[ilds] Alcoholism

[James Gifford]

Hello all,

In haste before a book launch tonight...

I've always struggled a bit over the mythical elements of the Quartet. 
In one sense, gesturing to the Fisher King goes to the roots of 
Durrell's kinship with the High Modernists, and I see a lot of struggle 
with Eliot's influence across the books of the Quartet (discussed on 
this listserv in the past as well).  Carol Peirce probably did more to 
elucidate that side of things than anyone else.

At the same time, we can't forget that "sex" also means gender, and the 
books had the "bisexual love" modified to "modern love" late in the 
game, and the continuation of the epigram from Freud in his letters to 
Fliess for /Justine/ reads "As for bisexuality, I'm sure you are right."

Wounded in one's sex nicely carries across all those potential meanings, 
linking the Fisher King to bisexuality, to physical traumas -- all are 
key to the Quartet, and Durrell seems to have learned his lesson from 
the "newly god-like" Keats emerging from his shower: Negative Capability 
(in the real Keats' sense of the term).

Best,
James

On 2015-11-28 11:28 AM, david wilde wrote:
> I understood/understand this remark refers to the well-known story of
> Parsifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_von_Eschenbach>,
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsifal).  David Wilde
>
> Amazon
> http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003FP9HTC