[ilds] Angst

[Bruce Redwine]

Richard,

Interesting.  You describe a degree of alienation which I was unaware of.  I guess you’re saying that Durrell had no home and was never “at home,” anywhere, even though he lived in Provence for over thirty years.  For all his gregariousness and conviviality, he had his work and little else:  “For those of use who stand upon the margins of the world, as yet unsolicited by any God, the only truth is that work itself is Love.”  Mountolive’s father says that, and he living in a remote monastery in India translating Pali texts!  So we return to Durrell’s India.

Bruce 





> On Nov 19, 2015, at 1:42 PM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:
> 
> Angst: no, that isn't what I meant.  There never was a "home" for Durrell - anywhere, after the Indian childhood, and, as we know, what he told us about that was partly fabricated and partly mistaken - but who does not mis-remember childhood and who does not imagine a childhood that was more golden than it really was. By "angst" I meant literally that LD did not like to return to places where he had been happy. How many of us have returned and found the place a disappointment, or one where old ghosts are less than welcoming? So it was a mixture of (a) knowing that he COULDN't go "home" (because if it had ever existed, it could no longer offer him the succour he needed all his life, and (b) simply the fear of disillusion, which, as I said, he certainly felt not merely on his return to Kalami (on which he wrote, including the essay "Oil for the Saint" but on several other subsequent visits, some (but not all) of which are recorded by MacNiven. (The unrecorded involved a few weeks,on 2 occasions,  on the dry, while he was working hard on the QUINTET, on both of which I have personal evidence from people he met and who are still living in Corfu)
> BTW, has anyone seen the DVD film "The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway" (BDV 018 made by a company named 'Beckmann', 80 minutes)) which has evocative shots of Kurseong. And there's another, a BBC series, 3x60 minute programmes, "Indian Hill Railways" which includes the Darjeeling line and 2 others (EIE10718)
> And I repeat my reference to Ravi Nambiar's book - after we met him in San Diego, Jay Brigham went to stay with him in Kerala and I think this book is the fruit of Ravi's long contemplation of LD's "India" and was boosted by his conversations with Jay. 
> RP

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