From durrell at telstra.com  Mon Aug 10 15:56:14 2009
From: durrell at telstra.com (BIGPOND ACCOUNT)
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:56:14 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Poem:  "Lawrence Durrell"
In-Reply-To: <786212D2-AE78-4ACC-AF6E-6DDBBC709208@earthlink.net>
References: <32D129F0-1D29-41FA-86E0-F80D78C3B852@earthlink.net>
	<B2FC3C63-4735-4680-8BB7-26EAB3F03095@telstra.com>
	<786212D2-AE78-4ACC-AF6E-6DDBBC709208@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <FCC2C4EA-64F6-4540-8F55-B9EDEA6235E6@telstra.com>

Laconically adroit witnessing,
Rascal, Energetic neurotic.
Contemplative existentialist.
Diving under rational reefs,
Evenings lusting liquers

Sent from my iPhone

On 10/08/2009, at 2:19, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>  
wrote:

> Dr. D.,
>
> Good idea, but I'm no poet, just a lowly critic.  My favorite
> hemistich:  "Bitch bitch bitch!"  Bryant has written a perceptive
> poem, a sad one, which identifies Durrell gifts and problems.  It is a
> "loving tribute," but also an honest one.  I do not, however, find
> most of the poetry, "rather flat," but like Bryant, often wonder,
> "what did it really mean?"  Finally, I just love Bryant's reading ?
> his accent, humor, and cadence.  I append the poem at the end.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
> On Aug 8, 2009, at 5:11 AM, BIGPOND ACCOUNT wrote:
>
>> G'day Bruce....thanks for the youtube link and I propose an
>> international LD poetry competition:
>>
>> "paint a
>>     poetic
>>         portrait
>>           of Lawrence Durrell"
>>
>> The entries can post their entries on you tube and the poem with the
>> highest view score in 3 months will win and collect a painting by
>> Uncle Efps!....the Australian Durrell Society (ADS) will be sure to
>> post a powerful poem and David and I will be hard at work over Shiraz
>> to shape an ode to Uncle Epfs.... Perhaps as the berkeley boy you'd
>> inspire us a little by squeezing a little poem out about our beloved
>> Larry soon.... Hope your well and like to see you on YouTube soon!!
>> Agape
>> AD
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On 08/08/2009, at 8:23, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> YouTube.  Charles Bryant reads his poem on LD.
>>>
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoa4d-aev
>
>
> LAWRENCE DURRELL
>
> by Charles Bryant
>
> Really rather a grubby little man!
> Stink of Gauloises and last night's spilt gin.
> Attempting to be fashionably gay,
> his heart not really in it.
>
> The sirocco was always blowing;
> sometimes the more exotic sharp khamseen;
> the shrubbery packed with cicadas sawing away;
> bougainvillea blooming up the drive.
> Hung over, groping for another drink
> and finding the bottle empty.  Bitch bitch bitch!
>
> His publishers deferential but demanding
> just like the latest mistress, some old biddy
> reeking of the casbah and stale sex.
> The awful poetry:  what did it really mean?
> Endlessly sprawling novels with Latin names.
>
> An ex-pat to his very ex-pat bones
> lounging about Greek islands.  Civil servant
> manqu?; admirer of Cavafy
> and Krafft-Ebbing.  Scobie
> his most glorious creation,
> self-portrait with earth-closet;
> parrot scurrilously quoting the Koran.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Wed Aug 12 09:31:26 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:31:26 -0400
Subject: [ilds] A taste as old as cold water
Message-ID: <4A82EE5E.8030804@utc.edu>

*http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/overseasproperty/6015726/Property-in-Corfu-bottling-the-essence-of-a-fruitful-land.html*
> *Property in Corfu: bottling the essence of a fruitful land
> After three years in Corfu, Keith Miller discovers the joy of 
> producing olive oil.
>
> By Keith Miller
> Published: 3:59PM BST 12 Aug 2009*
> Most people come to Corfu for the abundance of sun, the sparkling sea 
> and some of the most hospitable people on the planet. Yet, what 
> dominates and binds the people living here are the olive trees. Next 
> time you pour olive oil over that fresh Greek salad, stop a moment to 
> look up. You can't miss them. The olive trees. They are everywhere. In 
> fact there are millions of them? three million by some estimates. That 
> comes to about 20 olive trees for every man, woman and child living on 
> the island.
>
> "Dominant in a landscape full of richer greens, the olive is, for the 
> peasants, both a good servant and a hard master," wrote the poet and 
> writer Lawrence Durrell who lived in Corfu and, like many of us, was 
> inspired by the vast groves of olive trees.
>
> When I bought Villa Milos with two acres of land in the north-east of 
> the island I also took ownership of more than 100 olive trees. Three 
> years later I am bottling my own oil.
>
> The harvest, which starts in autumn, is an enchanting time on the island.
>
> The pace is slower, yet the sea still sparkles from the light of a 
> lowering sun. As you drive around the island you can't miss those 
> black nets wrapped around gnarled olive-tree trunks. In autumn they 
> are rolled out to collect the fruit as it falls. It seems everyone 
> participates. So I join in.
>
> Guided along by Yiannis Lampros, the owner of the new garden centre 
> near Avlaki, we started the process of harvesting the olives by hand. 
> Over the next four days we accumulated 246 kilos of fruit. We could 
> have taken 1000 kilos or more, but this is Greece, where being 
> practical is more important than being productive. There was enough 
> oil in those green, purple and black olives to provide both of us with 
> a year's worth of oil.
>
> The olive mill at Sines operates six months of the year. Since 1926 
> the mill has been run as a co-operative with more than 100 local 
> farmers sharing the cost of keeping it operational. This is not 
> high-tech. Electric motors turn thick rubber pulleys that power the 
> machinery. Imagine the surprise when this unknown Anglo with no 
> experience carted 40kg sacks full of olives to the weigh station. The 
> elderly Greek widow dressed all in black gave me a welcoming nod, but 
> never took her eyes off this stranger.
>
> It took about two hours for the olives to be turned to oil. The best 
> oil is achieved by a simple hydraulic press or centrifuge spinning at 
> 3,000rpm.
>
> Petras, the manager, dressed in blue overalls and sporting a patchy 
> dark beard, looked serious as he explained each step of the process. 
> Sorting, washing, crushing and spinning? I followed along as best I 
> could, but he could have been processing moon rocks for all I knew 
> about pressing olives.
>
> To make it simple someone explained: "It operates on the same 
> principle as squeezing fresh orange juice."
>
> As your batch of olives moves through the process of reducing the 
> olive to oil, a miniature blackboard with your name in chalk is hung 
> on the machine by wire. As the Milos olives move to the wash, so does 
> the blackboard. A dozen farmers stand around gossiping, appearing 
> uninterested, but they are attentive to where their olives are at all 
> times.
>
> They are also keeping an eye on mine. The Milos batch is getting a 
> special pressing since they are 100 per cent organic. Petras has 
> washed out all the tubes, grinders and conveyer belts so no residue of 
> the previous batch can taint the organic oil.
>
> More Corfiets turn up with more olives. The place takes on the 
> atmosphere of a town-hall meeting? only no-one can hear anything for 
> the noise of olives being crushed to pulp. They eye each other's 
> production as intently as if a marriageable daughter was on offer. I 
> was getting nervous. Around the funnel where the finished product 
> pours out into a 25-litre bin, the crowds look on. Sniffing the air 
> for purity, eyeing the colour for imperfections and finally breaking 
> off a chuck of the local homemade bread to dip and taste.
>
> Nobody asks for permission to dip into your oil. This is a 
> co-operative, all for one and one for all, except your reputation is 
> on the line. No Corfiet would be so rude as to spit out oil onto the 
> stained concrete floor, but word of an inferior oil spreads quickly.
>
> Finally, the oil from Milos is pouring out of the metal tube a light 
> green with shades of yellow. One old farmer, bread in hand, takes a 
> dip and eyes me like a poker pro sensing a bluff. Slowly, a smile 
> spreads across his weathered face, and he announces, "kala" ? good!
>
> Petras was so pleased I didn't get entangled in his machines that he 
> offered to test the oil for purity. The oil from the groves at Milos 
> came in at 0.8 free acidity, meaning the quality was extra virgin.
>
> The taste is sublime ? a mix of fresh cut grass and young fruit. It 
> may not have the peppery flavour of many Italian oils, but somehow the 
> knowledge that the oil you produced came from trees that shade your 
> garden is a taste without equal.
>
> Durrell, who lived part of his life in the seaside village of Kalami, 
> once wrote of the olive: "A taste older than meat, older than wine. A 
> taste as old as cold water." And, I could add, just as fresh.
>
> * For more information see www.villamilos.co.uk






-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Wed Aug 12 23:59:06 2009
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:59:06 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Acrostic Durrell
Message-ID: <C25E39AA15BF4A9D8D7DA14051791402@MumandDad>

Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Georgel Durrell,
Artist by default.
Wine fond Indian exile;
Read Cavafy and Miller
Enduring Pudding Island's taunt,
Nabob's sons are nothing;
Colonials indeed!
Ended up on Corfu

Determined to succeed.
Under Grecian gold and blue
Ripe with Poesy, Nancy and Count D,
Rosy fingered land with olive trees,
Enjoying candle lit talk.
Lawrence George Durrell,
lost in Buddist thought.



David Green
16 William Street
Marrickville NSW  2204
+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au
www.denisetart.com.au
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Aug 13 11:50:36 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:50:36 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Fwd: Letter from Egypt - On Beaches,
	Intolerance Wears a Veil - NYTimes.com
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>
Message-ID: <81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>

No mention of LGD in this article, but Dr. Mohamed Awad, mentioned  
below, is leading the fight to save the Ambron Villa, where LGD stayed  
when in Alex.  The article accurately describes what the city of  
Alexandria has now become.

Bruce


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Glenn Meyer <Glenn.R.Meyer at nasa.gov>
> Date: August 12, 2009 1:48:08 PM PDT
> To: SF Bay Egyptology <sfbayegypt at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Letter from Egypt - On Beaches, Intolerance Wears a Veil -  
> NYTimes.com
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/middleeast/12iht-letter.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
>
> Letter from Egypt
> On Beaches, Intolerance Wears a Veil
>
> By DANIEL WILLIAMS
> Published: August 11, 2009
> ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT ? Along the miles of crowded beachfront in Egypt?s  
> second city, women in bathing suits are nowhere in sight.
>
> On Alexandria?s breeze-blown shores, they all wear long-sleeve  
> shirts and ankle-length black caftans topped by head scarves.  
> Awkwardly afloat in the rough seas, the bathers look like wads of  
> kelp loosened from the sandy bottom.
>
> The scene would be unremarkable in Saudi Arabia or Iran, where a  
> strict interpretation of Islam mandates hiding the feminine body. In  
> Alexandria ? a storied town of sensuality and openness ? the veiled  
> beachgoers, coupled with sectarian conflicts, underscore to some  
> residents the loss of a valued sense of diversity in favor of  
> religious uniformity.
>
> ?Here is the front line of a battle between secularists and Islamic  
> fundamentalism,? said Mohamed Awad, director of the Alexandria and  
> Mediterranean Research Center, part of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina,  
> itself an evocation of the ancient library whose reputation for  
> scholarship helped give the city its pluralistic credentials.
>
> If the issue were only bathing attire ? or the gradual disappearance  
> of alcohol from open-air seaside cafes to avoid insults from passing  
> pedestrians ? the phenomenon might be just a curiosity. But there  
> are sharper signs of intolerance: increasing Christian-Muslim  
> clashes, unfamiliar to old Alexandrine eyes.
>
> On April 4, a Muslim man was allegedly stabbed by his Coptic  
> Christian landlords in a dispute over garbage collection, according  
> to a July 30 report by the Cairo-based Egyptian Initiative for  
> Personal Rights, a human rights watchdog. When the man died the next  
> day, Muslims praying at a mosque in the city?s Karmouz district  
> chanted ?they will die? and then trashed Christian-owned stores, the  
> report said.
>
> There have been similar events over the past three years, including  
> one incident in which Muslims stormed homes they said were Coptic  
> churches functioning without government permits. Copts, who make up  
> about 10 percent of Egypt?s population, are an indigenous  
> denomination founded in Alexandria around A.D. 61.
>
> The violence is particularly striking in a city whose skyline is  
> dotted by minarets and church steeples and where, at least in the  
> memory of the Alexandrian novelist Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, religion  
> has not always triggered public disputes. He has written two novels  
> of Alexandria?s 20th-century past that reflect a longing for a kind  
> of golden age of diversity.
>
> Another author, Haggag Oddoul, said in an interview: ?I wish we  
> could go back to being the city of Cleopatra.?
>
> The Alexandria of lore emerged as a major 19th-century transshipment  
> port with Europe, celebrated by Arab, Egyptian and Western writers  
> as a cosmopolitan paradise where sailors mingled at cafes with  
> exiles from Syria and Greece, businessmen from Italy and,  
> eventually, women in sun dresses.
>
> In 1956, Great Britain and France, with the help of Israel, invaded  
> Egypt to recover control of the recently nationalized Suez Canal,  
> through which nearly a 10th of world trade now passes. The attempt  
> failed, and communities of Greeks, Armenians, Italians, French and  
> Jews fled as the definition of Egypt narrowed to an Arab nation in a  
> homogenous Arab world.
>
> Since then, Alexandria has become home to oil refineries that have  
> helped swell its population to more than five million. The new  
> arrivals, many from Egypt?s overcrowded countryside, submerged the  
> scene in a tidal wave of poverty and ideology.
>
> Now, Arab nationalism and Alexandria?s cosmopolitanism have a new  
> rival: the push for an Islamic Egypt. Mr. Abdel Meguid attributes  
> this to influence from conservative Gulf nations ? in particular,  
> Saudi Arabia.
>
> ?We are no longer a universal city of song, dance, culture and art,?  
> he said.
>
> Mr. Awad?s center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina strives to reverse  
> that trend, spreading ?internationalism? and promoting ?a healthy  
> spirit of diversity, pluralism and interaction among civilizations,?  
> according to its Web site. And yet ?the library is an island,? he  
> said.
>
> The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt?s largest opposition  
> force, has a major base of support in the city, according to  
> national press accounts. There, as in other Egyptian urban centers,  
> the Brotherhood provides health care, subsidized food and social  
> services for the poor.
>
> The group is the prototype for Islamic political parties across the  
> Middle East ? and nostalgia for a legendary multicultural past is  
> not part of its agenda. ?At the end of the day, that?s all history,?  
> said Sobhi Saleh, a Brotherhood member of Parliament.
>
> A leaflet advising women on proper Islamic coverings is posted in  
> the lobby leading to Mr. Saleh?s office. A caftan and long head  
> scarf are correct. A skimpy head scarf accompanied by jeans is wrong.
>
> He said Christian-Muslim tensions were not a symptom of intolerance  
> but of ?insults? to Islam by Copts.
>
> Alexandria needs ?stable? community values, he insisted. Sensuality,  
> if it means sexuality, is not part of the social equation. Even the  
> library ? with its museum that includes pharaonic, Greek, Roman,  
> Coptic and Islamic relics ? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>
> ?There, Islam is just one topic among many. We don?t like those  
> naked Greek statues. Anyway, that?s over. Islam should have a  
> special status at the library,? he said. ?This is a Muslim city in a  
> Muslim country; that is our identity.?
>
> Daniel Williams writes for Bloomberg News.
>
>

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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Thu Aug 13 12:17:57 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:17:57 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Intolerance Wears a Veil
In-Reply-To: <81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>
	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>

Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.

>         *Alexandria* needs *?stable? community values*, he insisted.
>         *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>         social equation*. Even *the library* ? with its *museum* that
>         includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>         *? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>
>         ?There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don?t like
>         those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that?s over*. Islam
>         should have a special status at the library,? he said. ?This
>         is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>         *identity*.?
>

Where to begin discussion of those statements?

I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me. 

I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000 year 
epochs. 

The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is always 
"leaving" us.

The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the Turks 
and the French and the English came and went. 

The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and 
Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably, will go. 

What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be 
there to notice or to remember?

But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from the 
listserv commenting.

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Aug 13 13:17:37 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:17:37 -0700
Subject: [ilds] The Lost Capital of Memory
In-Reply-To: <4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>
	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>
	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <9F21AECF-505E-4C38-9476-E3527D1879A4@earthlink.net>

Charles,

I am no authority on Alexandria, just a casual observer.  I was there  
for only five days, but the trends were disturbing.  The old  
cosmopolitan culture of Greeks, Jews, Copts, Christians, Arabs,  
Armenians, et al. is disappearing.  The city is no longer Durrell's  
city of diversity and tolerance.  Read Dr. Mohamed Awad's article in  
Deus Loci, "The House Revisited, the City Remembered" (vol. 7,  
1999-2000), for a local assessment of the cultural situation.  Also  
read and study Michael Haag's book of old photographs, Vintage  
Alexandria:  Photographs of the City 1860-1960 (Cairo 2008).  That  
city is quickly vanishing.  More distressingly, some try to wipe out  
that memory and say it never really existed or was never  
representative of "real" Alexandria.  VA was recently reviewed in TLS  
(26 June 2009), and the reviewer, Maria Golia, an American and  
longtime resident of Cairo, assumes the Islamist viewpoint and claims  
that Durrell's "capital of Memory" was never more than a society  
enjoyed by the families of "the very, very few."  Golia presumably  
means rich, decadent families of foreign lineage.  She sounds a good  
deal like Mr. Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood MP, as quoted in  
Daniel Williams's article.  Haag responded to Golia's review and  
wrote, "They were not so few, and their families had been in Egypt for  
generations, in some cases for centuries.  They had been welcomed in  
Egypt for their expertise, energy and capital; they played a major  
role in developing the country ? they played an authentic part in  
Egyptian history" (TLS, 2 July 2009).  Seems to me, that in Egypt  
today there is a concerted effort to deny the history that Haag refers  
to, the same one Durrell cherished.


Bruce


On Aug 13, 2009, at 12:17 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.
>
>>        *Alexandria* needs *?stable? community values*, he insisted.
>>        *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>>        social equation*. Even *the library* ? with its *museum* that
>>        includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>>        *? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>>
>>        ?There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don?t like
>>        those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that?s over*. Islam
>>        should have a special status at the library,? he said. ?This
>>        is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>>        *identity*.?
>>
>
> Where to begin discussion of those statements?
>
> I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me.
>
> I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000 year
> epochs.
>
> The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is always
> "leaving" us.
>
> The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the  
> Turks
> and the French and the English came and went.
>
> The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and
> Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably, will  
> go.
>
> What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be
> there to notice or to remember?
>
> But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from the
> listserv commenting.
>
> Charles
>
> -- 
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Thu Aug 13 13:18:52 2009
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:18:52 +0200
Subject: [ilds] Intolerance Wears a Veil
In-Reply-To: <4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>
	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4A84752C.3030606@interdesign.fr>

"The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the 
Christians and the Turks
and the French and the English came and went. "

... and they were followed by pretentious 
intellectual bastards, that although they were 
using the richness to gain their daily bread, 
could do nothing better than shit on it with fowl 
lines of pretentious words that pretended to be 
..... I dare not use a word that has any meaning.

There once was a man that wrote beautiful prose, 
and beautiful poetry.... and a few "nothings" 
tried to use it to show that they were 
"something".... they did nothing but prove the 
opposite.

I doubt that these few lines will get past the 
census, that maintains the lines of power over 
this crap................

Marc

Charles Sligh a ?crit :
> Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.
> 
>>         *Alexandria* needs *?stable? community values*, he insisted.
>>         *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>>         social equation*. Even *the library* ? with its *museum* that
>>         includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>>         *? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>>
>>         ?There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don?t like
>>         those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that?s over*. Islam
>>         should have a special status at the library,? he said. ?This
>>         is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>>         *identity*.?
>>
> 
> Where to begin discussion of those statements?
> 
> I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me. 
> 
> I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000 year 
> epochs. 
> 
> The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is always 
> "leaving" us.
> 
> The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the Turks 
> and the French and the English came and went. 
> 
> The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and 
> Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably, will go. 
> 
> What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be 
> there to notice or to remember?
> 
> But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from the 
> listserv commenting.
> 
> Charles
> 

From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Thu Aug 13 13:44:34 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:44:34 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Bearers of a dimming torch
Message-ID: <4A847B32.1040906@utc.edu>

Bruce Redwine wrote:
> Charles,
>
> I am no authority on Alexandria, just a casual observer. I was there 
> for only five days, but the trends were disturbing. The old 
> cosmopolitan culture of Greeks, Jews, Copts, Christians, Arabs, 
> Armenians, et al. is disappearing. The city is no longer Durrell's 
> city of diversity and tolerance.

Here is a report on Alexandrian Jewry from earlier in the year, Bruce.

 From 80,000 to a handful.

C&c.

***

*Bearers of a dimming torch
Jack Shenker
April 18. 2009 8:30AM UAE / April 18. 2009 4:30AM GMT
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090418/FOREIGN/847613290/1011/ART*
> Sweating in the mid-morning heat, Abdul Salaam gently brushes the dirt 
> off a grave to reveal a faded Star of David. Mr Salaam, a committed 
> Muslim, has lived as a resident guard within the high walls of this 
> Alexandrian Jewish cemetery for 41 years, just as his father did for 
> five decades.
>
> The cracked headstones and marble tombs around him bear witness to 
> people who first made this Egyptian city their home more than 2,300 
> years ago, and in their heyday numbered almost 80,000. Last summer, 
> the final remnants of that vibrant community gathered here to bury 
> their leader. So few of them were left that the Kaddish, a Jewish 
> funeral blessing, could not be recited. The significance of that was 
> obvious to all who attended; this once-cosmopolitan corner of the Arab 
> world will soon entomb its final Jewish resident, and Mr Salaam will 
> be left alone with the graves.
>
> The death of Max Salama, 92, an Egyptian Jew who once served as King 
> Farouk?s personal dentist, leaves 18 surviving Jews in what was once 
> one of the religion?s greatest cultural capitals. The majority of 
> those remaining are in their 70s or 80s and reside in old people?s 
> homes, no longer interacting with the city they have always called 
> home. At the tender age of 53, the new leader, Youssef Gaon, is now 
> the youngest Jew in Alexandria by a considerable margin, and he is 
> childless.
>
> ?What can I say?? he shrugs, as he gives a tour of a beautifully 
> decorated but deserted synagogue in the old city centre.
>
> Jews have been an integral part of Alexandria?s history ever since the 
> port city was founded by Alexander the Great in 332BC. Their numbers 
> have ebbed and flowed over the years but reached a zenith in the early 
> 1900s, when Jews from across Europe and North Africa flocked there to 
> escape persecution.
>
> ?It was an immigrant community drawn from all corners of the world, 
> especially the remnants of the old Ottoman Empire,? said Yves Fedida, 
> an Egyptian Jew now living in France, whose grandparents emigrated to 
> Egypt from Palestine at the turn of the century in search of work.
>
> These were the rekindled glory days of Alexandria, an urbane melting 
> pot of nationalities where poets, scientists and intellectuals mingled 
> freely on the Corniche.
>
> Egyptian Jews lay at the heart of the city?s revival, with individuals 
> such as the anti-colonial Egyptian nationalist Yaqub Sana and the 
> prominent psychologist Jacques Hassoun becoming household names in the 
> region. But after revolutionary fervour swept Gamal Abdel Nasser to 
> power in 1952, the ancient city?s worldly reputation began to fade and 
> subsequent hostilities with the newly founded state of Israel 
> gradually eroded Alexandria?s Jewish population.
>
> Mr Fedida?s parents were forced out in the first wave of expulsions, 
> prompted by the outbreak of the Suez conflict. As Israeli tanks 
> advanced on the Suez Canal, his father, previously the financial 
> director of the national Egyptian Petroleum Company, was given 10 days 
> to leave the country.
>
> ?He had to take us away and start again in England with just 20 
> Egyptian pounds in his pocket,? remembers Mr Fedida, who now works for 
> the Nebi Daniel Association, a French group that brings together 
> Egyptian Jews from around the world.
>
> The exodus of Alexandria?s Jews continued following wars with Israel 
> in 1967 and 1973, and many of those who clung to their homeland were 
> imprisoned by the Egyptian state, suspected of being Zionist spies. 
> Today, the remaining Jews at the magnificent Italianate synagogue of 
> Eliahou Hanabi are vastly outnumbered by policemen and officials from 
> the Egyptian ministry of the interior, who pay for the site?s security.
>
> ?We are in very good hands,? said Mr Gaon, anxious not to upset the 
> fragile working relationship the surviving community has established 
> with the Egyptian government. ?Even after we have gone I know they 
> will look after this place.?
>
> But as the final echoes of Alexandria?s Jewish ancestry die out, a new 
> battle is raging over their heritage. At stake is the set of religious 
> and civil registers maintained by Egyptian Jewry under the Ottoman 
> Empire, which devolved such record-keeping to its non-Muslim communities.
>
> Mr Gaon and his elderly compatriots are the final custodians of these 
> logbooks, which run to 60,000 pages detailing all the births, deaths 
> and weddings of the community stretching back to the 1830s.
>
> These documents are of vital importance to descendants of Alexandrian 
> Jews such as Mr Fedida, as the Jewish faith requires individuals to 
> prove their maternal Jewish bloodline in order to get married. The 
> problem is that issuing such certification from Alexandria is 
> increasingly burdensome for the small number of Jewish pensioners left 
> and the process is often hampered by local bureaucracy. The Nebi 
> Daniel Association is lobbying the Egyptian government to allow copies 
> of the archives to be placed in a European institution where they 
> could be more easily accessed, but so far their efforts have met with 
> failure.
>
> The reluctance of the current Egyptian regime to enable easy access to 
> the documents springs from fears that the offspring of Alexandria?s 
> Jews will use them to make financial compensation claims against the 
> government for Jewish property confiscated under Nasser?s 
> nationalisation programmes.
>
> The issue is a sensitive one; last year an unspecified amount was paid 
> by the state to the Jewish family who originally owned The Cecil, a 
> luxury Alexandrian hotel immortalised in Lawrence Durrell?s novels The 
> Alexandria Quartet and seized by the government in 1957. Earlier this 
> summer, a planned Cairo conference of Jews hailing from Egypt was 
> cancelled after local media questioned the intentions behind the event.
>
> According to Mr Fedida, however, fears of compensation demands are 
> misguided.
>
> ?We are absolutely not interested in financial claims,? he said. ?Our 
> generation are the children of those who really suffered from 
> expulsion and imprisonment. Although our parents tried to reconstruct 
> their lives elsewhere, we saw their grief and we need to do them 
> justice by giving them back the identity that led to them being 
> uprooted in the first place.?
>
> Regardless of the outcome of this tussle over the logbooks, the human 
> element of this once grand community will soon be extinguished and 
> there will be no more burials at Abdul Salaam?s overgrown cemetery.
>
> For Mr Fedida though, who was born in Alexandria, optimism prevails 
> that Jews might one day make a return to the city.
>
> ?You never know; we lost it once before when the Byzantines kicked us 
> out in 400AD,? he said. ?I think it?s a wonderful city, and I long for 
> it on a daily basis. But deep down I know I?m longing for a world that 
> no longer exists.?
>
> * The National
-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Thu Aug 13 14:04:31 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:04:31 -0400
Subject: [ilds] furniture scattered in disarray
Message-ID: <4A847FDF.4030800@utc.edu>

These poems make me realize that Cavafy already understood, Bruce.

The report on Alexandrian losses that you sent immediately brought it to 
mind.

So perishable. . . .

C&c.

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

The Afternoon Sun
Translated by James Merrill
> This room, how well I know it. Now
> they?re renting it, it and the one next door,
> as offices. The whole house has been taken
> over by agents, businessmen, concerns.
>
> Ah but this one room, how familiar.
>
> Here by the door was the couch. In front of that,
> a Turkish carpet on the floor.
> The shelf then, with two yellow vases. On the right?
> no, opposite?a wardrobe with a mirror.
> At the center the table where he wrote,
> and the three big wicker chairs.
> There by the window stood the bed
> where we made love so many times.
>
> Poor things, they must be somewhere to this day.
>
> There by the window stood the bed: across it
> the afternoon sun used to reach halfway.
>
> ...We?d said goodbye one afternoon at four,
> for a week only. But alas,
> that week was to go on forevermore.

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


Clothing
Translated by Walter Kaiser
> In a chest or wardrobe of precious ebony, I shall place and keep my 
> life?s clothing.
> The blue garments. And then the red ? these the most beautiful. And 
> afterwards the yellow. And finally the blue again, only much more 
> faded, these, than the first.
> I shall keep them with reverence and with great sorrow.
> When I come to put on black garments and live in a black house, in a 
> dark room, I shall sometimes open the wardrobe with joy, with longing, 
> with despair.
> I shall gaze on the garments, and I shall recall the great feast ? 
> which by then will be completely over.
> Completely over. The furniture scattered in disarray through the great 
> rooms. Broken plates and glasses on the floor. All of the candles 
> burnt down to their ends. All of the wine drunk. All of the guests 
> gone. Some who are tired will sit by themselves, all alone, like me, 
> in dark houses; others, even more tired, will have gone to bed. 




-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Thu Aug 13 14:23:32 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:23:32 -0400
Subject: [ilds] impermanence
Message-ID: <4A848454.2090509@utc.edu>


Ken Gammage writes
> Professor Sligh, I've been enjoying your posts, and agree that this poem suggests the same impermanence we have been discussing...
>
> I just wanted to say, Durrell's own translation of this poem in the Quartet was so much better than Merrill's!
>
> -- Ken
Thanks for these words, Ken. 

Yes, strange how CPC's most private and intimate poems about lost lovers 
also seem to speak about the lost City.

I do prefer LD's translation.  But that preference springs from their 
familiarity and old associations, not out of any notion of the 
translator's accuracy.  Those LD translations of CPC are my "old 
furniture," you might say.

Glad to have you here on the listserv.

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Thu Aug 13 14:18:49 2009
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:18:49 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Intolerance Wears a Veil
In-Reply-To: <4A84752C.3030606@interdesign.fr>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
	<4A84752C.3030606@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <4A848339.5080403@gmail.com>

Salut Marc!

As you know, we prefer the listerv open, despite disagreements (except 
in cases of unduly personal disputes).  I can only add that Durrell, of 
all people, was capable of his own share of pretentious intellectual 
bastardizations...  But aren't we all.

If I recall, your background is in design, so I can say directly that 
virtually everyone in the world has no idea what a serif is nor how it 
could relate to the readability of a text -- likewise, most readers have 
little or no interest in the historical or aesthetic elements of a given 
text.  So, I hope we can celebrate our individual "nothings".  I like my 
own in particular...  A better question might be why we value our own 
while needing to devalue others'.

To everyone on the list whom I owe a reply and am dreadfully behind, I 
can only say that I have poor internet access here and will try to 
respond quickly, but I'm not back in North America until late next 
week.  For the few who are interested, I'll come back with some archival 
treasures.

Best,
James

Marc Piel wrote:
> "The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the 
> Christians and the Turks
> and the French and the English came and went. "
>
> ... and they were followed by pretentious 
> intellectual bastards, that although they were 
> using the richness to gain their daily bread, 
> could do nothing better than shit on it with fowl 
> lines of pretentious words that pretended to be 
> ..... I dare not use a word that has any meaning.
>
> There once was a man that wrote beautiful prose, 
> and beautiful poetry.... and a few "nothings" 
> tried to use it to show that they were 
> "something".... they did nothing but prove the 
> opposite.
>
> I doubt that these few lines will get past the 
> census, that maintains the lines of power over 
> this crap................
>
> Marc
>
> Charles Sligh a ?crit :
>   
>> Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.
>>
>>     
>>>         *Alexandria* needs *?stable? community values*, he insisted.
>>>         *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>>>         social equation*. Even *the library* ? with its *museum* that
>>>         includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>>>         *? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>>>
>>>         ?There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don?t like
>>>         those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that?s over*. Islam
>>>         should have a special status at the library,? he said. ?This
>>>         is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>>>         *identity*.?
>>>
>>>       
>> Where to begin discussion of those statements?
>>
>> I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me. 
>>
>> I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000 year 
>> epochs. 
>>
>> The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is always 
>> "leaving" us.
>>
>> The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the Turks 
>> and the French and the English came and went. 
>>
>> The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and 
>> Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably, will go. 
>>
>> What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be 
>> there to notice or to remember?
>>
>> But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from the 
>> listserv commenting.
>>
>> Charles
>>
>>     
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>   

From rui.martins at drclvt.mc.gov.pt  Fri Aug 14 02:52:39 2009
From: rui.martins at drclvt.mc.gov.pt (Rui Martins)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:52:39 +0100
Subject: [ilds] =?iso-8859-1?q?Melissa=2C_comment_vous_d=E9fendez_vous_con?=
	=?iso-8859-1?q?tre_la_solitude?=
Message-ID: <30384.10051250244872.mail.drclvt.mc.gov.pt@MHS>

Dear Sirs

 

My name is Rui Martins and I am from Portugal

I'm no scholar or anything, just a frequent reader of the Alexandria Quartet

 

Sorry to bother you with this question but it is a mystery the puzzles me A
LOT!

May be you could give me some clues.

 

For years I have been reading the Alexandria Quartet periodically.

I did so, on the Portuguese translation by Daniel Gon?alves, generally
reputed as a good one.

On the third book, Mountolive, comes a famous line (Pursewarden dancing with
Melissa:

 

?Melissa, comment vous d?fendez vous contre la solitude" ... "Messieur je
suis devenue la solitude m?me"

  

Now, for the first time I?m reading the original, on the Faber and Faber
edition and, to mi surprise, (and sadness, I should say) I read :

 

"Melissa, comment vous d?fendez vous contre la foule" ... "Messieur je ne me
d?fend plus"

 

Put both lines on Google only the first one is quoted.

 

Being so different one from the other, It does not seem the case for a
mistake or a liberty from the translator, does it, could that be a rewriting
from the part of Durrell himself? 

 

Again sorry to bother you, but really I?ve seam to be deprived of one of my
favourite lines in literature ever J

 

Thank you again

Best wishes, 

RuiMartins

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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Fri Aug 14 06:26:44 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:26:44 -0400
Subject: [ilds] contre la solitude
In-Reply-To: <30384.10051250244872.mail.drclvt.mc.gov.pt@MHS>
References: <30384.10051250244872.mail.drclvt.mc.gov.pt@MHS>
Message-ID: <4A856614.5070707@utc.edu>

Rui Martins wrote:
>
> On the third book, Mountolive, comes a famous line (Pursewarden 
> dancing with Melissa:
>
> ?Melissa, comment vous d?fendez vous contre la solitude" ... "Messieur 
> je suis devenue la solitude m?me"
>
> Now, for the first time I?m reading the original, on the Faber and 
> Faber edition and, to mi surprise, (and sadness, I should say) I read :
>
> "Melissa, comment vous d?fendez vous contre la foule" ... "Messieur je 
> ne me d?fend plus"
>
> Put both lines on Google only the first one is quoted.
>
> Being so different one from the other, It does not seem the case for a 
> mistake or a liberty from the translator, does it, could that be a 
> rewriting from the part of Durrell himself?
>
> Again sorry to bother you, but really I?ve seam to be deprived of one 
> of my favourite lines in literature ever J
>
Hello, Rui.

Yes, the revisions come from Durrell for the 1962 Faber one-volume 
/Quartet/. Your Portuguese translation seems to have used the earlier 
1958 printing of /Mountolive/ for the reading text.

There is no simple answer for why Durrell made the changes. We cannot 
read his mind or know his intention, and until Faber chooses to share 
more of its archive, that is the state of the matter.

You share that these lines in French are some of your "favourite lines 
in literature ever." Could you tell us about that?

What do these words say to you? And what gets lost in the revision?

Has anybody else been drawn to this conversation in /Mountolive/?

By the way, like you, I also have an attachment to the earlier, 
"uncorrected" texts of /Justine/, /Balthazar/, /Mountolive/, and /Clea/. 
Durrell was the maker, so he was certainly welcome to go back and put 
more finish on what he found unsatisfying. And his ideas about the 
/Quartet/ changed as he wrote and when he finished the series.

(Perhaps his understanding of the nuances of French was better circa 
1960-1962?)

But I like the books best--I /recall/ the books at their best--with 
beauty marks and moles and bruises.

Thank you!

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Fri Aug 14 01:26:19 2009
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:26:19 +0200
Subject: [ilds] The Lost Capital of Memory
In-Reply-To: <9F21AECF-505E-4C38-9476-E3527D1879A4@earthlink.net>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
	<9F21AECF-505E-4C38-9476-E3527D1879A4@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A851FAB.4050209@interdesign.fr>

I asked an Egyptian to send me some photos of the 
people on the beaches: these apparently tell 
another story!!! He is just outside Alexandria; 
nobody swimms in Alex's beaches any more because 
of the polution! My friend went out and took these 
photos for me.
Marc

Bruce Redwine a ?crit :
> Charles,
> 
> I am no authority on Alexandria, just a casual observer.  I was there 
> for only five days, but the trends were disturbing.  The old 
> cosmopolitan culture of Greeks, Jews, Copts, Christians, Arabs, 
> Armenians, et al. is disappearing.  The city is no longer Durrell's city 
> of diversity and tolerance.  Read Dr. Mohamed Awad's article in /Deus 
> Loci,/ "The House Revisited, the City Remembered" (vol. 7, 1999-2000), 
> for a local assessment of the cultural situation.  Also read and study 
> Michael Haag's book of old photographs, V/intage Alexandria: 
>  Photographs of the City 1860-1960 /(Cairo 2008).  That city is quickly 
> vanishing.  More distressingly, some try to wipe out that memory and say 
> it never really existed or was never representative of "real" 
> Alexandria.  /VA/ was recently reviewed in /TLS /(26 June 2009), and the 
> reviewer, Maria Golia, an American and longtime resident of Cairo, 
> assumes the Islamist viewpoint and claims that Durrell's "capital of 
> Memory" was never more than a society enjoyed by the families of "the 
> very, very few."  Golia presumably means rich, decadent families of 
> foreign lineage.  She sounds a good deal like Mr. Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim 
> Brotherhood MP, as quoted in Daniel Williams's article.  Haag responded 
> to Golia's review and wrote, "They were not so few, and their families 
> had been in Egypt for generations, in some cases for centuries.  They 
> had been welcomed in Egypt for their expertise, energy and capital; they 
> played a major role in developing the country ? they played an authentic 
> part in Egyptian history" /(TLS,/ 2 July 2009).  Seems to me, that in 
> Egypt today there is a concerted effort to deny the history that Haag 
> refers to, the same one Durrell cherished.
> 
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> On Aug 13, 2009, at 12:17 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.
>>
>>>        *Alexandria* needs *?stable? community values*, he insisted.
>>>        *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>>>        social equation*. Even *the library* ? with its *museum* that
>>>        includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>>>        *? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>>>
>>>        ?There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don?t like
>>>        those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that?s over*. Islam
>>>        should have a special status at the library,? he said. ?This
>>>        is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>>>        *identity*.?
>>>
>>
>> Where to begin discussion of those statements?
>>
>> I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me.
>>
>> I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000 year
>> epochs.
>>
>> The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is always
>> "leaving" us.
>>
>> The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the Turks
>> and the French and the English came and went.
>>
>> The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and
>> Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably, will go.
>>
>> What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be
>> there to notice or to remember?
>>
>> But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from the
>> listserv commenting.
>>
>> Charles
>>
>> -- 
>> ********************************************
>> Charles L. Sligh
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of English
>> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
>> charles-sligh at utc.edu <mailto:charles-sligh at utc.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 marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Fri Aug 14 01:31:00 2009
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:31:00 +0200
Subject: [ilds]  The Lost Capital of Memory
In-Reply-To: <4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4A8520C4.6060902@interdesign.fr>

Hello Galal,
Some of the people on the Durrel list are contunually negative.
I think they do it on purpose; it is their "power".
BR Marc

Here is one I received this morning:

"I am no authority on Alexandria, just a casual observer.  I was there 
for only five days, but the trends were disturbing.  The old 
cosmopolitan culture of Greeks, Jews, Copts, Christians, Arabs, 
Armenians, et al. is disappearing.  The city is no longer Durrell's city 
of diversity and tolerance.  Read Dr. Mohamed Awad's article in /Deus 
Loci,/ "The House Revisited, the City Remembered" (vol. 7, 1999-2000), 
for a local assessment of the cultural situation.  Also read and study 
Michael Haag's book of old photographs, V/intage Alexandria: 
 Photographs of the City 1860-1960 /(Cairo 2008).  That city is quickly 
vanishing.  More distressingly, some try to wipe out that memory and say 
it never really existed or was never representative of "real" 
Alexandria.  /VA/ was recently reviewed in /TLS /(26 June 2009), and the 
reviewer, Maria Golia, an American and longtime resident of Cairo, 
assumes the Islamist viewpoint and claims that Durrell's "capital of 
Memory" was never more than a society enjoyed by the families of "the 
very, very few."  Golia presumably means rich, decadent families of 
foreign lineage.  She sounds a good deal like Mr. Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim 
Brotherhood MP, as quoted in Daniel Williams's article.  Haag responded 
to Golia's review and wrote, "They were not so few, and their families 
had been in Egypt for generations, in some cases for centuries.  They 
had been welcomed in Egypt for their expertise, energy and capital; they 
played a major role in developing the country ? they played an authentic 
part in Egyptian history" /(TLS,/ 2 July 2009).  Seems to me, that in 
Egypt today there is a concerted effort to deny the history that Haag 
refers to, the same one Durrell cherished."



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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Fri Aug 14 06:01:55 2009
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:31:55 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 29,
	Issue 9_Letter from Egypt - On Beaches,
	Intolerance Wears a Veil_DANIEL WILLIAMS
References: <mailman.5.1250190009.4821130.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <008401ca1cdf$69482160$0301a8c0@abc>

DANIEL WILLIAMS' Letter from Egypt raises certain questions.

Sobhi Saleh, a Brotherhood member of Parliament is qouted: "Alexandria needs ?stable? community values, he insisted. Sensuality, if it means sexuality, is not part of the social equation."

I see a conflict between the disappearance of an European Alexandria and the increasing presence of an Egyptian Alexandria, based on a modern Arabic ethos, where an ultra-conservative and restrictive force - now recognised the world over -making its heavy presence felt. 

I have always been a great admirer of Lawrence Durrell's prose as it expands in its sounds, colours and its complexities in The Alexandria Quartet. It resounds with an inner poetry - never forget Lawrence Durrell as a poet. 

Over the years, however, I have come to see the point of Edward Said when he referred to the triviality of subject matter in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet [at his lecture in Beirut (?) - I forget the context but remember the assessment]. I have often felt that Lawrence Durrell's heightened prose - at its peak in the Alexandria Quartet in my opinion - was wasted on a kind of glorification of habitual and often seedy sexual activity which was difficult to extricate from the forceful romanticism of his work. This seediness associated with the writer has been expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell displayed in a recent post and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum member.

In the swimming pools in hotels and clubs in India, women would have to swim only in proper swimming gear. But one would have to deny many traditional Indian women their own sense of dignity and their pleasure in swimming, if swimming in the traditional Indian 'saree' in a village pond or a river or the open sea, were to be looked upon as a caricature of unacceptable conservatism. During specific festivals large numbers of Indian women also take holy dips in sacred rivers in India fully clothed in their traditional apparel. On the beaches of Goa in western India - widely frequented by western tourists and largely treated like other western seaside destination - traditional Indian families also swim in the sea with their womenfolk in their traditional apparel. 

Take the following observation: "The Alexandria of lore emerged as a major 19th-century transshipment  port with Europe, celebrated by Arab, Egyptian and Western writers  as a cosmopolitan paradise where sailors mingled at cafes with  exiles from Syria and Greece, businessmen from Italy and,  eventually, women in sun dresses." 

The question is - "a cosmopolitan paradise" for whom? 

And consider: "In  Alexandria ? a storied town of sensuality and openness ?..." 

"...openness.." and its loss one can one can understand and deplore. But what is a "storied town of sensuality..." An open bazaar of sex? Why should a great historical city be stamped or recognised only by such a quality?  

I can fully sympathise with the fear of extreme and narrow conservatism and its destructive forces. These forces can be seen in other cultures too and they are resisted. It is a growing conflict encountered in different settings. But Alexandria celebrated as a "storied town of sensuality..." or " a cosmopolitan paradise where sailors mingled at cafes with  exiles from Syria and Greece, businessmen from Italy and,  eventually, women in sun dresses...". What is one to make of the phrase "..eventually, women in sun dresses..."???!!! This is far too reminiscent of the offhand, rather cheaply colonial phrase from the opening chapter of 'Justine': "The sexual provender which lies to hand is staggering in its variety and profusion." And the grander sounding "..Alexandria was the great winepress of love..." or "...there are more than five sexes and only demotic Greek seems to distinguish among them." 

There is also the observation that, "There, as in other Egyptian urban centers, the Brotherhood provides health care, subsidized food and social services for the poor."

In the Alexandria Quartet, the poverty and shabbiness in Alexandria are represented as background content for description but the sympathy for poverty is ambiguous - as many have observed, Lawrence Durrell was in many ways a "colonial" by temperament and this quality emerges in his writing. In the "post-colonial" setting of today, looking after the poor will be a central commitment and more important than the preservation of a haute-cosmopolitan setting. 

While the now common forces which seek to impose a narrow order and conformity on Alexandria, arise as a threat, surely the obsession with Lawrence Durrell's former residence in the city or the symbolic importance of Cavafy (and his "shabby loves") or E.M. Forster must also be moderated as Alexandria's claims to twentieth century culture. 

Sumantra Nag

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 12:30 AM
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 29, Issue 9

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/middleeast/12iht-letter.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
>>
>> Letter from Egypt
>> On Beaches, Intolerance Wears a Veil
>>
>> By DANIEL WILLIAMS
>> Published: August 11, 2009
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 14 07:40:57 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:40:57 -0700
Subject: [ilds] The Lost Capital of Memory
In-Reply-To: <4A851FAB.4050209@interdesign.fr>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
	<9F21AECF-505E-4C38-9476-E3527D1879A4@earthlink.net>
	<4A851FAB.4050209@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <196AB7B2-E35E-4A64-BD4A-68BECCCA44F4@earthlink.net>

I don't think Daniel Williams is lying or exaggerating in his article  
for Bloomberg news, and I take his point to be true.  Namely, the  
niqab (a woman's full-length body cloak, where only the eyes are  
exposed) has become standard swimming gear for Islamic women around  
Alex.  The women in Marc's submitted photos may be Copts or foreigners  
or some brave Egyptians.  (Egypt has a large Coptic population, maybe  
ten percent.)  I don't think they're Jews, because, as Charles has  
pointed out, there are very, very few Jews living in Egypt today,  
because of the hostile policies of the Egyptian government.  You will  
recall that Eve Cohen, aka Justine, was essentially stateless when she  
lived in Egypt, because she was a Jew.  Re the wearing of the niqab,  
I'm one with the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who said  
recently, more or less, that it's a form of female imprisonment.


Bruce


On Aug 14, 2009, at 1:26 AM, Marc Piel wrote:

> I asked an Egyptian to send me some photos of the people on the  
> beaches: these apparently tell another story!!! He is just outside  
> Alexandria; nobody swimms in Alex's beaches any more because of the  
> polution! My friend went out and took these photos for me.
> Marc
>
> Bruce Redwine a ?crit :
>> Charles,
>> I am no authority on Alexandria, just a casual observer.  I was  
>> there for only five days, but the trends were disturbing.  The old  
>> cosmopolitan culture of Greeks, Jews, Copts, Christians, Arabs,  
>> Armenians, et al. is disappearing.  The city is no longer Durrell's  
>> city of diversity and tolerance.  Read Dr. Mohamed Awad's article  
>> in /Deus Loci,/ "The House Revisited, the City Remembered" (vol. 7,  
>> 1999-2000), for a local assessment of the cultural situation.  Also  
>> read and study Michael Haag's book of old photographs, V/intage  
>> Alexandria:  Photographs of the City 1860-1960 /(Cairo 2008).  That  
>> city is quickly vanishing.  More distressingly, some try to wipe  
>> out that memory and say it never really existed or was never  
>> representative of "real" Alexandria.  /VA/ was recently reviewed  
>> in /TLS /(26 June 2009), and the reviewer, Maria Golia, an American  
>> and longtime resident of Cairo, assumes the Islamist viewpoint and  
>> claims that Durrell's "capital of Memory" was never more than a  
>> society enjoyed by the families of "the very, very few."  Golia  
>> presumably means rich, decadent families of foreign lineage.  She  
>> sounds a good deal like Mr. Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood MP,  
>> as quoted in Daniel Williams's article.  Haag responded to Golia's  
>> review and wrote, "They were not so few, and their families had  
>> been in Egypt for generations, in some cases for centuries.  They  
>> had been welcomed in Egypt for their expertise, energy and capital;  
>> they played a major role in developing the country ? they played an  
>> authentic part in Egyptian history" /(TLS,/ 2 July 2009).  Seems to  
>> me, that in Egypt today there is a concerted effort to deny the  
>> history that Haag refers to, the same one Durrell cherished.
>> Bruce
>> On Aug 13, 2009, at 12:17 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:
>>> Thanks for the Alexandrian report, Bruce.
>>>
>>>>       *Alexandria* needs *?stable? community values*, he insisted.
>>>>       *Sensuality*, if it means *sexuality*, is not part of *the
>>>>       social equation*. Even *the library* ? with its *museum* that
>>>>       includes *pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Coptic and Islamic relics
>>>>       *? is misguided, Mr. Saleh said.
>>>>
>>>>       ?There, *Islam* is just one topic among many. We don?t like
>>>>       those *naked Greek statues*. Anyway, *that?s over*. Islam
>>>>       should have a special status at the library,? he said. ?This
>>>>       is *a Muslim city* in *a Muslim country*; that is our
>>>>       *identity*.?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Where to begin discussion of those statements?
>>>
>>> I have *deformed* the report in order to indicate what strikes me.
>>>
>>> I fancy that I tend to imagine history in terms of 1.000 to 2,000  
>>> year
>>> epochs.
>>>
>>> The City comes; the City goes--willy, nilly--Alexandria, she is  
>>> always
>>> "leaving" us.
>>>
>>> The Greeks and the Jews and the Romans and the Christians and the  
>>> Turks
>>> and the French and the English came and went.
>>>
>>> The great poets of secular history, such as Cavafy, Kipling, and
>>> Durrell, teach me that Islam once came and someday, inevitably,  
>>> will go.
>>>
>>> What new sect or cultus or tribe will follow?  Will anyone still be
>>> there to notice or to remember?
>>>
>>> But I would rather have some actual present-day Alexandrians from  
>>> the
>>> listserv commenting.
>>>
>>> Charles
>>>

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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Fri Aug 14 07:58:56 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:58:56 -0400
Subject: [ilds] The Lost Capital of Memory
In-Reply-To: <196AB7B2-E35E-4A64-BD4A-68BECCCA44F4@earthlink.net>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>	<9F21AECF-505E-4C38-9476-E3527D1879A4@earthlink.net>	<4A851FAB.4050209@interdesign.fr>
	<196AB7B2-E35E-4A64-BD4A-68BECCCA44F4@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A857BB0.5050509@utc.edu>

>
> On Aug 14, 2009, at 1:26 AM, Marc Piel wrote:
>
>> I asked an Egyptian to send me some photos of the people on the 
>> beaches: these apparently tell another story!!! He is just outside 
>> Alexandria; nobody swimms in Alex's beaches any more because of the 
>> polution! My friend went out and took these photos for me.
>> Marc
I am more interested in taking the discussion back to /Lawrence 
Durrell/, perhaps via Sumantra's posting.

But I wonder if the beach with more permissive attire is a /private/ 
beach, of which there are many around Alex, including Montaza, where I 
swam 13 years ago.

        Beaches, Alexandria
        http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Africa/Egypt/Muhafazat_al_Iskandariyah/Alexandria-2009064/Things_To_Do-Alexandria-Beaches-BR-1.html


The point about the polluted waters at Alex is valid.  The sewage comes 
right back into the harbors.  I recall how the leader of the 
archaeological team excavating the Cleopatra sites ordered his team out 
of the water after short periods.  

Even at Montaza, which is very beautiful and well kept, I took sick 
immediately after swimming.

Thanks for these views and reports, Marc and Bruce.

Charles

--
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Fri Aug 14 08:33:57 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:33:57 -0400
Subject: [ilds] complexities
In-Reply-To: <008401ca1cdf$69482160$0301a8c0@abc>
References: <mailman.5.1250190009.4821130.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<008401ca1cdf$69482160$0301a8c0@abc>
Message-ID: <4A8583E5.6060706@utc.edu>

Sumantra Nag wrote:
>  
> I see a conflict between the disappearance of an European Alexandria 
> and the increasing presence of an Egyptian Alexandria, based on 
> a modern Arabic ethos, where an ultra-conservative and restrictive 
> force - now recognised the world over -making its heavy presence felt. 
>  
> I have always been a great admirer of Lawrence Durrell's prose as it 
> expands in its sounds, colours and its complexities in The Alexandria 
> Quartet. It resounds with an inner poetry - never forget Lawrence 
> Durrell as a poet. 
>  
> Over the years, however, I have come to see the point of Edward Said 
> when he referred to *the triviality of subject matter in Durrell's 
> Alexandria Quartet *[at his lecture in Beirut (?) - I forget the 
> context but remember the assessment]. I have often felt that *Lawrence 
> Durrell's heightened prose - at its peak in the Alexandria Quartet in 
> my opinion - was wasted on a kind of glorification of habitual and 
> often seedy sexual activity* which was difficult to extricate from the 
> forceful romanticism of his work. This seediness associated with the 
> writer has been expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell 
> displayed in a recent post and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum member.
Thanks for writing, Sumantra.  Does this old debate come down to a 
question of the "uses of literature"?

One view will hold Durrell's writing as "incorrect" or "imperfect" for 
omitting or making grotesque the people, places, and history of 
Alexandria. 

That sort of objection springs from the sense that literature must 
accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that literature 
must "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable reality. 

Another view will observe that Durrell's writing in the /Quartet/ 
springs from Durrell's interest in uncertain, subjective viewpoints and 
his increasing skepticism about what gets called "Reality Prime."

That is, if Durrell has predicated his work upon the notion that no one 
sees the real Alexandria "as it is," then how could anyone criticize the 
writer for having missed something or for having made his characters 
more grotesque than "real Alexandrians." 

"But of course," might come the answer from someone who identifies with 
Durrell's aesthetic and philosophies in the /Quartet/. "How could it 
ever be otherwise, when all experience, all notions of reality and 
history are ultimately subjective?"

"Then let the Englishman play his games with subjectivity and 
impressionism in his own lands," the other side might answer.  "Our sons 
and daughters require books that give them strong, approved examples."

I doubt the extremes of these sides will ever find common ground. 

Those readers who hold the corrective view will accuse Durrell and the 
aesthetes of "re-colonization."

Those readers who take the aesthetic approach will call those who would 
chastise or correct Durrell "fundamentalists," "zealots."

But I imagine that a fair number of readers will fall somewhere into the 
middle, as you seem to do.

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 14 09:05:18 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:05:18 -0700
Subject: [ilds] The Lost Capital of Memory
In-Reply-To: <4A8520C4.6060902@interdesign.fr>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>
	<4A8520C4.6060902@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <9F4EEDBF-81C1-4055-8F6A-B940B4255FBF@earthlink.net>

Ah, this time I understand.  If discussion is the purpose of the ILDS,  
then negativity is a power well spent.


Bruce


On Aug 14, 2009, at 1:31 AM, Marc Piel wrote:

> Hello Galal,
> Some of the people on the Durrel list are contunually negative.
> I think they do it on purpose; it is their "power".
> BR Marc
>
> Here is one I received this morning:
>
> "I am no authority on Alexandria, just a casual observer.  I was  
> there for only five days, but the trends were disturbing.  The old  
> cosmopolitan culture of Greeks, Jews, Copts, Christians, Arabs,  
> Armenians, et al. is disappearing.  The city is no longer Durrell's  
> city of diversity and tolerance.  Read Dr. Mohamed Awad's article in  
> Deus Loci, "The House Revisited, the City Remembered" (vol. 7,  
> 1999-2000), for a local assessment of the cultural situation.  Also  
> read and study Michael Haag's book of old photographs, Vintage  
> Alexandria:  Photographs of the City 1860-1960 (Cairo 2008).  That  
> city is quickly vanishing.  More distressingly, some try to wipe out  
> that memory and say it never really existed or was never  
> representative of "real" Alexandria.  VA was recently reviewed in  
> TLS (26 June 2009), and the reviewer, Maria Golia, an American and  
> longtime resident of Cairo, assumes the Islamist viewpoint and  
> claims that Durrell's "capital of Memory" was never more than a  
> society enjoyed by the families of "the very, very few."  Golia  
> presumably means rich, decadent families of foreign lineage.  She  
> sounds a good deal like Mr. Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood MP, as  
> quoted in Daniel Williams's article.  Haag responded to Golia's  
> review and wrote, "They were not so few, and their families had been  
> in Egypt for generations, in some cases for centuries.  They had  
> been welcomed in Egypt for their expertise, energy and capital; they  
> played a major role in developing the country ? they played an  
> authentic part in Egyptian history" (TLS, 2 July 2009).  Seems to  
> me, that in Egypt today there is a concerted effort to deny the  
> history that Haag refers to, the same one Durrell cherished."
>

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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Fri Aug 14 09:38:16 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 12:38:16 -0400
Subject: [ilds] as a child might a watch
In-Reply-To: <9F4EEDBF-81C1-4055-8F6A-B940B4255FBF@earthlink.net>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>	<4A8520C4.6060902@interdesign.fr>
	<9F4EEDBF-81C1-4055-8F6A-B940B4255FBF@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A8592F8.10803@utc.edu>

Dear friends, could we not turn back to what connects Durrell's writings 
and life with the culture and history of Alexandria?

For my own part, in reference to the reports on the rise of a 
homogeneous Alexandria in the later 20th century, I recall how Durrell 
quotes Forster in the "Notes in the Text" to /Justine/:

>     Amr Conqueror of Alexandria, was a poet and soldier.  Of the Arab
>     invasion E.M. Forster writes: "Though they had not intention of
>     destroying her, they destroyed her, as a child might a watch.  She
>     never functioned again properly for over 1,000 years."

That endnote seems just as provocative today as it did in 1956-1957.  Is 
there not some back-and-forth pull between the Amr's sensitivity as a 
poet-soldier and the destructiveness of his Arab successors?  Strange, that.

The same note faces on to Cavafy's two poems about different losses of 
Alexandria, "The City" and "The God Abandons Antony."  I am certain that 
shifting Alexandria away from Ptolemaic rule to the new Roman regime 
brought its own distinctive uncertainties. 

Others may want to comment upon Alexandrian history and politics &c., 
but I for one will wonder, How does this endnote connect with its point 
of origin, at the close of Part I of /Justine/?   That is where Darley 
tells us "it was as if the whole city had crashed about my ears."

In terms of /Justine/ and the /Quartet/, I think that all of these 
moments could be usefully juxtaposed.

In terms of what differing sides call history, well, I am less certain.

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 14 10:12:09 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:12:09 -0700
Subject: [ilds] complexities
In-Reply-To: <4A8583E5.6060706@utc.edu>
References: <mailman.5.1250190009.4821130.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<008401ca1cdf$69482160$0301a8c0@abc> <4A8583E5.6060706@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <EF74BA5B-2779-437B-A203-D75891C4B632@earthlink.net>

Nag's query and Sligh's response, both very well stated, raise, in my  
opinion, some of the most important questions about Durrell's  
Quartet.  How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be  
judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be  
honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for myself,  
but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the  
novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and  
transcends conventional analysis, and here I am not talking about  
Durrell's philosophical underpinnings re the relativity of  
experience.  I like Durrell's poetry, not his overt philosophy,  
critical and otherwise.  I am absolutely not, however, of Edward  
Said's persuasion, who dismissed the Quartet as essentially a lot of  
pretentious, highbrow Colonial/Romantic rot.  (It's interesting that  
Said didn't feel that way about Joseph Conrad, another writer with a  
whole lot of Romantic baggage.  Conrad was the subject of Said's  
Harvard dissertation, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness has really gotten  
under the skin of the African writer, Chinua Achebe, whom I also  
disagree with.)  I see no reason why writers are obligated to do  
anything more than present their own vision of the world, as long as  
that vision is honest and causes no real harm.


Bruce


On Aug 14, 2009, at 8:33 AM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> Sumantra Nag wrote:
>>
>> I see a conflict between the disappearance of an European Alexandria
>> and the increasing presence of an Egyptian Alexandria, based on
>> a modern Arabic ethos, where an ultra-conservative and restrictive
>> force - now recognised the world over -making its heavy presence  
>> felt.
>>
>> I have always been a great admirer of Lawrence Durrell's prose as it
>> expands in its sounds, colours and its complexities in The Alexandria
>> Quartet. It resounds with an inner poetry - never forget Lawrence
>> Durrell as a poet.
>>
>> Over the years, however, I have come to see the point of Edward Said
>> when he referred to *the triviality of subject matter in Durrell's
>> Alexandria Quartet *[at his lecture in Beirut (?) - I forget the
>> context but remember the assessment]. I have often felt that  
>> *Lawrence
>> Durrell's heightened prose - at its peak in the Alexandria Quartet in
>> my opinion - was wasted on a kind of glorification of habitual and
>> often seedy sexual activity* which was difficult to extricate from  
>> the
>> forceful romanticism of his work. This seediness associated with the
>> writer has been expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell
>> displayed in a recent post and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum  
>> member.
> Thanks for writing, Sumantra.  Does this old debate come down to a
> question of the "uses of literature"?
>
> One view will hold Durrell's writing as "incorrect" or "imperfect" for
> omitting or making grotesque the people, places, and history of
> Alexandria.
>
> That sort of objection springs from the sense that literature must
> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that literature
> must "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable reality.
>
> Another view will observe that Durrell's writing in the /Quartet/
> springs from Durrell's interest in uncertain, subjective viewpoints  
> and
> his increasing skepticism about what gets called "Reality Prime."
>
> That is, if Durrell has predicated his work upon the notion that no  
> one
> sees the real Alexandria "as it is," then how could anyone criticize  
> the
> writer for having missed something or for having made his characters
> more grotesque than "real Alexandrians."
>
> "But of course," might come the answer from someone who identifies  
> with
> Durrell's aesthetic and philosophies in the /Quartet/. "How could it
> ever be otherwise, when all experience, all notions of reality and
> history are ultimately subjective?"
>
> "Then let the Englishman play his games with subjectivity and
> impressionism in his own lands," the other side might answer.  "Our  
> sons
> and daughters require books that give them strong, approved examples."
>
> I doubt the extremes of these sides will ever find common ground.
>
> Those readers who hold the corrective view will accuse Durrell and the
> aesthetes of "re-colonization."
>
> Those readers who take the aesthetic approach will call those who  
> would
> chastise or correct Durrell "fundamentalists," "zealots."
>
> But I imagine that a fair number of readers will fall somewhere into  
> the
> middle, as you seem to do.
>
> Charles
>
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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Fri Aug 14 10:24:20 2009
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:24:20 +0200
Subject: [ilds] complexities
In-Reply-To: <4A8583E5.6060706@utc.edu>
References: <mailman.5.1250190009.4821130.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>	<008401ca1cdf$69482160$0301a8c0@abc>
	<4A8583E5.6060706@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4A859DC4.6050600@interdesign.fr>

My Egyptian friend finally sent more than images; 
he sent a line of text:

"interesting, sad, but not all is true, at least 
at Montaza !!"

BR
Marc

Charles Sligh a ?crit :
> Sumantra Nag wrote:
>>  
>> I see a conflict between the disappearance of an European Alexandria 
>> and the increasing presence of an Egyptian Alexandria, based on 
>> a modern Arabic ethos, where an ultra-conservative and restrictive 
>> force - now recognised the world over -making its heavy presence felt. 
>>  
>> I have always been a great admirer of Lawrence Durrell's prose as it 
>> expands in its sounds, colours and its complexities in The Alexandria 
>> Quartet. It resounds with an inner poetry - never forget Lawrence 
>> Durrell as a poet. 
>>  
>> Over the years, however, I have come to see the point of Edward Said 
>> when he referred to *the triviality of subject matter in Durrell's 
>> Alexandria Quartet *[at his lecture in Beirut (?) - I forget the 
>> context but remember the assessment]. I have often felt that *Lawrence 
>> Durrell's heightened prose - at its peak in the Alexandria Quartet in 
>> my opinion - was wasted on a kind of glorification of habitual and 
>> often seedy sexual activity* which was difficult to extricate from the 
>> forceful romanticism of his work. This seediness associated with the 
>> writer has been expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell 
>> displayed in a recent post and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum member.
> Thanks for writing, Sumantra.  Does this old debate come down to a 
> question of the "uses of literature"?
> 
> One view will hold Durrell's writing as "incorrect" or "imperfect" for 
> omitting or making grotesque the people, places, and history of 
> Alexandria. 
> 
> That sort of objection springs from the sense that literature must 
> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that literature 
> must "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable reality. 
> 
> Another view will observe that Durrell's writing in the /Quartet/ 
> springs from Durrell's interest in uncertain, subjective viewpoints and 
> his increasing skepticism about what gets called "Reality Prime."
> 
> That is, if Durrell has predicated his work upon the notion that no one 
> sees the real Alexandria "as it is," then how could anyone criticize the 
> writer for having missed something or for having made his characters 
> more grotesque than "real Alexandrians." 
> 
> "But of course," might come the answer from someone who identifies with 
> Durrell's aesthetic and philosophies in the /Quartet/. "How could it 
> ever be otherwise, when all experience, all notions of reality and 
> history are ultimately subjective?"
> 
> "Then let the Englishman play his games with subjectivity and 
> impressionism in his own lands," the other side might answer.  "Our sons 
> and daughters require books that give them strong, approved examples."
> 
> I doubt the extremes of these sides will ever find common ground. 
> 
> Those readers who hold the corrective view will accuse Durrell and the 
> aesthetes of "re-colonization."
> 
> Those readers who take the aesthetic approach will call those who would 
> chastise or correct Durrell "fundamentalists," "zealots."
> 
> But I imagine that a fair number of readers will fall somewhere into the 
> middle, as you seem to do.
> 
> Charles
> 

From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 14 10:37:51 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:37:51 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Two Alexandrian Swimmers
Message-ID: <F432CAEF-5C59-4DD1-A146-4FD36CF049C2@earthlink.net>

Fairly recent photo of an Alexandrian beach.  This is what Daniel  
Williams refers to.

BR



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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 14 14:05:35 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:05:35 -0700
Subject: [ilds] as a child might a watch
In-Reply-To: <4A8592F8.10803@utc.edu>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>	<4A8520C4.6060902@interdesign.fr>
	<9F4EEDBF-81C1-4055-8F6A-B940B4255FBF@earthlink.net>
	<4A8592F8.10803@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <7FDDCD79-BE3B-4A0E-AAC5-9D89A0497891@earthlink.net>

Provocative question, Charles, especially in terms of the composition  
and plan of Justine, but I'm not sure where it leads in terms of the  
primary text, unless you want to argue for Darley's post-coital/ 
historical insights after first making love to Justine.  I.e., the  
aftermath of that profound sexual experience creates in Darley some  
historical consciousness of Alexandria, which figuratively brings the  
present crashing down and opens up a vast past, Cavafy-like.  That I  
like.  But, as you say, the broken watch image is in a footnote, an  
authorial footnote, obviously, not the main text dealing with Darley's  
consciousness.  What is in the main text that has always stuck in my  
memory is the image of the Arab conqueror Amr, on his deathbed,  
"breathing through the eye of a needle."  An image of struggle,  
suffocation, and death ? all in a post-sexual context, given Darley's  
situation.  (Cf. the fairly recent death of David Carradine in  
Bangkok, which some attributed to the practice of "auto-erotic  
asphyxiation.")   So, maybe one of Durrell's famous images (this one  
borrowed) can allude to some radical change in Darley's  
consciousness.  I guess, Charles, you're saying the main text and  
appended notes and translations really integrate into one reading  
experience.  And here, you're undoubtedly right.

By the way, Forster got the dying words of Amr from Alfred J. Butler's  
The Arab Conquest of Egypt (1902?).  I don't think Forster attributes  
the source in his Alexandria:  A History and a Guide.

Bruce


On Aug 14, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> Dear friends, could we not turn back to what connects Durrell's  
> writings
> and life with the culture and history of Alexandria?
>
> For my own part, in reference to the reports on the rise of a
> homogeneous Alexandria in the later 20th century, I recall how Durrell
> quotes Forster in the "Notes in the Text" to /Justine/:
>
>>    Amr Conqueror of Alexandria, was a poet and soldier.  Of the Arab
>>    invasion E.M. Forster writes: "Though they had not intention of
>>    destroying her, they destroyed her, as a child might a watch.  She
>>    never functioned again properly for over 1,000 years."
>
> That endnote seems just as provocative today as it did in  
> 1956-1957.  Is
> there not some back-and-forth pull between the Amr's sensitivity as a
> poet-soldier and the destructiveness of his Arab successors?   
> Strange, that.
>
> The same note faces on to Cavafy's two poems about different losses of
> Alexandria, "The City" and "The God Abandons Antony."  I am certain  
> that
> shifting Alexandria away from Ptolemaic rule to the new Roman regime
> brought its own distinctive uncertainties.
>
> Others may want to comment upon Alexandrian history and politics &c.,
> but I for one will wonder, How does this endnote connect with its  
> point
> of origin, at the close of Part I of /Justine/?   That is where Darley
> tells us "it was as if the whole city had crashed about my ears."
>
> In terms of /Justine/ and the /Quartet/, I think that all of these
> moments could be usefully juxtaposed.
>
> In terms of what differing sides call history, well, I am less  
> certain.
>
> Charles
>
> -- 
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 14 15:37:37 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:37:37 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Dreams and Imaginary Worlds
In-Reply-To: <4A85DBC6.6050304@utc.edu>
References: <4A832A88.2090409@nasa.gov>	<81E324EF-B09C-4827-A9FC-28821991EE51@earthlink.net>	<4A8466E5.7050507@utc.edu>	<4A8520C4.6060902@interdesign.fr>
	<9F4EEDBF-81C1-4055-8F6A-B940B4255FBF@earthlink.net>
	<4A8592F8.10803@utc.edu>
	<7FDDCD79-BE3B-4A0E-AAC5-9D89A0497891@earthlink.net>
	<4A85DBC6.6050304@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <B12A5844-E0CA-4779-AC1D-91465C91DE4A@earthlink.net>

Charles,

The possibilities of the Amr allusion would not have occurred to me  
had you not mentioned the ending to Part I of Justine.  That's the  
value of discussion ? goading one to think in new or alternative ways,  
joggling the brain cells to make new connections.  I share your  
enjoyment of Durrell's powerful imagination and the worlds he  
creates.  I consider that his greatest gift, a true Romantic  
disposition.  The real world be damned!


Bruce


On Aug 14, 2009, at 2:48 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> Bruce Redwine wrote:
>> I guess, Charles, you're saying the main text and appended notes  
>> and translations really integrate into one reading experience.  And  
>> here, you're undoubtedly right.
> Well there is always room for doubt, Bruce, but thank you for what  
> you added in response to my question.
>
> I enjoyed the connection that you made to Darley's post-coital  
> moment.  Cavafy's poems in the Durrell translations now can be  
> colored or inflected by that sense of drift and loss.
>
> Originally, the loss of the ancient library was on my mind in  
> connection with the broken watch.  I was reminded of that when you  
> passed along the report, with its viewpoints about cleaning out the  
> undesirable, un-Islamic nude statues &c.
>
> I read /Justine/ &c. for style and treat it all as a dream or as an  
> imaginary world.
> But I understand that is my special privilege, and I have been  
> reminded on occasion that not everyone else can take it that way-- 
> sometimes with a passionate violence, as in Alex in 1996 &c.  For  
> that view, see especially
>
>   http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Alexandria-Emerging-Voices-Quartet/dp/0704370069
>
>
> Which is very much written in opposition to Durrell's imagining of  
> Alexandrian women.
>
> Take care--
>
> Charles
>
>
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From sumantranag at gmail.com  Sat Aug 15 11:05:18 2009
From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag)
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:35:18 +0530
Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 29,
	Issue 11_Daniel Williams_Message 2 Sumantra_Message 5
	Charles_Message 8 Bruce
References: <mailman.5.1250276406.3940544.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>

Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that literature must
accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable reality."

Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be  
judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be  
honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for myself,  
but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the  
novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and  
transcends conventional analysis,"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a small part of your respective comments. 

Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments about Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller or expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of Darkness" where description is direct - but I may well be missing out on something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is held up by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for comparison with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from George Steiner on ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to point out that Durrell's characters are seen as limited to foreigners in Alexandria, and not to the Egyptian population - but then Alexandria apparently had a strong European character, different from the rest of Egypt. Again, Durrell's tendency in the AQ to write subjective commentaries about the "City" and its people, when he is actually writing about a very small section of the city's population (even its European population), accentuates the neglect of large portions of the city's people - even the cosmopolitan non-Egyptian polpulation. This may not have happened if he gave a less pervasive presence to "the City" in his novels. But then, the AQ has a magnetic quality - a quality which you have described as magical and transcending traditional analysis!     

Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the context of our discussions:

"Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia, for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer literary talent." (From "SUPREME TRICKSTER" By Terry Eagleton, a review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.) 

George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those of the quality of prose?

Best wishes

Sumantra 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2009 12:30 AM
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 29, Issue 11

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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sat Aug 15 13:05:32 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:05:32 -0400
Subject: [ilds] "a country of the mind"
In-Reply-To: <006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>
References: <mailman.5.1250276406.3940544.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>
Message-ID: <4A87150C.1090103@utc.edu>

Terry Eagleton wrote:
>
>         "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and
>         this is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so
>         shortlived. The glittering surface of his prose conceals an
>         emotional anaesthesia, for which the portentously "profound"
>         reflections of the Quartet are meant to compensate. Like many
>         poets, his verbal sensitivity is in inverse proportion *to
>         _real_ human sympathy, a sublimated _selfishness_ evident in
>         his life as much as his work**. What was _real_ was what he
>         could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or
>         high-sounding platitude. His Alexandria is _a country of the
>         mind_, attractive precisely because its cultural and ethnic
>         mix makes it at once nowhere and everywhere. I*f he plundered
>         Egypt for its symbolic capital, he also groused about its
>         "stinking inhabitants".
>
And Sumantra then asked:
>
>          
>         George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief
>         from the flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the
>         1950s. But it seems to me that some critics (including perhaps
>         Eagleton) see this quality of Durrell as filling the need of a
>         particular period. What happens if you judge the novels in
>         critical terms other than those of the quality of prose?
>
>
Well, I would first refuse to yield the ground to Eagleton.  Why let him 
set the rules by which we take our pleasure?

I would remind Eagleton that there are other ways to read, other ways to 
enjoy the world, other values beyond his particular sort of late Marxism.

I would ask Eagleton:

            * Why should "real human sympathy" or anything else "real"
              determine the pleasure or quality of fiction, art, or
              music?  
            * Why should something "selfish"--even something /supremely/
              self-centered, sublimated or intentional--be viewed as
              less worthy?
            * What precisely is negative about projecting "a country of
              the mind"? 
            * Why promote this touchstone test of "the real"?  Try using
              that test in Shakespeare's Elsinore, Coleridge's Xanadu,
              Bront?s' Wuthering Heights, Carroll's Wonderland,
              Dunsany's Pegana, Cabell's Poictesme, or even the
              different kinds of "Dublin" appearing in the late middle
              chapters of Joyce's /Ulysses/.
            * And what is this talk about "a sublimated selfishness
              evident in his life as much as his work"? / /There
              Eagleton really voices the police or the social worker,
              trying to come around knocking at the house and correct
              Durrell's biography. 

Eagleton is /wrong/ in assuming that his points about Durrell's writing 
are somehow damning--that these points somehow expose Durrell's offenses 
against an already agreed notion of what we can and cannot do with 
literature.    Really, there is no such formula or checklist.

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Sat Aug 15 13:58:38 2009
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:58:38 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Which seedy Poem
Message-ID: <289ABD0104EE4FE4B2416D8B182B9BB5@MumandDad>

Sumantra wrote: "This seediness associated with the writer has been expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell displayed in a recent post and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum member."

Sumantra poem are you refering to? One of mine or the one by Charles Bryant? I think mine are largely visceral or plays on words which, apart from references to Larry's vinuous habits, make no mention of Durrell's notorious sex life.

Speaking of colonials, one must be careful here as we cannot all be tarred with the same brush. You have the British African and Indian 'born to rule' type colonials who were given jobs as information officers on various British protectorates or possessions (e.g Larry on Rhodes or Cyprus) and then you have the Australian and New Zealand variety who, apart from some issues with their respective indiginous populations and with their strange accents, have never ruled over anyone much except over England on the sporting field, such are our glorious achievements in world history.

David Green
Coarse Colonial from the Antipodes


16 William Street
Marrickville NSW  2204
+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au
www.denisetart.com.au
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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sat Aug 15 15:11:49 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:11:49 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Subject: Eagleton
Message-ID: <4A8732A5.8060400@utc.edu>

>
> Subject:
> Eagleton
> From:
> "Mark Valentine" <Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com>
> Date:
> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:19:17 +0100
>
> To:
> <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
>
>
> Unfortunately, Eagleton cannot be regarded as a reliable critic of any 
> author outside the narrow Marxist, social-realist limit of his own 
> convictions. Because he proceeds from this particular drab, 
> determinist world-view, he starts from a position of prejudice against 
> Durrell, the bon viveur, the aesthete, the mystic, and then seeks out 
> reasons to denigrate him.  It is the same with other authors whose 
> world-view or lifestyle are different to his own. Seeking Eagleton's 
> opinions about Durrell is about as useful as asking a lead weight what 
> it thinks of an orchid.
>
> Mark V 

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Sat Aug 15 15:42:10 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:42:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Takes
In-Reply-To: <006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>
References: <mailman.5.1250276406.3940544.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>
Message-ID: <BEB55669-6197-4221-A08B-5DDAB4390A93@earthlink.net>

Sumantra,

Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"  
on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"    
Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he  
said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.

I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's Heart of  
Darkness (1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined  
it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of  
Africa:  Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Mass. Review 18  
[1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,  
Achebe's criticism of HD basically boils down to saying, and here I do  
not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It  
badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair  
treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism  
of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,  
"[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it  
is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and  
say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.   
Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems  
necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way racist.

Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find  
them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell  
Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the  
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Justine.  There many  
Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the Quartet,  
using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with  
that approach.

Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.   
First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,  
since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in TLS?, without the  
courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not  
surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about  
Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.  Second,  
Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the  
social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote  
Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the  
ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of  
Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I  
only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and Proust  
his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will endure.

Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would  
like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of  
"elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary  
talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's Lolita consistently gets  
ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second only  
to Joyce's Ulysses.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that he wasn't  
enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard working  
enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.   
Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards  
pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a  
finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had  
financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and  
children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with  
art, and I don't know what it was.


Bruce




On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:

> Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that  
> literature must
> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that  
> literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable  
> reality."
>
> Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
> judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
> honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for myself,
> but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
> novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
> transcends conventional analysis,"
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful  
> responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a  
> small part of your respective comments.
>
> Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of  
> Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments  
> about Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a  
> travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller  
> or expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of  
> Darkness" where description is direct - but I may well be missing  
> out on something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is  
> held up by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for  
> comparison with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from  
> George Steiner on ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to  
> point out that Durrell's characters are seen as limited to  
> foreigners in Alexandria, and not to the Egyptian population - but  
> then Alexandria apparently had a strong European character,  
> different from the rest of Egypt. Again, Durrell's tendency in the  
> AQ to write subjective commentaries about the "City" and its people,  
> when he is actually writing about a very small section of the city's  
> population (even its European population), accentuates the neglect  
> of large portions of the city's people - even the cosmopolitan non- 
> Egyptian polpulation. This may not have happened if he gave a less  
> pervasive presence to "the City" in his novels. But then, the AQ has  
> a magnetic quality - a quality which you have described as magical  
> and transcending traditional analysis!
>
> Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the  
> context of our discussions:
>
> "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this  
> is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The  
> glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,  
> for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are  
> meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in  
> inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness  
> evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he  
> could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding  
> platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive  
> precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once  
> nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic  
> capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His  
> combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by  
> Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer  
> literary talent." (From "SUPREME TRICKSTER" By Terry Eagleton, a  
> review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
>
> George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the  
> flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it  
> seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this  
> quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What  
> happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those  
> of the quality of prose?
>
> Best wishes
>
> Sumantra
>

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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Sun Aug 16 07:07:45 2009
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:07:45 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Subject: Eagleton
In-Reply-To: <4A8732A5.8060400@utc.edu>
References: <4A8732A5.8060400@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4A8812B1.9040903@gmail.com>

If Durrell's libertarian streak is as real as I've argued, then there's 
a very clear reason why Eagleton would oppose him -- the same reason why 
the likes of Frederic Jameson disregard the likes of Henry Miller.  An 
individualist view (as Eagleton describes Durrell) just doesn't jive 
with the Messianic break into a post-capitalist Utopia at the end of 
history.  That individualist may be anti-authoritarian, but that's the 
actual point -- there's no anti-authoritarian communist paradise, just 
like there's not anti-authoritarian corporate world, and most on 
libertarian left (or its other names) see slow progress rather than 
messianic moments of revolution...

Just me two bits before the internet time cuts me off!

-J

Charles Sligh wrote:
>> Subject:
>> Eagleton
>> From:
>> "Mark Valentine" <Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com>
>> Date:
>> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:19:17 +0100
>>
>> To:
>> <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately, Eagleton cannot be regarded as a reliable critic of any 
>> author outside the narrow Marxist, social-realist limit of his own 
>> convictions. Because he proceeds from this particular drab, 
>> determinist world-view, he starts from a position of prejudice against 
>> Durrell, the bon viveur, the aesthete, the mystic, and then seeks out 
>> reasons to denigrate him.  It is the same with other authors whose 
>> world-view or lifestyle are different to his own. Seeking Eagleton's 
>> opinions about Durrell is about as useful as asking a lead weight what 
>> it thinks of an orchid.
>>
>> Mark V 
>>     
>
>   

From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Sun Aug 16 07:19:57 2009
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:19:57 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Takes
In-Reply-To: <BEB55669-6197-4221-A08B-5DDAB4390A93@earthlink.net>
References: <mailman.5.1250276406.3940544.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>	<006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>
	<BEB55669-6197-4221-A08B-5DDAB4390A93@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A88158D.80403@gmail.com>

Let me also very briefly add that while in conversation with Eagleton 
during a DSC session, he admitted that he couldn't possibly read 
everything he was asked to review -- that in response to his comments on 
MacNiven's bio (which includes a mistake about the number of pages, 
among other things...).  Ditto when I asked about his reading of the 
complete Quartet, which it was apparently very fashionable to be *see* 
reading at the time, for the purpose of impression the fairer sex.  He 
was, however, seemingly enthusiastic about other parts of the works and 
was genuinely encouraging for the students at the session.

Perhaps Pamela or Beatrice can add more comments?  I wouldn't really go 
to Eagleton for serious commentary though, since he's ideologically 
against the position of the works, is disinclined to recognize their 
ironies, and likely hasn't really read them with any serious attention 
anyway.

As for Said's lecture in Lebanon, it's from Mustafa Marrouchi's book, 
based on notes on the lecture from Said's papers, and Said was very 
likely referring to the film given the nature and time of his comments 
(ie: not the book itself!).  Said's only written comments on the Quartet 
concern someone else's reading of the work, not the work itself...

-J

Bruce Redwine wrote:
> Sumantra,
>
> Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes" 
> on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"   
> Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he 
> said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
>
> I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's /Heart of 
> Darkness /(1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined 
> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of 
> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's /Heart of Darkness"/ /(Mass. Review/ 18 
> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist, 
> Achebe's criticism of /HD/ basically boils down to saying, and here I 
> do not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It 
> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair 
> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism 
> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote, 
> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it 
> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and 
> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do. 
>  Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems 
> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way racist.
>
> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find 
> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell 
> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the 
> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of /Justine.  /There many 
> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the /Quartet,/ 
> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with 
> that approach.
>
> Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work. 
>  First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics, 
> since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in /TLS/?, without the 
> courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not 
> surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about 
> Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.  Second, 
> Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the 
> social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote 
> Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the 
> ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of 
> Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I 
> only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and Proust 
> his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will endure.
>
> Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would 
> like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of 
> "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary 
> talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's /Lolita/ consistently 
> gets ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second 
> only to Joyce's /Ulysses/.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that he 
> wasn't enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard working 
> enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily. 
>  Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards 
> pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a 
> finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had 
> financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and 
> children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with 
> art, and I don't know what it was.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
>
>> Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that 
>> literature must
>> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that 
>> literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable 
>> reality."
>>
>> Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be  
>> judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be  
>> honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for myself,  
>> but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the  
>> novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and  
>> transcends conventional analysis,"
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful 
>> responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a 
>> small part of your respective comments.
>>  
>> Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of 
>> Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments about 
>> Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a 
>> travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller or 
>> expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of Darkness" 
>> where description is direct - but I may well be missing out on 
>> something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is held up 
>> by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for comparison 
>> with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from George Steiner on 
>> ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to point out that 
>> Durrell's characters are seen as limited to foreigners in Alexandria, 
>> and not to the Egyptian population - but then Alexandria apparently 
>> had a strong European character, different from the rest of Egypt. 
>> Again, Durrell's tendency in the AQ to write subjective commentaries 
>> about the "City" and its people, when he is actually writing about a 
>> very small section of the city's population (even its European 
>> population), accentuates the neglect of large portions of the city's 
>> people - even the cosmopolitan non-Egyptian polpulation. This may not 
>> have happened if he gave a less pervasive presence to "the City" in 
>> his novels. But then, the AQ has a magnetic quality - a quality which 
>> you have described as magical and transcending traditional analysis!     
>>  
>> Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the 
>> context of our discussions:
>>  
>> "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this is 
>> surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The 
>> glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia, 
>> for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are 
>> meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in 
>> inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness 
>> evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he 
>> could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding 
>> platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive 
>> precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once 
>> nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic 
>> capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His 
>> combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by 
>> Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer 
>> literary talent." (From *"**SUPREME TRICKSTER"* By Terry Eagleton, a 
>> review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
>>  
>> George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the 
>> flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it 
>> seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this 
>> quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What 
>> happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those of 
>> the quality of prose?
>>  
>> Best wishes
>>  
>> Sumantra 
>>  
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>   

From gkoger at mindspring.com  Sun Aug 16 07:36:23 2009
From: gkoger at mindspring.com (gkoger at mindspring.com)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:36:23 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [ilds] Takes
Message-ID: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sun Aug 16 08:57:59 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:57:59 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Takes
In-Reply-To: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A882C87.1080704@utc.edu>

Good to see your note, Grove.

>         /Lolita/ is certainly Nabokov's masterpiece, but despite its
>         myriad allusions I find it small and self-contained. Its cast
>         of characters is limited, and its language shows signs of the
>         artificiality that in my opinion would vitiate Nabokov's
>         subsequent works.

I have several thoughts here. 

Why should we allow Eagleton or any other critic set the terms as 
oppositional, "either . . . or"? 

Why must it be the question of "Nabokov or Durrell"? or "Hemingway or 
Durrell"?  or "Al-Kharrat or Durrell"?  &c.

Call me Epicurean, but I balk at that tether.  I can enjoy Scott and 
Austen, George Eliot and Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning and Swinburne. 

In fact, I often enjoy these "oppositionals" all the more because I feel 
that I am crossing borders and braking bounds.

I mark out works of literature as distinctive and memorable based upon 
how they surprise me into new experience.   The authors may have written 
from any variety of motivations--high aesthetic, Anarchy, Marxist 
revolutionary, or pornography.

And that would be my point of difference from Eagleton.  I am open to 
the possibility of being pleasurably surprised despite politics or lack 
of politics. 

I do not begin by caring about those motivations, but rather with how 
surprising or successful a work seems within its own limits of form and 
within the course of reading that I have conducted up to that point. 

In that, no doubt, I follow Swinburne, who found pleasure and power in 
the verse of Dante, Milton, and Christina Rossetti /despite/ their 
different sorts of Christian dogma.

>         It does not detract from the poetic supremacy of AEschylus and
>         of Dante, of Milton and of Shelley, that they should have been
>         pleased to put their art to such use ; nor does it detract
>         from the sovereign greatness of other poets that they should
>         have had no note of song for any such theme. In a word, the
>         doctrine of art for art is true in the positive sense, false
>         in the negative; sound as an affirmation, unsound as a
>         prohibition.

>  
>
> The /AQ/, in contrast, is far more expansive, a "masterpiece of size" 
> that opens outward and has much more to say about the world. Unlike 
> Nabokov's style, its style seems to me much more rooted in the natural 
> richness of the English language as it has developed over the centuries.
>
That certainly may be true.  Contra Eagleton, I find a very human and 
humane sort of writing in the island books and the poetry of the 1940s 
and 1950s.  And Darley and Pursewarden and Balthazar are very human in 
their limits and fears and mistakes.  

I wonder what you mean when you say that Durrell's prose partakes of the 
"natural richness of the English language as it has developed over the 
centuries"? 

For my own part, I would find that true in thinking about, say, 
/Justine/.  There, in certain sentences and paragraphs, Durrell restores 
to currency an obsolete term; in others, he commits jarring redundancies 
of word or phrase.  I have grown quite fond of those quaint little 
birthmarks and cicatrices running up and down the text.  All of that is 
/Justine/--I would not ask otherwise.  I enjoy the notion that the book 
was developing in real time, that it is still developing. . . .

Thanks, Grove!

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Sun Aug 16 09:04:14 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:04:14 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Takes
In-Reply-To: <4A88158D.80403@gmail.com>
References: <mailman.5.1250276406.3940544.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>	<006f01ca1dd2$f5898ad0$0301a8c0@abc>
	<BEB55669-6197-4221-A08B-5DDAB4390A93@earthlink.net>
	<4A88158D.80403@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <F9E87CB4-5DF8-4E3E-8646-E19B1D0AA47A@earthlink.net>

James,

Thanks for repeating what you said years ago.  My response to  
Eagleton's lame mea culpa is simple ? if a reviewer can't give a work  
a careful and thoughtful reading then he or she shouldn't review it.   
Seems to me that Eagleton was simply too eager to have his own name in  
print and have his own views propagated at the expense of someone  
else's hard work.


Bruce


On Aug 16, 2009, at 7:19 AM, James Gifford wrote:

> Let me also very briefly add that while in conversation with Eagleton
> during a DSC session, he admitted that he couldn't possibly read
> everything he was asked to review -- that in response to his  
> comments on
> MacNiven's bio (which includes a mistake about the number of pages,
> among other things...).  Ditto when I asked about his reading of the
> complete Quartet, which it was apparently very fashionable to be *see*
> reading at the time, for the purpose of impression the fairer sex.  He
> was, however, seemingly enthusiastic about other parts of the works  
> and
> was genuinely encouraging for the students at the session.
>
> Perhaps Pamela or Beatrice can add more comments?  I wouldn't really  
> go
> to Eagleton for serious commentary though, since he's ideologically
> against the position of the works, is disinclined to recognize their
> ironies, and likely hasn't really read them with any serious attention
> anyway.
>
> As for Said's lecture in Lebanon, it's from Mustafa Marrouchi's book,
> based on notes on the lecture from Said's papers, and Said was very
> likely referring to the film given the nature and time of his comments
> (ie: not the book itself!).  Said's only written comments on the  
> Quartet
> concern someone else's reading of the work, not the work itself...
>
> -J
>
> Bruce Redwine wrote:
>> Sumantra,
>>
>> Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"
>> on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
>> Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he
>> said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
>>
>> I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's /Heart of
>> Darkness /(1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
>> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
>> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's /Heart of Darkness"/ /(Mass. Review/ 18
>> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
>> Achebe's criticism of /HD/ basically boils down to saying, and here I
>> do not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.   
>> It
>> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
>> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the  
>> racism
>> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
>> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
>> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
>> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
>> Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
>> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way  
>> racist.
>>
>> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
>> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
>> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
>> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of /Justine.  /There many
>> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the /Quartet,/
>> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
>> that approach.
>>
>> Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.
>> First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
>> since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in /TLS/?, without the
>> courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
>> surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
>> Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.   
>> Second,
>> Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
>> social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote
>> Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
>> ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
>> Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
>> only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and  
>> Proust
>> his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will  
>> endure.
>>
>> Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
>> like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
>> "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
>> talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's /Lolita/ consistently
>> gets ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second
>> only to Joyce's /Ulysses/.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that  
>> he
>> wasn't enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard  
>> working
>> enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
>> Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
>> pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
>> finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
>> financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
>> children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
>> art, and I don't know what it was.
>>
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
>>
>>> Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that
>>> literature must
>>> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that
>>> literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable
>>> reality."
>>>
>>> Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
>>> judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
>>> honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for  
>>> myself,
>>> but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
>>> novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
>>> transcends conventional analysis,"
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful
>>> responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a
>>> small part of your respective comments.
>>>
>>> Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
>>> Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments  
>>> about
>>> Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a
>>> travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller  
>>> or
>>> expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of  
>>> Darkness"
>>> where description is direct - but I may well be missing out on
>>> something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is held up
>>> by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for comparison
>>> with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from George Steiner  
>>> on
>>> ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to point out that
>>> Durrell's characters are seen as limited to foreigners in  
>>> Alexandria,
>>> and not to the Egyptian population - but then Alexandria apparently
>>> had a strong European character, different from the rest of Egypt.
>>> Again, Durrell's tendency in the AQ to write subjective commentaries
>>> about the "City" and its people, when he is actually writing about a
>>> very small section of the city's population (even its European
>>> population), accentuates the neglect of large portions of the city's
>>> people - even the cosmopolitan non-Egyptian polpulation. This may  
>>> not
>>> have happened if he gave a less pervasive presence to "the City" in
>>> his novels. But then, the AQ has a magnetic quality - a quality  
>>> which
>>> you have described as magical and transcending traditional analysis!
>>>
>>> Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the
>>> context of our discussions:
>>>
>>> "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this  
>>> is
>>> surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The
>>> glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,
>>> for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are
>>> meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in
>>> inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness
>>> evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he
>>> could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding
>>> platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive
>>> precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once
>>> nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic
>>> capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His
>>> combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by
>>> Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer
>>> literary talent." (From *"**SUPREME TRICKSTER"* By Terry Eagleton, a
>>> review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
>>>
>>> George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the
>>> flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it
>>> seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this
>>> quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What
>>> happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those  
>>> of
>>> the quality of prose?
>>>
>>> Best wishes
>>>
>>> Sumantra
>>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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 Aug 16 09:32:10 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:32:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Takes
In-Reply-To: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <B8DA36DE-69A1-41C1-884E-E915D4B2D959@earthlink.net>

Grove,

I too prefer the Quartet over Lolita, and I wonder about Lolita, but  
not for the reason you give.  Nabokov writes some of the most  
exquisite prose in the English language, and this novel approaches  
Ulysses in terms of the perfection of its structure and composition.   
But I'm very queasy about an elderly Humbert Humbert chasing among an  
underaged "nymphet," as though the undertaking were one of the  
Russian's butterfly hunts.  I'm about as shocked as Mountolive was  
when he stumbled on a brothel of child prostitutes.  Durrell  
overwrites and some of his writing, on the most basic level of the  
sentence, doesn't hold up to scrutiny.  The man's imagination,  
however, is truly great, his richest gift.  That's part of what  
Charles Bryant admired in his reading of "Lawrence Durrell" ? the  
Dickensian inventiveness.  I haven't read Anthony Powell.


Bruce


On Aug 16, 2009, at 7:36 AM, gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:

> Bruce et al.,
>
> As much as I enjoy and admire Nabokov's best works, I must disagree  
> with those who find his talent "finer" than Durrell's. I'd be  
> willing to wager, although I may not be around to collect, that  
> Durrell's reputation will eventually eclipse Nabokov's. /Lolita/ is  
> certainly Nabokov's masterpiece, but despite its myriad allusions I  
> find it small and self-contained. Its cast of characters is limited,  
> and its language shows signs of the artificiality that in my opinion  
> would vitiate Nabokov's subsequent works.
>
> The /AQ/, in contrast, is far more expansive, a "masterpiece of  
> size" that opens outward and has much more to say about the world.  
> Unlike Nabokov's style, its style seems to me much more rooted in  
> the natural richness of the English language as it has developed  
> over the centuries. Although /The Revolt/ is written in a plainer  
> style, it maintains the expansiveness of the /AQ/. (I'm speaking in  
> non-literary terms, I know, but I hope that someone in agreement  
> will recast the argument.) And surely Durrell put a lot of work into  
> revising it.
>
> As far as great novels of the century go, at least in English, I'd  
> say we have to look to Anthony Powell's sequence /A Dance to the  
> Music of Time/ to find a work as important as the /AQ/. All other  
> things being equal, size does count.
>
> Am I the only one to have these thoughts?
>
> Grove
>
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Sun Aug 16 13:07:11 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:07:11 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Takes on Takes
In-Reply-To: <4A882C87.1080704@utc.edu>
References: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
	<4A882C87.1080704@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <076C1B47-F292-488A-B470-AE17245C9A01@earthlink.net>

Re two of Charles's points:

1.  "I am open to the possibility of being pleasurably surprised  
despite politics or lack of politics. I do not begin by caring about  
those motivations, but rather with how surprising or successful a work  
seems within its own limits of form and within the course of reading  
that I have conducted up to that point."

Hear, hear!  Yes, absolutely.  In graduate school in the seventies, I  
was initially taught to appreciate a work of literature on its own  
terms.  Then along came Paul de Man and "theory" took over.  I guess  
the current emphasis on critical "theory" has displaced the old  
approach.  I once had an essay rejected by a journal because it was  
"untheoretical," a word I didn't know existed.


2.  "I wonder what you mean when you say that Durrell's prose partakes  
of 'natural richness of the English language as it has developed over  
the centuries'"?

James Clawson on 10 July 2009 has already given an excellent analysis  
of that process in his discussion of Durrell's use of "porpentines" in  
Justine.


BR


On Aug 16, 2009, at 8:57 AM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> Good to see your note, Grove.
>
>>        /Lolita/ is certainly Nabokov's masterpiece, but despite its
>>        myriad allusions I find it small and self-contained. Its cast
>>        of characters is limited, and its language shows signs of the
>>        artificiality that in my opinion would vitiate Nabokov's
>>        subsequent works.
>
> I have several thoughts here.
>
> Why should we allow Eagleton or any other critic set the terms as
> oppositional, "either . . . or"?
>
> Why must it be the question of "Nabokov or Durrell"? or "Hemingway or
> Durrell"?  or "Al-Kharrat or Durrell"?  &c.
>
> Call me Epicurean, but I balk at that tether.  I can enjoy Scott and
> Austen, George Eliot and Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning and Swinburne.
>
> In fact, I often enjoy these "oppositionals" all the more because I  
> feel
> that I am crossing borders and braking bounds.
>
> I mark out works of literature as distinctive and memorable based upon
> how they surprise me into new experience.   The authors may have  
> written
> from any variety of motivations--high aesthetic, Anarchy, Marxist
> revolutionary, or pornography.
>
> And that would be my point of difference from Eagleton.  I am open to
> the possibility of being pleasurably surprised despite politics or  
> lack
> of politics.
>
> I do not begin by caring about those motivations, but rather with how
> surprising or successful a work seems within its own limits of form  
> and
> within the course of reading that I have conducted up to that point.
>
> I wonder what you mean when you say that Durrell's prose partakes of  
> the
> "natural richness of the English language as it has developed over the
> centuries"?
>
> For my own part, I would find that true in thinking about, say,
> /Justine/.  There, in certain sentences and paragraphs, Durrell  
> restores
> to currency an obsolete term; in others, he commits jarring  
> redundancies
> of word or phrase.  I have grown quite fond of those quaint little
> birthmarks and cicatrices running up and down the text.  All of that  
> is
> /Justine/--I would not ask otherwise.  I enjoy the notion that the  
> book
> was developing in real time, that it is still developing. . . .
>

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From jtriley at unca.edu  Sun Aug 16 13:22:08 2009
From: jtriley at unca.edu (Jacob Riley)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:22:08 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Achebe on Conrad/Durrell
Message-ID: <ee860fa00908161322l5c460f14sbc0c82c9eee87988@mail.gmail.com>

"I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's Heart of
Darkness (1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
Africa:  Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Mass. Review 18
[1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
Achebe's criticism of HD basically boils down to saying, and here I do
not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It
badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism
of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
"[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way racist.

Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Justine.  There many
Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the Quartet,
using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
that approach." --Bruce (i think this was your post, the message format is
confusing)

Bruce, I was furious after I read Achebe's article in a literary theory
course. As you say, I don't read Conrad as a 'realistic' representation of
(in the sense of a realistic novel) the continent of Africa, just as Durrell
is not attempting to portray the "real" life of Alexandrians in the quartet.
In fact, I think that looking at Durrell's later work like Tunc/Numquam and
especially the Avignon Quintet are less about the characters and even the
environment and more about the ideas Durrell is shoving into the novels. I
found a similar thing going on with Heart of Darkness, whereas the ideas in
Durrell are more presented through the character's dialogue and action in an
unconventionally clear way. Maybe this is just the way I read, but Durrell
sometimes reads like a philosophical treatise or even an academic
article--especially with the endless quotations built up in order to support
a generalization made about a character. All this is to say that I think it
is the reader's (and not the writer's) responsibility to be aware of the
potentially racist way of reading the novel (i.e. that Conrad is trying to
represent a "real" Africa). The same goes with Durrell, as Eagleton puts it
(albeit with  negative tone) Alexandria is a 'city of the mind'--as such, it
is a city, and a novel, of complex ideas.

I apologize if this seems irrelevant to the thread. I'm just now trying to
get into this mailing list as I'm attempting to write on Durrell and Joyce
for my undergraduate thesis.

On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 3:00 PM, <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca> wrote:

> 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
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>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. "a country of the mind" (Charles Sligh)
>   2. Which seedy Poem (Denise Tart & David Green)
>   3. Subject: Eagleton (Charles Sligh)
>   4. Takes (Bruce Redwine)
>   5. Re: Subject: Eagleton (James Gifford)
>   6. Re: Takes (James Gifford)
>   7. Re: Takes (gkoger at mindspring.com)
>   8. Re: Takes (Charles Sligh)
>   9. Re: Takes (Bruce Redwine)
>  10. Re: Takes (Bruce Redwine)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:05:32 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] "a country of the mind"
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A87150C.1090103 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Terry Eagleton wrote:
> >
> >         "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and
> >         this is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so
> >         shortlived. The glittering surface of his prose conceals an
> >         emotional anaesthesia, for which the portentously "profound"
> >         reflections of the Quartet are meant to compensate. Like many
> >         poets, his verbal sensitivity is in inverse proportion *to
> >         _real_ human sympathy, a sublimated _selfishness_ evident in
> >         his life as much as his work**. What was _real_ was what he
> >         could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or
> >         high-sounding platitude. His Alexandria is _a country of the
> >         mind_, attractive precisely because its cultural and ethnic
> >         mix makes it at once nowhere and everywhere. I*f he plundered
> >         Egypt for its symbolic capital, he also groused about its
> >         "stinking inhabitants".
> >
> And Sumantra then asked:
> >
> >
> >         George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief
> >         from the flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the
> >         1950s. But it seems to me that some critics (including perhaps
> >         Eagleton) see this quality of Durrell as filling the need of a
> >         particular period. What happens if you judge the novels in
> >         critical terms other than those of the quality of prose?
> >
> >
> Well, I would first refuse to yield the ground to Eagleton.  Why let him
> set the rules by which we take our pleasure?
>
> I would remind Eagleton that there are other ways to read, other ways to
> enjoy the world, other values beyond his particular sort of late Marxism.
>
> I would ask Eagleton:
>
>            * Why should "real human sympathy" or anything else "real"
>              determine the pleasure or quality of fiction, art, or
>              music?
>            * Why should something "selfish"--even something /supremely/
>              self-centered, sublimated or intentional--be viewed as
>              less worthy?
>            * What precisely is negative about projecting "a country of
>              the mind"?
>            * Why promote this touchstone test of "the real"?  Try using
>              that test in Shakespeare's Elsinore, Coleridge's Xanadu,
>              Bront?s' Wuthering Heights, Carroll's Wonderland,
>              Dunsany's Pegana, Cabell's Poictesme, or even the
>              different kinds of "Dublin" appearing in the late middle
>              chapters of Joyce's /Ulysses/.
>            * And what is this talk about "a sublimated selfishness
>              evident in his life as much as his work"? / /There
>              Eagleton really voices the police or the social worker,
>              trying to come around knocking at the house and correct
>              Durrell's biography.
>
> Eagleton is /wrong/ in assuming that his points about Durrell's writing
> are somehow damning--that these points somehow expose Durrell's offenses
> against an already agreed notion of what we can and cannot do with
> literature.    Really, there is no such formula or checklist.
>
> Charles
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:58:38 +1000
> From: "Denise Tart & David Green" <dtart at bigpond.net.au>
> Subject: [ilds] Which seedy Poem
> To: "Durrel" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <289ABD0104EE4FE4B2416D8B182B9BB5 at MumandDad>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Sumantra wrote: "This seediness associated with the writer has been
> expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell displayed in a recent post
> and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum member."
>
> Sumantra poem are you refering to? One of mine or the one by Charles
> Bryant? I think mine are largely visceral or plays on words which, apart
> from references to Larry's vinuous habits, make no mention of Durrell's
> notorious sex life.
>
> Speaking of colonials, one must be careful here as we cannot all be tarred
> with the same brush. You have the British African and Indian 'born to rule'
> type colonials who were given jobs as information officers on various
> British protectorates or possessions (e.g Larry on Rhodes or Cyprus) and
> then you have the Australian and New Zealand variety who, apart from some
> issues with their respective indiginous populations and with their strange
> accents, have never ruled over anyone much except over England on the
> sporting field, such are our glorious achievements in world history.
>
> David Green
> Coarse Colonial from the Antipodes
>
>
> 16 William Street
> Marrickville NSW  2204
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> dtart at bigpond.net.au
> www.denisetart.com.au
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:11:49 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] Subject: Eagleton
> To: "ilds at lists.uvic.ca" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <4A8732A5.8060400 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> >
> > Subject:
> > Eagleton
> > From:
> > "Mark Valentine" <Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com>
> > Date:
> > Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:19:17 +0100
> >
> > To:
> > <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> >
> >
> > Unfortunately, Eagleton cannot be regarded as a reliable critic of any
> > author outside the narrow Marxist, social-realist limit of his own
> > convictions. Because he proceeds from this particular drab,
> > determinist world-view, he starts from a position of prejudice against
> > Durrell, the bon viveur, the aesthete, the mystic, and then seeks out
> > reasons to denigrate him.  It is the same with other authors whose
> > world-view or lifestyle are different to his own. Seeking Eagleton's
> > opinions about Durrell is about as useful as asking a lead weight what
> > it thinks of an orchid.
> >
> > Mark V
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:42:10 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <BEB55669-6197-4221-A08B-5DDAB4390A93 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Sumantra,
>
> Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"
> on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
> Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he
> said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
>
> I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's Heart of
> Darkness (1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Mass. Review 18
> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> Achebe's criticism of HD basically boils down to saying, and here I do
> not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It
> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism
> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way racist.
>
> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Justine.  There many
> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the Quartet,
> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> that approach.
>
> Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.
> First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
> since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in TLS?, without the
> courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
> surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
> Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.  Second,
> Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
> social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote
> Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
> ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
> Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
> only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and Proust
> his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will endure.
>
> Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
> like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
> "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
> talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's Lolita consistently gets
> ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second only
> to Joyce's Ulysses.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that he wasn't
> enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard working
> enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
> Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
> pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
> finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
> financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
> children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
> art, and I don't know what it was.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
>
> > Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that
> > literature must
> > accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that
> > literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable
> > reality."
> >
> > Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
> > judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
> > honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for myself,
> > but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
> > novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
> > transcends conventional analysis,"
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful
> > responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a
> > small part of your respective comments.
> >
> > Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
> > Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments
> > about Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a
> > travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller
> > or expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of
> > Darkness" where description is direct - but I may well be missing
> > out on something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is
> > held up by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for
> > comparison with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from
> > George Steiner on ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to
> > point out that Durrell's characters are seen as limited to
> > foreigners in Alexandria, and not to the Egyptian population - but
> > then Alexandria apparently had a strong European character,
> > different from the rest of Egypt. Again, Durrell's tendency in the
> > AQ to write subjective commentaries about the "City" and its people,
> > when he is actually writing about a very small section of the city's
> > population (even its European population), accentuates the neglect
> > of large portions of the city's people - even the cosmopolitan non-
> > Egyptian polpulation. This may not have happened if he gave a less
> > pervasive presence to "the City" in his novels. But then, the AQ has
> > a magnetic quality - a quality which you have described as magical
> > and transcending traditional analysis!
> >
> > Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the
> > context of our discussions:
> >
> > "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this
> > is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The
> > glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,
> > for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are
> > meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in
> > inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness
> > evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he
> > could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding
> > platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive
> > precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once
> > nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic
> > capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His
> > combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by
> > Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer
> > literary talent." (From "SUPREME TRICKSTER" By Terry Eagleton, a
> > review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
> >
> > George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the
> > flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it
> > seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this
> > quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What
> > happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those
> > of the quality of prose?
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Sumantra
> >
>
> -------------- next part --------------
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:07:45 -0700
> From: James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Subject: Eagleton
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A8812B1.9040903 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> If Durrell's libertarian streak is as real as I've argued, then there's
> a very clear reason why Eagleton would oppose him -- the same reason why
> the likes of Frederic Jameson disregard the likes of Henry Miller.  An
> individualist view (as Eagleton describes Durrell) just doesn't jive
> with the Messianic break into a post-capitalist Utopia at the end of
> history.  That individualist may be anti-authoritarian, but that's the
> actual point -- there's no anti-authoritarian communist paradise, just
> like there's not anti-authoritarian corporate world, and most on
> libertarian left (or its other names) see slow progress rather than
> messianic moments of revolution...
>
> Just me two bits before the internet time cuts me off!
>
> -J
>
> Charles Sligh wrote:
> >> Subject:
> >> Eagleton
> >> From:
> >> "Mark Valentine" <Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com>
> >> Date:
> >> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:19:17 +0100
> >>
> >> To:
> >> <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> >>
> >>
> >> Unfortunately, Eagleton cannot be regarded as a reliable critic of any
> >> author outside the narrow Marxist, social-realist limit of his own
> >> convictions. Because he proceeds from this particular drab,
> >> determinist world-view, he starts from a position of prejudice against
> >> Durrell, the bon viveur, the aesthete, the mystic, and then seeks out
> >> reasons to denigrate him.  It is the same with other authors whose
> >> world-view or lifestyle are different to his own. Seeking Eagleton's
> >> opinions about Durrell is about as useful as asking a lead weight what
> >> it thinks of an orchid.
> >>
> >> Mark V
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:19:57 -0700
> From: James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A88158D.80403 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> Let me also very briefly add that while in conversation with Eagleton
> during a DSC session, he admitted that he couldn't possibly read
> everything he was asked to review -- that in response to his comments on
> MacNiven's bio (which includes a mistake about the number of pages,
> among other things...).  Ditto when I asked about his reading of the
> complete Quartet, which it was apparently very fashionable to be *see*
> reading at the time, for the purpose of impression the fairer sex.  He
> was, however, seemingly enthusiastic about other parts of the works and
> was genuinely encouraging for the students at the session.
>
> Perhaps Pamela or Beatrice can add more comments?  I wouldn't really go
> to Eagleton for serious commentary though, since he's ideologically
> against the position of the works, is disinclined to recognize their
> ironies, and likely hasn't really read them with any serious attention
> anyway.
>
> As for Said's lecture in Lebanon, it's from Mustafa Marrouchi's book,
> based on notes on the lecture from Said's papers, and Said was very
> likely referring to the film given the nature and time of his comments
> (ie: not the book itself!).  Said's only written comments on the Quartet
> concern someone else's reading of the work, not the work itself...
>
> -J
>
> Bruce Redwine wrote:
> > Sumantra,
> >
> > Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"
> > on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
> > Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he
> > said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
> >
> > I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's /Heart of
> > Darkness /(1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
> > it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> > Africa:  Racism in Conrad's /Heart of Darkness"/ /(Mass. Review/ 18
> > [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> > Achebe's criticism of /HD/ basically boils down to saying, and here I
> > do not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It
> > badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> > treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism
> > of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
> > "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
> > is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
> > say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> >  Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> > necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way racist.
> >
> > Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> > them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> > Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
> > fiftieth anniversary of the publication of /Justine.  /There many
> > Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the /Quartet,/
> > using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> > that approach.
> >
> > Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.
> >  First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
> > since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in /TLS/?, without the
> > courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
> > surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
> > Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.  Second,
> > Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
> > social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote
> > Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
> > ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
> > Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
> > only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and Proust
> > his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will endure.
> >
> > Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
> > like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
> > "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
> > talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's /Lolita/ consistently
> > gets ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second
> > only to Joyce's /Ulysses/.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that he
> > wasn't enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard working
> > enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
> >  Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
> > pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
> > finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
> > financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
> > children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
> > art, and I don't know what it was.
> >
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> >
> >> Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that
> >> literature must
> >> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that
> >> literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable
> >> reality."
> >>
> >> Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
> >> judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
> >> honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for myself,
> >> but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
> >> novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
> >> transcends conventional analysis,"
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful
> >> responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a
> >> small part of your respective comments.
> >>
> >> Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
> >> Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments about
> >> Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a
> >> travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller or
> >> expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of Darkness"
> >> where description is direct - but I may well be missing out on
> >> something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is held up
> >> by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for comparison
> >> with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from George Steiner on
> >> ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to point out that
> >> Durrell's characters are seen as limited to foreigners in Alexandria,
> >> and not to the Egyptian population - but then Alexandria apparently
> >> had a strong European character, different from the rest of Egypt.
> >> Again, Durrell's tendency in the AQ to write subjective commentaries
> >> about the "City" and its people, when he is actually writing about a
> >> very small section of the city's population (even its European
> >> population), accentuates the neglect of large portions of the city's
> >> people - even the cosmopolitan non-Egyptian polpulation. This may not
> >> have happened if he gave a less pervasive presence to "the City" in
> >> his novels. But then, the AQ has a magnetic quality - a quality which
> >> you have described as magical and transcending traditional analysis!
> >>
> >> Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the
> >> context of our discussions:
> >>
> >> "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this is
> >> surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The
> >> glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,
> >> for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are
> >> meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in
> >> inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness
> >> evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he
> >> could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding
> >> platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive
> >> precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once
> >> nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic
> >> capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His
> >> combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by
> >> Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer
> >> literary talent." (From *"**SUPREME TRICKSTER"* By Terry Eagleton, a
> >> review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
> >>
> >> George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the
> >> flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it
> >> seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this
> >> quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What
> >> happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those of
> >> the quality of prose?
> >>
> >> Best wishes
> >>
> >> Sumantra
> >>
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > ILDS mailing list
> > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:36:23 -0400 (EDT)
> From: gkoger at mindspring.com
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID:
>        <
> 30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root at elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
>
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>
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:57:59 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: gkoger at mindspring.com, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A882C87.1080704 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Good to see your note, Grove.
>
> >         /Lolita/ is certainly Nabokov's masterpiece, but despite its
> >         myriad allusions I find it small and self-contained. Its cast
> >         of characters is limited, and its language shows signs of the
> >         artificiality that in my opinion would vitiate Nabokov's
> >         subsequent works.
>
> I have several thoughts here.
>
> Why should we allow Eagleton or any other critic set the terms as
> oppositional, "either . . . or"?
>
> Why must it be the question of "Nabokov or Durrell"? or "Hemingway or
> Durrell"?  or "Al-Kharrat or Durrell"?  &c.
>
> Call me Epicurean, but I balk at that tether.  I can enjoy Scott and
> Austen, George Eliot and Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning and Swinburne.
>
> In fact, I often enjoy these "oppositionals" all the more because I feel
> that I am crossing borders and braking bounds.
>
> I mark out works of literature as distinctive and memorable based upon
> how they surprise me into new experience.   The authors may have written
> from any variety of motivations--high aesthetic, Anarchy, Marxist
> revolutionary, or pornography.
>
> And that would be my point of difference from Eagleton.  I am open to
> the possibility of being pleasurably surprised despite politics or lack
> of politics.
>
> I do not begin by caring about those motivations, but rather with how
> surprising or successful a work seems within its own limits of form and
> within the course of reading that I have conducted up to that point.
>
> In that, no doubt, I follow Swinburne, who found pleasure and power in
> the verse of Dante, Milton, and Christina Rossetti /despite/ their
> different sorts of Christian dogma.
>
> >         It does not detract from the poetic supremacy of AEschylus and
> >         of Dante, of Milton and of Shelley, that they should have been
> >         pleased to put their art to such use ; nor does it detract
> >         from the sovereign greatness of other poets that they should
> >         have had no note of song for any such theme. In a word, the
> >         doctrine of art for art is true in the positive sense, false
> >         in the negative; sound as an affirmation, unsound as a
> >         prohibition.
>
> >
> >
> > The /AQ/, in contrast, is far more expansive, a "masterpiece of size"
> > that opens outward and has much more to say about the world. Unlike
> > Nabokov's style, its style seems to me much more rooted in the natural
> > richness of the English language as it has developed over the centuries.
> >
> That certainly may be true.  Contra Eagleton, I find a very human and
> humane sort of writing in the island books and the poetry of the 1940s
> and 1950s.  And Darley and Pursewarden and Balthazar are very human in
> their limits and fears and mistakes.
>
> I wonder what you mean when you say that Durrell's prose partakes of the
> "natural richness of the English language as it has developed over the
> centuries"?
>
> For my own part, I would find that true in thinking about, say,
> /Justine/.  There, in certain sentences and paragraphs, Durrell restores
> to currency an obsolete term; in others, he commits jarring redundancies
> of word or phrase.  I have grown quite fond of those quaint little
> birthmarks and cicatrices running up and down the text.  All of that is
> /Justine/--I would not ask otherwise.  I enjoy the notion that the book
> was developing in real time, that it is still developing. . . .
>
> Thanks, Grove!
>
> Charles
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:04:14 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <F9E87CB4-5DF8-4E3E-8646-E19B1D0AA47A at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> James,
>
> Thanks for repeating what you said years ago.  My response to
> Eagleton's lame mea culpa is simple ? if a reviewer can't give a work
> a careful and thoughtful reading then he or she shouldn't review it.
> Seems to me that Eagleton was simply too eager to have his own name in
> print and have his own views propagated at the expense of someone
> else's hard work.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
> On Aug 16, 2009, at 7:19 AM, James Gifford wrote:
>
> > Let me also very briefly add that while in conversation with Eagleton
> > during a DSC session, he admitted that he couldn't possibly read
> > everything he was asked to review -- that in response to his
> > comments on
> > MacNiven's bio (which includes a mistake about the number of pages,
> > among other things...).  Ditto when I asked about his reading of the
> > complete Quartet, which it was apparently very fashionable to be *see*
> > reading at the time, for the purpose of impression the fairer sex.  He
> > was, however, seemingly enthusiastic about other parts of the works
> > and
> > was genuinely encouraging for the students at the session.
> >
> > Perhaps Pamela or Beatrice can add more comments?  I wouldn't really
> > go
> > to Eagleton for serious commentary though, since he's ideologically
> > against the position of the works, is disinclined to recognize their
> > ironies, and likely hasn't really read them with any serious attention
> > anyway.
> >
> > As for Said's lecture in Lebanon, it's from Mustafa Marrouchi's book,
> > based on notes on the lecture from Said's papers, and Said was very
> > likely referring to the film given the nature and time of his comments
> > (ie: not the book itself!).  Said's only written comments on the
> > Quartet
> > concern someone else's reading of the work, not the work itself...
> >
> > -J
> >
> > Bruce Redwine wrote:
> >> Sumantra,
> >>
> >> Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"
> >> on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
> >> Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he
> >> said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
> >>
> >> I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's /Heart of
> >> Darkness /(1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
> >> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> >> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's /Heart of Darkness"/ /(Mass. Review/ 18
> >> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> >> Achebe's criticism of /HD/ basically boils down to saying, and here I
> >> do not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.
> >> It
> >> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> >> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the
> >> racism
> >> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
> >> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
> >> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
> >> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> >> Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> >> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way
> >> racist.
> >>
> >> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> >> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> >> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
> >> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of /Justine.  /There many
> >> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the /Quartet,/
> >> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> >> that approach.
> >>
> >> Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.
> >> First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
> >> since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in /TLS/?, without the
> >> courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
> >> surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
> >> Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.
> >> Second,
> >> Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
> >> social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote
> >> Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
> >> ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
> >> Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
> >> only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and
> >> Proust
> >> his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will
> >> endure.
> >>
> >> Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
> >> like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
> >> "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
> >> talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's /Lolita/ consistently
> >> gets ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second
> >> only to Joyce's /Ulysses/.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that
> >> he
> >> wasn't enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard
> >> working
> >> enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
> >> Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
> >> pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
> >> finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
> >> financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
> >> children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
> >> art, and I don't know what it was.
> >>
> >>
> >> Bruce
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> >>
> >>> Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that
> >>> literature must
> >>> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that
> >>> literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable
> >>> reality."
> >>>
> >>> Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
> >>> judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
> >>> honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for
> >>> myself,
> >>> but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
> >>> novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
> >>> transcends conventional analysis,"
> >>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>> Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful
> >>> responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a
> >>> small part of your respective comments.
> >>>
> >>> Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
> >>> Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments
> >>> about
> >>> Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a
> >>> travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller
> >>> or
> >>> expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of
> >>> Darkness"
> >>> where description is direct - but I may well be missing out on
> >>> something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is held up
> >>> by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for comparison
> >>> with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from George Steiner
> >>> on
> >>> ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to point out that
> >>> Durrell's characters are seen as limited to foreigners in
> >>> Alexandria,
> >>> and not to the Egyptian population - but then Alexandria apparently
> >>> had a strong European character, different from the rest of Egypt.
> >>> Again, Durrell's tendency in the AQ to write subjective commentaries
> >>> about the "City" and its people, when he is actually writing about a
> >>> very small section of the city's population (even its European
> >>> population), accentuates the neglect of large portions of the city's
> >>> people - even the cosmopolitan non-Egyptian polpulation. This may
> >>> not
> >>> have happened if he gave a less pervasive presence to "the City" in
> >>> his novels. But then, the AQ has a magnetic quality - a quality
> >>> which
> >>> you have described as magical and transcending traditional analysis!
> >>>
> >>> Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the
> >>> context of our discussions:
> >>>
> >>> "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this
> >>> is
> >>> surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The
> >>> glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,
> >>> for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are
> >>> meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in
> >>> inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness
> >>> evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he
> >>> could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding
> >>> platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive
> >>> precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once
> >>> nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic
> >>> capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His
> >>> combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by
> >>> Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer
> >>> literary talent." (From *"**SUPREME TRICKSTER"* By Terry Eagleton, a
> >>> review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
> >>>
> >>> George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the
> >>> flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it
> >>> seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this
> >>> quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What
> >>> happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those
> >>> of
> >>> the quality of prose?
> >>>
> >>> Best wishes
> >>>
> >>> Sumantra
> >>>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> 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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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:32:10 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: gkoger at mindspring.com, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <B8DA36DE-69A1-41C1-884E-E915D4B2D959 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Grove,
>
> I too prefer the Quartet over Lolita, and I wonder about Lolita, but
> not for the reason you give.  Nabokov writes some of the most
> exquisite prose in the English language, and this novel approaches
> Ulysses in terms of the perfection of its structure and composition.
> But I'm very queasy about an elderly Humbert Humbert chasing among an
> underaged "nymphet," as though the undertaking were one of the
> Russian's butterfly hunts.  I'm about as shocked as Mountolive was
> when he stumbled on a brothel of child prostitutes.  Durrell
> overwrites and some of his writing, on the most basic level of the
> sentence, doesn't hold up to scrutiny.  The man's imagination,
> however, is truly great, his richest gift.  That's part of what
> Charles Bryant admired in his reading of "Lawrence Durrell" ? the
> Dickensian inventiveness.  I haven't read Anthony Powell.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
> On Aug 16, 2009, at 7:36 AM, gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:
>
> > Bruce et al.,
> >
> > As much as I enjoy and admire Nabokov's best works, I must disagree
> > with those who find his talent "finer" than Durrell's. I'd be
> > willing to wager, although I may not be around to collect, that
> > Durrell's reputation will eventually eclipse Nabokov's. /Lolita/ is
> > certainly Nabokov's masterpiece, but despite its myriad allusions I
> > find it small and self-contained. Its cast of characters is limited,
> > and its language shows signs of the artificiality that in my opinion
> > would vitiate Nabokov's subsequent works.
> >
> > The /AQ/, in contrast, is far more expansive, a "masterpiece of
> > size" that opens outward and has much more to say about the world.
> > Unlike Nabokov's style, its style seems to me much more rooted in
> > the natural richness of the English language as it has developed
> > over the centuries. Although /The Revolt/ is written in a plainer
> > style, it maintains the expansiveness of the /AQ/. (I'm speaking in
> > non-literary terms, I know, but I hope that someone in agreement
> > will recast the argument.) And surely Durrell put a lot of work into
> > revising it.
> >
> > As far as great novels of the century go, at least in English, I'd
> > say we have to look to Anthony Powell's sequence /A Dance to the
> > Music of Time/ to find a work as important as the /AQ/. All other
> > things being equal, size does count.
> >
> > Am I the only one to have these thoughts?
> >
> > Grove
> >
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From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sun Aug 16 13:52:45 2009
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:52:45 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Takes on Takes
In-Reply-To: <076C1B47-F292-488A-B470-AE17245C9A01@earthlink.net>
References: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
	<4A882C87.1080704@utc.edu>
	<076C1B47-F292-488A-B470-AE17245C9A01@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4A88719D.9080605@utc.edu>

Bruce Redwine wrote:

>         Hear, hear!  Yes, absolutely.  In graduate school in the
>         seventies, I was initially taught to appreciate a work of
>         literature on its own terms.  Then along came Paul de Man and
>         "theory" took over.  I guess the current emphasis on critical
>         "theory" has displaced the old approach. 

I will not deny that the professional study of literature today trends 
toward "sheep eat sheep."  There are precious few brave or singular 
folk, but I think that this is may be a truth universal across the 
professions.

And all of that "sheep eat sheep" culture might be one among several 
reasons behind Eagleton's caper.  The celebrated critic finds himself 
asked to review a biography of Lawrence Durrell, onetime celebrated 
author.  Or the celebrated critic is invited to travel in order to share 
his views in seminar with people who actually read and attend the 
writings of Lawrence Durrell.  What happens? 

In both cases, Eagleton floats one through, pretending to knowledge that 
he has not earned.   After all, he has "become a name."  And who of like 
stature might object and ride out to champion old Larry Durrell.  Seemed 
a quick buck, an easy enough take-down, in that old Virgilian sense,  
the rugged Pyrrhus bringing the hammer down on old grandsire Priam at 
the altar. . . .

I might make a small friendly qualification to your statement about the 
need to "appreciate a work of literature on its own terms," Bruce.  And 
I would make it by means of two of my touchstones, the writings of 
Lawrence Durrell and Walter Pater. 

As Pater writes in the "Preface" to /The Renaissance/:

>         "To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly
>         said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever, and in
>         aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one's object
>         as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really
>         is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly.

I think that Pater's sentence could serve as an appropriate abstract or 
epigraph for  /The Alexandria Quartet/, capturing not only what Darley 
must come to see about his lovers and the City, but also what the reader 
learns while reading.

Stay strong--keep on reading.

Charles

-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Sun Aug 16 15:28:44 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:28:44 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Achebe on Conrad/Durrell
In-Reply-To: <ee860fa00908161322l5c460f14sbc0c82c9eee87988@mail.gmail.com>
References: <ee860fa00908161322l5c460f14sbc0c82c9eee87988@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <3D75E4C5-8D42-4FA2-9A45-138AB3335125@earthlink.net>

Jacob,

Yes, I agree.  Good points.  Joyce and Durrell -- fascinating topic.   
If you're interested in the city as an imaginative construct, read  
Robert Alter's latest book, Imagined Cities, which approaches the  
topic through various kinds of discourse, erlebte rede, etc.  He picks  
up on Dorrit Cohn's analysis. I'd like to see someone do that with  
Durrell.  Good luck.

Bruce

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 16, 2009, at 1:22 PM, Jacob Riley <jtriley at unca.edu> wrote:

> "I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's Heart of
> Darkness (1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Mass. Review 18
> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> Achebe's criticism of HD basically boils down to saying, and here I do
> not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It
> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism
> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way  
> racist.
>
> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Justine.  There many
> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the Quartet,
> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> that approach." --Bruce (i think this was your post, the message  
> format is confusing)
>
> Bruce, I was furious after I read Achebe's article in a literary  
> theory course. As you say, I don't read Conrad as a 'realistic'  
> representation of (in the sense of a realistic novel) the continent  
> of Africa, just as Durrell is not attempting to portray the "real"  
> life of Alexandrians in the quartet. In fact, I think that looking  
> at Durrell's later work like Tunc/Numquam and especially the Avignon  
> Quintet are less about the characters and even the environment and  
> more about the ideas Durrell is shoving into the novels. I found a  
> similar thing going on with Heart of Darkness, whereas the ideas in  
> Durrell are more presented through the character's dialogue and  
> action in an unconventionally clear way. Maybe this is just the way  
> I read, but Durrell sometimes reads like a philosophical treatise or  
> even an academic article--especially with the endless quotations  
> built up in order to support a generalization made about a  
> character. All this is to say that I think it is the reader's (and  
> not the writer's) responsibility to be aware of the potentially  
> racist way of reading the novel (i.e. that Conrad is trying to  
> represent a "real" Africa). The same goes with Durrell, as Eagleton  
> puts it (albeit with  negative tone) Alexandria is a 'city of the  
> mind'--as such, it is a city, and a novel, of complex ideas.
>
> I apologize if this seems irrelevant to the thread. I'm just now  
> trying to get into this mailing list as I'm attempting to write on  
> Durrell and Joyce for my undergraduate thesis.
>
> On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 3:00 PM, <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca> wrote:
> 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
>
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>        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. "a country of the mind" (Charles Sligh)
>   2. Which seedy Poem (Denise Tart & David Green)
>   3. Subject: Eagleton (Charles Sligh)
>   4. Takes (Bruce Redwine)
>   5. Re: Subject: Eagleton (James Gifford)
>   6. Re: Takes (James Gifford)
>   7. Re: Takes (gkoger at mindspring.com)
>   8. Re: Takes (Charles Sligh)
>   9. Re: Takes (Bruce Redwine)
>  10. Re: Takes (Bruce Redwine)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:05:32 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] "a country of the mind"
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A87150C.1090103 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Terry Eagleton wrote:
> >
> >         "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster",  
> and
> >         this is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so
> >         shortlived. The glittering surface of his prose conceals an
> >         emotional anaesthesia, for which the portentously "profound"
> >         reflections of the Quartet are meant to compensate. Like  
> many
> >         poets, his verbal sensitivity is in inverse proportion *to
> >         _real_ human sympathy, a sublimated _selfishness_ evident in
> >         his life as much as his work**. What was _real_ was what he
> >         could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or
> >         high-sounding platitude. His Alexandria is _a country of the
> >         mind_, attractive precisely because its cultural and ethnic
> >         mix makes it at once nowhere and everywhere. I*f he  
> plundered
> >         Egypt for its symbolic capital, he also groused about its
> >         "stinking inhabitants".
> >
> And Sumantra then asked:
> >
> >
> >         George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief
> >         from the flat prose of English fiction which had set in by  
> the
> >         1950s. But it seems to me that some critics (including  
> perhaps
> >         Eagleton) see this quality of Durrell as filling the need  
> of a
> >         particular period. What happens if you judge the novels in
> >         critical terms other than those of the quality of prose?
> >
> >
> Well, I would first refuse to yield the ground to Eagleton.  Why let  
> him
> set the rules by which we take our pleasure?
>
> I would remind Eagleton that there are other ways to read, other  
> ways to
> enjoy the world, other values beyond his particular sort of late  
> Marxism.
>
> I would ask Eagleton:
>
>            * Why should "real human sympathy" or anything else "real"
>              determine the pleasure or quality of fiction, art, or
>              music?
>            * Why should something "selfish"--even something / 
> supremely/
>              self-centered, sublimated or intentional--be viewed as
>              less worthy?
>            * What precisely is negative about projecting "a country of
>              the mind"?
>            * Why promote this touchstone test of "the real"?  Try  
> using
>              that test in Shakespeare's Elsinore, Coleridge's Xanadu,
>              Bront?s' Wuthering Heights, Carroll's Wonderland,
>              Dunsany's Pegana, Cabell's Poictesme, or even the
>              different kinds of "Dublin" appearing in the late middle
>              chapters of Joyce's /Ulysses/.
>            * And what is this talk about "a sublimated selfishness
>              evident in his life as much as his work"? / /There
>              Eagleton really voices the police or the social worker,
>              trying to come around knocking at the house and correct
>              Durrell's biography.
>
> Eagleton is /wrong/ in assuming that his points about Durrell's  
> writing
> are somehow damning--that these points somehow expose Durrell's  
> offenses
> against an already agreed notion of what we can and cannot do with
> literature.    Really, there is no such formula or checklist.
>
> Charles
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:58:38 +1000
> From: "Denise Tart & David Green" <dtart at bigpond.net.au>
> Subject: [ilds] Which seedy Poem
> To: "Durrel" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <289ABD0104EE4FE4B2416D8B182B9BB5 at MumandDad>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Sumantra wrote: "This seediness associated with the writer has been  
> expressed in the last poem on Lawrence Durrell displayed in a recent  
> post and written by an ILDS Discussion Forum member."
>
> Sumantra poem are you refering to? One of mine or the one by Charles  
> Bryant? I think mine are largely visceral or plays on words which,  
> apart from references to Larry's vinuous habits, make no mention of  
> Durrell's notorious sex life.
>
> Speaking of colonials, one must be careful here as we cannot all be  
> tarred with the same brush. You have the British African and Indian  
> 'born to rule' type colonials who were given jobs as information  
> officers on various British protectorates or possessions (e.g Larry  
> on Rhodes or Cyprus) and then you have the Australian and New  
> Zealand variety who, apart from some issues with their respective  
> indiginous populations and with their strange accents, have never  
> ruled over anyone much except over England on the sporting field,  
> such are our glorious achievements in world history.
>
> David Green
> Coarse Colonial from the Antipodes
>
>
> 16 William Street
> Marrickville NSW  2204
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> dtart at bigpond.net.au
> www.denisetart.com.au
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 18:11:49 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] Subject: Eagleton
> To: "ilds at lists.uvic.ca" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <4A8732A5.8060400 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> >
> > Subject:
> > Eagleton
> > From:
> > "Mark Valentine" <Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com>
> > Date:
> > Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:19:17 +0100
> >
> > To:
> > <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> >
> >
> > Unfortunately, Eagleton cannot be regarded as a reliable critic of  
> any
> > author outside the narrow Marxist, social-realist limit of his own
> > convictions. Because he proceeds from this particular drab,
> > determinist world-view, he starts from a position of prejudice  
> against
> > Durrell, the bon viveur, the aesthete, the mystic, and then seeks  
> out
> > reasons to denigrate him.  It is the same with other authors whose
> > world-view or lifestyle are different to his own. Seeking Eagleton's
> > opinions about Durrell is about as useful as asking a lead weight  
> what
> > it thinks of an orchid.
> >
> > Mark V
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:42:10 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <BEB55669-6197-4221-A08B-5DDAB4390A93 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Sumantra,
>
> Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"
> on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
> Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he
> said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
>
> I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's Heart of
> Darkness (1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot mined
> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" (Mass. Review 18
> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> Achebe's criticism of HD basically boils down to saying, and here I do
> not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.  It
> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the racism
> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct quote,
> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against and
> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way  
> racist.
>
> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of the
> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Justine.  There many
> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the Quartet,
> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> that approach.
>
> Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.
> First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
> since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in TLS?, without the
> courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
> surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
> Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.  Second,
> Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
> social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you quote
> Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
> ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
> Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
> only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and Proust
> his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will  
> endure.
>
> Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
> like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
> "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
> talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's Lolita consistently gets
> ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second only
> to Joyce's Ulysses.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that he wasn't
> enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard working
> enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
> Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
> pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
> finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
> financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
> children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
> art, and I don't know what it was.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
>
> > Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that
> > literature must
> > accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that
> > literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable
> > reality."
> >
> > Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
> > judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
> > honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for  
> myself,
> > but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
> > novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
> > transcends conventional analysis,"
> >  
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful
> > responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a
> > small part of your respective comments.
> >
> > Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
> > Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments
> > about Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a
> > travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial traveller
> > or expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of
> > Darkness" where description is direct - but I may well be missing
> > out on something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is
> > held up by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for
> > comparison with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from
> > George Steiner on ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to
> > point out that Durrell's characters are seen as limited to
> > foreigners in Alexandria, and not to the Egyptian population - but
> > then Alexandria apparently had a strong European character,
> > different from the rest of Egypt. Again, Durrell's tendency in the
> > AQ to write subjective commentaries about the "City" and its people,
> > when he is actually writing about a very small section of the city's
> > population (even its European population), accentuates the neglect
> > of large portions of the city's people - even the cosmopolitan non-
> > Egyptian polpulation. This may not have happened if he gave a less
> > pervasive presence to "the City" in his novels. But then, the AQ has
> > a magnetic quality - a quality which you have described as magical
> > and transcending traditional analysis!
> >
> > Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in the
> > context of our discussions:
> >
> > "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and this
> > is surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The
> > glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,
> > for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet are
> > meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in
> > inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness
> > evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he
> > could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding
> > platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive
> > precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once
> > nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic
> > capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His
> > combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by
> > Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer
> > literary talent." (From "SUPREME TRICKSTER" By Terry Eagleton, a
> > review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
> >
> > George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from the
> > flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it
> > seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this
> > quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What
> > happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than those
> > of the quality of prose?
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Sumantra
> >
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:07:45 -0700
> From: James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Subject: Eagleton
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A8812B1.9040903 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> If Durrell's libertarian streak is as real as I've argued, then  
> there's
> a very clear reason why Eagleton would oppose him -- the same reason  
> why
> the likes of Frederic Jameson disregard the likes of Henry Miller.  An
> individualist view (as Eagleton describes Durrell) just doesn't jive
> with the Messianic break into a post-capitalist Utopia at the end of
> history.  That individualist may be anti-authoritarian, but that's the
> actual point -- there's no anti-authoritarian communist paradise, just
> like there's not anti-authoritarian corporate world, and most on
> libertarian left (or its other names) see slow progress rather than
> messianic moments of revolution...
>
> Just me two bits before the internet time cuts me off!
>
> -J
>
> Charles Sligh wrote:
> >> Subject:
> >> Eagleton
> >> From:
> >> "Mark Valentine" <Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com>
> >> Date:
> >> Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:19:17 +0100
> >>
> >> To:
> >> <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> >>
> >>
> >> Unfortunately, Eagleton cannot be regarded as a reliable critic  
> of any
> >> author outside the narrow Marxist, social-realist limit of his own
> >> convictions. Because he proceeds from this particular drab,
> >> determinist world-view, he starts from a position of prejudice  
> against
> >> Durrell, the bon viveur, the aesthete, the mystic, and then seeks  
> out
> >> reasons to denigrate him.  It is the same with other authors whose
> >> world-view or lifestyle are different to his own. Seeking  
> Eagleton's
> >> opinions about Durrell is about as useful as asking a lead weight  
> what
> >> it thinks of an orchid.
> >>
> >> Mark V
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:19:57 -0700
> From: James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A88158D.80403 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> Let me also very briefly add that while in conversation with Eagleton
> during a DSC session, he admitted that he couldn't possibly read
> everything he was asked to review -- that in response to his  
> comments on
> MacNiven's bio (which includes a mistake about the number of pages,
> among other things...).  Ditto when I asked about his reading of the
> complete Quartet, which it was apparently very fashionable to be *see*
> reading at the time, for the purpose of impression the fairer sex.  He
> was, however, seemingly enthusiastic about other parts of the works  
> and
> was genuinely encouraging for the students at the session.
>
> Perhaps Pamela or Beatrice can add more comments?  I wouldn't really  
> go
> to Eagleton for serious commentary though, since he's ideologically
> against the position of the works, is disinclined to recognize their
> ironies, and likely hasn't really read them with any serious attention
> anyway.
>
> As for Said's lecture in Lebanon, it's from Mustafa Marrouchi's book,
> based on notes on the lecture from Said's papers, and Said was very
> likely referring to the film given the nature and time of his comments
> (ie: not the book itself!).  Said's only written comments on the  
> Quartet
> concern someone else's reading of the work, not the work itself...
>
> -J
>
> Bruce Redwine wrote:
> > Sumantra,
> >
> > Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of "takes"
> > on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
> > Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything he
> > said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
> >
> > I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's /Heart of
> > Darkness /(1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot  
> mined
> > it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> > Africa:  Racism in Conrad's /Heart of Darkness"/ /(Mass. Review/ 18
> > [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> > Achebe's criticism of /HD/ basically boils down to saying, and  
> here I
> > do not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not  
> true.  It
> > badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> > treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the  
> racism
> > of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct  
> quote,
> > "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And it
> > is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against  
> and
> > say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> >  Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> > necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way  
> racist.
> >
> > Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> > them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> > Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of  
> the
> > fiftieth anniversary of the publication of /Justine.  /There many
> > Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the / 
> Quartet,/
> > using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> > that approach.
> >
> > Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's work.
> >  First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
> > since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in /TLS/?, without the
> > courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
> > surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
> > Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.   
> Second,
> > Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
> > social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you  
> quote
> > Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
> > ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
> > Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
> > only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and  
> Proust
> > his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will  
> endure.
> >
> > Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
> > like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
> > "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
> > talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's /Lolita/ consistently
> > gets ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century, second
> > only to Joyce's /Ulysses/.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is  
> that he
> > wasn't enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard  
> working
> > enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
> >  Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
> > pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
> > finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
> > financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
> > children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
> > art, and I don't know what it was.
> >
> >
> > Bruce
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Aug 15, 2009, at 11:05 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote:
> >
> >> Charles: "That sort of objection springs from the sense that
> >> literature must
> >> accurately reflect some locatable, fixed reality--or that
> >> literaturemust "reform" and "correct" misguided views of a stable
> >> reality."
> >>
> >> Bruce: "How is Durrell's viewpoint to be taken?  How is it to be
> >> judged?  Is its portrayal of Alexandria fair?  Need it be?  To be
> >> honest, I've never satisfactorily answered these questions for  
> myself,
> >> but that has not stopped me from continuing to enjoy reading the
> >> novels.  There's something in the Quartet that is magical and
> >> transcends conventional analysis,"
> >>  
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> Charles, Bruce, thank you both very much for your thoughtful
> >> responses. As points of reference, I am reproducing above, only a
> >> small part of your respective comments.
> >>
> >> Bruce, it is some time since I read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of
> >> Darkness". I think it is Lawrence Durrell's reflective comments  
> about
> >> Alexandria, scattered all over the Quartet, and reading like a
> >> travelogue, that tend to portray the image of a colonial  
> traveller or
> >> expatriate. I don't recall the same impression in "Heart of  
> Darkness"
> >> where description is direct - but I may well be missing out on
> >> something. (The intensity of prose in Conrad's "Lord Jim" is held  
> up
> >> by George Steiner as an example of baroque writing for comparison
> >> with the prose of the AQ - I posted an extract from George  
> Steiner on
> >> ILDS some time ago.) I also think it is valid to point out that
> >> Durrell's characters are seen as limited to foreigners in  
> Alexandria,
> >> and not to the Egyptian population - but then Alexandria apparently
> >> had a strong European character, different from the rest of Egypt.
> >> Again, Durrell's tendency in the AQ to write subjective  
> commentaries
> >> about the "City" and its people, when he is actually writing  
> about a
> >> very small section of the city's population (even its European
> >> population), accentuates the neglect of large portions of the  
> city's
> >> people - even the cosmopolitan non-Egyptian polpulation. This may  
> not
> >> have happened if he gave a less pervasive presence to "the City" in
> >> his novels. But then, the AQ has a magnetic quality - a quality  
> which
> >> you have described as magical and transcending traditional  
> analysis!
> >>
> >> Charles, I wonder whether Terry Eagleton's views are relevant in  
> the
> >> context of our discussions:
> >>
> >> "Durrell once described himself as a "supreme trickster", and  
> this is
> >> surely one reason why his celebrity proved so shortlived. The
> >> glittering surface of his prose conceals an emotional anaesthesia,
> >> for which the portentously "profound" reflections of the Quartet  
> are
> >> meant to compensate. Like many poets, his verbal sensitivity is in
> >> inverse proportion to real human sympathy, a sublimated selfishness
> >> evident in his life as much as his work. What was real was what he
> >> could exoticise, convert to mythological archetype or high-sounding
> >> platitude. His Alexandria is a country of the mind, attractive
> >> precisely because its cultural and ethnic mix makes it at once
> >> nowhere and everywhere. If he plundered Egypt for its symbolic
> >> capital, he also groused about its "stinking inhabitants". His
> >> combination of elitism and aestheticism was finally outstripped by
> >> Nabokov, another rootless emigre who happened to possess a finer
> >> literary talent." (From *"**SUPREME TRICKSTER"* By Terry  
> Eagleton, a
> >> review of Ian McNiven's biography of LAWRENCE DURRELL.)
> >>
> >> George Steiner upheld the rich prose of Durrell as a relief from  
> the
> >> flat prose of English fiction which had set in by the 1950s. But it
> >> seems to me that some critics (including perhaps Eagleton) see this
> >> quality of Durrell as filling the need of a particular period. What
> >> happens if you judge the novels in critical terms other than  
> those of
> >> the quality of prose?
> >>
> >> Best wishes
> >>
> >> Sumantra
> >>
> >
> >  
> --- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > ILDS mailing list
> > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:36:23 -0400 (EDT)
> From: gkoger at mindspring.com
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID:
>        <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root at elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net 
> >
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:57:59 -0400
> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: gkoger at mindspring.com, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <4A882C87.1080704 at utc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Good to see your note, Grove.
>
> >         /Lolita/ is certainly Nabokov's masterpiece, but despite its
> >         myriad allusions I find it small and self-contained. Its  
> cast
> >         of characters is limited, and its language shows signs of  
> the
> >         artificiality that in my opinion would vitiate Nabokov's
> >         subsequent works.
>
> I have several thoughts here.
>
> Why should we allow Eagleton or any other critic set the terms as
> oppositional, "either . . . or"?
>
> Why must it be the question of "Nabokov or Durrell"? or "Hemingway or
> Durrell"?  or "Al-Kharrat or Durrell"?  &c.
>
> Call me Epicurean, but I balk at that tether.  I can enjoy Scott and
> Austen, George Eliot and Lewis Carroll, Robert Browning and Swinburne.
>
> In fact, I often enjoy these "oppositionals" all the more because I  
> feel
> that I am crossing borders and braking bounds.
>
> I mark out works of literature as distinctive and memorable based upon
> how they surprise me into new experience.   The authors may have  
> written
> from any variety of motivations--high aesthetic, Anarchy, Marxist
> revolutionary, or pornography.
>
> And that would be my point of difference from Eagleton.  I am open to
> the possibility of being pleasurably surprised despite politics or  
> lack
> of politics.
>
> I do not begin by caring about those motivations, but rather with how
> surprising or successful a work seems within its own limits of form  
> and
> within the course of reading that I have conducted up to that point.
>
> In that, no doubt, I follow Swinburne, who found pleasure and power in
> the verse of Dante, Milton, and Christina Rossetti /despite/ their
> different sorts of Christian dogma.
>
> >         It does not detract from the poetic supremacy of AEschylus  
> and
> >         of Dante, of Milton and of Shelley, that they should have  
> been
> >         pleased to put their art to such use ; nor does it detract
> >         from the sovereign greatness of other poets that they should
> >         have had no note of song for any such theme. In a word, the
> >         doctrine of art for art is true in the positive sense, false
> >         in the negative; sound as an affirmation, unsound as a
> >         prohibition.
>
> >
> >
> > The /AQ/, in contrast, is far more expansive, a "masterpiece of  
> size"
> > that opens outward and has much more to say about the world. Unlike
> > Nabokov's style, its style seems to me much more rooted in the  
> natural
> > richness of the English language as it has developed over the  
> centuries.
> >
> That certainly may be true.  Contra Eagleton, I find a very human and
> humane sort of writing in the island books and the poetry of the 1940s
> and 1950s.  And Darley and Pursewarden and Balthazar are very human in
> their limits and fears and mistakes.
>
> I wonder what you mean when you say that Durrell's prose partakes of  
> the
> "natural richness of the English language as it has developed over the
> centuries"?
>
> For my own part, I would find that true in thinking about, say,
> /Justine/.  There, in certain sentences and paragraphs, Durrell  
> restores
> to currency an obsolete term; in others, he commits jarring  
> redundancies
> of word or phrase.  I have grown quite fond of those quaint little
> birthmarks and cicatrices running up and down the text.  All of that  
> is
> /Justine/--I would not ask otherwise.  I enjoy the notion that the  
> book
> was developing in real time, that it is still developing. . . .
>
> Thanks, Grove!
>
> Charles
>
> --
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 09:04:14 -0700
> From: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Takes
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID: <F9E87CB4-5DF8-4E3E-8646-E19B1D0AA47A at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> James,
>
> Thanks for repeating what you said years ago.  My response to
> Eagleton's lame mea culpa is simple ? if a reviewer can't give a work
> a careful and thoughtful reading then he or she shouldn't review it.
> Seems to me that Eagleton was simply too eager to have his own name in
> print and have his own views propagated at the expense of someone
> else's hard work.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
> On Aug 16, 2009, at 7:19 AM, James Gifford wrote:
>
> > Let me also very briefly add that while in conversation with  
> Eagleton
> > during a DSC session, he admitted that he couldn't possibly read
> > everything he was asked to review -- that in response to his
> > comments on
> > MacNiven's bio (which includes a mistake about the number of pages,
> > among other things...).  Ditto when I asked about his reading of the
> > complete Quartet, which it was apparently very fashionable to be  
> *see*
> > reading at the time, for the purpose of impression the fairer  
> sex.  He
> > was, however, seemingly enthusiastic about other parts of the works
> > and
> > was genuinely encouraging for the students at the session.
> >
> > Perhaps Pamela or Beatrice can add more comments?  I wouldn't really
> > go
> > to Eagleton for serious commentary though, since he's ideologically
> > against the position of the works, is disinclined to recognize their
> > ironies, and likely hasn't really read them with any serious  
> attention
> > anyway.
> >
> > As for Said's lecture in Lebanon, it's from Mustafa Marrouchi's  
> book,
> > based on notes on the lecture from Said's papers, and Said was very
> > likely referring to the film given the nature and time of his  
> comments
> > (ie: not the book itself!).  Said's only written comments on the
> > Quartet
> > concern someone else's reading of the work, not the work itself...
> >
> > -J
> >
> > Bruce Redwine wrote:
> >> Sumantra,
> >>
> >> Thanks for the interesting and informed email re a couple of  
> "takes"
> >> on Lawrence Durrell and his standing in what? ? "English letters?"
> >> Charles has already given his "take," and I agree with everything  
> he
> >> said.  A couple of over-long comments, which I hope are relevant.
> >>
> >> I mentioned earlier Chinua Achebe's article on Conrad's /Heart of
> >> Darkness /(1899), an early classic, especially ever since Eliot  
> mined
> >> it for an epigraph in "The Hollow Men."  The article:  "An Image of
> >> Africa:  Racism in Conrad's /Heart of Darkness"/ /(Mass. Review/ 18
> >> [1977]).  Achebe is a Nigerian.  Besides labeling Conrad a racist,
> >> Achebe's criticism of /HD/ basically boils down to saying, and  
> here I
> >> do not quote, just paraphrase liberally, "The novella is not true.
> >> It
> >> badly misrepresents Africa and Africans.  It's a gross and unfair
> >> treatment of the Congo and it's people, and it's typical of the
> >> racism
> >> of the European colonial mind."  In short, and here's a direct  
> quote,
> >> "[Conrad's] obvious racism has, however, not been addressed.  And  
> it
> >> is high time it was!"  All this I would argue strenuously against  
> and
> >> say that Achebe doesn't understand what Conrad is trying to do.
> >> Moreover, I give Conrad complete latitude to say whatever he deems
> >> necessary to accomplish his artistic ends, which I see in no way
> >> racist.
> >>
> >> Achebe's arguments are relevant to this discussion, because I find
> >> them very close to a lot of criticism I heard at "The Durrell
> >> Celebration," held in Alexandria, Egypt, 2007, on the occasion of  
> the
> >> fiftieth anniversary of the publication of /Justine.  /There many
> >> Egyptian members of the audience stood up and attacked the / 
> Quartet,/
> >> using arguments very similar to Achebe's.  I have no sympathy with
> >> that approach.
> >>
> >> Now, Terry Eagleton is another prominent opponent of Durrell's  
> work.
> >> First, I would mention Eagleton is a critic of questionable ethics,
> >> since he reviewed MacNiven's biography of LD in /TLS/?, without the
> >> courtesy of a complete and careful reading of the work.  Not
> >> surprisingly, Eagleton commits a number of factual errors about
> >> Durrell.  All this has been previously discussed on the List.
> >> Second,
> >> Eagleton is a Marxist critic, and Marxist like to talk about the
> >> social value of literary works or "real human sympathy," as you  
> quote
> >> Eagleton saying below ? none of which should be confused with the
> >> ethical values of reviewers.  Finally, re Eaglerton's criticism of
> >> Durrell's "country of the mind?"  Charles deals with this well.  I
> >> only add, and what's wrong with that?  Joyce has his Dublin and
> >> Proust
> >> his Paris ? all countries of the mind, in my mind, and they will
> >> endure.
> >>
> >> Eagleton's final barb, however, strikes home, but not as he would
> >> like.  As a throwaway, he mentions Nabokov as another example of
> >> "elitism and aestheticism," but an author with a "finer literary
> >> talent."  And this is surely true.  Nabokov's /Lolita/ consistently
> >> gets ranked as the second greatest novel of the 20th century,  
> second
> >> only to Joyce's /Ulysses/.  Durrell's problem, as I see it, is that
> >> he
> >> wasn't enough of an artist or, to put it another way, not hard
> >> working
> >> enough.  He was too gifted and writing came to him too easily.
> >> Besides his other problems of overwriting and a propensity towards
> >> pomposity, he didn't revise as he should have and try to turn out a
> >> finished product equal to those just mentioned.  Of course, he had
> >> financial considerations ? the pressures of wives, ex-wives, and
> >> children.  But I think something else caused his restlessness with
> >> art, and I don't know what it was.
> >>
> >>
> >> Bruce
> >>
> >
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Sun Aug 16 16:13:02 2009
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:13:02 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Takes on Takes
In-Reply-To: <4A88719D.9080605@utc.edu>
References: <30610622.1250433383328.JavaMail.root@elwamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
	<4A882C87.1080704@utc.edu>
	<076C1B47-F292-488A-B470-AE17245C9A01@earthlink.net>
	<4A88719D.9080605@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <8FE4217F-B662-44EB-9AD1-34A40AC98429@earthlink.net>

Charles,

Yes, analysis requires refinement of one's own perceptions.  You might  
say constant revision and correction to arrive at the clearest and  
best possible result ? a process which Lawrence Durrell,  
unfortunately, did not spend enough time doing, certainly in his  
prose, if not his poetry, which he took very seriously.


Bruce


On Aug 16, 2009, at 1:52 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> Bruce Redwine wrote:
>
>>        Hear, hear!  Yes, absolutely.  In graduate school in the
>>        seventies, I was initially taught to appreciate a work of
>>        literature on its own terms.  Then along came Paul de Man and
>>        "theory" took over.  I guess the current emphasis on critical
>>        "theory" has displaced the old approach.
>
> I will not deny that the professional study of literature today trends
> toward "sheep eat sheep."  There are precious few brave or singular
> folk, but I think that this is may be a truth universal across the
> professions.
>
> And all of that "sheep eat sheep" culture might be one among several
> reasons behind Eagleton's caper.  The celebrated critic finds himself
> asked to review a biography of Lawrence Durrell, onetime celebrated
> author.  Or the celebrated critic is invited to travel in order to  
> share
> his views in seminar with people who actually read and attend the
> writings of Lawrence Durrell.  What happens?
>
> In both cases, Eagleton floats one through, pretending to knowledge  
> that
> he has not earned.   After all, he has "become a name."  And who of  
> like
> stature might object and ride out to champion old Larry Durrell.   
> Seemed
> a quick buck, an easy enough take-down, in that old Virgilian sense,
> the rugged Pyrrhus bringing the hammer down on old grandsire Priam at
> the altar. . . .
>
> I might make a small friendly qualification to your statement about  
> the
> need to "appreciate a work of literature on its own terms," Bruce.   
> And
> I would make it by means of two of my touchstones, the writings of
> Lawrence Durrell and Walter Pater.
>
> As Pater writes in the "Preface" to /The Renaissance/:
>
>>        "To see the object as in itself it really is," has been justly
>>        said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever, and in
>>        aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one's object
>>        as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really
>>        is, to discriminate it, to realise it distinctly.
>
> I think that Pater's sentence could serve as an appropriate abstract  
> or
> epigraph for  /The Alexandria Quartet/, capturing not only what Darley
> must come to see about his lovers and the City, but also what the  
> reader
> learns while reading.
>
> Stay strong--keep on reading.
>
> Charles
>