[ilds] Reflections on a Marine Venus -- 1

[slighcl]

I have been toying with the fancy that /Reflections /serves a "hinge" 
between Durrell's "Epilogue in Alexandria" (/Prospero's Cell/) and the 
opening episodes of /Justine/.

Of course, /Reflections /is literally just that--a book by means of 
which Durrell made the passage from /Prospero's Cell /to /Justine/. 

There are interesting stylistic differences.  /Prospero's Cell/ and 
/Justine /find Durrell using the journal / episodic mode to report on a 
/mélange/ of sensations, ideas, and memory, whereas /Reflections /runs a 
steady course between points of adventure.  Still, in /Reflections 
/Durrell does interpose little samplings from Gideon's note-books and 
some other letters and jottings and "reports". . . .

But there are other moments when, if I carry the "Epilogue" to 
/Prospero's Cell/ and /Justine /lightly there in the back of my mind, I 
am getting uncanny echoes and refractions of those familiar moments and 
phrases.

As Durrell bids farewell to "E" and Alexandria as he is leaving, for 
example, he finds "the upper town dissolved in soft pearl and gold."  
Immediate recollection for me of the "sky of hot nude pearl" in 
/Justine/.  Perhaps that is also the magnetic attraction of the "E" 
figure drawing out the semblance, looking ahead to her later avatars 
Justine and Claudia?

Then there are disparate phrases and descriptions--"with the suddenness 
of an axe falling"--ships turning in the oily harbor. . . .

C&c.

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