[ilds] Query re 'Tunc'

[James Gifford]

> /Naos/ is very interesting.  It is a technical term used
> frequently in archaeology, particularly Egyptology and Mediterranean
> archaeology, and has a specific referent.  It refers to the innermost
> part of a temple, the /sanctum sanctorum,/ the holy of holies.
>
> Bruce

Which is, of course, where that book series peaks in London...  St. 
Paul's, with a "magic circle" and Fall (LD's capitalization).  /Nunquam/ 
is replete with references to corporatism and faith, with the 
distinction between the two frequently elided.  Even before the closing 
scene in St. Paul's, Durrell hints at the magic circle element and money:

"It [St. Paul's] was built by a great artificer in conscious pursuit of 
mathematical principles; it was not a dream of godhead full of poetry or 
frozen music or what not. No, it belonged to its age; it was a fitting 
symbol for a mercantile country in an age dedicated to reason, hovering 
on the edge of the Encyclopaedia and the Industrial Revolution. It is no 
accident that the business part of the city, the moneyed part, grouped 
itself round this great symbol of the stock and share. Nor is it an 
accident that it should in some ways feel strongly reminiscent of a 
railway station—say Euston or Waterloo. It stands as a symbol for the 
succeeding ages which produced both." (Nunquam 214)

Faith and funds are manifestations of the same impulse, in effect, and 
it circles around Durrell's preoccupation with urbanization and the 
conditions of modernity, I would think.  The faith-funds link comes up 
again and again across /Nunquam/:

"My dear chap, in this, our new Middle Ages, investment has become the 
motor response of all religion; not in God as he was known (he hasn’t 
changed), not in the psychic Fund of Funds which pretends to chime with 
the ways of universal nature. (That too is balls by the way.) No, for us 
money is sperm, and the investment of it the ritual of propitiation." 
(Nunquam 94)

To this Durrell adds the chain's link:

“The pattern is only repeating itself; we have placed an unobtrusive 
hand on much more than the Stock Exchange. Most of the Indian holy 
places like the Taj and Buddha’s tree and so on are in our hands; the 
Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Grant’s Tomb." 
(Nunquam 94)

The last item is striking, taking in as it does the nation as a 
continuation of the religious impulse.  The same idea repeats several 
times across Nunquam in particular.

Cheers,
James