[ilds] Tunc 1.1

[Bruce Redwine]

James, right.  “Meaning” is not the same as “interpretation,” and Durrell’s diction sometimes doesn’t make much sense, as you cite below.  I think Durrell hates being fixed and tied down to the very idea of “meaning.”  So, he’s prone to carelessness and too taken with his own gift for metaphor.  Too much free association.  He needs a filter at times.  Nevertheless, the overriding metaphor in Tunc is Felix’s “little dactyl” (pp.17, 19; 1.2), the recording machine whose nickname plays on a metrical foot (one long stressed syllable, followed by two short unstressed) and the literal Greek meaning of a “finger”—the linguistic paradox obviously appealing to Durrell and the theme of unknowingness.  So we have that long section of Felix trying to unravel the voices on a tape.  He ends up confused:  “I don’t know, I shall never know” (p. 291; 5.3).  The novel is quite dense with unknowingness.  Hence, the allusion to the unknown medieval poet known as “The Cloud of Unknowing,” whom Durrell alludes to as “a cloud of unknowing” (p. 155; 3.2).  I doubt that Durrell ever read the “Cloud Poet” (although he could have in his studies), rather he probably picked him or her up in some book on mysticism, maybe Evelyn Underhill’s, which is a classic.

Bruce





> On May 15, 2016, at 2:35 PM, James Gifford <james.d.gifford at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 

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