[ilds] Gifford's "Late Modernism's Migrations and peasants"

[Bruce Redwine]

David and James raise interesting questions about Durrell the man.  What kind of poet was he?  He was a “New Romantic," as someone said, so that defines him in part.  He liked nature in a Mediterranean context:  sea, islands, and geography delimited by the olive.  Since he calls himself a Taoist, he has to love nature in the rough.  Mountains fit in here.  Yet he wasn’t the rock climbing type, the man who could rough it in the way Patrick Leigh Fermor could.  Still, Durrell wasn’t an urban guy, like Eliot and Pound.  High culture and refinement.  Instead, he chose to live in the rural areas of Provence, perhaps initially for economic reasons, but I can’t imagine him being happy for long in a big city like Paris or London, where he’d make occasional forays.  Remember that Darley retreats to a remote island in the Cyclades.  Durrell liked the common man, David’s peasants, and their basic but joyous way of life.  Then there would be times he’d disappear in his VW van, and who knows where he’d go.  All this sounds very Wordsworthian, to some extent.  But remember, old LD didn’t much like Wordsworth and his poetry.  Durrell is very complex.  Like Darley, he needs to “heal himself.”

Bruce




  was he 
> On May 1, 2015, at 4:33 PM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> 
> I doubt the eco poets will discover Durrell, but what stuck me when I began reading Larry's poetry years was its reverence for nature. in fact it reverberates throughout his writing. And of course we note that Durrell - and Miller later on - preferred to live in the country as, as you say, an anti Marxist proletarian. Or perhaps I could put up the idea of 'peasant libertine'. I once discovered that Larry's daily wine consumption was about the same as the rustic average for the men of Provence. I am about to head over there to check this out. We are staying in Sommierres for a week to do some Durrell tourism. For copyright reasons the program I wrote is not available on line. You could check out the ABC Radio National site - past programs. It may still be up on the summer features. I have copies anyway if'n you want one. It will cost you a beer when we meet, hopefully on Crete next year.
> 
> Now I have peasants to unearth. And yes, peasants have a role in the Heraldic Universe as you say, they represent the past into the present, they are outside the capitalist norm. they measure distance by the number of cigarettes. they believe in evil sprits in the form of eels. The peasants of Homer's time are still catching octopus today in Durrell's world (and they are).
> Funny that Larry got so pissed off when his brother Leslie married one.
> 
> 
> 
> David Green
> 16 William Street
> Marrickville NSW 2204
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "James Gifford" <james.d.gifford at gmail.com>
> Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2015 9:13 AM
> To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] Gifford's "Late Modernism's Migrations and peasants"
> 
>> On 2015-05-01 3:41 PM, Denise Tart & David Green wrote:
>>> You may recall that we ended the Durrell Miller program with that final
>>> piece and the 'so that....'. The producer loved it. Allusion to Pound or
>>> not, it is a nice link to a potential follow up book.
>> 
>> Is that program still available online anywhere?
>> 
>>> he had little time for communism
>> 
>> That runs deep and long in Durrell's works.  The anti-communist stance is firm right from the start, even while his entire generation was flocking in the opposite direction.  The sniping is already present in /Panic Spring/ (1937, written mainly in 1936).
>> 
>>> Must get around to my examination of Durrell
>>> and peasants. He dressed like them, ate like them, drank like them and
>>> said writing was like chopping wood. He was short and stocky like them
>>> too. His fondness for flannelette shirt was have seen him labeled as a
>>> bogan in my country. Perhaps you Americans would say Redneck. Peasant
>>> are also often anti authoritarian.
>> 
>> The anti-Marxist proletarian is a fascinating concept...  The peasants are also frequently outside of modern notions of time and capital in Durrell too.  How do they measure time?  How do they think of value?  To be a rural man in a modern world sets Durrell (and Miller) so much apart from their generation.
>> 
>> I'm still waiting for ecopoetics to discover Durrell...
>> 
>> Best,
>> James
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