[ilds] Roessel and Vincent on Durrell and Gourna

[Bruce Redwine]

David Roessel and Gerald L. Vincent’s “A Tale of Two Villages:  Lawrence Durrell, Hassan Fathy, and the Story of Gourna,” Deus Loci, NS 14 (2014-2015):  85-103.

A couple of questions and a comment about this informative article.

1.  As the authors indicate, the village of Gourna is in Upper Egypt, on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor on the east bank.  I seriously doubt that Durrell was ever aware of the village during his stay in Egypt.  In fact, Durrell’s knowledge of Upper Egypt seems to have been very limited.  Chamberlin in his Chronology mentions Durrell undertaking a “brief holiday” to Aswan in 1943.  I can find no other mention of travels up the Nile during LD’s first stay in Egypt.  Is this correct?

2.  Austen Harrison was Durrell’s close friend, to whom he dedicated Bitter Lemons.  The authors indicate Harrison shared Scobie’s “tendencies”:  “Durrell surely knew that Harrison had them [“tendencies”].”  Have I missed something?  Harrison was a homosexual?

3.  The authors conclude by mildly criticizing Durrell for not mentioning that Hassan Fathy’s village and book inspired his future work.  This is not plagiarism, as has been previously discussed, but it is typical of Durrell’s method—he frequently conceals his sources, either deliberately or not.   In 1978, Durrell publishes a travel piece on his return to Egypt (NYT’s “Egyptian Moments,” see Gifford’s Elephant’s Back, pp. 359-78).  Roessel and Vincent believe that Durrell should have “inform[ed]” his “reader” of indebtedness to Fathy (p.94).  I agree.

Bruce
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