From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Tue Feb 23 08:22:21 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:22:21 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
Message-ID: <4B8400BD.4000802@utc.edu>

I am uncertain about the precise politics of the blogger. 

But his caveat regarding reductive and optimistic readings of the 
/Quartet/ seems valuable.  

If our listserv subscribers have other instances in which Durrell's 
writings have been borrowed for contemporary moralizing, please do share.

C&c.

***

>  Jim Leach's tension
>> http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/02/025662.php
>
> February 23, 2010 Posted by Scott at 6:32 AM
>
> While the National Endowment for the Arts has attracted attention as a 
> propaganda arm of the Obama administration, the National Endowment for 
> the Humanities has so far escaped such attention. The new chairman of 
> the NEH is Republican former Rep. Jim Leach. Leach supported Obama 
> during the campaign and must have had dreams of office higher than the 
> chairmanship of the NEH. The NEH itself is of course supposed to be 
> nonpartisan. In his capacity as chairman, however, Leach has become 
> something of an Obama mouthpiece .
>
> In a speech this past September titled "Bridging cultures: NEH and the 
> Muslim world," Leach explained his support for Obama during the 
> campaign: "[O]n a personal note, I chose as a Republican to endorse 
> Barack Obama for President because I was convinced that never in 
> American history was the case for a course change more compelling in 
> international relations and because I had become convinced that seldom 
> had a more natural humanist been chosen to represent his party for 
> national office." And that wasn't all!
>
> The anthropologist and National Association of Scholars president 
> Peter Wood raised a red flag concerning Leach's "Bridging cultures" 
> speech here. Professor Wood says just about everything that needs to 
> be said about it.
>
> Leach is making himself something of a schoolmarm, both pompous and 
> insipid, while continuing to curry favor with the Obama 
> administration. Earlier this month Leach returned to the themes of his 
> "Bridging cultures" speech in "The tension between speaking and 
> listening," at the Wayne State University Law School. Matthew Franck 
> concisely disposes of Leach's speech here.
>
> In the speech Leach opines at Castroite length on politics, civiilty, 
> the Supreme Court, and just about everything but the humanities. 
> Unlike any previous chairman of the NEH, Democrat or Republican, Leach 
> is turning the NEH into a political soapbox.
>
> Leach purports to advocate civility while instructing various 
> political actors in the deficiencies of their discourse, but Leach's 
> contribution has its own deficiencies. Like "Bridging cultures," the 
> speech is miserably written in a style that might characterized as 
> educated illiterate. The author of the speech badly needs a course in 
> remedial writing.
>
> One finds in both speeches Leach's praise of Lawrence Durrell's highly 
> literary Alexandria Quartet. Would someone who has actually read all 
> four novels of the Alexandria Quartet really say, as Leach did at 
> Wayne State, that "Certain frameworks of thought define rival ideas," 
> or instruct his audience that "The choice for leaders is whether to 
> opt for unifying statesmanship or opportunistic partisanship"? I would 
> like not to think so.
>
> Leach holds the Quartet almost as high in his esteem as he does Obama:
>
>     In a set of four books published half a century ago called the 
> Alexandria Quartet,the British author Lawrence Durrell describes urban 
> life in the ancient Egyptian city Alexandria between the first and 
> second World Wars. In the first book, Durrell spins a story from the 
> singular perspective of one individual. In each subsequent book, he 
> describes the same events from the perspective of others. While the 
> surrounding events are the same, the stories are profoundly different, 
> informed by each narrator's life and circumstances. The moral is that 
> to get a sense of reality it is illuminating to see things from more 
> than one set of eyes. This observation can apply to interactions in a 
> court room or town hall or to the international stage. What America 
> does may seem reasonable from our perspective, but look very different 
> to a European, African, Middle Easterner, or Asian.
>
> Leach's errors describing the Quartet suggest that he himself needs 
> another pair of eyes to get a good perspective on it. It seems to have 
> been a while since Leach actually read the novels, though he may be 
> the first of Durrell's readers to find a moral to the story.
>
> Leach deduces a serious relativism from the novels' experiment with 
> point of view. For a relativistic kind of guy, however, Leach seems 
> awfully sure of himself. One must wonder about Leach's relativistic 
> point of view. Is it exempt from the Leach uncertainty principle? How 
> can he be so sure that he is right, and the point of view of other 
> Americans (including a majority of the Supreme Court in the Citizens 
> United case) wrong? Or is the Leach uncertainty principle the final 
> revelation?
>
> Leach gives no hint of Durrell's exploration of geography, love and 
> sex in the novels. Describing Eve Cohen, the woman who inspired the 
> novels' enigmatic character Justine, Durrell wrote to Henry Miller. 
> Durrell described Cohen as serving up "experience raw - sex life of 
> Arabs, perversions, circumcision, hashish, sweetmeats, removal of the 
> clitoris, cruelty, murder." It's the kind of thing that tends to get 
> lost when you're busy instructing your fellow citizens in "public 
> manners."



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


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Tue Feb 23 08:30:22 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:30:22 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <4B8400BD.4000802@utc.edu>
References: <4B8400BD.4000802@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4B84029E.2060008@utc.edu>

Here follows the full text of the NEH Chairman's speech.

I do not question that speech is well-meaning. Such things usually are.

But is Chairman Leach's paraphrase of the "moral" (???) of the /Quartet/ 
at all accurate?

>         The moral is that to get a sense of reality, it is necessary
>         to see things from more than one pair of eyes.

Read on.

C&c.

***

> http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/speeches/09292009.html

> Speech by NEH Chairman Jim Leach
>
> ?Bridging Cultures: NEH and the Muslim World?
> Carnegie Corporation of New York
> New York, New York
> September 29, 2009
> (As prepared for delivery)
>
> Good morning. It is an honor to be charged with opening the discussion 
> today on the challenges of civic engagement with Muslim communities 
> inside and outside the United States.
>
> First, let me begin by thanking our hosts?the Carnegie Corporation, 
> the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation for 
> Islamic Art?for gathering us together and, more consequentially, for 
> the leadership role they have played for decades on the topic at hand.
>
> In this context I want to stress a theme that might seem self-evident 
> but is seldom given the attention it deserves. To wit, relations 
> between countries are only in part a dialogue of one government with 
> another. Actually, it is businessmen and women, unelected people of 
> good will, be they artists, scholars or students, who are more 
> integral to defining the tone of relations between states than public 
> officials.
>
> Government is a part of culture, not vice-versa. Accordingly, 
> government-to-government relations are only one kind of diplomacy. In 
> the literature of political science, official interchanges are 
> sometimes referred to as track 1 diplomacy. Broadly speaking there are 
> two other kinds. Track 2 is diplomacy involving non-government 
> officials attempting to advance, often at the behest of a government, 
> policies consistent with the views of the government. A subset of this 
> track is free lance diplomacy: private citizens advancing perspectives 
> that, while perhaps well-intended, may be objectionable to a 
> government in power. The third track is cultural diplomacy, which 
> encompasses all private contacts and relationships?social, 
> professional, business, artistic, and educational?that take place 
> unrelated to specific political issues of the day. Cultural diplomacy 
> generally precedes and increasingly supersedes 
> government-to-government relations.
>
> Just as government is a part of culture and not vice-versa, cultural 
> relations are often more consequential than political ones. Public 
> officials and their views come and go; culture may evolve but it is a 
> weighty constant. If peoples of a country or set of countries don?t 
> like each other, don?t understand or respect another?s way of life, 
> fail to sense good will, or can?t see any common interests, there is 
> little chance for the development of constructive 
> government-to-government relations.
>
> If this premise has validity, the national interest suggests that 
> whatever the politics of the moment in nation-state relations, citizen 
> effort, consistent with law, should be undertaken to reach out to 
> those societies with which tension is highest. While such an endeavor 
> may be facilitated by government, it is disproportionately a 
> private-sector responsibility.
>
> At the turn of the last century, two controversial political 
> sociologists from Italy, Mosca and Pareto, attempted to update an 
> undertaking of Aristotle and chronicle the types of governments then 
> in existence. One of their observations that seems trite but carries 
> profound implications is that whatever kind of government is in place, 
> it is impressive how at key moments powerful elites are empowered to 
> make decisions of a kind that impact multitudes. Our founders thought 
> a lot about this democratic dilemma. In these trying times, we are 
> obligated to reflect anew on this problem.
>
> At the time of our founding, one of the principal concerns of our 
> first citizens was to limit the capacity of a single person?in this 
> case a presidency shorn of kingly authority?to initiate war. Today the 
> challenge for citizens is to help make the need for government 
> officials to instigate war less likely.
>
> Democracy is no guarantee of good judgment of public officials, but it 
> is the best system to allow publics to insist on course corrections. 
> We all recognize that the last election produced a candidate who 
> prevailed in no small measure because he suggested that new approaches 
> were called for in international relations. That doesn?t mean that if 
> implemented these new approaches will prove popular or effective. 
> No-win situations abound. The bad news is that some events may simply 
> be beyond management and the actions of others may be impervious to 
> civil logic. The good news is that the President has a mandate to 
> rethink policies in place and appears to have chosen first class 
> professionals with open minds to advise him.
>
> In this circumstance there is an indispensible role for cultural 
> diplomacy to help create a social environment where disagreements 
> between peoples are more likely to be resolved in a civil way. As the 
> President suggested in one of the great humanist speeches of our time, 
> the development of cultural understanding requires that a young person 
> in Kansas be able to communicate with a young person in Cairo.
>
> Government-to-government relations implicitly reflect national power 
> contrasts whether or not military power is being asserted. But any 
> study of the human condition?the humanities?in any century, including 
> the last one in which man experimented with the most coercive dogmas 
> of hate, finds that military power alone can not for long hold 
> populations in check or control the mind and soul of a people.
>
> People want to have a say in their own destinies. There is something 
> about the human condition that prefers governing decisions, even 
> seemingly irrational ones, to be made at socially cohesive levels. A 
> lot is written today about globalism, but this century is also about 
> localism. To adapt to a fast changing world, one must understand both 
> of these phenomena: the fact, as Tip O?Neill repeatedly noted, that 
> all politics are local and the corollary, as we have learned again 
> with the financial crisis, that all local decisions are affected by 
> international events.
>
> Whether violence is an integral element of the human condition or a 
> learned response is a matter of conjecture. But non-violence is almost 
> certainly a practice that must be learned. And the most effective form 
> of social education is human contact. It is the humanization rather 
> than the demonization of individuals from different cultures that is 
> so critical if non-violent approaches to problem solving are to be 
> institutionalized. Without humanization?hand shakes of 
> understanding?there can be no trust and hence no family or national 
> security.
>
> In a fundamental sense, the issue of the times is not simply 
> Muslim-Western discord; it is also the philosophical paradigm with 
> which our founders grappled. At issue was and somewhat surprisingly 
> remains the contrast with a state of nature, which Hobbes defined as a 
> jungle where life was ?nasty, brutish and short,? and civil society, 
> which Locke described as a circumstance where rules governed disputes 
> and third party arbitration could be called upon. For Hobbes, 
> self-centered man could never escape the jungle because he lacked the 
> capacity to put himself in the shoes of others. For Jefferson and his 
> Lockean cohorts in Philadelphia, individuals were not only born with 
> rights no legitimate state could take away, but with a rational nature 
> capable of developing institutional arrangements to advance common 
> interests.
>
> For students of Western political theory, Hobbesian thought has for 
> long been considered to involve an interesting but abstract set of 
> propositions. But with the globalization for the first time in history 
> of anarchistic strategies, it is suddenly becoming clear that not only 
> have we not entirely escaped the jungle, but that the more modern and 
> centralized a society, the greater its vulnerability to terrorist 
> acts. In this circumstance, the case for a strong military and 
> expanded intelligence capacity is self-evident. But the only long-term 
> answer would appear also to require: a) a commitment to advancing 
> mutual understanding and the framework of law; and b) an understanding 
> that military intervention, even if employed by a democratic power 
> without a goal of Empire, can have unforeseen, counter-productive 
> consequences.
>
> In this setting I have suggested to the students I used to teach at 
> Princeton and Harvard that the most important geo-political tract of 
> the last century was that of a family of novels?the Alexandria Quartet 
> by the British author, Lawrence Durrell. Set between the first and 
> second world wars in the ancient library center, Alexandria, Durrell 
> wrote four books about the same set of events, each a first-person 
> perspective from the eyes of a different participant. One wonders why 
> read about the same events more than once. It ends up that each story 
> is profoundly different. The moral is that to get a sense of reality, 
> it is necessary to see things from more than one pair of eyes. This 
> may apply to interactions in a community, a court room, or in 
> international relations where what America does may seem reasonable 
> from our perspective but look very different from the eyes of a 
> European or African, a Middle Easterner or an Asian.
>
> As everyone in this room knows, over the past several decades two 
> Harvard political theorists, Samuel Huntington and Joseph Nye, have 
> written about the dangers of a clash of civilizations and of the role 
> of ?soft? (recently relabeled ?smart?) power as contrasted with ?hard? 
> power in international relations. These are important frameworks of 
> thought, but I would add to such considerations the contrasting model 
> of realism vs. pseudo-realism in policy development. Realists look to 
> effect, not to bluster. But what should a citizen think of ideological 
> arguments advanced in recent years by a small cohort of ideological 
> insiders that arms control agreements are to be avoided and diplomacy, 
> particularly multi-lateral diplomacy, is soft-headed? Should we not 
> ask whether this is pseudo-realism? What is more realistic and more 
> consistent with the American heritage than attempting to advance the 
> rule of law? Americans prefer to work in alliances. It is nonsense, 
> realism inverted, to press a foreign policy rooted in snubbing the 
> concerns of others.
>
> One of the myths of our time is that realism is principally about 
> might. Actually realism is about the human condition. Nations that are 
> ill-led, ill-fed, and ill-respected are breeding grounds for radicalism.
>
> America at its best combines principle and idealism with Yankee 
> pragmatism. One without the other is a prescription for disaster.
>
> In this context, NEH is launching a ?Bridging Cultures? initiative. 
> The analogy to a ?bridge? and use of the word as a verb is hardly 
> novel. Nor is what we have in mind a radical departure from prior NEH 
> initiatives or the long-term efforts of many individuals and NGOs 
> represented in this room. Our effort is simply to burrow ?in? more 
> deeply at the domestic level and press ?out? more broadly internationally.
>
> Hence we plan, in partnership with our state humanities councils, to 
> hold colloquiums, large and small, throughout the country on the issue 
> of ?hate speech and civility?; to commence what we intend to label 
> ?academies? on American history and the Constitution; and to hold 
> conferences on the importance of Muslim contributions to American 
> society. We are also open to partnering with other government 
> departments and non-governmental organizations in any number of ways.
>
> International violence, economic insecurity, and the chaotic nature of 
> accelerating change have produced a crisis of perspective as well as 
> values. Citizens of various philosophical persuasions are reflecting 
> increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for modern day 
> democratic governance.
>
> We have all followed the outburst of a congressman from South Carolina 
> during the President?s recent address to Congress. Less noted, and 
> vastly more significant, than the much publicized congressional 
> utterance is the fact that significant political figures and many 
> citizens have over the course of the last year charged our current 
> President with advancing policies that were either ?communist,? or 
> ?fascist? or both, and suggested that members of his party in Congress 
> should be investigated for ?un-American? activities. Several in public 
> life have even toyed with history-blind radicalism?the notion of 
> ?secession.?
>
> Words matter, for they reflect emotion as well as thought. The ones 
> cited above are politically and personally charged. In a legal sense 
> they are, of course, protected by free speech, but the question is 
> whether they nonetheless are part of a vocabulary of hate, 
> jeopardizing social cohesion and even public safety.
>
> In the public humanities we are fortunate to have a network of 
> humanities councils in every state and territorial jurisdiction. Each 
> is composed of independent humanities leaders with a sensitive sense 
> for what works in their areas. Most have already put outreach programs 
> in place that are truly impressive. Illinois, for instance, has a 
> strategy of reaching out to citizens in unexpected places in a program 
> they call ?Caf? Society.? Meetings are held in coffee houses, even 
> barber shops. Oregon has a comparable program called ?Think and 
> Drink,? presumably involving places that don?t just serve coffee. 
> Montana, for its part, is emphasizing what it calls ?gracious? dialogue.
>
> NEH is a kind of domestic State Department with state-wide embassies 
> and consulates. We are proud of the professional staff and appointed 
> board members who have proven so innovative.
>
> We are also proud of the scholarship we have supported in the past. In 
> recent years, for instance, utilizing a rigorous peer review process 
> in a manner similar to decision-making at the National Institutes of 
> Health and the National Science Foundation, we have funded nearly a 
> hundred projects relating to the Islamic world.
>
> We have supported seminars for teachers on ?The Arabic Novel in 
> Translation,? in which the works of the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz 
> and Ibraham al-Kuni and other modern writers are explored, and 
> provided research for books on topics that initially seemed abstractly 
> academic but later turned out to be essential reading material for 
> American policymakers. For example, we supported the publication of 
> Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, which was completed 
> only weeks before 9/11. Its publication made Professor David B. 
> Edwards of Williams College a principal source of scholarly knowledge 
> when the United States went to war in 2001.
>
> To the degree all war has antecedents or analogies to prior conflicts, 
> the studies we have encouraged of the French colonial experience in 
> places as distant from each other as Algeria and Indochina may also 
> inform our decisions on war and its conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
>
> Of more cultural relevance, we have awarded research grants for the 
> study of the Maimonides Code in the medieval Islamic world; on the 
> history of cross-cultural trade under Islamic law; on the influence of 
> the story of Job on Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages; 
> and, more contemporaneously, we have shared the science of museum 
> preservation with Afghan and Iraqi curators. In addition, our staff 
> recognized the importance of the ?Bactrian gold,? which was hidden for 
> twenty years in the basement of the presidential palace in Kabul. We 
> paid for the collection to be catalogued and helped it to tour museums 
> around the world to illuminate the national culture we were attempting 
> to protect on the battlefield.
>
> Because our support of these projects and many others like them is 
> based on peer reviewed scholarly criteria, they send an implicit 
> message to Muslims in our country and in other parts of the world that 
> we deeply value the contributions of their diverse and fascinating 
> cultures. Unfortunately our knowledge deficit is large. The need to 
> expand American understanding of Muslim history and traditions has 
> been extensively elucidated in the work of one of our Carnegie hosts, 
> Dr. Gregorian, who has been preaching for decades about how woefully 
> under-educated Americans are about the 1.2 billion Muslims with whom 
> we share this globe.
>
> Much attention has properly been directed to the question of whether 
> we had valid information about alleged WMD development in Iraq. But 
> this kind of precise intelligence probing has allowed a glossing over 
> of how little policymakers knew about the culture of a country we had 
> been at war with a decade before and were giving serious consideration 
> to invading in the wake of 9/11; of how sparse our knowledge was of 
> the basic tenets of the Muslim faith; of how limited our understanding 
> of the differences between Sunnis and Shi?a and the likely effects 
> Western military intervention would have on the historic tensions 
> between and within various faith systems.
>
> At a cultural level it is also unfortunate how little respect we have 
> exhibited for Muslim history, particularly the Golden Age of Islam 
> which was coterminous with what are frequently referred to as the Dark 
> Ages in pre-Renaissance Europe. This was a time when Islamic 
> intellectual life was thriving in centers of learning like Cordoba in 
> Muslim-ruled Spain. Said to have had 70 libraries, with over 400,000 
> volumes, Cordoba was a center for scholars to translate the classic 
> world of antiquity into Arabic. Without Muslim intellectual 
> leadership, works of Aristotle and many others would likely have been 
> lost forever. Importantly, Muslim intellectuals worked in 
> collaboration with rather than isolation from Christian and Jewish 
> scholars.
>
> When Europe went Dark, Muslims led in ?bridging cultures.?
>
> Our founders proved more prescient and more impressed with Muslim 
> history and culture than citizens today. Jefferson, for instance, read 
> widely in the area of comparative religion and was convinced that what 
> mattered most was not where faith systems differed but where they 
> conjoined. A century and a half later, presumably on the assumption 
> that in the field of ideas and enlightened thought no country had ever 
> received more foreign aid than the United States, Congress authorized 
> a series of marble relief portraits of law makers through history to 
> be placed on the walls of the House of Representatives. Thus, in the 
> people?s House are inspirational wall sculptures of Moses, Hammurabi, 
> Maimonides, and Suleiman the Magnificent, as well as such figures as 
> Solon, Justinian, and Jefferson.
>
> Yet, exacerbated by the acts of a score of Muslim terrorists on 9/11, 
> poll after poll indicates that American attitudes toward Muslims are 
> exceptionally disrespectful.
>
> As a former Member of Congress, I was fortunate to represent the 
> oldest mosque in America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After 9/11 I often met 
> with the elders of the mosque and was impressed with how much they 
> understood about attitudes in every corner of the Muslim world. 
> Likewise, I am confident that Muslims outside the United States hear 
> regularly about social difficulties faced by Muslims in America. It 
> would therefore seem logical that a critical element in developing a 
> more sympathetic attitude toward America and our foreign policy 
> concerns in Muslim nations would be a neighborly commitment to see 
> that Muslim citizens are welcome in every American community. Cultural 
> diplomacy begins at home.
>
> Finally on a personal note, I chose as a Republican to endorse Barack 
> Obama for President because I was convinced that never in American 
> history was the case for a course change more compelling in 
> international relations and because I had become convinced that seldom 
> had a more natural humanist been chosen to represent his party for 
> national office. I had not intended to return to government and, in 
> fact, turned down several initial offers. But when I was called about 
> this job, I could not decline.
>
> No one should underestimate the importance of the public humanities or 
> the need to address the temper and the integrity of the political 
> dialogue. America cannot revive its infectious leadership until it 
> revives its sense of self and reaches out respectfully instead of 
> shunning, or, worse yet, name calling those with whom we differ.
>
> In the profoundest political observation of the last century, Einstein 
> noted that splitting the atom had changed everything except our way of 
> thinking. Now civilization is jeopardized both by weapons of mass 
> destruction and by the brutal acts of people armed with machetes in 
> deepest Africa and terrorists with suicide bombs in Western societies. 
> In this jungle of man-made weapons instead of tigers, all the world?s 
> peoples have no choice except to think through the meaning of humanity 
> itself.
>
> In this context, the President couldn?t have chosen wiser words when 
> in Cairo he called for ?a new beginning between the U.S. and Muslims 
> around the world? based on ?mutual interest and mutual respect.?
>
> Governmental policy is shifting. We at NEH, like so many in the 
> non-profit community represented here, are prepared to re-center 
> attention and underpin a new Muslim-American relationship. This 
> President has articulated a call to action that none of us can ignore.
> Thank you.


From gkoger at mindspring.com  Tue Feb 23 10:45:06 2010
From: gkoger at mindspring.com (gkoger at mindspring.com)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:45:06 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
Message-ID: <18004995.1266950706874.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

Leach's observation doesn't strike me as unreasonable, although referring to the "moral" of the /Quartet/ is unfortunate. Note that he refers to "a sense of reality" rather than just "reality," which is a fairly nuanced way of putting it.

For what it's worth, two of the writers for /Power Line/ are fellows of the Claremont Institute, at whose 30th anniversary dinner Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak.

Grove 


-----Original Message-----
>From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
>Sent: Feb 23, 2010 11:30 AM
>To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
>
>Here follows the full text of the NEH Chairman's speech.
>
>I do not question that speech is well-meaning. Such things usually are.
>
>But is Chairman Leach's paraphrase of the "moral" (???) of the /Quartet/ 
>at all accurate?
>
>>         The moral is that to get a sense of reality, it is necessary
>>         to see things from more than one pair of eyes.
>
>Read on.
>
>C&c.




From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Tue Feb 23 15:28:41 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:28:41 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <18004995.1266950706874.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <18004995.1266950706874.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4B8464A9.7020505@utc.edu>

gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:
> Leach's observation doesn't strike me as unreasonable, although referring to the "moral" of the /Quartet/ is unfortunate. Note that he refers to "a sense of reality" rather than just "reality," which is a fairly nuanced way of putting it.
>
> For what it's worth, two of the writers for /Power Line/ are fellows of the Claremont Institute, at whose 30th anniversary dinner Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak.
>
> Grove 
>
>   
Thanks for that response, Grove.

I hear something different in that "sense of reality" when I read that 
phrase and sentence within the context of Leach's total speech.

Read in that way, I hear Leach saying that if we just listened and 
looked more--just like those characters in the /Quartet/--we just might 
overcome our limited, local perspectives and achieve a global, 
encompassing perspective and lead better lives.

Is the /Quartet/ really that progressive and optimistic in its politics?

In other words, I have a problem with Leach's optimism that some greater 
political or personal enlightenment is actually achieved by means of the 
/Quartet/'s perspectivism.

I do agree that in reading the /Quartet/ we readers are reminded again 
and again of the limitations and subjectivity of individual 
perspectives. Yes, we humans are blind to so much.

However, I do not find that characters in the /Quartet/ move from naive 
viewpoints to skepticism to some sort of liberating and reforming 
enlightenment. Instead, those characters who survive limp away into 
exile, maimed and shaken and separated from old selves and old friends 
and lovers.

In other words, yes, the /Quartet/ shakes up our preconceptions and the 
preconceptions of the characters. But, no, I do not think the book leads 
the reader to any greater wisdom beyond a fuller knowledge of his or her 
limits and unknowing.

The /Quartet/ takes away far more than it gives. (That move to 
"extinguishment" may be why Buddhism and the writings of Sade appealed 
to Durrell.) Thus the move to a kind of quietist tone and position of 
exile in the book's final movements.

Without doubt there are political aspects to the /Quartet/. But I find 
those political /plots/--the plots involving Nessim and Narouz and 
Mountolive--to be the parts most steeped in irony, skepticism, and 
bribes, betrayals, political assassinations, and gun-running.

After all, at the book's close, a war is coming--actually, 70+ years of war.

Contra Leach, the /Quartet/ does not seem to me to be a "road map" to a 
peace settlement.

Such a reading forgets Ron the Parrot, who farts and curses while 
reciting Koranic verse, and much else.

And we forget Ron the Parrot at our peril.

I will reprint Leach's whole address here below. I do find it 
interesting because it helps me to articulate my own different reading.

Charles

>
> ***
>
>> http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/speeches/09292009.html
>
>> Speech by NEH Chairman Jim Leach
>>
>> ?Bridging Cultures: NEH and the Muslim World?
>> Carnegie Corporation of New York
>> New York, New York
>> September 29, 2009
>> (As prepared for delivery)
>>
>> Good morning. It is an honor to be charged with opening the 
>> discussion today on the challenges of civic engagement with Muslim 
>> communities inside and outside the United States.
>>
>> First, let me begin by thanking our hosts?the Carnegie Corporation, 
>> the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation for 
>> Islamic Art?for gathering us together and, more consequentially, for 
>> the leadership role they have played for decades on the topic at hand.
>>
>> In this context I want to stress a theme that might seem self-evident 
>> but is seldom given the attention it deserves. To wit, relations 
>> between countries are only in part a dialogue of one government with 
>> another. Actually, it is businessmen and women, unelected people of 
>> good will, be they artists, scholars or students, who are more 
>> integral to defining the tone of relations between states than public 
>> officials.
>>
>> Government is a part of culture, not vice-versa. Accordingly, 
>> government-to-government relations are only one kind of diplomacy. In 
>> the literature of political science, official interchanges are 
>> sometimes referred to as track 1 diplomacy. Broadly speaking there 
>> are two other kinds. Track 2 is diplomacy involving non-government 
>> officials attempting to advance, often at the behest of a government, 
>> policies consistent with the views of the government. A subset of 
>> this track is free lance diplomacy: private citizens advancing 
>> perspectives that, while perhaps well-intended, may be objectionable 
>> to a government in power. The third track is cultural diplomacy, 
>> which encompasses all private contacts and relationships?social, 
>> professional, business, artistic, and educational?that take place 
>> unrelated to specific political issues of the day. Cultural diplomacy 
>> generally precedes and increasingly supersedes 
>> government-to-government relations.
>>
>> Just as government is a part of culture and not vice-versa, cultural 
>> relations are often more consequential than political ones. Public 
>> officials and their views come and go; culture may evolve but it is a 
>> weighty constant. If peoples of a country or set of countries don?t 
>> like each other, don?t understand or respect another?s way of life, 
>> fail to sense good will, or can?t see any common interests, there is 
>> little chance for the development of constructive 
>> government-to-government relations.
>>
>> If this premise has validity, the national interest suggests that 
>> whatever the politics of the moment in nation-state relations, 
>> citizen effort, consistent with law, should be undertaken to reach 
>> out to those societies with which tension is highest. While such an 
>> endeavor may be facilitated by government, it is disproportionately a 
>> private-sector responsibility.
>>
>> At the turn of the last century, two controversial political 
>> sociologists from Italy, Mosca and Pareto, attempted to update an 
>> undertaking of Aristotle and chronicle the types of governments then 
>> in existence. One of their observations that seems trite but carries 
>> profound implications is that whatever kind of government is in 
>> place, it is impressive how at key moments powerful elites are 
>> empowered to make decisions of a kind that impact multitudes. Our 
>> founders thought a lot about this democratic dilemma. In these trying 
>> times, we are obligated to reflect anew on this problem.
>>
>> At the time of our founding, one of the principal concerns of our 
>> first citizens was to limit the capacity of a single person?in this 
>> case a presidency shorn of kingly authority?to initiate war. Today 
>> the challenge for citizens is to help make the need for government 
>> officials to instigate war less likely.
>>
>> Democracy is no guarantee of good judgment of public officials, but 
>> it is the best system to allow publics to insist on course 
>> corrections. We all recognize that the last election produced a 
>> candidate who prevailed in no small measure because he suggested that 
>> new approaches were called for in international relations. That 
>> doesn?t mean that if implemented these new approaches will prove 
>> popular or effective. No-win situations abound. The bad news is that 
>> some events may simply be beyond management and the actions of others 
>> may be impervious to civil logic. The good news is that the President 
>> has a mandate to rethink policies in place and appears to have chosen 
>> first class professionals with open minds to advise him.
>>
>> In this circumstance there is an indispensible role for cultural 
>> diplomacy to help create a social environment where disagreements 
>> between peoples are more likely to be resolved in a civil way. As the 
>> President suggested in one of the great humanist speeches of our 
>> time, the development of cultural understanding requires that a young 
>> person in Kansas be able to communicate with a young person in Cairo.
>>
>> Government-to-government relations implicitly reflect national power 
>> contrasts whether or not military power is being asserted. But any 
>> study of the human condition?the humanities?in any century, including 
>> the last one in which man experimented with the most coercive dogmas 
>> of hate, finds that military power alone can not for long hold 
>> populations in check or control the mind and soul of a people.
>>
>> People want to have a say in their own destinies. There is something 
>> about the human condition that prefers governing decisions, even 
>> seemingly irrational ones, to be made at socially cohesive levels. A 
>> lot is written today about globalism, but this century is also about 
>> localism. To adapt to a fast changing world, one must understand both 
>> of these phenomena: the fact, as Tip O?Neill repeatedly noted, that 
>> all politics are local and the corollary, as we have learned again 
>> with the financial crisis, that all local decisions are affected by 
>> international events.
>>
>> Whether violence is an integral element of the human condition or a 
>> learned response is a matter of conjecture. But non-violence is 
>> almost certainly a practice that must be learned. And the most 
>> effective form of social education is human contact. It is the 
>> humanization rather than the demonization of individuals from 
>> different cultures that is so critical if non-violent approaches to 
>> problem solving are to be institutionalized. Without 
>> humanization?hand shakes of understanding?there can be no trust and 
>> hence no family or national security.
>>
>> In a fundamental sense, the issue of the times is not simply 
>> Muslim-Western discord; it is also the philosophical paradigm with 
>> which our founders grappled. At issue was and somewhat surprisingly 
>> remains the contrast with a state of nature, which Hobbes defined as 
>> a jungle where life was ?nasty, brutish and short,? and civil 
>> society, which Locke described as a circumstance where rules governed 
>> disputes and third party arbitration could be called upon. For 
>> Hobbes, self-centered man could never escape the jungle because he 
>> lacked the capacity to put himself in the shoes of others. For 
>> Jefferson and his Lockean cohorts in Philadelphia, individuals were 
>> not only born with rights no legitimate state could take away, but 
>> with a rational nature capable of developing institutional 
>> arrangements to advance common interests.
>>
>> For students of Western political theory, Hobbesian thought has for 
>> long been considered to involve an interesting but abstract set of 
>> propositions. But with the globalization for the first time in 
>> history of anarchistic strategies, it is suddenly becoming clear that 
>> not only have we not entirely escaped the jungle, but that the more 
>> modern and centralized a society, the greater its vulnerability to 
>> terrorist acts. In this circumstance, the case for a strong military 
>> and expanded intelligence capacity is self-evident. But the only 
>> long-term answer would appear also to require: a) a commitment to 
>> advancing mutual understanding and the framework of law; and b) an 
>> understanding that military intervention, even if employed by a 
>> democratic power without a goal of Empire, can have unforeseen, 
>> counter-productive consequences.
>>
>> In this setting I have suggested to the students I used to teach at 
>> Princeton and Harvard that the most important geo-political tract of 
>> the last century was that of a family of novels?the Alexandria 
>> Quartet by the British author, Lawrence Durrell. Set between the 
>> first and second world wars in the ancient library center, 
>> Alexandria, Durrell wrote four books about the same set of events, 
>> each a first-person perspective from the eyes of a different 
>> participant. One wonders why read about the same events more than 
>> once. It ends up that each story is profoundly different. The moral 
>> is that to get a sense of reality, it is necessary to see things from 
>> more than one pair of eyes. This may apply to interactions in a 
>> community, a court room, or in international relations where what 
>> America does may seem reasonable from our perspective but look very 
>> different from the eyes of a European or African, a Middle Easterner 
>> or an Asian.
>>
>> As everyone in this room knows, over the past several decades two 
>> Harvard political theorists, Samuel Huntington and Joseph Nye, have 
>> written about the dangers of a clash of civilizations and of the role 
>> of ?soft? (recently relabeled ?smart?) power as contrasted with 
>> ?hard? power in international relations. These are important 
>> frameworks of thought, but I would add to such considerations the 
>> contrasting model of realism vs. pseudo-realism in policy 
>> development. Realists look to effect, not to bluster. But what should 
>> a citizen think of ideological arguments advanced in recent years by 
>> a small cohort of ideological insiders that arms control agreements 
>> are to be avoided and diplomacy, particularly multi-lateral 
>> diplomacy, is soft-headed? Should we not ask whether this is 
>> pseudo-realism? What is more realistic and more consistent with the 
>> American heritage than attempting to advance the rule of law? 
>> Americans prefer to work in alliances. It is nonsense, realism 
>> inverted, to press a foreign policy rooted in snubbing the concerns 
>> of others.
>>
>> One of the myths of our time is that realism is principally about 
>> might. Actually realism is about the human condition. Nations that 
>> are ill-led, ill-fed, and ill-respected are breeding grounds for 
>> radicalism.
>>
>> America at its best combines principle and idealism with Yankee 
>> pragmatism. One without the other is a prescription for disaster.
>>
>> In this context, NEH is launching a ?Bridging Cultures? initiative. 
>> The analogy to a ?bridge? and use of the word as a verb is hardly 
>> novel. Nor is what we have in mind a radical departure from prior NEH 
>> initiatives or the long-term efforts of many individuals and NGOs 
>> represented in this room. Our effort is simply to burrow ?in? more 
>> deeply at the domestic level and press ?out? more broadly 
>> internationally.
>>
>> Hence we plan, in partnership with our state humanities councils, to 
>> hold colloquiums, large and small, throughout the country on the 
>> issue of ?hate speech and civility?; to commence what we intend to 
>> label ?academies? on American history and the Constitution; and to 
>> hold conferences on the importance of Muslim contributions to 
>> American society. We are also open to partnering with other 
>> government departments and non-governmental organizations in any 
>> number of ways.
>>
>> International violence, economic insecurity, and the chaotic nature 
>> of accelerating change have produced a crisis of perspective as well 
>> as values. Citizens of various philosophical persuasions are 
>> reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for 
>> modern day democratic governance.
>>
>> We have all followed the outburst of a congressman from South 
>> Carolina during the President?s recent address to Congress. Less 
>> noted, and vastly more significant, than the much publicized 
>> congressional utterance is the fact that significant political 
>> figures and many citizens have over the course of the last year 
>> charged our current President with advancing policies that were 
>> either ?communist,? or ?fascist? or both, and suggested that members 
>> of his party in Congress should be investigated for ?un-American? 
>> activities. Several in public life have even toyed with history-blind 
>> radicalism?the notion of ?secession.?
>>
>> Words matter, for they reflect emotion as well as thought. The ones 
>> cited above are politically and personally charged. In a legal sense 
>> they are, of course, protected by free speech, but the question is 
>> whether they nonetheless are part of a vocabulary of hate, 
>> jeopardizing social cohesion and even public safety.
>>
>> In the public humanities we are fortunate to have a network of 
>> humanities councils in every state and territorial jurisdiction. Each 
>> is composed of independent humanities leaders with a sensitive sense 
>> for what works in their areas. Most have already put outreach 
>> programs in place that are truly impressive. Illinois, for instance, 
>> has a strategy of reaching out to citizens in unexpected places in a 
>> program they call ?Caf? Society.? Meetings are held in coffee houses, 
>> even barber shops. Oregon has a comparable program called ?Think and 
>> Drink,? presumably involving places that don?t just serve coffee. 
>> Montana, for its part, is emphasizing what it calls ?gracious? dialogue.
>>
>> NEH is a kind of domestic State Department with state-wide embassies 
>> and consulates. We are proud of the professional staff and appointed 
>> board members who have proven so innovative.
>>
>> We are also proud of the scholarship we have supported in the past. 
>> In recent years, for instance, utilizing a rigorous peer review 
>> process in a manner similar to decision-making at the National 
>> Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, we have 
>> funded nearly a hundred projects relating to the Islamic world.
>>
>> We have supported seminars for teachers on ?The Arabic Novel in 
>> Translation,? in which the works of the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz 
>> and Ibraham al-Kuni and other modern writers are explored, and 
>> provided research for books on topics that initially seemed 
>> abstractly academic but later turned out to be essential reading 
>> material for American policymakers. For example, we supported the 
>> publication of Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, which 
>> was completed only weeks before 9/11. Its publication made Professor 
>> David B. Edwards of Williams College a principal source of scholarly 
>> knowledge when the United States went to war in 2001.
>>
>> To the degree all war has antecedents or analogies to prior 
>> conflicts, the studies we have encouraged of the French colonial 
>> experience in places as distant from each other as Algeria and 
>> Indochina may also inform our decisions on war and its conduct in 
>> Iraq and Afghanistan today.
>>
>> Of more cultural relevance, we have awarded research grants for the 
>> study of the Maimonides Code in the medieval Islamic world; on the 
>> history of cross-cultural trade under Islamic law; on the influence 
>> of the story of Job on Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle 
>> Ages; and, more contemporaneously, we have shared the science of 
>> museum preservation with Afghan and Iraqi curators. In addition, our 
>> staff recognized the importance of the ?Bactrian gold,? which was 
>> hidden for twenty years in the basement of the presidential palace in 
>> Kabul. We paid for the collection to be catalogued and helped it to 
>> tour museums around the world to illuminate the national culture we 
>> were attempting to protect on the battlefield.
>>
>> Because our support of these projects and many others like them is 
>> based on peer reviewed scholarly criteria, they send an implicit 
>> message to Muslims in our country and in other parts of the world 
>> that we deeply value the contributions of their diverse and 
>> fascinating cultures. Unfortunately our knowledge deficit is large. 
>> The need to expand American understanding of Muslim history and 
>> traditions has been extensively elucidated in the work of one of our 
>> Carnegie hosts, Dr. Gregorian, who has been preaching for decades 
>> about how woefully under-educated Americans are about the 1.2 billion 
>> Muslims with whom we share this globe.
>>
>> Much attention has properly been directed to the question of whether 
>> we had valid information about alleged WMD development in Iraq. But 
>> this kind of precise intelligence probing has allowed a glossing over 
>> of how little policymakers knew about the culture of a country we had 
>> been at war with a decade before and were giving serious 
>> consideration to invading in the wake of 9/11; of how sparse our 
>> knowledge was of the basic tenets of the Muslim faith; of how limited 
>> our understanding of the differences between Sunnis and Shi?a and the 
>> likely effects Western military intervention would have on the 
>> historic tensions between and within various faith systems.
>>
>> At a cultural level it is also unfortunate how little respect we have 
>> exhibited for Muslim history, particularly the Golden Age of Islam 
>> which was coterminous with what are frequently referred to as the 
>> Dark Ages in pre-Renaissance Europe. This was a time when Islamic 
>> intellectual life was thriving in centers of learning like Cordoba in 
>> Muslim-ruled Spain. Said to have had 70 libraries, with over 400,000 
>> volumes, Cordoba was a center for scholars to translate the classic 
>> world of antiquity into Arabic. Without Muslim intellectual 
>> leadership, works of Aristotle and many others would likely have been 
>> lost forever. Importantly, Muslim intellectuals worked in 
>> collaboration with rather than isolation from Christian and Jewish 
>> scholars.
>>
>> When Europe went Dark, Muslims led in ?bridging cultures.?
>>
>> Our founders proved more prescient and more impressed with Muslim 
>> history and culture than citizens today. Jefferson, for instance, 
>> read widely in the area of comparative religion and was convinced 
>> that what mattered most was not where faith systems differed but 
>> where they conjoined. A century and a half later, presumably on the 
>> assumption that in the field of ideas and enlightened thought no 
>> country had ever received more foreign aid than the United States, 
>> Congress authorized a series of marble relief portraits of law makers 
>> through history to be placed on the walls of the House of 
>> Representatives. Thus, in the people?s House are inspirational wall 
>> sculptures of Moses, Hammurabi, Maimonides, and Suleiman the 
>> Magnificent, as well as such figures as Solon, Justinian, and Jefferson.
>>
>> Yet, exacerbated by the acts of a score of Muslim terrorists on 9/11, 
>> poll after poll indicates that American attitudes toward Muslims are 
>> exceptionally disrespectful.
>>
>> As a former Member of Congress, I was fortunate to represent the 
>> oldest mosque in America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After 9/11 I often 
>> met with the elders of the mosque and was impressed with how much 
>> they understood about attitudes in every corner of the Muslim world. 
>> Likewise, I am confident that Muslims outside the United States hear 
>> regularly about social difficulties faced by Muslims in America. It 
>> would therefore seem logical that a critical element in developing a 
>> more sympathetic attitude toward America and our foreign policy 
>> concerns in Muslim nations would be a neighborly commitment to see 
>> that Muslim citizens are welcome in every American community. 
>> Cultural diplomacy begins at home.
>>
>> Finally on a personal note, I chose as a Republican to endorse Barack 
>> Obama for President because I was convinced that never in American 
>> history was the case for a course change more compelling in 
>> international relations and because I had become convinced that 
>> seldom had a more natural humanist been chosen to represent his party 
>> for national office. I had not intended to return to government and, 
>> in fact, turned down several initial offers. But when I was called 
>> about this job, I could not decline.
>>
>> No one should underestimate the importance of the public humanities 
>> or the need to address the temper and the integrity of the political 
>> dialogue. America cannot revive its infectious leadership until it 
>> revives its sense of self and reaches out respectfully instead of 
>> shunning, or, worse yet, name calling those with whom we differ.
>>
>> In the profoundest political observation of the last century, 
>> Einstein noted that splitting the atom had changed everything except 
>> our way of thinking. Now civilization is jeopardized both by weapons 
>> of mass destruction and by the brutal acts of people armed with 
>> machetes in deepest Africa and terrorists with suicide bombs in 
>> Western societies. In this jungle of man-made weapons instead of 
>> tigers, all the world?s peoples have no choice except to think 
>> through the meaning of humanity itself.
>>
>> In this context, the President couldn?t have chosen wiser words when 
>> in Cairo he called for ?a new beginning between the U.S. and Muslims 
>> around the world? based on ?mutual interest and mutual respect.?
>>
>> Governmental policy is shifting. We at NEH, like so many in the 
>> non-profit community represented here, are prepared to re-center 
>> attention and underpin a new Muslim-American relationship. This 
>> President has articulated a call to action that none of us can ignore.
>> Thank you.
>


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


From gkoger at mindspring.com  Tue Feb 23 17:38:16 2010
From: gkoger at mindspring.com (gkoger at mindspring.com)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:38:16 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
Message-ID: <13223403.1266975497391.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

Charles,

I admit that I'm an agnostic as to whether greater self-knowledge leads to a wiser politics. As for Durrell's books and characters, however, I think I find more optimism than you do.

Maybe I'm cheating to go to the various series' final passages, and yet they buoy me up. At the end of the /Quartet/, Darley writes: "And I felt as if the whole universe had given me a nudge!" 

At the end of the /Revolt/ Felix writes (says?): "There is some fine black jazz playing and we have been dancing, dancing in complete happiness and accord. And we will keep on this way, dancing and dancing, even though Rome burn."

At the end of the /Quintet/ Blanford thinks of describing the scene in these terms: "'It was at this precise moment that reality prime rushed to the aid of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to take place!'" 

Yes, in each case I sense Doubt and Irony waiting in the wings, but for me their presence doesn't dampen the spirit of the words. 

To take a slight detour, Leach's reference to "a sense of reality" reminded me of the Graham Greene collection by that title, and then thoughts about optimism and such reminded me of the ending of Greene's /Brighton Rock/: "She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all."

When I compare Durrell's vision to that of a Greene (or a Beckett, say) I find him pretty optimistic. 

Grove

-----Original Message-----
>From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
>Sent: Feb 23, 2010 6:28 PM
>To: gkoger at mindspring.com, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
>
>gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:
>> Leach's observation doesn't strike me as unreasonable, although referring to the "moral" of the /Quartet/ is unfortunate. Note that he refers to "a sense of reality" rather than just "reality," which is a fairly nuanced way of putting it.
>>
>> For what it's worth, two of the writers for /Power Line/ are fellows of the Claremont Institute, at whose 30th anniversary dinner Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak.
>>
>> Grove 
>>
>>   
>Thanks for that response, Grove.
>
>I hear something different in that "sense of reality" when I read that 
>phrase and sentence within the context of Leach's total speech.
>
>Read in that way, I hear Leach saying that if we just listened and 
>looked more--just like those characters in the /Quartet/--we just might 
>overcome our limited, local perspectives and achieve a global, 
>encompassing perspective and lead better lives.
>
>Is the /Quartet/ really that progressive and optimistic in its politics?
>
>In other words, I have a problem with Leach's optimism that some greater 
>political or personal enlightenment is actually achieved by means of the 
>/Quartet/'s perspectivism.
>
>I do agree that in reading the /Quartet/ we readers are reminded again 
>and again of the limitations and subjectivity of individual 
>perspectives. Yes, we humans are blind to so much.
>
>However, I do not find that characters in the /Quartet/ move from naive 
>viewpoints to skepticism to some sort of liberating and reforming 
>enlightenment. Instead, those characters who survive limp away into 
>exile, maimed and shaken and separated from old selves and old friends 
>and lovers.
>
>In other words, yes, the /Quartet/ shakes up our preconceptions and the 
>preconceptions of the characters. But, no, I do not think the book leads 
>the reader to any greater wisdom beyond a fuller knowledge of his or her 
>limits and unknowing.
>
>The /Quartet/ takes away far more than it gives. (That move to 
>"extinguishment" may be why Buddhism and the writings of Sade appealed 
>to Durrell.) Thus the move to a kind of quietist tone and position of 
>exile in the book's final movements.
>
>Without doubt there are political aspects to the /Quartet/. But I find 
>those political /plots/--the plots involving Nessim and Narouz and 
>Mountolive--to be the parts most steeped in irony, skepticism, and 
>bribes, betrayals, political assassinations, and gun-running.
>
>After all, at the book's close, a war is coming--actually, 70+ years of war.
>
>Contra Leach, the /Quartet/ does not seem to me to be a "road map" to a 
>peace settlement.
>
>Such a reading forgets Ron the Parrot, who farts and curses while 
>reciting Koranic verse, and much else.
>
>And we forget Ron the Parrot at our peril.
>
>I will reprint Leach's whole address here below. I do find it 
>interesting because it helps me to articulate my own different reading.
>
>Charles
>
>>
>> ***
>>
>>> http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/speeches/09292009.html
>>
>>> Speech by NEH Chairman Jim Leach
>>>
>>> ?Bridging Cultures: NEH and the Muslim World?
>>> Carnegie Corporation of New York
>>> New York, New York
>>> September 29, 2009
>>> (As prepared for delivery)
>>>
>>> Good morning. It is an honor to be charged with opening the 
>>> discussion today on the challenges of civic engagement with Muslim 
>>> communities inside and outside the United States.
>>>
>>> First, let me begin by thanking our hosts?the Carnegie Corporation, 
>>> the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation for 
>>> Islamic Art?for gathering us together and, more consequentially, for 
>>> the leadership role they have played for decades on the topic at hand.
>>>
>>> In this context I want to stress a theme that might seem self-evident 
>>> but is seldom given the attention it deserves. To wit, relations 
>>> between countries are only in part a dialogue of one government with 
>>> another. Actually, it is businessmen and women, unelected people of 
>>> good will, be they artists, scholars or students, who are more 
>>> integral to defining the tone of relations between states than public 
>>> officials.
>>>
>>> Government is a part of culture, not vice-versa. Accordingly, 
>>> government-to-government relations are only one kind of diplomacy. In 
>>> the literature of political science, official interchanges are 
>>> sometimes referred to as track 1 diplomacy. Broadly speaking there 
>>> are two other kinds. Track 2 is diplomacy involving non-government 
>>> officials attempting to advance, often at the behest of a government, 
>>> policies consistent with the views of the government. A subset of 
>>> this track is free lance diplomacy: private citizens advancing 
>>> perspectives that, while perhaps well-intended, may be objectionable 
>>> to a government in power. The third track is cultural diplomacy, 
>>> which encompasses all private contacts and relationships?social, 
>>> professional, business, artistic, and educational?that take place 
>>> unrelated to specific political issues of the day. Cultural diplomacy 
>>> generally precedes and increasingly supersedes 
>>> government-to-government relations.
>>>
>>> Just as government is a part of culture and not vice-versa, cultural 
>>> relations are often more consequential than political ones. Public 
>>> officials and their views come and go; culture may evolve but it is a 
>>> weighty constant. If peoples of a country or set of countries don?t 
>>> like each other, don?t understand or respect another?s way of life, 
>>> fail to sense good will, or can?t see any common interests, there is 
>>> little chance for the development of constructive 
>>> government-to-government relations.
>>>
>>> If this premise has validity, the national interest suggests that 
>>> whatever the politics of the moment in nation-state relations, 
>>> citizen effort, consistent with law, should be undertaken to reach 
>>> out to those societies with which tension is highest. While such an 
>>> endeavor may be facilitated by government, it is disproportionately a 
>>> private-sector responsibility.
>>>
>>> At the turn of the last century, two controversial political 
>>> sociologists from Italy, Mosca and Pareto, attempted to update an 
>>> undertaking of Aristotle and chronicle the types of governments then 
>>> in existence. One of their observations that seems trite but carries 
>>> profound implications is that whatever kind of government is in 
>>> place, it is impressive how at key moments powerful elites are 
>>> empowered to make decisions of a kind that impact multitudes. Our 
>>> founders thought a lot about this democratic dilemma. In these trying 
>>> times, we are obligated to reflect anew on this problem.
>>>
>>> At the time of our founding, one of the principal concerns of our 
>>> first citizens was to limit the capacity of a single person?in this 
>>> case a presidency shorn of kingly authority?to initiate war. Today 
>>> the challenge for citizens is to help make the need for government 
>>> officials to instigate war less likely.
>>>
>>> Democracy is no guarantee of good judgment of public officials, but 
>>> it is the best system to allow publics to insist on course 
>>> corrections. We all recognize that the last election produced a 
>>> candidate who prevailed in no small measure because he suggested that 
>>> new approaches were called for in international relations. That 
>>> doesn?t mean that if implemented these new approaches will prove 
>>> popular or effective. No-win situations abound. The bad news is that 
>>> some events may simply be beyond management and the actions of others 
>>> may be impervious to civil logic. The good news is that the President 
>>> has a mandate to rethink policies in place and appears to have chosen 
>>> first class professionals with open minds to advise him.
>>>
>>> In this circumstance there is an indispensible role for cultural 
>>> diplomacy to help create a social environment where disagreements 
>>> between peoples are more likely to be resolved in a civil way. As the 
>>> President suggested in one of the great humanist speeches of our 
>>> time, the development of cultural understanding requires that a young 
>>> person in Kansas be able to communicate with a young person in Cairo.
>>>
>>> Government-to-government relations implicitly reflect national power 
>>> contrasts whether or not military power is being asserted. But any 
>>> study of the human condition?the humanities?in any century, including 
>>> the last one in which man experimented with the most coercive dogmas 
>>> of hate, finds that military power alone can not for long hold 
>>> populations in check or control the mind and soul of a people.
>>>
>>> People want to have a say in their own destinies. There is something 
>>> about the human condition that prefers governing decisions, even 
>>> seemingly irrational ones, to be made at socially cohesive levels. A 
>>> lot is written today about globalism, but this century is also about 
>>> localism. To adapt to a fast changing world, one must understand both 
>>> of these phenomena: the fact, as Tip O?Neill repeatedly noted, that 
>>> all politics are local and the corollary, as we have learned again 
>>> with the financial crisis, that all local decisions are affected by 
>>> international events.
>>>
>>> Whether violence is an integral element of the human condition or a 
>>> learned response is a matter of conjecture. But non-violence is 
>>> almost certainly a practice that must be learned. And the most 
>>> effective form of social education is human contact. It is the 
>>> humanization rather than the demonization of individuals from 
>>> different cultures that is so critical if non-violent approaches to 
>>> problem solving are to be institutionalized. Without 
>>> humanization?hand shakes of understanding?there can be no trust and 
>>> hence no family or national security.
>>>
>>> In a fundamental sense, the issue of the times is not simply 
>>> Muslim-Western discord; it is also the philosophical paradigm with 
>>> which our founders grappled. At issue was and somewhat surprisingly 
>>> remains the contrast with a state of nature, which Hobbes defined as 
>>> a jungle where life was ?nasty, brutish and short,? and civil 
>>> society, which Locke described as a circumstance where rules governed 
>>> disputes and third party arbitration could be called upon. For 
>>> Hobbes, self-centered man could never escape the jungle because he 
>>> lacked the capacity to put himself in the shoes of others. For 
>>> Jefferson and his Lockean cohorts in Philadelphia, individuals were 
>>> not only born with rights no legitimate state could take away, but 
>>> with a rational nature capable of developing institutional 
>>> arrangements to advance common interests.
>>>
>>> For students of Western political theory, Hobbesian thought has for 
>>> long been considered to involve an interesting but abstract set of 
>>> propositions. But with the globalization for the first time in 
>>> history of anarchistic strategies, it is suddenly becoming clear that 
>>> not only have we not entirely escaped the jungle, but that the more 
>>> modern and centralized a society, the greater its vulnerability to 
>>> terrorist acts. In this circumstance, the case for a strong military 
>>> and expanded intelligence capacity is self-evident. But the only 
>>> long-term answer would appear also to require: a) a commitment to 
>>> advancing mutual understanding and the framework of law; and b) an 
>>> understanding that military intervention, even if employed by a 
>>> democratic power without a goal of Empire, can have unforeseen, 
>>> counter-productive consequences.
>>>
>>> In this setting I have suggested to the students I used to teach at 
>>> Princeton and Harvard that the most important geo-political tract of 
>>> the last century was that of a family of novels?the Alexandria 
>>> Quartet by the British author, Lawrence Durrell. Set between the 
>>> first and second world wars in the ancient library center, 
>>> Alexandria, Durrell wrote four books about the same set of events, 
>>> each a first-person perspective from the eyes of a different 
>>> participant. One wonders why read about the same events more than 
>>> once. It ends up that each story is profoundly different. The moral 
>>> is that to get a sense of reality, it is necessary to see things from 
>>> more than one pair of eyes. This may apply to interactions in a 
>>> community, a court room, or in international relations where what 
>>> America does may seem reasonable from our perspective but look very 
>>> different from the eyes of a European or African, a Middle Easterner 
>>> or an Asian.
>>>
>>> As everyone in this room knows, over the past several decades two 
>>> Harvard political theorists, Samuel Huntington and Joseph Nye, have 
>>> written about the dangers of a clash of civilizations and of the role 
>>> of ?soft? (recently relabeled ?smart?) power as contrasted with 
>>> ?hard? power in international relations. These are important 
>>> frameworks of thought, but I would add to such considerations the 
>>> contrasting model of realism vs. pseudo-realism in policy 
>>> development. Realists look to effect, not to bluster. But what should 
>>> a citizen think of ideological arguments advanced in recent years by 
>>> a small cohort of ideological insiders that arms control agreements 
>>> are to be avoided and diplomacy, particularly multi-lateral 
>>> diplomacy, is soft-headed? Should we not ask whether this is 
>>> pseudo-realism? What is more realistic and more consistent with the 
>>> American heritage than attempting to advance the rule of law? 
>>> Americans prefer to work in alliances. It is nonsense, realism 
>>> inverted, to press a foreign policy rooted in snubbing the concerns 
>>> of others.
>>>
>>> One of the myths of our time is that realism is principally about 
>>> might. Actually realism is about the human condition. Nations that 
>>> are ill-led, ill-fed, and ill-respected are breeding grounds for 
>>> radicalism.
>>>
>>> America at its best combines principle and idealism with Yankee 
>>> pragmatism. One without the other is a prescription for disaster.
>>>
>>> In this context, NEH is launching a ?Bridging Cultures? initiative. 
>>> The analogy to a ?bridge? and use of the word as a verb is hardly 
>>> novel. Nor is what we have in mind a radical departure from prior NEH 
>>> initiatives or the long-term efforts of many individuals and NGOs 
>>> represented in this room. Our effort is simply to burrow ?in? more 
>>> deeply at the domestic level and press ?out? more broadly 
>>> internationally.
>>>
>>> Hence we plan, in partnership with our state humanities councils, to 
>>> hold colloquiums, large and small, throughout the country on the 
>>> issue of ?hate speech and civility?; to commence what we intend to 
>>> label ?academies? on American history and the Constitution; and to 
>>> hold conferences on the importance of Muslim contributions to 
>>> American society. We are also open to partnering with other 
>>> government departments and non-governmental organizations in any 
>>> number of ways.
>>>
>>> International violence, economic insecurity, and the chaotic nature 
>>> of accelerating change have produced a crisis of perspective as well 
>>> as values. Citizens of various philosophical persuasions are 
>>> reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for 
>>> modern day democratic governance.
>>>
>>> We have all followed the outburst of a congressman from South 
>>> Carolina during the President?s recent address to Congress. Less 
>>> noted, and vastly more significant, than the much publicized 
>>> congressional utterance is the fact that significant political 
>>> figures and many citizens have over the course of the last year 
>>> charged our current President with advancing policies that were 
>>> either ?communist,? or ?fascist? or both, and suggested that members 
>>> of his party in Congress should be investigated for ?un-American? 
>>> activities. Several in public life have even toyed with history-blind 
>>> radicalism?the notion of ?secession.?
>>>
>>> Words matter, for they reflect emotion as well as thought. The ones 
>>> cited above are politically and personally charged. In a legal sense 
>>> they are, of course, protected by free speech, but the question is 
>>> whether they nonetheless are part of a vocabulary of hate, 
>>> jeopardizing social cohesion and even public safety.
>>>
>>> In the public humanities we are fortunate to have a network of 
>>> humanities councils in every state and territorial jurisdiction. Each 
>>> is composed of independent humanities leaders with a sensitive sense 
>>> for what works in their areas. Most have already put outreach 
>>> programs in place that are truly impressive. Illinois, for instance, 
>>> has a strategy of reaching out to citizens in unexpected places in a 
>>> program they call ?Caf? Society.? Meetings are held in coffee houses, 
>>> even barber shops. Oregon has a comparable program called ?Think and 
>>> Drink,? presumably involving places that don?t just serve coffee. 
>>> Montana, for its part, is emphasizing what it calls ?gracious? dialogue.
>>>
>>> NEH is a kind of domestic State Department with state-wide embassies 
>>> and consulates. We are proud of the professional staff and appointed 
>>> board members who have proven so innovative.
>>>
>>> We are also proud of the scholarship we have supported in the past. 
>>> In recent years, for instance, utilizing a rigorous peer review 
>>> process in a manner similar to decision-making at the National 
>>> Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, we have 
>>> funded nearly a hundred projects relating to the Islamic world.
>>>
>>> We have supported seminars for teachers on ?The Arabic Novel in 
>>> Translation,? in which the works of the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz 
>>> and Ibraham al-Kuni and other modern writers are explored, and 
>>> provided research for books on topics that initially seemed 
>>> abstractly academic but later turned out to be essential reading 
>>> material for American policymakers. For example, we supported the 
>>> publication of Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad, which 
>>> was completed only weeks before 9/11. Its publication made Professor 
>>> David B. Edwards of Williams College a principal source of scholarly 
>>> knowledge when the United States went to war in 2001.
>>>
>>> To the degree all war has antecedents or analogies to prior 
>>> conflicts, the studies we have encouraged of the French colonial 
>>> experience in places as distant from each other as Algeria and 
>>> Indochina may also inform our decisions on war and its conduct in 
>>> Iraq and Afghanistan today.
>>>
>>> Of more cultural relevance, we have awarded research grants for the 
>>> study of the Maimonides Code in the medieval Islamic world; on the 
>>> history of cross-cultural trade under Islamic law; on the influence 
>>> of the story of Job on Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle 
>>> Ages; and, more contemporaneously, we have shared the science of 
>>> museum preservation with Afghan and Iraqi curators. In addition, our 
>>> staff recognized the importance of the ?Bactrian gold,? which was 
>>> hidden for twenty years in the basement of the presidential palace in 
>>> Kabul. We paid for the collection to be catalogued and helped it to 
>>> tour museums around the world to illuminate the national culture we 
>>> were attempting to protect on the battlefield.
>>>
>>> Because our support of these projects and many others like them is 
>>> based on peer reviewed scholarly criteria, they send an implicit 
>>> message to Muslims in our country and in other parts of the world 
>>> that we deeply value the contributions of their diverse and 
>>> fascinating cultures. Unfortunately our knowledge deficit is large. 
>>> The need to expand American understanding of Muslim history and 
>>> traditions has been extensively elucidated in the work of one of our 
>>> Carnegie hosts, Dr. Gregorian, who has been preaching for decades 
>>> about how woefully under-educated Americans are about the 1.2 billion 
>>> Muslims with whom we share this globe.
>>>
>>> Much attention has properly been directed to the question of whether 
>>> we had valid information about alleged WMD development in Iraq. But 
>>> this kind of precise intelligence probing has allowed a glossing over 
>>> of how little policymakers knew about the culture of a country we had 
>>> been at war with a decade before and were giving serious 
>>> consideration to invading in the wake of 9/11; of how sparse our 
>>> knowledge was of the basic tenets of the Muslim faith; of how limited 
>>> our understanding of the differences between Sunnis and Shi?a and the 
>>> likely effects Western military intervention would have on the 
>>> historic tensions between and within various faith systems.
>>>
>>> At a cultural level it is also unfortunate how little respect we have 
>>> exhibited for Muslim history, particularly the Golden Age of Islam 
>>> which was coterminous with what are frequently referred to as the 
>>> Dark Ages in pre-Renaissance Europe. This was a time when Islamic 
>>> intellectual life was thriving in centers of learning like Cordoba in 
>>> Muslim-ruled Spain. Said to have had 70 libraries, with over 400,000 
>>> volumes, Cordoba was a center for scholars to translate the classic 
>>> world of antiquity into Arabic. Without Muslim intellectual 
>>> leadership, works of Aristotle and many others would likely have been 
>>> lost forever. Importantly, Muslim intellectuals worked in 
>>> collaboration with rather than isolation from Christian and Jewish 
>>> scholars.
>>>
>>> When Europe went Dark, Muslims led in ?bridging cultures.?
>>>
>>> Our founders proved more prescient and more impressed with Muslim 
>>> history and culture than citizens today. Jefferson, for instance, 
>>> read widely in the area of comparative religion and was convinced 
>>> that what mattered most was not where faith systems differed but 
>>> where they conjoined. A century and a half later, presumably on the 
>>> assumption that in the field of ideas and enlightened thought no 
>>> country had ever received more foreign aid than the United States, 
>>> Congress authorized a series of marble relief portraits of law makers 
>>> through history to be placed on the walls of the House of 
>>> Representatives. Thus, in the people?s House are inspirational wall 
>>> sculptures of Moses, Hammurabi, Maimonides, and Suleiman the 
>>> Magnificent, as well as such figures as Solon, Justinian, and Jefferson.
>>>
>>> Yet, exacerbated by the acts of a score of Muslim terrorists on 9/11, 
>>> poll after poll indicates that American attitudes toward Muslims are 
>>> exceptionally disrespectful.
>>>
>>> As a former Member of Congress, I was fortunate to represent the 
>>> oldest mosque in America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After 9/11 I often 
>>> met with the elders of the mosque and was impressed with how much 
>>> they understood about attitudes in every corner of the Muslim world. 
>>> Likewise, I am confident that Muslims outside the United States hear 
>>> regularly about social difficulties faced by Muslims in America. It 
>>> would therefore seem logical that a critical element in developing a 
>>> more sympathetic attitude toward America and our foreign policy 
>>> concerns in Muslim nations would be a neighborly commitment to see 
>>> that Muslim citizens are welcome in every American community. 
>>> Cultural diplomacy begins at home.
>>>
>>> Finally on a personal note, I chose as a Republican to endorse Barack 
>>> Obama for President because I was convinced that never in American 
>>> history was the case for a course change more compelling in 
>>> international relations and because I had become convinced that 
>>> seldom had a more natural humanist been chosen to represent his party 
>>> for national office. I had not intended to return to government and, 
>>> in fact, turned down several initial offers. But when I was called 
>>> about this job, I could not decline.
>>>
>>> No one should underestimate the importance of the public humanities 
>>> or the need to address the temper and the integrity of the political 
>>> dialogue. America cannot revive its infectious leadership until it 
>>> revives its sense of self and reaches out respectfully instead of 
>>> shunning, or, worse yet, name calling those with whom we differ.
>>>
>>> In the profoundest political observation of the last century, 
>>> Einstein noted that splitting the atom had changed everything except 
>>> our way of thinking. Now civilization is jeopardized both by weapons 
>>> of mass destruction and by the brutal acts of people armed with 
>>> machetes in deepest Africa and terrorists with suicide bombs in 
>>> Western societies. In this jungle of man-made weapons instead of 
>>> tigers, all the world?s peoples have no choice except to think 
>>> through the meaning of humanity itself.
>>>
>>> In this context, the President couldn?t have chosen wiser words when 
>>> in Cairo he called for ?a new beginning between the U.S. and Muslims 
>>> around the world? based on ?mutual interest and mutual respect.?
>>>
>>> Governmental policy is shifting. We at NEH, like so many in the 
>>> non-profit community represented here, are prepared to re-center 
>>> attention and underpin a new Muslim-American relationship. This 
>>> President has articulated a call to action that none of us can ignore.
>>> Thank you.
>>
>
>
>-- 
>********************************************
>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





From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Tue Feb 23 18:18:36 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:18:36 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <13223403.1266975497391.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <13223403.1266975497391.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4B848C7C.1030000@utc.edu>

gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:
> I admit that I'm an agnostic as to whether greater self-knowledge leads to a wiser politics. As for Durrell's books and characters, however, I think I find more optimism than you do.
>
> Maybe I'm cheating to go to the various series' final passages, and yet they buoy me up. At the end of the /Quartet/, Darley writes: "And I felt as if the whole universe had given me a nudge!" 
>
> At the end of the /Revolt/ Felix writes (says?): "There is some fine black jazz playing and we have been dancing, dancing in complete happiness and accord. And we will keep on this way, dancing and dancing, even though Rome burn."
>
> At the end of the /Quintet/ Blanford thinks of describing the scene in these terms: "'It was at this precise moment that reality prime rushed to the aid of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to take place!'" 
>   

Excellent examples, Grove.  The "sense of an ending" does tend to convey 
meaning and must be attended.  Certainly Darley thinks that everything 
may just come around.

But--to connect Darley's remark with Leach's address--is Darley's sense 
of a "nudge" consequential enough to found a better politics for the 
Middle East?  That is what Leach seems to suggest, I think.
> Yes, in each case I sense Doubt and Irony waiting in the wings, but for me their presence doesn't dampen the spirit of the words. 
>   
I can see that as a valid approach, Grove. 

You diagnosed my case in the earlier remark.  I tend to hear 
Pursewarden's ironic voice as the lasting resonance of the /Quartet/.   
As you say, Doubt and Irony and the gin-soaked ghost of Pursewarden lurk 
just off-stage.  And another world war.  And a partition of Palestine.

You are younger than I am in this one particular thing--bless you for 
indulging me in this fancy!--and you are reading "with" Darley's 
spirit.   That is an aspect that I set aside too often.  That is my fault.

> the ending of Greene's /Brighton Rock/: "She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all."
>
>   
I like the choreographic effect that Greene achieves there.  He draws a 
precise and deadly stiletto to lay his book to rest.  Staggering.

Good memory!

Charles

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


From odos.fanourios at gmail.com  Tue Feb 23 23:59:17 2010
From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:59:17 -0800
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <13223403.1266975497391.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
References: <13223403.1266975497391.JavaMail.root@elwamui-hybrid.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <DA96E1E0-6394-4C1A-A432-EDB22915CBDD@gmail.com>

Hi Grove,

I agree completely, but they're all past tense. A coincidence over 40  
years?

James (the pneumonial)

Sent from my iPod
_________________
James Gifford
Fairleigh Dickinson University

On 2010-02-23, at 17:38, gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:

> Charles,
>
> I admit that I'm an agnostic as to whether greater self-knowledge  
> leads to a wiser politics. As for Durrell's books and characters,  
> however, I think I find more optimism than you do.
>
> Maybe I'm cheating to go to the various series' final passages, and  
> yet they buoy me up. At the end of the /Quartet/, Darley writes:  
> "And I felt as if the whole universe had given me a nudge!"
>
> At the end of the /Revolt/ Felix writes (says?): "There is some fine  
> black jazz playing and we have been dancing, dancing in complete  
> happiness and accord. And we will keep on this way, dancing and  
> dancing, even though Rome burn."
>
> At the end of the /Quintet/ Blanford thinks of describing the scene  
> in these terms: "'It was at this precise moment that reality prime  
> rushed to the aid of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to  
> take place!'"
>
> Yes, in each case I sense Doubt and Irony waiting in the wings, but  
> for me their presence doesn't dampen the spirit of the words.
>
> To take a slight detour, Leach's reference to "a sense of reality"  
> reminded me of the Graham Greene collection by that title, and then  
> thoughts about optimism and such reminded me of the ending of  
> Greene's /Brighton Rock/: "She walked rapidly in the thin June  
> sunlight towards the worst horror of all."
>
> When I compare Durrell's vision to that of a Greene (or a Beckett,  
> say) I find him pretty optimistic.
>
> Grove
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
>> Sent: Feb 23, 2010 6:28 PM
>> To: gkoger at mindspring.com, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>> Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
>>
>> gkoger at mindspring.com wrote:
>>> Leach's observation doesn't strike me as unreasonable, although  
>>> referring to the "moral" of the /Quartet/ is unfortunate. Note  
>>> that he refers to "a sense of reality" rather than just "reality,"  
>>> which is a fairly nuanced way of putting it.
>>>
>>> For what it's worth, two of the writers for /Power Line/ are  
>>> fellows of the Claremont Institute, at whose 30th anniversary  
>>> dinner Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak.
>>>
>>> Grove
>>>
>>>
>> Thanks for that response, Grove.
>>
>> I hear something different in that "sense of reality" when I read  
>> that
>> phrase and sentence within the context of Leach's total speech.
>>
>> Read in that way, I hear Leach saying that if we just listened and
>> looked more--just like those characters in the /Quartet/--we just  
>> might
>> overcome our limited, local perspectives and achieve a global,
>> encompassing perspective and lead better lives.
>>
>> Is the /Quartet/ really that progressive and optimistic in its  
>> politics?
>>
>> In other words, I have a problem with Leach's optimism that some  
>> greater
>> political or personal enlightenment is actually achieved by means  
>> of the
>> /Quartet/'s perspectivism.
>>
>> I do agree that in reading the /Quartet/ we readers are reminded  
>> again
>> and again of the limitations and subjectivity of individual
>> perspectives. Yes, we humans are blind to so much.
>>
>> However, I do not find that characters in the /Quartet/ move from  
>> naive
>> viewpoints to skepticism to some sort of liberating and reforming
>> enlightenment. Instead, those characters who survive limp away into
>> exile, maimed and shaken and separated from old selves and old  
>> friends
>> and lovers.
>>
>> In other words, yes, the /Quartet/ shakes up our preconceptions and  
>> the
>> preconceptions of the characters. But, no, I do not think the book  
>> leads
>> the reader to any greater wisdom beyond a fuller knowledge of his  
>> or her
>> limits and unknowing.
>>
>> The /Quartet/ takes away far more than it gives. (That move to
>> "extinguishment" may be why Buddhism and the writings of Sade  
>> appealed
>> to Durrell.) Thus the move to a kind of quietist tone and position of
>> exile in the book's final movements.
>>
>> Without doubt there are political aspects to the /Quartet/. But I  
>> find
>> those political /plots/--the plots involving Nessim and Narouz and
>> Mountolive--to be the parts most steeped in irony, skepticism, and
>> bribes, betrayals, political assassinations, and gun-running.
>>
>> After all, at the book's close, a war is coming--actually, 70+  
>> years of war.
>>
>> Contra Leach, the /Quartet/ does not seem to me to be a "road map"  
>> to a
>> peace settlement.
>>
>> Such a reading forgets Ron the Parrot, who farts and curses while
>> reciting Koranic verse, and much else.
>>
>> And we forget Ron the Parrot at our peril.
>>
>> I will reprint Leach's whole address here below. I do find it
>> interesting because it helps me to articulate my own different  
>> reading.
>>
>> Charles
>>
>>>
>>> ***
>>>
>>>> http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/speeches/09292009.html
>>>
>>>> Speech by NEH Chairman Jim Leach
>>>>
>>>> ?Bridging Cultures: NEH and the Muslim World?
>>>> Carnegie Corporation of New York
>>>> New York, New York
>>>> September 29, 2009
>>>> (As prepared for delivery)
>>>>
>>>> Good morning. It is an honor to be charged with opening the
>>>> discussion today on the challenges of civic engagement with Muslim
>>>> communities inside and outside the United States.
>>>>
>>>> First, let me begin by thanking our hosts?the Carnegie Corpora 
>>>> tion,
>>>> the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation for
>>>> Islamic Art?for gathering us together and, more consequentiall 
>>>> y, for
>>>> the leadership role they have played for decades on the topic at  
>>>> hand.
>>>>
>>>> In this context I want to stress a theme that might seem self- 
>>>> evident
>>>> but is seldom given the attention it deserves. To wit, relations
>>>> between countries are only in part a dialogue of one government  
>>>> with
>>>> another. Actually, it is businessmen and women, unelected people of
>>>> good will, be they artists, scholars or students, who are more
>>>> integral to defining the tone of relations between states than  
>>>> public
>>>> officials.
>>>>
>>>> Government is a part of culture, not vice-versa. Accordingly,
>>>> government-to-government relations are only one kind of  
>>>> diplomacy. In
>>>> the literature of political science, official interchanges are
>>>> sometimes referred to as track 1 diplomacy. Broadly speaking there
>>>> are two other kinds. Track 2 is diplomacy involving non-government
>>>> officials attempting to advance, often at the behest of a  
>>>> government,
>>>> policies consistent with the views of the government. A subset of
>>>> this track is free lance diplomacy: private citizens advancing
>>>> perspectives that, while perhaps well-intended, may be  
>>>> objectionable
>>>> to a government in power. The third track is cultural diplomacy,
>>>> which encompasses all private contacts and relationships?social,
>>>> professional, business, artistic, and educational?that take place
>>>> unrelated to specific political issues of the day. Cultural  
>>>> diplomacy
>>>> generally precedes and increasingly supersedes
>>>> government-to-government relations.
>>>>
>>>> Just as government is a part of culture and not vice-versa,  
>>>> cultural
>>>> relations are often more consequential than political ones. Public
>>>> officials and their views come and go; culture may evolve but it  
>>>> is a
>>>> weighty constant. If peoples of a country or set of countries  
>>>> don?t
>>>> like each other, don?t understand or respect another?s way of  
>>>> life,
>>>> fail to sense good will, or can?t see any common interests, th 
>>>> ere is
>>>> little chance for the development of constructive
>>>> government-to-government relations.
>>>>
>>>> If this premise has validity, the national interest suggests that
>>>> whatever the politics of the moment in nation-state relations,
>>>> citizen effort, consistent with law, should be undertaken to reach
>>>> out to those societies with which tension is highest. While such an
>>>> endeavor may be facilitated by government, it is  
>>>> disproportionately a
>>>> private-sector responsibility.
>>>>
>>>> At the turn of the last century, two controversial political
>>>> sociologists from Italy, Mosca and Pareto, attempted to update an
>>>> undertaking of Aristotle and chronicle the types of governments  
>>>> then
>>>> in existence. One of their observations that seems trite but  
>>>> carries
>>>> profound implications is that whatever kind of government is in
>>>> place, it is impressive how at key moments powerful elites are
>>>> empowered to make decisions of a kind that impact multitudes. Our
>>>> founders thought a lot about this democratic dilemma. In these  
>>>> trying
>>>> times, we are obligated to reflect anew on this problem.
>>>>
>>>> At the time of our founding, one of the principal concerns of our
>>>> first citizens was to limit the capacity of a single person?in 
>>>>  this
>>>> case a presidency shorn of kingly authority?to initiate war.  
>>>> Today
>>>> the challenge for citizens is to help make the need for government
>>>> officials to instigate war less likely.
>>>>
>>>> Democracy is no guarantee of good judgment of public officials, but
>>>> it is the best system to allow publics to insist on course
>>>> corrections. We all recognize that the last election produced a
>>>> candidate who prevailed in no small measure because he suggested  
>>>> that
>>>> new approaches were called for in international relations. That
>>>> doesn?t mean that if implemented these new approaches will prove
>>>> popular or effective. No-win situations abound. The bad news is  
>>>> that
>>>> some events may simply be beyond management and the actions of  
>>>> others
>>>> may be impervious to civil logic. The good news is that the  
>>>> President
>>>> has a mandate to rethink policies in place and appears to have  
>>>> chosen
>>>> first class professionals with open minds to advise him.
>>>>
>>>> In this circumstance there is an indispensible role for cultural
>>>> diplomacy to help create a social environment where disagreements
>>>> between peoples are more likely to be resolved in a civil way. As  
>>>> the
>>>> President suggested in one of the great humanist speeches of our
>>>> time, the development of cultural understanding requires that a  
>>>> young
>>>> person in Kansas be able to communicate with a young person in  
>>>> Cairo.
>>>>
>>>> Government-to-government relations implicitly reflect national  
>>>> power
>>>> contrasts whether or not military power is being asserted. But any
>>>> study of the human condition?the humanities?in any century, in 
>>>> cluding
>>>> the last one in which man experimented with the most coercive  
>>>> dogmas
>>>> of hate, finds that military power alone can not for long hold
>>>> populations in check or control the mind and soul of a people.
>>>>
>>>> People want to have a say in their own destinies. There is  
>>>> something
>>>> about the human condition that prefers governing decisions, even
>>>> seemingly irrational ones, to be made at socially cohesive  
>>>> levels. A
>>>> lot is written today about globalism, but this century is also  
>>>> about
>>>> localism. To adapt to a fast changing world, one must understand  
>>>> both
>>>> of these phenomena: the fact, as Tip O?Neill repeatedly noted, 
>>>>  that
>>>> all politics are local and the corollary, as we have learned again
>>>> with the financial crisis, that all local decisions are affected by
>>>> international events.
>>>>
>>>> Whether violence is an integral element of the human condition or a
>>>> learned response is a matter of conjecture. But non-violence is
>>>> almost certainly a practice that must be learned. And the most
>>>> effective form of social education is human contact. It is the
>>>> humanization rather than the demonization of individuals from
>>>> different cultures that is so critical if non-violent approaches to
>>>> problem solving are to be institutionalized. Without
>>>> humanization?hand shakes of understanding?there can be no trus 
>>>> t and
>>>> hence no family or national security.
>>>>
>>>> In a fundamental sense, the issue of the times is not simply
>>>> Muslim-Western discord; it is also the philosophical paradigm with
>>>> which our founders grappled. At issue was and somewhat surprisingly
>>>> remains the contrast with a state of nature, which Hobbes defined  
>>>> as
>>>> a jungle where life was ?nasty, brutish and short,? and civil
>>>> society, which Locke described as a circumstance where rules  
>>>> governed
>>>> disputes and third party arbitration could be called upon. For
>>>> Hobbes, self-centered man could never escape the jungle because he
>>>> lacked the capacity to put himself in the shoes of others. For
>>>> Jefferson and his Lockean cohorts in Philadelphia, individuals were
>>>> not only born with rights no legitimate state could take away, but
>>>> with a rational nature capable of developing institutional
>>>> arrangements to advance common interests.
>>>>
>>>> For students of Western political theory, Hobbesian thought has for
>>>> long been considered to involve an interesting but abstract set of
>>>> propositions. But with the globalization for the first time in
>>>> history of anarchistic strategies, it is suddenly becoming clear  
>>>> that
>>>> not only have we not entirely escaped the jungle, but that the more
>>>> modern and centralized a society, the greater its vulnerability to
>>>> terrorist acts. In this circumstance, the case for a strong  
>>>> military
>>>> and expanded intelligence capacity is self-evident. But the only
>>>> long-term answer would appear also to require: a) a commitment to
>>>> advancing mutual understanding and the framework of law; and b) an
>>>> understanding that military intervention, even if employed by a
>>>> democratic power without a goal of Empire, can have unforeseen,
>>>> counter-productive consequences.
>>>>
>>>> In this setting I have suggested to the students I used to teach at
>>>> Princeton and Harvard that the most important geo-political tract  
>>>> of
>>>> the last century was that of a family of novels?the Alexandria
>>>> Quartet by the British author, Lawrence Durrell. Set between the
>>>> first and second world wars in the ancient library center,
>>>> Alexandria, Durrell wrote four books about the same set of events,
>>>> each a first-person perspective from the eyes of a different
>>>> participant. One wonders why read about the same events more than
>>>> once. It ends up that each story is profoundly different. The moral
>>>> is that to get a sense of reality, it is necessary to see things  
>>>> from
>>>> more than one pair of eyes. This may apply to interactions in a
>>>> community, a court room, or in international relations where what
>>>> America does may seem reasonable from our perspective but look very
>>>> different from the eyes of a European or African, a Middle  
>>>> Easterner
>>>> or an Asian.
>>>>
>>>> As everyone in this room knows, over the past several decades two
>>>> Harvard political theorists, Samuel Huntington and Joseph Nye, have
>>>> written about the dangers of a clash of civilizations and of the  
>>>> role
>>>> of ?soft? (recently relabeled ?smart?) power as contrasted 
>>>>  with
>>>> ?hard? power in international relations. These are important
>>>> frameworks of thought, but I would add to such considerations the
>>>> contrasting model of realism vs. pseudo-realism in policy
>>>> development. Realists look to effect, not to bluster. But what  
>>>> should
>>>> a citizen think of ideological arguments advanced in recent years  
>>>> by
>>>> a small cohort of ideological insiders that arms control agreements
>>>> are to be avoided and diplomacy, particularly multi-lateral
>>>> diplomacy, is soft-headed? Should we not ask whether this is
>>>> pseudo-realism? What is more realistic and more consistent with the
>>>> American heritage than attempting to advance the rule of law?
>>>> Americans prefer to work in alliances. It is nonsense, realism
>>>> inverted, to press a foreign policy rooted in snubbing the concerns
>>>> of others.
>>>>
>>>> One of the myths of our time is that realism is principally about
>>>> might. Actually realism is about the human condition. Nations that
>>>> are ill-led, ill-fed, and ill-respected are breeding grounds for
>>>> radicalism.
>>>>
>>>> America at its best combines principle and idealism with Yankee
>>>> pragmatism. One without the other is a prescription for disaster.
>>>>
>>>> In this context, NEH is launching a ?Bridging Cultures? initia 
>>>> tive.
>>>> The analogy to a ?bridge? and use of the word as a verb is h 
>>>> ardly
>>>> novel. Nor is what we have in mind a radical departure from prior  
>>>> NEH
>>>> initiatives or the long-term efforts of many individuals and NGOs
>>>> represented in this room. Our effort is simply to burrow ?in? 
>>>>  more
>>>> deeply at the domestic level and press ?out? more broadly
>>>> internationally.
>>>>
>>>> Hence we plan, in partnership with our state humanities councils,  
>>>> to
>>>> hold colloquiums, large and small, throughout the country on the
>>>> issue of ?hate speech and civility?; to commence what we inte 
>>>> nd to
>>>> label ?academies? on American history and the Constitution; a 
>>>> nd to
>>>> hold conferences on the importance of Muslim contributions to
>>>> American society. We are also open to partnering with other
>>>> government departments and non-governmental organizations in any
>>>> number of ways.
>>>>
>>>> International violence, economic insecurity, and the chaotic nature
>>>> of accelerating change have produced a crisis of perspective as  
>>>> well
>>>> as values. Citizens of various philosophical persuasions are
>>>> reflecting increased disrespect for fellow citizens and thus for
>>>> modern day democratic governance.
>>>>
>>>> We have all followed the outburst of a congressman from South
>>>> Carolina during the President?s recent address to Congress. Less
>>>> noted, and vastly more significant, than the much publicized
>>>> congressional utterance is the fact that significant political
>>>> figures and many citizens have over the course of the last year
>>>> charged our current President with advancing policies that were
>>>> either ?communist,? or ?fascist? or both, and suggested  
>>>> that members
>>>> of his party in Congress should be investigated for ?un-Amer 
>>>> ican?
>>>> activities. Several in public life have even toyed with history- 
>>>> blind
>>>> radicalism?the notion of ?secession.?
>>>>
>>>> Words matter, for they reflect emotion as well as thought. The ones
>>>> cited above are politically and personally charged. In a legal  
>>>> sense
>>>> they are, of course, protected by free speech, but the question is
>>>> whether they nonetheless are part of a vocabulary of hate,
>>>> jeopardizing social cohesion and even public safety.
>>>>
>>>> In the public humanities we are fortunate to have a network of
>>>> humanities councils in every state and territorial jurisdiction.  
>>>> Each
>>>> is composed of independent humanities leaders with a sensitive  
>>>> sense
>>>> for what works in their areas. Most have already put outreach
>>>> programs in place that are truly impressive. Illinois, for  
>>>> instance,
>>>> has a strategy of reaching out to citizens in unexpected places  
>>>> in a
>>>> program they call ?Caf? Society.? Meetings are held in coffee  
>>>> houses,
>>>> even barber shops. Oregon has a comparable program called ?Thi 
>>>> nk and
>>>> Drink,? presumably involving places that don?t just serve co 
>>>> ffee.
>>>> Montana, for its part, is emphasizing what it calls ?gracious? 
>>>>  dialogue.
>>>>
>>>> NEH is a kind of domestic State Department with state-wide  
>>>> embassies
>>>> and consulates. We are proud of the professional staff and  
>>>> appointed
>>>> board members who have proven so innovative.
>>>>
>>>> We are also proud of the scholarship we have supported in the past.
>>>> In recent years, for instance, utilizing a rigorous peer review
>>>> process in a manner similar to decision-making at the National
>>>> Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, we have
>>>> funded nearly a hundred projects relating to the Islamic world.
>>>>
>>>> We have supported seminars for teachers on ?The Arabic Novel in
>>>> Translation,? in which the works of the Nobel laureate Naguib  
>>>> Mahfouz
>>>> and Ibraham al-Kuni and other modern writers are explored, and
>>>> provided research for books on topics that initially seemed
>>>> abstractly academic but later turned out to be essential reading
>>>> material for American policymakers. For example, we supported the
>>>> publication of Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad,  
>>>> which
>>>> was completed only weeks before 9/11. Its publication made  
>>>> Professor
>>>> David B. Edwards of Williams College a principal source of  
>>>> scholarly
>>>> knowledge when the United States went to war in 2001.
>>>>
>>>> To the degree all war has antecedents or analogies to prior
>>>> conflicts, the studies we have encouraged of the French colonial
>>>> experience in places as distant from each other as Algeria and
>>>> Indochina may also inform our decisions on war and its conduct in
>>>> Iraq and Afghanistan today.
>>>>
>>>> Of more cultural relevance, we have awarded research grants for the
>>>> study of the Maimonides Code in the medieval Islamic world; on the
>>>> history of cross-cultural trade under Islamic law; on the influence
>>>> of the story of Job on Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle
>>>> Ages; and, more contemporaneously, we have shared the science of
>>>> museum preservation with Afghan and Iraqi curators. In addition,  
>>>> our
>>>> staff recognized the importance of the ?Bactrian gold,? whic 
>>>> h was
>>>> hidden for twenty years in the basement of the presidential  
>>>> palace in
>>>> Kabul. We paid for the collection to be catalogued and helped it to
>>>> tour museums around the world to illuminate the national culture we
>>>> were attempting to protect on the battlefield.
>>>>
>>>> Because our support of these projects and many others like them is
>>>> based on peer reviewed scholarly criteria, they send an implicit
>>>> message to Muslims in our country and in other parts of the world
>>>> that we deeply value the contributions of their diverse and
>>>> fascinating cultures. Unfortunately our knowledge deficit is large.
>>>> The need to expand American understanding of Muslim history and
>>>> traditions has been extensively elucidated in the work of one of  
>>>> our
>>>> Carnegie hosts, Dr. Gregorian, who has been preaching for decades
>>>> about how woefully under-educated Americans are about the 1.2  
>>>> billion
>>>> Muslims with whom we share this globe.
>>>>
>>>> Much attention has properly been directed to the question of  
>>>> whether
>>>> we had valid information about alleged WMD development in Iraq. But
>>>> this kind of precise intelligence probing has allowed a glossing  
>>>> over
>>>> of how little policymakers knew about the culture of a country we  
>>>> had
>>>> been at war with a decade before and were giving serious
>>>> consideration to invading in the wake of 9/11; of how sparse our
>>>> knowledge was of the basic tenets of the Muslim faith; of how  
>>>> limited
>>>> our understanding of the differences between Sunnis and Shi?a  
>>>> and the
>>>> likely effects Western military intervention would have on the
>>>> historic tensions between and within various faith systems.
>>>>
>>>> At a cultural level it is also unfortunate how little respect we  
>>>> have
>>>> exhibited for Muslim history, particularly the Golden Age of Islam
>>>> which was coterminous with what are frequently referred to as the
>>>> Dark Ages in pre-Renaissance Europe. This was a time when Islamic
>>>> intellectual life was thriving in centers of learning like  
>>>> Cordoba in
>>>> Muslim-ruled Spain. Said to have had 70 libraries, with over  
>>>> 400,000
>>>> volumes, Cordoba was a center for scholars to translate the classic
>>>> world of antiquity into Arabic. Without Muslim intellectual
>>>> leadership, works of Aristotle and many others would likely have  
>>>> been
>>>> lost forever. Importantly, Muslim intellectuals worked in
>>>> collaboration with rather than isolation from Christian and Jewish
>>>> scholars.
>>>>
>>>> When Europe went Dark, Muslims led in ?bridging cultures.?
>>>>
>>>> Our founders proved more prescient and more impressed with Muslim
>>>> history and culture than citizens today. Jefferson, for instance,
>>>> read widely in the area of comparative religion and was convinced
>>>> that what mattered most was not where faith systems differed but
>>>> where they conjoined. A century and a half later, presumably on the
>>>> assumption that in the field of ideas and enlightened thought no
>>>> country had ever received more foreign aid than the United States,
>>>> Congress authorized a series of marble relief portraits of law  
>>>> makers
>>>> through history to be placed on the walls of the House of
>>>> Representatives. Thus, in the people?s House are inspirational 
>>>>  wall
>>>> sculptures of Moses, Hammurabi, Maimonides, and Suleiman the
>>>> Magnificent, as well as such figures as Solon, Justinian, and  
>>>> Jefferson.
>>>>
>>>> Yet, exacerbated by the acts of a score of Muslim terrorists on  
>>>> 9/11,
>>>> poll after poll indicates that American attitudes toward Muslims  
>>>> are
>>>> exceptionally disrespectful.
>>>>
>>>> As a former Member of Congress, I was fortunate to represent the
>>>> oldest mosque in America in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After 9/11 I often
>>>> met with the elders of the mosque and was impressed with how much
>>>> they understood about attitudes in every corner of the Muslim  
>>>> world.
>>>> Likewise, I am confident that Muslims outside the United States  
>>>> hear
>>>> regularly about social difficulties faced by Muslims in America. It
>>>> would therefore seem logical that a critical element in  
>>>> developing a
>>>> more sympathetic attitude toward America and our foreign policy
>>>> concerns in Muslim nations would be a neighborly commitment to see
>>>> that Muslim citizens are welcome in every American community.
>>>> Cultural diplomacy begins at home.
>>>>
>>>> Finally on a personal note, I chose as a Republican to endorse  
>>>> Barack
>>>> Obama for President because I was convinced that never in American
>>>> history was the case for a course change more compelling in
>>>> international relations and because I had become convinced that
>>>> seldom had a more natural humanist been chosen to represent his  
>>>> party
>>>> for national office. I had not intended to return to government  
>>>> and,
>>>> in fact, turned down several initial offers. But when I was called
>>>> about this job, I could not decline.
>>>>
>>>> No one should underestimate the importance of the public humanities
>>>> or the need to address the temper and the integrity of the  
>>>> political
>>>> dialogue. America cannot revive its infectious leadership until it
>>>> revives its sense of self and reaches out respectfully instead of
>>>> shunning, or, worse yet, name calling those with whom we differ.
>>>>
>>>> In the profoundest political observation of the last century,
>>>> Einstein noted that splitting the atom had changed everything  
>>>> except
>>>> our way of thinking. Now civilization is jeopardized both by  
>>>> weapons
>>>> of mass destruction and by the brutal acts of people armed with
>>>> machetes in deepest Africa and terrorists with suicide bombs in
>>>> Western societies. In this jungle of man-made weapons instead of
>>>> tigers, all the world?s peoples have no choice except to think
>>>> through the meaning of humanity itself.
>>>>
>>>> In this context, the President couldn?t have chosen wiser word 
>>>> s when
>>>> in Cairo he called for ?a new beginning between the U.S. and M 
>>>> uslims
>>>> around the world? based on ?mutual interest and mutual resp 
>>>> ect.?
>>>>
>>>> Governmental policy is shifting. We at NEH, like so many in the
>>>> non-profit community represented here, are prepared to re-center
>>>> attention and underpin a new Muslim-American relationship. This
>>>> President has articulated a call to action that none of us can  
>>>> ignore.
>>>> Thank you.
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> ********************************************
>> 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
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds


From clawson at gmail.com  Wed Feb 24 12:40:00 2010
From: clawson at gmail.com (James Clawson)
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:40:00 -0600
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
Message-ID: <93d48d041002241240t674042a7ra4b09a500b157168@mail.gmail.com>

I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
(in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
of his remarks).

I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.

As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.

The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
*thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
limitations only made more pronounced?)

Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
-James (the nominally non-pneumonial)

From ilyas.khan at crosby.com  Thu Feb 25 00:29:05 2010
From: ilyas.khan at crosby.com (Ilyas)
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:29:05 +0000
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <93d48d041002241240t674042a7ra4b09a500b157168@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan@crosby.com>

James

One small point - you mention Avignon Q being "bleaker". Like many people on
this thread I have read and re-read both AQ's a few times (I betray my age
here), and I have tended to find myself less negatively affected through
Avignon than you suggest. Its certainly a harder read, and the narrative
creates more work on the part of the reader, but I don't think its "bleak".

Someone once described the end of the Alex Q as being written for a movie,
and perhaps that remains longer in reader's minds eye long after the book
itself has gone back to its place on a dusty shelf.

Take care grading papers,
Ilyas


On 24/02/2010 20:40, "James Clawson" <clawson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
> that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
> (in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
> of his remarks).
> 
> I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
> optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
> like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
> tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
> near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
> characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
> or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
> future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.
> 
> As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
> reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
> the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
> understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
> from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
> artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
> It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
> to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
> artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.
> 
> The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
> its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
> literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
> imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
> again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
> *thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
> and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
> in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
> things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
> maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
> limitations only made more pronounced?)
> 
> Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
> thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
> essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
> -James (the nominally non-pneumonial)
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds



From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Thu Feb 25 06:31:18 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:31:18 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan@crosby.com>
References: <C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan@crosby.com>
Message-ID: <4B8689B6.1090903@utc.edu>

Grove, Ilyas, James, & co.:

I agree.  The appearance of the /Quartet/ in discussions and debates 
about US foreign policy is most interesting--and unexpected.

If anyone spots additional responses to NEH Chairman Jim Leach's 
invocation of the /Quartet/, please do forward those mentions to the 
listserv.

I'll go back to Grove's little anthology of Durrellian endings:

>         Maybe I'm cheating to go to the various series' final passages, and yet they buoy me up. At the end of the /Quartet/, Darley writes: "And I felt as if the whole universe had given me a nudge!" 
>
>         At the end of the /Revolt/ Felix writes (says?): "There is some fine black jazz playing and we have been dancing, dancing in complete happiness and accord. And we will keep on this way, dancing and dancing, even though Rome burn."
>
>         At the end of the /Quintet/ Blanford thinks of describing the scene in these terms: "'It was at this precise moment that reality prime rushed to the aid of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to take place!'" 
>
>         Yes, in each case I sense Doubt and Irony waiting in the wings, but for me their presence doesn't dampen the spirit of the words. 

Yes, as I wrote before, I agree.  We must attend these endings and what 
they forecast about the "future" for characters living within the 
story-time world of the novels. 

I will note that "optimistic" readings of the /Quartet/'s ending must be 
projected by the reader.  The happy turn of events does not occur on the 
page, but rather in potentiality--after the book has ended.  Something 
seems to be about to happen.  But we do not see it transpire.

And that might be the rub for me.  If peace, happiness, and 
enlightenment have been shown to be illusory in every previous epoch or 
incident within the /Quartet/, am I doing the book justice--am I playing 
by the inner logic and rules that the book presents--if I imagine Darley 
finally "getting it" in some moment immediately after the book ends? 

There is no reason outside of the book why a reader cannot imagine 
Darley entering into wisdom or a "sense of reality" (?), but by the 
story-time logic rehearsed inside the book, the /Quartet/ seems to me to 
be front-loaded with questions about that ever being possible.

Mind you, if we recast this "doubt" as "acceptance of our limits and 
unknowing," then I do not find the close of the /Quartet/ to be at all 
pessimistic.  By contrast, the ending might be seen as moving toward 
something that Durrell would cast as "Eastern."  

Charles

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


From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Thu Feb 25 13:30:07 2010
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:30:07 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan@crosby.com>
References: <93d48d041002241240t674042a7ra4b09a500b157168@mail.gmail.com>,
	<C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan@crosby.com>
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201BBB6C6385A@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>


W. L. Godshalk *
Department of English    *           *
University of Cincinnati*   * Stellar Disorder  *
OH 45221-0069 *  *
________________________________________
I have been puzzling over Ilyas' comments. The image of the book being placed  on the dusty shelf seems conclusive. The reader would do better to think of the AQ as a movie script. That image perhaps will remain in the reader's mind long after the book has been placed in the bookcase to gather dust.

Ilyas, am I wrong in paraphrasing your words thus?

Bill



Someone once described the end of the Alex Q as being written for a movie,
and perhaps that remains longer in reader's minds eye long after the book
itself has gone back to its place on a dusty shelf.

Take care grading papers,
Ilyas


On 24/02/2010 20:40, "James Clawson" <clawson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
> that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
> (in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
> of his remarks).
>
> I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
> optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
> like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
> tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
> near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
> characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
> or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
> future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.
>
> As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
> reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
> the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
> understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
> from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
> artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
> It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
> to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
> artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.
>
> The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
> its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
> literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
> imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
> again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
> *thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
> and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
> in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
> things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
> maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
> limitations only made more pronounced?)
>
> Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
> thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
> essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
> -James (the nominally non-pneumonial)
> _______________________________________________
> 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


From clawson at gmail.com  Thu Feb 25 13:45:13 2010
From: clawson at gmail.com (clawson at gmail.com)
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:45:13 +0000
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <mailman.47.1267128033.3833984.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
References: <mailman.47.1267128033.3833984.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
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Ilyas, et al.-
Thanks for the comments in reply! You're right, of course: the Quintet offers a picture of vitality, especially at the end, with the opening of the caves. Still, though, I've actually read the Quintet (and, especially the Quartet) more times than my age might lead one to believe -- and I really like it, actually! When I speak of bleakness, it's not for Blanford, for whom I see the moment as an instance of joy. Rather I see that intrusion of Reality Prime as (Durrell's) indictment of any political enterprise for art. Partly my reading depends on a stubborn insistence to read; partly, it's a product of my desire to contextualize. 

I'm away from my books and papers at the moment, so things'll be citation free for now, though I can follow up later if needed. (I'm actually writing this long reply on my phone... Shudder.) The Quintet has been called (perhaps cheekily) "unreadable," and people have pointed out inconsistencies of chronology from one book to another. (Obviously an expectation for intertextual consistency says more about the reader, but we'll leave that for now.) Among these include Constance's healing of Blanford's injuries in later books, despite the fact she isn't alive in Monsieur and Blanford's wounds are yet unhealed.

We can choose to overlook the inconsistency, calling it an "oversight," or we can read the Quintet we have, inconsistencies intact. If the latter, two (maybe three) solutions to the Quintet's readability come to mind.

(THREE... Both versions, which contrast with each other, are wrong anyway, as they're just limited understandings, a la the Quartet.)

TWO... Both are right. This mutual acceptance of contradicting conditions fashions the Quintet as a (not un-Durrellian) novelistic consideration of the principle of explosion.  This reading is actually fantastically optimistic, as it suggests the logical possibility of, literally, anything.

ONE... Only one is "right" (Blanford "is," ultimately, at the stage of First Narration, a cripple who imagines the rest of the happenings of the Quintet) and the other is "wrong" (Blanford only fantasizes about having been healed, just as he's only fantasized about his dinner with Tu Duc). If this is the case, then the Quintet is the ultimate example of speculative fiction; even so, the limitations to art's political efficacy are spelled out clearly. At the moment of great change, in light of horrors as large (and symbolic) as WWII, fiction must still face and give way to the demands of Reality Prime. 

At times I lead toward this latter reading, though mostly because of my urge to contextualize. More often I delight in the ambiguity, and I Schrodinger-esque-ly imagine both ONE and TWO are true at once:

Great treasures may be in store! Or it might be a trap! Or it might be even better than treasure! Or it might have all been a dream! If only we don't lose ourselves in the darkness on the way...
Best, 
James

-----Original Message-----
From: ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:00:33 
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 35, Issue 12

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: the quartet & US politics (James Clawson)
   2. Re: the quartet & US politics (Ilyas)
   3. Re: the quartet & US politics (Charles Sligh)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:40:00 -0600
From: James Clawson <clawson at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
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I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
(in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
of his remarks).

I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.

As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.

The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
*thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
limitations only made more pronounced?)

Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
-James (the nominally non-pneumonial)


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:29:05 +0000
From: Ilyas <ilyas.khan at crosby.com>
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Message-ID: <C7ABE551.21EEA%ilyas.khan at crosby.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="US-ASCII"

James

One small point - you mention Avignon Q being "bleaker". Like many people on
this thread I have read and re-read both AQ's a few times (I betray my age
here), and I have tended to find myself less negatively affected through
Avignon than you suggest. Its certainly a harder read, and the narrative
creates more work on the part of the reader, but I don't think its "bleak".

Someone once described the end of the Alex Q as being written for a movie,
and perhaps that remains longer in reader's minds eye long after the book
itself has gone back to its place on a dusty shelf.

Take care grading papers,
Ilyas


On 24/02/2010 20:40, "James Clawson" <clawson at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm loving this discussion about politics and the Quartet! And I love
> that a politician would use the Quartet in attempt to sound well read
> (in the face of legions of Durrellists wondering at the finer points
> of his remarks).
> 
> I think I'm with Grove: I've always read the endings as, in the end,
> optimistic. Especially seeing them all together like this.  But I'd
> like also to add The Black Book, which (unlike the others) isn't past
> tense, and speaks of The Now.  Nunquam, too, uses the future tense
> near the end (though obviously not right at the end) when one of the
> characters speculates to Charlock that either everything will change
> or nothing will.  Though it ends in past tense, it's that speculative
> future into which Charlock and Benedicta dance.
> 
> As for optimism, I see even the Quartet as optimistic, though for
> reasons counter to the way Leach uses it.  Darley searches throughout
> the Quartet to find the batter vantage point, the better way to
> understand everything, and it's this struggle which converts him --
> from Justine, through Balthazar, and past Mountolive -- into the
> artist we see in Clea: taller-standing and not needing eye glasses.
> It's the struggle of looking for The Right Perspective that leads him
> to realize there is none... which in turn helps him to become an
> artist and finally to move beyond Alexandria.
> 
> The Avignon Quintet is bleaker, though it doesn't seem to recognize
> its own bleakness in the ending.  If (in one way) reading the books
> literally, Blanford is at the catacombs only through an act of
> imagination, then that last gambit of Reality Prime (recognized,
> again, in the conditional and speculative voice of someone who
> *thinks* about how he would write it all down in a novel) is a final
> and unproductive caveat to the imaginative realm.  (Our imaginations,
> in which we are corporeally whole individuals, and in which fantastic
> things happen, can be interrupted by Reality Prime when we don't
> maintain control; then what good is imagination? Aren't its
> limitations only made more pronounced?)
> 
> Hmm, I think I've lost my train.  Something about writing about
> thinking about thinking about writing will do that to you.  And I have
> essays to grade anyway, so I'll leave it for now.  Let's keep this up!
> -James (the nominally non-pneumonial)
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds




------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:31:18 -0500
From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Message-ID: <4B8689B6.1090903 at utc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Grove, Ilyas, James, & co.:

I agree.  The appearance of the /Quartet/ in discussions and debates 
about US foreign policy is most interesting--and unexpected.

If anyone spots additional responses to NEH Chairman Jim Leach's 
invocation of the /Quartet/, please do forward those mentions to the 
listserv.

I'll go back to Grove's little anthology of Durrellian endings:

>         Maybe I'm cheating to go to the various series' final passages, and yet they buoy me up. At the end of the /Quartet/, Darley writes: "And I felt as if the whole universe had given me a nudge!" 
>
>         At the end of the /Revolt/ Felix writes (says?): "There is some fine black jazz playing and we have been dancing, dancing in complete happiness and accord. And we will keep on this way, dancing and dancing, even though Rome burn."
>
>         At the end of the /Quintet/ Blanford thinks of describing the scene in these terms: "'It was at this precise moment that reality prime rushed to the aid of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to take place!'" 
>
>         Yes, in each case I sense Doubt and Irony waiting in the wings, but for me their presence doesn't dampen the spirit of the words. 

Yes, as I wrote before, I agree.  We must attend these endings and what 
they forecast about the "future" for characters living within the 
story-time world of the novels. 

I will note that "optimistic" readings of the /Quartet/'s ending must be 
projected by the reader.  The happy turn of events does not occur on the 
page, but rather in potentiality--after the book has ended.  Something 
seems to be about to happen.  But we do not see it transpire.

And that might be the rub for me.  If peace, happiness, and 
enlightenment have been shown to be illusory in every previous epoch or 
incident within the /Quartet/, am I doing the book justice--am I playing 
by the inner logic and rules that the book presents--if I imagine Darley 
finally "getting it" in some moment immediately after the book ends? 

There is no reason outside of the book why a reader cannot imagine 
Darley entering into wisdom or a "sense of reality" (?), but by the 
story-time logic rehearsed inside the book, the /Quartet/ seems to me to 
be front-loaded with questions about that ever being possible.

Mind you, if we recast this "doubt" as "acceptance of our limits and 
unknowing," then I do not find the close of the /Quartet/ to be at all 
pessimistic.  By contrast, the ending might be seen as moving toward 
something that Durrell would cast as "Eastern."  

Charles

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



------------------------------

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End of ILDS Digest, Vol 35, Issue 12
************************************


From rpinecorfu at yahoo.com  Fri Feb 26 00:47:06 2010
From: rpinecorfu at yahoo.com (Richard Pine)
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:47:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <816846783-1267134226-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1504075114-@bda272.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>
References: <mailman.47.1267128033.3833984.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<816846783-1267134226-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1504075114-@bda272.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>
Message-ID: <143333.56143.qm@web43505.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

2 brief comments:
1) I entitled the section of my book on LD relating to the Quintet 'An Unreadable Book' - unwisely, as it turns out, for at least one critic, Stefan Herbrechter, took it to mean that I personally found the book unreadable, which, I trust is evident, is far from the case. But it was unwise because I failed, it seems, to explain adequately what I meant by that expression. It would take too long to go into it now...
2) It cannot have been other than obvious to LD that, at the end of the Quintet they all troupe into the mountain, while his first novel, 35 years previously, had been 'Pied Piper...' - le cercle referme!
RP


----- Original Message ----
From: "clawson at gmail.com" <clawson at gmail.com>
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Sent: Thu, February 25, 2010 11:45:13 PM
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics

Ilyas, et al.-
Thanks for the comments in reply! You're right, of course: the Quintet offers a picture of vitality, especially at the end, with the opening of the caves. Still, though, I've actually read the Quintet (and, especially the Quartet) more times than my age might lead one to believe -- and I really like it, actually! When I speak of bleakness, it's not for Blanford, for whom I see the moment as an instance of joy. Rather I see that intrusion of Reality Prime as (Durrell's) indictment of any political enterprise for art. Partly my reading depends on a stubborn insistence to read; partly, it's a product of my desire to contextualize. 

I'm away from my books and papers at the moment, so things'll be citation free for now, though I can follow up later if needed. (I'm actually writing this long reply on my phone... Shudder.) The Quintet has been called (perhaps cheekily) "unreadable," 


      


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Fri Feb 26 05:01:19 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:01:19 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <143333.56143.qm@web43505.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
References: <mailman.47.1267128033.3833984.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>	<816846783-1267134226-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1504075114-@bda272.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>
	<143333.56143.qm@web43505.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4B87C61F.10406@utc.edu>

Richard Pine wrote:
> 1) I entitled the section of my book on LD relating to the Quintet 'An Unreadable Book' - unwisely, as it turns out, for at least one critic, Stefan Herbrechter, took it to mean that I personally found the book unreadable, which, I trust is evident, is far from the case. But it was unwise because I failed, it seems, to explain adequately what I meant by that expression. It would take too long to go into it now...
>   
Could you share the briefest of hints about this "unreadable" point, 
Richard?   The change in your perspective over time seems in keeping 
with the larger point. 

Charles

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


From rpinecorfu at yahoo.com  Fri Feb 26 05:19:52 2010
From: rpinecorfu at yahoo.com (Richard Pine)
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:19:52 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <4B87C61F.10406@utc.edu>
References: <mailman.47.1267128033.3833984.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<816846783-1267134226-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1504075114-@bda272.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>
	<143333.56143.qm@web43505.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
	<4B87C61F.10406@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <12708.36394.qm@web43504.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

Am snowed under with work. All I can do is to reproduce the relevant short section from Lawrence Durrell: the Mindscape (2nd edn, pp. 373-4). Hope this helps.
"The train which, like the Ship of Fools, bears its passengers towards the labyrinth (DL 13), reiterates the quest: we are told at the opening of Monsieur that ?the southbound train from Paris was the one we had always taken from time immemorial? (Quintet 5); at the inconclusive conclusion to the fourth volume, Sebastian, nearly twelve hundred pages later ?the train flew on?, bearing them ?onwards and downwards? (Quintet 1177); the events of Quinx have yet to unfold. Therefore, to what end? 
It will have become clear to the reader that ?what happens? in the work of Lawrence Durrell is as much a matter for the reader as for the author. Approaching his novels chronologically, one will have noted the growing severity of Durrell?s struggle with faith ? faith in the artist?s powers of production, in the nature of society, and even in relation to the question of existence. It may not seem so strange, therefore, to suggest that, in a further five-volume excursion into the same mystical territory, there was little more for Durrell to tell us about human nature or its manifestations. He was nevertheless able to present a new and deeper understanding of the debate on modern aesthetics, on the role of both writer and reader. In The Avignon Quintet there is a return to the situation outlined in Part 2: as with The Black Book, storyline is surrendered to the exploration of a state of ideas; atmosphere predominates over occasion. If we consider,
 for example, the very small nucleus of archetypal symbols from which all our myths derive, and the power which they nevertheless continue to exercise on our behaviour, we can readily appreciate that Durrell?s work, with its strong affinities to the mystical and quest literature of both east and west, can be expressed in a few simple but fundamental phrases, just as the elements in the Grail legends lend themselves so much more extensively to analysis than to exegesis. 
In this chapter I shall suggest that in the ambition to achieve a ?vantage point? from which to realise the ?new Age?, Durrell ran the risk of making The Avignon Quintet an ?unreadable book?; it is not that the dream of a ?Tibetan novel? was inherently unappealing to a western audience, but that its stasis and circularity oblige the reader to concentrate not on any sequence or series of events but on the idea of thought itself. The Avignon Ouintet becomes unreadable in the sense that a symphony by Brahms becomes ?unbearable? or even ?unplayable?, because, by placing too great a burden on the nature of a language which we have been taught to take for granted, it abandons us without signposts while we are still expecting to be conducted from start to finish by sequential narrative. In the following chapter, I shall take this argument a further step by asking what so troubled Durrell in addressing the question ?Why??,
 particularly in relation to his by now highly developed views on otherness. 
Despite the many flamboyant and vivid scenes ? the deaths of Sam, Livia, Ludo and Nancy Quiminal, the blinding of General von Esslin, the epiphany of Hitler and his quest for the Holy Grail, the sexual frolics and Prince Hassad?s ?spree? at the Pont du Gard ? there is little impetus. ?Onwards and downwards?, but ?never landfall?. The book is cerebration, not celebration, a train of thought rather than of action. The Prince?s Petronian f?te at which ?no phantasy had been spared?, with ?elderly rats in strange paper hats, waving their cigars at the universe? (Quintet 556-7) ? as fitting a way as any of celebrating the apocalypse of culture ? cannot replicate the real banquet, the diner ? deux (ironically, its title borrowed from Petronius himself)[1]at which Blanford converses with the absent (because deceased) Constance. And the only ?real? train is the model railway which so excites Imhof and Lord Galen in the garden
 of the asylum at Montfavet: ?a couple of absorbed children, a perfectly mated couple? (Quintet 536). 
The train is not so much speeding to a destination ? towards the impr?visible ? as shunted onto a line where its passengers are set, as in the ?dark labyrinth?, to examine their preoccupations, ?the great empty gap?, by ?re-living and re-digesting experience? (DL 80-1) and awaiting this still undefined sense of the merveilleux: Constance and Sebastian by taking stock of the sexual and psychic perfection of their love-making; Drexel[2]reflecting on the nature of Livia/Sylvie?s madness; Blanford and Sutcliffe[3]on the inevitability of sexual deviance; Piers de Nogaret on the nature of betrayal; Quatrefages[4]on its place in history; Mnemidis on that of inherent evil; Sebastian on the faith that surpasses the love of woman (how ?to interrogate death itself? - Quintet 1051); and Sebastian?s autistic child - on what? - how to interrogate life, perhaps? Once more, the prevailing author (and we should no longer readily assume that
 Durrell is the author in the conventional sense) has thrown down a specific ?gravitational field? around us, and has returned us to the ?capital of memory?. 
There was in Durrell a child whose constant need for the wondrous, for the satisfaction of the bedtime story to set against the unknown qualities of the night, was never assuaged. Equally, Durrell knew that it could never be. The ?treasure?, for those who represent the forces of capitalism and world mastery (Lords Galen and Banquo, General von Esslin) is indeed a hidden store of riches: for them the search, or game, aided by charts and folklore, is a real and thrilling pleasure. For those who adhere with Durrell to the refusal of such a world, the treasure is merely a state of mind. Maps there may still be: the snake-shaped death-chart of Piers de Nogaret is an echo of previous attempts (in Durrell?s books and in his own life)[5]to obtain a fix on some elusive state, whether or not we regard it as ?reality? ? it is the child?s method of ?making sense?, of exploring the interior, even if the only clues are those of fear and warning.
 Durrell the poet naturally sought the still point at the centre of all the flux caused by warfare and greed (after all, usury is merely another form of warfare). In this poetic sense he did believe that the quincunx, the epicentre, was a quint-essential place where antinomies might be resolved: not, as he emphasised in describing the ?Heraldic Universe?, a state of mind, but none the less a place he would know when, like Eliot?s searcher, he arrived there ?for the first time?.[6]


________________________________

[1]?Quartile?, ?Priestess of Priapus?, is a character in Petronius? Satyricon; other points on which Durrell may have consciously or subconsciously echoed Petronius include the atmosphere of the banquet chez Trimalchio which emerges both in the decadence of the Regina Hotel in The Black Book and the brothel scenes in Tunc (?the ?Nube?) and the Quintet.
[2]?Drexel?, like ?Darley?, is suggestive of an anagrammatic or onomatopoeic corruption of ?Durrell/Dixie?.
[3]While Durrell intended a deliberate reference to a French ?Ripper? in the translation of Quinx as Quinte: ou version Lande it is merely serendipitous that the protagonist, Sutcliffe, carries the same surname as the ?Yorkshire Ripper?, a serial killer in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Durrell had also employed the surname in a film treatment of his story ?The Will-Power Man?.
[4]?Quatrefages? as a surname was, Durrell maintained, a commonplace: ?you find it almost everywhere ? a street name ? it?s like Jones really?, but also, and much more significantly, agreed that it means ?crossroads? (R. Green, ?Lawrence Durrell?, Aegean Review). The point should be made that Durrell seldom employed more than rudimentary originality when giving names to characters: ?Toby? might have been borrowed from either Tristram Shandy or Point Counter Point; ?Vasec? (in The Black Book) from Tarr, ?Cade? from Tristram Shandy, ?Nessim? from Gerard de Nerval; while his stock of classical and biblical names (Livia, Joshua, Sam) indicates his reluctance to go far afield for new names for old characters who in themselves would not necessarily add to the received characterisation of fact or fiction: ?I have never been interested in human beings as realities but as metaphors or ideograms ? their poetic quiddity so
 to speak. They are like the obscenely funny notions which might pass through the mind of an idle god lying sunbathing? (SIUC 42/19/8).?? 
[5]CERLD inv. 1349 (notebook) contains a list originally dated ?Feb 68? with later additions, headed: ?Dead/Within the space of a few years? which includes the names of many friends, among them ?Claude, Bernard Spencer, Roy Campbell? Richard Aldington? Henry Miller, Ana?s Nin [these were two of the later additions]? Seferis, Auden? My mother, John Gawsworth? and subscribed: ?for the Avignon book! Nogaret?s death map ? ?all this winter I have lived with suicide ? Terrified? (diary of Piers)?.
[6]Cf. Eliot, ?Little Gidding? V: ?The end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time?; Complete Poems and Plays p. 197.



----- Original Message ----
From: Charles Sligh <Charles-Sligh at utc.edu>
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Cc: clawson at gmail.com
Sent: Fri, February 26, 2010 3:01:19 PM
Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics

Richard Pine wrote:
> 1) I entitled the section of my book on LD relating to the Quintet 'An Unreadable Book' - unwisely, as it turns out, for at least one critic, Stefan Herbrechter, took it to mean that I personally found the book unreadable, which, I trust is evident, is far from the case. But it was unwise because I failed, it seems, to explain adequately what I meant by that expression. It would take too long to go into it now...
>? 
Could you share the briefest of hints about this "unreadable" point, 
Richard?? The change in your perspective over time seems in keeping 
with the larger point. 

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
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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Fri Feb 26 22:24:28 2010
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:24:28 +1100
Subject: [ilds] unreadbale novel
Message-ID: <D7C442FAD2F54362B8677B4ED44076A4@MumandDad>

Richard,

thanks for your recent post. You have reasurred me as to why I find the Quartet, but especially the quintet difficult. There are great moments - and a sense of transportation into another world and time - but they ask to much of me. Someone once said that Wordsworth had great lines but terrible poems. I feel that way about LD's big novel cycles. I love being transported - but to corfu, rhodes, cyprus rising from the med blue and sunwashing wine and fig scented writer in waiting but doing really good stuff.

pound for pound, measure for measure, glass for glass, Bitter Lemons is by far LD's best book; thematically, structurally, everything. I enjoy prosperos more but BL is a better book, the best.

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 gkoger at mindspring.com  Sat Feb 27 07:47:10 2010
From: gkoger at mindspring.com (gkoger at mindspring.com)
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:47:10 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
Message-ID: <19559726.1267285630619.JavaMail.root@elwamui-milano.atl.sa.earthlink.net>

Above all else this is a reminder of the great debt we owe Richard for his work on Durrell!  Grove


-----Original Message-----
>From: Richard Pine <rpinecorfu at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Feb 26, 2010 6:19 AM
>To: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
>
>Am snowed under with work. All I can do is to reproduce the relevant short section from Lawrence Durrell: the Mindscape (2nd edn, pp. 373-4). Hope this helps.
>"The train which, like the Ship of Fools, bears its passengers towards the labyrinth (DL 13), reiterates the quest: we are told at the opening of Monsieur that ?the southbound train from Paris was the one we had always taken from time immemorial? (Quintet 5); at the inconclusive conclusion to the fourth volume, Sebastian, nearly twelve hundred pages later ?the train flew on?, bearing them ?onwards and downwards? (Quintet 1177); the events of Quinx have yet to unfold. Therefore, to what end? 
>It will have become clear to the reader that ?what happens? in the work of Lawrence Durrell is as much a matter for the reader as for the author. Approaching his novels chronologically, one will have noted the growing severity of Durrell?s struggle with faith ? faith in the artist?s powers of production, in the nature of society, and even in relation to the question of existence. It may not seem so strange, therefore, to suggest that, in a further five-volume excursion into the same mystical territory, there was little more for Durrell to tell us about human nature or its manifestations. He was nevertheless able to present a new and deeper understanding of the debate on modern aesthetics, on the role of both writer and reader. In The Avignon Quintet there is a return to the situation outlined in Part 2: as with The Black Book, storyline is surrendered to the exploration of a state of ideas; atmosphere predominates over occasion. If we consider,
> for example, the very small nucleus of archetypal symbols from which all our myths derive, and the power which they nevertheless continue to exercise on our behaviour, we can readily appreciate that Durrell?s work, with its strong affinities to the mystical and quest literature of both east and west, can be expressed in a few simple but fundamental phrases, just as the elements in the Grail legends lend themselves so much more extensively to analysis than to exegesis. 
>In this chapter I shall suggest that in the ambition to achieve a ?vantage point? from which to realise the ?new Age?, Durrell ran the risk of making The Avignon Quintet an ?unreadable book?; it is not that the dream of a ?Tibetan novel? was inherently unappealing to a western audience, but that its stasis and circularity oblige the reader to concentrate not on any sequence or series of events but on the idea of thought itself. The Avignon Ouintet becomes unreadable in the sense that a symphony by Brahms becomes ?unbearable? or even ?unplayable?, because, by placing too great a burden on the nature of a language which we have been taught to take for granted, it abandons us without signposts while we are still expecting to be conducted from start to finish by sequential narrative. In the following chapter, I shall take this argument a further step by asking what so troubled Durrell in addressing the question ?Why??,
> particularly in relation to his by now highly developed views on otherness. 
>Despite the many flamboyant and vivid scenes ? the deaths of Sam, Livia, Ludo and Nancy Quiminal, the blinding of General von Esslin, the epiphany of Hitler and his quest for the Holy Grail, the sexual frolics and Prince Hassad?s ?spree? at the Pont du Gard ? there is little impetus. ?Onwards and downwards?, but ?never landfall?. The book is cerebration, not celebration, a train of thought rather than of action. The Prince?s Petronian f?te at which ?no phantasy had been spared?, with ?elderly rats in strange paper hats, waving their cigars at the universe? (Quintet 556-7) ? as fitting a way as any of celebrating the apocalypse of culture ? cannot replicate the real banquet, the diner ? deux (ironically, its title borrowed from Petronius himself)[1]at which Blanford converses with the absent (because deceased) Constance. And the only ?real? train is the model railway which so excites Imhof and Lord Galen in the garden
> of the asylum at Montfavet: ?a couple of absorbed children, a perfectly mated couple? (Quintet 536). 
>The train is not so much speeding to a destination ? towards the impr?visible ? as shunted onto a line where its passengers are set, as in the ?dark labyrinth?, to examine their preoccupations, ?the great empty gap?, by ?re-living and re-digesting experience? (DL 80-1) and awaiting this still undefined sense of the merveilleux: Constance and Sebastian by taking stock of the sexual and psychic perfection of their love-making; Drexel[2]reflecting on the nature of Livia/Sylvie?s madness; Blanford and Sutcliffe[3]on the inevitability of sexual deviance; Piers de Nogaret on the nature of betrayal; Quatrefages[4]on its place in history; Mnemidis on that of inherent evil; Sebastian on the faith that surpasses the love of woman (how ?to interrogate death itself? - Quintet 1051); and Sebastian?s autistic child - on what? - how to interrogate life, perhaps? Once more, the prevailing author (and we should no longer readily assume that
> Durrell is the author in the conventional sense) has thrown down a specific ?gravitational field? around us, and has returned us to the ?capital of memory?. 
>There was in Durrell a child whose constant need for the wondrous, for the satisfaction of the bedtime story to set against the unknown qualities of the night, was never assuaged. Equally, Durrell knew that it could never be. The ?treasure?, for those who represent the forces of capitalism and world mastery (Lords Galen and Banquo, General von Esslin) is indeed a hidden store of riches: for them the search, or game, aided by charts and folklore, is a real and thrilling pleasure. For those who adhere with Durrell to the refusal of such a world, the treasure is merely a state of mind. Maps there may still be: the snake-shaped death-chart of Piers de Nogaret is an echo of previous attempts (in Durrell?s books and in his own life)[5]to obtain a fix on some elusive state, whether or not we regard it as ?reality? ? it is the child?s method of ?making sense?, of exploring the interior, even if the only clues are those of fear and warning.
> Durrell the poet naturally sought the still point at the centre of all the flux caused by warfare and greed (after all, usury is merely another form of warfare). In this poetic sense he did believe that the quincunx, the epicentre, was a quint-essential place where antinomies might be resolved: not, as he emphasised in describing the ?Heraldic Universe?, a state of mind, but none the less a place he would know when, like Eliot?s searcher, he arrived there ?for the first time?.[6]
>
>
>________________________________
>
>[1]?Quartile?, ?Priestess of Priapus?, is a character in Petronius? Satyricon; other points on which Durrell may have consciously or subconsciously echoed Petronius include the atmosphere of the banquet chez Trimalchio which emerges both in the decadence of the Regina Hotel in The Black Book and the brothel scenes in Tunc (?the ?Nube?) and the Quintet.
>[2]?Drexel?, like ?Darley?, is suggestive of an anagrammatic or onomatopoeic corruption of ?Durrell/Dixie?.
>[3]While Durrell intended a deliberate reference to a French ?Ripper? in the translation of Quinx as Quinte: ou version Lande it is merely serendipitous that the protagonist, Sutcliffe, carries the same surname as the ?Yorkshire Ripper?, a serial killer in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. Durrell had also employed the surname in a film treatment of his story ?The Will-Power Man?.
>[4]?Quatrefages? as a surname was, Durrell maintained, a commonplace: ?you find it almost everywhere ? a street name ? it?s like Jones really?, but also, and much more significantly, agreed that it means ?crossroads? (R. Green, ?Lawrence Durrell?, Aegean Review). The point should be made that Durrell seldom employed more than rudimentary originality when giving names to characters: ?Toby? might have been borrowed from either Tristram Shandy or Point Counter Point; ?Vasec? (in The Black Book) from Tarr, ?Cade? from Tristram Shandy, ?Nessim? from Gerard de Nerval; while his stock of classical and biblical names (Livia, Joshua, Sam) indicates his reluctance to go far afield for new names for old characters who in themselves would not necessarily add to the received characterisation of fact or fiction: ?I have never been interested in human beings as realities but as metaphors or ideograms ? their poetic quiddity so
> to speak. They are like the obscenely funny notions which might pass through the mind of an idle god lying sunbathing? (SIUC 42/19/8).?? 
>[5]CERLD inv. 1349 (notebook) contains a list originally dated ?Feb 68? with later additions, headed: ?Dead/Within the space of a few years? which includes the names of many friends, among them ?Claude, Bernard Spencer, Roy Campbell? Richard Aldington? Henry Miller, Ana?s Nin [these were two of the later additions]? Seferis, Auden? My mother, John Gawsworth? and subscribed: ?for the Avignon book! Nogaret?s death map ? ?all this winter I have lived with suicide ? Terrified? (diary of Piers)?.
>[6]Cf. Eliot, ?Little Gidding? V: ?The end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time?; Complete Poems and Plays p. 197.




From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Sat Feb 27 11:55:34 2010
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:55:34 -0500
Subject: [ilds] the quartet & US politics
In-Reply-To: <4B87C61F.10406@utc.edu>
References: <mailman.47.1267128033.3833984.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<816846783-1267134226-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1504075114-@bda272.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>
	<143333.56143.qm@web43505.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>, <4B87C61F.10406@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201BBB6C63882@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>

"The change in your perspective over time seems in keeping
with the larger point."

I thought that Charlie wrote "larger print." That would account for Richard's seeing better.

Charles

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********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
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Department of English
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charles-sligh at utc.edu
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From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Sat Feb 27 12:36:31 2010
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:36:31 -0500
Subject: [ilds] unreadbale novel and the black book
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201BBB6C63887@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>

The Black Book is also a tough book to read. Miller proposed that readers would be "lost amidst the verbal jungles" Durrell has here created. 

I've have recently been thinking that it reminds me of Joyce, esp. the Finnegans Wake Joyce. As I recall the two novels were bublished within a year of each other. If the reader decides to read on, he/she/it may well be annoyed by the obscure references that not even the Web can find and define. Images merge into images, and the dear reader may get lost among the cattle and the snow. 

This black book is not for the faint of heart. You must read with pen in hand. 

Bill

W. L. Godshalk *
Department of English    *           *
University of Cincinnati*   * Stellar Disorder  *
OH 45221-0069 *  *
________________________________________
From: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] On Behalf Of Denise Tart & David Green [dtart at bigpond.net.au]
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 1:24 AM
To: Durrel
Subject: [ilds] unreadbale novel

Richard,

thanks for your recent post. You have reasurred me as to why I find the Quartet, but especially the quintet difficult. There are great moments - and a sense of transportation into another world and time - but they ask to much of me. Someone once said that Wordsworth had great lines but terrible poems. I feel that way about LD's big novel cycles. I love being transported - but to corfu, rhodes, cyprus rising from the med blue and sunwashing wine and fig scented writer in waiting but doing really good stuff.

pound for pound, measure for measure, glass for glass, Bitter Lemons is by far LD's best book; thematically, structurally, everything. I enjoy prosperos more but BL is a better book, the best.

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>


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sat Feb 27 13:37:52 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:37:52 -0500
Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: FW: The Writer's Almanac for February 27,
 2010 ---- Today is Lawrence Durrell's Birthday]
Message-ID: <4B8990B0.8000507@utc.edu>

Thank you, Ken.

Happy birthday to Lawrence Durrell.

CLS

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	FW: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is 
Lawrence Durrell's Birthday
Date: 	Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:02:50 -0800
From: 	Ken Gammage <Ken.Gammage at directed.com>
To: 	charles-sligh at utc.edu <charles-sligh at utc.edu>
References: 
<20100227182038.CTEB16123.fed1rmmtao104.cox.net at fed1rmimpo01.cox.net>,<0BEF02A471383D429ADB5873552EF0957494D454D7 at mail2.directed.com> 




Professor Sligh, just FYI - I didn't see an e-mail about this today.
 
Cheers,
 
Ken
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Ken Gammage
*Sent:* Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:54 AM
*To:* Bill Johns
*Subject:* RE: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is 
Lawrence Durrell's Birthday

That is great to know! I am working on my paper - that's synchronicity 
in action. I made a Michaelada the same way I've been doing but with a 
Bohemia instead. It was OK - I still like the Cheladas.
 
Cheers,
 
- Ken
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Bill Johns [wjohns9 at cox.net]
*Sent:* Saturday, February 27, 2010 10:20 AM
*To:* Ken Gammage
*Subject:* The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is 
Lawrence Durrell's Birthday

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*From:* The Writer's Almanac [mailto:newsletter at americanpublicmedia.org]
*Sent:* Friday, February 26, 2010 10:49 PM
*To:* wjohns9 at cox.net
*Subject:* The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010

 

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to the beach where I sit as if the sky

were my room now. No one, not even you,
can hear me singing. Not even me.

As if the music rose from the mouth of the ocean.

No mouth. Like rain before it reaches us.
Like wind twirling dresses on the clothesline.

Who has no one has the history of the ocean.

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*It's the birthday* of the poet *Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
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poems that are still well known to this day, including "Evangeline" 
(1847) and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858). He also translated 
Dante's /Divine Comedy/.* Poem:* "Ground Waters" by Alison Apotheker, 
from /Slim Margin. /? Word Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission.

*It's the birthday* of *John Steinbeck 
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born in Salinas, California (1902). He is the author of the epic novel 
/The Grapes of Wrath/ (1939) and also /Of Mice and Men /(1937).

*It's the birthday* of the Kiowa novelist and poet *N. Scott Momaday 
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born in Lawton, Oklahoma (1934). He started writing, and he was working 
on a project about the sacred Sun Dance doll of the Kiowa tribe. He 
tried to write a book of poems based on the experience, but a teacher 
suggested he turn the poems into fiction, and that became his first 
novel, /House Made of Dawn/ (1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize.

*It's the birthday* of the writer who said, "Truth disappears with the 
telling of it": *Lawrence Durrell 
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born to a British father and Irish mother in Jullundur, India (1911). 
He's best known for his experimental tetralogy /The Alexandria Quartet./

When Durrell was 11, his parents sent him off to England to boarding 
school so he could get a proper British education. He hated living in 
England and said, "English life is really like an autopsy. It is so, so 
dreary." Cambridge rejected him, and he left the country and spent most 
of the rest of his life abroad.

Before he could make a living solely from his writing, he sold real 
estate, played jazz piano in nightclubs, raced fast cars, ran a 
photography studio, worked as a teacher, edited various publications, 
worked for the British Information Office, worked in public relations 
and as a press attach? for the British government. In the span of 15 
years, he lived Paris; Kalamata, Greece; Cairo; Alexandria; Cordoba, 
Argentina; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Cyprus. Briefly he was a special 
correspondent for /The Economist /magazine. He eventually returned to 
France and settled there.

It was in Paris in the late 1930s that Lawrence Durrell met Henry 
Miller. He'd read Henry Miller's Book /Tropic of Cancer/, been totally 
impressed, and written Miller a fan letter. The two men met up, became 
fast friends, and started editing a literary magazine together. They 
would exchange letters for the next five decades. Durrell's early books 
were very much imitations of Miller's writing.

/The Alexandria Quartet,/ Durrell's best-known work, is a set of four 
experimental books, each of which covers the same set of events but from 
a different narrative viewpoint. Durrell explained that he hoped to 
write a book about love and memory and space that would blend Einstein's 
theory of relativity with ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and 
Indian mysticism and Chinese philosophy. He said the story "is a 
four-dimensional dance, a relativity poem." Rather than being structured 
by chronology, the story is structured by memory and geography.

The four books are /Justine /(1957), /Balthazar/ (1958), /Mountolive/ 
(1958), /Clea /(1960). The first novel is narrated by a young 
Englishman, a struggling writer and schoolteacher who recounts his love 
affair with a rich and beautiful married Jewish woman in Alexandria whom 
everyone else also seemed to be in love with. In it, he narrates: "A 
city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants." And, "A 
woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying."

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charles-sligh at utc.edu
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From billyapt at hotmail.com  Sat Feb 27 12:31:31 2010
From: billyapt at hotmail.com (William Apt)
Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:31:31 -0600
Subject: [ilds] Difficult French Passage
Message-ID: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>


Dearest all:

 

I'm having difficulty translating the lines in French at the bottom of page 175 in the Penguin ed. of Montolive.  Assistance, anyone? Thanks!

 

Billy
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Sat Feb 27 16:20:52 2010
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:20:52 +1100
Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: FW: The Writer's Almanac for February 27,
	2010 ---- Today is Lawrence Durrell's Birthday]
References: <4B8990B0.8000507@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <A91C09A3DC354EC393ED198B99E3DF5E@MumandDad>

Good God, you are right! it is LD's birthday.

Lawrence George Durrell born at Jullundur, India at 1am Tuesday 27th February, 1912. 98 if he were still alive today.

I shall open a bottle of chardonnay in his honour and drink also to the Greek Islands



David
16 William Street
Marrickville NSW  2204
+61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
dtart at bigpond.net.au
www.denisetart.com.au

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Charles Sligh 
  To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
  Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2010 8:37 AM
  Subject: [ilds] [Fwd: FW: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is Lawrence Durrell's Birthday]


  Thank you, Ken.

  Happy birthday to Lawrence Durrell.

  CLS

  -------- Original Message -------- Subject:  FW: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is Lawrence Durrell's Birthday 
        Date:  Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:02:50 -0800 
        From:  Ken Gammage <Ken.Gammage at directed.com> 
        To:  charles-sligh at utc.edu <charles-sligh at utc.edu> 
        References:  <20100227182038.CTEB16123.fed1rmmtao104.cox.net at fed1rmimpo01.cox.net>,<0BEF02A471383D429ADB5873552EF0957494D454D7 at mail2.directed.com> 



  Professor Sligh, just FYI - I didn't see an e-mail about this today.

  Cheers,

  Ken

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: Ken Gammage
  Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 11:54 AM
  To: Bill Johns
  Subject: RE: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is Lawrence Durrell's Birthday


  That is great to know! I am working on my paper - that's synchronicity in action. I made a Michaelada the same way I've been doing but with a Bohemia instead. It was OK - I still like the Cheladas.

  Cheers,

  - Ken

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  From: Bill Johns [wjohns9 at cox.net]
  Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 10:20 AM
  To: Ken Gammage
  Subject: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010 ---- Today is Lawrence Durrell's Birthday







------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: The Writer's Almanac [mailto:newsletter at americanpublicmedia.org] 
  Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 10:49 PM
  To: wjohns9 at cox.net
  Subject: The Writer's Almanac for February 27, 2010



              View this message on the Web
             




                   

                   Saturday
                    Feb. 27, 2010  

             

                   

                   
                     LISTEN  

                   

                   Ocean
                    by Jason Shinder

                    Goodbye again. Say there is a little song in my head

                    and because of it I can't sleep or change my mind
                    about the future. Now the song runs all the way down

                    to the beach where I sit as if the sky

                    were my room now. No one, not even you,
                    can hear me singing. Not even me.

                    As if the music rose from the mouth of the ocean.

                    No mouth. Like rain before it reaches us.
                    Like wind twirling dresses on the clothesline.

                    Who has no one has the history of the ocean.

                    Lord, give me two more days. So that
                    the last moments may be with someone. 

                    "Ocean" by Jason Shinder, from Stupid Hope. ? Graywolf Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission (buy now) 

                    It's the birthday of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (books by this author) born in Portland, Maine (1807). Longfellow wrote many long, narrative poems that are still well known to this day, including "Evangeline" (1847) and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858). He also translated Dante's Divine Comedy. Poem: "Ground Waters" by Alison Apotheker, from Slim Margin. ? Word Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission.

                    It's the birthday of John Steinbeck, (books by this author) born in Salinas, California (1902). He is the author of the epic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and also Of Mice and Men (1937). 

                    It's the birthday of the Kiowa novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday, (books by this author) born in Lawton, Oklahoma (1934). He started writing, and he was working on a project about the sacred Sun Dance doll of the Kiowa tribe. He tried to write a book of poems based on the experience, but a teacher suggested he turn the poems into fiction, and that became his first novel, House Made of Dawn (1968), which won the Pulitzer Prize.

                    It's the birthday of the writer who said, "Truth disappears with the telling of it": Lawrence Durrell, (books by this author) born to a British father and Irish mother in Jullundur, India (1911). He's best known for his experimental tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet.

                    When Durrell was 11, his parents sent him off to England to boarding school so he could get a proper British education. He hated living in England and said, "English life is really like an autopsy. It is so, so dreary." Cambridge rejected him, and he left the country and spent most of the rest of his life abroad. 

                    Before he could make a living solely from his writing, he sold real estate, played jazz piano in nightclubs, raced fast cars, ran a photography studio, worked as a teacher, edited various publications, worked for the British Information Office, worked in public relations and as a press attach? for the British government. In the span of 15 years, he lived Paris; Kalamata, Greece; Cairo; Alexandria; Cordoba, Argentina; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Cyprus. Briefly he was a special correspondent for The Economist magazine. He eventually returned to France and settled there.

                    It was in Paris in the late 1930s that Lawrence Durrell met Henry Miller. He'd read Henry Miller's Book Tropic of Cancer, been totally impressed, and written Miller a fan letter. The two men met up, became fast friends, and started editing a literary magazine together. They would exchange letters for the next five decades. Durrell's early books were very much imitations of Miller's writing. 

                    The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell's best-known work, is a set of four experimental books, each of which covers the same set of events but from a different narrative viewpoint. Durrell explained that he hoped to write a book about love and memory and space that would blend Einstein's theory of relativity with ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and Indian mysticism and Chinese philosophy. He said the story "is a four-dimensional dance, a relativity poem." Rather than being structured by chronology, the story is structured by memory and geography. 

                    The four books are Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), Clea (1960). The first novel is narrated by a young Englishman, a struggling writer and schoolteacher who recounts his love affair with a rich and beautiful married Jewish woman in Alexandria whom everyone else also seemed to be in love with. In it, he narrates: "A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants." And, "A woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying."

                    Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.?

                    sponsor
                    The Poetry Foundation
                    National broadcasts of The Writer's Almanac are supported by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine for over 90 years.

                    The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media.
                   
                   

                   

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


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From marcpiel at interdesign.fr  Sun Feb 28 05:21:01 2010
From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:21:01 +0100
Subject: [ilds] Difficult French Passage
In-Reply-To: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>
References: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4B8A6DBD.80608@interdesign.fr>

Hello, will gladly try to help you but am not at 
home at the moment and don't have the same edition 
as you available. The one here is the four volume 
FF edition, so I can't locate the text that you 
want. Can someone give me the number of pages into 
the chapter to help me find it?
BR
Marc

William Apt a ?crit :
> Dearest all:
>  
> I'm having difficulty translating the lines in French at the bottom of 
> page 175 in the Penguin ed. of Montolive.  Assistance, anyone? Thanks!
>  
> Billy
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. Get it now. 
> <http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469230/direct/01/>
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sun Feb 28 08:04:36 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:04:36 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Difficult French Passage
In-Reply-To: <4B8A6DBD.80608@interdesign.fr>
References: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>
	<4B8A6DBD.80608@interdesign.fr>
Message-ID: <4B8A9414.20608@utc.edu>

William Apt a ?crit :
>> Dearest all:
>>  
>> I'm having difficulty translating the lines in French at the bottom of 
>> page 175 in the Penguin ed. of Montolive.  Assistance, anyone? Thanks!
>>  
>> Billy
>>     
Here below is Billy's passage from /Mountolive/ (chapter VIII), with the 
French set in context. 

> Between pity and admiration they kissed, but passionately now, united 
> by the ties of recorded human experience, by the sensation of having 
> shared something.  'I saw it in the hand,' she said, 'in your hand.'  
> She was somewhat frightened by the unwonted accuracy of her own 
> powers.  And he?  He had always wanted someone to whom he could speak 
> freely - /but it must be someone who could not fully understand/!  The 
> candle flickered.  On the mirror with shaving soap he had written the 
> mocking verses for Justine which began:
>
>  
>
>                                                     / Oh Dreadful is 
> the check!
>
>                                                      Intense the agony.
>
>                                                      When the ear 
> begins to hear
>
>                                                      And the eye 
> begins to see!/
>
>  
>
>       He repeated them softly to himself, in the privacy of his own 
> mind, as he thought of the dark composed features which he had seen 
> here, by candlelight - the dark body seated in precisely the pose 
> which Melissa now adopted, watching him with her chin on her knee, 
> holding his hand with sympathy.  And as he went on in his quiet voice 
> to speak of his sister, of his perpetual quest for satisfactions which 
> might be better than those he could remember, and which he had 
> deliberately abandoned, other verses floated through his mind; the 
> chaotic commentaries thrown up by his reading no less than by his 
> experiences.  Even as he saw once again the white marble face with its 
> curling black hair thrown back about the nape of a slender neck, the 
> ear-points, chin cleft by a dimple - a face which led him back always 
> to those huge empty eye-sockets - he heard his inner mind repeating:
>
>  
> /
>                                                      Amors par force 
> vos demeine!
>
>                                                      Combien durra 
> vostre folie?
>
>                                                      Trop avez mene 
> ceste vie./
>
>  
>
>       He heard himself saying things which belonged elsewhere.  With a 
> bitter laugh, for example: 'The Anglo-Saxons invented the word 
> "fornication" because they could not believe in the variety of love.'  
> And Melissa, nodding so gravely and sympathetically, began to look 
> more important - for here was a man at last confiding in her things 
> she could not understand, treasures of that mysterious male world 
> which oscillated always between sottish sentimentality and brutish 
> violence!  'In my country almost all the really delicious things you 
> can do to a woman are criminal offences, grounds for divorce.'  She 
> was frightened by his sharp, cracked laugh.  Of a sudden he looked so 
> ugly.  Then he dropped his voice again and continued pressing her hand 
> to his cheek softly, as one presses upon a bruise; and inside the 
> inaudible commentary continued:
>
>  
>
>                                                   '/What meaneth 
> Heaven by these diverse laws?
>
>                                                   Eros, Agape - 
> self-division's cause?/
>
>  
>
>       Locked up there in the enchanted castle, between the terrified 
> kisses and intimacies which would never now be recovered, they had 
> studied La Lioba!  What madness!  Would they ever dare to enter the 
> lists against other lovers?  /Jurata fornicatio/ - those verses 
> dribbling away in the mind; and her body, after Rudel, '/gras, delgat 
> et gen/'.  He sighed, brushing away the memories like a cobweb and 
> saying to himself: 'Later, in search of an askesis he followed the 
> desert fathers to Alexandria, to a place between two deserts, between 
> the two breasts of Melissa.  /O morosa delectatio/.  And he buried his 
> face there among the dunes, covered by her quick hair.'
>
>       Then he was silent, staring at her with his clear eyes, his 
> trembling lips closing for the first time about endearments which were 
> now alight, now truly passionate.  She shivered suddenly, aware that 
> she would not escape him now, that she would have to submit to him fully.
>
>       'Melissa,' he said triumphantly.
>
>       They enjoyed each other now, wisely and tenderly, like friends 
> long sought for and found among the commonplace crowds which thronged 
> the echoing city.  And here was a Melissa he had planned to find - 
> eyes closed, warm open breathing mouth, torn from sleep with a kiss by 
> the rosy candlelight.  'It is time to go.'  But she pressed nearer and 
> nearer to his body, whimpering with weariness.  He gazed down fondly 
> at her as she lay in the crook of his arm.  'And the rest of your 
> prophecy?' he said gaily.  'Rubbish, all rubbish,' she answered 
> sleepily.  'I can sometimes learn a character from a hand - but the 
> future!  I am not so clever.'
-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sun Feb 28 08:57:04 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:57:04 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Amors par force vos demeine!
In-Reply-To: <4B8A9414.20608@utc.edu>
References: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>	<4B8A6DBD.80608@interdesign.fr>
	<4B8A9414.20608@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4B8AA060.8050506@utc.edu>

Charles Sligh wrote:
> William Apt a ?crit :
>   
>>> Dearest all:
>>>  
>>> I'm having difficulty translating the lines in French at the bottom of 
>>> page 175 in the Penguin ed. of Montolive.  Assistance, anyone? Thanks!
>>>  
>>> Billy
>>>     
>>>       
>> /
>>     
>>
>>                     Amors par force vos demeine!
>>
>>                     Combien durra vostre folie?
>>
>>                     Trop avez mene ceste vie./
>>
>>  

I think that this verse comes from a known source for Durrell--/Love in 
the Western World/ (1956) by Denis de Rougemont--like Durrell, one of 
the great mythographers and mythologists of Love.

Denis de Rougement gives the verse special emphasis in his footnote, 
translating it as follows: "Love by force dominates you.  How long will 
your folly last?  Too long you have been leading this life" (40-41, n2 
in the Princeton UP edition).

Charles

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


From rpinecorfu at yahoo.com  Sun Feb 28 08:56:58 2010
From: rpinecorfu at yahoo.com (Richard Pine)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:56:58 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [ilds] Difficult French Passage
In-Reply-To: <4B8A9414.20608@utc.edu>
References: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>
	<4B8A6DBD.80608@interdesign.fr> <4B8A9414.20608@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <714817.85641.qm@web43513.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

It's mediaeval FRench, from the Tristan legend. It's quoted by LD's friend Denis de Rougemont in his Love in the Western World/Passion and Society so it's likely that LD saw it there, if he hadn't read the original.
RP


      


From Charles-Sligh at utc.edu  Sun Feb 28 08:59:52 2010
From: Charles-Sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:59:52 -0500
Subject: [ilds] Difficult French Passage
In-Reply-To: <714817.85641.qm@web43513.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
References: <SNT119-W85216A46920264F1D6996D83E0@phx.gbl>	<4B8A6DBD.80608@interdesign.fr>
	<4B8A9414.20608@utc.edu>
	<714817.85641.qm@web43513.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4B8AA108.8040105@utc.edu>

Richard Pine wrote:
> It's mediaeval FRench, from the Tristan legend. It's quoted by LD's friend Denis de Rougemont in his Love in the Western World/Passion and Society so it's likely that LD saw it there, if he hadn't read the original.
> RP
>
>
>       
>
> _
Good call, Richard.

C&c.

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


From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Sun Feb 28 17:36:30 2010
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:36:30 -0500
Subject: [ilds] direction
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201BBB6C6389F@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>

OK Charlie, have you been thinking about your question? Did Miller make the cuts himself, or did he copy the cuts from another source?

Did Durrell suggest the cuts, and Miller only copy  them into his book? Did he then send them on to Paris? 

Did the book itself travel to Paris, and then back to Miller?

Why did Durrell let Miller make selections that he himself could have made? 

And so on and on.

I guess the point is we do not know.

Lord Ardry