[ilds] Somewhere

[Bruce Redwine]

An important observation, Charles.  Where does "somewhere" reside?  Or why Durrell's emphasis upon somewhere, especially as used in Justine?  I would suggest that your "key" is not musical, but metaphorical, an entry into Durrell's imagination.  I don't read either Durrell's Corfu or his Rhodes as actual places, and Gideon's notebooks are not real either, given that Gideon himself is fiction.

As to the Middleton epigraph, that seems plain enough and descriptive of Durrell's situation on Rhodes.  He was an "exile" of sorts.  I'm wondering if "Alvarez" is a Spanish name with an Arabic origin.  "Al," an Arabic article, would suggest that.  But this could be a false etymology.  But if not, the Arabic may have struck Durrell as appropriate, given his prior circumstances.


Bruce

-----Original Message-----
>From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
>Sent: Jun 2, 2008 1:41 PM
>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: [ilds] Reflections on a Marine Venus -- 1

>Second, I will note that this book--like /Prospero's Cell/--opens in the 
>key of "SOMEWHERE."  That is a remarkable way to begin a "book of 
>place," I think. 
>
>"Somewhere" is a peculiar sort of flourish, I think, granting a kind of 
>suspensive poise among or between different places and things and states 
>of being.  And then I recall the incessant "somewhere-ness" of 
>/Justine/.  Try the word search here at Amazon, which will serve us as a 
>digital concordance:
>
>        http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0571203973/ref=sib_dp_pt/103-6141751-2435800#reader-link
>
>Charles