[ilds] Roessel and Vincent on Durrell and Gourna

[Bruce Redwine]

James,

We agree on all these points.  Well said.  Durrell’s brilliant choice of a “little mud brick” deserves further comment.  You’ve previously mentioned Beatrice Skordili’s analysis of small items such as the “green fingerstall” (her article, regrettably, I’ve not read and is hard to get).  Michael Haag has also commented on the “green fingerstall” in previous exchanges on the ILDS listserv.  I’d call attention to the French expression nostalgie de la boue (‘yearning for mud’; perhaps, ‘attraction to the crude’).  Henry Miller certainly felt this throughout his work, and Durrell’s respect for him seems partly based on this “yearning,” a Rabelaisian appreciation for dirt and all its connotations.  So I don’t find it surprising that Durrell would turn to a mud brick to round off his essay on a return to Egypt.  Mud is the primary building material for the people of ancient and modern Egypt.  Egyptian kings built their monuments in stone, but they lived in mud palaces (which is ignored and one of the many inaccuracies of Ridley Scott’s Exodus).  I keep on thinking of the mud of the Nile and Melissa, my favorite, who, at the beginning of Justine, “lies buried deep as any mummy in the shallow tepid sand of the black estuary.”

Bruce





> On Mar 18, 2016, at 11:05 AM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Bruce,
> 
> On 2016-03-18 9:21 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
>> 1.  Homosexuality is a big topic in Durrell’s oeuvre, so I think it
>> relevant that the authors chose to slip in a reference to Austen
>> Harrison’s “tendencies.”
> 
> It is indeed in his books from 1935 onward.
> 
>> 2.  At the end of their essay, Roessel and Vincent refer to Durrell’s
>> 1978 piece in the /NYT,/ “Egyptian Moments,” renamed “With Durrell in
>> Egypt” in Gifford’s edition of /From the Elephant’s Back /(2015).
> 
> It appears variously as "Egyptian Moments, "With Durrell in Egypt," and as "Return to Egypt."  I don't have my files on this machine, so I can't actually check why...  There are two ts. states with minor variations at U Paris Ouest and U Victoria (those both use "Return to Egypt" if I remember correctly).
> 
> What is perhaps more interesting is that the piece, whichever title we use, gives prominence to Fathy's "little brick" while the companion piece "Alexandria Revisited" makes no such gesture only four months later.  I'd suggest Durrell has a very different set of allusive references to contemporary politics in the former and the latter, aimed as they are at American and British readerships, respectively.
> 
> I'd agree with you that the object is typical of Durrell (a fingerstall, dispossessed wedding rings, a Victorian penny, a green stone against the evil eye, and so forth).  However, why the humble mud brick and not something exotic for the American audience?  Why not something to set their romantic imaginations adrift?
> 
> Indeed, the dispossessed object is "a classic Durrellian touch," but it's also a loaded one and one about which he seemed to be very deliberate.  Superficially, it's an Egyptian alternative independent of the Soviet (infrastructure) and American (media) influences gestured to across the piece.  You know: precisely the kind of thing that could never be explicitly spoken of in this sort of travel piece.
> 
>> 3.  Durrell’s knowledge of Upper Egypt seems faulty or indifferent.
>> (Which is not surprising considering that he told Miller he “loathed”
>> Egypt.)  So he can get his geography wrong when he describes Darley
>> spending two years as a school teacher somewhere beyond the Delta.
> 
> I'd add that he also loathed England...  And Argentina, and the former Yugoslavia, and...  He seems to have found things to love in all of those as well -- the "Family Portrait" piece about Yugoslavia in /Elephant/ is a bit of a surprise in that respect, is it not?
> 
> All best,
> James
> 

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