From zahlan at earthlink.net  Mon Jun 27 08:29:33 2011
From: zahlan at earthlink.net (Anne R Zahlan)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:29:33 -0400
Subject: [ilds] OMG XVII - London, 2012
References: <86229.79021.qm@web65808.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w332A59F1DDDFB6AE0EF3CA84620@phx.gbl>,
	<342903.27058.qm@web65815.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w644F32BAA01097612B88584650@phx.gbl>,
	<367503.59823.qm@web65813.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w2365010E909F19861B4C2B84650@phx.gbl>,
	<878391.39470.qm@web65811.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w2808EB6870B3458E2AA55384500@phx.gbl>	<213449.9838.qm@web65810.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<4E01EFAB.1010901@utc.edu>	<94117BDB-5525-450D-82FD-6A950D4778BF@earthlink.net>	<818587.8199.qm@web65805.mail.ac4.yahoo.com><8F7BCDC8-F2BE-4FBE-8605-5B66E4FBFF30@earthlink.net>
	<4E052CDA.7080709@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BF12992212534AD4B3206B252782F68F@annezahlan1>

Thanks James and Charles for all your planning and for making the Durrell 
Centenary information available on the www.lawrencedurrell.org site. The 
materials are impressive and the many opportunities for response and 
contributions should bring in Durrellians from around the world.

Anne

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Gifford" <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 8:33 PM
Subject: [ilds] OMG XVII - London, 2012


> Dear ILDS Members & List,
>
> I've just posted the Call for Papers for The Lawrence Durrell Centenary
> (On Miracle Ground XVII) to the ILDS listserv.  I hope that you'll all
> take the time to peruse it and think about the various ways we can make
> the centenary events successful.  I'm particularly hopeful that 2012
> will create opportunities for us to reconsider Durrell's reputation and
> importance to literary studies as well as our own reading experiences.
>
> Charles Sligh, the ILDS Vice-President, has worked very hard to put the
> conference together, and we're now finalizing our organizing committee
> to get into the hard work of programs, paper selection, and attracting
> wider interest.  As the current ILDS President, I want to extend the
> Society's thanks to everyone who has contributed ideas and work, as well
> as those whom we'll begin to call on shortly.  We're very lucky to have
> people from around the world working with the ILDS in this regard.
>
> I also want to invite everyone to attend and take part in the London
> events.  Working with Faber & Faber, Curtis Brown, the British Library,
> and in the beautiful facilities of Goodenough College affords us a
> breadth of opportunities we've not previously enjoyed at the On Miracle
> Ground conferences.  It would be grand to see everyone taking part in
> this very fine event.  Rooms are reserved at the Russell Hotel as well
> as the Goodenough Club, both of which are easily accessed on the Tube,
> are very close to Goodenough College, and are walking distance to the
> British Library.
>
> A number of smaller events will occur across the year, ranging from the
> ILDS's annual panels at the Louisville conference (only two days prior
> to Durrell's actual centenary date), a conference in Kerala late in
> 2011, and a seminar at the Durrell School of Corfu during the summer.
> Other events are sure to arise across the year as well.  I hope you will
> all give these enthusiastic support.
>
> I look forward to seeing everyone in London in 2012!
>
> My best,
> James
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------
> James Gifford, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of English and University Core Director
> School of English, Philosophy and Humanities
> University College: Arts, Sciences, Professional Studies
> Fairleigh Dickinson University, Vancouver Campus
> Voice: 604-648-4476
> Fax: 604-648-4489
> E-mail: gifford at fdu.edu
> http://alpha.fdu.edu/~jgifford
>
> 842 Cambie Street
> Vancouver, BC V6B 2P6
> Canada
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> 


From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Mon Jun 27 08:47:27 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:47:27 -0700
Subject: [ilds] OMG XVII - London, 2012
In-Reply-To: <BF12992212534AD4B3206B252782F68F@annezahlan1>
References: <86229.79021.qm@web65808.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w332A59F1DDDFB6AE0EF3CA84620@phx.gbl>,
	<342903.27058.qm@web65815.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w644F32BAA01097612B88584650@phx.gbl>,
	<367503.59823.qm@web65813.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w2365010E909F19861B4C2B84650@phx.gbl>,
	<878391.39470.qm@web65811.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<DUB103-w2808EB6870B3458E2AA55384500@phx.gbl>	<213449.9838.qm@web65810.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>	<4E01EFAB.1010901@utc.edu>	<94117BDB-5525-450D-82FD-6A950D4778BF@earthlink.net>	<818587.8199.qm@web65805.mail.ac4.yahoo.com><8F7BCDC8-F2BE-4FBE-8605-5B66E4FBFF30@earthlink.net>
	<4E052CDA.7080709@gmail.com>
	<BF12992212534AD4B3206B252782F68F@annezahlan1>
Message-ID: <4E08A60F.20502@gmail.com>

Thanks Anne!  Expect updates on the ILDS site today and across the week.

Best,
Jamie

On 27/06/11 8:29 AM, Anne R Zahlan wrote:
> Thanks James and Charles for all your planning and for making the
> Durrell Centenary information available on the www.lawrencedurrell.org
> site. The materials are impressive and the many opportunities for
> response and contributions should bring in Durrellians from around the
> world.
>
> Anne
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Gifford"
> <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 8:33 PM
> Subject: [ilds] OMG XVII - London, 2012
>
>
>> Dear ILDS Members & List,
>>
>> I've just posted the Call for Papers for The Lawrence Durrell Centenary
>> (On Miracle Ground XVII) to the ILDS listserv. I hope that you'll all
>> take the time to peruse it and think about the various ways we can make
>> the centenary events successful. I'm particularly hopeful that 2012
>> will create opportunities for us to reconsider Durrell's reputation and
>> importance to literary studies as well as our own reading experiences.
>>
>> Charles Sligh, the ILDS Vice-President, has worked very hard to put the
>> conference together, and we're now finalizing our organizing committee
>> to get into the hard work of programs, paper selection, and attracting
>> wider interest. As the current ILDS President, I want to extend the
>> Society's thanks to everyone who has contributed ideas and work, as well
>> as those whom we'll begin to call on shortly. We're very lucky to have
>> people from around the world working with the ILDS in this regard.
>>
>> I also want to invite everyone to attend and take part in the London
>> events. Working with Faber & Faber, Curtis Brown, the British Library,
>> and in the beautiful facilities of Goodenough College affords us a
>> breadth of opportunities we've not previously enjoyed at the On Miracle
>> Ground conferences. It would be grand to see everyone taking part in
>> this very fine event. Rooms are reserved at the Russell Hotel as well
>> as the Goodenough Club, both of which are easily accessed on the Tube,
>> are very close to Goodenough College, and are walking distance to the
>> British Library.
>>
>> A number of smaller events will occur across the year, ranging from the
>> ILDS's annual panels at the Louisville conference (only two days prior
>> to Durrell's actual centenary date), a conference in Kerala late in
>> 2011, and a seminar at the Durrell School of Corfu during the summer.
>> Other events are sure to arise across the year as well. I hope you will
>> all give these enthusiastic support.
>>
>> I look forward to seeing everyone in London in 2012!
>>
>> My best,
>> James
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------
>> James Gifford, Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor of English and University Core Director
>> School of English, Philosophy and Humanities
>> University College: Arts, Sciences, Professional Studies
>> Fairleigh Dickinson University, Vancouver Campus
>> Voice: 604-648-4476
>> Fax: 604-648-4489
>> E-mail: gifford at fdu.edu
>> http://alpha.fdu.edu/~jgifford
>>
>> 842 Cambie Street
>> Vancouver, BC V6B 2P6
>> Canada
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>
>

From charles-sligh at utc.edu  Mon Jun 27 09:43:13 2011
From: charles-sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:43:13 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Durrell 2012: The Lawrence Durrell Centenary
In-Reply-To: <4E08A92E.5000002@utc.edu>
References: <mailman.11519.1309189029.2281516.ilds@lists.uvic.ca>
	<4E08A92E.5000002@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <4E08B321.8030303@utc.edu>

On 6/27/11 12:00 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:

>         I hope that everyone here on the list will check Durrell 2012:
>         The Lawrence Durrell Centenary
>         <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/> frequently.  Once there,
>         you can subscribe to Durrell 2012 via email
>         <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/> for updates, and you can
>         also follow Durrell 2012 via Facebook
>         <http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=179878708736021> and
>         Twitter <http://twitter.com/Durrell2012>.
>
>         And please do share all of the above information and links
>         with your friends and colleagues.  The more, the merrier.

A follow-up on sharing:

Durrell 2012 <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/> features built-in 
publishing tools that will facilitate sharing posts, pages, and other 
Durrell Centenary resources with your friends and colleagues.

As the attached screen-shot shows, at the bottom of every Durrell 2012 
post and page, please find built-in "share" buttons for Facebook, 
Twitter, WordPress/Press This!, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

You can also email and print directly from Durrell 2012.

Thanks for reading.  And thanks for sharing!

Charles

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


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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Mon Jun 27 10:12:28 2011
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 03:12:28 +1000
Subject: [ilds] durrell2012
Message-ID: <99A0A5910B684570923DE1E24B6F560E@DenisePC>

Congrats to all who set up this site. it is fabulous, like a big newspaper; Lawrence Durrell turned into the London Times and why not. OMG London 2012 is very temping but I suspect beyond means and time constraints. we shall see. I vowed never to travel economy class again - not 20 odd hours to Britain - drive one to drink...mmmm

David

16 William Street
Marrickville NSW 2204
Australia
+ 61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
www.denisetart.com.au
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From charles-sligh at utc.edu  Mon Jun 27 10:28:47 2011
From: charles-sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:28:47 -0400
Subject: [ilds] durrell2012
In-Reply-To: <99A0A5910B684570923DE1E24B6F560E@DenisePC>
References: <99A0A5910B684570923DE1E24B6F560E@DenisePC>
Message-ID: <4E08BDCF.4080902@utc.edu>

On 6/27/11 1:12 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:

>     Congrats to all who set up this site. it is fabulous, like a big
>     newspaper; Lawrence Durrell turned into the London Times and why
>     not. OMG London 2012 is very temping but I suspect beyond means
>     and time constraints. we shall see.

Great to see your note, David.   Thanks for the kudos.

Please know that we've anticipated your needs.  At present we're 
refurbishing a decommissioned Cunard liner to float in Durrell 2012 
attendees from the Solomons, Oz, Rangoon, Chittagong, Calicut, and all 
points "somewheres" East of Suez.  All aboard.

Keep up the spirits -- good to have "a fellow of infinite jest."

C&c.

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


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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Mon Jun 27 10:55:40 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:55:40 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>

James, I'm in the dark, again.  Could you post your article appearing in jml?

By the way, perhaps I've missed something again.  On the topic of "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out material that Wickes includes?  E.g., in the letter of Fall or August 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of duration is false."  MacNiven does not include this important statement about "Heraldic."


Bruce



On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:

> I'm interested in where this leads!
> 
> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read 
> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the 
> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller.  The gist is that Miller was 
> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works 
> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and 
> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed 
> Communism.  Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read 
> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
> 
> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the 
> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point 
> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been 
> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read). 
> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely 
> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
> 
> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of 
> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the 
> epistolary discussion.  In that sense, the personal enacted in the 
> Heraldic carries a very particular politics.  "Personalism" seems to 
> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to 
> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the 
> Unpolitical."
> 
> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what 
> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see 
> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton 
> could be important...
> 
> Best,
> Jamie
> 
> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>> 1774    T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336   The pompous
>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>> 
>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>> 
>> I'm wondering if Durrell  might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>> narratives" in Warton
>> 
>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>> 
>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>> list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Mon Jun 27 12:39:57 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 12:39:57 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BA2FAF39-FEEC-4545-B613-C2D30E241F24@earthlink.net>

Sorry.  My mistake.  Wickes, not MacNiven, is the one who leaves out material in the D-M letters.


BR



On Jun 27, 2011, at 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

> James, I'm in the dark, again.  Could you post your article appearing in jml?
> 
> By the way, perhaps I've missed something again.  On the topic of "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out material that Wickes includes?  E.g., in the letter of Fall or August 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of duration is false."  MacNiven does not include this important statement about "Heraldic."
> 
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
> 
>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>> 
>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read 
>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the 
>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller.  The gist is that Miller was 
>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works 
>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and 
>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed 
>> Communism.  Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read 
>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>> 
>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the 
>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point 
>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been 
>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read). 
>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely 
>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>> 
>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of 
>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the 
>> epistolary discussion.  In that sense, the personal enacted in the 
>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics.  "Personalism" seems to 
>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to 
>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the 
>> Unpolitical."
>> 
>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what 
>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see 
>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton 
>> could be important...
>> 
>> Best,
>> Jamie
>> 
>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>> 1774    T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336   The pompous
>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>> 
>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>> 
>>> I'm wondering if Durrell  might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>> narratives" in Warton
>>> 
>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>> 
>>> Bill _______________________________________________ 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Mon Jun 27 13:32:10 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:32:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>

Hi Bruce,

I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing 
regarding private individuals...

As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in 
many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in 
different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between 
them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller 
in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences 
to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years 
in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO, 
have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are 
undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those 
here & there for many years as correlated materials   become available 
or are correlated.

I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It 
signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic 
concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.

For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly 
to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct 
from Miller):

"Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it 
leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
   --> [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
       wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
       men" (Durrell)

"the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims 
that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
   --> "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
       the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)

"we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those 
elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams, 
trances and hallucinations." (Read)
   --> "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
       with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
       stuff." (Durrell)

If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the 
origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.

Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to 
"Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation 
of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in 
a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...). 
Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his 
anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open 
Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made 
his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which 
is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of 
Breton's mode at the time.

My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see 
Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters, 
his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his 
ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living." 
After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of 
Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all 
contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and 
the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on 
"Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem 
"Freedom" near the end of the book too.

It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as 
well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in 
his first anarchist writings.

In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the 
print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred 
ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the 
American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...

Best,
James

(BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)

Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The 
Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.

There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber, 
which is easy to get.


On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
> /jml?/
>
> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
> about "Heraldic."
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>
>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>
>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>
>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>
>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>> Unpolitical."
>>
>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>> could be important...
>>
>> Best,
>> Jamie
>>
>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>
>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>
>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>
>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>> list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto: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 marc at marcpiel.fr  Mon Jun 27 14:12:52 2011
From: marc at marcpiel.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:12:52 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
	<4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>

Hi James,
I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and 
"Communism" put together.
Sure that Communism was very attractive at the 
beginning to Surrealists, especially because of 
Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of 
the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. 
They quickly saw that it was "locking" them in 
instead of giving them freedom. The most important 
characteristic of Surrealism  was freedom in the 
largest sense of the word. Curiously the ones that 
stayed with communism were those that came from 
bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. 
The same is true today in France. The communist 
party still exists with about 1% of vote and all 
from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that 
LD did not follow this movement.
B.R.
Marc

Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit :
> Hi Bruce,
>
> I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing
> regarding private individuals...
>
> As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in
> many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in
> different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between
> them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller
> in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences
> to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years
> in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO,
> have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are
> undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those
> here&  there for many years as correlated materials   become available
> or are correlated.
>
> I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It
> signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic
> concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
>
> For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly
> to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct
> from Miller):
>
> "Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it
> leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
>     -->  [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
>         wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
>         men" (Durrell)
>
> "the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims
> that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
>     -->  "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
>         the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
>
> "we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those
> elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams,
> trances and hallucinations." (Read)
>     -->  "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
>         with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
>         stuff." (Durrell)
>
> If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the
> origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
>
> Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to
> "Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation
> of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in
> a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...).
> Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his
> anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open
> Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made
> his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which
> is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of
> Breton's mode at the time.
>
> My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see
> Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters,
> his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his
> ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living."
> After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of
> Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all
> contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and
> the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on
> "Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem
> "Freedom" near the end of the book too.
>
> It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as
> well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in
> his first anarchist writings.
>
> In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the
> print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred
> ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the
> American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
>
> Best,
> James
>
> (BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
>
> Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The
> Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
>
> There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber,
> which is easy to get.
>
>
> On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
>> /jml?/
>>
>> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
>> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
>> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
>> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
>> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
>> about "Heraldic."
>>
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>>
>>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>>
>>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>>
>>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>>
>>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>>> Unpolitical."
>>>
>>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>>> could be important...
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Jamie
>>>
>>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>>
>>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>>
>>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>>
>>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>>
>>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>>> list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca<mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> ILDS mailing list
>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca<mailto: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
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
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From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Mon Jun 27 17:45:57 2011
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:45:57 -0400
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>

Could it be that Francis J. Mott's concept of universal design may have some link with Durrell's Heraldic Universe? 

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 Bruce Redwine [bredwine1968 at earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 1:55 PM
To: gifford at fdu.edu; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Cc: Bruce Redwine
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe

James, I'm in the dark, again.  Could you post your article appearing in jml?

By the way, perhaps I've missed something again.  On the topic of "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out material that Wickes includes?  E.g., in the letter of Fall or August 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of duration is false."  MacNiven does not include this important statement about "Heraldic."


Bruce



On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:

I'm interested in where this leads!

I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
term Heraldic in his letters to Miller.  The gist is that Miller was
criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
Communism.  Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
only made his anarchist views public in 1938.

In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.

In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
epistolary discussion.  In that sense, the personal enacted in the
Heraldic carries a very particular politics.  "Personalism" seems to
have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
Unpolitical."

This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
could be important...

Best,
Jamie

On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
1774    T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336   The pompous
circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
minute prolixity with which they were displayed.

Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
which has been linked to various schools of thought.

I'm wondering if Durrell  might have come across the phrase "heraldic
narratives" in Warton

and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."

Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca<mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca<mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds



From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Mon Jun 27 19:42:32 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:42:32 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>

Don't the timelines conflict?  Doesn't Durrell's Heraldic Universe precede Mott's Universal Design?  Or are you saying Durrell influenced Mott?  I first came across Durrell's idea in the D-M letters, the one previously mentioned, August or Fall of 1936.  Did he ever publish this theory/philosophy?


Bruce



On Jun 27, 2011, at 5:45 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:

> Could it be that Francis J. Mott's concept of universal design may have some link with Durrell's Heraldic Universe? 
> 
> 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 Bruce Redwine [bredwine1968 at earthlink.net]
> Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 1:55 PM
> To: gifford at fdu.edu; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Cc: Bruce Redwine
> Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe
> 
> James, I'm in the dark, again.  Could you post your article appearing in jml?
> 
> By the way, perhaps I've missed something again.  On the topic of "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out material that Wickes includes?  E.g., in the letter of Fall or August 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of duration is false."  MacNiven does not include this important statement about "Heraldic."
> 
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
> 
> I'm interested in where this leads!
> 
> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller.  The gist is that Miller was
> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
> Communism.  Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
> 
> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
> 
> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
> epistolary discussion.  In that sense, the personal enacted in the
> Heraldic carries a very particular politics.  "Personalism" seems to
> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
> Unpolitical."
> 
> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
> could be important...
> 
> Best,
> Jamie
> 
> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
> 1774    T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336   The pompous
> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
> 
> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
> 
> I'm wondering if Durrell  might have come across the phrase "heraldic
> narratives" in Warton
> 
> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
> 
> Bill 


From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Tue Jun 28 00:04:50 2011
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:04:50 +1000
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>
	<4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
Message-ID: <BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>

Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.

so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%. May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..

Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no adjectival icebergs..

You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at Brett Whitley's Justine.

Cheers

David


From: Marc Piel 
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
To: gifford at fdu.edu ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe


Hi James,
I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists, especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important characteristic of Surrealism  was freedom in the largest sense of the word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not follow this movement.
B.R.
Marc

Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit : 
Hi Bruce,

I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing 
regarding private individuals...

As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in 
many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in 
different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between 
them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller 
in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences 
to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years 
in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO, 
have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are 
undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those 
here & there for many years as correlated materials   become available 
or are correlated.

I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It 
signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic 
concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.

For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly 
to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct 
from Miller):

"Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it 
leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
   --> [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
       wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
       men" (Durrell)

"the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims 
that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
   --> "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
       the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)

"we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those 
elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams, 
trances and hallucinations." (Read)
   --> "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
       with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
       stuff." (Durrell)

If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the 
origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.

Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to 
"Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation 
of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in 
a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...). 
Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his 
anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open 
Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made 
his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which 
is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of 
Breton's mode at the time.

My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see 
Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters, 
his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his 
ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living." 
After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of 
Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all 
contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and 
the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on 
"Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem 
"Freedom" near the end of the book too.

It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as 
well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in 
his first anarchist writings.

In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the 
print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred 
ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the 
American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...

Best,
James

(BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)

Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The 
Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.

There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber, 
which is easy to get.


On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
/jml?/

//By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
"Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
about "Heraldic."


Bruce



On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:

I'm interested in where this leads!

I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
only made his anarchist views public in 1938.

In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.

In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
Unpolitical."

This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
could be important...

Best,
Jamie

On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
minute prolixity with which they were displayed.

Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
which has been linked to various schools of thought.

I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
narratives" in Warton

and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."

Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto: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
_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds



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


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From charles-sligh at utc.edu  Tue Jun 28 05:13:21 2011
From: charles-sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:13:21 -0400
Subject: [ilds] a new generation of young Aussies
In-Reply-To: <BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>	<4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
Message-ID: <4E09C561.7020202@utc.edu>

On 6/28/11 3:04 AM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:

>         Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first
>         class and no adjectival icebergs..
>         You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing
>         the rounds of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a
>         new generation of young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the
>         same spectacular effect at Brett Whitley's Justine.

Will book your passage, David.

My booking info tells me the following about our Elite Class Cabins:

>         The profusion of small shelves, trinket drawers, book racks,
>         &c., in the state rooms certainly suggest that the designer
>         had an intimate knowledge of the essential requirements of
>         passengers especially of ladies, whose love of cupboards,
>         etc.. is almost proverbial. There is a large wardrobe in each
>         room, and, of course, the usual wash. stand, life-belt, racks,
>         hooks, etc. The general rooms are fitted in mahogany, and
>         upholstered ith plush or velvet, while the fittings are
>         electro-plated. Electric light and electric call bells add to
>         the very complete sum of comfortable surroundings.
>
>         Read more: Cabin Class Staterooms - 1893 Cunard Passenger's
>         Log Book
>         <http://www.gjenvick.com/HistoricalBrochures/Steamships-OceanLiners/CunardLine/1893-PassengerLogBook-Staterooms.html#ixzz1QZUQEIIj>
>         http://www.gjenvick.com/HistoricalBrochures/Steamships-OceanLiners/CunardLine/1893-PassengerLogBook-Staterooms.html#ixzz1QZUQEIIj

I will note here that Scobie himself was a man fond of closets (handy 
for his Dolly Varden) and cupboards, keeping "small shelves" close to 
his bedside (imported, Euston Road).

I am glad that you picked up Brett Whitely's /Justine/ 
<http://www.artfact.com/auction-lot/brett-whiteley-1939-1992-,-justine-bondi-1986-1-c-4f7c309dfd> 
at auction, David.  Your countryman Mick Thomas 
<http://www.myspace.com/mickthomassongs/music/songs/lawrence-durrell-37957979> 
is a Lawrence Durrell fan, I think, so he might enjoy seeing the 
painting next time he is over at the beach house.

Excellent news about the young readers.  I am certain many of the 
students are "lifers" now.  Tell them, from here on out, "it's on his 
head," to quote your laureate.

Charles

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


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From Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de  Tue Jun 28 06:52:43 2011
From: Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de (Truebner, Christine)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:52:43 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
Message-ID: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>

..and what is a cunard? Can I come on it too from Frankfurt?
 

Christine Tr?bner 
51.D24  Leitstelle ?lterwerden 
Rathaus f?r Senioren  
069 212-44901 fax -36858 

 

________________________________

Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im Auftrag von Denise Tart & David Green
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
An: marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Betreff: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals


Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.
 
so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%. May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..
 
Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no adjectival icebergs..
 
You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at Brett Whitley's Justine.
 
Cheers
 
David

From: Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>  
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
To: gifford at fdu.edu ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe

Hi James,
I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists, especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important characteristic of Surrealism  was freedom in the largest sense of the word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not follow this movement.
B.R.
Marc

Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit : 

	Hi Bruce,
	
	I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing 
	regarding private individuals...
	
	As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in 
	many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in 
	different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between 
	them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller 
	in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences 
	to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years 
	in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO, 
	have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are 
	undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those 
	here & there for many years as correlated materials   become available 
	or are correlated.
	
	I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It 
	signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic 
	concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
	
	For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly 
	to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct 
	from Miller):
	
	"Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it 
	leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
	   --> [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
	       wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
	       men" (Durrell)
	
	"the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims 
	that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
	   --> "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
	       the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
	
	"we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those 
	elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams, 
	trances and hallucinations." (Read)
	   --> "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
	       with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
	       stuff." (Durrell)
	
	If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the 
	origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
	
	Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to 
	"Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation 
	of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in 
	a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...). 
	Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his 
	anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open 
	Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made 
	his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which 
	is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of 
	Breton's mode at the time.
	
	My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see 
	Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters, 
	his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his 
	ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living." 
	After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of 
	Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all 
	contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and 
	the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on 
	"Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem 
	"Freedom" near the end of the book too.
	
	It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as 
	well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in 
	his first anarchist writings.
	
	In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the 
	print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred 
	ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the 
	American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
	
	Best,
	James
	
	(BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
	
	Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The 
	Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
	
	There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber, 
	which is easy to get.
	
	
	On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

		James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
		/jml?/
		
		//By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
		"Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
		material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
		1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
		duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
		about "Heraldic."
		
		
		Bruce
		
		
		
		On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
		

			I'm interested in where this leads!
			
			I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
			correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
			term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
			criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
			following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
			Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
			Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
			only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
			
			In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
			Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
			response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
			copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
			It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
			a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
			
			In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
			sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
			epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
			Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
			have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
			Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
			Unpolitical."
			
			This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
			already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
			if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
			could be important...
			
			Best,
			Jamie
			
			On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:

				1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
				circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
				minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
				
				Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
				among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
				which has been linked to various schools of thought.
				
				I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
				narratives" in Warton
				
				and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
				world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
				
				Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
				list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> 
				https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

			_______________________________________________
			ILDS mailing list
			ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> <mailto: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

	_______________________________________________
	ILDS mailing list
	ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
	https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
	

________________________________

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From charles-sligh at utc.edu  Tue Jun 28 07:13:40 2011
From: charles-sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:13:40 -0400
Subject: [ilds] what is a cunard?
In-Reply-To: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
Message-ID: <4E09E194.5030607@utc.edu>

On 6/28/11 9:52 AM, Truebner, Christine wrote:

>     ..and what is a cunard?

Charming note, Christine.  I'll direct you to some postcards from our 
gift-shop <http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/Cunard3.html#anchor1294030>.

>     Can I come on it too from Frankfurt?

For Frankfurt-London, we'll have to float you in something else 
<http://www.airships.net/lz127-graf-zeppelin/interiors> besides David's 
refurbished Cunard.

Best!

C&c.

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


-------------- next part --------------
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From Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de  Tue Jun 28 06:49:52 2011
From: Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de (Truebner, Christine)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:49:52 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
Message-ID: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>

Pls let me know to better understand discussion what is a oxymoron?
 

Christine Tr?bner 

c/o Jugend- und Sozialamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main

 

 

________________________________

Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im Auftrag von Denise Tart & David Green
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
An: marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Betreff: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals


Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.
 
so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%. May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..
 
Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no adjectival icebergs..
 
You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at Brett Whitley's Justine.
 
Cheers
 
David

From: Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>  
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
To: gifford at fdu.edu ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca 
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe

Hi James,
I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists, especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important characteristic of Surrealism  was freedom in the largest sense of the word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not follow this movement.
B.R.
Marc

Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit : 

	Hi Bruce,
	
	I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing 
	regarding private individuals...
	
	As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in 
	many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in 
	different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between 
	them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller 
	in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences 
	to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years 
	in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO, 
	have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are 
	undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those 
	here & there for many years as correlated materials   become available 
	or are correlated.
	
	I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It 
	signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic 
	concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
	
	For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly 
	to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct 
	from Miller):
	
	"Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it 
	leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
	   --> [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
	       wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
	       men" (Durrell)
	
	"the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims 
	that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
	   --> "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
	       the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
	
	"we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those 
	elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams, 
	trances and hallucinations." (Read)
	   --> "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
	       with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
	       stuff." (Durrell)
	
	If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the 
	origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
	
	Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to 
	"Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation 
	of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in 
	a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...). 
	Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his 
	anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open 
	Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made 
	his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which 
	is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of 
	Breton's mode at the time.
	
	My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see 
	Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters, 
	his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his 
	ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living." 
	After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of 
	Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all 
	contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and 
	the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on 
	"Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem 
	"Freedom" near the end of the book too.
	
	It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as 
	well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in 
	his first anarchist writings.
	
	In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the 
	print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred 
	ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the 
	American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
	
	Best,
	James
	
	(BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
	
	Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The 
	Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
	
	There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber, 
	which is easy to get.
	
	
	On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

		James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
		/jml?/
		
		//By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
		"Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
		material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
		1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
		duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
		about "Heraldic."
		
		
		Bruce
		
		
		
		On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
		

			I'm interested in where this leads!
			
			I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
			correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
			term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
			criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
			following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
			Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
			Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
			only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
			
			In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
			Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
			response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
			copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
			It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
			a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
			
			In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
			sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
			epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
			Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
			have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
			Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
			Unpolitical."
			
			This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
			already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
			if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
			could be important...
			
			Best,
			Jamie
			
			On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:

				1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
				circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
				minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
				
				Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
				among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
				which has been linked to various schools of thought.
				
				I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
				narratives" in Warton
				
				and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
				world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
				
				Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
				list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> 
				https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

			_______________________________________________
			ILDS mailing list
			ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> <mailto: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

	_______________________________________________
	ILDS mailing list
	ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
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________________________________

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From allysonk at mweb.co.za  Tue Jun 28 07:03:29 2011
From: allysonk at mweb.co.za (Allyson)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:03:29 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
Message-ID: <!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAG0hXlPTAjhPq+nMeiiXA2PCgAAAEAAAAK7dO6RjX+1Epx4jah183/4BAAAAAA==@mweb.co.za>

It is rather like a canard made from steel.

 

From: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] On
Behalf Of Truebner, Christine
Sent: 28 June 2011 03:53 PM
To: Denise Tart & David Green; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

 

..and what is a cunard? Can I come on it too from Frankfurt?

 

Christine Tr?bner 
51.D24  Leitstelle ?lterwerden 
Rathaus f?r Senioren  
069 212-44901 fax -36858 

 

 

  _____  

Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im
Auftrag von Denise Tart & David Green
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
An: marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Betreff: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put into
practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism perhaps
had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a peaceful
anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.

 

so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they ceased
to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%. May day does
not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new world order and
mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not conservative, vote
'green' to feel better about their vast carbon/resource footprint -
adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few veggie scraps in the
recycling....quelle maleur..

 

Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no
adjectival icebergs..

 

You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds of
my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of young
Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at Brett
Whitley's Justine.

 

Cheers

 

David

 

From: Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>  

Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM

To: gifford at fdu.edu ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca 

Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe

 

Hi James,
I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists,
especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of the
interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it was
"locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important
characteristic of Surrealism  was freedom in the largest sense of the word.
Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came from
bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true today in
France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote and all from
bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not follow this
movement.
B.R.
Marc

Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit : 

Hi Bruce,
 
I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing 
regarding private individuals...
 
As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in 
many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in 
different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between 
them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller 
in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences 
to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years 
in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO, 
have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are 
undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those 
here & there for many years as correlated materials   become available 
or are correlated.
 
I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It 
signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic 
concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
 
For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly 
to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct 
from Miller):
 
"Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it 
leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
   --> [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
       wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
       men" (Durrell)
 
"the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims 
that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
   --> "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
       the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
 
"we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those 
elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams, 
trances and hallucinations." (Read)
   --> "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
       with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
       stuff." (Durrell)
 
If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the 
origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
 
Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to 
"Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation 
of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in 
a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...). 
Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his 
anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open 
Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made 
his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which 
is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of 
Breton's mode at the time.
 
My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see 
Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters, 
his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his 
ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living." 
After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of 
Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all 
contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and 
the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on 
"Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem 
"Freedom" near the end of the book too.
 
It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as 
well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in 
his first anarchist writings.
 
In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the 
print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred 
ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the 
American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
 
Best,
James
 
(BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
 
Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The 
Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
 
There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber, 
which is easy to get.
 
 
On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
/jml?/
 
//By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
"Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
about "Heraldic."
 
 
Bruce
 
 
 
On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
 

I'm interested in where this leads!
 
I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
 
In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
 
In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
Unpolitical."
 
This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
could be important...
 
Best,
Jamie
 
On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:

1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
 
Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
which has been linked to various schools of thought.
 
I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
narratives" in Warton
 
and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
 
Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
<mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> <mailto: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

_______________________________________________
ILDS mailing list
ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
 
  _____  


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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 07:44:17 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:44:17 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
Message-ID: <4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com>

> Pls let me know to better understand discussion what is a oxymoron?

I was always told a "stupidly-clever bovine..."

Military Intelligence, honest politician, or innovative academic.  A 
contradiction in terms.  In my opinion, the oxymoron is most fun when 
applied unexpectedly to stale turns of phrase, such as "sober second 
thought."

I think the Communist Surrealist is oxymoronic, yet 'twas the beast for 
many years, and it carried over dramatically to the English until the 
late 1930s.  In part, it's also because so many of the Marxists of the 
West also didn't concede a unidirectional influence between Base and 
Superstructure (later said nicely by Raymond Williams), which was the 
position taken by the French antihumanists, such as Althusser (contra 
Sartre).  I know folks debate how to interpret the Frankfurt School 
theorists on that point, but my strong inclination is to see them doing 
the same as Williams, just doing it first.  If you've read them in 
German, perhaps you could comment (if it's of interest).

Dada wasn't none of that..., but Breton brought in something different 
and was a different kind of animal.

Best,
James

>
> Christine Tr?bner*//**//**//*
>
> c/o Jugend- und Sozialamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Von:* ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca]
> *Im Auftrag von *Denise Tart & David Green
> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
> *An:* marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> *Betreff:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
>
> Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put
> into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism
> perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a
> peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.
> so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they
> ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%.
> May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new
> world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not
> conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast
> carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few
> veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..
> Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no
> adjectival icebergs..
> You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds
> of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of
> young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at
> Brett Whitley's Justine.
> Cheers
> David
>
> *From:* Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
> *To:* gifford at fdu.edu <mailto:gifford at fdu.edu> ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> <mailto:ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> *Subject:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe
>
> Hi James,
> I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
> Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists,
> especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of
> the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it
> was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important
> characteristic of Surrealism was freedom in the largest sense of the
> word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came
> from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true
> today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote
> and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not
> follow this movement.
> B.R.
> Marc
>
> Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit :
>> Hi Bruce,
>>
>> I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing
>> regarding private individuals...
>>
>> As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in
>> many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in
>> different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between
>> them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller
>> in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences
>> to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years
>> in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO,
>> have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are
>> undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those
>> here&  there for many years as correlated materials   become available
>> or are correlated.
>>
>> I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It
>> signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic
>> concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
>>
>> For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly
>> to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct
>> from Miller):
>>
>> "Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it
>> leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
>>     -->  [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
>>         wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
>>         men" (Durrell)
>>
>> "the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims
>> that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
>>     -->  "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
>>         the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
>>
>> "we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those
>> elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams,
>> trances and hallucinations." (Read)
>>     -->  "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
>>         with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
>>         stuff." (Durrell)
>>
>> If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the
>> origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
>>
>> Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to
>> "Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation
>> of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in
>> a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...).
>> Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his
>> anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open
>> Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made
>> his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which
>> is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of
>> Breton's mode at the time.
>>
>> My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see
>> Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters,
>> his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his
>> ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living."
>> After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of
>> Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all
>> contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and
>> the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on
>> "Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem
>> "Freedom" near the end of the book too.
>>
>> It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as
>> well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in
>> his first anarchist writings.
>>
>> In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the
>> print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred
>> ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the
>> American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
>>
>> Best,
>> James
>>
>> (BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
>>
>> Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The
>> Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
>>
>> There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber,
>> which is easy to get.
>>
>>
>> On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>>> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
>>> /jml?/
>>>
>>> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
>>> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
>>> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
>>> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
>>> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
>>> about "Heraldic."
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruce
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>>>
>>>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>>>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>>>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>>>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>>>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>>>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>>>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>>>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>>>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>>>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>>>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>>>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>>>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>>>
>>>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>>>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>>>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>>>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>>>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>>>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>>>> Unpolitical."
>>>>
>>>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>>>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>>>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>>>> could be important...
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Jamie
>>>>
>>>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>>>
>>>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>>>
>>>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>>>> listILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> ILDS mailing list
>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto: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
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

From charles-sligh at utc.edu  Tue Jun 28 07:48:28 2011
From: charles-sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:48:28 -0400
Subject: [ilds] what is a cunard?
In-Reply-To: <!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAG0hXlPTAjhPq+nMeiiXA2PCgAAAEAAAAK7dO6RjX+1Epx4jah183/4BAAAAAA==@mweb.co.za>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
	<!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAG0hXlPTAjhPq+nMeiiXA2PCgAAAEAAAAK7dO6RjX+1Epx4jah183/4BAAAAAA==@mweb.co.za>
Message-ID: <4E09E9BC.3090302@utc.edu>

On 6/28/11 10:03 AM, Allyson wrote:
> It is rather like a canard made from steel.
Well played, Allyson.  I had hesitated.

C&c.

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


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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 07:49:09 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:49:09 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com>

On 27/06/11 7:42 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> I first came across Durrell's idea in the D-M
> letters, the one previously mentioned, August or Fall of 1936.  Did
> he ever publish this theory/philosophy?

I'll leave Mott to Bill, but for Durrell publishing on the Heraldic 
Universe, the answer is "kinda"...

He published "The Heraldic Universe" in /Personal Landscape/ (1942), 
where he states "It is not a 'state of mind.'"  There were other bits 
and pieces in his prose, but it was certainly not systematized.  Then 
again, the opening of /Personal Landscape/ and its "Ideas on Poetry" 
series stated quite emphatically that it would not systematize and that 
ideas are subject to change in discussion.  I think that's actually 
rather the point.

He comes back to it across his letters as well.  Now off to the train!

Best,
J


From marc at marcpiel.fr  Tue Jun 28 07:56:05 2011
From: marc at marcpiel.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:56:05 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
Message-ID: <4E09EB85.1070506@marcpiel.fr>

Hi Christine,
Maybe this link will help

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron

Marc

Le 28/06/11 15:49, Truebner, Christine a ?crit :
> Pls let me know to better understand discussion 
> what is a oxymoron?
>
> Christine Tr?bner
>
> c/o Jugend- und Sozialamt der Stadt Frankfurt am 
> Main
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> *Von:* ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca 
> [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] *Im Auftrag 
> von *Denise Tart & David Green
> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
> *An:* marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> *Betreff:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and 
> other animals
>
> Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly 
> as the later was put into practice, are mutually 
> exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism 
> perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more 
> peaceful. Durrell was a peaceful anarchist at 
> heart, like many writers and artists.
> so, the French still have a communist party? in 
> Terra Australis they ceased to be many moons 
> ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%. 
> May day does not get a look in, even on uni 
> campuses these days; new world order and mining 
> boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not 
> conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about 
> their vast carbon/resource footprint - 
> adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few 
> veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..
> Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on 
> it, first class and no adjectival icebergs..
> You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth 
> is now doing the rounds of my year 12 students; 
> Durrell will live on in a new generation of 
> young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the 
> same spectacular effect at Brett Whitley's Justine.
> Cheers
> David
>
> *From:* Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
> *To:* gifford at fdu.edu <mailto:gifford at fdu.edu> ; 
> ilds at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> *Subject:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe
>
> Hi James,
> I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and 
> "Communism" put together.
> Sure that Communism was very attractive at the 
> beginning to Surrealists, especially because of 
> Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of 
> the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. 
> They quickly saw that it was "locking" them in 
> instead of giving them freedom. The most 
> important characteristic of Surrealism  was 
> freedom in the largest sense of the word. 
> Curiously the ones that stayed with communism 
> were those that came from bourgeois backgrounds 
> and families like Breton. The same is true today 
> in France. The communist party still exists with 
> about 1% of vote and all from bourgeois 
> backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not 
> follow this movement.
> B.R.
> Marc
>
> Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit :
>> Hi Bruce,
>>
>> I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing
>> regarding private individuals...
>>
>> As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in
>> many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in
>> different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between
>> them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller
>> in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences
>> to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years
>> in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO,
>> have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are
>> undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those
>> here&  there for many years as correlated materials   become available
>> or are correlated.
>>
>> I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It
>> signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic
>> concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
>>
>> For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly
>> to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct
>> from Miller):
>>
>> "Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it
>> leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
>>     -->  [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
>>         wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
>>         men" (Durrell)
>>
>> "the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims
>> that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
>>     -->  "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
>>         the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
>>
>> "we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those
>> elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams,
>> trances and hallucinations." (Read)
>>     -->  "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
>>         with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
>>         stuff." (Durrell)
>>
>> If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the
>> origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
>>
>> Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to
>> "Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation
>> of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in
>> a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...).
>> Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his
>> anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open
>> Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made
>> his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which
>> is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of
>> Breton's mode at the time.
>>
>> My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see
>> Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters,
>> his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his
>> ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living."
>> After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of
>> Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all
>> contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and
>> the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on
>> "Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem
>> "Freedom" near the end of the book too.
>>
>> It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as
>> well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in
>> his first anarchist writings.
>>
>> In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the
>> print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred
>> ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the
>> American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
>>
>> Best,
>> James
>>
>> (BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
>>
>> Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The
>> Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
>>
>> There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber,
>> which is easy to get.
>>
>>
>> On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>>> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
>>> /jml?/
>>>
>>> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
>>> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
>>> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
>>> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
>>> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
>>> about "Heraldic."
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruce
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>>>
>>>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>>>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>>>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>>>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>>>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>>>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>>>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>>>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>>>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>>>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>>>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>>>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>>>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>>>
>>>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>>>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>>>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>>>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>>>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>>>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>>>> Unpolitical."
>>>>
>>>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>>>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>>>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>>>> could be important...
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Jamie
>>>>
>>>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>>>
>>>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>>>
>>>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>>>> listILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> ILDS mailing list
>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto: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
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From marc at marcpiel.fr  Tue Jun 28 08:02:16 2011
From: marc at marcpiel.fr (Marc Piel)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:02:16 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
	<4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4E09ECF8.2060908@marcpiel.fr>

If i'm not mistaken Sartre stayed communist all 
his life!?

Le 28/06/11 16:44, James Gifford a ?crit :
>> Pls let me know to better understand discussion what is a oxymoron?
> I was always told a "stupidly-clever bovine..."
>
> Military Intelligence, honest politician, or innovative academic.  A
> contradiction in terms.  In my opinion, the oxymoron is most fun when
> applied unexpectedly to stale turns of phrase, such as "sober second
> thought."
>
> I think the Communist Surrealist is oxymoronic, yet 'twas the beast for
> many years, and it carried over dramatically to the English until the
> late 1930s.  In part, it's also because so many of the Marxists of the
> West also didn't concede a unidirectional influence between Base and
> Superstructure (later said nicely by Raymond Williams), which was the
> position taken by the French antihumanists, such as Althusser (contra
> Sartre).  I know folks debate how to interpret the Frankfurt School
> theorists on that point, but my strong inclination is to see them doing
> the same as Williams, just doing it first.  If you've read them in
> German, perhaps you could comment (if it's of interest).
>
> Dada wasn't none of that..., but Breton brought in something different
> and was a different kind of animal.
>
> Best,
> James
>
>> Christine Tr?bner*//**//**//*
>>
>> c/o Jugend- und Sozialamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *Von:* ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca]
>> *Im Auftrag von *Denise Tart&  David Green
>> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
>> *An:* marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>> *Betreff:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
>>
>> Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put
>> into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism
>> perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a
>> peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.
>> so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they
>> ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%.
>> May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new
>> world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not
>> conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast
>> carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few
>> veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..
>> Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no
>> adjectival icebergs..
>> You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds
>> of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of
>> young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at
>> Brett Whitley's Justine.
>> Cheers
>> David
>>
>> *From:* Marc Piel<mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
>> *To:* gifford at fdu.edu<mailto:gifford at fdu.edu>  ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>> <mailto:ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
>> *Subject:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe
>>
>> Hi James,
>> I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
>> Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists,
>> especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of
>> the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it
>> was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important
>> characteristic of Surrealism was freedom in the largest sense of the
>> word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came
>> from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true
>> today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote
>> and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not
>> follow this movement.
>> B.R.
>> Marc
>>
>> Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit :
>>> Hi Bruce,
>>>
>>> I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing
>>> regarding private individuals...
>>>
>>> As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in
>>> many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in
>>> different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between
>>> them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller
>>> in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences
>>> to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years
>>> in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO,
>>> have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are
>>> undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those
>>> here&   there for many years as correlated materials   become available
>>> or are correlated.
>>>
>>> I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It
>>> signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic
>>> concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
>>>
>>> For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly
>>> to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct
>>> from Miller):
>>>
>>> "Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it
>>> leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
>>>      -->   [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
>>>          wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
>>>          men" (Durrell)
>>>
>>> "the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims
>>> that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
>>>      -->   "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
>>>          the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
>>>
>>> "we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those
>>> elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams,
>>> trances and hallucinations." (Read)
>>>      -->   "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
>>>          with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
>>>          stuff." (Durrell)
>>>
>>> If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the
>>> origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
>>>
>>> Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to
>>> "Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation
>>> of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in
>>> a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...).
>>> Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his
>>> anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open
>>> Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made
>>> his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which
>>> is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of
>>> Breton's mode at the time.
>>>
>>> My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see
>>> Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters,
>>> his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his
>>> ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living."
>>> After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of
>>> Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all
>>> contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and
>>> the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on
>>> "Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem
>>> "Freedom" near the end of the book too.
>>>
>>> It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as
>>> well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in
>>> his first anarchist writings.
>>>
>>> In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the
>>> print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred
>>> ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the
>>> American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> James
>>>
>>> (BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
>>>
>>> Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The
>>> Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
>>>
>>> There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber,
>>> which is easy to get.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>>>> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
>>>> /jml?/
>>>>
>>>> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
>>>> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
>>>> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
>>>> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
>>>> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
>>>> about "Heraldic."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Bruce
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>>>>
>>>>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>>>>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>>>>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>>>>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>>>>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>>>>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>>>>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>>>>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>>>>
>>>>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>>>>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>>>>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>>>>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>>>>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>>>>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>>>>
>>>>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>>>>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>>>>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>>>>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>>>>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>>>>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>>>>> Unpolitical."
>>>>>
>>>>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>>>>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>>>>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>>>>> could be important...
>>>>>
>>>>> Best,
>>>>> Jamie
>>>>>
>>>>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>>>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>>>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>>>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>>>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>>>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>>>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>>>>
>>>>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>>>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>>>>> listILDS at lists.uvic.ca<mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> ILDS mailing list
>>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca<mailto: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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
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From allysonk at mweb.co.za  Tue Jun 28 08:19:48 2011
From: allysonk at mweb.co.za (allysonk at mweb.co.za)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:19:48 +0000
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <4E09ECF8.2060908@marcpiel.fr>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm><4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com><4E09ECF8.2060908@marcpiel.fr>
Message-ID: <1020075229-1309274389-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-2028845271-@b12.c19.bise7.blackberry>

So did paul eluard who was a surrealist. 
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Piel <marc at marcpiel.fr>
Sender: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:02:16 
To: <gifford at fdu.edu>; <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Reply-To: marc at marcpiel.fr, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

_______________________________________________
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Tue Jun 28 08:25:28 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:25:28 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>
	<4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net>

James,

Thanks for the reference.  If you go back to the letter of August 1936, it seems clear to me that what Durrell is describing is, in Heidegger's sense, a "state of being."  So, he's quite right to say that "it is not a 'state of mind,'" i.e., something that is rational, cognitive, and subject to logical analysis.  In this context, the mentioning of Lao Tse is entirely appropriate.  Durrell's tendencies are mystical, probably never fully realized, and I would cite his "Heraldic Universe" as evidence of such.


Bruce



On Jun 28, 2011, at 7:49 AM, James Gifford wrote:

> On 27/06/11 7:42 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>> I first came across Durrell's idea in the D-M
>> letters, the one previously mentioned, August or Fall of 1936.  Did
>> he ever publish this theory/philosophy?
> 
> I'll leave Mott to Bill, but for Durrell publishing on the Heraldic 
> Universe, the answer is "kinda"...
> 
> He published "The Heraldic Universe" in /Personal Landscape/ (1942), 
> where he states "It is not a 'state of mind.'"  There were other bits 
> and pieces in his prose, but it was certainly not systematized.  Then 
> again, the opening of /Personal Landscape/ and its "Ideas on Poetry" 
> series stated quite emphatically that it would not systematize and that 
> ideas are subject to change in discussion.  I think that's actually 
> rather the point.
> 
> He comes back to it across his letters as well.  Now off to the train!
> 
> Best,
> J



From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Tue Jun 28 09:24:12 2011
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:24:12 -0400
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>,
	<4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C18B@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>

Oxymoron is a two word paradox.


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 James Gifford [james.d.gifford at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 10:44 AM
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

> Pls let me know to better understand discussion what is a oxymoron?

I was always told a "stupidly-clever bovine..."

Military Intelligence, honest politician, or innovative academic.  A
contradiction in terms.  In my opinion, the oxymoron is most fun when
applied unexpectedly to stale turns of phrase, such as "sober second
thought."

I think the Communist Surrealist is oxymoronic, yet 'twas the beast for
many years, and it carried over dramatically to the English until the
late 1930s.  In part, it's also because so many of the Marxists of the
West also didn't concede a unidirectional influence between Base and
Superstructure (later said nicely by Raymond Williams), which was the
position taken by the French antihumanists, such as Althusser (contra
Sartre).  I know folks debate how to interpret the Frankfurt School
theorists on that point, but my strong inclination is to see them doing
the same as Williams, just doing it first.  If you've read them in
German, perhaps you could comment (if it's of interest).

Dada wasn't none of that..., but Breton brought in something different
and was a different kind of animal.

Best,
James

>
> Christine Tr?bner*//**//**//*
>
> c/o Jugend- und Sozialamt der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Von:* ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca]
> *Im Auftrag von *Denise Tart & David Green
> *Gesendet:* Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
> *An:* marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> *Betreff:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
>
> Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put
> into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism
> perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a
> peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.
> so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they
> ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%.
> May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new
> world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not
> conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast
> carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few
> veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..
> Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no
> adjectival icebergs..
> You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds
> of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of
> young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at
> Brett Whitley's Justine.
> Cheers
> David
>
> *From:* Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM
> *To:* gifford at fdu.edu <mailto:gifford at fdu.edu> ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> <mailto:ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> *Subject:* Re: [ilds] heraldic universe
>
> Hi James,
> I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
> Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists,
> especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of
> the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it
> was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important
> characteristic of Surrealism was freedom in the largest sense of the
> word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came
> from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true
> today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote
> and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not
> follow this movement.
> B.R.
> Marc
>
> Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit :
>> Hi Bruce,
>>
>> I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing
>> regarding private individuals...
>>
>> As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in
>> many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in
>> different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between
>> them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller
>> in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences
>> to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years
>> in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO,
>> have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are
>> undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those
>> here&  there for many years as correlated materials   become available
>> or are correlated.
>>
>> I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It
>> signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic
>> concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
>>
>> For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly
>> to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct
>> from Miller):
>>
>> "Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it
>> leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
>>     -->  [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
>>         wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
>>         men" (Durrell)
>>
>> "the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims
>> that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
>>     -->  "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
>>         the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
>>
>> "we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those
>> elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams,
>> trances and hallucinations." (Read)
>>     -->  "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
>>         with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
>>         stuff." (Durrell)
>>
>> If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the
>> origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
>>
>> Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to
>> "Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation
>> of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in
>> a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...).
>> Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his
>> anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open
>> Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made
>> his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which
>> is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of
>> Breton's mode at the time.
>>
>> My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see
>> Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters,
>> his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his
>> ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living."
>> After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of
>> Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all
>> contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and
>> the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on
>> "Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem
>> "Freedom" near the end of the book too.
>>
>> It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as
>> well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in
>> his first anarchist writings.
>>
>> In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the
>> print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred
>> ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the
>> American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
>>
>> Best,
>> James
>>
>> (BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
>>
>> Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The
>> Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
>>
>> There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber,
>> which is easy to get.
>>
>>
>> On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>>> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
>>> /jml?/
>>>
>>> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
>>> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
>>> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
>>> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
>>> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
>>> about "Heraldic."
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruce
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>>>
>>>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>>>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>>>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>>>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>>>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>>>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>>>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>>>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>>>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>>>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>>>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>>>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>>>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>>>
>>>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>>>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>>>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>>>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>>>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>>>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>>>> Unpolitical."
>>>>
>>>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>>>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>>>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>>>> could be important...
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Jamie
>>>>
>>>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>>>
>>>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>>>
>>>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>>>> listILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> ILDS mailing list
>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto: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
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 10:45:37 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:45:37 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <1020075229-1309274389-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-2028845271-@b12.c19.bise7.blackberry>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14AE@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm><4E09E8C1.1090001@gmail.com><4E09ECF8.2060908@marcpiel.fr>
	<1020075229-1309274389-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-2028845271-@b12.c19.bise7.blackberry>
Message-ID: <4E0A1341.4030802@gmail.com>

On 28/06/11 8:19 AM, allysonk at mweb.co.za wrote:
 > So did paul eluard who was a surrealist.

Miller uses Eluard as his first example in "An Open Letter to 
Surrealists Everywhere."  As for Sartre, could one say he was until he 
wasn't?  Sartre (in my limited reading) promoted existentialism as a 
humanist philosophy, which I think led to a debate with Heidegger and 
most certainly with Althusser.  Though he certainly supported the 
Communist Party, he also rejected authority and power as well as the 
anti-humanist branches of Marxism and Communism.

My recollection is that Sartre and Heidegger clashed over the notion of 
reason and selfhood in the Enlightenment sense of being self-conscious 
creatures with the capacity for reason and free will.  An Althusser 
might argue that social being determines the self or subject (via Marx 
though some would disagree).  Hence, for the anti-humanists, reason and 
choice are determined by the material conditions (or in some folks' 
sense, Base determines Superstructure).  Sartre (IMO) didn't like that 
component of Marxism or Communism and still sought a self-determining 
subject with some pre-social ontology and who could be convinced by 
reason rather than compelled by power or authority, and I don't think 
such a subject is so very far off from Durrell's "solopsistic" 
tendencies, though Durrell was clearly anti-Marxist while Sartre was not.

Unless I'm mistaken, for some of these reasons, Sartre later used the 
term anarchist, though he'd used it to self-describe at several points 
during his career.

Many of the Surrealists self-identified as Communists, and those 
politics were part of Breton's lead.

Cheers,
James

From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Tue Jun 28 11:14:25 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:14:25 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Heraldic, Surrealism, Socialism, Art, etc.
Message-ID: <275ED357-7E02-4483-91F7-C8F679DE1527@earthlink.net>

Charles,

These recent topics of discussion are covered in Durrell's letter to Miller, approximately dated August 1936.  It would be useful to have the entire letter posted on the list.  Is this possible?  MacNiven has the full letter (I believe) on pp. 17-20 of his edition of the Durrell-Miller letters.  The Wickes's edition is edited and presents a different Lawrence Durrell than MacNiven does.  Wickes's Durrell seems more mature, less prankish, and certainly more organized.  I prefer wild Durrell.


Bruce



From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 11:21:51 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:21:51 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Heraldic, Surrealism, Socialism, Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <275ED357-7E02-4483-91F7-C8F679DE1527@earthlink.net>
References: <275ED357-7E02-4483-91F7-C8F679DE1527@earthlink.net>
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Hi Bruce,

The relevant passages are available in Google Books, which absolves the 
list of the worries of copyright troubles...

http://books.google.com/books?id=FFBeeREKoDwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=durrell+miller+letters&hl=en&ei=1hoKTqauFI72swPS86GiDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=herbert&f=false

Just head to http://books.google.com/ and look for the Durrell Miller 
Letters.  It's page 18.

Perhaps that will help everyone join in!

Best,
James

On 28/06/11 11:14 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> Charles,
>
> These recent topics of discussion are covered in Durrell's letter to Miller, approximately dated August 1936.  It would be useful to have the entire letter posted on the list.  Is this possible?  MacNiven has the full letter (I believe) on pp. 17-20 of his edition of the Durrell-Miller letters.  The Wickes's edition is edited and presents a different Lawrence Durrell than MacNiven does.  Wickes's Durrell seems more mature, less prankish, and certainly more organized.  I prefer wild Durrell.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 11:22:10 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:22:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>	<4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>
	<4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
Message-ID: <4E0A1BD2.4080404@gmail.com>

Hi Marc,

I agree completely, but I think it's important to note the year(s). 
Read was writing in 1936, as were Miller and Durrell in their responses. 
  It's the same year as the London International Surrealist Exhibition 
as well, which was only a year after Gascoyne's /Short Introduction to 
Surrealism/.  After Spain and then the war, much was changed.

The English literary Surrealists were expressly Communist in 1936 (qua 
Breton) but seemed to change track very quickly after coming into 
contact with Miller and the Paris group.  Gascoyne did this around 1938, 
Read went public with his anarchist views in the same year, and many of 
them noted reading Miller's "An Open Letter" and Durrell's /The Black 
Book/ at the same moment.

Cheers,
James

On 27/06/11 2:12 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
> Hi James,
> I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
> Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists,
> especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of
> the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it
> was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important
> characteristic of Surrealism was freedom in the largest sense of the
> word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came
> from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true
> today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote
> and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not
> follow this movement.
> B.R.
> Marc
>
> Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit :
>> Hi Bruce,
>>
>> I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing
>> regarding private individuals...
>>
>> As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in
>> many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in
>> different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between
>> them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller
>> in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences
>> to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years
>> in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO,
>> have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are
>> undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those
>> here&  there for many years as correlated materials   become available
>> or are correlated.
>>
>> I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It
>> signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic
>> concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
>>
>> For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly
>> to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct
>> from Miller):
>>
>> "Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it
>> leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
>>     -->  [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
>>         wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
>>         men" (Durrell)
>>
>> "the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims
>> that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
>>     -->  "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
>>         the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
>>
>> "we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those
>> elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams,
>> trances and hallucinations." (Read)
>>     -->  "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
>>         with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
>>         stuff." (Durrell)
>>
>> If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the
>> origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
>>
>> Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to
>> "Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation
>> of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in
>> a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...).
>> Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his
>> anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open
>> Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made
>> his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which
>> is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of
>> Breton's mode at the time.
>>
>> My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see
>> Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters,
>> his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his
>> ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living."
>> After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of
>> Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all
>> contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and
>> the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on
>> "Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem
>> "Freedom" near the end of the book too.
>>
>> It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as
>> well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in
>> his first anarchist writings.
>>
>> In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the
>> print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred
>> ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the
>> American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
>>
>> Best,
>> James
>>
>> (BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
>>
>> Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The
>> Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
>>
>> There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber,
>> which is easy to get.
>>
>>
>> On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>>> James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
>>> /jml?/
>>>
>>> //By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
>>> "Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
>>> material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
>>> 1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
>>> duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
>>> about "Heraldic."
>>>
>>>
>>> Bruce
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm interested in where this leads!
>>>>
>>>> I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
>>>> correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
>>>> term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
>>>> criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
>>>> following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
>>>> Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
>>>> Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
>>>> only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
>>>> Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
>>>> response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
>>>> copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
>>>> It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
>>>> a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
>>>>
>>>> In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
>>>> sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
>>>> epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
>>>> Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
>>>> have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
>>>> Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
>>>> Unpolitical."
>>>>
>>>> This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
>>>> already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
>>>> if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
>>>> could be important...
>>>>
>>>> Best,
>>>> Jamie
>>>>
>>>> On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
>>>>> 1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
>>>>> circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
>>>>> minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
>>>>> among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
>>>>> which has been linked to various schools of thought.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
>>>>> narratives" in Warton
>>>>>
>>>>> and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
>>>>> world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
>>>>>
>>>>> Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
>>>>> listILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> ILDS mailing list
>>>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca  <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca>
>>>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>>>
>>>
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>> _______________________________________________
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 11:37:26 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:37:26 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>	<4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com>
	<34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com>

Hi Bruce,

 > If you go back to the letter of August 1936, it
 > seems clear to me that what Durrell is describing
 > is, in Heidegger's sense, a "state of being."  So,
 > he's quite right to say that "it is not a 'state
 > of mind,'"

Agreed!  Through I should have noted that Durrell also refers to the 
Heraldic Universe earlier in his 1938 "Hamlet, Prince of China" (itself 
a 1937 letter, again to Miller).

In those instances, I don't know that I'd call it a heideggerian "state 
of being," though I must own up that I'm simply not well versed in 
Heidegger.  I read some in tandem with Sartre and Patocka in 1999/2000, 
and I haven't gone back much since...

Durrell has a novel repetition from the 1937 letter appearing in the 
1942 essay in /Personal Landscape/, and it caught my attention strongly 
when I first noticed it: "the self, which you [Miller] used as a defence 
against the novel terrors of this heraldic universe (as one might use 
smoked glass to look at the sun)" (1937 letter, printed in 1938) later 
becomes "'Art' then is only the smoked glass through which we can look 
at the dangerous sun" (1942 essay).

That shuffle between "self" and "art" is fine, especially since he 
describes the Heraldic Universe as the individual's "inner heraldic 
territory" or personal property.  It seems very much to be something 
pre-social to Durrell and solipsistic though not the same a selfhood 
either.  IMO, that don't jive with Heidegger's "being," but I could very 
well be mistaken (I think it'd have to go back to Heidegger's response 
to Sartre's essay on Humanism, which I think is in the /Basic Writings/ 
book...  Dimly back a dozen years here).

It's intriguing that Durrell's Heraldic realm isn't utopic, and art or 
even selfhood stand as some kind of defensive tactic. Although at the 
same time, it's something he's "creat[ing]... quite alone" and for which 
he needs to lay a foundation (in that 1936 letter).  That suggests to me 
that some kind of pre- and post-social Being (which allows for an 
individual with reason and will not entirely determined by material 
conditions) is involved in the equation, but that the Heraldic isn't the 
autonomous Being-to-death and isn't identical with the self or art, even 
though it may be contiguous.

Of course, Durrell could have changed his mind.  I'm just intrigued by 
the contiguity between Durrell's discussion of Miller's anarchism and 
Read's (ostensible) communism in his first articulation of the Heraldic 
Universe.  That strikes me as a part of the literary history of the 
period more broadly.  Paired up with that, I'm (in a purely Durrellian 
orientation) terribly interested in the distinction Durrell sets up 
between the poet, the poem, the reader, and the inner world, as if they 
are all in contact yet are radically separate at times.  It would imply 
that art, once made, exists independent of us and beyond our 
determination even if it emerges from the artist (much like an 
individual may emerge from society yet is not determined or defined by 
the social, if one buys that idea).

James Clawson has a recent piece (I don't have a copy handy) that might 
be useful for this:

Clawson, James M. "Between Physics and Metaphysics: Spenglerian 
Bergsonism in Durrell's /Revolt of Aphrodite/." /Mosaic: A Journal for 
the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature/ 43.4 (2010): 123-139.

I'll grab that today for read, if I can locate a copy, and report back 
to the list.

Best,
James

On 28/06/11 8:25 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> James,
>
> Thanks for the reference.  If you go back to the letter of August
> 1936, it seems clear to me that what Durrell is describing is, in
> Heidegger's sense, a "state of being."  So, he's quite right to say
> that "it is not a 'state of mind,'" i.e., something that is rational,
> cognitive, and subject to logical analysis.  In this context, the
> mentioning of Lao Tse is entirely appropriate.  Durrell's tendencies
> are mystical, probably never fully realized, and I would cite his
> "Heraldic Universe" as evidence of such.
>
>
> Bruce
>
>
>
> On Jun 28, 2011, at 7:49 AM, James Gifford wrote:
>
>> On 27/06/11 7:42 PM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>>> I first came across Durrell's idea in the D-M letters, the one
>>> previously mentioned, August or Fall of 1936.  Did he ever
>>> publish this theory/philosophy?
>>
>> I'll leave Mott to Bill, but for Durrell publishing on the
>> Heraldic Universe, the answer is "kinda"...
>>
>> He published "The Heraldic Universe" in /Personal Landscape/
>> (1942), where he states "It is not a 'state of mind.'"  There were
>> other bits and pieces in his prose, but it was certainly not
>> systematized.  Then again, the opening of /Personal Landscape/ and
>> its "Ideas on Poetry" series stated quite emphatically that it
>> would not systematize and that ideas are subject to change in
>> discussion.  I think that's actually rather the point.
>>
>> He comes back to it across his letters as well.  Now off to the
>> train!
>>
>> Best, J
>
>
> _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

From Ken.Gammage at directed.com  Tue Jun 28 13:04:10 2011
From: Ken.Gammage at directed.com (Ken Gammage)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:04:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Could Durrell really swim "...as fast as a dolphin..."
In-Reply-To: <4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>
	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>
	<4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com>
	<34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net>
	<4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <0BEF02A471383D429ADB5873552EF0957665167E28@mail2.directed.com>

So asserted the late Patrick Leigh Fermor in a 2003 interview in The Paris Review. But could this have been literal fact? Opinion on the list appears divided: Sumantra, Billy, Bruce, James, Jimmy, Panaiotis, Richard, Don, Charles, Julie, Jacob, Marc, David and Bill may be prepared to agree that Durrell was indeed a good swimmer, while Grove, Jim, Anna, Roy, Anne, Pamela, Samantha, Rui, Gulshan, Sharbani, Leena, Ilyas, Merrianne and Yael likely feel that some poetic license was invoked. Brewster, Lee, John, Tib, Anthony, Frederic, Paul, Ed, Rony, Joan, DrD, Peter, Julia, Dorothy, Allyson, Christine and Sandy are keeping an open mind.
 
Next topic: was Larry truly proficient on the ocarina? Bruce says: "Probably."

- Ken


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From no-reply at wordpress.com  Tue Jun 28 16:16:11 2011
From: no-reply at wordpress.com (Durrell 2012: The Lawrence Durrell Centenary.)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:16:11 +0000
Subject: [ilds] [New post] "The Room Seems to Have Come into Its Own at
	Last": One Afternoon in the Library of Patrick Leigh Fermor
	(11 June 2011).
Message-ID: <1bc2acabc9528a047730f4fa5d0cfe72@wordpress.com>

Post       : "The Room Seems to Have Come into Its Own at Last": One Afternoon in the Library of Patrick Leigh Fermor (11 June 2011).
URL        : http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/the-room-seems-to-have-come-into-its-own-at-last-one-afternoon-in-the-library-of-patrick-leigh-fermor-11-june-2011/
Posted     : 28 June 2011 at 23:16
Author     : durrell2012
Tags       : Balthazar, Justine, Lawrence Durrell, My Family &amp; Other Animals, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Reflections on a Marine Venus
Categories : Balthazar, Gerald Durrell, Greece, Justine, Lawrence Durrell, My Family &amp; Other Animals, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Reflections on a Marine Venus, Uncategorized

Maggie Rainey-Smith has been kind enough to share images and memories from her 7 November 2007 visit with the late Patrick Leigh Fermor. In a recent post at "A Curious Hour," Maggie has published a set of photographs and video-clips from her visit at Kardamyli, giving her readers a fine sense of Paddy's chosen place [...]

Read more of this post (http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/the-room-seems-to-have-come-into-its-own-at-last-one-afternoon-in-the-library-of-patrick-leigh-fermor-11-june-2011/)

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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 16:21:43 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:21:43 -0700
Subject: [ilds] [New post] "The Room Seems to Have Come into Its Own at
 Last": One Afternoon in the Library of Patrick Leigh Fermor (11 June 2011).
In-Reply-To: <1bc2acabc9528a047730f4fa5d0cfe72@wordpress.com>
References: <1bc2acabc9528a047730f4fa5d0cfe72@wordpress.com>
Message-ID: <4E0A6207.8070200@gmail.com>

Did anyone spot the volumes of the Quartet on the shelves?

http://acurioushalfhour.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/img_06991.jpg

I'm intrigued by Durrell and Waugh being side by side -- what ordering 
was in place here...

-J

On 28/06/11 4:16 PM, Durrell 2012: The Lawrence Durrell Centenary. wrote:
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/author/durrell2012/> 	
>
>
>     "The Room Seems to Have Come into Its Own at Last": One Afternoon in
>     the Library of Patrick Leigh Fermor (11 June 2011).
>     <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/the-room-seems-to-have-come-into-its-own-at-last-one-afternoon-in-the-library-of-patrick-leigh-fermor-11-june-2011/>
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> *durrell2012 <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/author/durrell2012/>* |
> 28 June 2011 at 23:16 | Tags: Balthazar
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?tag=balthazar>, Justine
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?tag=justine>, Lawrence Durrell
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?tag=lawrence-durrell>, My Family &
> Other Animals
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?tag=my-family-other-animals>, Patrick
> Leigh Fermor
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?tag=patrick-leigh-fermor>,
> Reflections on a ! Marine Venus
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?tag=reflections-on-a-marine-venus> |
> Categories: Balthazar <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=47191>,
> Gerald Durrell <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=1383929>, Greece
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=2756>, Justine
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=722126>, Lawrence Durrell
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=539153>, My Family & Other
> Animals <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=4745448>, Patrick Leigh
> Fermor <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=2448646>, Reflections o! n
> a Marine Venus <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=17327013>,
> Uncategorized <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/?cat=1> | URL:
> http://wp.me/p1w9Sq-eK
>
> Maggie Rainey-Smith has been kind enough to share images and memories
> from her 7 November 2007 visit with the late Patrick Leigh Fermor. In a
> recent post at "A Curious Hour," Maggie has published a set of
> photographs and video-clips from her visit at Kardamyli, giving her
> readers a fine sense of Paddy's chosen place [...]
>
> Read more of this post
> <http://durrell2012.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/the-room-seems-to-have-come-into-its-own-at-last-one-afternoon-in-the-library-of-patrick-leigh-fermor-11-june-2011/>
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From charles-sligh at utc.edu  Tue Jun 28 16:36:22 2011
From: charles-sligh at utc.edu (Charles Sligh)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:36:22 -0400
Subject: [ilds] Heraldic, Surrealism, Socialism, Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <4E0A1BBF.1000004@gmail.com>
References: <275ED357-7E02-4483-91F7-C8F679DE1527@earthlink.net>
	<4E0A1BBF.1000004@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4E0A6576.6060400@utc.edu>

On 6/28/11 2:21 PM, James Gifford wrote:
> The relevant passages are available in Google Books, which absolves the
> list of the worries of copyright troubles...
Thanks Bruce, James, Allyson, &c.

I appreciate your pursuit of a topic that I will freely admit is far 
over the head of this plodding bibliographer.

I am just back from a day's hard work with the books in Patrick Leigh 
Fermor's library at Kardamyli.  As someone else once wrote on the 
fly-leaf of a notebook, "Dog-tired; very happy."  (I would add to that 
"some tears.")

Charles

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



From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Tue Jun 28 16:51:10 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:51:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>	<4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>
Message-ID: <4E0A68EE.8060509@gmail.com>

I ought to have added to this thread, to my mind, the best published 
work on Durrell's Heraldic Universe is Beatrice Skordili's doctoral 
dissertation.

For obvious reasons, I can't post her diss. to the listerv, but it's 
very fine and hopefully finds a home at a press in book form.

Best,
James

From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Tue Jun 28 18:25:23 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:25:23 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Heraldic, Surrealism, Socialism, Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <4E0A6576.6060400@utc.edu>
References: <275ED357-7E02-4483-91F7-C8F679DE1527@earthlink.net>
	<4E0A1BBF.1000004@gmail.com> <4E0A6576.6060400@utc.edu>
Message-ID: <E76D0CC2-1A50-487A-9920-818BB1CDC128@earthlink.net>

Is Charles really in Greece?  Avoid the Molotov cocktails and stick to the ouzo.


Bruce



On Jun 28, 2011, at 4:36 PM, Charles Sligh wrote:

> On 6/28/11 2:21 PM, James Gifford wrote:
>> The relevant passages are available in Google Books, which absolves the
>> list of the worries of copyright troubles...
> Thanks Bruce, James, Allyson, &c.
> 
> I appreciate your pursuit of a topic that I will freely admit is far 
> over the head of this plodding bibliographer.
> 
> I am just back from a day's hard work with the books in Patrick Leigh 
> Fermor's library at Kardamyli.  As someone else once wrote on the 
> fly-leaf of a notebook, "Dog-tired; very happy."  (I would add to that 
> "some tears.")
> 
> Charles
> 
> -- 
> ********************************************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
> charles-sligh at utc.edu
> ********************************************



From Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de  Wed Jun 29 03:27:18 2011
From: Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de (Truebner, Christine)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:27:18 +0200
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAG0hXlPTAjhPq+nMeiiXA2PCgAAAEAAAAK7dO6RjX+1Epx4jah183/4BAAAAAA==@mweb.co.za>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC><EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
	<!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAG0hXlPTAjhPq+nMeiiXA2PCgAAAEAAAAK7dO6RjX+1Epx4jah183/4BAAAAAA==@mweb.co.za>
Message-ID: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F1527@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>

...a duck made from steel? It must be something Lawrence Durell used as synonymic for something else, isn't it?
And more: what is the story to it?

Christine Tr?bner 

________________________________

Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im Auftrag von Allyson
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 16:03
An: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Betreff: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals



It is rather like a canard made from steel.

 

From: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] On Behalf Of Truebner, Christine
Sent: 28 June 2011 03:53 PM
To: Denise Tart & David Green; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

 

..and what is a cunard? Can I come on it too from Frankfurt?

 

Christine Tr?bner 
51.D24  Leitstelle ?lterwerden 
Rathaus f?r Senioren  
069 212-44901 fax -36858 

 

 

________________________________

Von: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca [mailto:ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca] Im Auftrag von Denise Tart & David Green
Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Juni 2011 09:05
An: marc at marcpiel.fr; ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Betreff: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

Marc, to me surrealism and communism, certainly as the later was put into practice, are mutually exclusive; oxymoron's as it were. surrealism perhaps had more to do with anarchism, but more peaceful. Durrell was a peaceful anarchist at heart, like many writers and artists.

 

so, the French still have a communist party? in Terra Australis they ceased to be many moons ago. even the labor party vote is down to 27%. May day does not get a look in, even on uni campuses these days; new world order and mining boom. the Aussie bourgeois, those who are not conservative, vote 'green' to feel better about their vast carbon/resource footprint - adjectivally HUGE but at least we dump a few veggie scraps in the recycling....quelle maleur..

 

Charles...send the Cunard to Sydney...I'll be on it, first class and no adjectival icebergs..

 

You will be pleased to know that Dark Labyrinth is now doing the rounds of my year 12 students; Durrell will live on in a new generation of young Aussies but perhaps not quite with the same spectacular effect at Brett Whitley's Justine.

 

Cheers

 

David

 

From: Marc Piel <mailto:marc at marcpiel.fr>  

Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:12 AM

To: gifford at fdu.edu ; ilds at lists.uvic.ca 

Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe

 

Hi James,
I am always surprised to see "Surrealism" and "Communism" put together.
Sure that Communism was very attractive at the beginning to Surrealists, especially because of Breton who stayed a very long time, but most of the interesting Surrealists left very quickly. They quickly saw that it was "locking" them in instead of giving them freedom. The most important characteristic of Surrealism  was freedom in the largest sense of the word. Curiously the ones that stayed with communism were those that came from bourgeois backgrounds and families like Breton. The same is true today in France. The communist party still exists with about 1% of vote and all from bourgeois backgrounds. I'm not surprised that LD did not follow this movement.
B.R.
Marc

Le 27/06/11 22:32, James Gifford a ?crit : 

Hi Bruce,
 
I agreed not to post the article to any listservs, but I signed nothing 
regarding private individuals...
 
As for Ian's edition, it does contain substantial cuts and differs in 
many respects from Wickes' work, but both are selected and differ in 
different ways.  Alas!  I use both and often go back and forth between 
them.  That particular letter also appears transcribed by Henry Miller 
in his correspondence with Herbert Read, but without major differences 
to content.  You'll find (in general) more material from the early years 
in Wickes but with different cuts than we find in MacNiven.  Both, IMO, 
have some wrong dates, but that's inevitable when the letters are 
undated and have no envelopes -- I'd expect folks will be tweaking those 
here & there for many years as correlated materials   become available 
or are correlated.
 
I agree that "duration" is important!  Miller included it too.  It 
signals the breadth of matters Durrell sought to unify in the Heraldic 
concept, which I don't think can be reduced to just one topic.
 
For my particular point, I'd note that Durrell responds fairly overtly 
to Read's comments in his published speech (Durrell's copy came direct 
from Miller):
 
"Surrealism will only be truly successful in the degree to which it 
leads, not to social entertainment, but to revolutionary action" (Read)
   --> [Durrell says he doesn't believe] "that [the artist]
       wants to transform the world.  He wants to transform
       men" (Durrell)
 
"the Surrealist is naturally a Marxian Socialist, and generally claims 
that he is a more consistent Communist than many" (Read)
   --> "but I do not believe the rest of this stuff.  That
       the artist must be a socialist, for example" (Durrell)
 
"we must include all aspects of human experience, not excluding those 
elements of subconscious life which are revealed in dreams, day dreams, 
trances and hallucinations." (Read)
   --> "I firmly believe in the ideals of cementing reality
       with the dream, but I do not believe the rest of this
       stuff." (Durrell)
 
If you set the two texts side by side with Miller's letters as well, the 
origins and sequence of topics stands our clearly.
 
Only after those and other rebuttals of Read does Durrell finally get to 
"Listen, Miller, what I feel about it is this" and then his articulation 
of the Heraldic Universe (and then follows the only reference to Read in 
a rather unkind postscript, which would otherwise make no sense...). 
Notably, Miller's rebuttal to Read was very clearly a part of his 
anarchist politics, both in the letters (copied to LD) and his "An Open 
Letter to Surrealists Everywhere."  Two years later, Read finally made 
his own anarchist politics public knowledge, but not until then, which 
is why he was misunderstood as an authoritarian Marxist and Communist of 
Breton's mode at the time.
 
My personal sense is that this context signficantly revises how we see 
Durrell's descriptions of the Heraldic Universe in his other letters, 
his description of it in /Personal Landscape/, as well as some of his 
ambiguous aesthetic devices and essays such as "No Clue to Living." 
After going through those, I've not been able to read /The Revolt of 
Aphrodite/ the same way...  I think, for instance, of the burning of all 
contractual obligations, the emphasis on personal responsibility, and 
the peculiar references to Zeno (see Kropotkin's Britannica article on 
"Anarchism" for that).  There's also LD's self-reference to his poem 
"Freedom" near the end of the book too.
 
It's worth looking back to Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" as 
well, which relies significantly on Kropotkin, and which Read echoes in 
his first anarchist writings.
 
In any case, that's occupying my attention at the moment, along with the 
print history of the subsequent ties to other authors with kindred 
ideas.  I feel it oddly important to note I have no sympathy for the 
American "libertarian" movement hitting Fox News so much at present...
 
Best,
James
 
(BTW, the work in question from Read is rather hard to get...)
 
Read, Herbert. "Speech by Herbert Read at the Conway Hall." /The 
Surrealist Bulletin/ 4 (1936): 7-13.
 
There's related work in his edited book on Surrealism through Faber, 
which is easy to get.
 
 
On 27/06/11 10:55 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:

	James, I'm in the dark, again. Could you post your article appearing in
	/jml?/
	 
	//By the way, perhaps I've missed something again. On the topic of
	"Heraldic" in the Durrell-Miller letters, why does MacNiven leave out
	material that Wickes includes? E.g., in the letter of Fall or August
	1936, Wickes has Durrell writing, "I have discovered that the idea of
	duration is false." MacNiven does not include this important statement
	about "Heraldic."
	 
	 
	Bruce
	 
	 
	 
	On Jun 26, 2011, at 8:51 PM, James Gifford wrote:
	 

		I'm interested in where this leads!
		 
		I argued last year in /jml/ that the Henry Miller - Herbert Read
		correspondence casts a new light on Durrell's most famous use of the
		term Heraldic in his letters to Miller. The gist is that Miller was
		criticizing Read for his promotion of Communism in his written works
		following the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, and
		Miller was promoting his anarchist views contra Read's supposed
		Communism. Both authors were in contact with Emma Goldman, but Read
		only made his anarchist views public in 1938.
		 
		In any case, the point is that Durrell's 1936 letter discussing the
		Heraldic Universe is, in context (in my reckoning), a point by point
		response to Read in Miller's correspondence (which Miller had been
		copying to Durrell, and in which he quoted Durrell's letter to Read).
		It also means the letter is probably misdated in MacNiven and was likely
		a month or so later than the estimated August 1936.
		 
		In context, I contend the Heraldic notion carries a great deal of
		sympathy for Miller's anarchism and the anti-Marxist politics of the
		epistolary discussion. In that sense, the personal enacted in the
		Heraldic carries a very particular politics. "Personalism" seems to
		have followed in the 40s in London at least in part as a response to
		Durrell and largely as a development from Read's "Politics of the
		Unpolitical."
		 
		This sense of the Heraldic Universe runs contrary to much of what
		already exists in the critical works on Durrell, so I'm waiting to see
		if anything more pops up that pulls it in different directions -- Warton
		could be important...
		 
		Best,
		Jamie
		 
		On 26/06/11 12:34 PM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:

			1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. xi. 336 The pompous
			circumstances of which these heraldic narratives consisted, and the
			minute prolixity with which they were displayed.
			 
			Durrell was a student of poetry as well as a poet. Also he is known
			among Durrellians for his references to the Heraldic Universe --
			which has been linked to various schools of thought.
			 
			I'm wondering if Durrell might have come across the phrase "heraldic
			narratives" in Warton
			 
			and later began to think of his own narratives as heraldic, and the
			world that they evoke as his "heraldic universe."
			 
			Bill _______________________________________________ ILDS mailing
			list ILDS at lists.uvic.ca <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> <mailto:ILDS at lists.uvic.ca> 
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From allysonk at mweb.co.za  Wed Jun 29 07:47:59 2011
From: allysonk at mweb.co.za (allysonk at mweb.co.za)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:47:59 +0000
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F1527@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com><4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC><EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F14BA@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm><!&!AAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAG0hXlPTAjhPq+nMeiiXA2PCgAAAEAAAAK7dO6RjX+1Epx4jah183/4BAAAAAA==@mweb.co.za><EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F1527@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
Message-ID: <1723115449-1309358879-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-382363236-@b12.c19.bise7.blackberry>

What can I say the steel duck was a real Nancy. 
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

-----Original Message-----
From: "Truebner, Christine" <Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de>
Sender: ilds-bounces at lists.uvic.ca
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:27:18 
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Reply-To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

_______________________________________________
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From godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu  Wed Jun 29 09:48:31 2011
From: godshawl at ucmail.uc.edu (Godshalk, William (godshawl))
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:48:31 -0400
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <4E0A68EE.8060509@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>
	<4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>
	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>,
	<4E0A68EE.8060509@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C18E@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>

But can  one purchase a copy? Many universities provide for dissertation publication.

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 James Gifford [james.d.gifford at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:51 PM
To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals

I ought to have added to this thread, to my mind, the best published
work on Durrell's Heraldic Universe is Beatrice Skordili's doctoral
dissertation.

For obvious reasons, I can't post her diss. to the listerv, but it's
very fine and hopefully finds a home at a press in book form.

Best,
James
_______________________________________________
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From james.d.gifford at gmail.com  Wed Jun 29 10:13:37 2011
From: james.d.gifford at gmail.com (James Gifford)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:13:37 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
In-Reply-To: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C18E@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><4E08E8CA.9070407@gmail.com>	<4E08F254.4000101@marcpiel.fr>	<BC491F672F4B448FA11BA801D7668BF1@DenisePC>,
	<4E0A68EE.8060509@gmail.com>
	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C18E@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>
Message-ID: <4E0B5D41.9000805@gmail.com>

On 29/06/11 9:48 AM, Godshalk, William (godshawl) wrote:
> But can  one purchase a copy? Many universities provide for dissertation publication.

Yes!  And it's on ProQuest (Dissertation Abstracts International) for 
order or if your uni already has a subscription.

If more than 10 move in a year, I think she gets enough to buy a coffee...

-J

> 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 James Gifford [james.d.gifford at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:51 PM
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Subject: Re: [ilds] heraldic universe and other animals
>
> I ought to have added to this thread, to my mind, the best published
> work on Durrell's Heraldic Universe is Beatrice Skordili's doctoral
> dissertation.
>
> For obvious reasons, I can't post her diss. to the listerv, but it's
> very fine and hopefully finds a home at a press in book form.
>
> Best,
> James
> _______________________________________________
> 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 bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Wed Jun 29 12:27:10 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:27:10 -0700
Subject: [ilds] heraldic universe
In-Reply-To: <4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net>	<94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu>	<619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net>	<4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com>
	<34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net>
	<4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <B4111D2C-257B-41F4-BA8B-1A65CADD6A53@earthlink.net>

James,

Some commentary on your interesting commentary.  I'm focusing on Durrell's letter to Miller (ca. August 1936) and comparing Ian MacNiven's exact (I assume) copy of this important document (Durrell-Miller Letters:  1935-80 [1979]) with George Wickes's edited version (Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller:  A Private Correspondence [1963]).  In the D-M letters, this is Durrell's earliest explanation of his "Heraldic Universe."

First, I think a distinction should be made between what Durrell intuits and how he explains what he intuits.  Moreover, I would rely more on the intuitions than the explanations. The former may result in some great and powerful poetry, the latter to inflated, opaque, and contradictory prose.  Hence, the occasional need to be oracular, to speak in caps:  "IT [art] IS GOING TO BE PROPHECY, in the biblical sense."

Second, what I like about the August 1936 letter is that it rambles.  It's wild and insane; it's unguarded and reveals Durrell's personality.  This craziness apparently irritated Wickes no end because he substantially edited the letter, rearranged it, made it coherent, and by so doing took out much of Durrell's psychic energy.  Young Durrell (only twenty-four) excitedly jumps from topic to topic ("I'm too excited," he exclaims) and fully exposes a rather huge, albeit insecure, ego (another thing which Wickes edited and toned down).  When you're twenty-four you do feel you can conquer the world and then a knighthood might be in store:  "Whether I am going to be knighted tomorrow is either true or false NOW."  A tongue-in-cheek hypothetical, you say?  Not entirely, I think.  Later in life Durrell will joke about winning a Nobel Prize (MacNiven, Letters, p. 509).  Why discuss Durrell's egotism?  Because, I think, Durrell's "big personality" (his own term for the artist) gets in the way of his art, and this goes back to problems I have with his "explanations."  He wants to play the role of Biblical prophet, but at the same time he claims that art is a "pure selfless action."  The explanations don't work. 

Third, in this letter, art is identified as a state of "being."  Hence, "What the man is is important" or "[T]he greatest art is timeless.  What it is is the man" (my italics).  Are these statements examples of Heideggerean "being?"  Maybe ? in the sense that they seem to stress a state of non-reflective existence, a kind of "mindless" being that I take as an important aspect of Martin Heidegger's ontology.  Like Heidegger, Durrell is trying to get at what it means to be.  True, he's not making a philosophical argument.  No matter, he's expressing an intuition, an insight.  The paragraph where these statements appear, which Wickes deletes (perhaps because too abstruse), begins with a reference to Lao Tse and "selfless action."  (Heidegger and Lao Tse are not strange bedfellows; philosophers compare the two [see Michael E. Zimmerman, "Heidegger, Buddhism, and Deep Ecology," in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, 1993, p. 259]).  Durrell then follows by saying "the big lust of the artist [is] to be spatialised.  TO BE WITHOUT MEMORY."

Now, if you eliminate memory, you eliminate time as time-past.  You exist in the eternal now, timeless space, the nunc stans.  You also eliminate the self and become selfless, for how can you have a "self," an I per se I, without memory?  This I take as an intuition, a very Taoist idea, undoubtedly felt in his very bones.  Which is also expressed as a variant, "I believe firmly in the ideal of cementing reality with the dream" ? a paradox.  This way of looking at the non-reality of reality is similar to the famous scene in Prospero's Cell (1945, 1970), when young Durrell ponders, "What is causality?" and later answers the question by staring into the pool near the shrine of Saint Arsenius (pp. 15-16).  Another intuition.  Question causality and you question the basis of reality.  That beautiful scene of prose-poetry, mystifying in what it actually "says" or means, was largely invented; it was part fiction, according to Penelope Durrell Hope's daughter, if I'm not mistaken.  And that observation coincides with what Penelope herself said at the Durrell Celebration, Alexandria, 2007.  Penelope related that Nancy Myers, her mother, said Prospero's Cell was "all lies."  So, we have a dream of a dream.

I would argue that elusive state of being was Durrell's lifelong goal ? initially expressed as "heraldic," later identified as Taoist.  Towards the end of his life, Durrell writes a memoir, A Smile in the Mind's Eye (1980, 1982), and there he seems to return to that crucial experience at the shrine of Saint Arsenius, fictional or not, and says, "It [a book on Taoism] led me back like a plumbline to that remote and far off day by the blue Ionian Sea when I said to myself with astonishment, 'Why goodness me, I must be a Taoist'" (p. 49).

Fourth, I could be mistaken, but I think the origins of "heraldic" are deeper and more fundamental than anything in the social milieu.



Bruce




On Jun 28, 2011, at 11:37 AM, James Gifford wrote:

> Hi Bruce,
> 
>> If you go back to the letter of August 1936, it
>> seems clear to me that what Durrell is describing
>> is, in Heidegger's sense, a "state of being."  So,
>> he's quite right to say that "it is not a 'state
>> of mind,'"
> 
> Agreed!  Through I should have noted that Durrell also refers to the 
> Heraldic Universe earlier in his 1938 "Hamlet, Prince of China" (itself 
> a 1937 letter, again to Miller).
> 
> In those instances, I don't know that I'd call it a heideggerian "state 
> of being," though I must own up that I'm simply not well versed in 
> Heidegger.  I read some in tandem with Sartre and Patocka in 1999/2000, 
> and I haven't gone back much since...
> 
> Durrell has a novel repetition from the 1937 letter appearing in the 
> 1942 essay in /Personal Landscape/, and it caught my attention strongly 
> when I first noticed it: "the self, which you [Miller] used as a defence 
> against the novel terrors of this heraldic universe (as one might use 
> smoked glass to look at the sun)" (1937 letter, printed in 1938) later 
> becomes "'Art' then is only the smoked glass through which we can look 
> at the dangerous sun" (1942 essay).
> 
> That shuffle between "self" and "art" is fine, especially since he 
> describes the Heraldic Universe as the individual's "inner heraldic 
> territory" or personal property.  It seems very much to be something 
> pre-social to Durrell and solipsistic though not the same a selfhood 
> either.  IMO, that don't jive with Heidegger's "being," but I could very 
> well be mistaken (I think it'd have to go back to Heidegger's response 
> to Sartre's essay on Humanism, which I think is in the /Basic Writings/ 
> book...  Dimly back a dozen years here).
> 
> It's intriguing that Durrell's Heraldic realm isn't utopic, and art or 
> even selfhood stand as some kind of defensive tactic. Although at the 
> same time, it's something he's "creat[ing]... quite alone" and for which 
> he needs to lay a foundation (in that 1936 letter).  That suggests to me 
> that some kind of pre- and post-social Being (which allows for an 
> individual with reason and will not entirely determined by material 
> conditions) is involved in the equation, but that the Heraldic isn't the 
> autonomous Being-to-death and isn't identical with the self or art, even 
> though it may be contiguous.
> 
> Of course, Durrell could have changed his mind.  I'm just intrigued by 
> the contiguity between Durrell's discussion of Miller's anarchism and 
> Read's (ostensible) communism in his first articulation of the Heraldic 
> Universe.  That strikes me as a part of the literary history of the 
> period more broadly.  Paired up with that, I'm (in a purely Durrellian 
> orientation) terribly interested in the distinction Durrell sets up 
> between the poet, the poem, the reader, and the inner world, as if they 
> are all in contact yet are radically separate at times.  It would imply 
> that art, once made, exists independent of us and beyond our 
> determination even if it emerges from the artist (much like an 
> individual may emerge from society yet is not determined or defined by 
> the social, if one buys that idea).
> 
> James Clawson has a recent piece (I don't have a copy handy) that might 
> be useful for this:
> 
> Clawson, James M. "Between Physics and Metaphysics: Spenglerian 
> Bergsonism in Durrell's /Revolt of Aphrodite/." /Mosaic: A Journal for 
> the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature/ 43.4 (2010): 123-139.
> 
> I'll grab that today for read, if I can locate a copy, and report back 
> to the list.
> 
> Best,
> James
> 
> On 28/06/11 8:25 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>> James,
>> 
>> Thanks for the reference.  If you go back to the letter of August
>> 1936, it seems clear to me that what Durrell is describing is, in
>> Heidegger's sense, a "state of being."  So, he's quite right to say
>> that "it is not a 'state of mind,'" i.e., something that is rational,
>> cognitive, and subject to logical analysis.  In this context, the
>> mentioning of Lao
>>  Tse is entirely appropriate.  Durrell's tendencies
>> are mystical, probably never fully realized, and I would cite his
>> "Heraldic Universe" as evidence of such.
>> 
>> 
>> Bruce
>> 

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From holdsworth at rogers.com  Wed Jun 29 12:52:47 2011
From: holdsworth at rogers.com (holdsworth)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:52:47 -0400
Subject: [ilds] New Book The Ambassador's Camel: Undiplomatic Tales of
	Embassy Life
Message-ID: <000001cc3696$1ef41a10$5cdc4e30$@com>

I believe a number of ILDS members are interested in references to Durrell's
works by other writers. For this reason I would like to bring to their
attention my recently published book, The Ambassador's Camel: Undiplomatic
Tales of Embassy Life. This book was inspired in part by Durrell's Antrobus
stories and Pombal in the Quartet. One of the characters is in fact
discovered reading  Esprit de Corps in his embassy office. 

 

 
<http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/images/1450276636/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=
916520&s=books> The Ambassador's Camel: Undiplomatic Tales of Embassy Life

 

The book is a series of hilarious short stories satirizing the Canadian
diplomatic corps and indeed, embassy life anywhere in the world. The stories
are seen through the eyes of a senior Canadian diplomat, exiled as
ambassador to a tiny Asian country called Bharalya, when he falls out with
his new foreign minister. When he and his wife arrive, they are quite
unprepared for the bizarre experiences they will share and the stark fact
that for the embassy, there is simply nothing to do. They meet the king
who's addicted to collecting medals from foreign governments, a junior
diplomat who impersonates his own foreign minister, a visiting minister
caught by the press in a brothel, and a travel-averse diplomat reduced to
jelly by his one and only trip outside the capital. The ambassador's major
duties turn out to be attending flower competitions, Christmas parties,
national day celebrations, golf tournaments and events with rented camels,
where diplomatic conflicts almost turn into wars. And regularly erupting at
the most awkward moments is the dreaded Bharali amoeba, scourge of the
diplomatic intestinal tract. But all frivolity is set aside when the
government threatens to close down the embassy; the Foreign Service springs
into action, with surprising results. 

 

Lea Stogdale, another Canadian member of the Society, provided invaluable
editorial advice during the writing of this book. It is available via most
on-line booksellers such as Amazon.com.

 

 

 

 

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From Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de  Thu Jun 30 03:24:48 2011
From: Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de (Truebner, Christine)
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:24:48 +0200
Subject: [ilds] Could Durrell really swim "...as fast as a dolphin..."
In-Reply-To: <0BEF02A471383D429ADB5873552EF0957665167E28@mail2.directed.com>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu><4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu><619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net><4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com><34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net><4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com>
	<0BEF02A471383D429ADB5873552EF0957665167E28@mail2.directed.com>
Message-ID: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F15FB@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>

I guess he couldn't - as most British can't.
What the hell is ocarina? 


Christine Tr?bner

Betreff: [ilds] Could Durrell really swim "...as fast as a dolphin..."

So asserted the late Patrick Leigh Fermor in a 2003 interview in The Paris Review. But could this have been literal fact? Opinion on the list appears divided: Sumantra, Billy, Bruce, James, Jimmy, Panaiotis, Richard, Don, Charles, Julie, Jacob, Marc, David and Bill may be prepared to agree that Durrell was indeed a good swimmer, while Grove, Jim, Anna, Roy, Anne, Pamela, Samantha, Rui, Gulshan, Sharbani, Leena, Ilyas, Merrianne and Yael likely feel that some poetic license was invoked. Brewster, Lee, John, Tib, Anthony, Frederic, Paul, Ed, Rony, Joan, DrD, Peter, Julia, Dorothy, Allyson, Christine and Sandy are keeping an open mind.
 
Next topic: was Larry truly proficient on the ocarina? Bruce says: "Probably."

- Ken


This email may contain confidential and/or privileged information. It is intended only for the person or persons to whom it is addressed. Any unauthorized review, use, or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email or telephone and destroy all copies of the original message.


_______________________________________________
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From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Thu Jun 30 13:47:26 2011
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:47:26 -0700
Subject: [ilds] New Book The Ambassador's Camel: Undiplomatic Tales of
	Embassy Life
In-Reply-To: <000001cc3696$1ef41a10$5cdc4e30$@com>
References: <000001cc3696$1ef41a10$5cdc4e30$@com>
Message-ID: <EB8BB2C4-43F1-408C-B581-38F32126D3E7@earthlink.net>

All,

I'm sure David Holdworth's The Ambassador's Camel is well done and very amusing.  He knows both Antrobus and the Canadian diplomatic corps.  I don't hesitate to recommend the book sight unseen.


Bruce



On Jun 29, 2011, at 12:52 PM, holdsworth wrote:

> I believe a number of ILDS members are interested in references to Durrell?s works by other writers. For this reason I would like to bring to their attention my recently published book, The Ambassador?s Camel: Undiplomatic Tales of Embassy Life. This book was inspired in part by Durrell?s Antrobus stories and Pombal in the Quartet. One of the characters is in fact discovered reading  Esprit de Corps in his embassy office.
>  
> <image003.jpg>
>  
> The book is a series of hilarious short stories satirizing the Canadian diplomatic corps and indeed, embassy life anywhere in the world. The stories are seen through the eyes of a senior Canadian diplomat, exiled as ambassador to a tiny Asian country called Bharalya, when he falls out with his new foreign minister. When he and his wife arrive, they are quite unprepared for the bizarre experiences they will share and the stark fact that for the embassy, there is simply nothing to do. They meet the king who's addicted to collecting medals from foreign governments, a junior diplomat who impersonates his own foreign minister, a visiting minister caught by the press in a brothel, and a travel-averse diplomat reduced to jelly by his one and only trip outside the capital. The ambassador?s major duties turn out to be attending flower competitions, Christmas parties, national day celebrations, golf tournaments and events with rented camels, where diplomatic conflicts almost turn into wars. And regularly erupting at the most awkward moments is the dreaded Bharali amoeba, scourge of the diplomatic intestinal tract. But all frivolity is set aside when the government threatens to close down the embassy; the Foreign Service springs into action, with surprising results.
>  
> Lea Stogdale, another Canadian member of the Society, provided invaluable editorial advice during the writing of this book. It is available via most on-line booksellers such as Amazon.com.
>  
>  
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From dtart at bigpond.net.au  Thu Jun 30 15:28:39 2011
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 08:28:39 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Could Durrell really swim "...as fast as a dolphin..."
In-Reply-To: <EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F15FB@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
References: <94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C185@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu><4E07FE3C.70105@gmail.com>,
	<BCC7F158-0470-45F1-9BAD-0A944FDF7B5D@earthlink.net><94B18F18BF859846A11A82A6166B6C4201F3E219C189@UCMAILBE2.ad.uc.edu><619C779F-38D0-461A-826C-51FD27C0573B@earthlink.net><4E09E9E5.9060404@gmail.com><34668D3C-6D46-4E7A-AAEC-B749E312DAF4@earthlink.net><4E0A1F66.4090003@gmail.com><0BEF02A471383D429ADB5873552EF0957665167E28@mail2.directed.com>
	<EA1D10B9A1BBC145A81B1EB4370BE8E29F15FB@CITYWMX1042.city.net.ffm>
Message-ID: <F8ED8C2D82784193A3B4A4A2DA4CFF2F@DenisePC>

well, David says this: Durrell's books, especially the island ones, show 
that he enjoyed swimming, bracing dips in the April Rhodian waters, possibly 
to clear the head of the previous day's wine - I have found similar 
therapeutic benefits from shooting a few muscular waves off Coogee Beach (2 
down from Bondi) on a Sunday morning - and that he claims to have chosen the 
Vampire House because the Vidourle River was good to swim in, but whether or 
not he was a good swimmer is another matter; could he do 20 laps of a 50 
metre pool in half an hour as I used to be able to do?

This I do not know.....'as fast as a dolphin'....hyperbole for sure and no 
relation to an oxymoron or ocarina - the later being a ancient flute like 
instrument who windy sounds probably flowed over the Grecian landscape in 
the days of shepherds and men in dresses and sandals

David Whitewine

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Truebner, Christine" <Christine.Truebner at stadt-frankfurt.de>
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 8:24 PM
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Subject: Re: [ilds] Could Durrell really swim "...as fast as a dolphin..."

> I guess he couldn't - as most British can't.
> What the hell is ocarina?
>
>
> Christine Tr?bner
>
> Betreff: [ilds] Could Durrell really swim "...as fast as a dolphin..."
>
> So asserted the late Patrick Leigh Fermor in a 2003 interview in The Paris 
> Review. But could this have been literal fact? Opinion on the list appears 
> divided: Sumantra, Billy, Bruce, James, Jimmy, Panaiotis, Richard, Don, 
> Charles, Julie, Jacob, Marc, David and Bill may be prepared to agree that 
> Durrell was indeed a good swimmer, while Grove, Jim, Anna, Roy, Anne, 
> Pamela, Samantha, Rui, Gulshan, Sharbani, Leena, Ilyas, Merrianne and Yael 
> likely feel that some poetic license was invoked. Brewster, Lee, John, 
> Tib, Anthony, Frederic, Paul, Ed, Rony, Joan, DrD, Peter, Julia, Dorothy, 
> Allyson, Christine and Sandy are keeping an open mind.
>
> Next topic: was Larry truly proficient on the ocarina? Bruce says: 
> "Probably."
>
> - Ken
>
>
> This email may contain confidential and/or privileged information. It is 
> intended only for the person or persons to whom it is addressed. Any 
> unauthorized review, use, or distribution is prohibited. If you are not 
> the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email or 
> telephone and destroy all copies of the original message.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 dtart at bigpond.net.au  Thu Jun 30 22:33:35 2011
From: dtart at bigpond.net.au (Denise Tart & David Green)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 15:33:35 +1000
Subject: [ilds] Durrell's fitness regime
Message-ID: <5227F4146FA64D8DBE5519F02B831EDB@DenisePC>

seriously though, as a follow up to my recent post, did LGD have any kind of fitness regime??? some of you I know knew him in later life when emphysema, old age and heavy drinking had got the better of him, so he may have been past swimming like a dolphin by then. Bowker's biography suggests that, aside from swimming, he liked walking and yoga and meditation but how consistent all this was is another matter. Compared to his brother Gerry, Larry certainly remained relatively 'trim'.

David

Denise Tart
designing ceremonies
Civil Celebrant - A8807
16 William Street
Marrickville NSW 2204
+ 61 2 9564 6165
0412 707 625
www.denisetart.com.au
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