From durrells at otenet.gr  Mon Apr 23 03:10:33 2007
From: durrells at otenet.gr (Durrell School of Corfu)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:10:33 +0300
Subject: [ilds] the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis
References: <00b601c7844f$f9dad720$a5210044@your4dacd0ea75><C24FC07E.BF3D%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
	<20070422011859.GQQD18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <01d501c7858f$a16dbe90$0100000a@DSC01>

An Egyptian law of 1912 forbade the shooting of Wheatear, Warbler, Wagtail, 
Pipit, Flycatcher, Lark, Bee-eater, Hoopoe, Stone Curlew, Green Plover, 
Spur-winged Plover and Egret, all of which (except the 2 latter) are (or 
were) inhabitants of Lake Mareotis. The law was not adhered to.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "william godshalk" <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
To: <gifford at uvic.ca>; <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 4:18 AM
Subject: [ilds] the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis


> Jamie,
>
> Someone -- I think your wife or Charlie -- told me that you had found
> the source for the duck shoot. This someone thought that the source
> was Lane, Modern Egyptians. But I just checked Lane rather rapidly
> (Table of Contents, Index, and skim -- not letting the book get
> control of me) and didn't find a duck shoot.
>
> If you tell me, I will keep it to myself. Honest. But I'm curious
> because I searched for the source of that damned duck shoot for years
> -- and obviously didn't find it. Recently I began collecting books
> that Durrell used -- and I'd like to get this one.
>
> Bill
> ***************************************
> 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 2211 (20070423) Information __________
>
> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> http://www.eset.com
>
> 


From sumantranag at gmail.com  Mon Apr 23 08:42:50 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:12:50 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67
References: <mailman.5.1177268402.1310736.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <002201c785be$0f67f4a0$c9c3a37a@abc>

Is the discussion not going off NOW into channels which are not dealing
sufficiently with the text of _Justine_? And is there a predominance of
exchanges between three commentators with only a few interjections from
other readers??!! But the issue about the duck shoot is relevant and so are
many other very scholarly attempts to follow the trail of meanings in the
text; but sometimes, the exchanges seem to get stuck on single points!!

May I put the following questions, which are general to_Justine_ but also
arise from the reading of Sections 1.1-1.9 where the style of writing for
the rest of the book and most of the AQ, is introduced:

Who are the major literary influences on Durrell's style? It seems from
information exchanged here that he was writing on the script of Justine for
many years, so of course his "own voice" dominates. But the richness of his
language has been compared (or related) to many writers: Lytton Strachey,
the Sitwells, Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey. And his descriptions have been
compared with those of Dickens. It would be interesting to get some
insights.

Sumantra Nag

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 12:30 AM
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67


> Send ILDS mailing list submissions to
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>
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> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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> than "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."
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>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: the bullshit art of active reading (william godshalk)
>    2. the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis (william godshalk)
>    3. Re: RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine (andy)
>    4. Re: the bullshit art of active reading (andy)
>    5. Re: RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine (Rita)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:51:32 -0400
> From: william godshalk <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] the bullshit art of active reading
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID:
> <20070421225135.GEGD16799.gx6.fuse.net at bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
>
> >Andy writes:
> >
> >"absolue proof.  books DO change. after you rip them to pieces.  but as
in
> >bookburning, doesnt that make them more powerful?"
>
>
> No, no, no! I changed after reading Ruthven's book. The book remains
> the same. Same words -- my underlining.
>
> If you burn all the copies of a book -- generally impossible -- you
> have essentially destroyed the book.
>
> Bill
> ***************************************
> W. L. Godshalk *
> Department of English         *
> University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
> Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
> 513-281-5927
> ***************************************
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:18:55 -0400
> From: william godshalk <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis
> To: gifford at uvic.ca, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID:
> <20070422011859.GQQD18874.gx4.fuse.net at bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> Jamie,
>
> Someone -- I think your wife or Charlie -- told me that you had found
> the source for the duck shoot. This someone thought that the source
> was Lane, Modern Egyptians. But I just checked Lane rather rapidly
> (Table of Contents, Index, and skim -- not letting the book get
> control of me) and didn't find a duck shoot.
>
> If you tell me, I will keep it to myself. Honest. But I'm curious
> because I searched for the source of that damned duck shoot for years
> -- and obviously didn't find it. Recently I began collecting books
> that Durrell used -- and I'd like to get this one.
>
> Bill
> ***************************************
> W. L. Godshalk *
> Department of English         *
> University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
> Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
> 513-281-5927
> ***************************************
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:35:07 -0400
> From: "andy" <nampilot at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <01dc01c78497$9ad13b00$a5210044 at your4dacd0ea75>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> >
> > To me it seems counter-intuitive to say that books actively do
> > anything. Narratives have a contingent reality. That is, if they are
> > not read -- if they are lost in the sands of Egypt -- it is almost as
> > if they do not exist. They certainly don't exist for the humans who
> > do not know of their existence.
> >
> i would offer, for severe criticism, the concept of one universal text.
>
> all books are simply variations thereof.
>
> just check any barn and ignoble shelf.
>
> you've been there, done that.
>
> read it all.
>
> nothing new, after awhile.
>
> why?
>
> one universal text.
>
> quite limited actually.
>
> vary from its central theme, and you are relegated to the dust bins.
>
> before publication.
>
> what will we be writing in ten thousand years?
>
> so the book buried in the sand sings just as loud as clark clifford's
hoax.
>
> books do not have to be read to exist.
>
> they were written.
>
> that is the song.
>
> best to all
>
> nonfeeling bser
>
> >
> > Bill -- in his library
> > ***************************************
> > 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
> >
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:41:43 -0400
> From: "andy" <nampilot at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] the bullshit art of active reading
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <023a01c78498$8753a5d0$a5210044 at your4dacd0ea75>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
>
> > If you burn all the copies of a book -- generally impossible -- you
> > have essentially destroyed the book.
> >
> > Bill
>
> so all the smuggling of banned texts in russia, then germany, then russia
> again, was not worth the lives of those shot in the head for having them
in
> their pants, as an expression of increased value, and the ultimate
> indestructability of the universal text?
>
>  ***************************************
> > 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
> >
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 08:32:48 +0200
> From: Rita <favorita at tiscali.nl>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <000001c784a8$0bcbb460$7503a8c0 at Beneden>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I think it's time to make myself more clear.
> "Never trust the writer, trust the tale (the book) but also never trust
> the reader trust the tale" And why is that? Because there is more in the
> tale then the writer writes with his mind (and pen or typewriter :) )and
> there is more in the tale then the reader can read. That is what I mean
> with the tale/book/novel exists. And as with us it has identity and it
> changes in and with time
> I would say that the AQ is our (the reader's and also the writer's)
> Alexandria.
> To analyze the novel is a mind thing, to read it from the existence of
> the novel is a different thing.
>
> But thinking about a book as a book , it is a book.....
> I know Bill that it gets its meaning when it is related with something
> else, and the purpose of a book is to be read. I know you will answer
> the purpose of the writer who puts his writing in a book and a reader
> who will read it.
>
> Rita
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] On
> Behalf Of william godshalk
> Sent: zondag 22 april 2007 0:47
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine
>
>
> >Andy asks: "can books speak without being read?"
> A good, basic question. I have also heard the question asked like
> this: "do books read themselves?"
>
> Even people who affirm in their writing that books do not read
> themselves, will talk as if they do. I am here thinking of Kendall
> Walton in Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the
> Representational Arts.
>
> To me it seems counter-intuitive to say that books actively do
> anything. Narratives have a contingent reality. That is, if they are
> not read -- if they are lost in the sands of Egypt -- it is almost as
> if they do not exist. They certainly don't exist for the humans who
> do not know of their existence.
>
> And, Rita, this is NOT to say that I don't have great pleasure
> reading among my books. I do.
>
> I'm somewhat amazed that no one has brought up audio cassettes. But
> even there, to listen to them you have to activate your CD player.
>
> Bill -- in his library
> ***************************************
> 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
>
>
> End of ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67
> ***********************************


From nampilot at cox.net  Mon Apr 23 10:03:24 2007
From: nampilot at cox.net (andy)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:03:24 -0400
Subject: [ilds] THOUGHTLESSNESS
Message-ID: <000701c785c9$4e427f50$a5210044@your4dacd0ea75>

dear friends
of the international order
of the latter day saints

although humor is my crutch

please take this comment as sincre

i truly thank you

for having given me the greatest gift possible

in my limited cosmolgy:

provocation

out of my comfort envelope

and into pondering

as i walk the fields and woods

my life has changed

as a result of your input

your thoughts.

thinking of key concepts

you have offered

i am changed.

no greater gift

thank you.

best to all

andy
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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Mon Apr 23 10:47:50 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:47:50 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine posts
In-Reply-To: <002201c785be$0f67f4a0$c9c3a37a@abc>
References: <mailman.5.1177268402.1310736.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<002201c785be$0f67f4a0$c9c3a37a@abc>
Message-ID: <462CF146.9070103@wfu.edu>

A note from a listserv moderator--

Sumantra asks

>Is the discussion not going off NOW into channels which are not dealing
>sufficiently with the text of _Justine_? 
>
I will offer up a tentative agreement, with a proviso.  I find that am 
far more likely to value and learn from postings anchoring  themselves 
in the words of /Justine/.  Dismissals and disagreements without textual 
evidence do not carry much weight.  If we all recall the novel as a 
starting point for any new RG posting, then I think that the points made 
will make a better contribution to the discussion.  Contribute.  Agree. 
Disagree.  Question.  Digress.  Obfuscate. Just make certain to start 
and stop with /Justine/.  Let the book's "dim momentum in the mind" be 
"the fugue upon which the writing is made" (1.6)

Having said that, I would also point out that the now somewhat lengthy 
debate over the roles of authors, readers, and texts is central to the 
/Quartet/, coming to the foreground with /Balthazar/.  The issues of 
active versus passive reading are central, but many of the postings 
could do a better job of offering up words from the text as proof.   
Readers, roll up your sleeves and get your hands involved.  Tear the 
heart out of the book with your fingers, like a fresh loaf (Workpoints/ 
Consequential Data).

>And is there a predominance of
>exchanges between three commentators with only a few interjections from
>other readers??!! 
>
I am afraid that the only blame can be placed on those sitting out 
silently on the virtual edges of our discussion.  The more subscribers 
posting, the greater diversity in the conversation.  Three cheers for 
all posting currently.  You are the only ones keeping the /Justine /RG 
alive at the moment.   Worthy pioneers, all.

>Who are the major literary influences on Durrell's style? [. . . .] the richness of his
>language has been compared (or related) to many writers: Lytton Strachey,
>the Sitwells, Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey. 
>
Yes.  Any attempt to locate single influential models--or even 
influential movements--seems inadequate.  In LD you are dealing with a 
writer who is too eclectic in taste, untainted by the literary 
expectations of the academy which has never been able to place him and 
thereore has left him ignored.  In his lectures on literature he was 
working towards an impressively broad and heterodox take on what used to 
be called "the tradition."  Witness LD arguing for us to rethink our 
assumption as he writes in the "Minor Mythologies" essay, from the 
decade leading up to /Justine/:

        Today the distinction between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" art is
        significant of the split in society.  Each section has, so to
        speak, developed its own myth-makers, its own criteria.  The
        reader who enjoys Proust and Kafka will seldom confess that he
        enjoys P.G. Wodehouse, and vice versa. . . .

LD was ready to confess that he did enjoy high and low literature, and 
/Justine /is one of the documents submitted as evidence.  I like your 
gestures to Strachey's eighteenth-century urbanity and Browne's baroque 
mannerisms.  Shax and the beloved Elizas, also.  Eliot.  Norman Douglas 
and other "silver age stylists."  A huge inventory of authors discarded 
by the enforcing authorities of his particular moment--cf. Arthur 
Machen.  Dickens for the Scobie material. You might also reread /A Key 
to Modern British Poetry/ and Pursewarden's letters to Brother Ass.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Mon Apr 23 11:21:19 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:21:19 -0400
Subject: [ilds] description of Justine
In-Reply-To: <F1C7DEA4-F13E-11DB-B62B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <462C0D60.6010407@wfu.edu>
	<F1C7DEA4-F13E-11DB-B62B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070423182130.PEUY18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Mon Apr 23 15:12:34 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:12:34 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Moving on through Justine 1.15
Message-ID: <20070423221234.QYAB16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From nampilot at cox.net  Mon Apr 23 11:58:21 2007
From: nampilot at cox.net (andy)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:58:21 -0400
Subject: [ilds] description of Justine
References: <462C0D60.6010407@wfu.edu><F1C7DEA4-F13E-11DB-B62B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<20070423182130.PEUY18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <02ca01c785d9$69a97860$a5210044@your4dacd0ea75>

/I think it interesting that the narrator never describes Justine in the detail that Durrell describes Eve./

speaking of stylistics, i struggle to avoid over describing my characters.

the objective is to let the reader fill in the details.

thus providing a far more impressive smack of the comet on earth's surface.

is this technique more effective than profuse desecription?

best to all,
from a too frequent commentor 
who is definitely not a scholar.
smiles
andy 

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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Mon Apr 23 15:36:12 2007
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:36:12 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
Message-ID: <004601c785f7$cc32dc10$0402a8c0@MumandDad>

To Sumatra and others;

I have tried, in vain it seems, to broaden our discussion of LDs works to more than just a mere progression through and discussion of Justine. Have I erred in thinking that this is a more open forum than it appears to be?

For example there are stylistic connections to Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a Marine Venus; books that were written at the same time as Justine, that I put up on the list only to find this brief moment smothered by hefty returns to Justine by the 'big three' and some rather odd contributions from a man named andy lower case).

Be that as it may, the references to Durrell'ds intellectualism - or lack of it - and the influences on his style deserve further comment.

"Durrell was always conscious of never having made it to university 'the gateway to the world' and led him to pursue ever more esoteric knowledge - as many autodidactic writers have done, like his part-Irish contemporary George Barker, and like Henry Miller."

"From this point onwards, his university was to be wherever he located himself, and like a mendicant friar or scholar gypsie he sort the places and books that stimulated his mind and imagination."

These quotes from Bowkers' biography (p 36) give two clues to LD the writer. 1) his lifelong quest to make up for his lack of tertiary education by being eclectic and clever - and pursuing obscure fields of knowledge such as the early coptics and the heresy of the templars which allowed him to cut the mustard with high brows of the day and gave his big works a complex and rich texture: very impressive compared to the more conventional output of bookish oxbridge types then writing in the insular, medieval style of the British at the time.

2) that the influences on his work and themes are almost too vast to be listed. Durrell devoured, as it were, libraries everywhere he went and could speak and read several languages. Who knows what the little bastard read.


Denise Tart & David Green
16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204

+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Mon Apr 23 18:04:51 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:04:51 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Justine's breast
Message-ID: <20070424010452.ZSXE5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Mon Apr 23 18:28:41 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:28:41 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
In-Reply-To: <004601c785f7$cc32dc10$0402a8c0@MumandDad>
References: <004601c785f7$cc32dc10$0402a8c0@MumandDad>
Message-ID: <20070424012842.SEYT18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

We know for sure some things that "the little bastard read." And how 
do we know? He took passages from his reading, modified them greatly 
or slightly, and worked them into his prose.

WLG
***************************************
W. L. Godshalk		*
Department of English         *
University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
513-281-5927
***************************************



From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Mon Apr 23 18:42:53 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 02:42:53 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Justine's breast
In-Reply-To: <20070424010452.ZSXE5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <1E0BF082-F205-11DB-9D9B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Two!

:M

On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 02:04  am, william godshalk wrote:

> ?Charlie points out to me that Justine has breasts:
> ?
> "Here I spilt wine on her cloak, and while attempting to help her 
> repair the damage, accidentally touched her breasts. ..."
> (first editions of Justine p. 119).
>
> WLG_______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Mon Apr 23 19:08:42 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:08:42 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.11 -- foetus
In-Reply-To: <1E0BF082-F205-11DB-9D9B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <1E0BF082-F205-11DB-9D9B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <462D66AA.6020802@wfu.edu>



        Nevertheless I can still see a direct connection between the
        picture of Justine bending over the dirty sink with the foetus
        in it, and poor Sophia of Valentinus who died for a love as
        perfect as it was wrong-headed.  (1.11)

Another "child" moment.  LD is giving Dickens a run for the title. Can 
someone explicate the "picture" here?  The Sophia business is not nearly 
so difficult, I think, as the when, where, and why of what Justine is 
doing.  Another darksome glance at LD's biography?  Right now I have the 
vaguely weird feeling that in Alex the sinks come with foeti. . . .

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Mon Apr 23 19:39:24 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:39:24 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.11 -- foetus
In-Reply-To: <462D66AA.6020802@wfu.edu>
References: <1E0BF082-F205-11DB-9D9B-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<462D66AA.6020802@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <20070424023955.FZZ5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Mon Apr 23 20:16:36 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:16:36 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.11 -- foetus
In-Reply-To: <20070424023955.FZZ5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <36006360-F212-11DB-94A4-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>


For the gnostics, the material world created by Sophia's fall was one 
of confusion, agony and remorse; it was an ektroma, an abortion.

:Michael



On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 03:39  am, william godshalk wrote:

> Yes, I was just rereading that passage, and puzzling over picture. Is 
> it a picture in the mind's eye of the narrator? Or a picture painted 
> by Clea? A photo seems unlikely.
>
> And the f?tus? Is it a picture of a genuine abortion? The abortion of 
> Justine's child? Or of some other? If some other, why does Justine 
> bend over the sink?
>
> More textual indeterminants?
>
> WLG
>
> Nevertheless I can still see a direct connection between the picture 
> of Justine bending over the dirty sink with the f?tus in it, and poor 
> Sophia of Valentinus who died for a love as perfect as it was 
> wrong-headed.? (1.11)
>
> Another "child" moment.? LD is giving Dickens a run for the title. Can 
> someone explicate the "picture" here?? The Sophia business is not 
> nearly so difficult, I think, as the when, where, and why of what 
> Justine is doing.? Another darksome glance at LD's biography?? Right 
> now I have the vaguely weird feeling that in Alex the sinks come with 
> f?ti. . . .
>
> CLS
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Mon Apr 23 22:39:26 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:09:26 +0530
Subject: [ilds] From: slighcl <slighcl@wfu.edu>Message: 5 Issue 69_reply to
	Message 3 from Sumantra
References: <mailman.134.1177350462.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <000e01c78632$ee4f2700$27c2a37a@abc>

Thank you Charles for your response and all the observations. I have read
Key to Modern Poetry and you have suggested that I might read that again.

Many members of the ILDS email discussion group may also want to discuss on
Lawrence Durrell more generally as well - a facility which was formerly
available to them. How can that be restored? Here I must thank Denise Tart &
David Green for making this point [Issue 71].

I agree that for a Reading Group on Justine, the
text and its details should be the anchor point of further discussions. As I
have tried to acknowledge, the detailed discussions are often enormously
informative for the lay but interested reader. And a detailed reading of the
text should be encouraged by lay readers as well. It is just that such
readers may have some burning questions which can be
linked with the discussion or at least addressed briefly, as you have taken
the trouble to do!


Regards to all

Sumantra
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 11:17 PM
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 69


> Send ILDS mailing list submissions to
> ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> ilds-owner at lists.uvic.ca
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: the bullshit art of active reading (andy)
>    2. Re: the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis (Durrell School of Corfu)
>    3. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67 (Sumantra Nag)
>    4. THOUGHTLESSNESS (andy)
>    5. Re: RG Justine posts (slighcl)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 01:26:48 -0400
> From: "andy" <nampilot at cox.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] the bullshit art of active reading
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <030901c78567$fd9785c0$a5210044 at your4dacd0ea75>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> > I'm too, too hard-headed to believe in Universal Texts. As a devout
> > atheist, I can hardly believe in metaphysics.
>
> WHERE DOES IT ALL COME FROM?
>
> >
> > As for smuggling books, I suggest that rifles are more effective for
> > fighting dictators.
> >
> are they not only the mere forms of ideas?
>
> > My literary beliefs are skeptical.
>
> my litearary beliefs are paralyzed.
>
>
> > In politics I believe primarily in MoveOn and other left wing action
> > groups.
>
> in politics, i believe in Pursewarden.
>
> >
> > Bill
> >
> > so all the smuggling of banned texts in russia, then germany, then
russia
> > again, was not worth the lives of those shot in the head for having them
> > in
> > their pants, as an expression of increased value, and the ultimate
> > indestructability of the universal text?
> > ***************************************
> > 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
> >
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:10:33 +0300
> From: "Durrell School of Corfu" <durrells at otenet.gr>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <01d501c7858f$a16dbe90$0100000a at DSC01>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> An Egyptian law of 1912 forbade the shooting of Wheatear, Warbler,
Wagtail,
> Pipit, Flycatcher, Lark, Bee-eater, Hoopoe, Stone Curlew, Green Plover,
> Spur-winged Plover and Egret, all of which (except the 2 latter) are (or
> were) inhabitants of Lake Mareotis. The law was not adhered to.
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "william godshalk" <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
> To: <gifford at uvic.ca>; <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 4:18 AM
> Subject: [ilds] the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis
>
>
> > Jamie,
> >
> > Someone -- I think your wife or Charlie -- told me that you had found
> > the source for the duck shoot. This someone thought that the source
> > was Lane, Modern Egyptians. But I just checked Lane rather rapidly
> > (Table of Contents, Index, and skim -- not letting the book get
> > control of me) and didn't find a duck shoot.
> >
> > If you tell me, I will keep it to myself. Honest. But I'm curious
> > because I searched for the source of that damned duck shoot for years
> > -- and obviously didn't find it. Recently I began collecting books
> > that Durrell used -- and I'd like to get this one.
> >
> > Bill
> > ***************************************
> > 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 2211 (20070423) Information __________
> >
> > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> > http://www.eset.com
> >
> >
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:12:50 +0530
> From: "Sumantra Nag" <sumantranag at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <002201c785be$0f67f4a0$c9c3a37a at abc>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Is the discussion not going off NOW into channels which are not dealing
> sufficiently with the text of _Justine_? And is there a predominance of
> exchanges between three commentators with only a few interjections from
> other readers??!! But the issue about the duck shoot is relevant and so
are
> many other very scholarly attempts to follow the trail of meanings in the
> text; but sometimes, the exchanges seem to get stuck on single points!!
>
> May I put the following questions, which are general to_Justine_ but also
> arise from the reading of Sections 1.1-1.9 where the style of writing for
> the rest of the book and most of the AQ, is introduced:
>
> Who are the major literary influences on Durrell's style? It seems from
> information exchanged here that he was writing on the script of Justine
for
> many years, so of course his "own voice" dominates. But the richness of
his
> language has been compared (or related) to many writers: Lytton Strachey,
> the Sitwells, Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey. And his descriptions have
been
> compared with those of Dickens. It would be interesting to get some
> insights.
>
> Sumantra Nag
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 12:30 AM
> Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67
>
>
> > Send ILDS mailing list submissions to
> > ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> >
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> > ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca
> >
> > You can reach the person managing the list at
> > ilds-owner at lists.uvic.ca
> >
> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > than "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."
> >
> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> >    1. Re: the bullshit art of active reading (william godshalk)
> >    2. the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis (william godshalk)
> >    3. Re: RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine (andy)
> >    4. Re: the bullshit art of active reading (andy)
> >    5. Re: RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine (Rita)
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:51:32 -0400
> > From: william godshalk <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
> > Subject: Re: [ilds] the bullshit art of active reading
> > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> > Message-ID:
> > <20070421225135.GEGD16799.gx6.fuse.net at bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> >
> >
> > >Andy writes:
> > >
> > >"absolue proof.  books DO change. after you rip them to pieces.  but as
> in
> > >bookburning, doesnt that make them more powerful?"
> >
> >
> > No, no, no! I changed after reading Ruthven's book. The book remains
> > the same. Same words -- my underlining.
> >
> > If you burn all the copies of a book -- generally impossible -- you
> > have essentially destroyed the book.
> >
> > Bill
> > ***************************************
> > W. L. Godshalk *
> > Department of English         *
> > University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
> > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
> > 513-281-5927
> > ***************************************
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2007 21:18:55 -0400
> > From: william godshalk <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
> > Subject: [ilds] the duck shoot on Lake Mareotis
> > To: gifford at uvic.ca, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> > Message-ID:
> > <20070422011859.GQQD18874.gx4.fuse.net at bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> >
> > Jamie,
> >
> > Someone -- I think your wife or Charlie -- told me that you had found
> > the source for the duck shoot. This someone thought that the source
> > was Lane, Modern Egyptians. But I just checked Lane rather rapidly
> > (Table of Contents, Index, and skim -- not letting the book get
> > control of me) and didn't find a duck shoot.
> >
> > If you tell me, I will keep it to myself. Honest. But I'm curious
> > because I searched for the source of that damned duck shoot for years
> > -- and obviously didn't find it. Recently I began collecting books
> > that Durrell used -- and I'd like to get this one.
> >
> > Bill
> > ***************************************
> > W. L. Godshalk *
> > Department of English         *
> > University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
> > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
> > 513-281-5927
> > ***************************************
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:35:07 -0400
> > From: "andy" <nampilot at cox.net>
> > Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine
> > To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> > Message-ID: <01dc01c78497$9ad13b00$a5210044 at your4dacd0ea75>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> > reply-type=original
> >
> > >
> > > To me it seems counter-intuitive to say that books actively do
> > > anything. Narratives have a contingent reality. That is, if they are
> > > not read -- if they are lost in the sands of Egypt -- it is almost as
> > > if they do not exist. They certainly don't exist for the humans who
> > > do not know of their existence.
> > >
> > i would offer, for severe criticism, the concept of one universal text.
> >
> > all books are simply variations thereof.
> >
> > just check any barn and ignoble shelf.
> >
> > you've been there, done that.
> >
> > read it all.
> >
> > nothing new, after awhile.
> >
> > why?
> >
> > one universal text.
> >
> > quite limited actually.
> >
> > vary from its central theme, and you are relegated to the dust bins.
> >
> > before publication.
> >
> > what will we be writing in ten thousand years?
> >
> > so the book buried in the sand sings just as loud as clark clifford's
> hoax.
> >
> > books do not have to be read to exist.
> >
> > they were written.
> >
> > that is the song.
> >
> > best to all
> >
> > nonfeeling bser
> >
> > >
> > > Bill -- in his library
> > > ***************************************
> > > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:41:43 -0400
> > From: "andy" <nampilot at cox.net>
> > Subject: Re: [ilds] the bullshit art of active reading
> > To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> > Message-ID: <023a01c78498$8753a5d0$a5210044 at your4dacd0ea75>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> > reply-type=original
> >
> >
> > > If you burn all the copies of a book -- generally impossible -- you
> > > have essentially destroyed the book.
> > >
> > > Bill
> >
> > so all the smuggling of banned texts in russia, then germany, then
russia
> > again, was not worth the lives of those shot in the head for having them
> in
> > their pants, as an expression of increased value, and the ultimate
> > indestructability of the universal text?
> >
> >  ***************************************
> > > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 5
> > Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 08:32:48 +0200
> > From: Rita <favorita at tiscali.nl>
> > Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine
> > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> > Message-ID: <000001c784a8$0bcbb460$7503a8c0 at Beneden>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> >
> > I think it's time to make myself more clear.
> > "Never trust the writer, trust the tale (the book) but also never trust
> > the reader trust the tale" And why is that? Because there is more in the
> > tale then the writer writes with his mind (and pen or typewriter :) )and
> > there is more in the tale then the reader can read. That is what I mean
> > with the tale/book/novel exists. And as with us it has identity and it
> > changes in and with time
> > I would say that the AQ is our (the reader's and also the writer's)
> > Alexandria.
> > To analyze the novel is a mind thing, to read it from the existence of
> > the novel is a different thing.
> >
> > But thinking about a book as a book , it is a book.....
> > I know Bill that it gets its meaning when it is related with something
> > else, and the purpose of a book is to be read. I know you will answer
> > the purpose of the writer who puts his writing in a book and a reader
> > who will read it.
> >
> > Rita
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] On
> > Behalf Of william godshalk
> > Sent: zondag 22 april 2007 0:47
> > To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> > Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.4 -- active reading & Justine
> >
> >
> > >Andy asks: "can books speak without being read?"
> > A good, basic question. I have also heard the question asked like
> > this: "do books read themselves?"
> >
> > Even people who affirm in their writing that books do not read
> > themselves, will talk as if they do. I am here thinking of Kendall
> > Walton in Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the
> > Representational Arts.
> >
> > To me it seems counter-intuitive to say that books actively do
> > anything. Narratives have a contingent reality. That is, if they are
> > not read -- if they are lost in the sands of Egypt -- it is almost as
> > if they do not exist. They certainly don't exist for the humans who
> > do not know of their existence.
> >
> > And, Rita, this is NOT to say that I don't have great pleasure
> > reading among my books. I do.
> >
> > I'm somewhat amazed that no one has brought up audio cassettes. But
> > even there, to listen to them you have to activate your CD player.
> >
> > Bill -- in his library
> > ***************************************
> > 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
> >
> >
> > End of ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 67
> > ***********************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:03:24 -0400
> From: "andy" <nampilot at cox.net>
> Subject: [ilds] THOUGHTLESSNESS
> To: "player" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <000701c785c9$4e427f50$a5210044 at your4dacd0ea75>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> dear friends
> of the international order
> of the latter day saints
>
> although humor is my crutch
>
> please take this comment as sincre
>
> i truly thank you
>
> for having given me the greatest gift possible
>
> in my limited cosmolgy:
>
> provocation
>
> out of my comfort envelope
>
> and into pondering
>
> as i walk the fields and woods
>
> my life has changed
>
> as a result of your input
>
> your thoughts.
>
> thinking of key concepts
>
> you have offered
>
> i am changed.
>
> no greater gift
>
> thank you.
>
> best to all
>
> andy
> -------------- next part --------------
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:47:50 -0400
> From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine posts
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <462CF146.9070103 at wfu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> A note from a listserv moderator--
>
> Sumantra asks
>
> >Is the discussion not going off NOW into channels which are not dealing
> >sufficiently with the text of _Justine_?
> >
> I will offer up a tentative agreement, with a proviso.  I find that am
> far more likely to value and learn from postings anchoring  themselves
> in the words of /Justine/.  Dismissals and disagreements without textual
> evidence do not carry much weight.  If we all recall the novel as a
> starting point for any new RG posting, then I think that the points made
> will make a better contribution to the discussion.  Contribute.  Agree.
> Disagree.  Question.  Digress.  Obfuscate. Just make certain to start
> and stop with /Justine/.  Let the book's "dim momentum in the mind" be
> "the fugue upon which the writing is made" (1.6)
>
> Having said that, I would also point out that the now somewhat lengthy
> debate over the roles of authors, readers, and texts is central to the
> /Quartet/, coming to the foreground with /Balthazar/.  The issues of
> active versus passive reading are central, but many of the postings
> could do a better job of offering up words from the text as proof.
> Readers, roll up your sleeves and get your hands involved.  Tear the
> heart out of the book with your fingers, like a fresh loaf (Workpoints/
> Consequential Data).
>
> >And is there a predominance of
> >exchanges between three commentators with only a few interjections from
> >other readers??!!
> >
> I am afraid that the only blame can be placed on those sitting out
> silently on the virtual edges of our discussion.  The more subscribers
> posting, the greater diversity in the conversation.  Three cheers for
> all posting currently.  You are the only ones keeping the /Justine /RG
> alive at the moment.   Worthy pioneers, all.
>
> >Who are the major literary influences on Durrell's style? [. . . .] the
richness of his
> >language has been compared (or related) to many writers: Lytton Strachey,
> >the Sitwells, Sir Thomas Browne, De Quincey.
> >
> Yes.  Any attempt to locate single influential models--or even
> influential movements--seems inadequate.  In LD you are dealing with a
> writer who is too eclectic in taste, untainted by the literary
> expectations of the academy which has never been able to place him and
> thereore has left him ignored.  In his lectures on literature he was
> working towards an impressively broad and heterodox take on what used to
> be called "the tradition."  Witness LD arguing for us to rethink our
> assumption as he writes in the "Minor Mythologies" essay, from the
> decade leading up to /Justine/:
>
>         Today the distinction between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" art is
>         significant of the split in society.  Each section has, so to
>         speak, developed its own myth-makers, its own criteria.  The
>         reader who enjoys Proust and Kafka will seldom confess that he
>         enjoys P.G. Wodehouse, and vice versa. . . .
>
> LD was ready to confess that he did enjoy high and low literature, and
> /Justine /is one of the documents submitted as evidence.  I like your
> gestures to Strachey's eighteenth-century urbanity and Browne's baroque
> mannerisms.  Shax and the beloved Elizas, also.  Eliot.  Norman Douglas
> and other "silver age stylists."  A huge inventory of authors discarded
> by the enforcing authorities of his particular moment--cf. Arthur
> Machen.  Dickens for the Scobie material. You might also reread /A Key
> to Modern British Poetry/ and Pursewarden's letters to Brother Ass.
>
> CLS
>
> -- 
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
> End of ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 69
> ***********************************


From slighcl at wfu.edu  Tue Apr 24 09:10:26 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:10:26 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Message from Sumantra
In-Reply-To: <000e01c78632$ee4f2700$27c2a37a@abc>
References: <mailman.134.1177350462.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<000e01c78632$ee4f2700$27c2a37a@abc>
Message-ID: <462E2BF2.2000508@wfu.edu>


>Many members of the ILDS email discussion group may also want to discuss on
>Lawrence Durrell more generally as well - a facility which was formerly
>available to them. How can that be restored? Here I must thank Denise Tart &
>David Green for making this point [Issue 71].
>
All of that facility for general emailing remains, Sumantra.  As was 
explained in the the initial postings, the Reading Group will cover 
different works within designated periods.  (Currently we are covering 
/Justine/.  /Prospero's Cell/ will come next during the summer.)   Those 
Reading Group postings are designated by the "RG" flags in the subject 
heading.  The "RG" flags are there for the convenience of readers who do 
not wish to keep up with a detailed coverage of the chosen reading text. 

The RG posts are published within the broader ILDS listserv, which 
remains free and open to announcements, queries, CFPs, and other sorts 
of LD related information.  Please feel invited to post your emails as 
you find yourself inclined.  

Open your book.  We are all ready to hear more from you.

Charles

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From wardwrites at yahoo.com  Tue Apr 24 09:34:32 2007
From: wardwrites at yahoo.com (M. Erick Ward)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:34:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [ilds] Lawrence Durrell more generally
Message-ID: <818581.27309.qm@web30915.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

            Many members of the ILDS email discussion group may also want to discuss on
            Lawrence Durrell more generally as well 
   
  I am heartened to hear this.  While I appreciate the finer minutia, much of it is lost on me at the moment: I began re-reading the Quartet before learning of this discussion board.  Thus, I am swept into Balthazar, and cannot make myself turn back.  In fact, I am just on the threshold of a favorite moment in the books, wherein Narouz and Nessim ride out alone into the desert.  
   
  I appreciate Durrell's deep, heavy-laden examination of modern love and mythology; however, I confess, I only love those moments when he just shuts up and writes.  He is most spellbinding  when, for instance, he shows us Narouz brutally splaying open a rooster with his whip, an action that, somehow, breaks down the barriers to communication, and the brothers become comfortable, conversant as they ride along.  For me, there's more truth packed into such moments than in all the Quartet's moments introspective supposing combined.
   
  Matt Ward
  Baltimore
   



       
---------------------------------
Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
 Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.
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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Tue Apr 24 11:34:43 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:34:43 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.11 -- foetus
In-Reply-To: <36006360-F212-11DB-94A4-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <36006360-F212-11DB-94A4-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <462E4DC3.4070807@wfu.edu>

On 4/23/2007 11:16 PM, Michael Haag wrote:

>
> For the gnostics, the material world created by Sophia's fall was one 
> of confusion, agony and remorse; it was an ektroma, an abortion.

Yes, I had thought the Sophia reference was leading us the way to 
meditations on "the botched creation."  Also recall Justine pleading:

        "I mean, that God neither created us nor wished us to be
        created, but that we are the work of an inferior deity, a
        Demiurge, who wrongly believed himself to be God?  Heavens, how
        probable it seems; and this overweening hubris has been handed
        down to our children."  (1.20)

Justine's "our children" takes on a new resonance if if we keep in mind 
not only the "lost child" but also "the dirty sink with the f?tus in it" 
(1.11). 

But again we have here "the picture" (a specific memory?) and also 
highly particularized by the articles--"the dirty sink" and "the 
f?tus."  Is there any other allusion to this incident in the /Quartet/?  
The dirty sink would seem to suggest the back area of Pombal's "little 
dank flat" (1.12).  Cf. Melissa washing in the "ugly scullery" with its 
"dirty iron sink" (1.23).  So what is this "picture"?

Biographically, for LD, the issue of pregnancy and lost children was 
haunting.  Others will tell those tales with more knowledge than I 
have.  As a student of the literature, I will simply note what artistic 
uses he made of the trauma:  "he carried the consciousness of her going 
heavily about with him--like a dead baby from which one could not bring 
oneself to part" (4.1).

Tremendously sad, that last.  I recall also Joyce and Poldy carrying 
heavily the memories of lost little ones.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Tue Apr 24 11:55:45 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 14:55:45 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.9 -- spaces and the shifting floors
Message-ID: <20070424185545.FHRZ5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Tue Apr 24 12:23:23 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:23:23 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.11 -- foetus
In-Reply-To: <462E4DC3.4070807@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <4487627C-F299-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Regarding 'the picture'.  Instead of 'these memorials', an early 
variant on Durrell's dedication of Justine was 'these documents' -- to 
Eve these documents of our/her beloved city (he crossed out our and 
substituted her).  Documents are things, proofs, and can include such 
things as papers, yes, but also photographs and even rings.  In fact I 
am rather surprised that nothing was made in the reading group of 
burying the rings (1.7).  My impression is that Durrell on his island, 
strangely with this child, is introducing us to various 
documents/things that have profound meaning for him.  He may not care 
whether or not you 'get it'; indeed he would probably prefer that you 
do not get it.  But he believes that these things carry a charge and 
that even without being understood they can carry a charge for the 
reader.

:Michael




On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 07:34  pm, slighcl wrote:

> On 4/23/2007 11:16 PM, Michael Haag wrote:
>
>
> For the gnostics, the material world created by Sophia's fall was one 
> of confusion, agony and remorse; it was an ektroma, an abortion.
>
> Yes, I had thought the Sophia reference was leading us the way to 
> meditations on "the botched creation."? Also recall Justine pleading:
>
> "I mean, that God neither created us nor wished us to be created, but 
> that we are the work of an inferior deity, a Demiurge, who wrongly 
> believed himself to be God?? Heavens, how probable it seems; and this 
> overweening hubris has been handed down to our children."? (1.20)
>
> Justine's "our children" takes on a new resonance if if we keep in 
> mind not only the "lost child" but also "the dirty sink with the f?tus 
> in it" (1.11).?
>
> But again we have here "the picture" (a specific memory?) and also 
> highly particularized by the articles--"the dirty sink" and "the 
> f?tus."? Is there any other allusion to this incident in the Quartet?? 
> The dirty sink would seem to suggest the back area of Pombal's "little 
> dank flat" (1.12).? Cf. Melissa washing in the "ugly scullery" with 
> its "dirty iron sink" (1.23).? So what is this "picture"?
>
> Biographically, for LD, the issue of pregnancy and lost children was 
> haunting.? Others will tell those tales with more knowledge than I 
> have.? As a student of the literature, I will simply note what 
> artistic uses he made of the trauma:? "he carried the consciousness of 
> her going heavily about with him--like a dead baby from which one 
> could not bring oneself to part" (4.1).
>
> Tremendously sad, that last.? I recall also Joyce and Poldy carrying 
> heavily the memories of lost little ones.
>
> 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
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Tue Apr 24 12:52:30 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:52:30 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.7 -- the rings
In-Reply-To: <4487627C-F299-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <462E4DC3.4070807@wfu.edu>
	<4487627C-F299-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070424195250.XYJQ16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Tue Apr 24 13:05:40 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:05:40 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.7 -- the rings
In-Reply-To: <20070424195250.XYJQ16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <462E4DC3.4070807@wfu.edu>	<4487627C-F299-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<20070424195250.XYJQ16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <462E6314.9020903@wfu.edu>



On 4/24/2007 3:52 PM, william godshalk wrote:

> But what part of this ceremony will bring good fortune? The simple 
> burying of the rings? I.e. any rings will do on this island. The fact 
> that Melissa is dead? (Seems wrong.) The fact that the purchaser of 
> the rings is dead? (Not likely?) The fact that the narrator ends up 
> with the rings -- as he ended up with the three-volume diary and the 
> folio recounting Nessim's madness (1.5.)?
>
> Or, Michael, is it as you suggest: the point is that this is 
> indeterminate? And the mystery carries the charge.

I also recall the narrator recalling the rings at the close of 
/Justine/.  He says of his Alexandrian days and friends::

        The slow unreality of time begins to grip them, blurring the
        outlines--so that sometimes I wonder whether these pages record
        the actions of real human beings; or whether this is not simply
        the story of a few inanimate objects which precipitated a drama
        around them--I mean a black patch, a watch-key and a couple of
        dispossessed wedding rings. . . ." (4.4)

What does that mean for your questions about the rings, Bill? 

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Tue Apr 24 13:12:17 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:12:17 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.9 -- spaces and the shifting floors
In-Reply-To: <20070424185545.FHRZ5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070424185545.FHRZ5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <462E64A1.6090005@wfu.edu>

Bill writes:

>
>
> I can make some sense of *days* being *spaces* between dreams, but 
> *days* as "*spaces* between the shifting floors of time, of acting, of 
> living out the topical. . . ." leaves me puzzled. And how does one 
> live out the *topical*? 

Those lines will be echoic for any readers of /Prospero's Cell/.  Cf. 
"It is a sophism to imagine that there is any strict dividing line 
between the waking world and the world of dreams" &c. &c. &c. 

Again, one has the feeling looking back on such lines in /Justine /from 
the next books in the /Quartet /that Durrell is revisiting his former 
writings. . . .

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Tue Apr 24 13:21:59 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:21:59 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.7 -- the rings
In-Reply-To: <20070424195250.XYJQ16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <7447963A-F2A1-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Well, I can think of one instance when rings carried a heavy charge for 
Durrell, and that may very well have some bearing here, but I will not 
get into that.  More generally I think of the folklore of rings and how 
they can restrain the freedom of the spirit -- in some societies it is 
thought that rings should be removed from the dead to permit the soul 
to escape the body.  Conversely rings are used as amulets to prevent 
evil from entering the body.  In other words a ring is a kind of 
gateway, a means of controlling great forces.  Durrell refers to the 
'custom of this island' without telling us what island, but certainly 
it is the custom on the island of Karpathos to remove rings from the 
dead to allow their souls to escape.  I am also reminded of the custom 
throughout the Balkans of immuring a living person in a major 
construction like a bridge.  For example there is the story about that 
beautiful seventeenth century bridge at Arta in western Greece; its 
construction had long been thwarted by the vagaries of the river until 
a bird revealed to the master builder that his wife would have to be 
immured in the foundations supporting its central span.  This the 
builder did, and the arches were joined -- and the bridge stands there 
to this day.  Never mind that the builder committed suicide.  There is 
on this island, where Darley is living strangely with this child, a 
child who helps him bury the rings, a sense of trying to come to terms 
with great matters of the past in order to start again.

:Michael


On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 08:52  pm, william godshalk wrote:

> In fact I am rather surprised that nothing was made in the reading 
> group of burying the rings (1.7).? My impression is that Durrell on 
> his island, strangely with this child, is introducing us to various 
> documents/things that have profound meaning for him.? He may not care 
> whether or not you 'get it'; indeed he would probably prefer that you 
> do not get it.? But he believes that these things carry a charge and 
> that even without being understood they can carry a charge for the 
> reader.
>
>
> So, Michael, let's discuss the burying of the rings. The narrator 
> notes that these rings were purchased by Cohen for Melissa. The serial 
> reader knows of "Melissa's death" (1.5.). The narrator writes, 
> "according to the custom of this island," burying the rings under the 
> hearth-stone "will ensure good luck to the inmates of the house (1.7).
>
> But what part of this ceremony will bring good fortune? The simple 
> burying of the rings? I.e. any rings will do on this island. The fact 
> that Melissa is dead? (Seems wrong.) The fact that the purchaser of 
> the rings is dead? (Not likely?) The fact that the narrator ends up 
> with the rings -- as he ended up with the three-volume diary and the 
> folio recounting Nessim's madness (1.5.)?
>
> Or, Michael, is it as you suggest: the point is that this is 
> indeterminate? And the mystery carries the charge.
>
> WLG
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Tue Apr 24 13:34:20 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:34:20 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.11 -- "rings" & "things"
In-Reply-To: <4487627C-F299-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <4487627C-F299-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <462E69CC.6050906@wfu.edu>

Michael writes:

> But he believes that these things carry a charge and that even without 
> being understood they can carry a charge for the reader.

I quote again:

> sometimes I wonder whether these pages record the actions of real 
> human beings; or whether this is not simply the story of a few 
> inanimate objects which precipitated a drama around them--I mean a 
> black patch, a watch-key and a couple of dispossessed wedding rings. . 
> . ." (4.4)

And, thinking of the larger project of the ILDS and this listserv RG, I 
must ask do the books of the /Quartet /also "precipitate a drama around 
them"?  Carol, Ian, Bill, Michael, Jamie, Linda, Bruce, Beatrice, Anna, 
Anne, David, Paul, Jim, Lindsay, Pamela, Don, Julio Cortazar (&c. &c.), 
and I each find the /Quartet/.  Then we meet each other and talk to each 
other and email each other when clearly we would not have enjoyed our 
fellowship without LD's objects there as the common denominator.

Precedent: A copy of /Tropic of Cancer/ left in a dirty WC facilitated 
another friendship. . . .

The deep question about "inanimate objects"--how do those objects--those 
rings--speak to LD's interest in the subject-object relationship and 
relativity?  That seems to matter for the author, the characters, and 
the readers.  I feel dividing lines falling away. . . .

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Tue Apr 24 13:50:04 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:50:04 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Rg Justine 1.7 -- the rings
In-Reply-To: <7447963A-F2A1-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <20070424195250.XYJQ16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<7447963A-F2A1-11DB-BC0C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Tue Apr 24 14:57:08 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:57:08 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.7-11 Rings and Things
Message-ID: <BF20F1F6-F2AE-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

The rings and things are not inanimate, they are invested with 
associations, meanings, emotions.  Or are even inert and empty, 
invested with loneliness.  But the moment they are mentioned they cease 
to be nothing.

This raises the question of what sort of person is Darley.  He is the 
least interesting person in the book, but he is interesting because of 
whom knows.  Melissa is generous, Justine is a Ptolemaic queen, Clea is 
still waters, Nessim struggles against vast historical dreams, etc.  
Durrell hides himself in Darley, and because he is hiding so Darley is 
not interesting.  But Durrell invests all the rest, the rings, the 
women, the landscapes, with a fantastic power of meaning, feeling and 
association.  He is a profoundly lonely man.

Cohen's rings.  Remember where Durrell got the name Cohen.

:Michael


From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Tue Apr 24 15:42:17 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:42:17 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.7-11 Cohen's rings
In-Reply-To: <BF20F1F6-F2AE-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <BF20F1F6-F2AE-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070424224217.ZCED16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>


>Michael writes: "Cohen's rings.  Remember where Durrell got the name Cohen."
 From his wife's father? From his wife?

Genghis Cohen? Leonard?

WLG
***************************************
W. L. Godshalk		*
Department of English         *
University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
513-281-5927
***************************************



From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Tue Apr 24 14:13:04 2007
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:13:04 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
References: <004601c785f7$cc32dc10$0402a8c0@MumandDad>
	<20070424012842.SEYT18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <000f01c786b5$5947d1b0$0402a8c0@MumandDad>

Yes indeed. For example I believe the influences of French writers such as 
Rimbaud, Francis Villons, Rabelaise and Baudelaire are often overlooked when 
consideration the formation of Durrell's themes, style and indeed lifestyle.

Of course Durrell was not really a bastard (except to some of his wives) but 
he was only 5 feet 4 inches tall.

David

Denise Tart & David Green
16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204
AUSTRALIA
+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "william godshalk" <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications


> We know for sure some things that "the little bastard read." And how
> do we know? He took passages from his reading, modified them greatly
> or slightly, and worked them into his prose.
>
> 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  Tue Apr 24 16:00:50 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:00:50 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
In-Reply-To: <000f01c786b5$5947d1b0$0402a8c0@MumandDad>
Message-ID: <A56F8228-F2B7-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Actually Durrell was not a bastard to his wives.

:Michael


On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 10:13  pm, Denise Tart & David Green 
wrote:

> Yes indeed. For example I believe the influences of French writers 
> such as
> Rimbaud, Francis Villons, Rabelaise and Baudelaire are often 
> overlooked when
> consideration the formation of Durrell's themes, style and indeed 
> lifestyle.
>
> Of course Durrell was not really a bastard (except to some of his 
> wives) but
> he was only 5 feet 4 inches tall.
>
> David
>
> Denise Tart & David Green
> 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204
> AUSTRALIA
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> dtart at bigpond.net.au
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "william godshalk" <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 11:28 AM
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
>
>
>> We know for sure some things that "the little bastard read." And how
>> do we know? He took passages from his reading, modified them greatly
>> or slightly, and worked them into his prose.
>>
>> 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 michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Tue Apr 24 16:02:34 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:02:34 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.7-11 Cohen's rings
In-Reply-To: <20070424224217.ZCED16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <E39F342A-F2B7-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

In Durrell's notebooks for Justine there was the character of 'the old 
furrier'; he did not have a name.  'Cohen' was added late, after Eve 
had left him.

:Michael


On Tuesday, April 24, 2007, at 11:42  pm, william godshalk wrote:

>
>> Michael writes: "Cohen's rings.  Remember where Durrell got the name 
>> Cohen."
>  From his wife's father? From his wife?
>
> Genghis Cohen? Leonard?
>
> 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  Tue Apr 24 16:26:39 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 19:26:39 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.12 -- Pombal and Eau de Portugal
Message-ID: <20070424232649.HDWR5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Tue Apr 24 17:50:42 2007
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:50:42 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
References: <A56F8228-F2B7-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <000e01c786d3$c07960b0$0402a8c0@MumandDad>

Well, I am not sure Nancy or especially Ghislaine would agree with you 
there. His Brother Gerald certainly thought he was rather hard on them at 
times and he and Larry were close.

If Bowker's biography is reliable, then we know that could be a drunkard and 
was violent (physically and mentally) toward Ghislaine as well as unfaithful 
to her. Now where I come from that is usually considered being a bit a 
bastard. We can admire the man and the writer and the character, as I do, 
without having to accept all his behaviour.

David Green



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: "Michael Haag" <michaelhaag at btinternet.com>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications


> Actually Durrell was not a bastard to his wives.
>
> :Michael



From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Tue Apr 24 18:14:28 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 02:14:28 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
In-Reply-To: <000e01c786d3$c07960b0$0402a8c0@MumandDad>
Message-ID: <505C3230-F2CA-11DB-87E7-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

I qualify my remark.  I was thinking of his real wives, Nancy, Eve and 
Claude.  The relationships could be difficult; they were also extremely 
rewarding; there were problems on both sides, and I do not think it 
works to simply call Durrell a bastard.   Ghislaine was a mistake; he 
got nothing from her and she got nothing from him, and things 
degenerated badly.  The elderly Durrell was not always a pretty sight.  
As for Bowker, his biography is tendentious, more loaded than 
researched.

:Michael


On Wednesday, April 25, 2007, at 01:50  am, Denise Tart & David Green 
wrote:

> Well, I am not sure Nancy or especially Ghislaine would agree with you
> there. His Brother Gerald certainly thought he was rather hard on them 
> at
> times and he and Larry were close.
>
> If Bowker's biography is reliable, then we know that could be a 
> drunkard and
> was violent (physically and mentally) toward Ghislaine as well as 
> unfaithful
> to her. Now where I come from that is usually considered being a bit a
> bastard. We can admire the man and the writer and the character, as I 
> do,
> without having to accept all his behaviour.
>
> David Green
>
>
>
> 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: "Michael Haag" <michaelhaag at btinternet.com>
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 9:00 AM
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Questions, Digressions and Obfustications
>
>
>> Actually Durrell was not a bastard to his wives.
>>
>> :Michael
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>


From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Tue Apr 24 19:21:32 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:21:32 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine
Message-ID: <20070425022131.IBIP5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Tue Apr 24 19:58:11 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:58:11 -0400
Subject: [ilds] =?iso-8859-1?q?Lawrence_Durrell=2C_Jacques_Lacarri=E8re_?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?=281981=29?=
Message-ID: <462EC3C3.3010400@wfu.edu>

This clip takes some time to load.  You will find the short bit with 
LD's appearance near the end.

CLS

        http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/xy6bk_gnostiques

        Duration: 12:18 Taken: 21 January 1974  Location: France

        1. Invit? de l'?mission ? Ouvrez les guillemets ?, Jacques
        Lacarri?re est interview? par Andr? Bourin ? propos de son livre
        ? Les gnostiques ?. lectures par Laurent Terzieff. pr?sent? par
        Bernard Pivot.
        ORTF, 21/01/1974

        2. Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Lacarri?re dans l'?mission ? La
        rage de lire ?, pr?sent?e par Georges Suffert.

        TF1, 01/07/1981.

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Tue Apr 24 20:10:17 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:10:17 -0400
Subject: [ilds]
 =?iso-8859-1?q?Lawrence_Durrell=2C_Jacques_Lacarri=E8re_?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?=281981=29?=
In-Reply-To: <462EC3C3.3010400@wfu.edu>
References: <462EC3C3.3010400@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <20070425031026.IHGF5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From hungerist at hotmail.com  Wed Apr 25 15:07:10 2007
From: hungerist at hotmail.com (Alejandro Adams)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:07:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds]  Durrell and The Good Soldier
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>
	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>

In more than one post, Ford Madox Ford has been mentioned in relation to 
Durrell and the Quartet.  Stop me if you've heard this before:

During an interview with an English journalist, Durrell says something to 
the effect that no one has tried to write anything quite like the Quartet. 
(To wit, "The narrative momentum forward is counter-sprung by references 
backwards in time, giving the impression of a book which is not traveling 
from a to b but standing above time and turning slowly on its own axis to 
comprehend the whole pattern.")  The journalist immediately stops the 
interview, hands Durrell a copy of The Good Soldier and leaves him to read 
it.  The journalist returns the following day and resumes the interview, at 
which point Durrell humbly thanks the journalist for introducing him to 
Ford's novel and confesses that Ford already "did it" (see parenthetical 
citation above for an uncannily accurate description of the narrative 
methodology of The Good Soldier).

I've always wondered whether the Quartet could have gestated with such a 
self-important sense of daring had Durrell been exposed to the impeccable 
machinery of The Good Soldier when Justine was just an embryo.  But what 
would the Quartet be without that sense of daring?

Belatedly,
Alejandro Adams



From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Wed Apr 25 15:38:43 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:38:43 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
In-Reply-To: <BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>
	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Wed Apr 25 15:49:42 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:49:42 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
Message-ID: <20721684.1177541382758.JavaMail.root@elwamui-little.atl.sa.earthlink.net>


Alejandro Adams writes:

>Subject: [ilds]  Durrell and The Good Soldier

>During an interview with an English journalist, Durrell says something to 
>the effect that no one has tried to write anything quite like the Quartet. 
>(To wit, "The narrative momentum forward is counter-sprung by references 
>backwards in time, giving the impression of a book which is not traveling 
>from a to b but standing above time and turning slowly on its own axis to 
>comprehend the whole pattern.")  The journalist immediately stops the 
>interview, hands Durrell a copy of The Good Soldier and leaves him to read 
>it.  The journalist returns the following day and resumes the interview, at 
>which point Durrell humbly thanks the journalist for introducing him to 
>Ford's novel and confesses that Ford already "did it" (see parenthetical 
>citation above for an uncannily accurate description of the narrative 
>methodology of The Good Soldier).
>
>I've always wondered whether the Quartet could have gestated with such a 
>self-important sense of daring had Durrell been exposed to the impeccable 
>machinery of The Good Soldier when Justine was just an embryo.  But what 
>would the Quartet be without that sense of daring?

>
                                * * * * *

Good story.  I hadn't heard it before.  Someone will undoubtedly show me wrong, but I don't believe Durrell was familiar with Ford's Good Soldier or he wouldn't have made such bold claims about his Quartet.  I also think he was probably little read in the classic "high moderns," as his comments about Joyce and Proust indicate.  On the other hand, I don't think this diminishes the accomplishments of his Quartet one bit, which is read on its own merits and don't need the author's "hype."

Bruce



From hungerist at hotmail.com  Wed Apr 25 15:52:26 2007
From: hungerist at hotmail.com (Alejandro Adams)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:52:26 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 -- Ironic?
References: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
	<4621182E.3060009@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <BAY123-DAV11DE9DC19A028C3E16CDDDA2490@phx.gbl>

Bruce Redwine writes, "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'm particularly sensitive to the Irony Question, and I fall in line with 
Bruce's deliberately circumscribed orientation--that is, I make the effort 
to take the novel as "serious," despite doubts raised by the possibility of 
"multiple readings."  Whatever primal remnant of my being responds to 
Justine demands a monolithic experience--of which I am more victim than 
participant--rather than anything as self-conscious-sounding as an 
"interpretation."

I had a particularly rich experience with The Good Soldier on my first 
reading and was surprised to learn that a Mark Schorer essay which 
encouraged an ironic reading of the novel had become the academic standard 
for a few decades (maybe someone here can qualify this assertion).  A later 
influential essay (eighties?  but by whom?  must consult the Norton Critical 
Ed.) counter-attacked Schorer's position and, much in the spirit of Bruce's 
post, argued that the novel was an earnest, even sentimental effort on 
Ford's part.  Which is not to say that The Good Soldier is without its share 
of wit and physical comedy.

"The Good Soldier" is an ironic title, but even that is accidental: the 
publisher asked Ford to come up with a more marketable title than The 
Saddest Story, under which cloud Ford had written the novel, so the author 
sent a tongue-in-cheek telegram from the battlefield which suggested it be 
called The Good Soldier.  To Ford's surprise, he soon saw a novel of that 
title on a bookshelf and discovered it was otherwise his own.  This anecdote 
provides an apt metaphor for any author's relationship to interpretation: 
bemusement and, above all, total absence from the process.

Though ignorant of allusiveness, a reader may still be amused by 
Lolita--Nabokov made sure of that.  If FMF or LD were subtly mocking their 
narrators or, by extension, their own ostensible stylistic preoccupations 
(unreliability in The Good Soldier or "the 'fine' prose style of Justine"), 
then they would have been not-so-subtly mocking much of their readership. 
It seems to me...

Belatedly,
Alejandro Adams


From hungerist at hotmail.com  Wed Apr 25 16:08:25 2007
From: hungerist at hotmail.com (Alejandro Adams)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:08:25 -0700
Subject: [ilds]  Durrell's Phraseology
References: <623697.94509.qm@web30909.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<46252D2C.9080101@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <BAY123-DAV146049C8FBF0F6F274A5DEA2490@phx.gbl>

Marc Piel writes, "I have always read the AQ slowly, and reread phrases over 
and over again (for their beauty- not for what some of the posts call 
'multiple readings'."

I pillage Durrell with his own creed in mind: "[I]n order for one to write 
one must first be convinced that every book ever written was made for one to 
borrow from.  The art is in paying back these loans with interest."

Though a fiery and full-bodied thinker, Emerson nonetheless admitted that he 
returned to Plato and Montaigne not for the quality of their thought but for 
their phrasings.  "I read Proclus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read a 
dictionary, for mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination.  I read 
for the lustres, as if one should use a fine picture in a chromatic 
experiment, for its rich colors."

Updike eulogized Nabokov by noting that rarely had a brilliant scientific 
mind lent itself so fully to the arts.  It seems similarly rare for a mind 
as philosophically acute as Emerson's play the role of giddy aesthete.





From slighcl at wfu.edu  Wed Apr 25 16:50:24 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 19:50:24 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Justine 1.1 -- Ironic?
In-Reply-To: <BAY123-DAV11DE9DC19A028C3E16CDDDA2490@phx.gbl>
References: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net>	<4621182E.3060009@wfu.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV11DE9DC19A028C3E16CDDDA2490@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <462FE940.7060803@wfu.edu>



On 4/25/2007 6:52 PM, Alejandro Adams wrote:

>
>I'm particularly sensitive to the Irony Question, and I fall in line with 
>Bruce's deliberately circumscribed orientation--that is, I make the effort 
>to take the novel as "serious," despite doubts raised by the possibility of 
>"multiple readings."  Whatever primal remnant of my being responds to 
>Justine demands a monolithic experience--of which I am more victim than 
>participant--rather than anything as self-conscious-sounding as an 
>"interpretation."
>
>  
>
Why aspire to victimhood?  Why insist that irony and romanticism can't 
exist in flux and couterflux?  LD projects Darley and Pursewarden as his 
avatars.  To ignore one and claim the other is to miss the dynamic of 
the /Quartet/. 

I for one aspire to be a reader never too lazy to use a knife on my 
author.  (Cf. Pursewarden & the Buddha).  I for one am always nostalgic 
for the first encounter with these jewel-toned gem-bright words, this 
investigation of modern love in the days before I had any notion what 
love might be. 

I am only safeguarded by moving back and forth between the poles of 
romanticism and irony.  "The world is like a cucumber--today it's in 
your hand, tomorrow up your arse" (/Justine /2.6).  We'd all be better 
with more mindful handling of our cucumbers, in every sense that can be 
imagined.

There is plenty of room..  Here's to liberty and plenitude.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From hungerist at hotmail.com  Wed Apr 25 17:07:00 2007
From: hungerist at hotmail.com (Alejandro Adams)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:07:00 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Sterile and Pretentious Posts
References: <135227.1176820107982.JavaMail.root@elwamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net><4624F2F1.50202@wfu.edu>
	<46253B20.4010704@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <BAY123-DAV145DB1C2DD4FFEEE54F7EFA2480@phx.gbl>

I couldn't help noticing the colorful phrase "sterile and pretentious 
posts."  I haven't seen any posts fitting that description, but as a 
short-on-scholarship Reader's Reader (intuitive and uninformed), I 
understand the spirit of the accusation.

The most intense aspects of any experience in the arts ipso facto defy 
discussability.  Somewhere Sontag talks about the notion of "talking about" 
art, how this notion has developed, how it is applied, and how arbitrary and 
counterproductive it is as a method of metabolizing experience (bad 
paraphrase).

Any literary discussion has an indirect relationship to the book in 
question.  When we talk about reading, we talk about an experience which has 
expired, since it is physically--rather, mentally--impossible to read a 
sentence for the first time and simultaneously discuss it with someone else 
who is reading it for the first time.  Discussion is necessarily 
revisitation--nostalgia, a subtext of loss.  Discussion is itself "sterile" 
in contrast to the dynamic experience of reading.  Are we to favor a 
firebrand contentiousness which obliquely mirrors our volatile inner state 
as we read the AQ (or any piece of exciting literature) for the first time? 
That sensation is, to my mind, profoundly anti-social.

My own feeling is that What Can Be Discussed about any work of art resides 
on a plane that is ungratifyingly low on the scale of experience--just as a 
discussion of a basketball game will inevitably fall short of the experience 
of watching the basketball game.  One can go only so far in verbally 
rendering athleticism and bouncing balls--and if one were to accept the 
challenge of going as far as possible in discussing the game, could (or 
should) the discussion achieve a level of intensity which matches that of 
watching the original event?

It may be the case that the hardest-reading, most intuitive and brilliant 
reader of Durrell would avoid this sort of list altogether, just as Elton 
Trueblood suggested, after the Second World War, that "true Christians" were 
avoiding church--i.e., avoiding the institutionalization of a faith too 
vital to be caged.  This list is equivalent to an institutionalization of 
our collective faith in Durrell, and I gladly accept the "high church" 
trappings.  Our only other choice is to go solo, all locusts and wild honey 
and camel hair.  Sounds lonely.

Belatedly,
Alejandro Adams


From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Wed Apr 25 17:42:23 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:42:23 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.15 -- bisexuality?
Message-ID: <20070426004232.POXG5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Wed Apr 25 17:51:54 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 01:51:54 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.15 -- bisexuality?
In-Reply-To: <20070426004232.POXG5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <53C4ADA0-F390-11DB-A55C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

The Last Judgement will come, says Jesus in the gnostic Gospel of the 
Egyptians, 'When the two become one, and the male with the female, 
there being neither male nor female'.

:Michael


On Thursday, April 26, 2007, at 01:42  am, william godshalk wrote:

> Some while ago we discussed the issue of bisexuality. I suppose the 
> narrator's assertion that he understands Justine's love of Nessim, 
> "loving him so much myself" (Justine 1.15), may suggest a certain 
> bisexuality in the relationship among Nessim, Justine, and the 
> narrator. The narrator calls Justine "this most masculine and 
> resourceful of women" (1.11) He claims, "She talked like a man and I 
> talked to her like a man" (1.13). The ambiguity in that line may be 
> significant. She holds her fur "at her back as a peasant holds his 
> coat" (1.11). And in a later episode (1.16), the narrator remembers 
> watching Nessim and Justine "dancing together several times, he 
> slender and with a deep waist like a woman, and long arched beautiful 
> hands."
>
> Earlier when we discussed bisexuality in Justine, I was skeptical.
>
> WLG_______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Wed Apr 25 17:51:10 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:51:10 -0400
Subject: [ilds] reading and writing at the same time
In-Reply-To: <BAY123-DAV145DB1C2DD4FFEEE54F7EFA2480@phx.gbl>
References: <135227.1176820107982.JavaMail.root@elwamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
	<4624F2F1.50202@wfu.edu> <46253B20.4010704@interdesign.fr>
	<BAY123-DAV145DB1C2DD4FFEEE54F7EFA2480@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <20070426005108.HSSU16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

I think it is possible (in fact I've been just doing it) to read and 
write concurrently. I read looking for a relevant passage to quote, 
and then I quote it -- or get it on this screen in some way. Durrell 
must have used this procedure -- at least sometimes -- when we catch 
him paraphrasing a passage that he has read -- I assume "just read' 
-- reading and writing simultaneously.

WLG


>I couldn't help noticing the colorful phrase "sterile and pretentious
>posts."  I haven't seen any posts fitting that description, but as a
>short-on-scholarship Reader's Reader (intuitive and uninformed), I
>understand the spirit of the accusation.
>
>The most intense aspects of any experience in the arts ipso facto defy
>discussability.  Somewhere Sontag talks about the notion of "talking about"
>art, how this notion has developed, how it is applied, and how arbitrary and
>counterproductive it is as a method of metabolizing experience (bad
>paraphrase).
>
>Any literary discussion has an indirect relationship to the book in
>question.  When we talk about reading, we talk about an experience which has
>expired, since it is physically--rather, mentally--impossible to read a
>sentence for the first time and simultaneously discuss it with someone else
>who is reading it for the first time.  Discussion is necessarily
>revisitation--nostalgia, a subtext of loss.  Discussion is itself "sterile"
>in contrast to the dynamic experience of reading.  Are we to favor a
>firebrand contentiousness which obliquely mirrors our volatile inner state
>as we read the AQ (or any piece of exciting literature) for the first time?
>That sensation is, to my mind, profoundly anti-social.
>
>My own feeling is that What Can Be Discussed about any work of art resides
>on a plane that is ungratifyingly low on the scale of experience--just as a
>discussion of a basketball game will inevitably fall short of the experience
>of watching the basketball game.  One can go only so far in verbally
>rendering athleticism and bouncing balls--and if one were to accept the
>challenge of going as far as possible in discussing the game, could (or
>should) the discussion achieve a level of intensity which matches that of
>watching the original event?
>
>It may be the case that the hardest-reading, most intuitive and brilliant
>reader of Durrell would avoid this sort of list altogether, just as Elton
>Trueblood suggested, after the Second World War, that "true Christians" were
>avoiding church--i.e., avoiding the institutionalization of a faith too
>vital to be caged.  This list is equivalent to an institutionalization of
>our collective faith in Durrell, and I gladly accept the "high church"
>trappings.  Our only other choice is to go solo, all locusts and wild honey
>and camel hair.  Sounds lonely.
>
>Belatedly,
>Alejandro Adams
>
>_______________________________________________
>ILDS mailing list
>ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

***************************************
W. L. Godshalk		*
Department of English         *
University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
513-281-5927
***************************************



From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Wed Apr 25 18:08:28 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:08:28 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
Message-ID: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Wed Apr 25 18:19:24 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:19:24 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <462FFE1C.9050304@wfu.edu>

On 4/25/2007 9:08 PM, william godshalk wrote:

> As far as I can tell from a google, /Jamaie de la vie/ (i.e. never, 
> absolutely not) is not the name of an extant perfume.


Wilde said:  "In a word, Life is Art's best, Art's only pupil."

Hence:

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Wed Apr 25 18:23:43 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 21:23:43 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <462FFE1C.9050304@wfu.edu>
References: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<462FFE1C.9050304@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <20070426012411.IDRE18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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***************************************
W. L. Godshalk		*
Department of English         *
University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
513-281-5927
***************************************

From hungerist at hotmail.com  Wed Apr 25 23:41:25 2007
From: hungerist at hotmail.com (Alejandro Adams)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:41:25 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu>
	<461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr><461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu><BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>
	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>

I'd like to reiterate that I'm not a scholar and have very limited range of 
movement in these matters, but I'll gladly cite the applicable portion of 
the interview as it seems to be of interest.  The book is Lawrence Durrell: 
Conversations, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll.  The title of the piece is The 
Poet Who Stumbled into Prose by Kenneth Young.  It appeared in the December 
1959 issue of Encounter.

Durrell: If the experiment comes off, if you have all four [books] held in 
your cranium, you should get a notion of the continuum.  I am using human 
beings instead of figures.  Consequently, subject to all the problems of 
just pure novel writing, I am trying to illuminate them from five or six 
different sides.

Young: At this point, I suggested that much of what he was after had been 
done, and in purely literary terms, by Ford Madox Ford.  I lent Durrell 
Ford's The Good Soldier; he read it overnight, and then wrote:

Durrell: I'm so glad I didn't read The Good Soldier before writing Justine 
or I might never have finished her!  This novel is an eye-opener with its 
brilliant organization and gathering momentum; it's fit to put beside the 
best of our time.  How the devil didn't I know his work?



From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Thu Apr 26 01:30:48 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:30:48 +0200
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <46306338.3060500@interdesign.fr>

"Jamais de la vie" with an "s".
It does not seem to have existed. I looked for it 
years ago.
Marc Piel

william godshalk wrote:

> As far as I can tell from a google, Jamaie de la vie (i.e. never, 
> absolutely not) is not the name of an extant perfume. Yet Justine wears 
> it, as does Constance in Sebastian. The narrator of Justine writes, "I 
> don't know why" (1.13) it's called Jamaie de la vie. I suppose his 
> ignorance should act as a spur (like Lady Macbeth).
> 
> 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  Thu Apr 26 04:33:56 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:33:56 +0200
Subject: [ilds]
 =?windows-1252?q?Lawrence_Durrell=2C_Jacques_Lacarri=E8re_?=
 =?windows-1252?q?=281981=29?=
In-Reply-To: <462EC3C3.3010400@wfu.edu>
References: <462EC3C3.3010400@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <46308E24.4040705@interdesign.fr>

Is it a curious coincidence, but on the same site 
a little further:

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/xl8xq_mafish-durell-nicolas-barrie

There is a film (if you can call it that) on 
Alexandria, a sort of "?loge" (It is very long and 
sometimes the image is bad).

The initial link is an interview of "Jacques 
Lacarri?re" who wrote a book "Les Gnostiques" with 
a preface by LD. Published by Gallimard in Paris. 
Do not know if it was ever translated, but LD said 
it was the best written on the subject and that he 
used it as reference. The interview is from the 
archives on INA (Institut National de 
l'Audiovisuel) where there are 4 clips concerning LD:

http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?full=Durrell&action=ft&x=0&y=0

INA started recently putting all their audio and 
video archives on-line: a very rich source indeed. 
The interview by Bernard PIVOT, who ran a literary 
programme in French TV for many many years 
(regretfully stopped now) is well worth seeing; I 
like the way it finishes "Dieu, Diable, Durrell.

Marc Piel,
Paris, France.

slighcl wrote:

> This clip takes some time to load.  You will find the short bit with 
> LD's appearance near the end.
> 
> CLS
> 
>         http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/xy6bk_gnostiques
> 
>         Duration: 12:18 Taken: 21 January 1974  Location: France
> 
>         1. Invit? de l??mission ? Ouvrez les guillemets ?, Jacques
>         Lacarri?re est interview? par Andr? Bourin ? propos de son livre
>         ? Les gnostiques ?. lectures par Laurent Terzieff. pr?sent? par
>         Bernard Pivot.
>         ORTF, 21/01/1974
> 
>         2. Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Lacarri?re dans l??mission ? La
>         rage de lire ?, pr?sent?e par Georges Suffert.
> 
>         TF1, 01/07/1981.
> 
> -- 
> **********************
> 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 slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 05:41:47 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 08:41:47 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
In-Reply-To: <BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu>	<461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr><461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu><BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <46309E0B.6090909@wfu.edu>

Thanks to Richard and Alejandro for pursuing and clarifying LD's words 
on FMF.

CLS

*****FROM RICHARD PINE*****

Subject:
Re: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
From:
"Durrell School of Corfu" <durrells at otenet.gr>
Date:
Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:43:45 +0300

To:
<ilds at lists.uvic.ca>


It is true that Durrell (most probably) had not read The Good Soldier 
until after 1959, but he admired it immensely and included it in his 
CalTech lectures in  1974: '[Ford was] a major talent, with the capacity 
to range over the whole field of memory selecting events or sequences of 
events from all the tenses of memory past, future, perfect, pluperfect, 
and the novelistic present (the historic present) and fit them together 
so that they will supplement and comment on each other as images in a 
poem do'.
Richard Pine
Durrell School of Corfu

*****





 

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 06:00:19 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:00:19 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <20070426012411.IDRE18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070426010846.PSQL5961.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<462FFE1C.9050304@wfu.edu>
	<20070426012411.IDRE18874.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <4630A263.6030202@wfu.edu>


> On 4/25/2007 9:23 PM, william godshalk wrote:
> How long has it been on the market? And what's its relation to /Justine/?

The /Justine /perfume was a tie-in product for the 1969 Cukor film.  The 
perfume is no longer in production, but you can still obtain bottles at 
auction.  Asking who would aspire to wear it would be revealing.

The information below  is scanned from the pressbook for the film.  Note 
the clothing line to be carried by Saks.  All of this is an important 
record of that decade in which LD's readership was still growing 
abundantly and the /Quartet /still enjoyed a singular reputation as both 
an important work of fiction and, in Richard's phrase, an 
"unputdownable" read.   Like the fashions below, that seems like an 
epoch slipped off into the sea.

Enough of the archeology.  Here's to the good work of encouraging more 
readers to pick up the books once more.

CLS



-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From durrells at otenet.gr  Thu Apr 26 06:35:12 2007
From: durrells at otenet.gr (Durrell School of Corfu)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:35:12 +0300
Subject: [ilds]
	=?windows-1252?q?Lawrence_Durrell=2C_Jacques_Lacarri=E8re_?=
	=?windows-1252?q?=281981=29?=
References: <462EC3C3.3010400@wfu.edu> <46308E24.4040705@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <00ca01c78807$b7b48c40$0100000a@DSC01>

Lacarriere's book (with LD's foreword) was published in English by City 
Lights (San Francisco) 1989. Lacarriere died 2005.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marc Piel" <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: [ilds] Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Lacarri?re (1981)


> Is it a curious coincidence, but on the same site
> a little further:
>
> http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/xl8xq_mafish-durell-nicolas-barrie
>
> There is a film (if you can call it that) on
> Alexandria, a sort of "?loge" (It is very long and
> sometimes the image is bad).
>
> The initial link is an interview of "Jacques
> Lacarri?re" who wrote a book "Les Gnostiques" with
> a preface by LD. Published by Gallimard in Paris.
> Do not know if it was ever translated, but LD said
> it was the best written on the subject and that he
> used it as reference. The interview is from the
> archives on INA (Institut National de
> l'Audiovisuel) where there are 4 clips concerning LD:
>
> http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?full=Durrell&action=ft&x=0&y=0
>
> INA started recently putting all their audio and
> video archives on-line: a very rich source indeed.
> The interview by Bernard PIVOT, who ran a literary
> programme in French TV for many many years
> (regretfully stopped now) is well worth seeing; I
> like the way it finishes "Dieu, Diable, Durrell.
>
> Marc Piel,
> Paris, France.
>
> slighcl wrote:
>
>> This clip takes some time to load.  You will find the short bit with
>> LD's appearance near the end.
>>
>> CLS
>>
>> 
>> http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/xy6bk_gnostiques
>>
>>         Duration: 12:18 Taken: 21 January 1974  Location: France
>>
>>         1. Invit? de l??mission ? Ouvrez les guillemets ?, Jacques
>>         Lacarri?re est interview? par Andr? Bourin ? propos de son livre
>>         ? Les gnostiques ?. lectures par Laurent Terzieff. pr?sent? par
>>         Bernard Pivot.
>>         ORTF, 21/01/1974
>>
>>         2. Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Lacarri?re dans l??mission ? La
>>         rage de lire ?, pr?sent?e par Georges Suffert.
>>
>>         TF1, 01/07/1981.
>>
>> -- 
>> **********************
>> 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
>
>
>
> __________ NOD32 2220 (20070426) Information __________
>
> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> http://www.eset.com
>
> 


From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Thu Apr 26 07:10:37 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:10:37 +0100
Subject: [ilds]
 =?iso-8859-1?q?Lawrence_Durrell=2C_Jacques_Lacarri=E8re_?=
 =?iso-8859-1?q?=281981=29?=
In-Reply-To: <00ca01c78807$b7b48c40$0100000a@DSC01>
Message-ID: <E826EFFA-F3FF-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Lacarriere's Gnostics was originally published in English translation  
with Durrell's forward by Peter Owen, London 1977.


On Thursday, April 26, 2007, at 02:35  pm, Durrell School of Corfu  
wrote:

> Lacarriere's book (with LD's foreword) was published in English by City
> Lights (San Francisco) 1989. Lacarriere died 2005.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Marc Piel" <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 2:33 PM
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Lacarri?re (1981)
>
>
>> Is it a curious coincidence, but on the same site
>> a little further:
>>
>> http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/ 
>> xl8xq_mafish-durell-nicolas-barrie
>>
>> There is a film (if you can call it that) on
>> Alexandria, a sort of "?loge" (It is very long and
>> sometimes the image is bad).
>>
>> The initial link is an interview of "Jacques
>> Lacarri?re" who wrote a book "Les Gnostiques" with
>> a preface by LD. Published by Gallimard in Paris.
>> Do not know if it was ever translated, but LD said
>> it was the best written on the subject and that he
>> used it as reference. The interview is from the
>> archives on INA (Institut National de
>> l'Audiovisuel) where there are 4 clips concerning LD:
>>
>> http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/ 
>> index.php?full=Durrell&action=ft&x=0&y=0
>>
>> INA started recently putting all their audio and
>> video archives on-line: a very rich source indeed.
>> The interview by Bernard PIVOT, who ran a literary
>> programme in French TV for many many years
>> (regretfully stopped now) is well worth seeing; I
>> like the way it finishes "Dieu, Diable, Durrell.
>>
>> Marc Piel,
>> Paris, France.
>>
>> slighcl wrote:
>>
>>> This clip takes some time to load.  You will find the short bit with
>>> LD's appearance near the end.
>>>
>>> CLS
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/ 
>>> xy6bk_gnostiques
>>>
>>>         Duration: 12:18 Taken: 21 January 1974  Location: France
>>>
>>>         1. Invit? de l??mission ? Ouvrez les guillemets ?, Jacques
>>>         Lacarri?re est interview? par Andr? Bourin ? propos de son  
>>> livre
>>>         ? Les gnostiques ?. lectures par Laurent Terzieff. pr?sent?  
>>> par
>>>         Bernard Pivot.
>>>         ORTF, 21/01/1974
>>>
>>>         2. Lawrence Durrell, Jacques Lacarri?re dans l??mission ? La
>>>         rage de lire ?, pr?sent?e par Georges Suffert.
>>>
>>>         TF1, 01/07/1981.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> **********************
>>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> __________ NOD32 2220 (20070426) 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 albigensian at hotmail.com  Thu Apr 26 07:17:41 2007
From: albigensian at hotmail.com (Pamela Francis)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:17:41 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
In-Reply-To: <BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <BAY108-F328FD2859A1DBD9EBAFFDEB0480@phx.gbl>


I read the Good Soldier just recently, and I was very impressed, and yes, 
made the connections b/t Ford's modus operandi and Durrell's.  As for why LD 
didn't know the work: I have been reading for my comprehensive exams, and my 
main subject area is British Modernism.  When you read the criticism, both 
of the era itself and current work, you find that Ford is just everywhere.  
I mean, everywhere.  He was held in the highest regard by his fellow 
Moderns, and critics (Peter Childs, Levenson, etc) hail him as the 
quintessential modernist novelist.  Therefore I, too, was very surprised to 
read that LD had not read TGS.  But even with the high regard given him (and 
TGS is one of the most finely crafted examples of unreliable narration I've 
ever read) he is just not read very often.  I have no idea why, and I can 
assure you he will be on my future syllabi.  His absence is particulary 
obvious on this side of the Atlantic (the States).  In short, his influence 
is well-noted, but his books are rarely-read.  Tis a shame.--Pamela Francis, 
English Graduate Student, Rice University, Houston, TX


>From: "Alejandro Adams" <hungerist at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
>Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
>Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:41:25 -0700
>
>I'd like to reiterate that I'm not a scholar and have very limited range of
>movement in these matters, but I'll gladly cite the applicable portion of
>the interview as it seems to be of interest.  The book is Lawrence Durrell:
>Conversations, edited by Earl G. Ingersoll.  The title of the piece is The
>Poet Who Stumbled into Prose by Kenneth Young.  It appeared in the December
>1959 issue of Encounter.
>
>Durrell: If the experiment comes off, if you have all four [books] held in
>your cranium, you should get a notion of the continuum.  I am using human
>beings instead of figures.  Consequently, subject to all the problems of
>just pure novel writing, I am trying to illuminate them from five or six
>different sides.
>
>Young: At this point, I suggested that much of what he was after had been
>done, and in purely literary terms, by Ford Madox Ford.  I lent Durrell
>Ford's The Good Soldier; he read it overnight, and then wrote:
>
>Durrell: I'm so glad I didn't read The Good Soldier before writing Justine
>or I might never have finished her!  This novel is an eye-opener with its
>brilliant organization and gathering momentum; it's fit to put beside the
>best of our time.  How the devil didn't I know his work?
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>ILDS mailing list
>ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds



From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 09:11:22 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:11:22 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
In-Reply-To: <46309E0B.6090909@wfu.edu>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>
	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>
	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>
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From holdsworth at rogers.com  Thu Apr 26 09:07:09 2007
From: holdsworth at rogers.com (David Holdsworth)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:07:09 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <46306338.3060500@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <000001c7881c$f550e610$6401a8c0@D13W0611>



Marc Piel wrote:

"Jamais de la vie" with an "s".
It does not seem to have existed. I looked for it 
years ago.
Marc Piel

william godshalk wrote:

> As far as I can tell from a google, Jamaie de la vie (i.e. never, 
> absolutely not) is not the name of an extant perfume. Yet Justine wears 
> it, as does Constance in Sebastian. The narrator of Justine writes, "I 
> don't know why" (1.13) it's called Jamaie de la vie. I suppose his 
> ignorance should act as a spur (like Lady Macbeth).
> 

No one has brought up (unless I missed it) the suggestion in Mike Diboll's
book that the name of the perfume 'Jamais de la vie' may be a reference to
the telegram sent by De Lesseps in 1882 "Jamais les Anglais n'y p?n?treront,
jamais, jamais!" as the British moved to occupy the Canal Zone. If this is
correct, it would lead to a wonderful reading of Darley's innocent "I don't
know why" at the outset of his relationship with Justine and the Hosnanis.
Can someone more knowledgeable than I comment?

David Holdsworth




From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Apr 26 09:28:20 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:28:20 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
Message-ID: <26370665.1177604900734.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

Pamela Francis writes:

>I read the Good Soldier just recently . . . Therefore I, too, was very surprised to 
>read that LD had not read TGS.  But even with the high regard given him (and 
>TGS is one of the most finely crafted examples of unreliable narration I've 
>ever read) he is just not read very often.
>
                                 * * * * *

I suppose Durrell's reading habits reflect his interests and the way he saw himself within the literary establishment of the times.  Not surprising.  I see him as an outsider, like Miller (that friendship is very telling), way outside the mainstream, without an Oxbridge degree, and doing battle with the big shots who ran the show in the first half of the 20th century.  But there is still the matter of doing one's homework, and it is surprising he didn't have under his belt the major authors, and Ford was certainly one of those, along with Joyce and Proust.  Durrell's life, however, was hectic, and perhaps he didn't have the time to do all that reading.  Academics have the time and inclination -- but they don't turn out Alexandria Quartets.  So, he went his own way, followed his own instincts, and I'm glad he did.  What he accomplished was so great that I'll even put up with his occasional pontifications on the course of European literature.  A whole conference could probably be devoted to this subject.

Bruce


From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Thu Apr 26 09:49:10 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:49:10 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <000001c7881c$f550e610$6401a8c0@D13W0611>
Message-ID: <0E8DA600-F416-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

That is a good example of over-straining a word to make an 
unsubstantiated and irrelevant political point.

:Michael


On Thursday, April 26, 2007, at 05:07  pm, David Holdsworth wrote:

>
>
> Marc Piel wrote:
>
> "Jamais de la vie" with an "s".
> It does not seem to have existed. I looked for it
> years ago.
> Marc Piel
>
> william godshalk wrote:
>
>> As far as I can tell from a google, Jamaie de la vie (i.e. never,
>> absolutely not) is not the name of an extant perfume. Yet Justine 
>> wears
>> it, as does Constance in Sebastian. The narrator of Justine writes, "I
>> don't know why" (1.13) it's called Jamaie de la vie. I suppose his
>> ignorance should act as a spur (like Lady Macbeth).
>>
>
> No one has brought up (unless I missed it) the suggestion in Mike 
> Diboll's
> book that the name of the perfume 'Jamais de la vie' may be a 
> reference to
> the telegram sent by De Lesseps in 1882 "Jamais les Anglais n'y 
> p?n?treront,
> jamais, jamais!" as the British moved to occupy the Canal Zone. If 
> this is
> correct, it would lead to a wonderful reading of Darley's innocent "I 
> don't
> know why" at the outset of his relationship with Justine and the 
> Hosnanis.
> Can someone more knowledgeable than I comment?
>
> David Holdsworth
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>



From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 10:44:57 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:44:57 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
In-Reply-To: <26370665.1177604900734.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <26370665.1177604900734.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4630E519.7090302@wfu.edu>

On 4/26/2007 12:28 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

>But there is still the matter of doing one's homework, and it is surprising he didn't have under his belt the major authors, and Ford was certainly one of those, along with Joyce and Proust.  
>
I think I hear what you are saying Bruce, but I can place little belief 
in the notion that LD did not have a thorough exposure and knowledge of 
19th and 20th century literary movements.  Eliot certainly did not 
engage LD in the letters as a naive poet writing from the wilderness, 
and we should be confident that TSE brooked no fools.  While it is true 
that LD schooled himself in literature, his works, his lectures, and his 
critical statements put to rest any idea that he did not know, 
understand, and selectively digest the work of Joyce, Proust, Kafka.  
(/I know that you are not saying LD did not read Joyce and Proust, 
Bruce--just that he seems not to have read FMF./)  LD cites all of them 
as points of references in the letters and in contemporary documents 
springing from his lectures, /A Key to Modern British Poetry/ and "The 
Minor Mythologies," for example.  And to make the generic bound to 
poetry, a bound which is too little taken in our fiction-obsessed times, 
LD had an extremely thorough command of works by Eliot, Pound, Auden, 
and too many other minors and majors to list beside.  LD may or may not 
have read FMF in the context of these other writers.  Given FMF's close 
proximity to the major modernist figures as friend, publisher, &c., it 
would indeed be a surprise that LD had skipped over him.  He absolutely 
did not require a university degree to be aware of a key catalytic 
figure as FMF.

Watch LD talk in the old films (say the BBC Gawsworth special from 1970) 
or listen to the recordings of his lectures.  The range of reference 
never ceases to amaze me.  Hearing his voice, I think that, like 
Boswell's Johnson, LD "knows how to read better than any one . . . he 
gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.' 

(Does that direct echo mean that Justine of the Workpoints/Consequential 
Data read Boswell, or simply that she had clawed out the heart of his book?)

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 10:52:37 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:52:37 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <0E8DA600-F416-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <0E8DA600-F416-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <4630E6E5.6040704@wfu.edu>



On 4/26/2007 12:49 PM, Michael Haag wrote:

>That is a good example of over-straining a word to make an 
>unsubstantiated and irrelevant political point.
>
>:Michael
>
I will strain the word in another direction, asking what the list makes 
of LD's late correction in the /Justine /typescript:

        /Jamais de la vie/] "/~ dans ~ ~/"

Beyond the insight that LD seems to have slipped in his French, can 
anyone tease out the implications?

Bending over the dirty sink with cancellations in it--

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 10:51:10 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:51:10 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <0E8DA600-F416-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <000001c7881c$f550e610$6401a8c0@D13W0611>
	<0E8DA600-F416-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070426175107.CKXA26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From odos.fanourios at gmail.com  Thu Apr 26 11:06:03 2007
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:06:03 -0700
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <20070426175107.CKXA26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <C256381B.C103%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>

My French is not terribly good, but from my school years I?d always thought
?jamais de la vie? was an idiom equivalent to ?never ever.?  N?est pas un
chat...

There was a version of the perfume released with the Justine film, but I
took it to be a simple reference to something eternal lacking or longed for.
?Never ever? isn?t likely to be a name for a scent from Calvin Klein.

Best,
James
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 11:43:32 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:43:32 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <4630E6E5.6040704@wfu.edu>
References: <0E8DA600-F416-11DB-B463-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<4630E6E5.6040704@wfu.edu>
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Apr 26 12:14:18 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:14:18 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
Message-ID: <1674877.1177614858314.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 13:17:01 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:17:01 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <1674877.1177614858314.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <1674877.1177614858314.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <463108BD.4050803@wfu.edu>



On 4/26/2007 3:14 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

> My French is terrible, but I thought "jamais de la vie" was more or 
> less equivalent to English, "not on your life!"  Perhaps French 
> speakers can comment.  David?  I never understood how that idiom came 
> to be the name of a perfume and still don't.
>
> Bruce

So if the name of the perfume comes through as something like "never in 
my life" or "no way" or "a month of Sundays" or "not on your life," what 
does that say about Justine?  about Darley?

I think that it really matters.  In the BL  typescript for /Justine/, LD 
carefully calculates and calibrates every ending of these early 
paragraphs. (Note how many paragraphs and episodes end with a dying 
fall, many of which were additions in ink to the typescript.)

Michael touches upon the perfume in his /Alexandria: City of Memory/, 
and I will also point us to what William L. Godshalk tells us about 
other Durrellian characters who wore the same scent:

> /Sebastian: Or, Ruling Passions/: Searches and Failures
> William L. Godshalk
> /Twentieth Century Literature/, Vol. 33, No. 4, Lawrence Durrell 
> Issue, Part II. (Winter, 1987), pp.
> 536-549.


> And when things do work, it is not the result of rational planning.
> The cure of Affad's apparently autistic son is a case in point. Constance
> rejects the use of kittens and toys. "It is not," she claims, "just a 
> question
> of motor response one is looking for, but a reaction at a deeper level,
> which can only come from inside himself. How can we help that?" (69).
> Her last question remains unanswered-until, inadvertently, Constance
> wears a perfume called Jamais de la Vie (i.e., "absolutely not," or in
> modern slang, "no way"). It turns out to be the scent worn by the child's
> mother, and Constance theorizes: "perhaps this is what had given her
> such an immediate associative transference with the child" (85). She's

> not sure. So much for her deliberate plan "to break his psychic reverie"
> (71). Failure of nerve, mistaken identity, fortuitous action, the
> non-rational and the irrational-these are central to the novel.

CLS


-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 13:26:18 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:26:18 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <1674877.1177614858314.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <1674877.1177614858314.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <46310AEA.6050700@wfu.edu>

On the perfume also cf. Don Kaczvinsky's /LD's Major Novels/ (143) and 
Stefan Herbrechter's note (185 n38) in /LD, Postmodernism, and the 
Ethics of Alterity/.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Thu Apr 26 14:27:21 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:27:21 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Ruling Passions
Message-ID: <EAE8C0F2-F43C-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

The original title was not Sebastian: Ruling Passions, rather 
Sebastian: Special Tastes.

:Michael


From holdsworth at rogers.com  Thu Apr 26 15:24:16 2007
From: holdsworth at rogers.com (David Holdsworth)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:24:16 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <463108BD.4050803@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <002f01c78851$a3eb3de0$6401a8c0@D13W0611>

 

 


On 4/26/2007 3:14 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote: 

My French is terrible, but I thought "jamais de la vie" was more or less
equivalent to English, "not on your life!"  Perhaps French speakers can
comment.  David?  I never understood how that idiom came to be the name of a
perfume and still don't.

"Absolutely not" or "no way" to me best convey in English the French sense
of  "jamais de la vie", as some others have already suggested.

 

David Holdsworth



 
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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Thu Apr 26 13:12:40 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:12:40 +0200
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <C256381B.C103%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
References: <C256381B.C103%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <463107B8.9050000@interdesign.fr>

Yes it means "never in my life would I....... do, 
say, choose, etc....
Marc Piel

James Gifford wrote:

> My French is not terribly good, but from my school years I?d always 
> thought ?jamais de la vie? was an idiom equivalent to ?never ever.? 
>  N?est pas un chat...
> 
> There was a version of the perfume released with the Justine film, but I 
> took it to be a simple reference to something eternal lacking or longed 
> for.  ?Never ever? isn?t likely to be a name for a scent from Calvin Klein.
> 
> Best,
> James
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 15:49:01 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:49:01 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Fwd: RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors
Message-ID: <20070426224858.FGRY28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 16:02:14 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:02:14 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Sepastian: Ruling Passions or Special Tastes
In-Reply-To: <EAE8C0F2-F43C-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <EAE8C0F2-F43C-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070426230212.FHBU485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Thu Apr 26 16:09:53 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:09:53 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Sepastian: Ruling Passions or Special Tastes
In-Reply-To: <20070426230212.FHBU485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <3DE32196-F44B-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Not only multiple readings, but multiple titles!

:Michael



On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 12:02  am, william godshalk wrote:

> Here's what I can add. I have the Faber Sebastian or Special Tastes in 
> Uncorrected Advance Proofs (1983), and I have the Viking Unrevised and 
> Unpublished Proofs with the title: Sebastian or Ruling Passions (dated 
> 4/84).
>
> Faber wins!
>
> WLG
>
>
> At 05:27 PM 4/26/2007, you wrote:
>
> The original title was not Sebastian: Ruling Passions, rather
> Sebastian: Special Tastes.
>
> :Michael
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 16:19:48 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:19:48 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Sebastian: Ruling Passions or Special Tastes
In-Reply-To: <3DE32196-F44B-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <20070426230212.FHBU485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<3DE32196-F44B-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Thu Apr 26 16:08:46 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:08:46 +0200
Subject: [ilds] Fwd: RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors
In-Reply-To: <20070426224858.FGRY28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070426224858.FGRY28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <463130FE.90907@interdesign.fr>

Surely this photo of Eve taken by LD himself is 
the supreme witness of his interest for mirrors?
Incidentally in Alexandria there are all sorts of 
mirrors everywhere!
Marc Piel

william godshalk wrote:

> 
>> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:16:23 -0400
>> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>> From: william godshalk <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
>> Subject: RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors
>>
>> There are 36 references to mirrors in Justine, the first in this 
>> episode: "As I was leaving I caught a glimpse of him [i.e. Cohen] in 
>> one of the long mirrors" (Justine 1.12). The narrator has been 
>> standing next to Cohen in a bar "for nearly half and hour" without 
>> talking. But now he notices -- in the mirror -- Cohen staring into his 
>> wineglass. I assume that the long mirrors are behind the bar.
>>
>> If we are reading Justine for the first time, we do not yet realize 
>> the importance of mirrors in the novel. But in Justine 1.15, the 
>> narrator (referring  to mirrors for the second time) remembers Justine 
>> sitting before the multiple mirrors at the dressmaker's, being fitted 
>> for a shark-skin costume, and saying: "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-sightedness. 
>> Why should not people show more than one profile at a time?" And we 
>> begin to see how important mirrors are in this narrative.
>>
>> But why does the narrator (or Durrell, if you wish), begin this 
>> important sequence of mirrors with Cohen's face reflected in a barroom 
>> mirror? Why not begin with Justine's cubist observation?
>>
>> 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
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 16:30:25 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:30:25 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Fwd: RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors
In-Reply-To: <463130FE.90907@interdesign.fr>
References: <20070426224858.FGRY28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<463130FE.90907@interdesign.fr>
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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Thu Apr 26 16:26:17 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:26:17 +0200
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Sebastian: Ruling Passions or Special Tastes
In-Reply-To: <20070426231945.FJJW26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070426230212.FHBU485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<3DE32196-F44B-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<20070426231945.FJJW26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <46313519.8050902@interdesign.fr>

Does this mean that a majority of the worlds 
population in "kinky"??????????
Marc Piel

william godshalk wrote:

>> Not only multiple readings, but multiple titles!
>>
>> :Michael
> 
> 
> Thus it was in those days.
> 
> Yes, the varying titles of the novels in the AQ are -- interesting. 
> Constance in Love or Solitary Practices.
> 
> Special Tastes, Solitary Practices certainly suggest sexual kink -- I think.
> 
> 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  Thu Apr 26 16:35:21 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:35:21 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Sebastian: Ruling Passions or Special Tastes
In-Reply-To: <46313519.8050902@interdesign.fr>
References: <20070426230212.FHBU485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<3DE32196-F44B-11DB-91CF-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<20070426231945.FJJW26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<46313519.8050902@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <20070426233559.FMMP28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

At 07:26 PM 4/26/2007, you wrote:
>Does this mean that a majority of the world's
>population is "kinky"??????????
>Marc Piel

Well, I certainly should hope so!

WLG
***************************************
W. L. Godshalk		*
Department of English         *
University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
513-281-5927
***************************************



From hungerist at hotmail.com  Thu Apr 26 16:31:26 2007
From: hungerist at hotmail.com (Alejandro Adams)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:31:26 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Pursewarden -- Ironic?
References: <25617001.1176563642988.JavaMail.root@elwamui-muscovy.atl.sa.earthlink.net>	<4621182E.3060009@wfu.edu><BAY123-DAV11DE9DC19A028C3E16CDDDA2490@phx.gbl>
	<462FE940.7060803@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <BAY123-DAV15C3E08D040EAD5E986E48A2480@phx.gbl>

CLS writes, "I for one aspire to be a reader never too lazy to use a knife 
on my author."

I'm not sure "laziness" can be attributed in a case in which a conscious and 
tenacious effort is being made to put aside a ubiquitous cultural filter (I 
would compare the choice to that of a monk if it didn't sound so 
self-aggrandizing and "romantic," though there are overtones of innocence 
and reverence which I fancy), but I accept the accusation in as much as I'm 
here to be challenged rather than to challenge (or counter-challenge).

That said (and I apologize in advance for straying from Justine, but at the 
mention of Pursewarden as one of Durrell's avatars, it's difficult not to 
invoke certain parts of Clea), in Pursewarden's notebook I sense a 
retroactive prolepsis (an oxymoron, like so many ideas prompted by the 
Quartet) on the part of the author, who seems to be attacking himself, 
rather than an ironic metacommentary on the character of Darley (am I 
splitting hairs here?).  To brutalize Darley's values--the vehemence and 
vitriol are elevated to a level which belies the necessary indirectness of 
irony, no?

If Darley is Romanticism and Pursewarden Irony, then what is Arnauti but a 
more robust totem of Romanticism, with his inimitable and daunting 
earnestness and perspicacity and artistic integrity and verbal flair? 
Whatever glib criticisms Darley may offer in regard to the formal 
pretensions of Arnauti's Moeurs, he cites the work liberally, in a spirit of 
envy and awe ("savage insight," "accurate and penetrating").  So what are we 
to make of Arnauti in terms of Durrell's multiple avatars?  Granted: he is 
an elusive figure, an incorporeal mentor or spirit guide, only a refracted 
presence in the novel.  But if Pursewarden is intended to provide an ironic 
metacommentary on Darley, are we to take Arnauti as even more of a "joke" in 
his display of fine writing?  "Come on, at least Darley isn't THAT 
ridiculous!"

Isn't the entire interlinear of Balthazar an ironic beating up of Darley as 
narrator?  Less scornful and more patronizing than Pursewarden's--but 
Balthazar is addressing Darley's grasp of human affairs, not his literary 
values.  Isn't Balthazar equally ignorant of the truth of the matters 
regarding which he fastidiously corrects Darley?  But, then, we know the AQ 
is an epistemological enterprise.  So is everyone wrong about everything or 
is everyone right about everything?  Isn't Arnauti the most right 
(rightmost) by virtue of not having been subject to the sort of machinations 
and deceit--not to such a profound degree at any rate--which result in 
Darley and Balthazar and Pursewarden being so thoroughly duped?  Don't we 
have the uneasy sense that Arnauti would have seen through the multiple and 
contradictory ruses of Justine and others?

The narrator of The Good Soldier asks, "If for nine years I have possessed a 
goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in 
nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine 
years I possessed a goodly apple?"  Epistemologically speaking, aren't the 
events and character histories of Justine as Darley conveys them "true"?  If 
only the third novel had been written as Arnauti's metacommentary on 
Balthazar's metacommentary on the manuscript of Justine!  That is, if 
Arnauti would only tell me once and for all how to feel about Darley's 
incalculable misapprehension of the world around him...

You see, through the bungled accounts of the unreliable narrator I glimpse a 
reliable counterpart and instinctively want to join him in the stands.

Scattered,
Alejandro Adams

(I want to add, self-consciously, that I'm not sure how free the list is 
intended to be in terms of the scope of a single post.  I realize there is 
much to be gained from sticking to a "Justine 1.1" structure, and I'll 
gladly accept any due censure.)




From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 17:08:18 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:08:18 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine -- Ironic?
In-Reply-To: <mailman.712.1177630453.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
References: <mailman.712.1177630453.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <46313EF2.3050500@wfu.edu>


> If Darley is Romanticism and Pursewarden Irony, then what is Arnauti 
> but a more robust totem of Romanticism, with his inimitable and 
> daunting earnestness and perspicacity and artistic integrity and 
> verbal flair? Whatever glib criticisms Darley may offer in regard to 
> the formal pretensions of Arnauti's Moeurs, he cites the work 
> liberally, in a spirit of envy and awe ("savage insight," "accurate 
> and penetrating").  So what are we to make of Arnauti in terms of 
> Durrell's multiple avatars?  Granted: he is an elusive figure, an 
> incorporeal mentor or spirit guide, only a refracted presence in the 
> novel.  But if Pursewarden is intended to provide an ironic 
> metacommentary on Darley, are we to take Arnauti as even more of a 
> "joke" in his display of fine writing?  "Come on, at least Darley 
> isn't THAT ridiculous!" 

A marvellous post, Alejandro.  1001 thanks.  I welcome you to the list 
and RG.  Yes. Arnauti.  "a more robust totem of Romanticism."  An 
unforgivable omission on my part.  But you have the sense of it, I 
think.  Within terms of the /Quartet/'s /ficciones/, you have

        [*Darley *(Balthazar / Pursewarden / Clea &c. {/Darley
        /[*Arnuati*] /Darley/} Balthazar / Pursewarden / Clea &c.)
        *Darley*]      X       /Mountolive /

-- a simplifcation of the formula, but workable. if provisional.

>but at the 
>mention of Pursewarden as one of Durrell's avatars, it's difficult not to 
>invoke certain parts of Clea), in Pursewarden's notebook I sense a 
>retroactive prolepsis (an oxymoron, like so many ideas prompted by the 
>Quartet) on the part of the author, who seems to be attacking himself, 
>rather than an ironic metacommentary on the character of Darley (am I 
>splitting hairs here?).  To brutalize Darley's values--the vehemence and 
>vitriol are elevated to a level which belies the necessary indirectness of 
>irony, no?
>
And in terms of LD's composition process in his notebooks for /Justine/, 
and then again for the siblings of the /Quartet/, this is also true.  LD 
is writing back at LD.  What is presented in the published /Justine /as 
the /Moeurs/--Arnauti writing on "Claudia"--is largely made up of LD's 
elaborations upon earlier premonitions from the notebook drafts that 
ended in still births, dead ends.  LD's insight was at once genius and 
completely opportunistic and necessitated by real world conditions, real 
world time schedules.  He could see that there was no need to discard 
the still born "Arnauti" drafts from the notebooks.  Revise and polish 
those early notebook pages.  Draw them into the next draft and cobble 
them together with the necessary ligature as if the newer narrative 
avatar (Darley) had acquired the earlier text fortuitously, from a 
friend.  Then turn that chinese box text

        {Darley [Arnuati] Darley}

over to other characters / readers / narrators to read, comment upon, 
interlineate.  And you get. . . . .*^*

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Thu Apr 26 17:18:40 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:18:40 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie -- [Fwd: william j
	locke????]
Message-ID: <46314160.5030609@wfu.edu>

What follows is not scholarship (yet).  Rather it is a working example 
of the sort of digital synchronicity and connectivity that LD began to 
have an inkling about in /The Revolt of Aphrodite/.  CLS submits it to 
the ILDS RG at the behest of WLG.

Paraphrasing Lear, somewhere in the wilderness:  Let kinkiness thrive.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	william j locke????
Date: 	Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:54:17 -0400
From: 	slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
To: 	Bill Godshalk <godshawl at EMAIL.UC.EDU>



I feel like one of those narrators in Poe or Lovecraft. Or maybe TP's 
Oedipa Maas from /The Crying of Lot 49/.

So here I am, "going about my author's business," deep searching for the 
j/amais de la vie /query of the day.

And I strike the text of William John Locke's /Simon the Jester/ (1910), 
an author of whom and a book of which I had no awareness.

    http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3828/3828-h/3828-h.htm

Interesting, perhaps even provocative, that a book containing characters 
named "Tom Durrell" and "Lady Durrell" also has another character 
invoking that French phrase.  Worth a thought or an email to 
WLG--perhaps those two are the same for me these days.  But perhaps not 
much else.

But then I poke into WJL's other texts--especially curiously titled,/ 
The House of Baltasar/ (1920).  Read the first page:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=-o1fCGIfVJoC&pg=PA236&dq=House+of+Baltasar&as_brr=1&ie=ISO-8859-1#PPA9,M2

You need not tell me that I am overdetermining or any other proverb for 
paranoids.  But what a web I have spun myself.

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
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 12:16:23 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:16:23 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors
In-Reply-To: <20070426161120.URM485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.u c.edu>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>
	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>
	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>
	<46309E0B.6090909@wfu.edu>
	<20070426161120.URM485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Thu Apr 26 23:26:06 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:56:06 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1,
	Issue 81_(i) Film on Alexandria (ii) Ford, Joyce, Proust and LD
References: <mailman.623.1177609526.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <003801c78895$07327380$1fbaa37a@abc>

1. This is an interesting film but without a commentary it is disjointed. (I
could catch only occasional snatches of spound on this track). The written
comments are in French - I could not locate an English introduction or
comment.

Sumantra
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
> >
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/durrell/video/xl8xq_mafish-durell-nicolas-barrie
> >
> > There is a film (if you can call it that) on
> > Alexandria, a sort of "?loge" (It is very long and
> > sometimes the image is bad).

> >> > Marc Piel,
> > Paris, France.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------

2. Regarding Joyce and Proust, Lawrence Durrell has said somewhere in an
introduction to the structure of the AQ, ".....this is not a Joycean or
Proustian method...." which seemed to suggest considerable familiriaty with
these two major writers.

Regarding The Good Soldier, I read the book many years ago, after coming
across several references to the book in my readings on the AQ. I would say,
that a comparison on structure is probably striking, but the whole
"tapestry" of AQ including Justine as an individual book, is so immersed in
landscape and a variety of characters, and LD's prose style is so richly
evocative in many ways, that the two works become very different as
creations.

Sumantra

Sumantra
--------------------------------------------------------- 
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:17:41 -0500
> From: "Pamela Francis" <albigensian at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier

>> I read the Good Soldier just recently, and I was very impressed, and yes,
> made the connections b/t Ford's modus operandi and Durrell's.  As for why
LD
> didn't know the work: I have been reading for my comprehensive exams, and
my
> main subject area is British Modernism.  >
>
> >From: "Alejandro Adams" <hungerist at hotmail.com>
> >Reply-To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> >To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> >Subject: Re: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
> >Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:41:25 -0700

> >Durrell: I'm so glad I didn't read The Good Soldier before writing
Justine
> >or I might never have finished her!  This novel is an eye-opener with its
> >brilliant organization and gathering momentum; it's fit to put beside the
> >best of our time.  How the devil didn't I know his work?
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:07:09 -0400
> From: "David Holdsworth" <holdsworth at rogers.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG Justine 1.13 -- Jamais de la vie
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <000001c7881c$f550e610$6401a8c0 at D13W0611>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
>

> I suppose Durrell's reading habits reflect his interests and the way he
saw himself within the literary establishment of the times.  Not surprising.
I see him as an outsider, like Miller (that friendship is very telling), way
outside the mainstream, without an Oxbridge degree, and doing battle with
the big shots who ran the show in the first half of the 20th century.  But
there is still the matter of doing one's homework, and it is surprising he
didn't have under his belt the major authors, and Ford was certainly one of
those, along with Joyce and Proust.  Durrell's life, however, was hectic,
and perhaps he didn't have the time to do all that reading.  Academics have
the time and inclination -- but they don't turn out Alexandria Quartets.
So, he went his own way, followed his own instincts, and I'm glad he did.
What he accomplished was so great that I'll even put up with his occasional
pontifications on the course of European literature.  A whole conference
could probably!
>   be devoted to this subject.
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
>  While it is true
> that LD schooled himself in literature, his works, his lectures, and his
> critical statements put to rest any idea that he did not know,
> understand, and selectively digest the work of Joyce, Proust, Kafka.
> (/I know that you are not saying LD did not read Joyce and Proust,
> Bruce--just that he seems not to have read FMF./)  LD cites all of them
> as points of references in the letters and in contemporary documents
> springing from his lectures, /A Key to Modern British Poetry/ and "The
> Minor Mythologies," for example.  >
>
> CLS
>
> -- 
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>


From slighcl at wfu.edu  Fri Apr 27 01:38:22 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:38:22 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors, Cohen, Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <20070426191630.DLOT485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu>
	<461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>	<BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>	<46309E0B.6090909@wfu.edu>	<20070426161120.URM485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<20070426191630.DLOT485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <4631B67E.8040406@wfu.edu>

On 4/26/2007 3:16 PM, william godshalk wrote:

>
> But why does the narrator (or Durrell, if you wish), begin this 
> important sequence of mirrors with Cohen's face reflected in a barroom 
> mirror? Why not begin with Justine's cubist observation?
>
> WLG
>
        "As I was leaving I caught a glimpse of him in one of the long
        mirrors, his head bowed as he stared into the wineglass" (1.12)

Look into thy "glass" (image / drink / hour glass).  As with Pursewarden 
squirting his drink upon the mirror, time, drink, and mirrors.  Again, 
these all might be taken as the common, recurrent references funding 
LD's work--especially the poetry, where mirrors and glasses abound.

        ON MIRRORS [from Collected Poems: 1931-1974 (1985), Faber and Faber]

        You gone, the mirrors all reverted,
        Lay banging in the empty house,
        Redoubled their efforts to impede
        Waterlogged images of faces pleading.

        So Fortunatus had a mirror which
        Imperilled his reason when it broke;
        The sleepers in their dormitory of glass
        Stirred once and sighed but never woke.

        Time amputated so will bleed no more
        But flow like refuse now in clocks
        On clinic walls, in libraries and barracks,
        Not made to spend but kill and nothing more.

        Yet mirrors abandoned drink like ponds:
        (Once they resumed the childhood of love)
        And overflowing, spreading, swallowing
        Like water light, show one averted face,

        As in the capsule of the human eye
        Seen at infinity, the outer end of time,
        A man and woman lying sun-bemused
        In a blue vineyard by the Latin sea,

        Steeped in each other's minds and breathing there
        Like wicks inhaling deep in golden oil.

        1955/1954

On Cohen:  Darley is "haunted by this old man" (1.12), and rightfully 
so.  Cohen becomes the narrator's /doppleg?nger /in the text, shadowing 
him pas, present, and future, presaging the sadness of the cast-off 
lovers to come, including Darley--cf. his late realization, "And in a 
little time perhaps, if she should call on me or I on her?" (2.5).  For 
my own part I increasingly appreciate the sense of "an extraordinary 
feeling of intimacy" that the narrator confesses here.  Somehow Cohen 
humanizes the narrator and the book, reminding us that one step to the 
left or the right and we all appear with "the clumsy air of a trained 
seal grappling with human emotions" (1.12). 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's use of mirrors in the /House of Life/ sonnet 
sequence to overlay "Old Love" and "New Love" is also in my mind as a 
reader.  "How they met themselves," using axes to cut down each other. . . .

And yes:  later on, as he is dying at the hospital, Cohen sings a few 
bars of "a small popular song which had once been the rage of 
Alexandria, /Jamais de la vie/" (2.5).

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 00:17:06 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:47:06 +0530
Subject: [ilds] Fw: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 84_Mirrors_Message: 3
Message-ID: <00d101c7889c$14050ee0$1fbaa37a@abc>


--------------------------------------------------
Incidentally in Alexandria there are all sorts of
mirrors everywhere!
Marc Piel
-------------------------------------------

As a person who has not yet visited Alexandria (although my wife and I have
a trip to Istanbul-Crete-Athens planned for June this year) it would be
interesting to hear more about the abundance and variety of mirrirs in
Alexandria.

Sumantra


From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 04:13:25 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:13:25 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Jamais de la vie
Message-ID: <51AD753C-F4B0-11DB-9EC8-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

'...clinging to the minds of old men like traces of perfume upon a 
sleeve: Alexandria, the capital of Memory' -- Durrell, Justine (AQ p152 
1962 Faber single volume edition).

'Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house --
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
The death of hope and despair,
   This is the death of air.'
		-- Eliot, Little Gidding, II, in Four Quartets.



:Michael


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Apr 27 06:14:26 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:14:26 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] Durrell and The Good Soldier
Message-ID: <33197432.1177679666201.JavaMail.root@elwamui-milano.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

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From lillios at mail.ucf.edu  Fri Apr 27 05:48:51 2007
From: lillios at mail.ucf.edu (Anna Lillios)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:48:51 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Fw: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 84_Mirrors_Message: 3
Message-ID: <4631B8F30200004D00016519@mail.ucf.edu>

Durrell and his British expats used to hang out at the Cecil Hotel in Alexandria.  Its lobby was filled with mirrors. 

                                                                                                                 --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
>>> "Sumantra Nag" <sumantranag at gmail.com> 04/27/07 3:17 AM >>>

--------------------------------------------------
Incidentally in Alexandria there are all sorts of
mirrors everywhere!
Marc Piel
-------------------------------------------

As a person who has not yet visited Alexandria (although my wife and I have
a trip to Istanbul-Crete-Athens planned for June this year) it would be
interesting to hear more about the abundance and variety of mirrirs in
Alexandria.

Sumantra

_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds



From odos.fanourios at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 08:40:26 2007
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:40:26 -0700
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <51AD753C-F4B0-11DB-9EC8-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <C257677A.C18B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>

Michael,

That's an attentive reading!  I've been thinking about the Four Quartets &
Alexandria Quartet connections for a  while now.  If we were to turn to the
opening of Clea, we'd find Alexandria is also the burning rose that closes
Little Gidding, the "one" that Eliot spent so many years (spending &
squandering) to gain.  Given Durrell's anecdote about giving Eliot the title
for the Four Quartets, I've been wondering for quite some time just how much
LD intended the AQ to be a response to TSE's 4Qs...

More to follow as I unpack!

Best,
James


On 4/27/07 4:13 AM, "Michael Haag" <michaelhaag at btinternet.com> wrote:

> '...clinging to the minds of old men like traces of perfume upon a
> sleeve: Alexandria, the capital of Memory' -- Durrell, Justine (AQ p152
> 1962 Faber single volume edition).
> 
> 'Ash on an old man's sleeve
> Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
> Dust in the air suspended
> Marks the place where a story ended.
> Dust inbreathed was a house --
> The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
> The death of hope and despair,
>    This is the death of air.'
> -- Eliot, Little Gidding, II, in Four Quartets.
> 
> 
> 
> :Michael
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

___________________________
James Gifford
Department of English
University of Victoria
Victoria, B.C., Canada
http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford



From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 09:35:07 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:35:07 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine - Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <C257677A.C18B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <421A0D78-F4DD-11DB-91F0-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

And then there is the dust!



On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 04:40  pm, James Gifford wrote:

> Michael,
>
> That's an attentive reading!  I've been thinking about the Four 
> Quartets &
> Alexandria Quartet connections for a  while now.  If we were to turn 
> to the
> opening of Clea, we'd find Alexandria is also the burning rose that 
> closes
> Little Gidding, the "one" that Eliot spent so many years (spending &
> squandering) to gain.  Given Durrell's anecdote about giving Eliot the 
> title
> for the Four Quartets, I've been wondering for quite some time just 
> how much
> LD intended the AQ to be a response to TSE's 4Qs...
>
> More to follow as I unpack!
>
> Best,
> James
>
>
> On 4/27/07 4:13 AM, "Michael Haag" <michaelhaag at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> '...clinging to the minds of old men like traces of perfume upon a
>> sleeve: Alexandria, the capital of Memory' -- Durrell, Justine (AQ 
>> p152
>> 1962 Faber single volume edition).
>>
>> 'Ash on an old man's sleeve
>> Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
>> Dust in the air suspended
>> Marks the place where a story ended.
>> Dust inbreathed was a house --
>> The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
>> The death of hope and despair,
>>    This is the death of air.'
>> -- Eliot, Little Gidding, II, in Four Quartets.
>>
>>
>>
>> :Michael
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
> ___________________________
> 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
>


From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Thu Apr 26 19:10:57 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:10:57 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine -- Here Comes Everybody
In-Reply-To: <46313EF2.3050500@wfu.edu>
References: <mailman.712.1177630453.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<46313EF2.3050500@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <20070427175100.KSRN28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 10:56:49 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:26:49 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
References: <mailman.736.1177686496.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <000d01c788f5$7165a3c0$fbbfa37a@abc>

-----------------------
Message: 7
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:48:51 -0400
From: "Anna Lillios" <lillios at mail.ucf.edu>
Subject: Re: [ilds] Fw: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 84_Mirrors_Message:

Durrell and his British expats used to hang out at the Cecil Hotel in
Alexandria.  Its lobby was filled with mirrors.


                                     --Anna

-------------------------------------------
Thank you Anna. This is informative as far as the subject of mirrors in
Alexandria is concerned and also suggests much about the British
expatriates.

But it incidentally leads to a serious question which arises in relation to
Justine and the AQ, i.e., to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
European expats?

I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature - or
should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence Durrell
referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems, that
he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were to
look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for one)
whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.

I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as "trivial"
and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything more
than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in such a
phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of poetry in
the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about the
social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek woman?
And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling colonial
power in Alexandria.

And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:

"Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to extremity
by want are interesting, even touching,..."

"...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment which
is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!

Sumantra Nag


From sumantranag at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 10:57:00 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:27:00 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
References: <mailman.736.1177686496.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <001101c788f5$77431ac0$fbbfa37a@abc>

-----------------------
Message: 7
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:48:51 -0400
From: "Anna Lillios" <lillios at mail.ucf.edu>
Subject: Re: [ilds] Fw: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 84_Mirrors_Message:

Durrell and his British expats used to hang out at the Cecil Hotel in
Alexandria.  Its lobby was filled with mirrors.


                                     --Anna

-------------------------------------------
Thank you Anna. This is informative as far as the subject of mirrors in
Alexandria is concerned and also suggests much about the British
expatriates.

But it incidentally leads to a serious question which arises in relation to
Justine and the AQ, i.e., to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
European expats?

I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature - or
should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence Durrell
referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems, that
he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were to
look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for one)
whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.

I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as "trivial"
and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything more
than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in such a
phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of poetry in
the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about the
social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek woman?
And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling colonial
power in Alexandria.

And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:

"Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to extremity
by want are interesting, even touching,..."

"...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment which
is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!

Sumantra Nag


From sumantranag at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 10:57:03 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:27:03 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
References: <mailman.736.1177686496.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <001401c788f5$7b16b800$fbbfa37a@abc>

-----------------------
Message: 7
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:48:51 -0400
From: "Anna Lillios" <lillios at mail.ucf.edu>
Subject: Re: [ilds] Fw: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 84_Mirrors_Message:

Durrell and his British expats used to hang out at the Cecil Hotel in
Alexandria.  Its lobby was filled with mirrors.


                                     --Anna

-------------------------------------------
Thank you Anna. This is informative as far as the subject of mirrors in
Alexandria is concerned and also suggests much about the British
expatriates.

But it incidentally leads to a serious question which arises in relation to
Justine and the AQ, i.e., to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
European expats?

I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature - or
should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence Durrell
referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems, that
he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were to
look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for one)
whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.

I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as "trivial"
and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything more
than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in such a
phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of poetry in
the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about the
social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek woman?
And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling colonial
power in Alexandria.

And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:

"Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to extremity
by want are interesting, even touching,..."

"...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment which
is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!

Sumantra Nag


From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Fri Apr 27 11:25:27 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:25:27 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors, Cohen, Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <4631B67E.8040406@wfu.edu>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu> <461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>
	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>
	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>
	<46309E0B.6090909@wfu.edu>
	<20070426161120.URM485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<20070426191630.DLOT485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<4631B67E.8040406@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <20070427182557.LBTD26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Apr 27 12:05:10 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:05:10 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
Message-ID: <22103070.1177700710838.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>



-----Original Message-----
>From: Sumantra Nag <sumantranag at gmail.com>
>
>
>I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as "trivial"
>and one can see why!

                                * * * * * *

Sumantra, do you have a citation for Said's comment?  I'm sure you're right, but I couldn't find it in Orientalism or elsewhere.  "Trivial" does indeed sound like Said talking about Durrell.  Thanks.

Bruce


From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Fri Apr 27 13:36:21 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:36:21 +0100
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
In-Reply-To: <000d01c788f5$7165a3c0$fbbfa37a@abc>
Message-ID: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history 
of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him; 
and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a 
Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.

In fact these scenes in the opening sections of Justine are reminiscent 
of scenes in many books, books set in Europe, and scenes in Durrell's 
earlier novels Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring where the 
incidents occur in London.  They are not incidents that Durrell or his 
principal characters in those books seem to approve of.  One could say 
that Durrell transposed his material from London to Alexandria.  If so, 
does that suddenly put his writing into the category of colonialist or 
post-colonialist or orientalist?

I find tags like colonial and post-colonial literature unhelpful; they 
stop people making important enquiries or thinking for themselves.  As 
for Edward Said, his Orientalism is nonsense and has been properly 
rubbished by people far better informed in the subject than himself, 
for example the historian of the medieval Middle East and novelist 
Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies 
(London, 2006).  Irwin has some pretty strong words for Edward Said, 
calling him something like dishonest and malign.

I might add that the characters in Justine are, almost all of them, 
Alexandrians.  I draw the distinction between Alexandrians and 
Egyptians, and between Alexandria and Egypt.  Alexandria was a peculiar 
enterprise, a Europe transposed to Africa, rather like Durrell's 
scenes.  The fascination with Alexandria to a considerable extent lies 
in the fact that it is a kind of mirror (yes) to European civilisation; 
it allows you to see something that is familiar yet to see it in a 
special way.  That is why Cavafy, E M Forster and Lawrence Durrell were 
always writing about a European experience when writing about 
Alexandria -- the essence of the city, both ancient and 
modern-cosmopolitan, was European not Egyptian.

Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing to say that she has 
not lived there all her life.  Balthazar is an Egyptian Jew as is 
Justine, and Nessim is a Copt, more Egyptian than those 
Johnny-come-lately Arabs or Turks.  Pombal is transitory, being a 
diplomat.  He will be transitory wherever he goes.  Darley may or may 
not have been transitory in Alexandria.  As it turns out, he leaves, 
comes back, then leaves again.  But he might have stayed.  Certainly 
the hundreds of thousands of people who made up the population at that 
time belonged to families who had been in Alexandria for generations, 
whether they were Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether they were French, 
Italian, Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian, Lebanese, Maltese, English, 
Belgian, Greek or whatever.  In fact the newcomers were the Egyptians; 
they moved in after the modern city was up and running.  The 
Alexandrians, indeed, were rather like Edward Said; he would fit the 
Alexandrian mould perfectly, except that his father ran a business in 
Cairo, not Alexandria, and sent his son to school in Cairo and America, 
not Alexandria and Paris.

Alexandria was not a British colonial city.  The British between 1882 
and 1922 ran things from Cairo; after that the Egyptians ran almost 
everything for themselves, and indeed everything after 1936 -- except 
during the war, when the choice was between the British being in Egypt 
or the Nazis.  There were some Egyptians who wanted the Nazis, but I do 
not weep for the failure of their hopes.  In any case, Alexandria was a 
very different city to Cairo.  Cairo was founded by the Arabs and was 
the seat of the imperialist powers who ruled over Egypt, whether the 
Arabs themselves or the Turks in their many varieties, then the French, 
the Alids, the British, and now an Egyptian military dictatorship 
dressed up as a democratic government.  But Alexandria, refounded in 
about 1820 by Mohammed Ali (an Ottoman from northern Greece), was 
settled by Europeans who were invited there and whose communities were 
even given land on which to build.  They established their own elected 
municipal government -- the first municipal government anywhere in the 
Middle East -- and they largely ran their own affairs.  This was well 
established by the time the British came along.

Having said all that, it is worth noting that in the very earliest 
drafts for Justine Durrell's characters were not Alexandrians, they 
were for the most part British, but they were not ex-pats nor were they 
transients, instead they were marooned in Alexandria by the war.  They 
wanted to get out, but they were trapped.  Rather like the gnostics 
felt trapped in a world not of their choosing nor even of God's 
choosing.

The matter is complex.

I should also add that the Alexandria Quartet is in fact two works.  
One is Justine.  The other is Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea.  The two works 
were written at very different times.  Moreover Justine was not written 
with any notion that there would be further volumes.  Reading Justine 
as though Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea already existed, or was conceived 
of, is a mistake.

:Michael







On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 06:56  pm, Sumantra Nag wrote:
>

> to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
> European expats?
>
> I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature - 
> or
> should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence 
> Durrell
> referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems, 
> that
> he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were 
> to
> look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
> expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for 
> one)
> whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.
>
> I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as 
> "trivial"
> and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything 
> more
> than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
> that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in 
> such a
> phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of 
> poetry in
> the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about 
> the
> social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek 
> woman?
> And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling 
> colonial
> power in Alexandria.
>
> And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:
>
> "Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to 
> extremity
> by want are interesting, even touching,..."
>
> "...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
> unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment 
> which
> is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!
>
> Sumantra Nag


From slighcl at wfu.edu  Fri Apr 27 14:16:34 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:16:34 -0400
Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: Google Alert - "Lawrence Durrell"]
Message-ID: <46326832.9000005@wfu.edu>

Since it will ultimately be tied to a search engine, this ILDS listserv 
can be most useful as an archive of Durrelliana, a fund for publishing 
LD-related news, no matter how apparently ephemeral. 

With that in mind, I pass along an article on archeology in modern 
Alex.  Perhaps no news here, but still we must be alert and honest 
enough to realize that /any /mention of LD sustains and directs 
attention to his works, shoring up his posthumous existence.  And given 
the fact that digital distribution of articles like the one below far 
exceeds readership for journals, scholarly monographs, conference 
papers, or biographies, any LD sightings in the digital press are worthy 
of note.

Enjoy--submit what you find--and then talk!

CLS

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Google Alert - "Lawrence Durrell"
Date: 	Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:27:42 -0700
From: 	Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply at google.com>
To: 	slighcl at wfu.edu



Google News Alert for: *"Lawrence Durrell"*

Alexandria Rediscovered 
<http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/04/alexandria_redi.html>
Wired News - USA
*...* to the British novelist *Lawrence Durrell*, whose Alexandria 
Quartet, published in the late 1950s, is a bittersweet paean to the 
haunted city. *...*
See all stories on this topic 
<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/04/alexandria_redi.html> 


------------------------------------------------------------------------
 This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

Remove 
<http://www.google.com/alerts/remove?s=EAAAABiCVG0pMM49iTuEYQVm9_8&hl=en> 
this alert.
Create <http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en> another alert.
Manage <http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?hl=en> your alerts.


-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Fri Apr 27 14:30:39 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:30:39 -0400
Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: Re: thank you!]
Message-ID: <46326B7F.4040401@wfu.edu>

I shall take the liberty of forwarding an email sent earlier to Marc 
Piel;  thanks for collaborating, Marc!

See note copied below for an hour long recording of LD reading at the 
Poetry Forum.  Also of note is his "Letter to Henry Miller," which is 
available at

        http://www.ubu.com/sound/miller.html


Please share your own sound files and video clips of LD if you have 
them.  (I am certain that Jamie will share a link or  two.) We live in 
grand days for open archives.

Charles

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: thank you!
Date: 	Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:16:27 +0200
From: 	Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
Reply-To: 	marcpiel at interdesign.fr
Organization: 	InterDesign?
To: 	slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
References: 	<46309C47.7050803 at wfu.edu>



Thank you Charles, I very much enjoyed hearing LD. 
Are there more recordings like that?
I found nothing on youtube.
Thank you again.
Marc

slighcl wrote:
> Thanks, Marc.  I really appreciate your following up on those clips.  I 
> enjoy listening to LD talk--he was a conversationalist extraordinaire.  
> If you do no know his reading recorded at poetryforum, please take a listen:
> 
>         http://www.thepoetryforum.org/Durrell.m3u
> 
> 
> Dailymotion is an important resource.  Because it broadcasts free of US 
> copyright restrictions, it carries many clips not available from 
> US-based YouTube &c.
> 
> Enjoy the day.
> 
> Charles
> 
> -- 
> **********************
> 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
**********************

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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Fri Apr 27 14:24:02 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:24:02 +0200
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
In-Reply-To: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <463269F2.9000702@interdesign.fr>

Bravo!!!!!!!!!

Michael Haag wrote:

> Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history 
> of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him; 
> and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a 
> Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
> 
> In fact these scenes in the opening sections of Justine are reminiscent 
> of scenes in many books, books set in Europe, and scenes in Durrell's 
> earlier novels Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring where the 
> incidents occur in London.  They are not incidents that Durrell or his 
> principal characters in those books seem to approve of.  One could say 
> that Durrell transposed his material from London to Alexandria.  If so, 
> does that suddenly put his writing into the category of colonialist or 
> post-colonialist or orientalist?
> 
> I find tags like colonial and post-colonial literature unhelpful; they 
> stop people making important enquiries or thinking for themselves.  As 
> for Edward Said, his Orientalism is nonsense and has been properly 
> rubbished by people far better informed in the subject than himself, 
> for example the historian of the medieval Middle East and novelist 
> Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies 
> (London, 2006).  Irwin has some pretty strong words for Edward Said, 
> calling him something like dishonest and malign.
> 
> I might add that the characters in Justine are, almost all of them, 
> Alexandrians.  I draw the distinction between Alexandrians and 
> Egyptians, and between Alexandria and Egypt.  Alexandria was a peculiar 
> enterprise, a Europe transposed to Africa, rather like Durrell's 
> scenes.  The fascination with Alexandria to a considerable extent lies 
> in the fact that it is a kind of mirror (yes) to European civilisation; 
> it allows you to see something that is familiar yet to see it in a 
> special way.  That is why Cavafy, E M Forster and Lawrence Durrell were 
> always writing about a European experience when writing about 
> Alexandria -- the essence of the city, both ancient and 
> modern-cosmopolitan, was European not Egyptian.
> 
> Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing to say that she has 
> not lived there all her life.  Balthazar is an Egyptian Jew as is 
> Justine, and Nessim is a Copt, more Egyptian than those 
> Johnny-come-lately Arabs or Turks.  Pombal is transitory, being a 
> diplomat.  He will be transitory wherever he goes.  Darley may or may 
> not have been transitory in Alexandria.  As it turns out, he leaves, 
> comes back, then leaves again.  But he might have stayed.  Certainly 
> the hundreds of thousands of people who made up the population at that 
> time belonged to families who had been in Alexandria for generations, 
> whether they were Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether they were French, 
> Italian, Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian, Lebanese, Maltese, English, 
> Belgian, Greek or whatever.  In fact the newcomers were the Egyptians; 
> they moved in after the modern city was up and running.  The 
> Alexandrians, indeed, were rather like Edward Said; he would fit the 
> Alexandrian mould perfectly, except that his father ran a business in 
> Cairo, not Alexandria, and sent his son to school in Cairo and America, 
> not Alexandria and Paris.
> 
> Alexandria was not a British colonial city.  The British between 1882 
> and 1922 ran things from Cairo; after that the Egyptians ran almost 
> everything for themselves, and indeed everything after 1936 -- except 
> during the war, when the choice was between the British being in Egypt 
> or the Nazis.  There were some Egyptians who wanted the Nazis, but I do 
> not weep for the failure of their hopes.  In any case, Alexandria was a 
> very different city to Cairo.  Cairo was founded by the Arabs and was 
> the seat of the imperialist powers who ruled over Egypt, whether the 
> Arabs themselves or the Turks in their many varieties, then the French, 
> the Alids, the British, and now an Egyptian military dictatorship 
> dressed up as a democratic government.  But Alexandria, refounded in 
> about 1820 by Mohammed Ali (an Ottoman from northern Greece), was 
> settled by Europeans who were invited there and whose communities were 
> even given land on which to build.  They established their own elected 
> municipal government -- the first municipal government anywhere in the 
> Middle East -- and they largely ran their own affairs.  This was well 
> established by the time the British came along.
> 
> Having said all that, it is worth noting that in the very earliest 
> drafts for Justine Durrell's characters were not Alexandrians, they 
> were for the most part British, but they were not ex-pats nor were they 
> transients, instead they were marooned in Alexandria by the war.  They 
> wanted to get out, but they were trapped.  Rather like the gnostics 
> felt trapped in a world not of their choosing nor even of God's 
> choosing.
> 
> The matter is complex.
> 
> I should also add that the Alexandria Quartet is in fact two works.  
> One is Justine.  The other is Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea.  The two works 
> were written at very different times.  Moreover Justine was not written 
> with any notion that there would be further volumes.  Reading Justine 
> as though Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea already existed, or was conceived 
> of, is a mistake.
> 
> :Michael
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 06:56  pm, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> 
> 
>>to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
>>European expats?
>>
>>I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature - 
>>or
>>should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence 
>>Durrell
>>referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems, 
>>that
>>he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were 
>>to
>>look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
>>expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for 
>>one)
>>whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.
>>
>>I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as 
>>"trivial"
>>and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything 
>>more
>>than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
>>that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in 
>>such a
>>phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of 
>>poetry in
>>the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about 
>>the
>>social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek 
>>woman?
>>And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling 
>>colonial
>>power in Alexandria.
>>
>>And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:
>>
>>"Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to 
>>extremity
>>by want are interesting, even touching,..."
>>
>>"...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
>>unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment 
>>which
>>is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!
>>
>>Sumantra Nag
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> 
> 

From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Fri Apr 27 14:27:20 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:27:20 +0200
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.12 -- mirrors, Cohen, Jamais de la vie
In-Reply-To: <20070427182557.LBTD26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <461E3298.6030300@wfu.edu>
	<461FD7D3.1070405@interdesign.fr>	<461FE195.1000204@wfu.edu>	<BAY123-DAV15F6F81C39AA24CFFEAB1EA2490@phx.gbl>	<20070425223842.HBSR16799.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<BAY123-DAV163E0F71C3D84B6DFC1024A2480@phx.gbl>	<46309E0B.6090909@wfu.edu>	<20070426161120.URM485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<20070426191630.DLOT485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<4631B67E.8040406@wfu.edu>
	<20070427182557.LBTD26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <46326AB8.8070208@interdesign.fr>

Has anyone developped the idea that "Cohen" is 
inspired by Eve's family????
Marc Piel

william godshalk wrote:

> Thanks, Charlie, very good posting. On mirrors, Cirlot, A Dictionary of 
> Symbols, has an interesting roundup of interpretations, among which is: 
> "it is a symbol of the imagination -- or of consciousness -- in its 
> capacity to reflect the formal reality of the visible world." WLG
> 
>>> But why does the narrator (or Durrell, if you wish), begin this 
>>> important sequence of mirrors with Cohen's face reflected in a 
>>> barroom mirror? Why not begin with Justine's cubist observation?
>>>
>>> WLG
>>
>>     "As I was leaving I caught a glimpse of him in one of the long
>>     mirrors, his head bowed as he stared into the wineglass" (1.12)
>>
>> Look into thy "glass" (image / drink / hour glass).  As with 
>> Pursewarden squirting his drink upon the mirror, time, drink, and 
>> mirrors.  Again, these all might be taken as the common, recurrent 
>> references funding LD's work--especially the poetry, where mirrors and 
>> glasses abound.
>>
>>     ON MIRRORS [from Collected Poems: 1931-1974 (1985), Faber and Faber]
>>
>>     You gone, the mirrors all reverted,
>>     Lay banging in the empty house,
>>     Redoubled their efforts to impede
>>     Waterlogged images of faces pleading.
>>
>>     So Fortunatus had a mirror which
>>     Imperilled his reason when it broke;
>>     The sleepers in their dormitory of glass
>>     Stirred once and sighed but never woke.
>>
>>     Time amputated so will bleed no more
>>     But flow like refuse now in clocks
>>     On clinic walls, in libraries and barracks,
>>     Not made to spend but kill and nothing more.
>>
>>     Yet mirrors abandoned drink like ponds:
>>     (Once they resumed the childhood of love)
>>     And overflowing, spreading, swallowing
>>     Like water light, show one averted face,
>>
>>     As in the capsule of the human eye
>>     Seen at infinity, the outer end of time,
>>     A man and woman lying sun-bemused
>>     In a blue vineyard by the Latin sea,
>>
>>     Steeped in each other's minds and breathing there
>>     Like wicks inhaling deep in golden oil.
>>
>>     1955/1954
>>
>> On Cohen:  Darley is "haunted by this old man" (1.12), and rightfully 
>> so.  Cohen becomes the narrator's doppleg?nger in the text, shadowing 
>> him pas, present, and future, presaging the sadness of the cast-off 
>> lovers to come, including Darley--cf. his late realization, "And in a 
>> little time perhaps, if she should call on me or I on her?" (2.5).  
>> For my own part I increasingly appreciate the sense of "an 
>> extraordinary feeling of intimacy" that the narrator confesses here.  
>> Somehow Cohen humanizes the narrator and the book, reminding us that 
>> one step to the left or the right and we all appear with "the clumsy 
>> air of a trained seal grappling with human emotions" (1.12). 
>>
>> Dante Gabriel Rossetti's use of mirrors in the House of Life sonnet 
>> sequence to overlay "Old Love" and "New Love" is also in my mind as a 
>> reader.  "How they met themselves," using axes to cut down each other. 
>> . . .
>>
>> And yes:  later on, as he is dying at the hospital, Cohen sings a few 
>> bars of "a small popular song which had once been the rage of 
>> Alexandria, Jamais de la vie" (2.5).
>>
>> CLS
>>
>>-- 
>>**********************
>>Charles L. Sligh
>>Department of English
>>Wake Forest University
>>slighcl at wfu.edu <mailto:slighcl at wfu.edu>
>>**********************
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> 
> 
> ***************************************
> 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  Fri Apr 27 14:39:13 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:39:13 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG women 1.12 and 1.14
In-Reply-To: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <000d01c788f5$7165a3c0$fbbfa37a@abc>
	<F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070427213909.MMHD485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

Well, Darley (or the nameless narrator) claims the Pombal "pays one 
of the Syrians" from Golfo's to spend an occasional night with him 
(1.12). And in 1.14, he recalls lying beside a sleeping woman in a 
cheap room. Of course, perhaps they were simply tired and needed some rest!

WLG

At 04:36 PM 4/27/2007, you wrote:
>Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history
>of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him;
>and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a
>Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
>
>In fact these scenes in the opening sections of Justine are reminiscent
>of scenes in many books, books set in Europe, and scenes in Durrell's
>earlier novels Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring where the
>incidents occur in London.  They are not incidents that Durrell or his
>principal characters in those books seem to approve of.  One could say
>that Durrell transposed his material from London to Alexandria.  If so,
>does that suddenly put his writing into the category of colonialist or
>post-colonialist or orientalist?
>
>I find tags like colonial and post-colonial literature unhelpful; they
>stop people making important enquiries or thinking for themselves.  As
>for Edward Said, his Orientalism is nonsense and has been properly
>rubbished by people far better informed in the subject than himself,
>for example the historian of the medieval Middle East and novelist
>Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies
>(London, 2006).  Irwin has some pretty strong words for Edward Said,
>calling him something like dishonest and malign.
>
>I might add that the characters in Justine are, almost all of them,
>Alexandrians.  I draw the distinction between Alexandrians and
>Egyptians, and between Alexandria and Egypt.  Alexandria was a peculiar
>enterprise, a Europe transposed to Africa, rather like Durrell's
>scenes.  The fascination with Alexandria to a considerable extent lies
>in the fact that it is a kind of mirror (yes) to European civilisation;
>it allows you to see something that is familiar yet to see it in a
>special way.  That is why Cavafy, E M Forster and Lawrence Durrell were
>always writing about a European experience when writing about
>Alexandria -- the essence of the city, both ancient and
>modern-cosmopolitan, was European not Egyptian.
>
>Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing to say that she has
>not lived there all her life.  Balthazar is an Egyptian Jew as is
>Justine, and Nessim is a Copt, more Egyptian than those
>Johnny-come-lately Arabs or Turks.  Pombal is transitory, being a
>diplomat.  He will be transitory wherever he goes.  Darley may or may
>not have been transitory in Alexandria.  As it turns out, he leaves,
>comes back, then leaves again.  But he might have stayed.  Certainly
>the hundreds of thousands of people who made up the population at that
>time belonged to families who had been in Alexandria for generations,
>whether they were Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether they were French,
>Italian, Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian, Lebanese, Maltese, English,
>Belgian, Greek or whatever.  In fact the newcomers were the Egyptians;
>they moved in after the modern city was up and running.  The
>Alexandrians, indeed, were rather like Edward Said; he would fit the
>Alexandrian mould perfectly, except that his father ran a business in
>Cairo, not Alexandria, and sent his son to school in Cairo and America,
>not Alexandria and Paris.
>
>Alexandria was not a British colonial city.  The British between 1882
>and 1922 ran things from Cairo; after that the Egyptians ran almost
>everything for themselves, and indeed everything after 1936 -- except
>during the war, when the choice was between the British being in Egypt
>or the Nazis.  There were some Egyptians who wanted the Nazis, but I do
>not weep for the failure of their hopes.  In any case, Alexandria was a
>very different city to Cairo.  Cairo was founded by the Arabs and was
>the seat of the imperialist powers who ruled over Egypt, whether the
>Arabs themselves or the Turks in their many varieties, then the French,
>the Alids, the British, and now an Egyptian military dictatorship
>dressed up as a democratic government.  But Alexandria, refounded in
>about 1820 by Mohammed Ali (an Ottoman from northern Greece), was
>settled by Europeans who were invited there and whose communities were
>even given land on which to build.  They established their own elected
>municipal government -- the first municipal government anywhere in the
>Middle East -- and they largely ran their own affairs.  This was well
>established by the time the British came along.
>
>Having said all that, it is worth noting that in the very earliest
>drafts for Justine Durrell's characters were not Alexandrians, they
>were for the most part British, but they were not ex-pats nor were they
>transients, instead they were marooned in Alexandria by the war.  They
>wanted to get out, but they were trapped.  Rather like the gnostics
>felt trapped in a world not of their choosing nor even of God's
>choosing.
>
>The matter is complex.
>
>I should also add that the Alexandria Quartet is in fact two works.
>One is Justine.  The other is Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea.  The two works
>were written at very different times.  Moreover Justine was not written
>with any notion that there would be further volumes.  Reading Justine
>as though Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea already existed, or was conceived
>of, is a mistake.
>
>:Michael
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 06:56  pm, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> >
>
> > to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
> > European expats?
> >
> > I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature -
> > or
> > should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence
> > Durrell
> > referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems,
> > that
> > he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were
> > to
> > look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
> > expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for
> > one)
> > whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.
> >
> > I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as
> > "trivial"
> > and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything
> > more
> > than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
> > that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in
> > such a
> > phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of
> > poetry in
> > the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about
> > the
> > social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek
> > woman?
> > And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling
> > colonial
> > power in Alexandria.
> >
> > And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:
> >
> > "Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to
> > extremity
> > by want are interesting, even touching,..."
> >
> > "...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
> > unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment
> > which
> > is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!
> >
> > Sumantra Nag
>
>_______________________________________________
>ILDS mailing list
>ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

***************************************
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 27 14:39:56 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:39:56 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
Message-ID: <32005267.1177709996629.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

Oui, oui.  The Brit has earned an accolade.  Maybe even a French one.

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
>From: Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
>Sent: Apr 27, 2007 2:24 PM
>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>
>Bravo!!!!!!!!!
>
>Michael Haag wrote:
>
>> Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history 
>> of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him; 
>> and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a 
>> Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
>> 
>>


From slighcl at wfu.edu  Fri Apr 27 15:20:20 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:20:20 -0400
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
In-Reply-To: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <46327723.60306@wfu.edu>

On 4/27/2007 4:36 PM, Michael Haag wrote:

>I find tags like colonial and post-colonial literature unhelpful; they 
>stop people making important enquiries or thinking for themselves.  As 
>for Edward Said, his Orientalism is nonsense and has been properly 
>rubbished by people far better informed in the subject than himself, 
>for example the historian of the medieval Middle East and novelist 
>Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies 
>(London, 2006).  Irwin has some pretty strong words for Edward Said, 
>calling him something like dishonest and malign.
>
As something of an aesthete and a decadent--or even despite being so 
inclined--I would still be interested in hearing more about how LD fares 
in these debates, post-colonial or, if you will, post-post-colonial.  I 
believe that Said's remarks on LD come with his "Secular Criticism" 
(1983).  From what I recall, Said recalls LD's /Quartet /as required 
reading for neo-colonialists, standard issue on their desks.  Is that a 
right recollection? 

If so, it strangely chimes with that other opponent of LD's life and 
works, Terry Eagleton , who in his review of Ian MacNiven's biography of 
LD gave a similar anecdote about the place of the /Quartet /on the desks 
of literary /poseurs /in his university days.  (Others may be willing to 
give anecdotes about Eagleton himself, including his admission of 
neglecting to reread LD or read MacNiven's biography.  Anyone?)

All of this is to say that LD's life and works too often enjoys the 
unhappy situation of what LD would say was the clay pipe figure at the 
fair--line him up and knock him down--win the easy prize.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Fri Apr 27 15:22:06 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:22:06 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine -- pushing on to 1.25
Message-ID: <4632778E.6010809@wfu.edu>

*    Dear Durrellians:

    We are thinking that the next push should be from /Justine /1.16 
through 1.25.  That brings us through quite a bit of the early 
novel--back histories for Nessim, Da Capo, Mnemjian, the Cabal, the 
child brothel, Melissa's spanish fly incident, Justine's childhood 
memories.  And we will stop right before Arnauti's /Moeurs/, where via a 
new narrative voice we will have a useful revisitation of people and 
events so far in the text.

    Charles L. Sligh
    William L. Godshalk
    James Gifford*

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From odos.fanourios at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 15:17:28 2007
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:17:28 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Said references Expats and colonialism
In-Reply-To: <22103070.1177700710838.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <C257C488.C1BC%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>

Said has extremely few overt references to LD.  He gives a parallel to the
Nazi who reads Rilke (paralleling an American General who reads Durrell,
except somehow this reflects on Durrell as well...) and he's once cited as
giving a talk in Beirut in which he refers to the Quartet as "trivial" and
given to poor metaphors (ie: the telephone).  I've consulted with an author
who had the written paper of what was supposedly presented at that women's
college in Lebanon, but I don't have a copy.  I believe he was actually
referring to the film version of Justine, which may be why he does not refer
to LD directly in his other published works (it would seem to be a glaring
oversight considering the period in which Said did his first works).

Cheers,
James


On 4/27/07 12:05 PM, "Bruce Redwine" <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Sumantra Nag <sumantranag at gmail.com>
>> 
>> 
>> I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as "trivial"
>> and one can see why!
> 
>                                 * * * * * *
> 
> Sumantra, do you have a citation for Said's comment?  I'm sure you're right,
> but I couldn't find it in Orientalism or elsewhere.  "Trivial" does indeed
> sound like Said talking about Durrell.  Thanks.
> 
> Bruce



From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Apr 27 15:51:44 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:51:44 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
Message-ID: <9714498.1177714304480.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Apr 27 17:15:17 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:15:17 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
Message-ID: <31813194.1177719317265.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rustique.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

Marc, no offense intended.  I guess my attempt at a French joke went over, as we say in English, like a lead balloon.  I have only the highest regard for France and the French, unlike many of my American compatriots.  In fact, I wish I were French and living in France, seriously.

Best,

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
>From: Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
>Sent: Apr 27, 2007 4:13 PM
>To: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>
>Each of us has their own problem!
>
>Bruce Redwine wrote:
>
>> Oui, oui.  The Brit has earned an accolade.  Maybe even a French one.
>> 
>> Bruce
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> 
>>>From: Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
>>>Sent: Apr 27, 2007 2:24 PM
>>>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>>>Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>>>
>>>Bravo!!!!!!!!!
>>>
>>>Michael Haag wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history 
>>>>of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him; 
>>>>and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a 
>>>>Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
>>>>
>>>>
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>> 
>> 


From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Fri Apr 27 15:56:21 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:56:21 +0200
Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: Re: thank you!]
In-Reply-To: <46326B7F.4040401@wfu.edu>
References: <46326B7F.4040401@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <46327F95.1040102@interdesign.fr>

Thank you for this one too.
I read Black Spring in 1968; have to say it does 
not have the same appeal as LD today!
Also HM doesn't read nearly as well as LD!
Has more life to read than to hear (pretty flat).
@+
Mrc Piel

slighcl wrote:

> I shall take the liberty of forwarding an email sent earlier to Marc 
> Piel;  thanks for collaborating, Marc!
> 
> See note copied below for an hour long recording of LD reading at the 
> Poetry Forum.  Also of note is his "Letter to Henry Miller," which is 
> available at
> 
>         http://www.ubu.com/sound/miller.html
> 
> 
> Please share your own sound files and video clips of LD if you have 
> them.  (I am certain that Jamie will share a link or  two.) We live in 
> grand days for open archives.
> 
> Charles
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	Re: thank you!
> Date: 	Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:16:27 +0200
> From: 	Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
> Reply-To: 	marcpiel at interdesign.fr
> Organization: 	InterDesign?
> To: 	slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> References: 	<46309C47.7050803 at wfu.edu>
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you Charles, I very much enjoyed hearing LD. 
> Are there more recordings like that?
> I found nothing on youtube.
> Thank you again.
> Marc
> 
> slighcl wrote:
>> Thanks, Marc.  I really appreciate your following up on those clips.  I 
>> enjoy listening to LD talk--he was a conversationalist extraordinaire.  
>> If you do no know his reading recorded at poetryforum, please take a listen:
>> 
>>         http://www.thepoetryforum.org/Durrell.m3u
>> 
>> 
>> Dailymotion is an important resource.  Because it broadcasts free of US 
>> copyright restrictions, it carries many clips not available from 
>> US-based YouTube &c.
>> 
>> Enjoy the day.
>> 
>> Charles
>> 
>> -- 
>> **********************
>> 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  Fri Apr 27 16:13:11 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 01:13:11 +0200
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
In-Reply-To: <32005267.1177709996629.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <32005267.1177709996629.JavaMail.root@elwamui-polski.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <46328387.2010903@interdesign.fr>

Each of us has their own problem!

Bruce Redwine wrote:

> Oui, oui.  The Brit has earned an accolade.  Maybe even a French one.
> 
> Bruce
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> 
>>From: Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
>>Sent: Apr 27, 2007 2:24 PM
>>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>>Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>>
>>Bravo!!!!!!!!!
>>
>>Michael Haag wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history 
>>>of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him; 
>>>and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a 
>>>Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
>>>
>>>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> 
> 

From sumantranag at gmail.com  Fri Apr 27 21:56:39 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:26:39 +0530
Subject: [ilds] Fw: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 87_Expats and colonialism
Message-ID: <002901c78951$9f512500$21b8a37a@abc>

----------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:26:49 +0530
From: "Sumantra Nag" <sumantranag at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and
colonialism
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I am sorry that my posting was transmitted 3 times over by mistake. Regards.
Sumantra


From sumantranag at gmail.com  Sat Apr 28 02:16:35 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:46:35 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
References: <mailman.783.1177709578.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <000e01c78975$ee2aa6a0$1abba37a@airtel>

RE_Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:36:21 +0100
> From: Michael Haag

...........Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no
history
> of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to
him;............
----------------------------------------------------------
Michael,

I found your spirited response very informative. I did of course note your
major
publication on Alexandria (Capital of Memory) some time ago, and look
forward very much to reading it
one day, along with Ian McNiven's biography on Lawrence Durrell. My
observations:

Your view that "...Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing to say
that she has
not lived there all her life."

In Justine, when Darley meets her for the first time, when she is very ill
after a party in the flat lent by Pombal to Pursewarden, the Greek doctor
'...asked her where she came from and a haunted expression came into her
face as she replied "Smyrna";...and then, '...The doctor took up her hand
and examined the wedding-finger. "You see," he said.... pointing out the
absence of a ring. "That is why. Her family has disowned her...." '

Melissa is a refugee: much earlier in Justine, the narrator writes,

"I found Melissa, washed up like a half-drowned bird, on the dreary
littorals of Alexandria, with her sex broken...."

Early in the pages of Justine, [1.2] Durrell makes much of Alexandria as
"...the great wine-press of love;...." and its inhabitants as people "...who
have been deeply wounded in their sex."  What is one to make of this
somewhat genral comment?

Sumantra
--------------------------------------------
Sumantra, do you have a citation for Said's comment?  I'm sure you're
right, but I couldn't find it in Orientalism or elsewhere.  "Trivial" does
indeed sound like Said talking about Durrell.  Thanks.
>
> Bruce
----------------------------- 
Bruce,

James Gifford has identified it:

RE_Message: 6
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:17:28 -0700
From: James Gifford <odos.fanourios at gmail.com>

and he's once cited as
giving a talk in Beirut in which he refers to the Quartet as "trivial"
--------------------
I remember reading an account of this talk given in Beirut. I am writing
from memory, but remember some of these phrases.
>From what I can recall (!) the audience was described to consist of
Europeans who saw themselves as "...Durrellian heroes..." in the "...romance
and intrigue..." of a "...latter-day Alexandria...(meaning Beirut) etc.
I hope someone will be able to find the specific account and

Sumantra
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2007 3:02 AM
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88


> Send ILDS mailing list submissions to
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>
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>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>       (Bruce Redwine)
>    2. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>       (Michael Haag)
>    3. [Fwd: Google Alert - "Lawrence Durrell"] (slighcl)
>    4. [Fwd: Re: thank you!] (slighcl)
>    5. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and colonialism
>       (Marc Piel)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:05:10 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and
> colonialism
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID:
> <22103070.1177700710838.JavaMail.root at elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Sumantra Nag <sumantranag at gmail.com>
> >
> >
> >I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as "trivial"
> >and one can see why!
>
>                                 * * * * * *
>
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:36:21 +0100
> From: Michael Haag <michaelhaag at btinternet.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and
> colonialism
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <F5898E20-F4FE-11DB-8A30-000393B1149C at btinternet.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history
> of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him;
> and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a
> Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
>
> In fact these scenes in the opening sections of Justine are reminiscent
> of scenes in many books, books set in Europe, and scenes in Durrell's
> earlier novels Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring where the
> incidents occur in London.  They are not incidents that Durrell or his
> principal characters in those books seem to approve of.  One could say
> that Durrell transposed his material from London to Alexandria.  If so,
> does that suddenly put his writing into the category of colonialist or
> post-colonialist or orientalist?
>
> I find tags like colonial and post-colonial literature unhelpful; they
> stop people making important enquiries or thinking for themselves.  As
> for Edward Said, his Orientalism is nonsense and has been properly
> rubbished by people far better informed in the subject than himself,
> for example the historian of the medieval Middle East and novelist
> Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies
> (London, 2006).  Irwin has some pretty strong words for Edward Said,
> calling him something like dishonest and malign.
>
> I might add that the characters in Justine are, almost all of them,
> Alexandrians.  I draw the distinction between Alexandrians and
> Egyptians, and between Alexandria and Egypt.  Alexandria was a peculiar
> enterprise, a Europe transposed to Africa, rather like Durrell's
> scenes.  The fascination with Alexandria to a considerable extent lies
> in the fact that it is a kind of mirror (yes) to European civilisation;
> it allows you to see something that is familiar yet to see it in a
> special way.  That is why Cavafy, E M Forster and Lawrence Durrell were
> always writing about a European experience when writing about
> Alexandria -- the essence of the city, both ancient and
> modern-cosmopolitan, was European not Egyptian.
>
> Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing to say that she has
> not lived there all her life.  Balthazar is an Egyptian Jew as is
> Justine, and Nessim is a Copt, more Egyptian than those
> Johnny-come-lately Arabs or Turks.  Pombal is transitory, being a
> diplomat.  He will be transitory wherever he goes.  Darley may or may
> not have been transitory in Alexandria.  As it turns out, he leaves,
> comes back, then leaves again.  But he might have stayed.  Certainly
> the hundreds of thousands of people who made up the population at that
> time belonged to families who had been in Alexandria for generations,
> whether they were Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether they were French,
> Italian, Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian, Lebanese, Maltese, English,
> Belgian, Greek or whatever.  In fact the newcomers were the Egyptians;
> they moved in after the modern city was up and running.  The
> Alexandrians, indeed, were rather like Edward Said; he would fit the
> Alexandrian mould perfectly, except that his father ran a business in
> Cairo, not Alexandria, and sent his son to school in Cairo and America,
> not Alexandria and Paris.
>
> Alexandria was not a British colonial city.  The British between 1882
> and 1922 ran things from Cairo; after that the Egyptians ran almost
> everything for themselves, and indeed everything after 1936 -- except
> during the war, when the choice was between the British being in Egypt
> or the Nazis.  There were some Egyptians who wanted the Nazis, but I do
> not weep for the failure of their hopes.  In any case, Alexandria was a
> very different city to Cairo.  Cairo was founded by the Arabs and was
> the seat of the imperialist powers who ruled over Egypt, whether the
> Arabs themselves or the Turks in their many varieties, then the French,
> the Alids, the British, and now an Egyptian military dictatorship
> dressed up as a democratic government.  But Alexandria, refounded in
> about 1820 by Mohammed Ali (an Ottoman from northern Greece), was
> settled by Europeans who were invited there and whose communities were
> even given land on which to build.  They established their own elected
> municipal government -- the first municipal government anywhere in the
> Middle East -- and they largely ran their own affairs.  This was well
> established by the time the British came along.
>
> Having said all that, it is worth noting that in the very earliest
> drafts for Justine Durrell's characters were not Alexandrians, they
> were for the most part British, but they were not ex-pats nor were they
> transients, instead they were marooned in Alexandria by the war.  They
> wanted to get out, but they were trapped.  Rather like the gnostics
> felt trapped in a world not of their choosing nor even of God's
> choosing.
>
> The matter is complex.
>
> I should also add that the Alexandria Quartet is in fact two works.
> One is Justine.  The other is Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea.  The two works
> were written at very different times.  Moreover Justine was not written
> with any notion that there would be further volumes.  Reading Justine
> as though Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea already existed, or was conceived
> of, is a mistake.
>
> :Michael
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 06:56  pm, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> >
>
> > to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
> > European expats?
> >
> > I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature -
> > or
> > should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence
> > Durrell
> > referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems,
> > that
> > he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were
> > to
> > look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
> > expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for
> > one)
> > whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.
> >
> > I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as
> > "trivial"
> > and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything
> > more
> > than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
> > that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in
> > such a
> > phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of
> > poetry in
> > the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about
> > the
> > social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek
> > woman?
> > And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling
> > colonial
> > power in Alexandria.
> >
> > And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:
> >
> > "Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to
> > extremity
> > by want are interesting, even touching,..."
> >
> > "...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
> > unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment
> > which
> > is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!
> >
> > Sumantra Nag
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:16:34 -0400
> From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: Google Alert - "Lawrence Durrell"]
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <46326832.9000005 at wfu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Since it will ultimately be tied to a search engine, this ILDS listserv
> can be most useful as an archive of Durrelliana, a fund for publishing
> LD-related news, no matter how apparently ephemeral.
>
> With that in mind, I pass along an article on archeology in modern
> Alex.  Perhaps no news here, but still we must be alert and honest
> enough to realize that /any /mention of LD sustains and directs
> attention to his works, shoring up his posthumous existence.  And given
> the fact that digital distribution of articles like the one below far
> exceeds readership for journals, scholarly monographs, conference
> papers, or biographies, any LD sightings in the digital press are worthy
> of note.
>
> Enjoy--submit what you find--and then talk!
>
> CLS
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Google Alert - "Lawrence Durrell"
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:27:42 -0700
> From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply at google.com>
> To: slighcl at wfu.edu
>
>
>
> Google News Alert for: *"Lawrence Durrell"*
>
> Alexandria Rediscovered
> <http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/04/alexandria_redi.html>
> Wired News - USA
> *...* to the British novelist *Lawrence Durrell*, whose Alexandria
> Quartet, published in the late 1950s, is a bittersweet paean to the
> haunted city. *...*
> See all stories on this topic
>
<http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ncl=http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalconte
nts/2007/04/alexandria_redi.html>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google.
>
> Remove
> <http://www.google.com/alerts/remove?s=EAAAABiCVG0pMM49iTuEYQVm9_8&hl=en>
> this alert.
> Create <http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en> another alert.
> Manage <http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?hl=en> your alerts.
>
>
> -- 
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>
> -------------- next part --------------
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:30:39 -0400
> From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: Re: thank you!]
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <46326B7F.4040401 at wfu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I shall take the liberty of forwarding an email sent earlier to Marc
> Piel;  thanks for collaborating, Marc!
>
> See note copied below for an hour long recording of LD reading at the
> Poetry Forum.  Also of note is his "Letter to Henry Miller," which is
> available at
>
>         http://www.ubu.com/sound/miller.html
>
>
> Please share your own sound files and video clips of LD if you have
> them.  (I am certain that Jamie will share a link or  two.) We live in
> grand days for open archives.
>
> Charles
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: thank you!
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:16:27 +0200
> From: Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
> Reply-To: marcpiel at interdesign.fr
> Organization: InterDesign?
> To: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> References: <46309C47.7050803 at wfu.edu>
>
>
>
> Thank you Charles, I very much enjoyed hearing LD.
> Are there more recordings like that?
> I found nothing on youtube.
> Thank you again.
> Marc
>
> slighcl wrote:
> > Thanks, Marc.  I really appreciate your following up on those clips.  I
> > enjoy listening to LD talk--he was a conversationalist extraordinaire.
> > If you do no know his reading recorded at poetryforum, please take a
listen:
> >
> >         http://www.thepoetryforum.org/Durrell.m3u
> >
> >
> > Dailymotion is an important resource.  Because it broadcasts free of US
> > copyright restrictions, it carries many clips not available from
> > US-based YouTube &c.
> >
> > Enjoy the day.
> >
> > Charles
> >
> > -- 
> > **********************
> > 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 --------------
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 23:24:02 +0200
> From: Marc Piel <marcpiel at interdesign.fr>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 86_Expats and
> colonialism
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <463269F2.9000702 at interdesign.fr>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Bravo!!!!!!!!!
>
> Michael Haag wrote:
>
> > Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and no history
> > of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to him;
> > and Justine picked him up.  As for Pombal, well, he does what a
> > Frenchman has to do.  Neither of them are exactly living depraved lives.
> >
> > In fact these scenes in the opening sections of Justine are reminiscent
> > of scenes in many books, books set in Europe, and scenes in Durrell's
> > earlier novels Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic Spring where the
> > incidents occur in London.  They are not incidents that Durrell or his
> > principal characters in those books seem to approve of.  One could say
> > that Durrell transposed his material from London to Alexandria.  If so,
> > does that suddenly put his writing into the category of colonialist or
> > post-colonialist or orientalist?
> >
> > I find tags like colonial and post-colonial literature unhelpful; they
> > stop people making important enquiries or thinking for themselves.  As
> > for Edward Said, his Orientalism is nonsense and has been properly
> > rubbished by people far better informed in the subject than himself,
> > for example the historian of the medieval Middle East and novelist
> > Robert Irwin in For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies
> > (London, 2006).  Irwin has some pretty strong words for Edward Said,
> > calling him something like dishonest and malign.
> >
> > I might add that the characters in Justine are, almost all of them,
> > Alexandrians.  I draw the distinction between Alexandrians and
> > Egyptians, and between Alexandria and Egypt.  Alexandria was a peculiar
> > enterprise, a Europe transposed to Africa, rather like Durrell's
> > scenes.  The fascination with Alexandria to a considerable extent lies
> > in the fact that it is a kind of mirror (yes) to European civilisation;
> > it allows you to see something that is familiar yet to see it in a
> > special way.  That is why Cavafy, E M Forster and Lawrence Durrell were
> > always writing about a European experience when writing about
> > Alexandria -- the essence of the city, both ancient and
> > modern-cosmopolitan, was European not Egyptian.
> >
> > Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing to say that she has
> > not lived there all her life.  Balthazar is an Egyptian Jew as is
> > Justine, and Nessim is a Copt, more Egyptian than those
> > Johnny-come-lately Arabs or Turks.  Pombal is transitory, being a
> > diplomat.  He will be transitory wherever he goes.  Darley may or may
> > not have been transitory in Alexandria.  As it turns out, he leaves,
> > comes back, then leaves again.  But he might have stayed.  Certainly
> > the hundreds of thousands of people who made up the population at that
> > time belonged to families who had been in Alexandria for generations,
> > whether they were Christian, Muslim or Jew, whether they were French,
> > Italian, Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian, Lebanese, Maltese, English,
> > Belgian, Greek or whatever.  In fact the newcomers were the Egyptians;
> > they moved in after the modern city was up and running.  The
> > Alexandrians, indeed, were rather like Edward Said; he would fit the
> > Alexandrian mould perfectly, except that his father ran a business in
> > Cairo, not Alexandria, and sent his son to school in Cairo and America,
> > not Alexandria and Paris.
> >
> > Alexandria was not a British colonial city.  The British between 1882
> > and 1922 ran things from Cairo; after that the Egyptians ran almost
> > everything for themselves, and indeed everything after 1936 -- except
> > during the war, when the choice was between the British being in Egypt
> > or the Nazis.  There were some Egyptians who wanted the Nazis, but I do
> > not weep for the failure of their hopes.  In any case, Alexandria was a
> > very different city to Cairo.  Cairo was founded by the Arabs and was
> > the seat of the imperialist powers who ruled over Egypt, whether the
> > Arabs themselves or the Turks in their many varieties, then the French,
> > the Alids, the British, and now an Egyptian military dictatorship
> > dressed up as a democratic government.  But Alexandria, refounded in
> > about 1820 by Mohammed Ali (an Ottoman from northern Greece), was
> > settled by Europeans who were invited there and whose communities were
> > even given land on which to build.  They established their own elected
> > municipal government -- the first municipal government anywhere in the
> > Middle East -- and they largely ran their own affairs.  This was well
> > established by the time the British came along.
> >
> > Having said all that, it is worth noting that in the very earliest
> > drafts for Justine Durrell's characters were not Alexandrians, they
> > were for the most part British, but they were not ex-pats nor were they
> > transients, instead they were marooned in Alexandria by the war.  They
> > wanted to get out, but they were trapped.  Rather like the gnostics
> > felt trapped in a world not of their choosing nor even of God's
> > choosing.
> >
> > The matter is complex.
> >
> > I should also add that the Alexandria Quartet is in fact two works.
> > One is Justine.  The other is Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea.  The two works
> > were written at very different times.  Moreover Justine was not written
> > with any notion that there would be further volumes.  Reading Justine
> > as though Balthazar-Mountolive-Clea already existed, or was conceived
> > of, is a mistake.
> >
> > :Michael
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Friday, April 27, 2007, at 06:56  pm, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> >
> >
> >>to what extent is the AQ mainly about British and
> >>European expats?
> >>
> >>I believe the AQ has been referred to as "post-colonial" literature -
> >>or
> >>should it be "colonial" literature? I remember reading that Lawrence
> >>Durrell
> >>referred to himself once as a "literary blimp", suggesting, it seems,
> >>that
> >>he looked upon himself as a colonial in attitude. In fact, if one were
> >>to
> >>look at the subject matter of the AQ, a lot of it deals with womanising
> >>expatriate Englishmen (Darley, Pursewarden) or Frenchmen (Pombal for
> >>one)
> >>whose presence in Alexandria was transitory.
> >>
> >>I think Edward Said referred to the subject matter of the AQ as
> >>"trivial"
> >>and one can see why! Is Darley's relationship with Melissa anything
> >>more
> >>than "...what we wanted of each other..." [Justine (1.4)]? And what was
> >>that? It is not clear, but can a complex relationship be contained in
> >>such a
> >>phrase? At first reading, there is an innocence and an element of
> >>poetry in
> >>the lines of this section - but how does it appear on reflection about
> >>the
> >>social situation - an Englishman having a fling with a deprived Greek
> >>woman?
> >>And the Englishman (however indigent) is a member of the ruling
> >>colonial
> >>power in Alexandria.
> >>
> >>And what do you make of the following passage [Justine (1.12)]:
> >>
> >>"Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to
> >>extremity
> >>by want are interesting, even touching,..."
> >>
> >>"...encounters...are interesting.."???!!! It is as if Durrell had
> >>unthinkingly let slip a crass and cynical comment, but it is a comment
> >>which
> >>is revealing, and what it reveals is not very nice!
> >>
> >>Sumantra Nag
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>
>
> End of ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
> ***********************************


From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sat Apr 28 08:29:10 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:29:10 +0100
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
In-Reply-To: <000e01c78975$ee2aa6a0$1abba37a@airtel>
Message-ID: <365D19D4-F59D-11DB-B32C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Sumantra:

Yes, I forgot about Smyrna.  But that does not really change anything.  
Smyrna was something like Alexandria, also a place where so-called 
foreigners had been living for generations.  In fact Smyrna was a Greek 
city taken over by the Turks; for that matter Asia Minor was Greek and 
the whole thing had been taken over by the Turks.  The point is that 
Melissa was not a foreigner in Alexandria in the tedious narrow 
parochial modern 21st century sense of being born and having come from 
what is currently recognised as being Greece; she belonged to that 
great Greek world whose origins go back to Alexander the Great, even to 
the Trojan War, and of which Alexandria was once part.  Certainly in 
speaking of the modern cosmopolitan city, the one that began dying in 
1936, it was 'home' to Greeks who had been invited to settle there by 
Mohammed Ali, himself born and raised in what is now Greece.

Complex, as I said, and not to be reduced to the silly modern fashions 
of colonial and post-colonial 'theory'.

:Michael




On Saturday, April 28, 2007, at 10:16  am, Sumantra Nag wrote:

> RE_Message: 2
>> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:36:21 +0100
>> From: Michael Haag
>
> ...........Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and 
> no
> history
>> of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to
> him;............
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Michael,
>
> I found your spirited response very informative. I did of course note 
> your
> major
> publication on Alexandria (Capital of Memory) some time ago, and look
> forward very much to reading it
> one day, along with Ian McNiven's biography on Lawrence Durrell. My
> observations:
>
> Your view that "...Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing 
> to say
> that she has
> not lived there all her life."
>
> In Justine, when Darley meets her for the first time, when she is very 
> ill
> after a party in the flat lent by Pombal to Pursewarden, the Greek 
> doctor
> '...asked her where she came from and a haunted expression came into 
> her
> face as she replied "Smyrna";...and then, '...The doctor took up her 
> hand
> and examined the wedding-finger. "You see," he said.... pointing out 
> the
> absence of a ring. "That is why. Her family has disowned her...." '
>
> Melissa is a refugee: much earlier in Justine, the narrator writes,
>
> "I found Melissa, washed up like a half-drowned bird, on the dreary
> littorals of Alexandria, with her sex broken...."
>
> Early in the pages of Justine, [1.2] Durrell makes much of Alexandria 
> as
> "...the great wine-press of love;...." and its inhabitants as people 
> "...who
> have been deeply wounded in their sex."  What is one to make of this
> somewhat genral comment?
>
> Sumantra
> --------------------------------------------


From odos.fanourios at gmail.com  Sat Apr 28 09:49:23 2007
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 09:49:23 -0700
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
In-Reply-To: <365D19D4-F59D-11DB-B32C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <C258C923.C1E9%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>

Michael writes to Sumantra

> Complex, as I said, and not to be reduced to
> the silly modern fashions of colonial and
> post-colonial 'theory'.

I like this reading, but I would add that Durrell seems to have been quite
aware (who couldn't be?) of the trauma that Smyrna represented (or rather,
not represented, but was).  Melissa whispers (murmurs?) "Smyrna," and it is
a date that no Greek would confuse with anna mirabilis of Modernism, 1922.
1922 was a slightly different date for the Irish as well... This is one
element of Durrell that I think gets overlooked, though Michael has voiced
it in his book on Alexandria, and I've mentioned it for Durrell's Corfu
works.  Durrell was keenly cognizant of histories lying under his
landscapes: more than we give him credit for, I believe, though perhaps that
leads in the fallacy of trying to read the authors mind through his art.
Reading Nabakov through Lolita?

Michael might comment more on Alexandria (I haven't the background to do
so), but when Durrell writes of Corfu in the 1960s, he takes the reader
through every major colonial site without mentioning that history, except
through innuendo and allusion.  If you know it, it's powerfully present, and
if you do not, it remains slumbering beneath the surface of the text.
Smyrna and the Greek world slumbers in Alexandria in a similar manner, or at
least I see flashes of it from my thin background on the subject.  It is
also difficult to discuss 'postcoloniality' when referring to the Hellenic
world would make one seem 'pro-colonial.'  As postcolonial scholars might
say, these are hybrid places, though one of those very long histories has
been erased.

Moreover, to mention Smyrna in a text set in the 1930s (Michael and Don can
quibble over the dating) in a decidedly Hellenic city in a Muslim country
with Coptic and Jewish characters interacting with an Irishman would strike
me as a profoundly political move...  Really, an Irish school teacher living
with a Greek woman from Smyrna, having an affair with a Jewish woman with
strong ties to Palestine, who's husband is a Coptic banker involved in gun
running to Palestine, chasing Greek references around Alexandria, a city for
which Cavafy is the 'Old Poet.'  That's not a pro-British colonialism, but I
think the political import is fairly overt.  As the whole series inches
toward WWII, it's easy for the 21st century reader to forget what an
Irishman's alignment would be.

Although it was after he wrote the Quartet, let's not forget that Durrell
was denied British citizenship during a move to prohibit immigration from
India & Pakistan...  That's in neither of the biographies currently
available, though Ezard wrote a news article on the matter.  Michael?

Sumantra?  What's your take on this?  Does Durrell's 'troubling' of
'received notions' of the colonial world show through in your reader?  Does
it make us retrospectively revise our (it did mine) previous elision or
division of narrator and author?  Personally, I think Durrell is still ripe
for a thorough postcolonial reading, except with the proviso that bringing
the theory to Durrell may reshape our reading, but neither the novels not
the theory will be exactly the same afterwards.  For my money, postcolonial
readings of Durrell haven't fulfilled their potential yet because they don't
adequately account for irony and the epistemological problems in the books
-- in general, I've often thought that seems to be a limitation of the
theory.

But, back to my own ransacked books and papers...

Best
James

On 4/28/07 8:29 AM, "Michael Haag" <michaelhaag at btinternet.com> wrote:

> Sumantra:
> 
> Yes, I forgot about Smyrna.  But that does not really change anything.
> Smyrna was something like Alexandria, also a place where so-called
> foreigners had been living for generations.  In fact Smyrna was a Greek
> city taken over by the Turks; for that matter Asia Minor was Greek and
> the whole thing had been taken over by the Turks.  The point is that
> Melissa was not a foreigner in Alexandria in the tedious narrow
> parochial modern 21st century sense of being born and having come from
> what is currently recognised as being Greece; she belonged to that
> great Greek world whose origins go back to Alexander the Great, even to
> the Trojan War, and of which Alexandria was once part.  Certainly in
> speaking of the modern cosmopolitan city, the one that began dying in
> 1936, it was 'home' to Greeks who had been invited to settle there by
> Mohammed Ali, himself born and raised in what is now Greece.
> 
> Complex, as I said, and not to be reduced to the silly modern fashions
> of colonial and post-colonial 'theory'.
> 
> :Michael
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Saturday, April 28, 2007, at 10:16  am, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> 
>> RE_Message: 2
>>> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 21:36:21 +0100
>>> From: Michael Haag
>> 
>> ...........Darley is hardly a womaniser.  He had no woman at all, and
>> no
>> history
>>> of having had one, until Melissa pretty much offered herself to
>> him;............
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>> Michael,
>> 
>> I found your spirited response very informative. I did of course note
>> your
>> major
>> publication on Alexandria (Capital of Memory) some time ago, and look
>> forward very much to reading it
>> one day, along with Ian McNiven's biography on Lawrence Durrell. My
>> observations:
>> 
>> Your view that "...Melissa is a Greek of Alexandria; there is nothing
>> to say
>> that she has
>> not lived there all her life."
>> 
>> In Justine, when Darley meets her for the first time, when she is very
>> ill
>> after a party in the flat lent by Pombal to Pursewarden, the Greek
>> doctor
>> '...asked her where she came from and a haunted expression came into
>> her
>> face as she replied "Smyrna";...and then, '...The doctor took up her
>> hand
>> and examined the wedding-finger. "You see," he said.... pointing out
>> the
>> absence of a ring. "That is why. Her family has disowned her...." '
>> 
>> Melissa is a refugee: much earlier in Justine, the narrator writes,
>> 
>> "I found Melissa, washed up like a half-drowned bird, on the dreary
>> littorals of Alexandria, with her sex broken...."
>> 
>> Early in the pages of Justine, [1.2] Durrell makes much of Alexandria
>> as
>> "...the great wine-press of love;...." and its inhabitants as people
>> "...who
>> have been deeply wounded in their sex."  What is one to make of this
>> somewhat genral comment?
>> 
>> Sumantra
>> --------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

___________________________
James Gifford
Department of English
University of Victoria
Victoria, B.C., Canada
http://web.uvic.ca/~gifford



From odos.fanourios at gmail.com  Sat Apr 28 10:02:15 2007
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:02:15 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Edward Said
In-Reply-To: <000e01c78975$ee2aa6a0$1abba37a@airtel>
Message-ID: <C258CC27.C1EC%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>

Sumantra writes:

> James Gifford has identified it:
> 
> RE_Message: 6
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:17:28 -0700
> From: James Gifford <odos.fanourios at gmail.com>
> 
> and he's once cited as
> giving a talk in Beirut in which he refers to the
> Quartet as "trivial"
> --------------------
> I remember reading an account of this talk given in
> Beirut. I am writing
> from memory, but remember some of these phrases.
> From what I can recall (!) the audience was described
> to consist of
> Europeans who saw themselves as "...Durrellian heroes..."
> in the "...romance
> and intrigue..." of a "...latter-day Alexandria...(meaning
> Beirut) etc.
> I hope someone will be able to find the specific account and

I quoted the Rilke parallel from the extract from Secular Criticism in the
Said Reader (220-221).  I know, I should use the book itself, BUT to this
anecdote, Said adds the damning endnote: "The example of the Nazi who read
Rilke and then wrote out genocidal orders to his concentration-camp
underlings had not yet become well known. Perhaps then the Durrell-Secretary
of Defense anecdote might not have seemed so useful to my enthusiastic
friend" (462). 

This anecdote is remarkably similar to Terry Eagleton's parallel sighting of
Durrell's Alexandria Quartet on his friend Greenway's mantle, "no doubt to
demonstrate his entirely non-existent openness to the new" (Gatekeeper 170).

Here's how I comment on the third bit from Said in the monograph I'm working
on.  It's on the anecdote about his lecture in Beirut on Durrell (I only
have this from the book, not from the original lecture itself):

Mustapha Marrouchi clarifies Said's intentions in this anecdote in his book
on Said by turning attention to Said's desire to correct Durrell's
misrepresentations of Egypt. Marrouchi recounts Said's only recorded
sustained comments on Durrell, given during a year he spent in Beirut
learning Arabic:

"One evening at Beirut College for Women, [Said] addressed a large assembly
on a prize work of the Orientalist canon, Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria
Quartet. Many of the Westerners in the room imagined themselves Durrellian
heroes in a latter-day Alexandria of intrigue and romance. Said attacked the
novel's triviality, its incomprehensible metaphors, its meaningless plot....
[O]ne university lecturer protested that Durrell's images were compelling.
'Compelling?' Said asked. 'When he needs an image for human communication,
he reaches for the [64] telephone' (1975: 234) [1]. As an almost doctrinaire
secularist, Said is hardly swayed by an argument or hobbled by a rigid
approach." (Marrouchi 63-64)

This presents several problems that typify postcolonial readings of Durrell.
First, the "incomprehensible metaphors" being dismissed seem to be attacked
precisely because they are too comprehensible: the telephone as a metaphor
for human communication. Moreover, while the political purpose behind this
attack (to correct politically charged misrepresentations that carry
political influences) remains laudable, it is difficult for a reader of
Durrell's novel to view his cast of Western characters as heroes in any
form, unless one dispenses with the prominent ironies. The Westerners'
imagination of themselves as Durrell's characters (pederasts, homosexuals,
poverty-stricken and sexually humiliated tutors, incestuous authors, or
politicians blind to the machinations around them) seems highly unlikely in
the cultural climate of 1972. In contrast, the only reader I am aware to
have voiced this feeling of wonder for the heavily Orientalist Alexandria
refers instead to the film version of Durrell?s Quartet (Cuckor's 1969
Justine), which has received nearly universally terrible reviews, and this
reader is neither Western nor an Orientalist: M. G. Vassanji ("The Boy" 1-3,
mss. held at UVic). The enviable heroes of the film, where they appear quite
dapper in stark contrast to the novel, seem far more likely than those of
the novel.



[1] The referenced work is not included in the Marouchi's bibliography but
is in fact Said's notes for the speech, kept unpublished among his private
papers.




From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sat Apr 28 10:36:38 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 18:36:38 +0100
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
In-Reply-To: <C258C923.C1E9%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <0486740A-F5AF-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

One point I am making is that one needs to know something of the 
history and circumstances of the times.  Coming up with a theory of the 
universe is not very helpful if you think the earth is flat and the sun 
is a banana.

History is also biography.  I do not want to write Durrell's biography 
in these posts.  But two points: Durrell was not Irish by any broadly 
accepted use of the term, and he was not denied British citizenship.

Smyrna was a nod to his Venizelist friends.  In Greek experience the 
imperial power was not England, France or Russia but the Ottoman 
Empire.  Durrell knew that very well.  He also knew -- to make things 
complex -- that cosmopolitan cities like Alexandria, Beirut, Smyrna and 
Istanbul were products of the Ottoman Empire.  When nationalism and 
sectarianism replaced imperialism, so Alexandria, Beirut, Smyrna and 
Istanbul were destroyed.

:Michael


On Saturday, April 28, 2007, at 05:49  pm, James Gifford wrote:

> Michael writes to Sumantra
>
>> Complex, as I said, and not to be reduced to
>> the silly modern fashions of colonial and
>> post-colonial 'theory'.
>
> I like this reading, but I would add that Durrell seems to have been 
> quite
> aware (who couldn't be?) of the trauma that Smyrna represented (or 
> rather,
> not represented, but was).  Melissa whispers (murmurs?) "Smyrna," and 
> it is
> a date that no Greek would confuse with anna mirabilis of Modernism, 
> 1922.
> 1922 was a slightly different date for the Irish as well... This is one
> element of Durrell that I think gets overlooked, though Michael has 
> voiced
> it in his book on Alexandria, and I've mentioned it for Durrell's Corfu
> works.  Durrell was keenly cognizant of histories lying under his
> landscapes: more than we give him credit for, I believe, though 
> perhaps that
> leads in the fallacy of trying to read the authors mind through his 
> art.
> Reading Nabakov through Lolita?
>
> Michael might comment more on Alexandria (I haven't the background to 
> do
> so), but when Durrell writes of Corfu in the 1960s, he takes the reader
> through every major colonial site without mentioning that history, 
> except
> through innuendo and allusion.  If you know it, it's powerfully 
> present, and
> if you do not, it remains slumbering beneath the surface of the text.
> Smyrna and the Greek world slumbers in Alexandria in a similar manner, 
> or at
> least I see flashes of it from my thin background on the subject.  It 
> is
> also difficult to discuss 'postcoloniality' when referring to the 
> Hellenic
> world would make one seem 'pro-colonial.'  As postcolonial scholars 
> might
> say, these are hybrid places, though one of those very long histories 
> has
> been erased.
>
> Moreover, to mention Smyrna in a text set in the 1930s (Michael and 
> Don can
> quibble over the dating) in a decidedly Hellenic city in a Muslim 
> country
> with Coptic and Jewish characters interacting with an Irishman would 
> strike
> me as a profoundly political move...  Really, an Irish school teacher 
> living
> with a Greek woman from Smyrna, having an affair with a Jewish woman 
> with
> strong ties to Palestine, who's husband is a Coptic banker involved in 
> gun
> running to Palestine, chasing Greek references around Alexandria, a 
> city for
> which Cavafy is the 'Old Poet.'  That's not a pro-British colonialism, 
> but I
> think the political import is fairly overt.  As the whole series inches
> toward WWII, it's easy for the 21st century reader to forget what an
> Irishman's alignment would be.
>
> Although it was after he wrote the Quartet, let's not forget that 
> Durrell
> was denied British citizenship during a move to prohibit immigration 
> from
> India & Pakistan...  That's in neither of the biographies currently
> available, though Ezard wrote a news article on the matter.  Michael?
>
> Sumantra?  What's your take on this?  Does Durrell's 'troubling' of
> 'received notions' of the colonial world show through in your reader?  
> Does
> it make us retrospectively revise our (it did mine) previous elision or
> division of narrator and author?  Personally, I think Durrell is still 
> ripe
> for a thorough postcolonial reading, except with the proviso that 
> bringing
> the theory to Durrell may reshape our reading, but neither the novels 
> not
> the theory will be exactly the same afterwards.  For my money, 
> postcolonial
> readings of Durrell haven't fulfilled their potential yet because they 
> don't
> adequately account for irony and the epistemological problems in the 
> books
> -- in general, I've often thought that seems to be a limitation of the
> theory.
>
> But, back to my own ransacked books and papers...
>
> Best
> James
>
> On 4/28/07 8:29 AM, "Michael Haag" <michaelhaag at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>> Sumantra:
>>
>> Yes, I forgot about Smyrna.  But that does not really change anything.
>> Smyrna was something like Alexandria, also a place where so-called
>> foreigners had been living for generations.  In fact Smyrna was a 
>> Greek
>> city taken over by the Turks; for that matter Asia Minor was Greek and
>> the whole thing had been taken over by the Turks.  The point is that
>> Melissa was not a foreigner in Alexandria in the tedious narrow
>> parochial modern 21st century sense of being born and having come from
>> what is currently recognised as being Greece; she belonged to that
>> great Greek world whose origins go back to Alexander the Great, even 
>> to
>> the Trojan War, and of which Alexandria was once part.  Certainly in
>> speaking of the modern cosmopolitan city, the one that began dying in
>> 1936, it was 'home' to Greeks who had been invited to settle there by
>> Mohammed Ali, himself born and raised in what is now Greece.
>>
>> Complex, as I said, and not to be reduced to the silly modern fashions
>> of colonial and post-colonial 'theory'.
>>
>> :Michael
>>


From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sat Apr 28 11:02:58 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 14:02:58 -0400
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
In-Reply-To: <365D19D4-F59D-11DB-B32C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <000e01c78975$ee2aa6a0$1abba37a@airtel>
	<365D19D4-F59D-11DB-B32C-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070428180253.POYW485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sat Apr 28 11:31:32 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 19:31:32 +0100
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1, Issue 88
In-Reply-To: <20070428180253.POYW485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <AFDF3115-F5B6-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

For one thing, 'colonial' and 'post-colonial' are terms which justify 
nationalism and sectarianism.  There are good arguments for imperialism 
being better than nationalism and sectarianism.  Crimes have been 
committed in the names of both systems.  I suppose that Serbian 
soldiers murdering thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica are being 
post-colonial in ridding themselves of their former imperialist 
oppressors.

:Michael



On Saturday, April 28, 2007, at 07:02  pm, william godshalk wrote:

> Michael concludes his comment (below) with a warning:
>
> Complex, as I said, and not to be reduced to the silly modern fashions
> of colonial and post-colonial 'theory'.
>
>
> George Lakoff in Women, Fire and Dangerous Things points out the 
> necessity for categories, and illustrates the construction of various 
> categories. I find it a very compelling book. And I imagine that 
> "colonial" and "post-colonial" are categories.
>
> But, as Michael seems to suggest, categories can be misleading when 
> constructed for political ends. For example, American politicians have 
> constructed a category called "war" which has little or nothing to do 
> with the usual definition of "war."? So we have the "war on drugs" and 
> the "war on terror" and "the war on poverty," and so on.
>
> So are "colonial" and "postcolonial" also categories constructed for 
> political ends?
>
> WLG
>
>
> Yes, I forgot about Smyrna.? But that does not really change anything.?
> Smyrna was something like Alexandria, also a place where so-called
> foreigners had been living for generations.? In fact Smyrna was a Greek
> city taken over by the Turks; for that matter Asia Minor was Greek and
> the whole thing had been taken over by the Turks.? The point is that
> Melissa was not a foreigner in Alexandria in the tedious narrow
> parochial modern 21st century sense of being born and having come from
> what is currently recognised as being Greece; she belonged to that
> great Greek world whose origins go back to Alexander the Great, even to
> the Trojan War, and of which Alexandria was once part.? Certainly in
> speaking of the modern cosmopolitan city, the one that began dying in
> 1936, it was 'home' to Greeks who had been invited to settle there by
> Mohammed Ali, himself born and raised in what is now Greece.
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sat Apr 28 17:25:15 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:25:15 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
Message-ID: <20070429011540.QUJF485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sat Apr 28 18:51:26 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 02:51:26 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <20070429011540.QUJF485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

This entire run, from 1.10 to 1.16, is beautifully worked around two of 
Cavafy's poems, indeed it is imbued with Cavafy associations.  First in 
1.10 there is 'the afternoon sun', which is a Cavafy poem, and a few 
lines down Darley goes to his balcony where he catches sight of 
Justine, a reference picked up again at the end of 1.15 when Justine 
quotes 'In the Evening' -- both 'The Afternoon Sun' and 'In the 
Evening' being exquisite poems of loss, of love affairs long since 
gone, of memory transmuted into place.

:Michael



On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 01:25  am, william godshalk wrote:

> When the narrator gives his lecture on "the native poet of the city," 
> he notes that "one solitary student of the passions and the arts" sits 
> in the back of the hall, "her legs crossed in a mannish attitude" 
> (1.16). But he apparently does not recognize her as Justine.
>
> But the narrator has made it quite evident that he knows Justine by 
> sight. From his balcony he catches sight of her "walking idly towards 
> the town in her white sandals." At another time, perhaps, she "passes 
> below" his "window, smiling as if at some private satisfaction" 
> (1.10). He further claims that he had "many such glimpses of her at 
> different times, and of course I knew her well by sight long before we 
> met (1.11). He claims that anyone who earns more than 200 pounds a 
> year relinquishes all anonymity in Alexandria -- and he recounts some 
> of the times he has seen her. To make matters doubly clear that the 
> reader gets the point, the narrator writes: "I knew them [Justine and 
> Nessim] by sight many months before we actually met -- as I knew 
> everyone in the city" (1.16).
>
> Surely there's a mystery here. The narrator insists that he knows 
> Justine by sight, and then, when he sees her at his lecture, he 
> doesn't seem to recognize her. Why not?
>
> And when Justine gets him home, she races to Nessim "like a gun-dog" 
> metaphorically dropping the narrator at Nessim's feet, wagging her 
> tale. "She had achieved me" (1.16). The narrator comments: "I did not 
> know for what purpose I had been brought here" (1.16).
>
> In Justine does the narrator and the reader ever know the "purpose"?
>
>
> WLG_______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Sun Apr 29 02:43:21 2007
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:13:21 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 1,
	Issue 91_Expats and colonialism_Message 2 from James Gifford
References: <mailman.847.1177783385.1413178.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <003401c78a42$d5cc2930$0201a8c0@intel>

Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 09:49:23 -0700
> From: James Gifford

Sumantra?  What's your take on this?  Does Durrell's 'troubling' of
> 'received notions' of the colonial world show through in your reader?
-----------------------------------------------------------

James,

It is time for me to first confess that I am not an academic in the field of 
English literature. Nor do I have the historical perspective about the Greek 
world and the world of the Middle East which I have seen displayed in these 
wonderfully stimulating recent exchanges on the ILDS site. My knowledge 
about Orientalism is very oblique. I mentioned in my very first postings on 
the new recent ILDS discussions including [RG] Justine, that I was strongly 
attracted by Durrell's evocative prose  in Justine and the AQ, when I first 
read the books in the early 1960s at the age of about 17-19. I still find 
Justine quite rivetting, a bit like Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" 
(or more accurately in translation, "In Search of Lost Time") - where you 
can open a page and get lost in the world which arises in the pages!

The consciousness about Orientalism or "post-colonial" or "colonial" aspects 
of literature has come much later for me, and of course, with time one 
notices social realities which make one more judgemental, at least in terms 
of social perspectives. But this can happen without any extensive erosion in 
one's responses to a literary creation (such as Justine) in purely literary 
terms - had I been educated later as an academic in English literature, my 
responses would probably have been more judgemental in those (i.e., 
literary) terms as well!

Also, not being familiar with the details of international politics in 
Egypt - or in Alexandria in particular - just before and during WWII, I 
suppose I did not read much into the political stances or situations 
suggested by the books of the AQ, except as a part of the stories which 
develop in these novels.

So much for the time being!

Regards

Sumantra



From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sun Apr 29 09:36:46 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:36:46 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <20070429011540.QUJF485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
	<24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070429163649.SXJV26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Sun Apr 29 09:59:53 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:59:53 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <20070429163649.SXJV26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
References: <20070429011540.QUJF485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>	<24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<20070429163649.SXJV26782.gx6.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <4634CF09.7000704@wfu.edu>

On 4/29/2007 12:36 PM, william godshalk wrote:

>
> But how do you account for the apparent discrepancy? The narrator 
> makes it clear -- you might say "doubly clear" -- that he knows 
> Justine by sight and then does not identify her when she appears at 
> his lecture on Cavafy. I assume that he has not lost his glasses since 
> he just delivered a lecture. 

I will go back read the moments that you describe, map them out &c., but 
all of this recalls to my mind the dynamic that has always remained most 
memorable and signature for me in /Justine/.  The novel starts in 
episodes 1.1 - 1.15 with the laying down of a whole rich series of 
character-squeezes and images of privileged moments and little 
epiphanies in dialogue--like faded photos or old phonograph recordings 
or diary entires shuffled together--then with 1.16 something of a more 
traditional narrative style begins to assert itself, moving forward 
briefly, then passing back so that we have the narrator first meeting 
Melissa (1.24) only after he first meets Justine (1.16)--disrupted 
chronology, time spilled out of its frame like dazed quail.

But while describing the conditions within which the narrator's claims 
occur, all of this still does not answer your query, Bill.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 11:05:44 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:05:44 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <4634CF09.7000704@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <3FA463E0-F67C-11DB-B7AA-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

What Charles says is true.  Nevertheless, from my quick reading (and 
not mapping out the sequences), there does indeed seem to be a 
discrepancy which I would put down to one of two things.  Either Darley 
does not recognise Justine because, as he says, she is sitting with her 
head down [1.16].  Or Durrell, after shuffling his deck and laying down 
his cards, did not notice or did not care.  Or maybe even did care and 
liked it that way because it would fit in with the uncertainty of 
memory and recording events.  For example, at the risk of over 
interpreting, I did mention Cavafy's poem The Afternoon Sun.  There is 
no real allusion to that poem except the phrase 'afternoon sun' [1.10] 
and the fact that the text goes on to mention Cavafy ('the old Greek 
poet') [1.15]; also to make a passing mention of 'the city' [1.15] 
(whether meant to resonate or not, but nevertheless the title of 
another Cavafy poem, and one of the two poems included at the back of 
Justine, the other being The God Abandons Antony); and finally the 
explicit reference to Cavafy's poem In the Evening [1.15] which is 
earlier alluded to, if you care to interpret the text that way, where 
the text reads 'This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my 
balcony ...' [1.10].  Now the point about both In the Evening and The 
Afternoon Sun, as I said earlier, is that they are poems of loss, 
memory, and locating the past in a present place, which The Afternoon 
Sun does with a note of hesitancy.

This room, how well I know it.
Now they're renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices.  ...

This room, how familiar it is.

The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right -- no, opposite -- a wardrobe with a mirror.

In both poems there is sunlight and light fading, the afternoon sun 
falling across the bed where they made love so many times, though the 
bed itself is long gone, and the light fading on the balcony as the old 
love letter is read and memories are stirred of 'what a magnificent bed 
we lay in'.

So if Durrell, or Darley, gets his memories and order of events a bit 
mixed up, it is all in keeping.

:Michael




On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 05:59  pm, slighcl wrote:

> On 4/29/2007 12:36 PM, william godshalk wrote:
>
>
> But how do you account for the apparent discrepancy? The narrator 
> makes it clear -- you might say "doubly clear" -- that he knows 
> Justine by sight and then does not identify her when she appears at 
> his lecture on Cavafy. I assume that he has not lost his glasses since 
> he just delivered a lecture.
>
> I will go back read the moments that you describe, map them out &c., 
> but all of this recalls to my mind the dynamic that has always 
> remained most memorable and signature for me in Justine.? The novel 
> starts in episodes 1.1 - 1.15 with the laying down of a whole rich 
> series of character-squeezes and images of privileged moments and 
> little epiphanies in dialogue--like faded photos or old phonograph 
> recordings or diary entires shuffled together--then with 1.16 
> something of a more traditional narrative style begins to assert 
> itself, moving forward briefly, then passing back so that we have the 
> narrator first meeting Melissa (1.24) only after he first meets 
> Justine (1.16)--disrupted chronology, time spilled out of its frame 
> like dazed quail.
>
> But while describing the conditions within which the narrator's claims 
> occur, all of this still does not answer your query, Bill.
>
> 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
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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 11:18:42 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:18:42 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <3FA463E0-F67C-11DB-B7AA-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <0FA63B34-F67E-11DB-B7AA-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

I would also like to mention that I have the sense, reading these 
sections, that Darley is being led into Alexandria.  The whole thing is 
a seduction.  Durrell is seducing his reader.  Darley is being seduced 
by Justine.  But most of all Alexandria is seducing everybody.  After 
the lecture at the Atelier [1.16], Darley goes across the Rue Fuad to a 
grocers where he buys a tin of Italian olives -- 'overcome by a sudden 
longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean'.  'I began to eat 
Italy.'  Then Justine walks in and 'unable to disentangle myself from 
Italy I looked up boorishly and saw her leaning down at me from the 
mirrors on three sides of the room, her dark thrilling face full of a 
troubled, arrogant reserve'.  Darley quickly forgets about the Italian 
olives.

:Michael




On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 07:05  pm, Michael Haag wrote:

> What Charles says is true.  Nevertheless, from my quick reading (and 
> not mapping out the sequences), there does indeed seem to be a 
> discrepancy which I would put down to one of two things.  Either 
> Darley does not recognise Justine because, as he says, she is sitting 
> with her head down [1.16].  Or Durrell, after shuffling his deck and 
> laying down his cards, did not notice or did not care.  Or maybe even 
> did care and liked it that way because it would fit in with the 
> uncertainty of memory and recording events.  For example, at the risk 
> of over interpreting, I did mention Cavafy's poem The Afternoon Sun.  
> There is no real allusion to that poem except the phrase 'afternoon 
> sun' [1.10] and the fact that the text goes on to mention Cavafy ('the 
> old Greek poet') [1.15]; also to make a passing mention of 'the city' 
> [1.15] (whether meant to resonate or not, but nevertheless the title 
> of another Cavafy poem, and one of the two poems included at the back 
> of Justine, the other being The God Abandons Antony); and finally the 
> explicit reference to Cavafy's poem In the Evening [1.15] which is 
> earlier alluded to, if you care to interpret the text that way, where 
> the text reads 'This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my 
> balcony ...' [1.10].  Now the point about both In the Evening and The 
> Afternoon Sun, as I said earlier, is that they are poems of loss, 
> memory, and locating the past in a present place, which The Afternoon 
> Sun does with a note of hesitancy.
>
> This room, how well I know it.
> Now they're renting it, and the one next to it,
> as offices.  ...
>
> This room, how familiar it is.
>
> The couch was here, near the door,
> a Turkish carpet in front of it.
> Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
> On the right -- no, opposite -- a wardrobe with a mirror.
>
> In both poems there is sunlight and light fading, the afternoon sun 
> falling across the bed where they made love so many times, though the 
> bed itself is long gone, and the light fading on the balcony as the 
> old love letter is read and memories are stirred of 'what a 
> magnificent bed we lay in'.
>
> So if Durrell, or Darley, gets his memories and order of events a bit 
> mixed up, it is all in keeping.
>
> :Michael
>
>
>
>
> On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 05:59  pm, slighcl wrote:
>
>> On 4/29/2007 12:36 PM, william godshalk wrote:
>>
>>
>> But how do you account for the apparent discrepancy? The narrator 
>> makes it clear -- you might say "doubly clear" -- that he knows 
>> Justine by sight and then does not identify her when she appears at 
>> his lecture on Cavafy. I assume that he has not lost his glasses 
>> since he just delivered a lecture.
>>
>> I will go back read the moments that you describe, map them out &c., 
>> but all of this recalls to my mind the dynamic that has always 
>> remained most memorable and signature for me in Justine.? The novel 
>> starts in episodes 1.1 - 1.15 with the laying down of a whole rich 
>> series of character-squeezes and images of privileged moments and 
>> little epiphanies in dialogue--like faded photos or old phonograph 
>> recordings or diary entires shuffled together--then with 1.16 
>> something of a more traditional narrative style begins to assert 
>> itself, moving forward briefly, then passing back so that we have the 
>> narrator first meeting Melissa (1.24) only after he first meets 
>> Justine (1.16)--disrupted chronology, time spilled out of its frame 
>> like dazed quail.
>>
>> But while describing the conditions within which the narrator's 
>> claims occur, all of this still does not answer your query, Bill.
>>
>> 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
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From bskordil at otenet.gr  Sun Apr 29 10:54:46 2007
From: bskordil at otenet.gr (Beatrice Skordili)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:54:46 +0300
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>

The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa. The woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals" "yawning" is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from her afternoon nap, because she works at night. It picks up from 1.4 when the narrator describes her night "assignations" with men. Only at 1.10 starting "I have had many glimpses of her" does the narrator start describing Justine. The transition from 1.9 to 1.10 as well as the similarity with "I used to see her" and "I saw her daily" in 1.8 which refer to Melissa create a very intentional confusion between the two women.

Beatrice
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Haag 
  To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
  Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 4:51 AM
  Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine


  This entire run, from 1.10 to 1.16, is beautifully worked around two of Cavafy's poems, indeed it is imbued with Cavafy associations. First in 1.10 there is 'the afternoon sun', which is a Cavafy poem, and a few lines down Darley goes to his balcony where he catches sight of Justine, a reference picked up again at the end of 1.15 when Justine quotes 'In the Evening' -- both 'The Afternoon Sun' and 'In the Evening' being exquisite poems of loss, of love affairs long since gone, of memory transmuted into place. 

  :Michael



  On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 01:25 am, william godshalk wrote:


    When the narrator gives his lecture on "the native poet of the city," he notes that "one solitary student of the passions and the arts" sits in the back of the hall, "her legs crossed in a mannish attitude" (1.16). But he apparently does not recognize her as Justine.

    But the narrator has made it quite evident that he knows Justine by sight. From his balcony he catches sight of her "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals." At another time, perhaps, she "passes below" his "window, smiling as if at some private satisfaction" (1.10). He further claims that he had "many such glimpses of her at different times, and of course I knew her well by sight long before we met (1.11). He claims that anyone who earns more than 200 pounds a year relinquishes all anonymity in Alexandria -- and he recounts some of the times he has seen her. To make matters doubly clear that the reader gets the point, the narrator writes: "I knew them [Justine and Nessim] by sight many months before we actually met -- as I knew everyone in the city" (1.16).

    Surely there's a mystery here. The narrator insists that he knows Justine by sight, and then, when he sees her at his lecture, he doesn't seem to recognize her. Why not?

    And when Justine gets him home, she races to Nessim "like a gun-dog" metaphorically dropping the narrator at Nessim's feet, wagging her tale. "She had achieved me" (1.16). The narrator comments: "I did not know for what purpose I had been brought here" (1.16).

    In Justine does the narrator and the reader ever know the "purpose"?


    WLG_______________________________________________
    ILDS mailing list
    ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
    https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds



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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Sun Apr 29 13:42:45 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:42:45 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
Message-ID: <46350345.20408@wfu.edu>

/Beata Beatrix/!  I am excited about your post.  It raises some basic 
issues--not only of reading and interpretation--but also of the 
textual-bibliographical history of the /Quartet/.

You write that:

>     The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the
>     beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa.
>     The woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals"
>     "yawning" is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from
>     her afternoon nap, because she works at night.

I agree about the indeterminacy of the women and how they shade into 
each other like mirages--like Alex seen from the sea upon approach.  
Bill Godshalk and I have been talking about that indeterminacy for 
several years now.  Perhaps Jamie can pull our old postings from 2003 so 
we will not repeat too much? 

But in short your observation--and it is helpful and acute in 
itself!--must take us to asking, what text of /Justine /you are using?

    *

              All early Fabers (1957 - 1962) will leave the flux and
              indeterminacy open, letting you interpret that woman in
              1.10 as /perhaps /being Melissa.  After all, Melissa has
              been colored as an "afternoon" presence in 1.4, the
              section with a little "coloured stall" with its ices.

    *

              All post-1962 Faber /Justine /printings will follow the
              single volume additions and corrections, where that line
              reads:

                  "This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my
                  balcony I catch an unexpected glimpse of her walking
                  idly towards the town in her white sandals, still half
                  asleep.  Justine!" (1.10)

                + You write again that

>                   Only at 1.10 starting "I have had many glimpses of
>                   her" does the narrator start describing Justine.

                  Here I think that you mean 1.11, but again your post
                  brings out the differences in the text.  The 1957
                  Faber does read "many such glimpses of her"; the 1962
                  reads "many such glimpses of Justine."

The differences, Beatrice, as you already know from our old 
conversations in Cincinatti & Corfu & from your own writings, makes a 
"world" of difference for how the reader experiences these first 
glimpses of Alex and her women.  Both the 1957 and 1962 versions of 
/Justine /are legitimate and represents LD's method in the particular 
historical moment.   Both need preserving in the record--they are 
"possible" /Justines/.  But I for one will always enjoy the open 
possibilities of the 1957-1962 printings.  (American Dutton/Penguin 
printings are based on the earliest available plates, so they persist 
with the indeterminacy.) I have been asking for a long time why LD moved 
to isolate and specify the women.  As a reader who has learned a great 
deal about reading among indeterminacies from the /Quartet/, I would 
have counseled him otherwise.  As an editor, I hold on to the historical 
differences.

So what text are you reading from these days, Beatrice?  And while we 
are talking, what text does the Greek translator follow?--or (here to 
Marc) what did the French translator use?  How about Aurora Bernardez 
(Julio Cortazar's wife)--which version does she follow in the those 
wonderful Spanish translations?

Why should we only have one perspective!

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sun Apr 29 14:02:50 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:02:50 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <0FA63B34-F67E-11DB-B7AA-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <3FA463E0-F67C-11DB-B7AA-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<0FA63B34-F67E-11DB-B7AA-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
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From bskordil at otenet.gr  Sun Apr 29 14:32:12 2007
From: bskordil at otenet.gr (Beatrice Skordili)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:32:12 +0300
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com><09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
	<46350345.20408@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <001a01c78aa5$dad35b70$1b7a4a55@lacan>

Well, Charles, I always use the Dutton four volume first and only to check to see differences in the one volume Faber (1962). I have not checked any of the other variants. But, I don't have the Faber handy right now, so obviously I have missed all the additional Justine references. However, what you say about the open-ended effects of the first editions agrees well with an argument I have been making (based solely on the difference between the two versions I have been using), that Durrell engaged in a radical program of "sanitizing" his text in the later version, eliminating ambiguities, destroying the play of the footnotes in Justine (1957), and in all manner of ways (some of which I have engaged with quite extensively in my diss.). I have not checked the Greek version at all--or the Spanish one for that matter.
    Although I love my Dutton and determined that it would be my definitive text a long time ago, I have found that the revisions--while "sanitizing" the 1962 text--prolong the play of ambiguity on a different level when the Quartet versions are looked at collectively. Nevertheless, I leave to you the painstaking work of collating the different versions. It takes the kind of nerves and patience I do not possess. In the end, while D. was certainly in love with creating a certain quantum flux on the level of versions, he also did a hell of a lot with what he actually left unchanged between versions. 
    I will have to look at the passages you quote in the Faber, when I have the opportunity. I still think, nevertheless, that the intention is to mention one woman's name while really talking about the other! Be that as it may, I do stand corrected in some sense. It's just that Bill's post jarred my own impression of the text.
    The thing is there is a million things mentioned everyday in the posts that I feel I have something to say about. For instance, the olives issue (how can the olives be forgotten when they are a constant reference in D. since Prospero's Cell?). Here, I'll throw something out: What does Justine do with the olive-pit from the Orvieto olive that she eats? Or the "dirty sink"--I'll answer: Justine, Melissa, and Clea all stand before a dirty sink (two of them with a foetus inside) at some point! The pace with which the posts appear is staggering. I really can't follow! 
    Glad to hear from you, Charles!

Beatrice

P.S. Sorry for messing up the numbering!

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: slighcl 
  To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
  Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:42 PM
  Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine


  Beata Beatrix!  I am excited about your post.  It raises some basic issues--not only of reading and interpretation--but also of the textual-bibliographical history of the Quartet.

  You write that:

      The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa. The woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals" "yawning" is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from her afternoon nap, because she works at night. 
  I agree about the indeterminacy of the women and how they shade into each other like mirages--like Alex seen from the sea upon approach.  Bill Godshalk and I have been talking about that indeterminacy for several years now.  Perhaps Jamie can pull our old postings from 2003 so we will not repeat too much?  

  But in short your observation--and it is helpful and acute in itself!--must take us to asking, what text of Justine you are using?

    a.. All early Fabers (1957 - 1962) will leave the flux and indeterminacy open, letting you interpret that woman in 1.10 as perhaps being Melissa.  After all, Melissa has been colored as an "afternoon" presence in 1.4, the section with a little "coloured stall" with its ices.

    b.. All post-1962 Faber Justine printings will follow the single volume additions and corrections, where that line reads: 

          "This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my balcony I catch an unexpected glimpse of her walking idly towards the town in her white sandals, still half asleep.  Justine!" (1.10)
        a.. You write again that

          Only at 1.10 starting "I have had many glimpses of her" does the narrator start describing Justine.
        Here I think that you mean 1.11, but again your post brings out the differences in the text.  The 1957 Faber does read "many such glimpses of her"; the 1962 reads "many such glimpses of Justine."

  The differences, Beatrice, as you already know from our old conversations in Cincinatti & Corfu & from your own writings, makes a "world" of difference for how the reader experiences these first glimpses of Alex and her women.  Both the 1957 and 1962 versions of Justine are legitimate and represents LD's method in the particular historical moment.   Both need preserving in the record--they are "possible" Justines.  But I for one will always enjoy the open possibilities of the 1957-1962 printings.  (American Dutton/Penguin printings are based on the earliest available plates, so they persist with the indeterminacy.) I have been asking for a long time why LD moved to isolate and specify the women.  As a reader who has learned a great deal about reading among indeterminacies from the Quartet, I would have counseled him otherwise.  As an editor, I hold on to the historical differences.

  So what text are you reading from these days, Beatrice?  And while we are talking, what text does the Greek translator follow?--or (here to Marc) what did the French translator use?  How about Aurora Bernardez (Julio Cortazar's wife)--which version does she follow in the those wonderful Spanish translations?

  Why should we only have one perspective!

  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
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sun Apr 29 16:06:36 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:06:36 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
Message-ID: <20070429230630.TRKJ28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 16:18:54 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:18:54 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <20070429230630.TRKJ28783.gx4.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <FF48F1EE-F6A7-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Actually I think Durrell meant what he wrote.  In 1.10 he clearly means 
Justine, and I mean that even in the first Faber edition before he 
added the name 'Justine'.  He has just been talking of Justine in 1.9.  
And he goes on to talk about her in 1.11.  Clearly he means Justine all 
along.  It is one continuous progression of sightings leading up to 
their meeting at the Atelier.  But in response to anyone who missed the 
point, he drilled the point home: Justine.

:Michael



On Monday, April 30, 2007, at 12:06  am, william godshalk wrote:

> Yes, Beatrice, a very good explanation. But before Durrell began 
> sprinkling names "Melissa! Melissa" and "Justine!" in the early 
> episodes, there was even more ambiguity -- which I liked. Is it 
> possible that, when Durrell came back to the novel, he mistakenly 
> identified Melissa walking toward town in white sandals as Justine. 
> Would Justine be foolish enough to walk to town in sandals when she 
> had a car at her service?
>
> WLG
>
>
> The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the 
> beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa. The 
> woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals" "yawning" 
> is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from her afternoon 
> nap, because she works at night. It picks up from 1.4 when the 
> narrator describes her night "assignations" with men. Only at 1.10 
> starting "I have had many glimpses of her" does the narrator start 
> describing Justine. The transition from 1.9 to 1.10 as well as the 
> similarity with "I used to see her" and "I saw her daily" in 1.8 which 
> refer to Melissa create a very intentional confusion between the two 
> women.
> ?
> Beatrice
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Haag
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 4:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
>
> This entire run, from 1.10 to 1.16, is beautifully worked around two 
> of Cavafy's poems, indeed it is imbued with Cavafy associations. First 
> in 1.10 there is 'the afternoon sun', which is a Cavafy poem, and a 
> few lines down Darley goes to his balcony where he catches sight of 
> Justine, a reference picked up again at the end of 1.15 when Justine 
> quotes 'In the Evening' -- both 'The Afternoon Sun' and 'In the 
> Evening' being exquisite poems of loss, of love affairs long since 
> gone, of memory transmuted into place.
>
> :Michael
>
>
>
> On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 01:25 am, william godshalk wrote:
>
> When the narrator gives his lecture on "the native poet of the city," 
> he notes that "one solitary student of the passions and the arts" sits 
> in the back of the hall, "her legs crossed in a mannish attitude" 
> (1.16). But he apparently does not recognize her as Justine.
>
> But the narrator has made it quite evident that he knows Justine by 
> sight. >From his balcony he catches sight of her "walking idly towards 
> the town in her white sandals." At another time, perhaps, she "passes 
> below" his "window, smiling as if at some private satisfaction" 
> (1.10). He further claims that he had "many such glimpses of her at 
> different times, and of course I knew her well by sight long before we 
> met (1.11). He claims that anyone who earns more than 200 pounds a 
> year relinquishes all anonymity in Alexandria -- and he recounts some 
> of the times he has seen her. To make matters doubly clear that the 
> reader gets the point, the narrator writes: "I knew them [Justine and 
> Nessim] by sight many months before we actually met -- as I knew 
> everyone in the city" (1.16).
>
> Surely there's a mystery here. The narrator insists that he knows 
> Justine by sight, and then, when he sees her at his lecture, he 
> doesn't seem to recognize her. Why not?
>
> And when Justine gets him home, she races to Nessim "like a gun-dog" 
> metaphorically dropping the narrator at Nessim's feet, wagging her 
> tale. "She had achieved me" (1.16). The narrator comments: "I did not 
> know for what purpose I had been brought here" (1.16).
>
> In Justine does the narrator and the reader ever know the "purpose"?
>
>
> WLG_______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
<image.tiff>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sun Apr 29 16:17:10 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:17:10 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <001a01c78aa5$dad35b70$1b7a4a55@lacan>
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan> <46350345.20408@wfu.edu>
	<001a01c78aa5$dad35b70$1b7a4a55@lacan>
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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 16:24:01 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:24:01 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <001a01c78aa5$dad35b70$1b7a4a55@lacan>
Message-ID: <B6AF318F-F6A8-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

It seems odd that one should rely on the Dutton editions when Durrell 
was working with Faber.  The Dutton editions are likely to contain 
errors not of the author's or original editor's making, which if one 
likes that sort of ambiguity and indeterminacy then fine, but it is not 
original to the work.  They also preserve, as we see, earlier errors 
that were corrected by the author.  Always best to work with the 
material over which the author has had control.

:Michael


On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 10:32  pm, Beatrice Skordili wrote:

> Well, Charles, I always use the Dutton four volume first and only to 
> check to see differences in the one volume Faber (1962). I have not 
> checked any of the other variants. But, I don't have the Faber handy 
> right now, so obviously I have missed all the additional Justine 
> references. However, what you say about the open-ended effects of the 
> first editions agrees well with an argument I have been making (based 
> solely on the difference between the two versions I have been using), 
> that Durrell engaged in a radical program of "sanitizing" his text in 
> the later version, eliminating ambiguities, destroying the play of the 
> footnotes in Justine (1957), and in all manner of ways (some of which 
> I have engaged with quite extensively in my diss.). I have not checked 
> the Greek version at all--or the Spanish one for that matter.
> ??? Although I love my Dutton and determined that it would be my 
> definitive text a long time ago, I have found that the 
> revisions--while "sanitizing" the 1962 text--prolong the play of 
> ambiguity on a different level when the Quartet versions are looked at 
> collectively. Nevertheless, I leave to you the painstaking work of 
> collating the different versions. It takes the kind of nerves and 
> patience I do not possess. In the end, while D. was certainly in love 
> with creating a certain quantum flux on the level of versions, he also 
> did a hell of a lot with what he actually left unchanged between 
> versions.
> ??? I will have to look at the passages you quote in the Faber, when I 
> have the opportunity. I still think, nevertheless, that the intention 
> is to mention one woman's name while really talking about the other! 
> Be that as it may, I do stand corrected in some sense. It's just that 
> Bill's post jarred my own impression of the text.
> ??? The thing is there is a million things mentioned everyday in the 
> posts that I feel I have something to say about. For instance, the 
> olives issue (how can the olives be forgotten when they are a constant 
> reference in D. since Prospero's Cell?). Here, I'll throw something 
> out: What does Justine do with the olive-pit from the Orvieto olive 
> that she eats? Or the "dirty sink"--I'll answer: Justine, Melissa, and 
> Clea all stand before a dirty sink (two of them with a foetus inside) 
> at some point! The pace with which the posts appear is staggering. I 
> really can't follow!
> ??? Glad to hear from you, Charles!
> ?
> Beatrice
> ?
> P.S. Sorry for messing up the numbering!
> ?
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: slighcl
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:42 PM
> Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
>
> Beata Beatrix!? I am excited about your post.? It raises some basic 
> issues--not only of reading and interpretation--but also of the 
> textual-bibliographical history of the Quartet.
>
> You write that:
>
>
> The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the 
> beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa. The 
> woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals" "yawning" 
> is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from her afternoon 
> nap, because she works at night.
>
> I agree about the indeterminacy of the women and how they shade into 
> each other like mirages--like Alex seen from the sea upon approach.? 
> Bill Godshalk and I have been talking about that indeterminacy for 
> several years now.? Perhaps Jamie can pull our old postings from 2003 
> so we will not repeat too much??
>
> But in short your observation--and it is helpful and acute in 
> itself!--must take us to asking, what text of Justine you are using?
>
> ? 	All early Fabers (1957 - 1962) will leave the flux and 
> indeterminacy open, letting you interpret that woman in 1.10 as 
> perhaps being Melissa.? After all, Melissa has been colored as an 
> "afternoon" presence in 1.4, the section with a little "coloured 
> stall" with its ices.
>
> ? 	All post-1962 Faber Justine printings will follow the single volume 
> additions and corrections, where that line reads:
>
> "This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my balcony I catch an 
> unexpected glimpse of her walking idly towards the town in her white 
> sandals, still half asleep.? Justine!" (1.10)
>
> ? 	You write again that
>
> Only at 1.10 starting "I have had many glimpses of her" does the 
> narrator start describing Justine.
>
> Here I think that you mean 1.11, but again your post brings out the 
> differences in the text.? The 1957 Faber does read "many such glimpses 
> of her"; the 1962 reads "many such glimpses of Justine."
>
> The differences, Beatrice, as you already know from our old 
> conversations in Cincinatti & Corfu & from your own writings, makes a 
> "world" of difference for how the reader experiences these first 
> glimpses of Alex and her women.? Both the 1957 and 1962 versions of 
> Justine are legitimate and represents LD's method in the particular 
> historical moment.?? Both need preserving in the record--they are 
> "possible" Justines.? But I for one will always enjoy the open 
> possibilities of the 1957-1962 printings.? (American Dutton/Penguin 
> printings are based on the earliest available plates, so they persist 
> with the indeterminacy.) I have been asking for a long time why LD 
> moved to isolate and specify the women.? As a reader who has learned a 
> great deal about reading among indeterminacies from the Quartet, I 
> would have counseled him otherwise.? As an editor, I hold on to the 
> historical differences.
>
> So what text are you reading from these days, Beatrice?? And while we 
> are talking, what text does the Greek translator follow?--or (here to 
> Marc) what did the French translator use?? How about Aurora Bernardez 
> (Julio Cortazar's wife)--which version does she follow in the those 
> wonderful Spanish translations?
>
> Why should we only have one perspective!
>
> CLS
>
> -- 
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>
>
>
<image.tiff>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sun Apr 29 16:38:20 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 19:38:20 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <B6AF318F-F6A8-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
References: <001a01c78aa5$dad35b70$1b7a4a55@lacan>
	<B6AF318F-F6A8-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <20070429233824.TYXD485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 16:54:27 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:54:27 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <20070429233824.TYXD485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <F72CB970-F6AC-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

No, it is not up for interpretation, for the reasons I have given.

> He has just been talking of Justine in 1.9.  And he goes on to talk 
> about her in 1.11.  It is one continuous progression of sightings 
> leading up to their meeting at the Atelier.

And if it was not already clear enough, Durrell made it even clearer by 
adding 'Justine'.

:Michael



On Monday, April 30, 2007, at 12:38  am, william godshalk wrote:

>
>
> It seems odd that one should rely on the Dutton editions when Durrell 
> was working with Faber.? The Dutton editions are likely to contain 
> errors not of the author's or original editor's making, which if one 
> likes that sort of ambiguity and indeterminacy then fine, but it is 
> not original to the work.? They also preserve, as we see, earlier 
> errors that were corrected by the author.? Always best to work with 
> the material over which the author has had control.
>
>
>
> But in the Faber -- and I now have a first impression with a first 
> impression dust jacket -- the woman in the white sandals is not 
> identified. Without the narrator's identification, the identity of the 
> woman is up for interpretation. I think.
>
> WLG
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Sun Apr 29 16:55:30 2007
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:55:30 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
Message-ID: <18365014.1177890930434.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>



-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Haag <michaelhaag at btinternet.com>
>Sent: Apr 29, 2007 4:24 PM
>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
>
>It seems odd that one should rely on the Dutton editions when Durrell 
>was working with Faber.  The Dutton editions are likely to contain 
>errors not of the author's or original editor's making, which if one 
>likes that sort of ambiguity and indeterminacy then fine, but it is not 
>original to the work.  They also preserve, as we see, earlier errors 
>that were corrected by the author.  Always best to work with the 
>material over which the author has had control.
>
>:Michael
>
                           * * * * *

Durrell wrote very fast and admitted he made mistakes.  So, I agree with Haag's methodology.  I prefer to work with the text closest to the author's intent -- and that usually means the last one he or she personally revised.  Admittedly, the problems can be complex, but it avoid situations, such as what happened when Hans Walter Gabler came up with his "corrected text" of Ulysses in 1986, where an editor takes too much upon himself and thinks he knows more than the author does.  All this is a variant on my email of long ago where I argued credit goes to the author, and I fully expect this will satisfy no one who likes multiplicity.

Bruce

From bskordil at otenet.gr  Sun Apr 29 17:01:12 2007
From: bskordil at otenet.gr (Beatrice Skordili)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:01:12 +0300
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
References: <B6AF318F-F6A8-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
Message-ID: <008301c78aba$ac1dc210$1b7a4a55@lacan>

Michael,

I defer to Charles' authority on the editions here. He assured me at some point in time that the Dutton's are essentially a reprint of the original four volume Faber. As for "errors" in the original edition: In a book which makes a big deal about "mistakes" and "slips" and the truths they reveal, I would be very careful about what I designate as errors or not. Finally, from what I have been able to establish, the "mistakes" that Durrell "corrects" in the Faber 1962 could hardly be called "errors." In fact, they are so deliberately calculated to introduce new levels of ambiguity on close examination that they are downright disingenuous. Finally, didn't Durrell want to complicate the issue of control, to defeat the ego? I would think, given the above, I am after all closer to Durrell's "original intention" whatever that means in this particular case!

Beatrice
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Haag 
  To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
  Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:24 AM
  Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine


  It seems odd that one should rely on the Dutton editions when Durrell was working with Faber. The Dutton editions are likely to contain errors not of the author's or original editor's making, which if one likes that sort of ambiguity and indeterminacy then fine, but it is not original to the work. They also preserve, as we see, earlier errors that were corrected by the author. Always best to work with the material over which the author has had control.

  :Michael


  On Sunday, April 29, 2007, at 10:32 pm, Beatrice Skordili wrote:


    Well, Charles, I always use the Dutton four volume first and only to check to see differences in the one volume Faber (1962). I have not checked any of the other variants. But, I don't have the Faber handy right now, so obviously I have missed all the additional Justine references. However, what you say about the open-ended effects of the first editions agrees well with an argument I have been making (based solely on the difference between the two versions I have been using), that Durrell engaged in a radical program of "sanitizing" his text in the later version, eliminating ambiguities, destroying the play of the footnotes in Justine (1957), and in all manner of ways (some of which I have engaged with quite extensively in my diss.). I have not checked the Greek version at all--or the Spanish one for that matter.
        Although I love my Dutton and determined that it would be my definitive text a long time ago, I have found that the revisions--while "sanitizing" the 1962 text--prolong the play of ambiguity on a different level when the Quartet versions are looked at collectively. Nevertheless, I leave to you the painstaking work of collating the different versions. It takes the kind of nerves and patience I do not possess. In the end, while D. was certainly in love with creating a certain quantum flux on the level of versions, he also did a hell of a lot with what he actually left unchanged between versions.
        I will have to look at the passages you quote in the Faber, when I have the opportunity. I still think, nevertheless, that the intention is to mention one woman's name while really talking about the other! Be that as it may, I do stand corrected in some sense. It's just that Bill's post jarred my own impression of the text.
        The thing is there is a million things mentioned everyday in the posts that I feel I have something to say about. For instance, the olives issue (how can the olives be forgotten when they are a constant reference in D. since Prospero's Cell?). Here, I'll throw something out: What does Justine do with the olive-pit from the Orvieto olive that she eats? Or the "dirty sink"--I'll answer: Justine, Melissa, and Clea all stand before a dirty sink (two of them with a foetus inside) at some point! The pace with which the posts appear is staggering. I really can't follow!
        Glad to hear from you, Charles!
     
    Beatrice
     
    P.S. Sorry for messing up the numbering!
     
    ----- Original Message -----

    From: slighcl
    To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
    Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:42 PM
    Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine

    Beata Beatrix!  I am excited about your post.  It raises some basic issues--not only of reading and interpretation--but also of the textual-bibliographical history of the Quartet.

    You write that:


    The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa. The woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals" "yawning" is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from her afternoon nap, because she works at night.

    I agree about the indeterminacy of the women and how they shade into each other like mirages--like Alex seen from the sea upon approach.  Bill Godshalk and I have been talking about that indeterminacy for several years now.  Perhaps Jamie can pull our old postings from 2003 so we will not repeat too much? 

    But in short your observation--and it is helpful and acute in itself!--must take us to asking, what text of Justine you are using?

    ? All early Fabers (1957 - 1962) will leave the flux and indeterminacy open, letting you interpret that woman in 1.10 as perhaps being Melissa.  After all, Melissa has been colored as an "afternoon" presence in 1.4, the section with a little "coloured stall" with its ices.

    ? All post-1962 Faber Justine printings will follow the single volume additions and corrections, where that line reads:

    "This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my balcony I catch an unexpected glimpse of her walking idly towards the town in her white sandals, still half asleep.  Justine!" (1.10)

    ? You write again that

    Only at 1.10 starting "I have had many glimpses of her" does the narrator start describing Justine.

    Here I think that you mean 1.11, but again your post brings out the differences in the text.  The 1957 Faber does read "many such glimpses of her"; the 1962 reads "many such glimpses of Justine."

    The differences, Beatrice, as you already know from our old conversations in Cincinatti & Corfu & from your own writings, makes a "world" of difference for how the reader experiences these first glimpses of Alex and her women.  Both the 1957 and 1962 versions of Justine are legitimate and represents LD's method in the particular historical moment.   Both need preserving in the record--they are "possible" Justines.  But I for one will always enjoy the open possibilities of the 1957-1962 printings.  (American Dutton/Penguin printings are based on the earliest available plates, so they persist with the indeterminacy.) I have been asking for a long time why LD moved to isolate and specify the women.  As a reader who has learned a great deal about reading among indeterminacies from the Quartet, I would have counseled him otherwise.  As an editor, I hold on to the historical differences.

    So what text are you reading from these days, Beatrice?  And while we are talking, what text does the Greek translator follow?--or (here to Marc) what did the French translator use?  How about Aurora Bernardez (Julio Cortazar's wife)--which version does she follow in the those wonderful Spanish translations?

    Why should we only have one perspective!

    CLS

    -- 
    **********************
    Charles L. Sligh
    Department of English
    Wake Forest University
    slighcl at wfu.edu
    **********************




  <image.tiff>





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From bskordil at otenet.gr  Sun Apr 29 17:14:47 2007
From: bskordil at otenet.gr (Beatrice Skordili)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:14:47 +0300
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com><09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
	<46350345.20408@wfu.edu><001a01c78aa5$dad35b70$1b7a4a55@lacan>
	<20070429231703.TXDB485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <00b601c78abc$900a0910$1b7a4a55@lacan>

Always delightful, dear Bill, in finessing a point!

What I meant was when an author takes such care in disposing olive-pits, something is up, something that has to do both with the provenance of the vase as well as the olive!

But, I'd better stop before I am "sanitized" out of this list along with some of Durrell's most interesting effects!

Beatrice
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: william godshalk 
  To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
  Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 2:17 AM
  Subject: Re: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine


     Here, I'll throw something out: What does Justine do with th olive-pit from the Orvieto olive that she eats? asks Beatrice.


  Justine pauses "to transfer her olive-pit from the pocket of her coat to a Chinese vase"  when she gets him home.

  I too think about that olive-pit and wonder who cleans the vases. Probably not Justine -- though she does darn old pullovers.

  WLG


  ***************************************
  W. L. Godshalk           *
  Department of English         *
  University of Cincinnati            Stellar disorder  *
  Cincinnati OH 45221-0069      *
  513-281-5927
  *************************************** 


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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Sun Apr 29 17:30:33 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:30:33 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <008301c78aba$ac1dc210$1b7a4a55@lacan>
References: <B6AF318F-F6A8-11DB-8C6A-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>
	<008301c78aba$ac1dc210$1b7a4a55@lacan>
Message-ID: <463538A9.8010804@wfu.edu>



On 4/29/2007 8:01 PM, Beatrice Skordili wrote:

> Michael,
>  
> I defer to Charles' authority on the editions here. He assured me at 
> some point in time that the Dutton's are essentially a reprint of the 
> original four volume Faber. As for "errors" in the original edition: 
> In a book which makes a big deal about "mistakes" and "slips" and the 
> truths they reveal, I would be very careful about what I designate as 
> errors or not.


 Beatrice: the Dutton /Justine /is printed off of plates akin to--but 
not identical with--the Faber first/first.  As I pointed out in that 
paper at Cincinnati, LD sent Faber a list of "muck ups."  (The list is 
at SIU-Carbondale.) One or two of those errors Faber had already caught 
before printing Justine first/first. The rest make it into the Faber 
texts a few impressions later.  Dutton never got around to making things 
right, and Penguin has no economic incentive to make them tamper with 
the text.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From godshawl at email.uc.edu  Sun Apr 29 18:07:48 2007
From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:07:48 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine: intention
In-Reply-To: <18365014.1177890930434.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.
	earthlink.net>
References: <18365014.1177890930434.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20070430010822.UHYZ485.gx5.fuse.net@bill-hdl5a49h32.email.uc.edu>


>Bruce writes:
>  "I prefer to work with the text closest to the author's intent -- 
> and that usually means the last one he or she personally revised."

First, can we know an author's intention? Michael tells us that 
authors lie when they are interviewed. And even authors do not have 
conscious access to their subconscious intentions.

If we establish intent from analysis of the writing, then we have to 
deal with the problem of conflicting analyses.

Some writers distinguish between creative writing and secondary 
editing. The author's second thoughts are merely editorial changes 
after the fire of primary creation.

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 29 18:21:11 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:21:11 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <18365014.1177890930434.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <18365014.1177890930434.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <46354487.9040503@wfu.edu>

On 4/29/2007 7:55 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

>All this is a variant on my email of long ago where I argued credit goes to the author, and I fully expect this will satisfy no one who likes multiplicity.
>
We know each other too well, I think, Bruce.  Yes, my friend, I hear 
your point, and accept your methods as a reader of LD who feels he must 
choose a single text, but as a bibliographer who must work with the 
ethic of a historian, I can no more elide LD "intentions" in 1957 any 
more than I can elevate his "intentions" in 1962.   He "intended" both 
versions.  The typescripts prove he "intended" a certain reading of 
/Justine /1.10 before publishing in 1957.  The revisions prove he 
"intended" another version of 1.10 in 1962.   Both are important parts 
of the historical record. 

Another example: I greatly admire Wolpe's jacket and binding designs for 
the individual Faber issues of the novels in the /Quartet/.  I even 
think that you can present "readings" of the /Quartet /through the 
bibliographical codes advertised in the look of the jackets, the 
binding, and the typeface chosen.  But if I insist on strict 
intentionalism, I would have to say that those resources are invalidated 
by the move LD made to a single volume 1962 /Quartet /or the 
paper-covered editions springing from that revision.  All of those 
various printings contain special histories, meanings.  I will leave it 
to the Vatican to decide where the "/imprimi potest/" can be stamped, 
which books to suppress or to approve.  We do not need more police.

Certainly, if I were writing thorough literary criticism on LD--please 
recall, I my interest is instead archaeological, textual--I would make 
the choice to use the Fabers, post 1962.  But to be conscientious I 
would also keep an eye on the author's movement's in his texts and admit 
those variants for my reader's consideration where they revealed the 
author having second thoughts or redrawing his work.  A historian of 
texts can do no less. 

None of this is "postmodernism," a word that I do not espouse or believe 
in.  And what happened with /Ulysses /is a separate matter, something 
that no longer needs to happen, given our recent gains in technology.  I 
am not for imposing 1962 or 1957--or the notebooks or the typescripts, 
for that matter--and conflating them into a "definitive text," while not 
forbidden, simply distorts the text according to the local view of an 
editor.   Instead, I look ahead to a time when all of those different 
texts of /Justine /will be available to readers and scholars as starting 
points.  For LD it will be many, many, many years from now, 
post-copyright and in a different archival moment that may seem 
impossible at present, but digital archiving will give us more access, 
less institutional policing.  It is already starting today, and I have 
already helped to initiate the change with my colleagues at /The 
Rossetti Archive/ (http://www.rossettiarchive.org/index.html).  That 
case--in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a maligned and forgotten and 
politically inconvenient author makes a sudden renascence after many 
years in exile--may in fact be a very good model for what can recuperate 
LD following what may be many years of declining readership.   In DGR's 
case, he has gone from one of the least available poets to now quite 
arguably the most available--the /Archive /now offers about 17,000 
digital scans of his printed works, manuscripts, and pictorial works, 
all annotated and transcribed and searchable.  Tennyson, Browning, 
Shakespeare &c. have no where near that availability for any variety of 
reasons--Shakespeare simply doesn't remain extant in the way that a 
nineteenth-century writer like DGR or a twentieth-century writer like 
LD, both of whom came after romanticism changed the way we think about 
authors and hold on to their mss and archival record--but most 
especially because the institutions owning those authors' core documents 
and the scholars overseeing those authors' criticism have not availed 
themselves of a new resource which they suspect and avoid.  Control, 
power, money--libraries, museums, and universities see the change 
coming.  Yes, the art of reading and the practice of scholarship will 
change in ways that all of us old-timers will not be able to understand 
and may not be comfortable with.  But then reading changed with Gutenberg.

Remember, none of what I am saying here precludes reading for 
"intention."  That is still an available strategy and, if rigorously and 
continuously self-monitored, may bear fruit as it has in the past.

CLS

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Sun Apr 29 14:18:16 2007
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:18:16 +0200
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <46350345.20408@wfu.edu>
References: <24126568-F5F4-11DB-AF53-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>	<09f701c78a87$7c262080$e2ddcb57@lacan>
	<46350345.20408@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <46350B98.7010405@interdesign.fr>

Please excuse me for being very basic: how can 
anyone say that the "narator" played tricks on the 
reader??? 1. the narator is LD himself. 2. It is a 
novel that intrigues the reader and holds him/her 
in suspense. Surely this is not "tricking" but a 
great writing tallent???
It seems to me that anyone who feels tricked, is 
very pretentious! Or is it something else that I 
don"t understand?
Marc Piel

slighcl wrote:

> Beata Beatrix!  I am excited about your post.  It raises some basic 
> issues--not only of reading and interpretation--but also of the 
> textual-bibliographical history of the Quartet.
> 
> You write that:
> 
>>     The narrator plays tricks on the reader. A couple of times in the
>>     beginning he mentions Justine, but he goes on to discuss Melissa.
>>     The woman "walking idly towards the town in her white sandals"
>>     "yawning" is not Justine, but Melissa who has just woken up from
>>     her afternoon nap, because she works at night.
> 
> I agree about the indeterminacy of the women and how they shade into 
> each other like mirages--like Alex seen from the sea upon approach.  
> Bill Godshalk and I have been talking about that indeterminacy for 
> several years now.  Perhaps Jamie can pull our old postings from 2003 so 
> we will not repeat too much? 
> 
> But in short your observation--and it is helpful and acute in 
> itself!--must take us to asking, what text of Justine you are using?
> 
>     *
> 
>               All early Fabers (1957 - 1962) will leave the flux and
>               indeterminacy open, letting you interpret that woman in
>               1.10 as perhaps being Melissa.  After all, Melissa has
>               been colored as an "afternoon" presence in 1.4, the
>               section with a little "coloured stall" with its ices.
> 
>     *
> 
>               All post-1962 Faber Justine printings will follow the
>               single volume additions and corrections, where that line
>               reads:
> 
>                   "This is the hour least easy to bear, when from my
>                   balcony I catch an unexpected glimpse of her walking
>                   idly towards the town in her white sandals, still half
>                   asleep.  Justine!" (1.10)
> 
>                 + You write again that
> 
>>                   Only at 1.10 starting "I have had many glimpses of
>>                   her" does the narrator start describing Justine.
> 
>                   Here I think that you mean 1.11, but again your post
>                   brings out the differences in the text.  The 1957
>                   Faber does read "many such glimpses of her"; the 1962
>                   reads "many such glimpses of Justine."
> 
> The differences, Beatrice, as you already know from our old 
> conversations in Cincinatti & Corfu & from your own writings, makes a 
> "world" of difference for how the reader experiences these first 
> glimpses of Alex and her women.  Both the 1957 and 1962 versions of 
> Justine are legitimate and represents LD's method in the particular 
> historical moment.   Both need preserving in the record--they are 
> "possible" Justines.  But I for one will always enjoy the open 
> possibilities of the 1957-1962 printings.  (American Dutton/Penguin 
> printings are based on the earliest available plates, so they persist 
> with the indeterminacy.) I have been asking for a long time why LD moved 
> to isolate and specify the women.  As a reader who has learned a great 
> deal about reading among indeterminacies from the Quartet, I would have 
> counseled him otherwise.  As an editor, I hold on to the historical 
> differences.
> 
> So what text are you reading from these days, Beatrice?  And while we 
> are talking, what text does the Greek translator follow?--or (here to 
> Marc) what did the French translator use?  How about Aurora Bernardez 
> (Julio Cortazar's wife)--which version does she follow in the those 
> wonderful Spanish translations?
> 
> Why should we only have one perspective!
> 
> 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  Sun Apr 29 19:55:20 2007
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:55:20 -0600
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <18365014.1177890930434.JavaMail.root@elwamui-ovcar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <C25AB6B8.C24B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>

Bruce writes (in response to Beatrice and Michael):

> I prefer to work with the text closest to the author's
> intent -- and that usually means the last one he or she
> personally revised.

I must admit that I like multiplicity, but to offer a more ridiculous
example, what of Milan Kundera?  He's known for taking back the text after
the reader has it, and then he insists on changes.  Why?  Because he's the
author, and it's his text, and he'll do what he likes with it...  Notably,
he also hates the archive, or for that matter, anything that restricts his
autonomy, such as history or memory.  If he had his way, every previous
version of works would be rounded up, burned, and replaced by his newest
ideas about it.  Perfectly revisionist, in many respects (just see his
latest column in the Guardian).

Between the two extremes -- the revisionist author versus the 'dead' author
-- how do we read Durrell?  I would personally like to know each state of
the text, from Faber's first, the Duttons, through to the omnibus.  Are not
some of the changes too superfluous to not call our attention to the fact of
variants in a book all about texts?

But here's the rub...  We don't need to exclude any of these options in
order to have them all.  Durrell was fully aware of how editors watch
variant editions, as his early thoughts on the Hamlet bad Quarto or his
UNESCO lectures on Shakespeare show.  With any author who knew each of these
variants would slumber on in the archive, I don't think we need to choose
between the omnipotent or the multiplicitous author.  The perfect option for
the author is to have his reader purchase each edition and each variant...

And, I think this is Beatrice's point.  The changes are variations in 'space
time,' so to speak, such as the objects that precipitate drama around them
(a watch key, a 'fingerstall,' eh Beatrice...), and the changes between
editions are not just revisions.  They are revisions that require we know
each variant, not simply replace the old with the new.  That said, I prefer
to move from the Fabers to the Dutton (and Cardinal) through to the omnibus
edition

But, I suspect Beatrice could say something more meaningful about this than
I could, and Michael would know more about the revision process itself.  I
do, however, think it provides an accommodation to Bruce's worry over the
author's intentions -- I this case, we need all the multiplicity to approach
the intentions or even just the text...

Best,
Jamie



From slighcl at wfu.edu  Sun Apr 29 20:23:13 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:23:13 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG 1.6 -- the narrator meets Justine
In-Reply-To: <C25AB6B8.C24B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
References: <C25AB6B8.C24B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <46356121.9040002@wfu.edu>

On a last note of self-deprecation, I send LD's own commentary about 
textual critics.  He penned the poem some years before publishing 
/Justine/.  "The Man with a Message" is only 57.96% ironic here 
according to my analysis. 

Durrell, Lawrence:  THE CRITICS [from Collected Poems: 1931-1974 (1985), 
Faber and Faber]

They never credit us
With being bad enough
The boys that come to edit us:
Of simply not caring when a prize,
Something for nothing, comes our way,
A wife, a mistress, or a holiday
 From People living neckfast in their lies.

No: Shakespear's household bills
Could never be responsible, they say,
For all the heartbreak and the 1,000 ills
His work is heir to, poem, sonnet, play ...
Emended readings give the real reason:
The times were out of joint, the loves, the season.

Man With A Message---how could you forget
To read your proofs, the heartache and the fret?
The copier or the printer
Must take the blame for it in all
The variants they will publish by the winter.

'By elision we quarter suffering.' Too true.
'From images and scansion can be learned.' ...
Yet under it perhaps may be discerned
A something else afoot---a Thing
Lacking both precedent and name and gender:
An uncreated Weight which left its clue,
Making him run up bills,
Making him violent or distrait or tender:
Leaving for Stratford might have heard It say:
'Tell them I won't be back on Saturday.
My wife will understand I'm on a bender.'

And to himself muttering, muttering: 'Words
Added to words multiply the space
Between this feeling and my expressing It.
The wires get far too hot. Time smoulders
Like a burning rug. I will be free.' ...

And all the time from the donkey's head
The lover is whispering: 'This is not
What I imagined as Reality.
If truth were needles surely eyes would see?'

1948/1948

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From slighcl at wfu.edu  Sun Apr 29 20:49:07 2007
From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 23:49:07 -0400
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine -- "pegamoid" words, words, words
In-Reply-To: <C25AB6B8.C24B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
References: <C25AB6B8.C24B%odos.fanourios@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <46356733.4090809@wfu.edu>

"He is a pegamoid sloth of a man" (1.12).  LD really does give us 
pockets full of new words in these opening pages.  In order to reassure 
all of those readers who kept note cards of unknown words from their 
first reading of /Justine/, here follows all 50 words that LD's novel 
contributed to the /Oxford English Dictionary/.   For comparison, 
Woolf's /To the Lighthouse/ is referenced 46 times. 

It pleases me that the "great car" and Scobie and Pursewarden make the 
list.  The inconsistent dating for LD's novel is more problematic:

1  1607   *desireless*, a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 84 As for me I was 
cons
2   c725   *horn*, n. 1957 L.     Durrell Justine ii. 141 The same night, on
3   1511    *hub*1  1957 L.     Durrell Justine 27 The great silver Rolls
4   1838    *invert*, n.            1957 L.     Durrell Justine ii. 96 
At least the invert
5   c1175    *John            *1957 L.     Durrell Justine 249 She had 
neatly tied hi
6   1855    *kinetic*, a. (n.)            1957 L.     Durrell Justine 
ii. 134 It was these very
7   1793    *manhole*, n.            1957 L.     Durrell Justine iv. 
227, I stepped into th
8   1854   * mariage de convenance*, n.            1957 L.     Durrell 
Justine iv. 235 Someone trapped in
9    1877   *mari complaisant*, n.            1958 L.     Durrell 
Justine 1. 29 She was reputed to h
10  c1330  *marvellous *| marvelous, a., adv., and n.            1956 L. 
    Durrell Justine i. 18 A door had suddenly
11 1340 *measure*, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 24 Reflecting on this h
12 OE *miss*, v.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 210 People only see i
13 1530 *mission*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 113 The mission of the
14 1570 *model*, n. and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 34 He had a model 
of th
15 1474 *mordant*, a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 212 His view of thing
16 1528 *mumchance*, n. and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 133 For my 
part I rema
17 1957 *mutil?*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 187 His expression be
18 OE *open*, v. 1956 L. Durrell Justine iii, I am about to say som
19 1191 *pack*, n.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 180 Justine .. would
20 1662 *palatable*, a. 1956 L. Durrell Justine i, Excuses which might mak
21 ?a1425 *palpitation*, n. 1956 L. Durrell Justine i, In autumn the 
female ba
22 1340 *pearl*, n.1 and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 13 A sky of hot 
nude pe
23 1895 *pegamoid*, n. and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 21 He is a 
pegamoid slo
24 ?a1425 *penetration*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 185 The whole 
portent
25 c1460 *personage*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 134 It was these very
26 1874* petit mal*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 160 An occasional hea
27 c1230 *plaint*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 43 Professional mourner
28 c1387 *poignant*, adj. 1956 L. Durrell Justine ii. 134 By the bed the ric
29 1581 *pole*, v.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 215 Faraj is out poli
30 1601 *potentia *1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 75 Life, the new materi
31 re-, *prefix *1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 199 The resonance of
32 13.. *recover*, v.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iv. 233 It is strange when
33 1685 *refugee*, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 39 You are a mental ref
34 1760 *rictus *1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 107 This ghastly rictu
35 1752 *scene-shifter *1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 102 Quick as a scene-s
36 1579 *scoutmaster*, scout-master 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 124 I've 
done quite a
37 1393 *screen*, n.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 78 It is perhaps what t
38 c1470 *scrimmage*, scrummage, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 185 The 
whole portent
39 1885 *scupper*, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 155 You can help us s
40 1569 *shark*, n.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 183 Now in his ice-sm
41 1847 *smarm*, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 143 He is a complete p
42 1481 *smoulder*, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 69 She seemed to smould
43 a1300 *spit*, n.2 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 37 A spitcurl at each t
44 1857 *spring-cleaning *1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 23 It was thrown away b
45 1908 *strap-hang,* v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 53 Here, where the gene
46 c1400 *substitute*, n. 1956 L. Durrell Justine i. 78 For her we, her love
47 1598 *tarot *1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 180 Justine .. would
48 1885 *ushabti *1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 57 The air was all at o
49 1796 *vicariously*, adv. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 127 Those 
interminable
50 1909 *voulu*, a. (n.) 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 132 The idea is not sp





-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 20:57:02 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 04:57:02 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine -- "pegamoid" words, words, words
In-Reply-To: <46356733.4090809@wfu.edu>
Message-ID: <DA5E819A-F6CE-11DB-9415-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

Surely these are not new words, simply Durrell being cited to support 
definitions.

:Michael



On Monday, April 30, 2007, at 04:49  am, slighcl wrote:

> "He is a pegamoid sloth of a man" (1.12).? LD really does give us 
> pockets full of new words in these opening pages.? In order to 
> reassure all of those readers who kept note cards of unknown words 
> from their first reading of Justine, here follows all 50 words that 
> LD's novel contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary.?? For 
> comparison, Woolf's To the Lighthouse is referenced 46 times.?
>
> It pleases me that the "great car" and Scobie and Pursewarden make the 
> list.? The inconsistent dating for LD's novel is more problematic:
>
> 1? 1607?? desireless, a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 84 As for me I was 
> cons
> 2 ? c725?? horn, n. 1957 L. ??? Durrell Justine ii. 141 The same 
> night, on
> 3 ? 1511??? hub1? 1957 L. ??? Durrell Justine 27 The great silver Rolls
> 4 ? 1838??? invert, n.??? ??? ??? 1957 L. ??? Durrell Justine ii. 96 
> At least the invert
> 5 ? c1175??? John??? ??? ??? 1957 L. ??? Durrell Justine 249 She had 
> neatly tied hi
> 6 ? 1855??? kinetic, a. (n.)??? ??? ??? 1957 L. ??? Durrell Justine 
> ii. 134 It was these very
> 7 ? 1793??? manhole, n.??? ??? ??? 1957 L. ??? Durrell Justine iv. 
> 227, I stepped into th
> 8 ? 1854??? mariage de convenance, n.??? ??? ??? 1957 L. ??? Durrell 
> Justine iv. 235 Someone trapped in
> 9 ?? 1877?? mari complaisant, n.??? ??? ??? 1958 L. ??? Durrell 
> Justine 1. 29 She was reputed to h
> 10? c1330? marvellous | marvelous, a., adv., and n.??? ??? ??? 1956 L. 
> ??? Durrell Justine i. 18 A door had suddenly
> 11 1340 measure, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 24 Reflecting on this h
> 12 OE miss, v.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 210 People only see i
> 13 1530 mission, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 113 The mission of the
> 14 1570 model, n. and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 34 He had a model 
> of th
> 15 1474 mordant, a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 212 His view of thing
> 16 1528 mumchance, n. and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 133 For my 
> part I rema
> 17 1957 mutil?, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 187 His expression be
> 18 OE open, v. 1956 L. Durrell Justine iii, I am about to say som
> 19 1191 pack, n.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 180 Justine .. would
> 20 1662 palatable, a. 1956 L. Durrell Justine i, Excuses which might 
> mak
> 21 ?a1425 palpitation, n. 1956 L. Durrell Justine i, In autumn the 
> female ba
> 22 1340 pearl, n.1 and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 13 A sky of hot 
> nude pe
> 23 1895 pegamoid, n. and a. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 21 He is a 
> pegamoid slo
> 24 ?a1425 penetration, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 185 The whole 
> portent
> 25 c1460 personage, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 134 It was these 
> very
> 26 1874 petit mal, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 160 An occasional 
> hea
> 27 c1230 plaint, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 43 Professional mourner
> 28 c1387 poignant, adj. 1956 L. Durrell Justine ii. 134 By the bed the 
> ric
> 29 1581 pole, v.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 215 Faraj is out poli
> 30 1601 potentia 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 75 Life, the new materi
> 31 re-, prefix 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 199 The resonance of
> 32 13.. recover, v.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iv. 233 It is strange when
> 33 1685 refugee, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 39 You are a mental ref
> 34 1760 rictus 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 107 This ghastly rictu
> 35 1752 scene-shifter 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 102 Quick as a 
> scene-s
> 36 1579 scoutmaster, scout-master 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 124 I've 
> done quite a
> 37 1393 screen, n.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 78 It is perhaps what t
> 38 c1470 scrimmage, scrummage, n. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 185 The 
> whole portent
> 39 1885 scupper, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 155 You can help us s
> 40 1569 shark, n.1 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 183 Now in his ice-sm
> 41 1847 smarm, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 143 He is a complete p
> 42 1481 smoulder, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 69 She seemed to smould
> 43 a1300 spit, n.2 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 37 A spitcurl at each t
> 44 1857 spring-cleaning 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 23 It was thrown 
> away b
> 45 1908 strap-hang, v. 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 53 Here, where the 
> gene
> 46 c1400 substitute, n. 1956 L. Durrell Justine i. 78 For her we, her 
> love
> 47 1598 tarot 1957 L. Durrell Justine iii. 180 Justine .. would
> 48 1885 ushabti 1957 L. Durrell Justine i. 57 The air was all at o
> 49 1796 vicariously, adv. 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 127 Those 
> interminable
> 50 1909 voulu, a. (n.) 1957 L. Durrell Justine ii. 132 The idea is not 
> sp
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> **********************
> 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
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From michaelhaag at btinternet.com  Sun Apr 29 21:14:23 2007
From: michaelhaag at btinternet.com (Michael Haag)
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:14:23 +0100
Subject: [ilds] RG Justine 1.10 variants
Message-ID: <46FEAA5E-F6D1-11DB-9415-000393B1149C@btinternet.com>

It is certainly true that the Faber one-volume Alexandria Quartet of 
1962 was more than a correction of errors.  It was a revision.  It was 
Durrell's first chance to look back at the whole and to make 
adjustments, clarifications, tie up loose ends, etc.  The motivation 
was to make the conception as one and as seamless as possible, with 
hindsight.  I am quite happy with it.  And I am quite happy with the 
first edition, first impression of the Faber Justine.  And I am quite 
happy with the fourth impression of the first edition of the Faber 
Justine, where apart from correcting obvious mistakes and printer's 
errors, Durrell begins the process he completes in the 1962 omnibus 
edition of burying his early tracks.  Each one is of its moment.  And 
in fact I admire Durrell more for discovering how he works, how he 
feels his way and improvises and arrives at something brilliant or 
so-so as the case may be.

What I am not happy with is the imputation of ambiguity where there is 
none.

:Michael