > of hot nude pearl" &c.--the narrator suddenly pulls back and questions > his own heightened, dramatic prose--"I do not know why I use the word > 'escape'." Immediately after that, he recalls that he is neither living > nor writing in a vacuum: first, there are his neighbors, those > "villagers," making their little jokes about the "sick man"; and then he > invokes the second person "you," calling us into an awareness that > we--like those villagers--are not passive, but active presences, > involved in making meanings out of the text. > > I think that this second paragraph tells us much about > > 1. who the narrator is--he is someone learning, criticizing himself, > tearing down, rebuilding--moving "so far away" from his > Alexandrian self so that he can gain some critical distance and > "understand it all." It certainly does not spoil anything to note > that, like this early self-revision of "escape," the narrator's > present attempt to understand it all in his "Justine" manuscript > will have to be reconsidered and revised at the opening of > Balthazar, itself a revision of the opening of Justine. > 2. what kind of audience LD expects for his book--that is, to follow > Pursewarden's Obiter Dicta in Balthazar, one who is "not too lazy > to use a knife" on his author. > > Let us recall Pursewarden again: > > "I refer the reader to a blank page in order to throw him back > upon his own resources--which is where every reader ultimately > belongs." > > Let us also recall the epigraph from Sade: > > I ask whether there can be any hesi- > tation, lovely Th?r?se, and where will your > little mind find an argument able to combat > that one? > > CLS > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Thu Apr 12 15:02:30 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:02:30 +0200 Subject: [ilds] DG Prospero's Cell 1.1 In-Reply-To: <461EA618.8060103@wfu.edu> References: <461CF081.2070909@wfu.edu> <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> <9a5532d922d4748f7409720dd1b807ea@charter.net> <461EA618.8060103@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <461EAC76.9050604@interdesign.fr> I would be tempted to think that the quality of the details was because of the intensity of his first love with Nancy (it was based on notes from that period), the calm with which it was written (this is important) was because of the presence of Eve, and then of course the quality of the writing is LD himself at his best. These three criteria don't always coincide; so comparisons are not always valid (sure there is another word?). Marc Piel slighcl wrote: > On 4/12/2007 5:07 PM, Edward Hungerford wrote: > >> The comments on the Island books were refreshing--I too have always >> been continually fascinated by them, and especially by Prospero's Cell. > > I am in agreement. If I had to choose the proverbial "desert island > books," the LD book taken along would most certainly be Prospero's > Cell. It has a finished style, an architectural balance, and a range of > human experience at once personal and historical that I think that even > the Quartet as a total work cannot match. One of the great meditations > on Time, Place, and the mortality of Love. It has this Swinburnean's vote. > > CLS > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Thu Apr 12 15:58:57 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:58:57 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero In-Reply-To: <005201c77c84$1aeff810$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Message-ID: David Green (and much of the current discussion here) raises what I think is a complicated but important point about Durrell's different works. > Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, > along with Portrait of a Marine Venus and > Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most > enchanting writing - and that side of his > personality which endeared him to others; the > champagne cork being popped. I'd have to agree with this -- for my money, _Prospero's Cell_ is probably the loveliest book he wrote, though I'd also avoid calling it uncomplicated. I also have to admit to a double purpose: when I'm teaching, close readings are a big help, so this kind of discussion is a chance to enliven my resources. Part of what I think is going on is how _Justine_ stops the reader in many ways and forces a slightly different kind of reading activity. The island books are generally easier to float through, _Justine_ slows you down, and the Quintet stops one dead in one's tracks... For instance, _Prospero's Cell_ is not a difficult book to read, per se, although I do think it *invites* difficulty without *requiring* it. Both _PC_ and _Justine_ open with a direct engagement with the landscape. Much like Durrell's apparently well-planned placement of the reader in those opening passages of _Justine_, _PC_ opens with a "You" who enters Greece as You would enter a dark crystal that refracts and distorts. This "You" also enters an island that offers "something harder, the discovery of yourself" as s/he would enter a landscape... The location reshapes vision, and the trembling air over Corfu (presumably over the water in the summer heat) prompts the comparison of Greece to a dark crystal that reflects only yourself, but a distorted version. This is surprisingly close to the Quartet, both for landscape and vision. Yet, that introduction does not put me back on my heels in the way _Quinx_ does, but even without forcing me to pause, it is far from uncomplicated. > it appears he wrote the Quartet and the Quintet to > be taken seriously by them [academics]. For my money > he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell > fans agree? Every reader needs to have a preference -- it's why I still don't particularly enjoy Henry James (sorry to say). But, I wonder if it hasn't also got something to do with how Durrell wanted to shape the reader for different purposes? David's first sentence above is a serious one. Did LD write the Quartet in order to be taken seriously by academics or such that it is taken seriously by them? I think both. For instance, his UNESCO lectures on Shakespeare show a very close familiarity with the manner in which academics deal with variants, such as the 'bad Quarto's' of _Hamlet_. It comes, then, as no surprise to find he's working on a book that enchants one academically (bibliographically?) as much as it enchants stylistically. {for the record, LD's crazy idea that Q1 Hamlet was an abridged version for stage is actually endorsed in the newest Cambridge edition of Q1...} In other words, LD knew that academic readers watch for variants, and sure enough, he constructed variants for us: ones that reflect the main themes of the novel... It's not just there to tease academics, but rather to extend the book. Not every reader needs to read for that, but surely it's a part of the book, no? Marc Piel makes a related point on "sources" versus "influences" or "inspirations." These are all messy terms, none of them being sufficient, but I think "source" avoids some of the implication of simply mimicking another author. I think Durrell had sources, even though Eliot would have preferred he have influences... One of the reasons I harp on about Eliot is his emphasis on allusions, which is closely caught up in his notion of Tradition. When he founded _The Criterion_, he included "The Waste Land," as if this set the tone for the whole endeavour. It's an elitism for an educated background, a style of reading, and a luxuriousness of production that set Modernism apart (and more importantly, "above"). And, as possibly the most influential editor of perhaps the most important publishing house (in retrospect) and of perhaps the most significant literary journal, his shadow carries a lot of weight, especially for Durrell, who wanted to published in _The Criterion_ and did publish through Faber & Faber. I think Durrell learned much from Eliot, and that allusive technique is there, but he upsets the 'Tradition' to which he refers and seems to be out to refute Eliot in some ways as well. For instance, we have all of this "academic" stuff in the opening of _Justine_ and an invitation to pursue it, but it's not like diving into "The Waste Land." The allusions are enlivened on repeat readings, but you needn't pursue them to read the book. The beauty of the language is enough in itself. The allusions also seem to me to point the reader inward, which is something I don't have when I read Eliot. So, is this just polishing brass belly buttons, as Marc asks? I think not. It would be like saying Alexandria isn't part of the book, or the Levant or Mediterranean play no role. After all, isn't the majority of the plot about readers reading and learning how to read differently, until they ultimately become writers? (ie: Nessim's diaries, Arnauti's _Moeurs_, Balthazar's interlinear, Pursewarden's letters, Clea's letters, etc. -->to--> our variant editions, notebooks drafts, the corrected proofs, etc.) We needn't read that way, nor must we read with a sense of the politics or biography, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't read for those things. Yet, does that restrict one from being simply enchanted by "words & writing," also at Marc's suggestion? I certainly hope not! I also wouldn't trust the word "simply" -- there's nothing simple about that kind of meaningful engagement with the text. That said, the books after the Quartet seem to make this obsession with texts themselves increasingly a part of the aesthetic -- if that doesn't appeal to the reader, then I doubt those later books will either, nor would that side of _Justine_... I must admit to being such as reader as is drawn to that textual aesthetic, and for that reason I've always found the Quintet the most appealing work, and hence that reading style colours the rest of my reading of the other earlier works. Cheers, James ___________________________ James Gifford Department of English University of Victoria Victoria, B.C., Canada http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford From slighcl at wfu.edu Thu Apr 12 17:27:53 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:27:53 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 -- narrator In-Reply-To: <461EA9AB.7010505@interdesign.fr> References: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> <461EA31A.10309@wfu.edu> <461EA9AB.7010505@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <461ECE89.3@wfu.edu> On 4/12/2007 5:50 PM, Marc Piel wrote: >Surely this is more an author (fisherman) baiting >his readers, rather than "a narrator learning to >overhear himself"??????? >Marc Piel > Certainly "Old D" is up to all sorts of tricks in his books, baiting, fishing, catching, releasing, and otherwise, Marc. But if we pay close attention to the opening of /Balthazar /we certainly cannot ignore that one of the major points of /Justine/ is to show us how self-involved and blinded the narrator became as he sat there in splendid isolation on his island trying to "understand it all.". The narrator not only learns via his friend Balthazar that he got any number of essential facts about his Alexandrian experience wrong, he also discovers that the very attempt to "understand it all"--as in comprehensive, totalizing knowledge--may be at the root of his mistake. This error, as Darley admits, occurred at once on the level of the history he had cobbled together and also on the level of the language, the words and style that he used: Justine, Melissa, Clea. . . . I had set myself the task of trying to recover them in words, reinstate them in memory, allot to each his and her position in my time. Selfishly. And with that writing complete, I felt that I had turned a key upon the doll's house of our actions. Indeed, I saw my lovers and friends no longer as living people but as coloured transfers of the mind; inhabiting my papers now, no longer the city, like tapestry figures. It was difficult to concede to them any more common reality than to the words I had used about them. What has recalled me to myself? But in order to go on, it is necessary to go back. . . . (/Balthazar /1.2) I am wondering several things, perhaps not unrelated: * if the narrator has any inklings of his own self-indulgences earlier than the opening of /Balthazar/--perhaps, as I have said, in /Justine /1.1; * how does a reader without knowledge of the revelations given in /Balthazar /spot the "comic irony" that Rexroth notes--my admiration is that Rexroth is able to articulate the point so early--pre-/Balthazar/; And so we must go back to the text. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/cf460e24/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Thu Apr 12 19:00:57 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:00:57 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and Balthazar In-Reply-To: <461ECE89.3@wfu.edu> References: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> <461EA31A.10309@wfu.edu> <461EA9AB.7010505@interdesign.fr> <461ECE89.3@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070413020029.VGJV15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/63dacd52/attachment-0001.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Thu Apr 12 18:47:52 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:47:52 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 -- narrator In-Reply-To: <461ECE89.3@wfu.edu> Message-ID: > Charles Sligh has several times mentioned Rexroth's perspicacity (eg see below). I am not so sure. In writing about Justine in 1957 Rexroth seems to be wanting it to be what he thinks it ought to be. He is still happy, even happier, when reviewing Balthazar in 1958. Then in 1960 Rexroth announces that in fact Durrell is 'frivolous and irresponsible'; what Rexroth had divined as 'complex and subtle and ironic' has turned into something 'flimsy, schematic and flashy'. And it is not only that Rexroth is angry at Durrell making dangerous use of the Copts. It is that Durrell turns out to be an Englishman which Rexroth compares to being 'a Southern Congressman ... sounding off'. The moment Rexroth discovers something that crosses him politically, as in Bitter Lemons and Mountolive, his perspicacity turns on a dime. Was Rexroth right in divining irony in Justine, and was he also right in finding Clea sensationalist claptrap? I wonder whether his literary views are not conditioned and limited by a certain political infancy. :Michael > ? > ? how does a reader without knowledge of the revelations given in > Balthazar spot the "comic irony" that Rexroth notes--my admiration is > that Rexroth is able to articulate the point so early--pre-Balthazar > (CLS) > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1406 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/fc2561c8/attachment.bin From slighcl at wfu.edu Thu Apr 12 20:06:19 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:06:19 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and Balthazar In-Reply-To: <20070413020029.VGJV15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <461E56D1.5060401@wfu.edu> <461EA31A.10309@wfu.edu> <461EA9AB.7010505@interdesign.fr> <461ECE89.3@wfu.edu> <20070413020029.VGJV15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <461EF3AB.1030208@wfu.edu> I will try to tie this post to the mailings by Bill and Michael. Michael asks: <> Your points about Rexroth's political differences with LD are of great interest, Michael, and go into the larger contemporary context of the reception in ways that I had not even divined. Thanks for that. Aside from Rexroth's settling of political scores via book reviews, I would have to agree with him that I find /Clea /less interesting, but disagree with him about /Mountolive/. I have my aesthetic axe to grind, rather than political, I suppose. I think what was catching my attention in Rexroth's reviews of /Justine /and /Balthazar /was the way in which he could early on articulate the fact that something odd and ironic was going on with what he calls the "fine writing." Whereas many 1957 reviewers tended to flatten the distance between the narrative persona and LD--referring to the "hauntingly sensual style" and the "brilliance" and "clarity" of LD's prose, while ignoring the narrative ironies--Rexroth takes an extra step, noting that it all might be "a satirical mirror image"--"the take-off on fine writing is itself fine writing." I would suspect that a good number of first time readers in 1987 or 1997 or 2007 also fail to ponder the complexities of the narrative voice and prose style of /Justine/. I might also question Rexroth's assumption that LD was up to that sort of thing initially, in a planned sort of way. Based on my time with the /Justine /notebooks at the BL, I think that I find LD gradually feeling his way toward the fuller implications of mirrored narrators, discovering his innovation as he progresses. In his drafting LD outgrew any number of narrative voices/authorial personae, becoming frustrated with them and setting them aside again and again as dead ends. For one example, the Arnuati persona quoted at length by Darley is one of the starts for this kind of narrative self-consciousness--it is at once a remnant of an older, unfinished attempt LD had made towards "Justine" and, set within its new contextual frame of /Justine/, a brilliant innovation. You mentioned LD's "opportunism," Michael. Sometimes opportunism can beget some wonderful art. Bitter Lemons becoming lemonade. Bill writes: >> But does the narrator ever do anything about these self-indulgences? >> Is Bathazar any less romantically indulgent than Justine? I used to >> believe that Rexroth was right on the money. Now I have my doubts. > Bill makes a good point about the disjunct between Darley's claims in /Balthazar /to have learned something crucial and his continual use of a lush, "romantically indulgent" style. That is a puzzle--I can't answer it. And a confession of a justified aesthete here: I take such delight in so much of the prose in /Justine /and /Balthazar /that, ironic or not ironic, right or wrong, mature or immature, I would not wish him to "do anything" about it Please don't take my "sky of hot nude pearl" away. Nor my "five races, five languages, a dozen creeds: five fleets turning through their greasy reflections behind the harbour bar" (1.2). Self-involved, yes; willfully turning in on itself through gratuitous echoing series and sequence. But wonderful. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070412/79ecd06b/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Fri Apr 13 04:41:44 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:41:44 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's literary afterlife Message-ID: <461F6C78.1050708@wfu.edu> I am always fascinated by Lawrence Durrell's literary afterlife. Recently it was revealed that LD was one of Raymond Carver's favorite prose stylists. That must give a certain pause to anyone who has really thought about those two writers different aesthetic. And then today in the Tacoma News Tribune, LD is referenced in the obituary notice of a crime writer, Michael Dibdin: "Dibdin can capture the sense of place with the swift poetic accuracy of Lawrence Durrell, and Venice, its people, manners and mores are the center of a book," wrote critic Charles Champlin in a 1995 Los Angeles Times review of "Dead Lagoon" (1994). http://www.thenewstribune.com/359/story/37956.html It is pleasing to hear that at least in some measure LD survives in the larger conversation. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/1a918f95/attachment.html From sumantranag at gmail.com Fri Apr 13 10:35:16 2007 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:05:16 +0530 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero References: Message-ID: <00f301c77df2$1c884a00$36baa37a@abc> James Gifford refers to: ".....Portrait of a Marine Venus ...." Should it not be _Reflections on a Marine Venus_? Regards Sumantra Nag ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Gifford" To: Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 4:28 AM Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero > David Green (and much of the current discussion here) raises what I think is > a complicated but important point about Durrell's different works. > > > Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, > > along with Portrait of a Marine Venus and > > Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most > > enchanting writing - and that side of his > > personality which endeared him to others; the > > champagne cork being popped. > > I'd have to agree with this -- for my money, _Prospero's Cell_ is probably > the loveliest book he wrote, though I'd also avoid calling it uncomplicated. > I also have to admit to a double purpose: when I'm teaching, close readings > are a big help, so this kind of discussion is a chance to enliven my > resources. Part of what I think is going on is how _Justine_ stops the > reader in many ways and forces a slightly different kind of reading > activity. The island books are generally easier to float through, _Justine_ > slows you down, and the Quintet stops one dead in one's tracks... > > For instance, _Prospero's Cell_ is not a difficult book to read, per se, > although I do think it *invites* difficulty without *requiring* it. > > Both _PC_ and _Justine_ open with a direct engagement with the landscape. > Much like Durrell's apparently well-planned placement of the reader in those > opening passages of _Justine_, _PC_ opens with a "You" who enters Greece as > You would enter a dark crystal that refracts and distorts. This "You" also > enters an island that offers "something harder, the discovery of yourself" > as s/he would enter a landscape... > > The location reshapes vision, and the trembling air over Corfu (presumably > over the water in the summer heat) prompts the comparison of Greece to a > dark crystal that reflects only yourself, but a distorted version. This is > surprisingly close to the Quartet, both for landscape and vision. > > Yet, that introduction does not put me back on my heels in the way _Quinx_ > does, but even without forcing me to pause, it is far from uncomplicated. > > > it appears he wrote the Quartet and the Quintet to > > be taken seriously by them [academics]. For my money > > he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell > > fans agree? > > Every reader needs to have a preference -- it's why I still don't > particularly enjoy Henry James (sorry to say). But, I wonder if it hasn't > also got something to do with how Durrell wanted to shape the reader for > different purposes? > > David's first sentence above is a serious one. Did LD write the Quartet in > order to be taken seriously by academics or such that it is taken seriously > by them? I think both. For instance, his UNESCO lectures on Shakespeare > show a very close familiarity with the manner in which academics deal with > variants, such as the 'bad Quarto's' of _Hamlet_. It comes, then, as no > surprise to find he's working on a book that enchants one academically > (bibliographically?) as much as it enchants stylistically. > > {for the record, LD's crazy idea that Q1 Hamlet was an abridged version for > stage is actually endorsed in the newest Cambridge edition of Q1...} > > In other words, LD knew that academic readers watch for variants, and sure > enough, he constructed variants for us: ones that reflect the main themes of > the novel... It's not just there to tease academics, but rather to extend > the book. Not every reader needs to read for that, but surely it's a part > of the book, no? > > Marc Piel makes a related point on "sources" versus "influences" or > "inspirations." These are all messy terms, none of them being sufficient, > but I think "source" avoids some of the implication of simply mimicking > another author. I think Durrell had sources, even though Eliot would have > preferred he have influences... > > One of the reasons I harp on about Eliot is his emphasis on allusions, which > is closely caught up in his notion of Tradition. When he founded _The > Criterion_, he included "The Waste Land," as if this set the tone for the > whole endeavour. It's an elitism for an educated background, a style of > reading, and a luxuriousness of production that set Modernism apart (and > more importantly, "above"). And, as possibly the most influential editor of > perhaps the most important publishing house (in retrospect) and of perhaps > the most significant literary journal, his shadow carries a lot of weight, > especially for Durrell, who wanted to published in _The Criterion_ and did > publish through Faber & Faber. > > I think Durrell learned much from Eliot, and that allusive technique is > there, but he upsets the 'Tradition' to which he refers and seems to be out > to refute Eliot in some ways as well. > > For instance, we have all of this "academic" stuff in the opening of > _Justine_ and an invitation to pursue it, but it's not like diving into "The > Waste Land." The allusions are enlivened on repeat readings, but you > needn't pursue them to read the book. The beauty of the language is enough > in itself. The allusions also seem to me to point the reader inward, which > is something I don't have when I read Eliot. > > So, is this just polishing brass belly buttons, as Marc asks? I think not. > It would be like saying Alexandria isn't part of the book, or the Levant or > Mediterranean play no role. After all, isn't the majority of the plot about > readers reading and learning how to read differently, until they ultimately > become writers? (ie: Nessim's diaries, Arnauti's _Moeurs_, Balthazar's > interlinear, Pursewarden's letters, Clea's letters, etc. -->to--> our > variant editions, notebooks drafts, the corrected proofs, etc.) We needn't > read that way, nor must we read with a sense of the politics or biography, > but that doesn't mean we shouldn't read for those things. > > Yet, does that restrict one from being simply enchanted by "words & > writing," also at Marc's suggestion? I certainly hope not! I also wouldn't > trust the word "simply" -- there's nothing simple about that kind of > meaningful engagement with the text. > > That said, the books after the Quartet seem to make this obsession with > texts themselves increasingly a part of the aesthetic -- if that doesn't > appeal to the reader, then I doubt those later books will either, nor would > that side of _Justine_... I must admit to being such as reader as is drawn > to that textual aesthetic, and for that reason I've always found the Quintet > the most appealing work, and hence that reading style colours the rest of my > reading of the other earlier works. > > Cheers, > James > ___________________________ > James Gifford > Department of English > University of Victoria > Victoria, B.C., Canada > http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/455dddf9/attachment-0001.html From sumantranag at gmail.com Fri Apr 13 10:47:31 2007 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:17:31 +0530 Subject: [ilds] Fw: RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero Message-ID: <013201c77df3$d2d5cb60$36baa37a@abc> Sorry, James Gifford was quoting David Green, while referring to "....Portrait of A Marine Venus..." Sumantra Nag ----- Original Message ----- From: Sumantra Nag To: gifford at uvic.ca ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 11:05 PM Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero James Gifford refers to: ".....Portrait of a Marine Venus ...." Should it not be _Reflections on a Marine Venus_? Regards Sumantra Nag ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Gifford" To: Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 4:28 AM Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero > David Green (and much of the current discussion here) raises what I think is > a complicated but important point about Durrell's different works. > > > Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, > > along with Portrait of a Marine Venus and > > Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most > > enchanting writing - and that side of his > > personality which endeared him to others; the > > champagne cork being popped. > > I'd have to agree with this -- for my money, _Prospero's Cell_ is probably > the loveliest book he wrote, though I'd also avoid calling it uncomplicated. > I also have to admit to a double purpose: when I'm teaching, close readings > are a big help, so this kind of discussion is a chance to enliven my > resources. Part of what I think is going on is how _Justine_ stops the > reader in many ways and forces a slightly different kind of reading > activity. The island books are generally easier to float through, _Justine_ > slows you down, and the Quintet stops one dead in one's tracks... > > For instance, _Prospero's Cell_ is not a difficult book to read, per se, > although I do think it *invites* difficulty without *requiring* it. > > Both _PC_ and _Justine_ open with a direct engagement with the landscape. > Much like Durrell's apparently well-planned placement of the reader in those > opening passages of _Justine_, _PC_ opens with a "You" who enters Greece as > You would enter a dark crystal that refracts and distorts. This "You" also > enters an island that offers "something harder, the discovery of yourself" > as s/he would enter a landscape... > > The location reshapes vision, and the trembling air over Corfu (presumably > over the water in the summer heat) prompts the comparison of Greece to a > dark crystal that reflects only yourself, but a distorted version. This is > surprisingly close to the Quartet, both for landscape and vision. > > Yet, that introduction does not put me back on my heels in the way _Quinx_ > does, but even without forcing me to pause, it is far from uncomplicated. > > > it appears he wrote the Quartet and the Quintet to > > be taken seriously by them [academics]. For my money > > he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell > > fans agree? > > Every reader needs to have a preference -- it's why I still don't > particularly enjoy Henry James (sorry to say). But, I wonder if it hasn't > also got something to do with how Durrell wanted to shape the reader for > different purposes? > > David's first sentence above is a serious one. Did LD write the Quartet in > order to be taken seriously by academics or such that it is taken seriously > by them? I think both. For instance, his UNESCO lectures on Shakespeare > show a very close familiarity with the manner in which academics deal with > variants, such as the 'bad Quarto's' of _Hamlet_. It comes, then, as no > surprise to find he's working on a book that enchants one academically > (bibliographically?) as much as it enchants stylistically. > > {for the record, LD's crazy idea that Q1 Hamlet was an abridged version for > stage is actually endorsed in the newest Cambridge edition of Q1...} > > In other words, LD knew that academic readers watch for variants, and sure > enough, he constructed variants for us: ones that reflect the main themes of > the novel... It's not just there to tease academics, but rather to extend > the book. Not every reader needs to read for that, but surely it's a part > of the book, no? > > Marc Piel makes a related point on "sources" versus "influences" or > "inspirations." These are all messy terms, none of them being sufficient, > but I think "source" avoids some of the implication of simply mimicking > another author. I think Durrell had sources, even though Eliot would have > preferred he have influences... > > One of the reasons I harp on about Eliot is his emphasis on allusions, which > is closely caught up in his notion of Tradition. When he founded _The > Criterion_, he included "The Waste Land," as if this set the tone for the > whole endeavour. It's an elitism for an educated background, a style of > reading, and a luxuriousness of production that set Modernism apart (and > more importantly, "above"). And, as possibly the most influential editor of > perhaps the most important publishing house (in retrospect) and of perhaps > the most significant literary journal, his shadow carries a lot of weight, > especially for Durrell, who wanted to published in _The Criterion_ and did > publish through Faber & Faber. > > I think Durrell learned much from Eliot, and that allusive technique is > there, but he upsets the 'Tradition' to which he refers and seems to be out > to refute Eliot in some ways as well. > > For instance, we have all of this "academic" stuff in the opening of > _Justine_ and an invitation to pursue it, but it's not like diving into "The > Waste Land." The allusions are enlivened on repeat readings, but you > needn't pursue them to read the book. The beauty of the language is enough > in itself. The allusions also seem to me to point the reader inward, which > is something I don't have when I read Eliot. > > So, is this just polishing brass belly buttons, as Marc asks? I think not. > It would be like saying Alexandria isn't part of the book, or the Levant or > Mediterranean play no role. After all, isn't the majority of the plot about > readers reading and learning how to read differently, until they ultimately > become writers? (ie: Nessim's diaries, Arnauti's _Moeurs_, Balthazar's > interlinear, Pursewarden's letters, Clea's letters, etc. -->to--> our > variant editions, notebooks drafts, the corrected proofs, etc.) We needn't > read that way, nor must we read with a sense of the politics or biography, > but that doesn't mean we shouldn't read for those things. > > Yet, does that restrict one from being simply enchanted by "words & > writing," also at Marc's suggestion? I certainly hope not! I also wouldn't > trust the word "simply" -- there's nothing simple about that kind of > meaningful engagement with the text. > > That said, the books after the Quartet seem to make this obsession with > texts themselves increasingly a part of the aesthetic -- if that doesn't > appeal to the reader, then I doubt those later books will either, nor would > that side of _Justine_... I must admit to being such as reader as is drawn > to that textual aesthetic, and for that reason I've always found the Quintet > the most appealing work, and hence that reading style colours the rest of my > reading of the other earlier works. > > Cheers, > James > ___________________________ > James Gifford > Department of English > University of Victoria > Victoria, B.C., Canada > http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/bc98e6ef/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Fri Apr 13 12:19:47 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:19:47 +0200 Subject: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr> Hello Charles, Sorry I could not find my french Justine; someone had borrowed it. Be your own judge: La mer est de nouveau trop grosse aujourd'hui, et des bouff?es de vent viennent d?sorienter le sens. Au coeur m?me de l'hiver, on per?oit d?j? les pr?mices du printemps. Un ciel de nacre pure jusqu? midi; les criquets dans les recoins d'ombre; et maintenant le vent, d?nudant et fouillant les grands platanes... The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inven- tions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind un- packing the great planes, ransacking the great planes... My opinion: I first read Justine in english in February 1965 (It was recommended by a friend I had met in London) It is common today for young french to work in the UK; I did it then). The above french translation first came out in 1969. The only question I can make concerns the "great planes" which I first thought was an error, meaning "plains". Then I realized it meant "plane trees" - in France all the national highways - it was an idea of Napoleon - were lined with Plane trees. Unfortunately since then many have been decapitated, but now it seems to be regaining popularity to bring them back. Travelling on a plane lined road is so much cooler than bare bitumen. So it seems that my culture, my environment and my experience all have an influence on my understanding. All these items, with other personal ones (loves, disappointments, hopes and wishes, all had an influence on LD's writing: surely that is where his genius lies. At least that is what I immediately felt and keep on feeling when I reread (in english) the AQ; it even inspired me, after so many years to visit Alexandria where I saw plane trees like in France. Hope I have not been talking to myself here! Marc Piel slighcl wrote: > Marc: > > I would be most interested in having you share with the listserv any > observations that you might have about how Durrell reads in French. For > example, how does that lovely, evocative Justine 1.1 read in translation > vs. English? > > As I have said in my postings, I find the beauty of the language comes > from its ability to find a prose style that echoes its subject > matter--retrospective, elegiac, nostalgic, and, ultimately for this > novel which opens on an island, tidelike. . . . > > Please share with the whole list if you find that of interest. > > Best! > > Charles > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > From slighcl at wfu.edu Fri Apr 13 13:01:25 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:01:25 -0400 Subject: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr> References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu> Thank you for considering the opening of /Justine /as translated in the French, Marc. I think that the arc of your post's associations (cultural and autobiographical) is a fitting response. I hope others will respond with their thoughts on LD in French, Spanish, &c. I recall that we had a bit of interest on "les grands platanes" in the 2003 LD RG. Am I right in thinking that it is the peeling bark so characteristic of the planes being "ransacked" and "unpacked"? I have always imagined the long strips as paper-like, so I will cast them into sympathetic analogy with those manuscript "papers" that the child has scattered and destroyed with "the indifference of the natural world to the constructions of art" (1.5). "Les grands platanes"--on a grand whim, I will also nod to that other novel of education, so elegiac, atmospheric, and ruminative, Alain-Fournier's /Le Grand Meulnes/. /Justine/, /Le Grand Meulnes/, /The Good Soldier/--quite a bookshelf. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/a75b6b10/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Fri Apr 13 12:33:11 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:33:11 +0200 Subject: [ilds] Fw: RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero In-Reply-To: <013201c77df3$d2d5cb60$36baa37a@abc> References: <013201c77df3$d2d5cb60$36baa37a@abc> Message-ID: <461FDAF7.8030100@interdesign.fr> I agree. Prospero's cell is marvellous: maybe a reflection on his state of mind at the time; recovery from the loss of Nancy: new found love with Eve; new surroundings at the Ambron Villa and the persons that were associated with it..... etc... Marc Piel Sumantra Nag wrote: > Sorry, James Gifford was quoting David Green, while referring to > "....Portrait of A Marine Venus..." > > Sumantra Nag > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Sumantra Nag > To: gifford at uvic.ca ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca > > Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 11:05 PM > Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero > > James Gifford refers to: > > ".....Portrait of a Marine Venus ...." > > Should it not be _Reflections on a Marine Venus_? > > Regards > > Sumantra Nag > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "James Gifford" > > To: > > Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 4:28 AM > Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero > > > David Green (and much of the current discussion here) raises what I > think is > > a complicated but important point about Durrell's different works. > > > > > Prospero's Cell. My feeling is that this book, > > > along with Portrait of a Marine Venus and > > > Bitter Lemons reveal Durrell's finest and most > > > enchanting writing - and that side of his > > > personality which endeared him to others; the > > > champagne cork being popped. > > > > I'd have to agree with this -- for my money, _Prospero's Cell_ is > probably > > the loveliest book he wrote, though I'd also avoid calling it > uncomplicated. > > I also have to admit to a double purpose: when I'm teaching, close > readings > > are a big help, so this kind of discussion is a chance to enliven my > > resources. Part of what I think is going on is how _Justine_ stops the > > reader in many ways and forces a slightly different kind of reading > > activity. The island books are generally easier to float through, > _Justine_ > > slows you down, and the Quintet stops one dead in one's tracks... > > > > For instance, _Prospero's Cell_ is not a difficult book to read, per se, > > although I do think it *invites* difficulty without *requiring* it. > > > > Both _PC_ and _Justine_ open with a direct engagement with the landscape. > > Much like Durrell's apparently well-planned placement of the reader > in those > > opening passages of _Justine_, _PC_ opens with a "You" who enters > Greece as > > You would enter a dark crystal that refracts and distorts. This > "You" also > > enters an island that offers "something harder, the discovery of > yourself" > > as s/he would enter a landscape... > > > > The location reshapes vision, and the trembling air over Corfu > (presumably > > over the water in the summer heat) prompts the comparison of Greece to a > > dark crystal that reflects only yourself, but a distorted version. > This is > > surprisingly close to the Quartet, both for landscape and vision. > > > > Yet, that introduction does not put me back on my heels in the way > _Quinx_ > > does, but even without forcing me to pause, it is far from uncomplicated. > > > > > it appears he wrote the Quartet and the Quintet to > > > be taken seriously by them [academics]. For my money > > > he need not have bothered. I wonder if other Durrell > > > fans agree? > > > > Every reader needs to have a preference -- it's why I still don't > > particularly enjoy Henry James (sorry to say). But, I wonder if it > hasn't > > also got something to do with how Durrell wanted to shape the reader for > > different purposes? > > > > David's first sentence above is a serious one. Did LD write the > Quartet in > > order to be taken seriously by academics or such that it is taken > seriously > > by them? I think both. For instance, his UNESCO lectures on Shakespeare > > show a very close familiarity with the manner in which academics deal > with > > variants, such as the 'bad Quarto's' of _Hamlet_. It comes, then, as no > > surprise to find he's working on a book that enchants one academically > > (bibliographically?) as much as it enchants stylistically. > > > > {for the record, LD's crazy idea that Q1 Hamlet was an abridged > version for > > stage is actually endorsed in the newest Cambridge edition of Q1...} > > > > In other words, LD knew that academic readers watch for variants, and > sure > > enough, he constructed variants for us: ones that reflect the main > themes of > > the novel... It's not just there to tease academics, but rather to > extend > > the book. Not every reader needs to read for that, but surely it's a > part > > of the book, no? > > > > Marc Piel makes a related point on "sources" versus "influences" or > > "inspirations." These are all messy terms, none of them being > sufficient, > > but I think "source" avoids some of the implication of simply mimicking > > another author. I think Durrell had sources, even though Eliot would > have > > preferred he have influences... > > > > One of the reasons I harp on about Eliot is his emphasis on > allusions, which > > is closely caught up in his notion of Tradition. When he founded _The > > Criterion_, he included "The Waste Land," as if this set the tone for the > > whole endeavour. It's an elitism for an educated background, a style of > > reading, and a luxuriousness of production that set Modernism apart (and > > more importantly, "above"). And, as possibly the most influential > editor of > > perhaps the most important publishing house (in retrospect) and of > perhaps > > the most significant literary journal, his shadow carries a lot of > weight, > > especially for Durrell, who wanted to published in _The Criterion_ > and did > > publish through Faber & Faber. > > > > I think Durrell learned much from Eliot, and that allusive technique is > > there, but he upsets the 'Tradition' to which he refers and seems to > be out > > to refute Eliot in some ways as well. > > > > For instance, we have all of this "academic" stuff in the opening of > > _Justine_ and an invitation to pursue it, but it's not like diving > into "The > > Waste Land." The allusions are enlivened on repeat readings, but you > > needn't pursue them to read the book. The beauty of the language is > enough > > in itself. The allusions also seem to me to point the reader inward, > which > > is something I don't have when I read Eliot. > > > > So, is this just polishing brass belly buttons, as Marc asks? I > think not. > > It would be like saying Alexandria isn't part of the book, or the > Levant or > > Mediterranean play no role. After all, isn't the majority of the > plot about > > readers reading and learning how to read differently, until they > ultimately > > become writers? (ie: Nessim's diaries, Arnauti's _Moeurs_, Balthazar's > > interlinear, Pursewarden's letters, Clea's letters, etc. -->to--> our > > variant editions, notebooks drafts, the corrected proofs, etc.) We > needn't > > read that way, nor must we read with a sense of the politics or > biography, > > but that doesn't mean we shouldn't read for those things. > > > > Yet, does that restrict one from being simply enchanted by "words & > > writing," also at Marc's suggestion? I certainly hope not! I also > wouldn't > > trust the word "simply" -- there's nothing simple about that kind of > > meaningful engagement with the text. > > > > That said, the books after the Quartet seem to make this obsession with > > texts themselves increasingly a part of the aesthetic -- if that doesn't > > appeal to the reader, then I doubt those later books will either, nor > would > > that side of _Justine_... I must admit to being such as reader as is > drawn > > to that textual aesthetic, and for that reason I've always found the > Quintet > > the most appealing work, and hence that reading style colours the > rest of my > > reading of the other earlier works. > > > > Cheers, > > James > > ___________________________ > > James Gifford > > Department of English > > University of Victoria > > Victoria, B.C., Canada > > http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > ILDS mailing list > > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From jbsnbs at braemarnet.com Fri Apr 13 12:54:53 2007 From: jbsnbs at braemarnet.com (Jim and Nancy Supler) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 15:54:53 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Durrell's literary afterlife In-Reply-To: <461F6C78.1050708@wfu.edu> References: <461F6C78.1050708@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <93663e4d9d59eefafeee3c013190405d@braemarnet.com> Michael Dibden was a great and wonderful writer of mystery fiction. His stories of contemporary Italy, Italians, and italian crime and politics were elegant, luminous and fascinating. I am sure LD is delighted with the comparison. Nancy Brown Supler On Apr 13, 2007, at 7:41 AM, slighcl wrote: > I am always fascinated by Lawrence Durrell's literary afterlife.? > Recently it was revealed that LD was one of Raymond Carver's favorite > prose stylists.? That must give a certain pause to anyone who has > really thought about those two writers different aesthetic.? And then > today in the Tacoma News Tribune, LD is referenced in the obituary > notice of a crime writer, Michael Dibdin: > >>> ?Dibdin can capture the sense of place with the swift poetic >>> accuracy of Lawrence Durrell, and Venice, its people, manners and >>> mores are the center of a book,? wrote critic Charles Champlin in a >>> 1995 Los Angeles Times review of ?Dead Lagoon? (1994). >>> >>> http://www.thenewstribune.com/359/story/37956.html > > > CLS > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1432 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/5b7e74de/attachment.bin From slighcl at wfu.edu Fri Apr 13 13:06:21 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:06:21 -0400 Subject: [ilds] le grand meaulnes Message-ID: <461FE2BD.5030006@wfu.edu> */Le Grand Meaulnes Of course /* Sorry for the typo--one cannot sit at home answering a four year old's questions and make accurate literary references on the laptop, it seems. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070413/b19e2628/attachment.html From dtart at bigpond.net.au Fri Apr 13 16:53:50 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:53:50 +1000 Subject: [ilds] Fw: RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero References: <013201c77df3$d2d5cb60$36baa37a@abc> Message-ID: <004c01c77e26$fc2c30c0$0202a8c0@MumandDad> Yes, indeed. I should have said Reflections on a Marine Venus. I do apologise. I had been reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog earlier and must have got confused. DG Denise Tart & David Green 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 +61 2 9564 6165 0412 707 625 dtart at bigpond.net.au ----- Original Message ----- From: Sumantra Nag To: gifford at uvic.ca ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2007 3:47 AM Subject: [ilds] Fw: RG Justine 1.1 | academics & Prospero Sorry, James Gifford was quoting David Green, while referring to "....Portrait of A Marine Venus..." Sumantra Nag -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/d2df1387/attachment-0001.html From dtart at bigpond.net.au Fri Apr 13 17:16:26 2007 From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:16:26 +1000 Subject: [ilds] Durrell: Collected Poems Message-ID: <006201c77e2a$244cd610$0202a8c0@MumandDad> THIS UNIMPORTANT MORNING This unimportant morning Something goes singing where The capes turn over on their sides and the warm adriatic rides Her blue and sunwashing At the edge of the world and its brilliant cliffs. Day rings in the higher airs Pure with cicadas, and slowing Like a pulse to smoke from farms, Extinguished in the exhausted earth, Unclenched like a fist and going Trees fume, cool, pour - and overflowing Unstretch the feathers of birds and shake Carpets from windows, brush with dew The up-and-doing: and young lovers now Their little resurrections make. And now lightly to kiss all whom sleep Stitched up - and wake, my darling wake. The impatient Boatman has been waiting Under the house, his long oars folded up Like wings in waiting on the darkling lake. LD 1944 This is my favourite Durrell Poem. It is perhaps and ode to Corfu and to, I suspect, Nancy. However there is the suggestion death in the last verse. Does Durrell mean 'all men kill the thing they love'? The first three verses are to me, as an Australian immersed in sun, sea and summer, some of the most evocative lines I have come across. I would be interested to know what others make of it. By the way, I think Durrell began writing Prospero's Cell in Corfu and finished it later in Alexandria. It is a treasure of book to be sure. I wish I had known the Count D. David Green Denise Tart & David Green 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204 +61 2 9564 6165 0412 707 625 dtart at bigpond.net.au -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/f8a766c4/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Fri Apr 13 19:18:55 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 22:18:55 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 Message-ID: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things -- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear with a dying clunk. WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Fri Apr 13 16:58:09 2007 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:58:09 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 Message-ID: <11477436.1176508689254.JavaMail.root@elwamui-cypress.atl.sa.earthlink.net> -----Original Message----- >From: Marc Piel >Sent: Apr 13, 2007 12:19 PM >To: slighcl , ilds at lists.uvic.ca >Subject: Re: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 > >Hello Charles, >Sorry I could not find my french Justine; someone >had borrowed it. > >Be your own judge: > >La mer est de nouveau trop grosse aujourd'hui, et >des bouff?es de vent viennent d?sorienter le sens. >Au coeur m?me de l'hiver, on per?oit d?j? les >pr?mices du printemps. Un ciel de nacre pure >jusqu? midi; les criquets dans les recoins >d'ombre; et maintenant le vent, d?nudant et >fouillant les grands platanes... * * * * * > > I take it this is Marc Piel's translation. I think Marc should do a full French translation of Justine. It sounds beautiful, and he expresses his deep enthusiasm for Durrell as well as anyone can, especially on the beauty of plane trees along the roads of France. Bruce From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sat Apr 14 03:42:59 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:42:59 +0200 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <4620B033.6010502@interdesign.fr> I disagree!!!!! I love my city and I know what it does for me. Maybe I'm just too romantic... lucky me! Marc Piel, Paris, France. william godshalk wrote: > Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to > be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should > be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the > narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated > in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." > > This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city > in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does > Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used > to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things > -- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, > any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like > romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. > > And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear > with a dying clunk. > > WLG > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sat Apr 14 03:51:09 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:51:09 +0200 Subject: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <11477436.1176508689254.JavaMail.root@elwamui-cypress.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <11477436.1176508689254.JavaMail.root@elwamui-cypress.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <4620B21D.4050803@interdesign.fr> No, I am sorry it is not my translation, but that of Roger Giroux, who translated the four volumes of the AQ but unfortunately not the Quintet. LD said of him, in an interview, that the french version was better than the english as Giroux was a better writer then he was. Marc Piel Bruce Redwine wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > >>From: Marc Piel >>Sent: Apr 13, 2007 12:19 PM >>To: slighcl , ilds at lists.uvic.ca >>Subject: Re: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 >> >>Hello Charles, >>Sorry I could not find my french Justine; someone >>had borrowed it. >> >>Be your own judge: >> >>La mer est de nouveau trop grosse aujourd'hui, et >>des bouff?es de vent viennent d?sorienter le sens. >>Au coeur m?me de l'hiver, on per?oit d?j? les >>pr?mices du printemps. Un ciel de nacre pure >>jusqu? midi; les criquets dans les recoins >>d'ombre; et maintenant le vent, d?nudant et >>fouillant les grands platanes... > > > > * * * * * > >> > I take it this is Marc Piel's translation. I think Marc should do a full French translation of Justine. It sounds beautiful, and he expresses his deep enthusiasm for Durrell as well as anyone can, especially on the beauty of plane trees along the roads of France. > > Bruce > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 09:07:39 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:07:39 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Moving on to Justine 1.2 and 1.3 Message-ID: <20070414160718.EUAG15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Let us move on to the next two episodes of Justine, i.e. 1.2 and 1.3, in which the narrator begins to describe "this city of ours." The third episode ends with "They struggle for breath and in every summer kiss they can detect the taste of quicklime. . . ." But even though we move on, you may at any time return "again" to Justine 1.1. Good reading to you. WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net Sat Apr 14 08:14:02 2007 From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:14:02 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 Message-ID: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> -----Original Message----- >From: william godshalk >Sent: Apr 13, 2007 7:18 PM >To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca >Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 > >Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to >be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should >be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the >narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated >in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." > >This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city >in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does >Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used >to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things >-- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, >any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like >romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. > >And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear >with a dying clunk. _ * * * * * Deliberately provocative, but absolutely necessary. It seems to me that readers of Justine, indeed of all the Quartet, are in the position of the Marquis's "lovely Therese." We have two "positions" open to us. (1) We can commit the "crime" of looking at such passages as Bill Godshalk quotes (and there are many, many of them) and treat them ironically. We can say all such excesses are probably ironic, including "beloved Alexandria!" And then we go on to show how Durrell is grinning from ear to ear behind his lines. (2) Or we can take the "noose" of Romanticism, put it around our necks, and make the leap. I think that those who swallow the "hot nude pearl" and continue reading have decided to make the jump. I, for one, made that decision a very long time ago, and I prefer not to see Durrell's work as being saturated in irony. Bruce From fode at pioneersofchange.net Sat Apr 14 07:10:26 2007 From: fode at pioneersofchange.net (fode at pioneersofchange.net) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:10:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <4620B033.6010502@interdesign.fr> References: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <4620B033.6010502@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <1304.74.57.204.94.1176559826.squirrel@mail.pioneersofchange.net> Or perhaps judging the city should be seen as a metaphore and not be taken litterally. For example, he refers to 'we, its children'. What would be the reaction of a child confronted with an overwhelming tension? (e.g. the city) The child would likely blame that tension, this mystery and shout their innocence. To take a step back, what if we change 'City' for 'World/Society'? Then, we would dive into the complex dynamic of individual/cultural/community responsibility. We are influenced by the city(world) just as we influence the city(world). Whether or not we feel powerless or empowered is a matter of maturity, hence the reference to 'children'. Fod? > I disagree!!!!! > I love my city and I know what it does for me. > Maybe I'm just too romantic... lucky me! > Marc Piel, > Paris, France. > > william godshalk wrote: > >> Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to >> be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should >> be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the >> narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated >> in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." >> >> This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city >> in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does >> Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used >> to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things >> -- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, >> any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like >> romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. >> >> And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear >> with a dying clunk. >> >> WLG >> *************************************** >> W. L. Godshalk * >> Department of English * >> University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * >> Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * >> 513-281-5927 >> *************************************** >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >> >> > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From jrraper at bellsouth.net Sat Apr 14 08:31:43 2007 From: jrraper at bellsouth.net (J. R. Raper) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:31:43 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 References: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <4620B033.6010502@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <001f01c77eaa$01c89090$220110ac@your27e1513d96> Bill, You are on to something important here. Romantic or not, this sounds like Groddeck using the big "national" IT to explain why we do what we do. It is a type of fatalistic determinism that Darley will mature out of, esp. in his ultimate action that means so much to Clea (in CLEA) and that breaks his own checked pattern of behavior. Hard not to look ahead to view the forest rather than remaining checked by trees. Jack ----- Original Message ----- > > william godshalk wrote: > >> Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to >> be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should >> be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the >> narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated >> in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." >> >> This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city >> in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does >> Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used >> to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things >> -- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, >> any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like >> romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. >> >> And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear >> with a dying clunk. >> >> WLG >> *************************************** >> W. L. Godshalk * >> Department of English * >> University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * >> Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * >> 513-281-5927 >> *************************************** >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >> >> > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From vcel at ix.netcom.com Sat Apr 14 07:27:54 2007 From: vcel at ix.netcom.com (Vittorio Celentano) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:27:54 -0400 Subject: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <001101c77ea1$177c1230$9dd278d0@vittoriohx7smy> Dear Marc, After reading the beautiful French translation of the initial excerpt from Justine, I could not help but order "Le Quatuor d'Alexandrie" from Amazon France. Vittorio Celentano ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc Piel" To: "slighcl" ; Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 3:19 PM Subject: Re: [ilds] french translation... Justine 1.1 Hello Charles, Sorry I could not find my french Justine; someone had borrowed it. Be your own judge: La mer est de nouveau trop grosse aujourd'hui, et des bouff?es de vent viennent d?sorienter le sens. Au coeur m?me de l'hiver, on per?oit d?j? les pr?mices du printemps. Un ciel de nacre pure jusqu? midi; les criquets dans les recoins d'ombre; et maintenant le vent, d?nudant et fouillant les grands platanes... The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inven- tions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind un- packing the great planes, ransacking the great planes... My opinion: I first read Justine in english in February 1965 (It was recommended by a friend I had met in London) It is common today for young french to work in the UK; I did it then). The above french translation first came out in 1969. The only question I can make concerns the "great planes" which I first thought was an error, meaning "plains". Then I realized it meant "plane trees" - in France all the national highways - it was an idea of Napoleon - were lined with Plane trees. Unfortunately since then many have been decapitated, but now it seems to be regaining popularity to bring them back. Travelling on a plane lined road is so much cooler than bare bitumen. So it seems that my culture, my environment and my experience all have an influence on my understanding. All these items, with other personal ones (loves, disappointments, hopes and wishes, all had an influence on LD's writing: surely that is where his genius lies. At least that is what I immediately felt and keep on feeling when I reread (in english) the AQ; it even inspired me, after so many years to visit Alexandria where I saw plane trees like in France. Hope I have not been talking to myself here! Marc Piel slighcl wrote: > Marc: > > I would be most interested in having you share with the listserv any > observations that you might have about how Durrell reads in French. For > example, how does that lovely, evocative Justine 1.1 read in translation > vs. English? > > As I have said in my postings, I find the beauty of the language comes > from its ability to find a prose style that echoes its subject > matter--retrospective, elegiac, nostalgic, and, ultimately for this > novel which opens on an island, tidelike. . . . > > Please share with the whole list if you find that of interest. > > Best! > > Charles > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 09:49:18 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 12:49:18 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <001f01c77eaa$01c89090$220110ac@your27e1513d96> References: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <4620B033.6010502@interdesign.fr> <001f01c77eaa$01c89090$220110ac@your27e1513d96> Message-ID: <20070414164847.CEQZ20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> >"Romantic or not, this sounds like Groddeck using the big "national" >IT to explain why we do what we do." Good point, Jack. The City takes on the role of the "it," the diving force in our lives. As we know, Freud acknowledges Groddeck's influence with regard to his concept of the "it," infamously translated as "id." WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From sumantranag at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 10:01:55 2007 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:31:55 +0530 Subject: [ilds] Moving on to Justine 1.2 and 1.3 References: <20070414160718.EUAG15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <004d01c77eb6$9d8c1720$2fbca37a@abc> I first read the Alexandria Quartet as a student in Delhi University, when I was 17-19 years old. So great was its impact that I clearly remember reading the whole Quartet over 3 times and, as far as I can remember, I started out on a 4th reading and got as far as the beginning of Clea! Having been brought up on the rich language of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, (mainly through his songs which are composed in a poetical framework), the Alexandria Quartet had an immediate appeal because of the sheer resonance of the language and the richness of description. I have tried to express this point on the ILDS discussion forum in the past. Also, in the AQ Durrell was describing an urban landscape which seemed to capture the atmosphere of Indian cities, particularly certain aspects of Delhi (where I was brought up and where I have been living for many years) and perhaps more, of Kolkata (where I was born, and where I briefly lived in later years). The "AQ" also seemed to do something unique, by evoking in the English language, emotions which appeared to be Eastern in their quality and intensity. I have noticed that recent discussions on Lawrence Durrell on the ILDS site, have dwelt often on the influence which his early Indian upbringing had on his philosophy, and consequently on his writing. I was delighted by the prolonged analysis in the current discussions, of the opening lines of the AQ: "The sea is high again today with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring...." I had hoped the discussion would also include the following lines on the opening page, which captivated me instantly on my first reading: "Capitally, what is this city of ours? What is resumed in the word Alexandria? In a flash my mind's eye shows me a thousand dust-tormented streets....." And indeed it has moved precisely to this point! Of course, these last lines may raise the charge of "exoticism" - something which in my opinion, D.J. Enright did, in a commentary on the "AQ", which was rather pointedly entitled, "Alexandrian Nights Entertainments" as far as I can remember. But Enright made a point of adding that he admired Durrell's poetry. The use of a form of direct address by Durrell is also intriguing: "....you can feel the inventions of Spring...." and "...what is this city of ours?..." Sumantra Nag ----- Original Message ----- From: "william godshalk" To: Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2007 9:37 PM Subject: [ilds] Moving on to Justine 1.2 and 1.3 > Let us move on to the next two episodes of Justine, i.e. 1.2 and > 1.3, in which the narrator begins to describe "this city of ours." > The third episode ends with "They struggle for breath and in every > summer kiss they can detect the taste of quicklime. . . ." > > But even though we move on, you may at any time return "again" to Justine 1.1. > > Good reading to you. > > WLG > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 10:12:31 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:12:31 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Fwd: Re: DG Justine 1.1 flora Message-ID: <20070414171220.CGUT20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> >To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca >From: william godshalk >Subject: Re: [ilds] DG Justine 1.1 >Cc: why flora rather than fauna > >In the penultimate paragraph of Justine 1.1, the narrator says: "the >city used us as flora." I would expect "fauna." I assume that he >uses "flora" with a purpose. But what could that purpose be? > >WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 10:15:35 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:15:35 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <46210C37.4050604@wfu.edu> Bill Godshalk has asked me to forward on to the RG a short note that I sent him yesterday regarding the narrator's closing lines regarding the City, its floral children, and moral responsibiliy. I now regret not sending it directly to the RG list. Now the list has an opportunity to read it in a most Durrellian fashion--discovering the unknown event that set certain other reactions in motion but was itself unseen, unheard, unwitnessed. *I do feel pressed to see some discussion about the narrator's announcement at the close of 1.1 that he sees "at last that none us is properly to be judged." We have been hitting pretty hard at the narrator's naivete and his move toward greater self knowledge in what follows upon 1.1. How are we meant to take his confidence in this early declaration of knowledge come "at last"? Especially since the conceptual basis for the statement is regularly endorsed as a central Durrellian credo--i.e., that the spirit of place and the historical continuum of Alexandria precipitated the conflicts, not the human "flora." Is the narrator's moral analysis innovative or willfully irresponsible? Is he grown wise in some things and not in others? It just seems a little odd to pronounce a coherent moral philosophy so early, with so much left to learn. Is that worth opening for discussion?* *As someone who teaches Victorian novels and must regularly learn to read by Victorian "moral compasses," such disclaimers catch my ear and my eye. As an epxeriment emphasizing a century change in values I am trying to imagine Pip or Jane or Dorothea Brooke transported into such terms. The horror.* *CLS* -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/73487e99/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 10:46:00 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:46:00 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 -- Groddeck In-Reply-To: <20070414164847.CEQZ20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.emai l.uc.edu> References: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <4620B033.6010502@interdesign.fr> <001f01c77eaa$01c89090$220110ac@your27e1513d96> <20070414164847.CEQZ20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <20070414174559.FMGF18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> > >"Romantic or not, this sounds like Groddeck using the big "national" > >IT to explain why we do what we do." Jack, another point we should have made is that Durrell wrote an essay on Georg Groddeck for Horizon magazine in 1948, an essay that was reprinted in the 1961 Vintage edition of Groddeck's The Book of the It. In my previous posting I mentioned "the diving force." A Freudian slip, no doubt, but I consciously meant "driving force." WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 10:55:55 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 13:55:55 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Moving on to Justine 1.2 and 1.3 In-Reply-To: <004d01c77eb6$9d8c1720$2fbca37a@abc> References: <20070414160718.EUAG15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <004d01c77eb6$9d8c1720$2fbca37a@abc> Message-ID: <20070414175604.FNEE18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> > Thank you, Sumantra, thank you for your excellent posting. You end by point out Durrell's use of a form of direct address: >"....you can feel the inventions of Spring...." and > >"...what is this city of ours?..." Do you have any thoughts about why he uses "you" and "ours"? WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 10:58:52 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:58:52 -0700 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 "the city" In-Reply-To: <46210C37.4050604@wfu.edu> Message-ID: Hello all, I, too, am fascinated by these questions surrounding the city, and I've also just read Peter Christensen's forthcoming article on Durrell & Groddeck in the Nin journal, so it's all on my mind. When I teach the Quartet, I've always taken this line back to the epigraphs. Here's why... Charles notes: > the narrator's closing lines regarding the City, its > floral children, and moral responsibiliy. I think it's the 3rd item that ties these together. Charles also notes the close of 1.1 and its implication: > "at last that none us is properly to be judged." .... [snip}.... > a central Durrellian credo--i.e., that the spirit of place and > the historical continuum of Alexandria precipitated the conflicts, > not the human "flora." Is the narrator's moral analysis > innovative or willfully irresponsible? If it's fair to suggest Durrell positions the moral or ethical dilemma of the novel between Freud and Sade (or, since he needn't slavishly follow the, between "talk" and "unfettered desire"), then doesn't the city match nicely with Sade? The rural island is where he finally has a chance to talk. The City, as the It (I think a fair reading, though I also believe Durrell created his own version of Groddeck for his own purposes), works nicely as precipitating conflicts in its flora, who are deprived of agency itself. Such is the position Sade offers: chase after raw desire without thought, and you'll have only crime or the noose, both of which are defined by the city/state. If I (pronoun shift) don't examine my desire, then I'm lived by 'It' -- if I 'talk,' I may find it has very little to do with what I'm chasing. This would be a very Victorian problem indeed, to take up Charles' suggestion. I'm thinking of the ending of Eliot's _Mill on the Floss_. What would a Durrell reader make of the 'drownded' siblings? Liza and Pursewarden in disguise, unwilling to talk? Fod? suggests something akin to all of this: > perhaps judging the city should be seen as a metaphor > .... > To take a step back, what if we change 'City' for > 'World/Society'? I think that's exactly it, though I wouldn't limit it to only external influences, like the social. I doubt this 'city' has much to do with actual urbanity, per se, just as Durrell's Alexandria freely adapts (perhaps very freely, according to some) the 'real' Alexandria. Somewhere between the Id's crime and the Superego's noose, perhaps there's an opportunity for the Ego to talk? At least, that's how I tell students Freud changes Sade. After all, this wounded narrator doesn't even have a name... His would seem to be a ridiculously impoverished Ego struggling to find itself again somewhere between a rock and hard place... Perhaps this also answers Sumantra's comments on Enright's sense of 'exoticism' in Durrell. Certainly, I'd say LD's Alexandria is exotic, but wouldn't any city be if it was carrying this burden of metaphor? If Winesburg, Ohio had to fight for a space between the noose and crime, I'd imagine it too would have "dust-tormented streets." In fact, I rather think it does, in its own way. That said, I can see why someone who loves Alexandria would find this troubling. I'm working on a 19th century Canadian author at the moment who positions Victoria (where I was born) as Atlantis and the Fraser Canyon (where I grew up) as between Mount Kait?sa and the Himalayas, with Manasa bearing a striking resemblance to Seton Lake. That new landscape may reflect *his* "wants and needs," but not mine... Such defamiliarization is always discomforting. Cheers, Jamie ___________________________ James Gifford Department of English University of Victoria Victoria, B.C., Canada http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 11:06:38 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:06:38 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <4621182E.3060009@wfu.edu> Bruce writes in response to Bill who was responding to my post which was precipitated by LD's narrator in /Justine/ 1.1: It seems to me that readers of Justine, indeed of all the Quartet, are in the position of the Marquis's "lovely Therese." We have two "positions" open to us. (1) We can commit the "crime" of looking at such passages as Bill Godshalk quotes (and there are many, many of them) and treat them ironically. We can say all such excesses are probably ironic, including "beloved Alexandria!" And then we go on to show how Durrell is grinning from ear to ear behind his lines. (2) Or we can take the "noose" of Romanticism, put it around our necks, and make the leap. I think that those who swallow the "hot nude pearl" and continue reading have decided to make the jump. I, for one, made that decision a very long time ago, and I prefer not to see Durrell's work as being saturated in irony. I think that there are any number of ways of reading /Justine /and the /Quartet/, Bruce, and I do not think it is necessary to pretend that we have to make a final choice between "ironic" and "romantic." I certainly never do settle into one camp, and I like to imagine that LD and the /Quartet /taught me that kind of provisional strategy. Some days like you I just get drunk on the goreousness of the wine-dark prose. (/Drop another "hot nude pearl" into my cup, Cleo. would you? That's my girl./ /Ahhh. . . . All better now./) Other days I can only seem to notice the cucumber that LD slipping up his reader. (/Ouf! Old D caught me out again./) I do not find that /Justine /and the /Quartet /ever parse quite clean, all romantic, all ironic. For examples we might take /Justine /1.1, where we the narrator indulging in romantic, self-involved viewpoints that his creator LD later seems intent on undercutting via the immense narrative ironies of the total /Quartet/; or later consider the following exchange some dozen pages later in which the narrator suddenly becomes the ironist: "You really believe so?" she would say with such sorrow that one was touched and amused at the same time. "And why do you smile? You always smile at the most serious things. Ah! surely you should be sad?" If she ever knew me at all she must later have discovered that for those of us who fell deeply and who are at all conscious of the inextricable tangle of human thought there is only one response to be made--ironic tenderness and silence. (1.20) Pursewarden writes somewhere that we live our lives "based on selected fictions" (/Balthazar /1.3). Our readings are not separate from that fictionality, that provisionality. "/Good god!/" Pursewarden writes elsewhere. "/They are at last beginning to take me seriously. This imposes a terrible burden upon me. I must redouble my laughter./" The burden of laughter. What might that tool bring to /Justine /1.1? Perhaps we should append that line above the ILDS listserv archives web pages??? I first started reading /Justine /at 14 or 15, so my reading practices are profoundly shaped by its pleasures and by my training in it. In the same way, now that I profess Victorian poetry and Victorian novels, those very different nineteenth-century reading practices grant me a different sort of insight on /Justine/, emphasizing and reinforcing its profound strangeness. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/b708273d/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 11:10:19 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:10:19 -0700 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 -- pronouns In-Reply-To: <20070414175604.FNEE18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: >From Bill & Sumantra: > You end by point out Durrell's use of a form of direct address: > >> "....you can feel the inventions of Spring...." and >> >> "...what is this city of ours?..." > > Do you have any thoughts about why he uses "you" and "ours"? I think Durrell was, to a very high degree, instinctively aware of how readers respond to such moments in a text. For the reader response group I was in while in Edmonton, we found that readers very often take up such moments to rearticulate their own experience, feelings, and thoughts in the language provided by the text. Likewise, while speaking, such readers often distance themselves from uncomfortable expressions by shifting from personal pronouns to direct address. In the opening page, this shift draws the reader in, suggesting his or her active participation. Durrell uses a similar technique in the opening pages of _Monsieur_, where the first person narrator moves to third person to self-describe when he must confront his feelings of loss. I might also add that this places us readers in a position much like the narrator's. He's reading everyone else's manuscripts and papers, eavesdropping on conversations of which he is not properly part. He is not addressed by the 'our' or 'you' he reads, just as we are not Justine reading his manuscript (who else could the audience be?). Moreover, he eventually finds his position is wrong for finding the 'truth,' and so do we... I would only very rarely see such shifts in narrative voice or pronoun as random in Durrell's works... --James From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 11:18:55 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:18:55 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Fwd: Re: DG Justine 1.1 flora In-Reply-To: <20070414171220.CGUT20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <20070414171220.CGUT20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <46211B0F.9000706@wfu.edu> >>a >> >>In the penultimate paragraph of Justine 1.1, the narrator says: "the >>city used us as flora." I would expect "fauna." I assume that he >>uses "flora" with a purpose. But what could that purpose be? >> >>WLG >> >> I am dimly recalling that some 2003 RG posters chased the "flora" back through a Baudelaire, Huysmans, Wilde, & all sorts of other decadent atmospherics. If anyone knows that old post, feel free to excerpt it. I am also recalling Enoch Soames work, /The Fungoids/--cf. /Soames. The Critical Heritage/ http://www.cypherpress.com/soames/criticalheritage/rose.asp Gerry Durrell had already covered the "fauna," Bill. All that was left for brother Larry was the flora. Cucumbers all around. Why such reckless extravagance in one so young? CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/bc5b369b/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 11:28:03 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:28:03 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <4621182E.3060009@wfu.edu> References: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <4621182E.3060009@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46211D33.3050909@wfu.edu> <> The second cup of purple patches took me on that one, Bruce. Off for coffee. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 11:55:57 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 11:55:57 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 flora In-Reply-To: <46211B0F.9000706@wfu.edu> Message-ID: In our 2003 reading group, flora was discussed in the following messages https://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/2007-April/000027.html https://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/2007-April/000026.html https://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/2007-April/000024.html https://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/2007-April/000023.html Charles Sligh has just now noted: > I am dimly recalling that some 2003 RG posters chased > the "flora" back through a Baudelaire, Huysmans, Wilde, > & all sorts of other decadent atmospherics. "Baudelaire" is written into the margin of Jay Brigham's copy of the Quartet, if I may allow him to join in our conversation. The tie to the Fleure de Mal was almost certainly what he was reading... Bill also raised a good point four years ago (ahem): > It's probably apparent that I believe the text is inactive, > and the reader is active .... I am not controlled by my text > -- and I close my book. > .... > In section 1, the narrator says that "the city . . . used us > as its flora." Why "flora" rather than "fauna"? ... I wonder > why the narrator sees his friends as plants rather than > animals. Are these things akin, Bill? When the reader believes he or she is being controlled by the text (classic projection? Blame the object?), is this not akin to Darley's relationship to the city as its plant? It's not just about learning how to read a text carefully but also how to become self-aware (the object of 'talk' in the Freud epigraph) during that reading... Hmm. "My Family and Other Flora" -- what a book it might have been! Best, James From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 12:14:06 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:14:06 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 flora & pearl In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <462127FE.2010400@wfu.edu> Thank you for chasing those florae down, Jamie. I especially enjoyed reading JG interact with WG 2003 and WG 2007. Another way of thinking about LD's literary afterlife is to examine his ghostly presence or echo as it exists in the /Oxford English Dictionary/. The OED cites /Justine /50 times--I consider that an impressive showing--one instance is an old favorite of our RG: *pearl, n.1 and a. * *9. The colour or lustre of a pearl; a very pale bluish grey or white. Cf. sense B 2. Chiefly literary. * 1600 E. FAIRFAX tr. Tasso Godfrey of Bulloigne VI. ciii. 114 The siluer moone..Spred frostie pearle on the canded ground. 1830 TENNYSON Recoll. Arab. Nights xiii, A brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony. 1899 Westm. Gaz. 2 Dec. 1/3 He watched the first streak of dawn change from a thin grey line of pearl into a broad band of pink and amethyst. 1957 L. DURRELL Justine I. 13 A sky of hot nude pearl. 1992 S. BARKER Guarding Border 52 The pale moon thickened her deepening shades of pearl. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/c0958fa8/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 12:21:47 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:21:47 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Fwd: Re: DG Justine 1.1 flora In-Reply-To: <46211B0F.9000706@wfu.edu> References: <20070414171220.CGUT20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <46211B0F.9000706@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070414192206.FWCQ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/b751ec54/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 13:11:34 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:11:34 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion Message-ID: <46213576.2010003@wfu.edu> Five races, five languages, a dozen creeds: five fleets turning through their greasy reflections behind the harbour bar. But there are more than five sexes and only demotic Greek seems to distinguish among them. (1.2) Here I think is a good place to begin exploring different ways of reading /Justine/. I am certain Michael can test these sentences in cultural-historical terms unavailable to me since I am not a specialist in Alexandrian history. Or Beatrice, Anna, and other friends can point out things I'll never understand about the "demotic Greek." Simple me. My first point of reference would be to say that "demotic" will always inevitably recall Eliot's Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant, /especially /when LD employs it in these opening paragraphs about a Real/Unreal City and wounded sex, all so redolent of /The Waste Land/. Why "five"? Perhaps races, languages, and navies do actually come in "fives" in pre-war Alexandria. It would seem a highly selective cast in such a cosmopolitan place, to say the least. But at the same time I will have to note that in its self-conscious repetitions the prose style is cultivating a very particular kind of aesthetic. For all of its rich range of reference and heteroglossia, the repetition, like alliteration in poetry, marks the passages as being as much about artifice and self-referentiality as about any references to a "real City" locatable somewhere in a real historical moment. Another sign of the narrator's solipsistic tendencies? Is he the one turning through his own "reflections"? CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/228021b6/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 16:56:04 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 19:56:04 -0400 Subject: [ilds] I first ran into stoney. . . . Message-ID: <46216A14.7000802@wfu.edu> All of us are guilty of not saying what we should to whom we should when we should. Why? I realized that was true tonight as I was cooking in the kitchen at home and heard the words to "Stoney" come streaming over the online broadcast to which I was tuned: He had a gray pillowcase full of books by Durrell, And he had this old concertina, all beat up and she played like hell, Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs, Well, he drank all night for nothing, he told his stories till dawn. . . . The artist with a new recording of this old Jerry Jeff Walker song is Todd Snider. http://www.toddsnider.net/ The album is called /Peace, Love, and Anarchy/. http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Love-Anarchy-Todd-Snider/dp/B000NIIURO The subject of the song--our song, I'll venture--is our own H.R. Stoneback. My Corfu is in a great sense a Corfu where Stoney still talks away the early morning hours up in the roof garden of the Cavlieri Hotel with the swallows flying away, spinning away their dark webs against the arc-lit night sky above above the park. I think Jamie and Bill were there. Richard Pine was there too, envisioning over some guttering candles what would one day not long after come to be the Durrell School. But nobody--nobody--could talk on and on and on through the night like Stoney. The sun itself did not dare to rise over the Ionian without Stoney's leave and without giving him due credit. That was thirst. Those were stories. That was song. Those were nights. Long may Stoney hold forth. I'll append the lyrics here. A cup of kindness to all. CLS *Stoney* Jerry Jeff Walker I first ran into Stoney. . . it was a bar downtown; Was Richmond, Virginia. . . we were bumming around, Suitcase to suitcase. . . we started him talking, Finding out about the things we've shared in the miles we've been. He had a gray pillowcase full of books by Durrell, And he had this old concertina, all beat up and she played like hell, Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs, Well, he drank all night for nothing, he told his stories till dawn. And he said, "Come on, get your bag, boy! Sun's up now and it's time to roll! Hell, you know there ain't no better time than early in the morning To be out walking down that road! Just feeling another day beginning while some fools just rushing on by, We'll be like some Mr. Independence: we're taking our own sweet time!" We walked on out that highway under a clear blue sky, I's listening to the tales he told, drinking warm red wine. 'Bout the night he rolled seven; bout some girl he'd done wrong; 'Bout everything he could think of while we walked along. Yeah, ol' Stoney had a magic; made him hard to forget. Like the night we flew down the highway (his old pickup, it nearly wrecked!) Was a crazy woman driving, all drunked up and carrying on; Till Stoney finally calmed her singing those Gospel songs. Well, we split the road at Norwood, and he just shook my hand. He said, "I'll see you some place, friend," but you know he never has. But we were that free then, just walking down the road, Never really caring where that highway goes. Yeah, Stoney was a liar (a bullshitter!) ain't no doubt about it. It was just the way he told things, and you never want to doubt him. 'Cause he kept you going when the road got rough, And brought you through the lean times by making it up. "Hey, did I ever tell you the time I married my cousin up in Las Vegas?" Yeah, Stoney. Tell it again, will you? -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/c1c9ff98/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sat Apr 14 16:37:23 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:37:23 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <46213576.2010003@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <187AAA90-EAE1-11DB-9E57-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Five languages seems a fair enough approximation. These would normally have been French, Italian, English, Greek and Arabic. To those Eve Durrell could add Ladino. And I know of people who had Turkish, Albanian, Serbo-Croat, German, Russian, Latin, etc -- one or more of them, that is, in addition to the basic five. But five would do, those five I first listed. Races in the sense of nationalities (the French race) would follow from the above, and again five gives the idea. But Durrell does get carried away with five. Before the war there would have been only one fleet: Britain's Royal Navy. During the war there would have been the Royal Navy, the Royal Hellenic Navy, and Vichy's Force X. Three not five. But maybe Durrell was warming up for the Avignon Quintet. :Michael *** On Saturday, April 14, 2007, at 09:11 pm, slighcl wrote: > Five races, five languages, a dozen creeds: five fleets turning > through their greasy reflections behind the harbour bar.? But there > are more than five sexes and only demotic Greek seems to distinguish > among them. (1.2) > > > > Why "five"?? Perhaps races, languages, and navies do actually come in > "fives" in pre-war Alexandria.? It would seem a highly selective cast > in such a cosmopolitan place, to say the least.? > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1344 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/73a8d67a/attachment.bin From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 17:53:19 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:53:19 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <187AAA90-EAE1-11DB-9E57-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <187AAA90-EAE1-11DB-9E57-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <4621777F.6090207@wfu.edu> Michael writes: > But Durrell does get carried away with five. . . . But maybe Durrell > was warming up for the Avignon Quintet. Thanks for testing the connections of those fives with any semblance of the real. For the fiction, I recall Justine talking into the mirror-mirror-on the wall: "Look! five different pictures of the same subject. Now if I wrote I would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of prism-sghtedness. Why should not people show more than one profile at a time?" (/Justine /1.15) One for each sense? CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/7aaa46a4/attachment-0001.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sat Apr 14 18:01:55 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 02:01:55 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <4621777F.6090207@wfu.edu> Message-ID: One for each finger. On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 01:53 am, slighcl wrote: > Michael writes: > > But Durrell does get carried away with five. . . .? But maybe Durrell > was warming up for the Avignon Quintet. > > Thanks for testing the connections of those fives with any semblance > of the real.? For the fiction, I recall Justine talking into the > mirror-mirror-on the wall:? > > "Look! five different pictures of the same subject.? Now if I wrote I > would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of > prism-sghtedness.? Why should not people show more than one profile at > a time?"? (Justine 1.15)? > > One for each sense? > > CLS > -- > > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1207 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/8ae6de8c/attachment.bin From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 18:09:16 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:09:16 -0400 Subject: [ilds] announcement Kentucky Writers Day 20007 In-Reply-To: <4621777F.6090207@wfu.edu> References: <187AAA90-EAE1-11DB-9E57-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <4621777F.6090207@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070415010935.DYEW20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Stoney (that is H. R. Stoneback, our Stoney) and his wife Sparrow will be at the Kentucky Writers Day (April 21-22). The general site for the meeting is at Penn's Store in Gravel Switch, KY. See the web site for maps and directions. Don't drive too fast, ya might miss it. http://www.pennsstore.com/index.html *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 18:39:52 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:39:52 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <46218268.5010403@wfu.edu> Michael recalls the five fingers. Ah yes. Sapphy's hand. The original cover art for /Justine /&c. Dog tired terribly happy. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/90cd800f/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: justine_hand.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 108122 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/90cd800f/attachment-0001.jpg From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 19:00:52 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:00:52 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- fives In-Reply-To: References: <4621777F.6090207@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070415022725.HHZH15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> At 09:01 PM 4/14/2007, you wrote: >One for each finger. > >Michael and Charlie are much too quick for me. Yes, five fingers and >the blue hand. Are there other significant fives in the novel? There are significant fives in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In fact, there are five fives, and a pentangle, and the five wounds of Christ, and more. Somehow I doubt that Durrell is following the Gawain poet. But maybe . . . . WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Apr 14 19:40:23 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:40:23 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 In-Reply-To: <46218268.5010403@wfu.edu> References: <46218268.5010403@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070415034832.HLXV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> In the last paragraph of 1.1, the narrator thinks of the "lime-laden dust of those summer afternoons" (probably in Alexandria), and at the beginning of 1.2 his "mind's eye" shows him "a thousand dust-tormented streets." In 1.3 he remembers "An air full of brick-dust -- sweet smelling brick dust." And in the final sentence of 1.3 the boys "struggle for breath and in every summer kiss they can detect the taste of quicklime . . . ." Dust and lime. As the narrator himself suggests, it's "so unromantic" (1.3). wlg *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Apr 14 21:20:21 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:20:21 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 -- lime dust In-Reply-To: <20070415034832.HLXV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <46218268.5010403@wfu.edu> <20070415034832.HLXV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <4621A805.5060002@wfu.edu> Bill writes of dust--I look to the Old Poet of the City--or at least to his family letters: CLS Alexandria alas! is much changed, and the decayed buildings on each side of the streets look deprecatingly down on the passengers. The streets however are becoming orderly and passable, but the blinding clouds of lime dust are very disagreeable. Another very serious annoyance is the numerous horde of flies that seem to have infested the place after the bombardment. It is no exaggeration to say that one has to pick them off the flesh every minute. As I am writing now I can feel two, pasturing on the verdant produce of my nose! From John C. Cavafy To Constantine Cavafy [Alexandria] 12 August 1882 Transcribed and edited by Katerina Ghika http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/66c3618e/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 21:32:28 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:32:28 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- fives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Five colours mixed make people blind... On 4/14/07 6:01 PM, "Michael Haag" wrote: > One for each finger. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070414/9e952ce1/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 21:32:05 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:32:05 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <46213576.2010003@wfu.edu> Message-ID: I must admit that, for my approach, I can?t really read 1.2 & 1.3 in isolation. I think something is going on there that bridges 1.2 through 1.6, and Charles is hitting on some of that here... What I mean is, how do we as readers (who are likely to read all of these sections in the first sitting, quite easily) relate these pieces: 1.2 ? THE CITY ?Capitally, what is this city of ours?? 1.3 ? THE ISLAND ?Landscape tones...? 1.4 ? THE CITY (from the island) ?I had come here to completely rebuild this city in my brain? ?A part of city...? These 3 sections are contextualized further, with 1.1 as the movement from the island to the city, 1.5 as a return to the city through the act of writing and remembering (Justine's diaries and Nessim's folio of his madness & series of historical dreams), and 1.6 as the rural island's sense of time through the sea. (naturally, there's a lot of back & forth, so this is generalized...) They all then start to overlap in ways that might inform some of this tension between the rural island and the urban city. For instance: 1) the city is "the great winepress of love," which I read (contrary to some) as an allusion to Revelations 14:19-20: "And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs" This would seem to place the city in a teleological frame of mind; yet, the rural island is without time until the city is introduced: "In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea" (1.6). The island is circular. 2) the city keeps coming back to slaked and unslaked, such that we have "hot pavements slaked with water" (1.3) and shortly after Melissa's mouth falls on the narrator's "like an unslaked summer" (1.4). That unslaked kiss leads to "our little fingers linked, drinking in the deep camphor-scented afternoon, a part of city..." (1.4). 3) even in the opening bisexual Freudian epigraph and Sadean sense of crime and the noose, we get the 5 sexes (1.2). There are also the "symbolic lovers of the free Hellenic world" who are replaced by "something... androgynous, inverted upon itself" (1.2). "Inverted" strikes me as important here since it presages 1.3 "Balthazar went so often with the old poet of the city,* the boys stir uneasily." And, even the "quicklime" tasting kisses they share anticipate the narrator's kisses with Melissa, who is at first without a name or gender, which to my mind suggests a continuation of Balthazar & Cavafy. After the "bodies of the young hunt for a fellow nakedness" 1.3 (note the gender of 'fellow' and that Balthazar and Cavafy are in this hunt, making the boys stir), in 1.4 we get further references to Cavafy, then: "Here *we* so often met" (1.5)... Who is this "we"? Only Nessim, Balthazar, and Cavafy have been named. The next sentence leads us on even further: "There was a little coloured stall in summer with slices of water-melon and the vivid water-ices..... [wait for it].... *she* liked to eat" (1.5). That's a long wait for the gender of the person whom he meets so often. She is immediately tied other confusions though, being "fresh perhaps from some assignation in a darkened room, from which I averted my mind" (1.5). So, she's travelling between two men, "dusted by the pollen of his kisses." To my mind, this 'pollen' that Darley picks up from the other man makes his ties to the "something inverted" quite complex, especially since her mouth is the petal, though she is travelling between the 'flora' of the city: the men. 4) and in the midst of all of this, the thematic ties are rendered even more complex through the references to texts: -- 1.1 contains the "a few books" brought to the island -- 1.2 we go from "a flash in the mind's eye" to Nessim "quoting" The Book, so we're back to texts -- 1.3 opens with "notes" clearly in a notebook and references to another poet -- 1.4 quotes Cavafy with citation to the 'tipped in' texts at the end while the narrator and Melissa pass messages through "flesh-lips." -- 1.5 the papers are 'censored' by the child, Nessim's journals and Justine's diary -- 1.6 even the sea, the break from the telos of the city, still is "the fugue upon which this writing is made" while the gulls are "white scribble on the grey, munched clouds." To overlap all of these things in so short a space, yet without giving the sense of contriving it all, is quite stunning. --> So, what catches my eye is the rapid juxtaposition of the urban and the rural such that the markers of difference seem to be time, sex, texts, memory, and thinking vs. acting. Moreover, the island re-inscribes the stability lost to the city: a child and a parent. How this relates to crime vs. talk, urban vs. rural, Id vs. Superego, and so forth is (to my mind) the series of troubles laid out across the rest of the series.... As for Charles' stylistic observation, > For all of its rich range of reference and heteroglossia, > the repetition, like alliteration in poetry, marks the > passages as being as much about artifice and self- > referentiality as about any references to a "real City" > locatable somewhere in a real historical moment. I couldn't agree more. Best, James ___________________________ James Gifford Department of English University of Victoria Victoria, B.C., Canada http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 06:52:54 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 09:52:54 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <46222E36.2020005@wfu.edu> I agree, Jamie. 1.2 works within a field of associations. Thanks for ransacking and unpacking some of them! >"Here *we* so often met" (1.5)... Who is this "we"? Only Nessim, >Balthazar, and Cavafy have been named. The next sentence leads us on even >further: "There was a little coloured stall in summer with slices of >water-melon and the vivid water-ices..... [wait for it].... *she* liked to >eat" (1.5). That's a long wait for the gender of the person whom he meets >so often. > We had some excellent discussion in 2003 about the poetic effect of the unnamed objects of desire and description. Could you please point people to those entries? >So, she's travelling between two men, "dusted by the pollen of his kisses." >To my mind, this 'pollen' that Darley picks up from the other man makes his >ties to the "something inverted" quite complex, especially since her mouth >is the petal, though she is travelling between the 'flora' of the city: the >men. > Melissa, I note, is at once like a pollen-bearing, honey-making bee (thus realizing the sweetness of her name) while also in all of her shuttling recalling "those who enjoy an intermediate existence" between "flies" and "beggars." Her male lovers thus are cast darkly. >-- 1.4 quotes Cavafy with citation to the 'tipped in' texts at the end while >the narrator and Melissa pass messages through "flesh-lips." > Here Jamie brings out some of the sense of how the style, the exotic and erotic association, and literary allusions all start to come together, like motif combining at once. And it is curious and grand that LD did not intend at least a part of this crescendo to a kiss. The /Justine /notebooks and the typescripts clearly show that he originally wrote The messages passing beyond conscience, directly through the flesh--lips, eyes, water ices, the coloured stall. The double dash became a hyphen when the type was being set up for /Justine/. LD had plenty of time and occasion to fix that muck-up if he had wished to do so. I now suppose that if he did note the slip he saw how the poetic sense was heightened, the immediacy of the sensuality raised. A good case of a textual variant that I would never wish changed, but think important to record and to provide. (Burton does use "flesh lips" as a phrase in his translation of the /Perfumed Garden/; lucky alignment of textual sympathies.) CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/f02e2501/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 07:07:00 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:07:00 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <46222E36.2020005@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <941B57FA-EB5A-11DB-9889-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Mellisae (bees) were the priestesses of Cybele who tore off her lovers' sexual organs. Indeed her male priests were castrated. In the famous statue of Artemis of Ephesus (Artemis being a descendant of Cybele) she is decorated with testicles and bees. :Michael On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 02:52 pm, slighcl wrote: > > > > So, she's travelling between two men, "dusted by the pollen of his > kisses." > To my mind, this 'pollen' that Darley picks up from the other man > makes his > ties to the "something inverted" quite complex, especially since her > mouth > is the petal, though she is travelling between the 'flora' of the > city: the > men. > > Melissa, I note, is at once like a pollen-bearing, honey-making bee > (thus realizing the sweetness of her name) while also in all of her > shuttling recalling "those who enjoy an intermediate existence" > between "flies" and "beggars."? Her male lovers thus are cast darkly. > > > > CLS > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1527 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/a8865c41/attachment-0001.bin From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sun Apr 15 08:05:16 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 08:05:16 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <941B57FA-EB5A-11DB-9889-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: Since both Michael and Charles have picked up the pollen-laden Melissa, I should note that it has always made me think of The Beggar?s Opera, ?My heart was so free / it rov?d like the bee / ?till Polly my passion requited.? Personally, I?m simply stunned as a reader by how tightly woven the metaphors, adjective, adverbs, and images all are. As for the castrating Melissa, which Michael notes below, I must admit that I?ve always been puzzled by Melissa?s surname: Artemis. Now it begins to make more sense with the bees image, but I?d always mentally connected this with the Temple of Artemis in Paleopolis on Corfu, which had supported the Medusa pediment LD found so fascinating. I?d always found the combination of Artemis and the Gorgon peculiar, but now Artemis decorated by castrated men?s ?remainders?... Hmmm. This certainly complicates Melissa for me. She?s always been the most elusive character for me, yet Durrell was clearly intrigued enough to write ?Eight Aspects of Melissa.? --Jamie On 4/15/07 7:07 AM, "Michael Haag" wrote: > Mellisae (bees) were the priestesses of Cybele who tore off her lovers' sexual > organs. Indeed her male priests were castrated. In the famous statue of > Artemis of Ephesus (Artemis being a descendant of Cybele) she is decorated > with testicles and bees. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/9c1eb7aa/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 09:07:05 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:07:05 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.3 landscape tones of Alexandria In-Reply-To: References: <46213576.2010003@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070415160633.IXYO18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> >What I mean is, how do we as readers (who are likely to read all of these >sections in the first sitting, quite easily) relate these pieces: > >1.2 ? THE CITY >?Capitally, what is this city of ours?? > >1.3 ? THE ISLAND >?Landscape tones...? So writes Jamie. And perhaps I am not reading this as he would like me to. But I think 1.3 describes the city rather than the island. WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 08:59:52 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:59:52 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 real and unreal Message-ID: <58FC492C-EB6A-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> James quotes Charles as follows: As for Charles' stylistic observation, > For all of its rich range of reference and heteroglossia, > the repetition, like alliteration in poetry, marks the > passages as being as much about artifice and self- > referentiality as about any references to a "real City" > locatable somewhere in a real historical moment. I couldn't agree more. Best, James ___________________________ Well yes, I do agree that Justine is a work of the imagination, but it would be a mistake to overlook the real, whether the real city, or real persons, or real experiences in Durrell's life. In fact I do not think that it is possible to fully elucidate or even, sometimes, to begin to understand what Durrell is on about in his writings, both poetry and prose, without looking into his life -- to which he is forever making direct references or at the very least allusions. :Michael From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 09:21:02 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:21:02 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <941B57FA-EB5A-11DB-9889-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <46222E36.2020005@wfu.edu> <941B57FA-EB5A-11DB-9889-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <20070415162040.IZHV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Michael Haag reminds us: >Mellisae (bees) were the priestesses of Cybele who tore off her >lovers' sexual organs. Indeed her male priests were castrated. In >the famous statue of Artemis of Ephesus (Artemis being a descendant >of Cybele) she is decorated with testicles and bees. >This is an old and fading memory, but many years ago Durrell told me >that Mellisae were iniates to the Elysian mysteries. Perhaps I >misremember what he said, or he got his mysteries mixed. WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 09:36:21 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:36:21 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 real and unreal In-Reply-To: <58FC492C-EB6A-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <58FC492C-EB6A-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <46225485.1010406@wfu.edu> Michael writes: >In fact I do not think >that it is possible to fully elucidate or even, sometimes, to begin to >understand what Durrell is on about in his writings, both poetry and >prose, without looking into his life -- to which he is forever making >direct references or at the very least allusions. > and I had written about these early : > passages as being as much about artifice and self- > referentiality as about any references to a "real City" > locatable somewhere in a real historical moment. I don't any of this as exclusive. Michael's own work in the Alex books shows us the real rewards for new understanding of LD's writings, fiction and non-fiction. I really mean that "as being as much about . . . as" to sound balanced. I envision the technique here as real historical and biographical material being reworked under the refracting lense of memory. There is indeed a notion of the real City, some place and time back to which some of this could be traced, often with great result, but given that /Justine /is presented from within the speech of a imaginary narrator remembering his past unevenly within a work of fiction, the notion of verification becomes complicated. Provisionality, uncertainty--I think that is what the book dramatizes. . . . LD really wants to test our notions, our old definitions and our old allegiances to "fiction" and "non-fiction," "real" versus "unreal." Swinburne says about "art for art's sake" that it is /sound as an obligation/, for beauty and excellence must come first, but /unsound as a prohibition/, in that other concerns might also come into play within the art (political, spiritual, &c., as in Milton and Shelley). Nothing is forbidden to the imagination. I would not support any statements that would say, "/Justine /is all about an unreal City" or "/Justine /is all about a real City." Each of those points can be explored provisionally, perhaps using Pursewarden and Darley's observations early on in /Balthazar/. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/3be78219/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 09:11:34 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:11:34 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.3 landscape tones of Alexandria In-Reply-To: <20070415160633.IXYO18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: Definitely the city, not the island. On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 05:07 pm, william godshalk wrote: > >> What I mean is, how do we as readers (who are likely to read all of >> these >> sections in the first sitting, quite easily) relate these pieces: >> >> 1.2 ? THE CITY >> ?Capitally, what is this city of ours?? >> >> 1.3 ? THE ISLAND >> ?Landscape tones...? > > So writes Jamie. And perhaps I am not reading > this as he would like me to. But I think 1.3 > describes the city rather than the island. > > WLG > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 09:32:26 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:32:26 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- staggering in its variety and profusion In-Reply-To: <20070415162040.IZHV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: The initiates at Eleusis were the mystai. :Michael On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 05:21 pm, william godshalk wrote: > Michael Haag reminds us: > >> Mellisae (bees) were the priestesses of Cybele who tore off her >> lovers' sexual organs. Indeed her male priests were castrated. In >> the famous statue of Artemis of Ephesus (Artemis being a descendant >> of Cybele) she is decorated with testicles and bees. > >> This is an old and fading memory, but many years ago Durrell told me >> that Mellisae were iniates to the Elysian mysteries. Perhaps I >> misremember what he said, or he got his mysteries mixed. > > WLG > > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sun Apr 15 09:51:13 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:51:13 +0200 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 real and unreal In-Reply-To: <58FC492C-EB6A-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <58FC492C-EB6A-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <46225801.1070903@interdesign.fr> Surely this fiction is based on "collective realities" whipped into a wonderful, rich and tasty mayonaise!? Marc Piel Michael Haag wrote: > James quotes Charles as follows: > > As for Charles' stylistic observation, > > >>For all of its rich range of reference and heteroglossia, >>the repetition, like alliteration in poetry, marks the >>passages as being as much about artifice and self- >>referentiality as about any references to a "real City" >>locatable somewhere in a real historical moment. > > > I couldn't agree more. > > Best, > James > ___________________________ > > Well yes, I do agree that Justine is a work of the imagination, but it > would be a mistake to overlook the real, whether the real city, or real > persons, or real experiences in Durrell's life. In fact I do not think > that it is possible to fully elucidate or even, sometimes, to begin to > understand what Durrell is on about in his writings, both poetry and > prose, without looking into his life -- to which he is forever making > direct references or at the very least allusions. > > :Michael > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 10:02:48 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:02:48 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 Message-ID: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Regarding mysteries, Melissa and melissai: Mysteries turned on the idea of rebirth or resurrection. The theme of rebirth is a very ancient one, and not surprisingly women played a central role. But when viewed as part of a cyle, rebirth is preceded by death, so that women played the role of killers as much as nurturing mothers. Cybele (or Kybele) was an earth goddess of Asia Minor whose son and lover was Attis. There were stories of mountain-top affairs during which Cybele, like a queen bee, would tear out her lover?s sexual organs. Cybele combined within her death and life, nature, man and the divine. Her temple rites were ecstatic acts of self-abandonment and sometimes of self-sacrifice. Her priests castrated themselves in an ecstasy of identification with Attis, while Cybele?s priestesses, the melissai, or bees, also served as temple prostitutes, offering up their bodies to sacred sexual union -- though I believe that the male lay celebrant returned home with his privates still attached. The Greek Artemis, as I have said, was a descendant of Cybele, or at least the orientalised version of Artemis at Ephesus was. The Olympian Artemis, goddess of the hunt, had asked her father Zeus for the gift of eternal virginity. But the Artemis of Ephesus was a woman with a past, that past residing in Cybele. And now an interesting connection, for according to a strand of Christian tradition, Jesus confided his mother to the care of his apostle John, who brought Mary to Ephesus where she lived out her days. The remains of her house is still shown to visitors today. Since early Christian times the Church has celebrated the assumption of the Virgin on 15 August, but the date has a far older resonance than that, for 15 August was also the annual feast day of Artemis at Ephesus. And as it happens in the Christian Church the virginity of Mary is symbolised by a bee. Like the man said, 'Alexandria, princess and whore.' :Michael From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 10:40:52 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:40:52 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- "Melissa!" In-Reply-To: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <462263A4.1080504@wfu.edu> Michael tells us: >Cybele?s priestesses, the >melissai, or bees, also served as temple prostitutes, offering up their >bodies to sacred sexual union -- though I believe that the male lay >celebrant returned home with his privates still attached. > I enjoy knowing this background to "Melissa Artemis: patron of sorrow" (/Justine /Workpoints / Consequential Data). I have always thought that Melissa, with boundless charity, her miserable assignations, and her sad dancing at the club bears some semblance to the tradition of orientalized temple whores as imagined by Flaubert in /Salammb?/ or Lou?s in several of his works. Melissa is so important, yet she gets overcast or eclipsed in a great way, not only by the narrator's neglect, but (perhaps) also by the reader, who has sat down to read a novel entitled /Justine/, not /Melissa/. She is a sacrificial victim in that way. Jamie is right to recall the "Melissa" invoked by the poem sequence. But why would not Melissa merit a titled volume, as well as Justine and Clea? What happens to her in our minds because she never achieves that privileged state of entitlement? To complicate this business and these claims: Will anyone share thoughts on the effect of having Melissa appear in description before Justine &c.? I can still recall trying to sort out who "she" was when I read this as a teenager. What an initiation, what a set of problems for my naive self. I had to know her by her body before I could know her in name. As I noted in some 2003 RG posting, Melissa was originally left as an unnamed, associative "she" in the 1957 /Justine /1.4. The reader initially does not know who "she" is in reading the narrator's descriptions; only retrospectively can we see the signs and make sense of who she is. In 1962 LD evidently had some concerns that this would be confusing and tidied up 1.4, inserting the declaration "Melissa!" US readers still have the earlier orchestration of effects around an unnamed "she"; UK readers have the post 1962 "Melissa!" in the Faber printings. Those changes and others like them make for decidedly different reading experiences. CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/fba01df7/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 11:31:18 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:31:18 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- ellipses, episodes, fragments In-Reply-To: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <46226F76.6030302@wfu.edu> We have touched upon the possible connections between the prose style in these early passages of /Justine /and some of the important thematic and conceptual issues explored within the larger /Quartet/. I would like to hear anyone's thought regarding the form of the novel, first made evident in /Justine /1.1 - 1.4 &c. The reader early on discovers that this novel presents formal difficulties and pleasures which make seem different from expected narrative conventions. The sentences themselves are full of dashes, ellipses, refrains, "notes for landscape tones," asterisks, and other interesting features. And then, moving up a level, there are the "episodes," the divided sections within the larger four "Parts" of /Justine/. The dividers between the "episodes" seem analogous to the ellipses and dashes in the sentences. What to make of the formal experiment of /Justine/'s episodes? What do we do with the gaps in the text between episodes? CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/afbb92e8/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 10:58:47 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:58:47 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- "Melissa!" In-Reply-To: <462263A4.1080504@wfu.edu> Message-ID: '... the iodine-coloured meidan of Mazarita. ... Here we so often met.' Eve Cohen, the future ex-Mrs Durrell, lived at Mazarita at the time Durrell and Eve met. On their first evening together they walked back and forth along the corniche, then finally turning inland a bit to Mazarita he took her home. :Michael On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 06:40 pm, slighcl wrote: > Michael tells us: > > Cybele?s priestesses, the > melissai, or bees, also served as temple prostitutes, offering up their > bodies to sacred sexual union -- though I believe that the male lay > celebrant returned home with his privates still attached. > > I enjoy knowing this background to "Melissa Artemis: patron of sorrow" > (Justine Workpoints / Consequential Data).? I have always thought that > Melissa, with boundless charity, her miserable assignations, and her > sad dancing at the club bears some semblance to the tradition of > orientalized temple whores as imagined by Flaubert in Salammb? or > Lou?s in several of his works.? > > Melissa is so important, yet she gets overcast or eclipsed in a great > way, not only by the narrator's neglect, but (perhaps) also by the > reader, who has sat down to read a novel entitled Justine, not > Melissa.? She is a sacrificial victim in that way.? Jamie is right to > recall the "Melissa" invoked by the poem sequence.? But why would not > Melissa merit a titled volume, as well as Justine and Clea?? What > happens to her in our minds because she never achieves that privileged > state of entitlement? > > To complicate this business and these claims:? Will anyone share > thoughts on the effect of having Melissa appear in description before > Justine &c.?? I can still recall trying to sort out who "she" was when > I read this as a teenager.? What an initiation, what a set of problems > for my naive self.? I had to know her by her body before I could know > her in name. > > As I noted in some 2003 RG posting, Melissa was originally left? as an > unnamed, associative "she" in the 1957 Justine 1.4.? The reader > initially does not know who "she" is in reading the narrator's > descriptions; only retrospectively can we see the signs and make sense > of who she is.? In 1962 LD evidently had some concerns that this would > be confusing and tidied up 1.4, inserting? the declaration "Melissa!"? > US readers still have the earlier orchestration of effects around an > unnamed "she"; UK readers have the post 1962 "Melissa!" in the Faber > printings.? Those changes and others like them make for decidedly > different reading experiences. > > CLS > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 3125 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/09a177cc/attachment.bin From lillios at mail.ucf.edu Sun Apr 15 11:36:00 2007 From: lillios at mail.ucf.edu (Anna Lillios) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:36:00 -0400 Subject: [ilds] I first ran into stoney. . . . In-Reply-To: <46216A14.7000802@wfu.edu> References: <46216A14.7000802@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <462238500200004D00014BE8@mail.ucf.edu> After spending time with Stoney and Sparrow this summer in Malaga and Ronda, Spain, I can say that the wonderful late-night conversations in cafes and bars continue. I heard from Stoney a week or so ago and he said that he plans to see us all in Paris 'O8. --Anna Dr. Anna Lillios Associate Professor of English Department of English University of Central Florida P.O. Box 161346 Orlando, Florida 32816-1346 Phone: (407) 823-5161 FAX: (407) 823-6582 >>> slighcl 4/14/2007 6:56:04 PM >>> All of us are guilty of not saying what we should to whom we should when we should. Why? I realized that was true tonight as I was cooking in the kitchen at home and heard the words to "Stoney" come streaming over the online broadcast to which I was tuned: He had a gray pillowcase full of books by Durrell, And he had this old concertina, all beat up and she played like hell, Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs, Well, he drank all night for nothing, he told his stories till dawn. . . . The artist with a new recording of this old Jerry Jeff Walker song is Todd Snider. http://www.toddsnider.net/ The album is called /Peace, Love, and Anarchy/. http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Love-Anarchy-Todd-Snider/dp/B000NIIURO The subject of the song--our song, I'll venture--is our own H.R. Stoneback. My Corfu is in a great sense a Corfu where Stoney still talks away the early morning hours up in the roof garden of the Cavlieri Hotel with the swallows flying away, spinning away their dark webs against the arc-lit night sky above above the park. I think Jamie and Bill were there. Richard Pine was there too, envisioning over some guttering candles what would one day not long after come to be the Durrell School. But nobody--nobody--could talk on and on and on through the night like Stoney. The sun itself did not dare to rise over the Ionian without Stoney's leave and without giving him due credit. That was thirst. Those were stories. That was song. Those were nights. Long may Stoney hold forth. I'll append the lyrics here. A cup of kindness to all. CLS *Stoney* Jerry Jeff Walker I first ran into Stoney. . . it was a bar downtown; Was Richmond, Virginia. . . we were bumming around, Suitcase to suitcase. . . we started him talking, Finding out about the things we've shared in the miles we've been. He had a gray pillowcase full of books by Durrell, And he had this old concertina, all beat up and she played like hell, Until you got him started singing those Gospel songs, Well, he drank all night for nothing, he told his stories till dawn. And he said, "Come on, get your bag, boy! Sun's up now and it's time to roll! Hell, you know there ain't no better time than early in the morning To be out walking down that road! Just feeling another day beginning while some fools just rushing on by, We'll be like some Mr. Independence: we're taking our own sweet time!" We walked on out that highway under a clear blue sky, I's listening to the tales he told, drinking warm red wine. 'Bout the night he rolled seven; bout some girl he'd done wrong; 'Bout everything he could think of while we walked along. Yeah, ol' Stoney had a magic; made him hard to forget. Like the night we flew down the highway (his old pickup, it nearly wrecked!) Was a crazy woman driving, all drunked up and carrying on; Till Stoney finally calmed her singing those Gospel songs. Well, we split the road at Norwood, and he just shook my hand. He said, "I'll see you some place, friend," but you know he never has. But we were that free then, just walking down the road, Never really caring where that highway goes. Yeah, Stoney was a liar (a bullshitter!) ain't no doubt about it. It was just the way he told things, and you never want to doubt him. 'Cause he kept you going when the road got rough, And brought you through the lean times by making it up. "Hey, did I ever tell you the time I married my cousin up in Las Vegas?" Yeah, Stoney. Tell it again, will you? -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 11:49:12 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 14:49:12 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- mystai In-Reply-To: References: <20070415162040.IZHV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <20070415184839.JOFI18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> At 12:32 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: >The initiates at Eleusis were the mystai. Some place out there is a copy of Tunc with a letter from Durrell to me laid in. If you have that book and letter you could resolve who's wrong -- Durrell or me! WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 12:04:32 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:04:32 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- "Melissa!" In-Reply-To: <462263A4.1080504@wfu.edu> References: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <462263A4.1080504@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070415190422.JPRT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> >Charlie asks: >"Will anyone share thoughts on the effect of having Melissa appear >in description before Justine &c.? I can still recall trying to >sort out who "she" was when I read this as a teenager. What an >initiation, what a set of problems for my naive self. I had to know >her by her body before I could know her in name." I first read Justine in 1963, on a cold winter night, on Cape Cod. I remember thinking that the woman described in Justine 4.1 is Justine. Who else? When Durrell put in the Melissa marker, I was annoyed. And the change did effect my reading. WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 11:59:12 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:59:12 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- mystai In-Reply-To: <20070415184839.JOFI18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <6672FDE6-EB83-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> How much are you offering to get it back? On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 07:49 pm, william godshalk wrote: > At 12:32 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: >> The initiates at Eleusis were the mystai. > Some place out there is a copy of Tunc with a letter from Durrell to > me laid in. If you have that book and letter you could resolve who's > wrong -- Durrell or me! > > WLG > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 12:08:06 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:08:06 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- you have it? In-Reply-To: <6672FDE6-EB83-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <20070415184839.JOFI18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <6672FDE6-EB83-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <20070415190743.GNXF20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> O, Michael, You have it! Does my memory fail me? How much are you asking? Bill At 02:59 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: >How much are you offering to get it back? > > >On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 07:49 pm, william godshalk wrote: > > > At 12:32 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: > >> The initiates at Eleusis were the mystai. > > Some place out there is a copy of Tunc with a letter from Durrell to > > me laid in. If you have that book and letter you could resolve who's > > wrong -- Durrell or me! *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 12:12:34 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:12:34 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 -- lime dust -- really? In-Reply-To: <4621A805.5060002@wfu.edu> References: <46218268.5010403@wfu.edu> <20070415034832.HLXV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <4621A805.5060002@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070415191231.JQKZ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/8b86a786/attachment.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 12:23:24 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:23:24 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.2 -- you have it? In-Reply-To: <20070415190743.GNXF20060.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: Whatever I can get on eBay! On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 08:08 pm, william godshalk wrote: > O, Michael, > > You have it! Does my memory fail me? > > How much are you asking? > > Bill > > At 02:59 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: >> How much are you offering to get it back? >> >> >> On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 07:49 pm, william godshalk wrote: >> >>> At 12:32 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: >>>> The initiates at Eleusis were the mystai. >>> Some place out there is a copy of Tunc with a letter from Durrell to >>> me laid in. If you have that book and letter you could resolve who's >>> wrong -- Durrell or me! > > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 12:35:56 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:35:56 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 -- lime dust -- really? In-Reply-To: <20070415191231.JQKZ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <87D88E54-EB88-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Alexandria is built on a limestone ridge. The limestone is quarried even now a few miles to the west, and it may have been quarried pretty much in situ then, or at least foundations would have be dug and the stone itself finished on site, creating limestone dust. Also brick dust, Durrell mentions. This would have been mudbrick, hence sweet-smelling. Alexandria is a lot less dustier than Cairo where the dust is from the desert sand and is yellow or dark. In Alexandria, I have noticed, the dust has a lighter colour, almost white, and on buildings it looks like a patina of salt from the sea breeze. :Michael On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 08:12 pm, william godshalk wrote: > ??? Charlie, are you suggesting that Durrell may have read John > Cavafy's letter, or are you suggesting that Alexandria was pretty > dusty -- really, not fictionally, clouded with lime dust? > > > > WLG > > > > > "Alexandria alas! is much changed, and the decayed buildings on each > side of the streets look deprecatingly down on the passengers. > ??? The streets however are becoming orderly and passable, but the > blinding clouds of lime dust are very disagreeable." > ??? > > >From John C. Cavafy > To Constantine Cavafy > [Alexandria] 12 August 1882 > Transcribed and edited by Katerina Ghika > > http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1524 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/a2120ed4/attachment.bin From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 13:19:57 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:19:57 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 -- lime dust -- really? In-Reply-To: <20070415191231.JQKZ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> References: <46218268.5010403@wfu.edu> <20070415034832.HLXV18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <4621A805.5060002@wfu.edu> <20070415191231.JQKZ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <462288ED.5070204@wfu.edu> On 4/15/2007 3:12 PM, william godshalk wrote: >> Charlie, are you suggesting that Durrell may have read John >> Cavafy's letter, or are you suggesting that Alexandria was pretty >> dusty -- really, not fictionally, clouded with lime dust? >> My own scruples prevent me from claiming any direct connections. I was mainly interested in the juxtaposition of dust, flies, and Cavafy. But I can't deny that I thought the confluence of concerns 1882 / 1950s provocative, evocative. Yet not factual, and perhaps it is not necessary to press it all that ahrd. Perhaps Michael, Jamie, or someone else with Cavafy expertise knows more about the publication of the Cavafy correspondence and whether or not LD could have read the brother's description. But no doubt in any epoch the City offers abundant flies and dust. . . . CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/e8d5496b/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 13:39:46 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:39:46 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 -- lime dust -- really? In-Reply-To: <87D88E54-EB88-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <87D88E54-EB88-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <46228D92.60901@wfu.edu> The limestone in the ground seems right, Michael, but would there not also be dust from lime kilns in Alex? Or had that rendering down of the ancient city's marble already been accomplished? I had always recalled the sacrifice of all of the classical statuary and marble coverings in the medieval period. Marble is usefully rendered down for whitening, lime for cement, &c. One incarnation of the City cannibalizes the corpse of its predecessor. The pollen of Alexander and Antony's Alex lightly dusting the inhabitants of LD's Alex, making their kisses tart. Maybe I recall that lime-kiln business from my archaeology days, or my time at Giza, or perhaps from Christopher Woodward's diverting survey, /In Ruins/ (2004): But if the Goths did not demolish the buildings, where did the dusty, cobwebbed temples disappear to? They were recycled: in the thousand years that followed, ancient Rome was remade as Christian Rome. In the darkness of the deserted ruins the colonnades echoed with the clang of mallets as thieves stole the gold and bronze statues in order to melt them down. And why open a quarry when the Forum was on the new city's doorstep, with its stones polished and ready? The Colosseum was leased as a quarry by the Popes: picking up one receipt in the Vatican archive we see a payment of 205 ducats for the removal of 2,522 tons of stone between September 1451 and May 1452. One of the first Popes to introduce legislation to protect the few monuments that still stood was Pius II, in 1462. A humanist scholar, Pius had praised the ruins in a poem written many years before: Oh Rome! Your very ruins are a joy, Fallen is your pomp; but it was peerless once! Your noble blocks wrench'd from your ancient walls Are burn'd for lime by greedy slaves of gain. Villains! If such as you may have their way Three ages more, Rome's glory will be gone. Pius's laws were disregarded like many before or since, however. In 1519 Raphael told Pope Leo X, 'I would be so bold as to say that all of this new Rome, however great it may be, however beautiful, however embellished with palaces, churches and other buildings, all of this is built with mortar made from ancient marbles.' In the twelve years since Raphael had known the city the Temple of Ceres and one of its two pyramids had been destroyed. The lime-burning which Pius II and Raphael decried was the most banal, yet most destructive, aspect of the recycling. In mixing mortar the best aggregate is powdered lime, and the easiest way to obtain powdered lime is to burn marble. At the end of the nineteenth century the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani discovered a lime-kiln abandoned by lime-burners in a sudden hurry many centuries before. Inside stood eight marble Vestal Virgins ready to be burned, stashed 'like a cord of wood, leaving as few interstices as possible between them, and the spaces formed by the curves of the body filled in by marble chips'. Once when he was sketching in the Forum, the great French seventeenth-century painter Nicolas Poussin was asked where to find the spirit of ancient Rome. He knelt down and scooped up a handful of earth. 'Here.' The cow pasture was mingled with marble dust, the richest sediment in the world. -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/55b36906/attachment-0001.html From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 14:33:59 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 22:33:59 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.1 and 1.2 -- lime dust -- really? In-Reply-To: <46228D92.60901@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <0574CDD3-EB99-11DB-B569-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Yes, possibly lime kilns too, in Cavafy's younger days anyway, that is when the city was fast abuilding over its ancient traces, and especially right after the 1882 bombardment. But an awful lot lay deeper than the foundations of the sorts of houses and buildings constructed at that time, so that the new city overlaid considerable remains of the ancient one. It is only now in our age of deeper foundations that the past has become seriously imperilled. Every time someone digs a hole, you see columns, mosaics, etc. Sometimes they are protected in situ or taken away to museums. Buildings are raised on concrete pylons so as not to sit on or destroy the ancient marble. In Durrell's day I doubt that lime kilns were a factor. :Michael On Sunday, April 15, 2007, at 09:39 pm, slighcl wrote: > The limestone in the ground seems right, Michael, but would there not > also be dust from lime kilns in Alex?? Or had that rendering down of > the ancient city's marble already been accomplished? > > I had always recalled the sacrifice of all of the classical statuary > and marble coverings in the medieval period.? Marble is usefully > rendered down for whitening, lime for cement, &c.? One incarnation of > the City cannibalizes the corpse of its predecessor.? The pollen of > Alexander and Antony's Alex lightly dusting the inhabitants of LD's > Alex, making their kisses tart.? Maybe I recall that lime-kiln > business from my archaeology days, or my time at Giza, or perhaps from > Christopher Woodward's diverting survey, In Ruins (2004): > > But if the Goths did not demolish the buildings, where did the dusty, > cobwebbed temples disappear to? They were recycled: in the thousand > years that followed, ancient Rome was remade as Christian Rome. In the > darkness of the deserted ruins the colonnades echoed with the clang of > mallets as thieves stole the gold and bronze statues in order to melt > them down. And why open a quarry when the Forum was on the new city's > doorstep, with its stones polished and ready? The Colosseum was leased > as a quarry by the Popes: picking up one receipt in the Vatican > archive we see a payment of 205 ducats for the removal of 2,522 tons > of stone between September 1451 and May 1452. One of the first Popes > to introduce legislation to protect the few monuments that still stood > was Pius II, in 1462. A humanist scholar, Pius had praised the ruins > in a poem written many years before: > > Oh Rome! Your very ruins are a joy, > Fallen is your pomp; but it was peerless once! > Your noble blocks wrench'd from your ancient walls > Are burn'd for lime by greedy slaves of gain. > Villains! If such as you may have their way > Three ages more, Rome's glory will be gone. > > Pius's laws were disregarded like many before or since, however. In > 1519 Raphael told Pope Leo X, 'I would be so bold as to say that all > of this new Rome, however great it may be, however beautiful, however > embellished with palaces, churches and other buildings, all of this is > built with mortar made from ancient marbles.' In the twelve years > since Raphael had known the city the Temple of Ceres and one of its > two pyramids had been destroyed. The lime-burning which Pius II and > Raphael decried was the most banal, yet most destructive, aspect of > the recycling. In mixing mortar the best aggregate is powdered lime, > and the easiest way to obtain powdered lime is to burn marble. At the > end of the nineteenth century the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani > discovered a lime-kiln abandoned by lime-burners in a sudden hurry > many centuries before. Inside stood eight marble Vestal Virgins ready > to be burned, stashed 'like a cord of wood, leaving as few interstices > as possible between them, and the spaces formed by the curves of the > body filled in by marble chips'. Once when he was sketching in the > Forum, the great French seventeenth-century painter Nicolas Poussin > was asked where to find the spirit of ancient Rome. He knelt down and > scooped up a handful of earth. 'Here.' The cow pasture was mingled > with marble dust, the richest sediment in the world. > > > -- > ********************** > Charles L. Sligh > Department of English > Wake Forest University > slighcl at wfu.edu > ********************** > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4610 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/28cbd4cd/attachment.bin From durrells at otenet.gr Sat Apr 14 06:16:44 2007 From: durrells at otenet.gr (Durrell School of Corfu) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2007 16:16:44 +0300 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 References: <20070414021835.DBCT18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <004d01c77e97$26601120$0100000a@DSC01> At the risk of being facetious, Bill (and given the earnest but I think unnecessary jeux of some previous messages such as 'again...agon') one might ask, if Durrell 'copped out', how did he spell Copt? Best to all Richard Pine Durrell School of Corfu ----- Original Message ----- From: "william godshalk" To: Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2007 5:18 AM Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 > Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to > be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should > be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the > narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated > in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." > > This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city > in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does > Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used > to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things > -- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, > any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like > romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. > > And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear > with a dying clunk. > > WLG > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > > __________ NOD32 2187 (20070413) Information __________ > > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. > http://www.eset.com > > From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 17:13:25 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:13:25 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- ellipses, episodes, fragments In-Reply-To: <46226F76.6030302@wfu.edu> References: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <46226F76.6030302@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <20070416001252.KXGS15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/2dd5888b/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 17:28:53 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:28:53 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- voice of the silence In-Reply-To: <20070416001252.KXGS15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.emai l.uc.edu> References: <235A6B34-EB73-11DB-962F-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> <46226F76.6030302@wfu.edu> <20070416001252.KXGS15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <20070416002821.KXMJ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> "Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?" (Justine 4.4). Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence is suggestive. According to Betty Ryan, Durrell was at least exposed to Blavatsky when he first arrived at the Villa Seurat. Blavatsky was "a favorite of Miller's." She claims. WLG *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 17:35:41 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 01:35:41 +0100 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- voice of the silence In-Reply-To: <20070416002821.KXMJ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: <67C44D26-EBB2-11DB-B569-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> He exposed himself to Blavatsky long before that. :Michael On Monday, April 16, 2007, at 01:28 am, william godshalk wrote: > "Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence > around us?" (Justine 4.4). > Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence is suggestive. According to > Betty Ryan, Durrell was at least exposed to Blavatsky when he first > arrived at the Villa Seurat. Blavatsky was "a favorite of Miller's." > She claims. > > WLG > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sun Apr 15 17:50:21 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:50:21 -0700 Subject: [ilds] Mailing list volume In-Reply-To: <20070416001252.KXGS15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: Hello all, Just a reminder for those who may be finding the number of email a little much -- you can always set your subscription to "digest," which gives you a daily batch of all messages, so there are fewer actual emails. Cheers, James ___________________________ James Gifford Department of English University of Victoria Victoria, B.C., Canada http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford From gifford at ualberta.ca Sun Apr 15 17:47:42 2007 From: gifford at ualberta.ca (James Gifford) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:47:42 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- ellipses, episodes, fragments In-Reply-To: <20070416001252.KXGS15749.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Message-ID: In response to Charles, Bill writes: > Perhaps the gaps between the episodes are filled > with the voices of silence. I don't want to write a great deal on this, mainly 'cause it was a big part of my dissertation, which I've just revised... I think the gaps are an absolutely key element to Durrell's writing in general (and Henry Miller's as well, though in a slightly different way). For instance, the ellipses are plentiful, even in _Justine_ 4.4, in which we're given a reading method (I've already noted this): "I have decided to leave Clea's last letter unanswered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone... [my ellipsis]. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires.... [also mine]. Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us.? The Dutton/Penguin editions are cut at that point, but the Faber editions all continue with a fragment, which I read as an allusion to the end of Pound's first Canto: "So that..." and the previous "everything*" is also given an asterisk, which leads to the notes, which then point the reader to a blank page. My point is that gap and silences are intimately tied to readers, whether it's Clea reading the narrator or us reading the novel (that ends in silence of an ellipsis). They're not just an aesthetic or stylistic element -- they tie in closely to reading, interpreting, and one's own needs and desires. I believe Durrell was highly aware of this aspect of reading. Just as Darley learns to recognize his creation of Alexandria and Justine as, by and large, the projection of his own desires, we as readers ought to be increasingly aware of our own additions to the ambiguous or gap-riddled text. And, being extra-textual, anything in a gap must come from us... A projection. If "everything depend[s] on our interpretation of the silence around us" as the points when the novel refuses to speak, then isn't that 'everything' precisely what we bring to the reading experience? Is that "everything" more important than the text itself? We care about the gaps it leads us to more than its words? Where the novel falls silent in an ellipsis, lacunae, or a gap (in which I think we rarely read silence), we fill the void, and that's where we find ourselves just as Darley does. Perhaps that's the perfect Freudian parapraxis... Silence speaks our own "needs and desires" as articulately as any slip from the It of the city, the Es of our Id, or the Unbewusste of the Unknown. My temptation is also to read that cut from the USA edition as simply another silence upon which everything depends. As for the stylistic features of 1.1 to 1.4 (or any part of the novel, really), that articulate absence in the ellipsis, a missing name, a missing adjective, or the gap between fragments all speak to the same issue. If we don't catch ourselves out in those gaps, the end of the novel turns us back to them, putting us back on our own resources as readers... It's a way of creating self-conscious readers, and for my money, that's one of the great uses of the Quartet in the classroom. Cheers, James From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Apr 15 18:00:04 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:00:04 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- voice of the silence In-Reply-To: <67C44D26-EBB2-11DB-B569-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> References: <20070416002821.KXMJ18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> <67C44D26-EBB2-11DB-B569-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> Message-ID: <20070416005941.LBPI18017.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu> Naughty! Very naughty. I couldn't find Blavatsky in MacNiven. WLG At 08:35 PM 4/15/2007, you wrote: >He exposed himself to Blavatsky long before that. *************************************** W. L. Godshalk * Department of English * University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * 513-281-5927 *************************************** From michaelhaag at btinternet.com Sun Apr 15 18:26:58 2007 From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag) Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 02:26:58 +0100 Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 In-Reply-To: <004d01c77e97$26601120$0100000a@DSC01> Message-ID: <919F8A5E-EBB9-11DB-A342-000393B1149C@btinternet.com> I thought we were already given the answer to that some while ago: K-E-N-Y-A-N. :Michael On Saturday, April 14, 2007, at 02:16 pm, Durrell School of Corfu wrote: > At the risk of being facetious, Bill (and given the earnest but I think > unnecessary jeux of some previous messages such as 'again...agon') one > might > ask, if Durrell 'copped out', how did he spell Copt? > Best to all > Richard Pine > Durrell School of Corfu > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "william godshalk" > To: > Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2007 5:18 AM > Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 > > >> Justine 1.1 ends with: "I see at last that none of us is properly to >> be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should >> be judged though we, its children, must pay the price." Earlier, the >> narrator writes that the city "used us as its flora -- precipitated >> in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own." >> >> This sounds to me like a cop out. Are we the "children" of the city >> in which we live? Does Mother Cincinnati use me as its "flora"? Does >> Cincinnati precipitate in me conflicts that are hers and which I used >> to mistake for my own? Well, no, Cincinnati doesn't do these things >> -- to me, anyway. Or so I believe. How could you know that your city, >> any city, is controlling you? I think the whole idea sounds like >> romantic hogwash -- if I may be so bold. >> >> And "we . . . must pay the price" sounds jejune and strikes my ear >> with a dying clunk. >> >> WLG >> *************************************** >> W. L. Godshalk * >> Department of English * >> University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * >> Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * >> 513-281-5927 >> *************************************** >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> ILDS mailing list >> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca >> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds >> >> >> __________ NOD32 2187 (20070413) Information __________ >> >> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. >> http://www.eset.com >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Apr 15 18:37:00 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:37:00 -0400 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- ellipses, episodes, fragments In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4622D33C.2020606@wfu.edu> Jamie offers the following observation on the gaps: >It's a way of creating self-conscious readers, and for my money, that's one >of the great uses of the Quartet in the classroom. > * * * * * / Schema For the first time a book presented with all the narrative articulation removed; a synopsis of the plot will be given on the first page; all that follows is of the plot but not a part of it. In other words, the drama here is detached from its factitious frame-- and freed from the burden of form. (/Justine /notebook A, BL) * * * * * Faced with gaps, at a loss for a "factitious frame," we respond with imaginative suture, the ligature homespun out of our own poor provisions. * * * * * "I dream of a book powerful enough to contain the elements of her--but it is not the sort of book to which we are accustomed these days. For example, on the first page a synopsis of the plot in a few lines. Thus we might dispense with the narrative articulation. What follows would be drama freed from the burden of form. I would set my own book free to dream." (/Justine /1.29) * * * * * I sometimes used to think that /Justine /read like a gathering of the miscellaneous documents resting there before Darley on the writing table. The gaps with dividers are the spaces between documents--indications of discontinuity, certainly, but also presenting the retrospective surprise once the echo, the patterned refrain became clearer, leading me to imagine why D put a,b,c &c.. * * * * * Another approach might be to think of the novel as an elaborated series of "Workpoints" or "Consequential Data." That might in turn take us to the realization that LD discovered / /in the episodic, fragmented, recursive pages of his quarried notebooks not merely the plot and characters, but also the form for /Justine /and the /Quartet/. The novels should then by logic become "quarry books" for the reader to revise and rework. One step toward what Cort?zar would offer up in his "model kits." * * * * * Our poverty: We pondered and piddled on about "fives," and amid it all I failed to note the markers in the gap are always *five *in number in all Faber and Dutton / Penguin printings.. * * * * * I was taken by those divided pauses (* * * * *) between the episodes in my earliest reading of /Justine/. What were they? I had never seen anything like them. Does anyone have any ideas for LD's inspiration for those formal or typographical features? * * * * * Jamie's nod to Miller's /Tropic of Cancer/ is suggestive--there are gaps there, without asterisks or stars, I believe. And I know that various writers with acknowledged debts to LD have replayed those gaps in various ways--cf. Cort?zar, Burroughs, Pynchon. But who did this before? * * * * * CLS -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070415/fd7ef44a/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sun Apr 15 20:40:41 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:40:41 -0700 Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- ellipses, episodes, fragments In-Reply-To: <4622D33C.2020606@wfu.edu> Message-ID: What a lovely confluence of reading styles to find, and especially Durrell's "Schema." You know, if I'd had that a few years ago, it would have made the PhD a great deal easier. Charles, I think I've finally realized what you means by "dream," which has eluded me until now. You say > Faced with gaps, at a loss for a "factitious frame," > we respond with imaginative suture, the ligature > homespun out of our own poor provisions. I think the empiric evidence on reading bears this out very strongly. This is no postulation on reading -- it's a fact of reading. I also think it's one Durrell knew well. My reading has been shaped by the Avignon Quintet, the first Durrell book I read (in the omnibus edition). The fragmented approach there is clear, from Monsieur right through to Quinx, and because of that I didn't find Quinx troubling. I saw fragments from the beginning, fragments that forced me to stitch together my own Monster/Monsieur like Frankenstein. So, to find the Quintet ending with a book that refused to do the stitching for me only made sense... I could see no other possible ending. The Quartet I read was shaped by my anticipation of fractures and fissures, not my surprise by them. But for Miller's influence on Durrell... * * * * * I thought the gap was Durrell & Miller's strongest meeting point. Durrell makes the case more clearly and forcefully. He makes it a stronger part of his style & purpose, yet Miller is there as well. Rather than breaks in the narrative, where the text fragments into a new 'piece,' I read Miller as after a different kind of gap. He leaves things out that he knows we'll provide. > And I know that various writers with > acknowledged debts to LD have replayed those > gaps in various ways--cf. Cort?zar, Burroughs, > Pynchon. But who did this before? Who did it before? No one, I think... We've had 'postmodern' play all the way back to Sterne and before, but a gap that fosters a self-aware reader who cognizes the sutures he or she makes in a "quarry" novel -- that, I think, was new. Anticipated, yes, but still new. Cheers, Jamie