[ilds] Query re 'Tunc'

[Kennedy Gammage]

Bravo James – that’s why the listserv is so vital to our ongoing
discussions! What would be the Twitter equivalent of your post?

“St. Paul’s = Paddington. £ = jizm. #Hippo!”

Cheers - Ken



On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 11:57 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
wrote:

> /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
>
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