[ilds] Selected Fictions

[Bruce Redwine]

Marc,

Yes.  "Lives" or personalities as "selected fictions" would seem to be  
one of Durrell's pet ideas.  In the poem "Alexandria," we have the  
line, "As for me I now move / Through many negatives to what I am."   
"Negatives" is ambiguous, it could refer to negation or to  
photography, but I usually take it to mean the latter, a photographic  
image.  (Durrell liked photographs, how they momentarily captured a  
bit of reality.  Cf. the scene in Balthazar developed around a  
photograph taken in Mnemjian's barber shop or the scene in Justine  
where Nessim appears behind a frosted glass door:  "He developed like  
a print in a photographer's developing bowl.")  I'm sure more examples  
of this idea, other variants, can be dug up throughout Durrell's  
oeuvre.  The idea of the "unstable ego" gets developed in chapter  
three of Durrell's A Key to Modern Poetry (1952), which begins by  
quoting D. H. Lawrence on the passing of the "old stable ego."  Once  
Durrell establishes the basic human personality as "unstable," i.e.,  
fluid or unknowable, it's not a big leap to believing in "selected  
fictions" or "multiple selves."  For me, being a rather down-to-earth  
guy, this has never made much sense, and I doubt if many psychiatrists  
would go along with Durrell's analysis.  Isn't having "multiple  
personalities" part of the definition of schizophrenia?  On the other  
hand, maybe Durrell was a little crazy, that being part of his  
genius.  Look at the end of Monsieur and all those multiple levels of  
narration, all those "begats," all that fragmentation -- the novel  
seems to be having a mental breakdown.  Old Durrell, bless his heart,  
seems to be going off the deep end.  And I think he sometimes did.


Best,

Bruce


On Oct 2, 2009, at 3:54 PM, Marc Piel wrote:

> Thank you Bruce for situating the citation. The
> accompagning paragraphe explicites the meaning:
>
> "Our view of reality is conditioned by our
> position in space and time--- not by our
> personalities as we like to think. Thus every
> interpretation of reality is based upon a unique
> position. Two paces east or west and the whole
> picture is changed.' Something of this order.....
> 	And as for human characters, whether real or
> invented, there are no such animals. Each psyche
> is really an anthill of opposing pre-dispositions.
> Personality as something with fixed attributes is
> an illusion ----but a necesary illusion if we are
> in love! (last five words in italics).
>
> Bruce, you must surely have a numeric version of
> all this..... I am sure this idea was also said
> elsewhere!
> Best regards,
> Marc
>
>
>
> Bruce Redwine a écrit :
>> Marc,
>>
>> Good point.  "'We live' writes Pursewarden somewhere, 'lives based  
>> upon
>> selected fictions'" /(Balthazar,/ New York 1986, p. 14).  And Durrell
>> and his alter ego weren't lying.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>> On Oct 1, 2009, at 3:03 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>>
>>> Surrely he summed it all up himself with the words
>>> "we each live our selected fictions".
>>> Marc (or was it "we all live our selected fictions"
>>>

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