[ilds] Tunc 1.1

[James Gifford]

Hi Bruce,

> 1.  More should be done with Durrell and the
> influence of musical composition.

There have been a few scholarly pieces.  I think Zivley's is the most 
recent though:

Zivley, Sherry Lutz. “A Quartet That Is a Quartet: Lawrence Durrell’s 
Alexandria Quartet.” /Literature and Music/. Ed. Michael J. Meyer. 
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. 135–44.

A trouble with overlapping music & literature, especially in relation to 
form, is the often allegorical and metaphorical nature of the 
comparisons.  As anyone with the British Library's delightful Durrell CD 
knows, he had a good ear and his songs were charming, and musical 
references run across the oeuvre from Walsh's songs in /Pied Piper/, the 
chapter on music in /Panic Spring/, and so on.  Yet I can't bring myself 
to discuss literature as "fugal" or "contrapuntal" as others have...

I suppose I don't know where we'd move beyond a metaphorical use of 
musical references or gestures.  The fermata over Claude, for instance, 
contains multiple sounds, so it's a symbol of her continuation but not 
an actual fermata (which would sustain just one vowel).  That said, what 
it leads you to strikes me as quite genuine:

> it also seems to me that “multiple”
> interpretations is a fundamental rule of Durrell’s
> art, one which he actively promotes, as in “There
> seems to be a hundred reasons to account for every
> act,” cited below.  So, from the very beginning, we
> have /Tunc/, the title, turned into an obscene
> anagram.  So, early on, we have Athenian “honey
> cakes in the shape of female pudenda” (p. 35; 2.1).
>  The flip side to the sacred is the profane

I think that's exactly right, especially the sacred and profane (but 
also very much the profane and the sacred...).  However, as with musical 
"meaning," a multiplicity of potential interpretations isn't the same 
thing as a meaning.  It's an opening for the reader but not a "meaning" 
in the text.  When Durrell's after an effect, I think we get this -- 
rather than a specific interpretation or even a deliberately Keatsian 
negative capability (so very apt for this particular novel series!), we 
have a tension between possibilities, and that tension is the meaning 
itself.

For instance, when Durrell talks about mixing his words hot & cold 
("mathematical strawberry" or "lax unmanning Eastbourne" or "ribonuclear 
cid"), are we to derive specific meanings?  Metaphorical fusion leaves 
inevitable ambiguity and reader-imminent development of meanings.

All best,
James