[ilds] Burgess and Durrell (and Cortázar)

Wed Feb 20 07:56:49 PST 2008

James -

Will dig out the Rushdie reference later; am at work right now - at a music company. Ah, Charles has  beaten me to it, I see from the latest posting.

What you are saying about polyphony and rhythm in Durrell makes sense to me. I also think some of Durrell's prose-poetry flights could be compared to jazz improvisations - daring solos that take off without a clear sense of how they are going to resolve, inspired by the sound as well as the sense, shaping the idea as it flows and, sometimes, crash-landing. Nothing risked, nothing gained.

I know that the Alexandria Quartet was much admired by UK jazz musicians. There's even a recording, isn't there, of Durrell reading with London jazz players. The bassist Jeff Clyne mentioned it to me long ago.

Cortázar's books are full of jazz. Burgess loved Duke Ellington (and in his autobiography reccords a conversation with Ellington in which Duke spoke of his affection for Constant Lambert and William Walton)...

Burgess was a musician who almost accidentally stumbled into recognition as a fiction writer, and who continued to toy with the application of musical structure to literature, at least at the blueprint level for his books. Durrell's altogether more impulsive and intuitive, but a singer, just the same.

Best

Steve

Steve Lake
Production/Licensing
ECM Records/Verlag GmbH
Pasinger Str. 94
82166 Gräfelfing
Germany

Tel: (089) 851048-49
Fax: (089) 854 5652

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im Auftrag von James Gifford
Gesendet: 20 February 2008 16:12
An: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Betreff: Re: [ilds] Burgess and Durrell (and Cortázar)

Hello Steve,

Nice observation on the musicality of these 3 writers.  My other field is music (opera), and I'm always curious how a musician's heightened sense of form and (for lack of a better word) 'simultaneity' might influence experimental prose.

I know there's been work on that topic for Burgess, but I must admit I'm not satisfied with the terms 'contrapuntal,' 'fugal,' or 'Baroque' that I've seen applied to Durrell.  I think, however, that he hints at some of these things in his early works where the formal experimentation is a bit more overt and less polished -- he also refers extensively to musical experience and Beethoven's 4th piano concerto for most of a full chapter in _Panic Spring_.

I've just been re-reading Jay Brigham's thoughts on that formal experimentation, and he regards it as casting off chronological development for the sake of placing multiple narratives beside each other.  That 'polyphony' with a semi-musical formal structure for the novel as a whole, next to his ear for the rhythm of a sentence, strike me a distinctly musical qualities.

But, can you tell use more about Rushdie's "Jaguar's Smile"?  I haven't read it, and you've caught my attention!  I only know of one other moment when Rushdie mentions Durrell in passing...

Best,
James

ps: Durrell's sketch for a musical "Ulysses Come Back" is fun, and he clearly had an ear for improvising jazz, though it's not near the scale of Burgess.

Production/Licensing wrote:
> In Salman Rushdie's "The Jaguar's Smile", an account of travels in Nicaragua, the author is surprised when  local writers and poets talk to him about the influence of  Durrell.  It struck me, on reading this, that LD was dispensing 'magical realism' before there was a name for it.
>
> But I am intrigued by these translating connections that link Durrell and Burgess and Cortázar - three writers I like very much and who do seem to me have things in common, including imagination, wanderlust, and a sense for musicality and the shape of a phrase. All three indeed were musicians- Cortázar and Durrell amateurs, Burgess a real composer...and music, transfigured or otherwise, is present in the books. I haven't seen this aspect much explored in writings about these authors.
>
>
> Steve
>
> Steve Lake
> Production/Licensing
> ECM Records/Verlag GmbH
> Pasinger Str. 94
> 82166 Gräfelfing
> Germany
>
> Tel: (089) 851048-49
> Fax: (089) 854 5652
>
>
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im
> Auftrag von James Gifford
> Gesendet: 18 February 2008 22:58
> An: ilds Listserv
> Betreff: [ilds] Burgess and Durrell
>
> Hello all, and Charles in particular,
>
> As we all discovered in December through Charles, Liana Johnson (Anthony Burgess's 2nd wife and long-time lover) was also a Durrell translator in 1959, three years before Burgess wrote _A Clockwork Orange_.
>
> I've just run across this passage in Durrell's _Pied Piper of Lovers_
> (1935) and thought I'd post it for any comments:
>
> "Exquisite. Everything neatly docketed. We are, are we not, the one generation with clockwork guts?  Robot-minded hyper-super-steel and reinforced concrete."
>
> The immediate shift of scene (the next words) move to music and an impromptu performance that elicits much emotion.
>
> The thing I can't recall, and I haven't been able to dig up my copy of _Clockworks Orange_ (perhaps still in Vancouver), is if "clockwork guts"
> ties to F. Alexander's book in Burgess' novel.  It's a stretch, but it's worth considering, and even though I doubt we could prove a connection, the verbal link is suggestive...
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
> James Gifford wrote:
>> Hi Charles,
>>
>> Proof positive -- you can see my iron links in the chain of memory below...
>>
>> ---
>>
>> I have a citation to Italian translations, but none have her name --
>> this appears to be erroneous and leads me to suspect there are more
>> than one Italian translations:
>>
>> http://www.liberonweb.it/Einaudi/ril_durrell.asp
>>
>> There is, however, a potential item here:
>>
>> www.ferraguti.it/download/cataloghi/catalogo%2056.doc
>>
>> It lists the following item for sale:
>>
>> Durrell Lawrence, /Justine/, Longanesi & C., Milano, 1959, ril. ed.,
>> bs., mancante di sovcop., pp. 309. Introduzione di Elémire Zolla. Trad.
>> di Liana Johnson. Collana "La Ginestra" n° 35 € 15,00
>>
>> I'm guessing from some other online postings, so it's not very
>> trustworthy, but it appears to have been reprinted in 1966 as well.
>>
>> Whoa!  UVic has a copy.  I'll report on it tomorrow -- it's in
>> Special Collections, and it does indeed list Liana M. Johnson as the author.
>> It's the 1966 reprint of the 1959 edition.
>>
>> Best,
>> Jamie
>>
>>
>> slighcl wrote:
>>>  >From your listserv wire-service:  All the news that is fit to copy
>>> and paste.
>>>
>>> I would be obliged to any of our Italian subscribers for additional
>>> info on the Durrell translation reported below.  Did the translation
>>> make it into print?  Is it still in print?  So far I have been
>>> unable to find a bibliographical record.
>>>
>>> If the connection proves true, it would mean that wives of two
>>> prominent twentieth-century novelists translated Durrell's
>>> /Quartet/--Anthony Burgess's wife Liana (Italian) and Julio
>>> Cortazar's wife Aurora Bernárdez (Spanish).
>>>
>>> Charles
>>>
>>> ****
>>> Liana Burgess
>>> [obituary]
>>> Telegraph (UK)
>>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/05/db05
>>> 0
>>> 1.xml
>>>
>>> Last Updated: 1:30am GMT 05/12/2007
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