[ilds] Chains of memory

[Denise Tart & David Green]

I can't help but read that with my mind straying to Darley on the island
 at the beginning of /Justine/ struggling with his chains of memory,
 which threaten to drag him beneath the surface.  I've been re-reading
 Skordili's work on time, space, and narrative at the moment as well, and
 I can't help but see a 'portentous pattern' emerging in LD's works...


James,

I perceive the course you lay. Durrell wrote out of his own life experience; 
method writing if you like - live it first, write about it later through the 
prism or indeed chain of memory - or the theatrical distortion of memory. 
Many writers do this. They essentially fictionalise their own lives. In 
Durrell's island books there are 'real' characters who appear with their own 
consent and other who are plausible fictions. All tell the story the writer 
wants to tell. my feeling is all LD's prose fiction is of this type; an 
experience lived, notes taken, characters remembered and adapted later, 
memories recalled through a glass darkly or indeed brightly in the case of 
chardonnay on a summer's day (Island Books). The prism or chain of memory is 
a creative filter, not an hinderance but I guess it was hard work at times.

"Gideon (Durrell), I discovered, was reading an account of the Aegean travel 
published in the eighties of the last century by an eccentric divine, the 
Rev. Fanshawe Tozer, whose writings were to amuse and delight us so much 
afterwards."

or

"to read Gideon (Durrell co wrote his reports) on Beet was a new literary 
experience. Everyone was pleased except the Brigadier, who pronounced 
Gideon's style abominable and refused to grant him his majority until he had 
read and studied Swift."

Ouch! the big knock back. While in Rhodes Durrell was seriously angling for 
a promotion.

In these exerpts I love the interplay of British Kharki stiffness and 
classical learning. The soldier Poet? - The Elizabethan ideal, and LD loved 
his Elizabethans.

LD Meets the British Military and discovers they are not not so boorish 
afterall. Experience remembered and embellished, a story told.

DG


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

+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au