[ilds] Robert Dessaix on islomania

[James Gifford]

I think this smacks of Durrellian influence!  Although I'd wager serious 
funds that Dessaix hadn't read /Panic Spring/, I wonder if it is useful 
in juxtaposition with /Prospero's Cell/ and /Reflections on a Marine 
Venus/ to illustrate Durrell's islomania?  I certainly think the island 
functions as a terrain of the unconscious in /PS/ and /The Black Book/ 
too for that matter...

Best to all during the holidays!

-James

Denise Tart & David Green wrote:
> To my mind the below text applies to LD in some measure - remembering 
> that his last island was Cyprus, a bad experience and he never lived on 
> one again
>  
> /Islands are not just islands, are they? I mean, they are not just bits 
> of land surrounded by water, they also stand for something less 
> tangible, always half desired. When you look across the water and see an 
> island, part of you wants to go there, don't you find? I can't help 
> thinking it has got something to do with sudden resolution. there you 
> are floundering in all that eddying, featureless water, with unseen 
> horrors you can only guess at prowling beneath the surface, when 
> suddenly an island appears on the horizon; such a blessedly fixed point, 
> *a place of longed for release from anxiety and aimlessness, not too 
> mention the lurking monsters of the subconscious.* So an island, even 
> the flattest or rockiest or most barren, seems beautiful. It's the self 
> we'd like to be. Dante of course, if you recall, says that Purgatory is 
> an island, the realm of those who have not wilfully sinned, is an 
> island. There reason still has some hope of becoming a vision./
>  
> - Robert Dessaix /Night Letters./
> Robert Dessaix is an Australian writer and radio commentator.
>  
>  
> David Green
> 16 William Street
> Marrickville NSW  2204
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> dtart at bigpond.net.au <mailto:dtart at bigpond.net.au>
> www.denisetart.com.au <http://www.denisetart.com.au>
> 
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