PROSPERO`S CELL LAWRENCE DURRELL AND THE

PROSPERO'S CELL
LAWRENCE DURRELL
AND THE
QUEST FOR ARTISTIC CONSCIOUSNESS
by
JAMES ALBERT BRIGHAM
B.A., University o f B r i t i s h Columbia, I 9 6 3
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OP
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We accept t h i s thesis as conforming to the
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THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
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The U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i t i s h
V a n c o u v e r 8, C a n a d a
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thesis
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It i s understood
thesis
Columbia
1965
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for scholarly
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ABSTRACT
The purpose o f t h i s t h e s i s i s t o c o n s i d e r t h e movement toward and
achievement
of a r t i s t i c consciousness
on t h e p a r t o f Lawrence D u r r e l l .
The emphasis i s on the e a r l y work, p a r t i c u l a r l y P r o s p e r o ' s C e l l ,
I s l e " , R e f l e c t i o n s On A M a r i n e Venus, D u r r e l l * s p u b l i s h e d
w i t h Henry M i l l e r , and " C i t i e s , P l a i n s and P e o p l e " .
"Prospero's
correspondence
The 1937-1946 p e r i o d
was chosen because i t was t h e p e r i o d w h i c h D u r r e l l s p e n t i n Greece i n a
v o l u n t a r y e x i l e from England.
A d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e poems and a r t i c l e s f r o m
t h i s p e r i o d and o f t h e l a t e r A l e x a n d r i a Q u a r t e t , w h i c h t r a c e s t h e growth
toward a r t i s t i c consciousness
w i t h i n the l i m i t s o f the
i n a more o b j e c t i v e way, was n o t p o s s i b l e
thesis.
C h a p t e r I i s a c o n c i s e commentary on " C i t i e s , P l a i n s and P e o p l e " ,
w h i c h the c o n t r o l l i n g s y m b o l , P r o s p e r o , i s seen t o be a ' p e r s o n a
Durrell.
D u r i n g t h e c o u r s e o f the c h a p t e r ,
in
for
1
' a r t i s t i c consciousness*
is
d e f i n e d as * s e n s i t i v i t y t o t h e happenings o f t h e e x t e r n a l w o r l d c o u p l e d
w i t h i n t e n s e i n t r o s p e c t i o n and s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n w h i c h a l l o w t h e a r t i s t
t a k e f r o m h i s i n n e r b e i n g the power embodied i n h i s e l u s i v e
'furies'
in
o r d e r t o mold t h e e v e n t s o f h i s environment i n t o what i s c a l l e d ' a r t , '
means o f communication w i t h h i s r e a d e r . *
to
the
The method used i s one o f b r i e f
o b s e r v a t i o n s on the meaning o f s p e c i f i c l i n e s i n t h e poem, a copy o f w h i c h
has been i n c l u d e d as an a p p e n d i x .
Chapter I I d i s c u s s e s
i n "Prospero's I s l e " ,
the chapter,
an a r t i c l e p u b l i s h e d i n 1939.
discusses
i n The Tempest,
seen
The f i r s t p a r t o f
" ' T h i s Rough M a g i c ' " , i s concerned w i t h P r o s p e r o ' s
of a r t i s t i c consciousness
Innocence",
t h e i m p o r t a n c e o f P r o s p e r o f o r D u r r e l l as
achievement
and p a r t t w o , "The P a r a d i s e o f
the meaning o f t h a t achievement
for Durrell.
iii
Chapter III, "The Quality of Silence", concentrates on Prospero's Cell
and Reflections On A Marine Venus,
Part one, "'The Heraldic Universe"*, i s
a discussion of the influence of the Greek landscape on Durrell,
corroborated by references to Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi,
"'To Move Towards Creation'", sums up the growth toward a r t i s t i c
consciousness and ends with Durrell's leaving the islands to return to
Europe and the larger context of the world.
In general, the thesis shows the importance of a r t i s t i c consciousness
for Durrell, discussing his concern with the dualism which he saw typified
in and initiated by Descartes, and showing the solution which he found i n
isolation and introspection i n the Greek islands between 1937 and 1946,
iv
TABLE OP CONTENTS
Chapter
I.
II.
Page
COMMENTARY ON "CITIES, PLAINS AND PEOPLE"
"PROSPERO'S ISLE"
1
25
•This Rough Magic (26)
1
The Paradise o f Innocence (37)
III.
THE QUALITY OF SILENCE
47
•The Heraldic Universe' (48)
•To Move Towards Creation' (68)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
79
APPENDIX
83
1
CHAPTER I
COMMENTART ON "CITIES, PLAINS AND PEOPLE"
2
This thesis i s concerned with the growth toward a r t i s t i c consciousness
as seen i n the works and letters of Lawrence Durrell during the period
1937-1946. That growth i s chronicled i n Prospero's Cell, Reflections On A
Marine Venus, Durrell's letters to Henry Miller, and "Cities, Plains and
People", the t i t l e poem of a volume of verse published i n 1946,
Chapter
One comments on that poem.
•Once i n idleness was my beginning.*
This f i r s t line foreshadows the
introspection and reflection which, as the poem progresses, becomes
necessary for the development of a r t i s t i c consciousness.
Night was to the mortal boy
Innocent of surface like a new mind
Upon whose edges once he walked
In idleness, i n perfect idleness.
(5)
As a child, Durrell's mind was a 'new mind.' Like the night, i t was
'innocent of surface,' and he walked upon i t s edges because he had no need
to understand i t s workings.
Saw the Himalayas like lambs there
S t i r their huge joints and lay
Against his innocent thigh a stony thigh.
(10)
The child and nature have an affinity, especially i n line 10, i n which the
mountains are personified as having 'a stony thigh.'
Like the Himalayas,
the child i s 'innocent.'
On draughty corridors to Lhasa
Was my f i r s t school
In faces l i f t e d from saddles to the snows.
The child i s , at this point, starting on the road of the a r t i s t .
He i s the
passive observer of the people i n caravans stopping 'to drink Tibet,• to
become intoxicated by the mystery and religious awe carried by the winds
blowing from the mountains.
3
In t h i s world, between the r i g i d i t y of the B r i t i s h c o l o n i a l system and
the s p i r i t u a l i t y o f Tibet, ' l i t t l e known o f better then or worse' (27)
indicates the lack o f any i n t e r n a l chaos on the part of the boy.
There i s ,
instead, a unity of s p i r i t which D u r r e l l loses when he returns to England
and which he spends a great deal of time attempting to regain.
Indeed,
t h i s unity i s the same as a r t i s t i c consciousness, f o r i t allows the a r t i s t
to stop worrying about the condition o f h i s inner being and concentrate on
the external world from which he takes h i s material.
To a l l who turn and s t a r t descending
The long sad r i v e r o f t h e i r growth:
The tidebound, t e p i d , causeless
Continuum o f t e r r o r s i n the s p i r i t ,
I give you here unending
(35)
In idleness an innocent beginning
U n t i l your pain become a l i t e r a t u r e .
(40)
In these l i n e s D u r r e l l dedicates his poem to those who, l i k e himself,
have l e f t the innocent world o f the c h i l d and come to grips with the
'causeless . . . t e r r o r s i n the s p i r i t . '
From the place of idleness the
'soft klaxons [are] crying / Down to the plains and s e t t l e d c i t i e s ' (24-25)
i n order to point out to the i n d i v i d u a l who i s not psychologically u n i f i e d
the needlessness o f h i s personal i n t e r n a l fears.
Those who went forward
Into t h i s honeycomb o f silence often
Gained the whole world: but often l o s t each other.
Like the characters i n Porster's Passage To India who go into the
•honeycomb o f s i l e n c e ' which i s the Marabar Gave, 'those who went forward'
i n the poem have come to a r e a l i z a t i o n o f t h e i r true natures.
The
necessary r e t r e a t i n t o introspection which y i e l d s a r t i s t i c consciousness
' f o r the writer may alienate those around him, and i t was i n the Greek
islands that D u r r e l l achieved unity and at the same time l o s t two wives.
4
At this point i n his l i f e , however, Durrell did not go to Tibet but
returned with his parents to England:
But he for whom steel and running water
Were roads, went westward only
To the prudish c l i f f s and the sad green home
Of Pudding Island o'er the Victorian foam.
(50)
This section of the poem i s consistent with Durrell's attitude to England
in The Black Book, i n which he sees the situation i n England as stoltifying
and calls i t 'the English death.'
Line 51 i s an adequate example: the
c l i f f s are 'prudish' and the home, while 'green,' i s 'sad.*
Line 52, 'Of
Pudding Island o'er the Victorian foam,* needs no comment.
Here a l l as poets were pariahs.
Some sharpened l i t t l e f o l l i e s into hooks
To pick upon the language and survive.
(55)
Durrell tempered this attitude to England's effect on her writers i n an
interview i n The Paris Review:
•my heroes of my generation, the Lawrences,
the Norman Douglases, the Aldingtons, the
ELiots, the Graveses, their ambition was
always to be a European. It didn't qualify
their Englishness i n any way, but i t was
recognized that a touch of European f i r e
was necessary, as i t were, to ignite the
sort of dull sodden mass that one became
living i n an unrestricted suburban way.'^
It i s against the 'dull sodden mass' that Durrell i s striking out when he
describes
the business witches i n their bowlers,
The blackened Samsons of the green estate,
The earls from their cockney-boxes calling £.]
And {he] knew before i t was too late, London
Could only be a promise-giving kingdom.
(65)
Julian Mitchell and Gene Andrewski, "The Art of Fiction XXIII:
Lawrence Durrell," i n The Paris Review, No. 22 (Autumn-Winter, 1959-60), 37
1
5
London, and therefore England, can only give promises to her young men.
It
cannot and w i l l not f u l f i l l them. But Durrell found England to be *a
window / Into the great sick-room, Europe*
( 6 7 - 6 8 ) :
•I think that, as I say, i n England, living
as i f we are not a part of Europe, we are
living against the grain of what i s
nourishing to our artists, do you see?
There seems to be an ingrown psychological
thing about i t , I don't know why i t i s . *
2
Like Eliot and Graves, his living i n Europe and serving part of his a r t i s t i c
apprenticeship there has not qualified Durrell's 'Englishness' i n any way.
However much he dislikes the English and their 'English death,' there
remains a sense of being English and writing for England:
'But, mind you, that doesn't qualify one's
.origins or one's attitudes to things. I
mean i f I'm writing I'm writing for England
— and so_long as I write English i t w i l l
be for England that I have to write.*3
In lines 7 2 to 7 6 , Durrell expresses admiration for the Venerable Bede,
but manages to restrict himself to Bede and attack the 'so many less' who
were not like him:
Here he saw Bede who softly
Blew out desire and went to bed,
So much the greater than so many less
Who made their unconquered guilt i n atrophy
A passport to the dead*
( 7 5 )
Some of her writers and her position as a window on Europe are the good
things about England, but 'for this person i t was never a landfall£j_
not a world as yet. Not a world.'
Near the end of Part II, the reader i s asked to 'Reflect how Prosper©
was born to a green c e l l ' ( 8 8 ) , In The Tempest Prosper© was not, i n fact,
2
3
T
he Paris Review, p. 3 7
The Paris Review, p. 3 8
6
'porn to a green c e l l . '
He reached i t a t a l a t e r stage i n l i f e , and i t was
here that he achieved the u n i t y of s e l f which allowed him to return t o the
world outside the i s l a n d knowing that he would be a part of i t and not
i s o l a t e d from i t i n h i s magic.
For D u r r e l l , Prospero i s a symbol o f the
u n i t y f o r which he i s seeking.
Lines 88 to 92 present a dichotomous
situation:
on the one hand there i s Prospero, 'born to a green c e l l , * and
on the other there are those who sing *We s h a l l never return, never be
young again.*
To become p h y s i c a l l y young again i s impossible, but to
regain the u n i t y one had as a c h i l d i s not.
was b o m to a green c e l l : *
Here i s the meaning of *Prospero
the u n i t y of s e l f which Prospero knew i n h i s
childhood, and which he had l o s t , has been regained.
He i s no longer l i k e
the English, *the p o t e n t i a l passion hidden, Wordsworth / In the dessicated
bodies of postmistresses' (99-100).
So here at l a s t we d i d outgrow ourselves.
As the green stalk i s taken from the earth,
With a great j u i c y sob, I turned him from a Man
To Mandrake, i n Whose awful hand I am.
(105)
The c h i l d has outgrown h i s childhood and has matured to the point that he
has been 'taken from the earth,' but i n the process of growth he has l o s t
his
s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n , and must begin t o search f o r i t .
Lines 105 to 106
point out that D u r r e l l had 'turned him from a Man / To Mandrake.*
He
has made the c h i l d a magician, and that magician i s Prospero, who controlled
the world around him by means of an acquired magic and not the innate power
of the u n i f i e d i n d i v i d u a l .
The r o l e of the magician i s one step nearer t o
the achievement o f a r t i s t i c consciousness, but a t t h i s point i n the poem
that consciousness has not been reached.
Part I I I i s an interpolated comment pointing toward the remainder o f
the poem as a whole.
The c h i l d has not yet achieved a r t i s t i c eonsciousness,
7
and lines 107 to 110 foreshadow what i s to come:
Prospero upon his island
Cast i n a romantic form,
When his love was f o l l y grown
He laid his magic down,
(110)
The innate internal powers embodied i n love and emotion are far greater than
those which are acquired, and these lines predict a time i n the development
of the artist when his acquired magic i s no longer necessary.
Lines 111 to
118 point out that the search for truth* i s to be finalized without the
1
aid of magic, for
Truth within the t r i b a l wells,
Innocent inviting creature
Does not rise to human spells
But by paradox
Teaches a l l who seek for her
That no saint or seer unlocks
The wells of truth unless he f i r s t
Conquer for the truth his thirst.
(115)
The 'spells* with which Prospero causes the storm in the play are useless
i n the search for *truth,* and w i l l be useless i n the quest for unification
of the self.
These lines point up for Durrell a basic truth about the unity
of self for which he i s searching:
like the happiness he had lost, i t i s to
be found i n the innocence of the child which, as Part I of the poem shows,
i s so basic as to parallel the primordial. The paradox l i e s i n the idea
that truth can be found only by those who do not seek her, and this fact
recalls the child who had no need to search for self-unity because he had
never been told that he was not unified,
Durrell*s reference to the 'Cartesian imperatives* of absolute doubt
i n line 70 anticipates lines 125 to 131:
he waited
For black-hearted Descartes to seek him out
With a l l his sterile apparatus.
(125)
8
Now man f o r him became a thinking lobe,
Through endless permutation sought repose.
By f r i g i d latinisms he mated now
To the hard form of prose the cogent verb.
The reference to 'black-hearted
Descartes' i s to the Cartesian theory of
dualism which postulates that the mind of man
For t h i s reason, 'man
for
(130)
Durrell
l i n e 127 has a double connotation,
i s f a r superior to h i s body.
became a thinking lobe.*
'Sterile' i n
i n d i c a t i n g the c l i n i c a l conditions both
of the laboratory of the s c i e n t i s t and of the w r i t e r who
i s more concerned
with the d i s s e c t i o n of language than with creation, and the ultimate value,
seen i n retrospect, of such practices f o r the writer who
with them and goes no further i n his search.
contents himself
When we consider that *man
f o r him became a thinking lobe' we must also r e a l i z e that D u r r e l l i s
commenting upon himself.
He i s attempting at t h i s point to solve his
dilemma by means of 'endless permutation,*
To many luck may give f o r merit
More p r o f i t a b l e teachers. To the heart
A c r i t i c and a nymph:
And an unflinching doctor to the s p i r i t .
(135)
The implication here i s that D u r r e l l ' s 'teachers,* the dissectors of
language, were not p r o f i t a b l e . Because his heart did not at t h i s time
have *a c r i t i c and a nymph,* he was
forced to struggle towards the unity
of s e l f which 'an unflinching doctor to the s p i r i t ' would have given
him
by cutting out the acceptance of Cartesian dualism.
Lines 137 to 139 compare the body to a world, and there i s a
foreshadowing of the movement through and away from the t e c h n i c a l hocuspocus of the magician toward a f r e e r means of expression founded on the
i n t e r n a l forces of the i n d i v i d u a l . The members of the body gradually
become 'doors' into the s e l f , a means of gaining entrance to s e l f -
9
realization.
The p a r a l l e l with the c h i l d who f i r s t of a l l investigates
the t i n y world which i s his body and comes to know himself before exploring
the greater world which i s external to him comes to mind here, f o r there i s
a s h i f t from the i n t e l l e c t u a l knowledge to the physical when D u r r e l l t e l l s
how sex became
A l e s s e r sort of speech, and members doors.
Part V of the poem comments upon the r e s u l t of the 'endless permutation'
attempted by the author:
Faces may s e t t l e sadly
Each i n t o i t s private death
By business t r a v e l or fortune,
Like the f a t congealing on a plate
Or the fogged negative of labour
Whose dumb f a s t i d i o u s rectitude
Brings death i n l i v i n g as a sort of mate.
Here however man might botch h i s way
To God v i a Valery, Gide or Rabelais.
(145)
(150)
In The Paris Review, D u r r e l l has t h i s to say about the development of s t y l e :
*I don't think anyone can, you know, develop a
s t y l e consciously. I read with amazement, f o r
example, of o l d Maugham writing out a page of
Swift every d ay when he was trying to l e a r n
the job, i n order to give himself a s t y l i s t i c
purchase as i t were. I t struck me as something
I could never do.
No..
I think the writing i t s e l f grows you up, and
you grow the writing up, and f i n a l l y you get
an amalgam of everything you have pinched
with a new kind of personality which i s your
own. '^
Even i n h i s comment to the interviewers, D u r r e l l i s 'pinching,• f o r these
l i n e s are an expanded paraphrase of what T. S. ELiot said i n The Sacred
Wood i n 1920:
Immature poets imitatej mature poets s t e a l ; bad
poets deface what they take, and good poets make
i t into something better, or at l e a s t something
*
The Paris Review, pp. 52-53
10
d i f f e r e n t . A good poet w i l l usually borrow from
authors remote i n time, or a l i e n i n language, or
diverse i n interest.5
The importance of these comments f o r D u r r e l l i s that 'faces may s e t t l e
sadly / Each into i t s private death' i f what i s 'pinched,* whether s t y l e
or content, i s not 'made into something d i f f e r e n t . •
a r t i s t w i l l be ' l i k e the f a t congealing on a p l a t e . '
The e f f e c t on the
The 'dumb f a s t i d i o u s
rectitude _of] labour* w i l l r e s u l t i n a 'fogged negative:*
the a r t i s t ,
f o r a l l h i s attempts to create out o f h i s inner being, w i l l f i n d himself
cut o f f at every turn from the s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n which should be a part o f
his efforts.
The use o f »sadly' i n l i n e 145, and that of 'death' i n l i n e 146, c a l l s
to mind 'the sad green home' which D u r r e l l found i n England and the English
•who made t h e i r unconquered g u i l t i n atrophy / A passport to the dead'
(75-76).
The statement that 'man might botch h i s way / To God' (152-153)
through the copying o f the s t y l i s t i c apparatus o f Gide, Valery o r Rabelais
i s a comment on the methods o f approaching a r t i s t i c consciousness, and the
three writers to whom he r e f e r s are d e f i n i t e l y candidates f o r E l i o t ' s
'authors remote i n time, or a l i e n i n language.*
The reference to the a r t i s t * s moving toward God i s o f i n t e r e s t , f o r
D u r r e l l , i n learning h i s a r t through the copying of the techniques of others,
i s l i k e Coleridge*s Ancient Mariner.
Both must move through a 'death i n
l i v i n g ' and, by means of r e p e t i t i o n , transcend the h a l f - l i f e .
The Mariner
w i l l reach God, and D u r r e l l w i l l achieve a r t i s t i c consciousness. Ultimately
God and a r t i s t i c consciousness are synonymous i n one respect, f o r the writer,
i n h i s capacity f o r organizing what he takes from h i s environment and
5
T. S. E l i o t , The Sacred Wood (London) University
(I960), p. 125
Paperbacks
11
recreating i t ' i n his own
image,• i s playing the r o l e of a d e i t y .
E a r l i e r i n the poem D u r r e l l indicates that the 'truth* f o r which he
seeks l i e s ' i n the t r i b a l wells,* i n the primitive innocence of the c h i l d .
Part VI of the poem continues t h i s idea:
And i n the personal heart, weary
Of the p i e r c i n g innocents i n parks
(170)
Who s a i l the rapt subconscious there l i k e swans,
Disturbs and brightens with _November'sj tears, t h i n k i n g :
'Perhaps a f t e r a l l i t i s we who are b l i n d ,
While the unconscious eaters of the apple
Are whole as ingots of a process
Punched i n matter by the promiscuous Mind.*
(175)
•In the personal heart* D u r r e l l i s weary because he i s envious of the
c h i l d r e n who
have what he does not: u n i t y .
The c h i l d r e n are ' p i e r c i n g i n
1
that t h e i r a b i l i t y to ' s a i l the rapt subconscious' i n a l l the unconcerned
grace of swans disturbs him.
But there i s also an element of hope i n these
l i n e s , f o r there i s a r e a l i z a t i o n that the adult i s b l i n d and that
c h i l d r e n who
innocent
have not yet become 'eaters of the apple* are 'whole as ingots.*
The opening l i n e s of Part VII are s i m i l a r to E l i o t * s *By the waters of
Leman I sat down and wept . . . .
*
This whole section i s s i m i l a r to the
"Thames daughters" portion of The Waste Land and, j u s t as i n ELiot*s poem,
the presence of water points toward unity of s e l f :
By the waters of Buda
Uncomb and unlock them,
Abandon and nevermore cherish
Queer l i p s , queer hearts, hands.
There to f u t u r i t y leave
The l u c k i e r lover who's waiting
As, l i k e a spring c o i l e d up,
In the bones of Adam, l a y Eve.
The attainment of u n i t y i s indicated i n 'the l u c k i e r l o v e r ' who,
w i l l leave
came there.
(190)
(195)
presumably,
'the water of Buda* i n place of the weary 'personal heart'
who
He w i l l leave minus the Cartesian dualism which held him back,
12
l i k e Prospero who,
'when h i s love was f u l l y grown[,J
l a i d h i s magic down.*
On the s t r i c t l y autobiographical l e v e l , there i s a movement toward the
Greek i s l a n d s i n Part VIII of the poem:
So Time, the l o v e l y and mysterious
With promises and blessings moves
Through her swift degrees,
So g l a d l y does he bear
Towards the sad perfect wife,
The rocky i s l a n d and the cypress-trees.
Taken i n the pattern of a l l s o l i t a r i e s ,
An only c h i l d , of introspection got,
Her only playmates, lovers, i n h e r s e l f .
(200)
D u r r e l l and h i s wife become not only an i n t e g r a l part of each other but also
of the Greek landscape which bears ' i n ruins / The faces of the
i n w e l l s ' (212-213).
innocents
At t h i s time, as Prospero's C e l l t e s t i f i e s , D u r r e l l
i s completely immersed i n every small d e t a i l of l i f e i n Greece, ' a l l f a r
beyond the c u p i d i t y of verses / Or the lechery of images to t e l l ' (222-223).
The f i n a l step i n the movement toward a r t i s t i c consciousness
occurred i n
t h i s period i n the i s l a n d s , f o r 'here worlds were confirmed i n him.'
Differences that matched l i k e c l o t h
Between the darkness and the inner l i g h t ,
Moved on the undivided breath of blue.
(225)
The important l i n e i s 224* f o r here there i s a l i g h t vs dark dichotomy i n
which the outer darkness, as opposed to 'the inner light,» stands f o r the
world of chaos and confusion which i s constantly t e r r i f y i n g those who
not achieved s e l f - i n t e g r a t i o n .
i n d i v i d u a l , l i e s i n l i n e s 228 to
have
The answer to these t e r r o r s , f o r the u n i f i e d
230:
Formed moving, trees asserted here
Nothing but simple comparisons to
The artist;?, s endearing eye.
(230)
For the unintegrated i n d i v i d u a l , these trees are a manifestation of the
'causeless continuum of t e r r o r s i n the s p i r i t , • but f o r D u r r e l l they are
13
nothing more than 'simple comparisons*'
Like Shakespeare's Gonzalo, who
saw a green land where Sebastian and Antonio saw only the terrors o f a desert
i s l a n d , D u r r e l l i s able, through h i s own powers as t y p i f i e d i n the 'endearing
eye,• to make o f h i s environment what he w i l l .
'Look' she might say 'Press here
With your fingers a t the temples.
Are they not the blunt uncut horns
Of the small naked Ionian fauns?'
Considering that l i n e s 240 to 242 r e f e r to one o f D u r r e l l ' s daughters o l d
enough to walk with him along the shore, t h i s stanza, too, may w e l l r e f e r t o
a new-born c h i l d .
The comparison o f the c h i l d to the 'small naked Ionian
fauns' c a r r i e s the concept o f the primitiveness of the c h i l d one step further,
A second consideration here i s Nietzsche's theory that true a r t i s a r e s u l t
of the e f f e c t on the exhausted Dionysiac o f the ordering, symbol-making
Apollonian f o r c e s .
Fauns are t r a d i t i o n a l l y found i n the worshipping t r a i n
of Dionysus, and so the concern o f the c h i l d with 'the f i v e lean dogs o f
sense' associates i t with the Dionysiac rather than the Apollonian,
Concerned with the sensual, D u r r e l l i s caught up i n the
Red P o l i s h mouth,
Lips that as f o r the f l u t e unform,
Gone round on nouns o r vowels,
To u t t e r the accepting, calm
'Yes', or make t e r r i b l e verbs
Like • I adore, adore',
(250)
D u r r e l l has become the 'persuader,' a milder form o f 'seducer,'
so long hunted
By your wild pack o f selves,
Past peace o f mind o r even sleep,
So longed f o r and so sought [.]
(255)
I t i s not completely c l e a r whether i t i s the 'persuader' or 'peace o f mind'
which has been sought.
Ultimately, i t makes no difference, and I am i n c l i n e d
to accept 'peace o f mind' as the more suitable alternate, as i t f i t s the
14
general thought content of the poem.
selves
1
The references to the •wild pack of
i n l i n e 254 and the 'mutinous crew of f u r i e s ' i n l i n e 271, however,
indicate that while D u r r e l l has achieved s e l f - u n i f i c a t i o n , he i s not yet i n
c o n t r o l o f the various facets o f his inner being.
Within a time of reading
Here i s a l l my growth
Through the bodies o f other selves,
In books, by promise or perversity
My mutinous crew of f u r i e s — t h e i r pleading
Threw up at l a s t the naked s p r i t e
Whose f l e s h and noise I am,
Who i s my j a i l o r and my inward night.
(270)
These l i n e s , and especially 272 to 274, contain the basis f o r Groddeck's
theory of the I t : 'I hold the view that man i s animated by the Unknown,
that there i s within him an "Es," an " I t , " some wondrous force which d i r e c t s
both what he himself does, and what happens to him. The affirmation ^ I
l i v e " i s only c o n d i t i o n a l l y correct, i t expresses only a small and s u p e r f i c i a l
part o f the fundamental p r i n c i p l e , "Man i s l i v e d by the It."'**
The
mutinous 'crew of f u r i e s ' i s the manifestation of the I t and the only means
by which D u r r e l l can attempt to understand the force which i s c o n t r o l l i n g
him.
The 'naked s p r i t e ' i s s i m i l a r t o the 'fauns' and the innocent c h i l d .
By the w i l l o f the I t , h i s ' f u r i e s
1
have driven D u r r e l l to attempt to
communicate what he r e a l l y i s by means of h i s books.
The problem i n t h i s
attempt i s the vast gap between the w r i t e r and h i s reader:
My darkness reaches out and fumbles at a typewriter
with i t s tongs. Tour darkness reaches out with
your tongs and grasps a book. There are twenty
modes of change, f i l t e r and t r a n s l a t i o n between us.7
Georg Groddeck, The Book of The I t , i n t r o , Lawrence D u r r e l l
(N.I.) Vintage (1961), p. 11
0
7
William Golding, Free F a l l (G.B.) Penguin (1963), p. 7
15
The last section of Part X i s concerned with the plight of Fedor and
Anna, 'the last two vain explorers of our guilt.'
The reference to 'taws*
i n line 279 i s a veiled allusion to the writings of the Marquis de Sade,
whom Pursewarden, one of the characters of the Alexandria Quartet, sees as
•the f i n a l flower of [the] reason' which began with Descartes.
3
The 'taws'
refer to the flagellation practiced by many religious fanatics, and lines
292 to 294 are a further comment on the European situation, for Durrell
sees Fedor and Anna, 'these hideous mommets' as 'westering angels' who have
9
become the emissaries of a God like Blake's Nobadaddy.
So knowledge has an end,
And virtue at the last an end,
In the dark f i e l d of sensibility
The unchanging and unbending;
As i n aquariums gloomy
On the negative's dark screen
Grow the shapes of other selves,
So groaned for by the heart,
So seldom grasped i f seen.
(295)
(300)
With the. turning from the Apollonian to the Dionysiac earlier i n the poem,
'sensibility' comes to mean understanding based on the senses, and lines
295 to 298 describe the overpowering of purely intellectual knowledge and
the false virtue of the English ('Wordsworth i n / The dessicated bodies
of postmistresses') by sensibility.
Unlike Fedor and Anna, who tortured
the body i n order to achieve spiritual solace, Durrell has managed to
overcome his earlier concentration on the mind i n order to f u l l y experience
the world of the senses.
'The negative's dark screen,' on which Durrell sees 'the shapes of
other selves,' calls to mind the earlier use of the 'fogged
negative*(149)
as exemplifying the result of the concentration on the c l i n i c a l aspects of
8
Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar (London) Faber (1958), p. 247
16
w r i t i n g to the complete denial of the emotional sources of i n s p i r a t i o n .
Here, however, the 'negative' i s not 'fogged' but rather shows, i f even
for
a f l e e t i n g moment, the various ' f u r i e s ' which D u r r e l l i s attempting to
take under control i n order to translate them into words.
Although these
'other selves' are 'seldom grasped,' when they are taken under control
they provide the power f o r creation.
These l i n e s point up the dichotomy i n every a r t i s t .
On the one hand
there i s the passive observer, through and around whom everything flows,
who records the events of the external world and shapes them to h i s l i k i n g .
On the other hand there i s the a r t i s t who wages continual war with the
i n v i s i b l e forces of h i s own mind.
Paradoxically, the a r t i s t does not want
to endure the pain caused by h i s ' f u r i e s , ' but he must come to grips with
them before he can createj
they are, therefore, 'the shapes of other
selves, / So groaned f o r by the heart.*
consciousness:
This i s the d e f i n i t i o n of a r t i s t i c
s e n s i t i v i t y to the happenings of the external world coupled
with intense introspection and s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n which allow the a r t i s t to
take from h i s inner being the power embodied i n h i s elusive *furies* i n
order to mold the events of h i s environment i n t o what i s c a l l e d
'art,'
the means of communication with h i s reader*
Art has l i m i t s and l i f e l i m i t s
Within the nerves that support them.
(310)
D u r r e l l draws a p a r a l l e l here between l i f e and a r t , and he i s able to do so
because both are founded on and bounded by the l i f e of the body and a r t i s t i c
consciousness i s only able to function as long as the body which supports
i t functions.
The response to the world around him through h i s senses
rather than h i s i n t e l l e c t u a l capacity i s the point toward which D u r r e l l has
been moving i n the poem, f o r the response which i s not conditioned by and
17
based almost wholly on the sensual i s extremely limited.
So better with the happy
Discover than the wise
Who teach the sad valour
Of endurance through the seasons.
(315)
The meaning of these lines i s straightforward.
The opposition between the
'happy' and the 'wise' l i e s i n the difference between those who are sensually
oriented and those who base their existence on the purely intellectual.
Durrell sees a valour i n 'endurance,' but no value.
Through the ambuscades of sex,
The f o l l i e s of the w i l l , the tears,
Turning, a personal world I go
To where the yellow emperor once
Sat out the summer and the snow,
And searching i n himself struck o i l ,
Published the f i r s t great Tao.
(330)
The writer must f i r s t see himself as 'a personal world' before he can begin
to present a cohesive picture of his world to the reader, for the external
world i s at last embodied i n the writer and what he writes i s therefore
about himself rather than about his environment.
'The yellow emperor'
refers to Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, one of the oldest Chinese
philosophical classics.
This work propounds a predominantly passivist
doctrine, based upon a pre-recognition of the self which w i l l enable the
individual to be a part of his environment.
The Durrell-Miller letters
indicate a profound interest i n the Tao Te Ching; both writers feel that
Lao Tzu holds pertinent answers for them. This section of the poem describes
the conditions under which the book i s traditionally supposed to have been
written.
Lao Tzu approached the Keeper of the Pass and asked admittance.
In return for the favour, the Keeper, recognizing the wise man, asked him
to write a book. The result was the Tao Te Ching.9
^
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. D. C. Lau (G.B.) Penguin (1963), p.9
18
Which a l l confession can only gloze
And i n the Consciousness can only spoil
Apparent opposition of the two
Where unlocked numbers show their fabric.
(335)
The true Tao, the 'way' which i s beyond a l l else and yet a part of a l l , i s
unnameable and, except as i t i s perceived and understood by the Unconscious,
unknowable. Part of the doctrine put forward by Lao Tzu concerns 'apparent
opposition,' the idea that nothing except the Tao i s absolute and that where
one thing exists i n the world, so must i t s opposite.-*- Durrell must become
0
conscious of the fusion and interdependence of seemingly opposite things.
Without that understanding he cannot be the creator, for he cannot control
what he does not understand.
Lines 337 to 340 outline the general doctrine of the Tao, i n which Lao
Tzu defines
the Many and the None
As base reflections of the One.
(340)
The 'Many' are the 'myriad creatures' who w i l l be set at rest because man
follows the 'way,' and the 'None' refers to Lao Tzu's somewhat confusing
idea that something can be made from nothing:
The myriad creatures i n the world are born from
Something, and Something from Nothing.H
The important point here i s that everything i s a 'base reflection of the
One' which i s the tao. This presents a seeming paradox:
on the one hand
there i s the tao which i s beyond a l l comprehension i n terms of magnitude
and influence, and on the other there i s the tao which i s embodied i n every
enlightened individual.
However, the latter i s merely the former as
manifested i n the actions of believers, and so they are the same.
1 0
Tao Te Ching, Book One, XXVI, 59-59a, p. 83
1 1
Tao Te Ching, Book Two, XL, 89, p. 101
19
D u r r e l l begins the next stanza of Part XII with an application of Lao
Tzu's theory of opposites to the concept of the •double,• r e f e r r i n g to
s p e c i f i c l i t e r a r y cases:
What b i f i d Hamlet i n the maze
Wept to f i n d ; the doppelganger
Goethe saw one morning go
Oyer the h i l l ahead; the man
So gnawed by promises who shared
The magnificent responses of Rimbaud.
(345)
Goethe and Rimbaud f i t the pattern of the a r t i s t who i s both the passive
observer and the i n t e r n a l l y torn man.
Hamlet does not seem to f i t u n t i l i t
i s remembered that, a f t e r having passed through a period of feigned madness,
he reaches s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n and i s able to p a r t i a l l y control h i s environment
to
h i s own
ends.
A l l that we have sought i n us,
The a r t i s t by h i s greater cowardice
In sudden brush-strokes gave us clues
Hamlet and Faust as front-page news.
—
(350)
These l i n e s give a greater u n i v e r s a l i t y to what D u r r e l l has said previously
about the a r t i s t , f o r here the a r t i s t i s seen o b j e c t i v e l y as one who records
the
t r i a l s of mankind i n 'sudden brush-strokes.'
The 'cowardice* of the
a r t i s t i s an i r o n i c a l comment on Society's b e l i e f that the a r t i s t does
nothing.
But Society's view i s wrong.
The a r t i s t i s t r y i n g to do something:
to present •Hamlet and Faust as front-page news* and bring to the attention
of
h i s audience t h e i r need to resolve the dualism which i s a r e s u l t of the
Cartesian doctrine.
The yellow emperor f i r s t confirmed
By one Unknown the human calculus,
Where f e e l i n g and idea,
Must f a l l within t h i s space,
This personal landscape b u i l t
Within the Chinese c i r c l e ' s calm embrace.
(355)
20
Through the power of the tao, the artist i s able to reconcile 'feeling and
idea' i n order to create.
They f a l l i n harmony i n the 'personal landscape*
which i s the artist, and i t i s their reconciliation which allows him to
create and communicate, having discovered the 'calm embrace' of 'the Chinese
c i r c l e ' which i s psychological unity.
The
Dark Spirit, sum of a l l
That has remained unloved,
Gone crying through the world:
The source of a l l manufacture and repair
(360)
i s the force which drives the artist to communicate, the dark thing at his
core which i s not understood by things external to i t , not even the artist,
but which desires to be loved.
Akin to Durrell's 'furies', i t i s invoked
here that i t might 'Quicken the giving-spring / In ferns and birds and
ordinary people' that they, like the artist, might attempt to communicate
with others,
That a l l deeds done may share,
By this our temporal sun,
The part of living that i s loving,
Tour dancing, a beautiful behaviour.
(365)
This i s also a prayer that a l l men might find the 'way,' the force which
knows and i s unknowable, sees and i s unseeable,
Darkness, who contain
The source of a l l this corporal music,
On the great table of the Breath
Our opposites i n pity bear,
Our measure of perfection or of pain,
Both trespassers i n you, that then
Our Here and Now become your Everywhere.
(370)
It i s through 'the source of a l l this corporal music' that man w i l l control
his own situation.
The music with which Prospero calms the storm i n The
Tempest i s the music of Ariel, the sprite who i s the product of his magic.
The 'music' which allows the artist to structure and control his situation,
however, i s not the product of externally acquired powers but a 'corporal
music' that comes from within.
21
Part XIII describes the peaceful l i f e of Lao Tau, pointing out the
difference between appearance and
reality:
His palace f e l l to ruins
But his heart was i n r e p a i r .
Like that of Lao Tzu, the world of the a r t i s t i s contained i n him, and he i s
peopled by the Tao Te Ching's 'myriad creatures,• h i s 'wild pack of other
selves,'
As these are recognized
and brought under c o n t r o l , the
world becomes quiescent and the a r t i s t can merely contemplate.
personal
Should the
•furies* be freed, however, he i s l i t e r a l l y driven to communicate his pain
through w r i t i n g .
These are the a l t e r n a t i n g periods of introspection and
intense c r e a t i v i t y which every w r i t e r experiences and which D u r r e l l mentions
i n the i s l a n d books and his l e t t e r s to M i l l e r .
Ego, my dear, and i d
Lie so profoundly h i d
In space-time void, though f e e l i n g ,
While contemporary, slow,
We conventional lovers cheek to cheek
(400)
Inhaling and exhaling go.
(405)
D u r r e l l sees the ego playing a female r o l e i n the agonies of c r e a t i v i t y .
It
i s dominated and seduced by the i d and forced to play the part which the i d
demands of i t , but by Lao Tzu's d e f i n i t i o n the ego remains superior:
In the union of the world,
The female always gets the better part of the male
by s t i l l n e s s .
Being s t i l l , she takes the lower p o s i t i o n .
1 2
This process i s the psychological equivalent of the sexual intercourse
described i n l i n e s 403 to 405, but i t i s l i g h t n i n g - l i k e as ppposed to the
'contemporary, slow* pace of the p h y s i c a l act.
The e s s e n t i a l difference i s
that the psychological forces are 'profoundly h i d / In space-time void.»
The
'sexual ambuscade' to which D u r r e l l submits i n l i n e 326 i s the rape of
the ego by the i d , r e s u l t i n g i n an agony which increases ' u n t i l [ t h a t j pain
12
Tao Te Ching, Book Two,
LXI, 141 -
141a
22
become a literature' (40).
Dear Spirit, should I reach,
By touch or speech corrupt,
The inner suffering word,
By weakness or idea,
Though you might suffer
Feel and know,
Pretend you do not hear.
(415)
The four possible ways to reach the conflict i n the mind are touch, speech,
weakness and idea, but a l l of these are inadequate.
What the artist really
wishes to say, what he formulates i n his mind, i s not what f i n a l l y reaches
the paper.
There i s an indecisiveness as to whether the artist w i l l ever
reach 'the inner suffering word,' or whether he must continue to make attempts
to approximate what he feels.
In a l l this, because the 'Spirit' i s a part
of the artist, and because i t forces him to write i n order that i t might
express i t s e l f , i t must 'suffer / Feel and know' what i s happening.
Part XV concludes Durrell's tracing of the development of a r t i s t i c
consciousness and reaffirms the basic forces of l i f e from which the artist
takes his strength. Addressing the reader, Durrell attempts to reach the
community from which he i s isolated:
See looking down motionless
How clear Athens or Bremen seem
A mass of rotten vegetables
Firm on the diagram of earth can l i e j
And here you may reflect how genus epileptoid
Knows his stuff; and where rivers
Have thrown their switches and enlarged
Our mercy and our knowledge of each otherj
Wonder who walks beside them now and why,
And what they talk about.
(430)
(435)
Durrell, like the Chinese i n Teats's "Lapis Lazuli", has reached again the
' l i t t l e half-way house' of his childhood, and he can look down upon ' a l l
the tragic scene' and comment upon i t .
The desecration of the earth has been
accomplished by the 'genus epileptoid,' those who do not have control of
23
themselves and have only succeeded In d i r e c t i n g the chaos and not c o n t r o l l i n g
it.
The unchanging foree of nature i s embodied i n the r i v e r s , f o r , unlike
the disturbed and disturbing creatures of l i n e 431, the r i v e r s have *enlarged /
Coir mercy and our knowledge of each other.*
The r i v e r s , l i k e Mark Twain's
M i s s i s s i p p i , are f i n a l l y a r t i s t s i n that they change the face of the earth t o
t h e i r own l i k i n g .
I t makes no difference 'who walks beside them now
and
why,• f o r they too w i l l have to undergo what D u r r e l l has undergone i n order
to f i n d the consciousness which not only y i e l d s c r e a t i v i t y i n the a r t i s t i c
sense but also i n the sense that l i v i n g i t s e l f i s an a r t .
The l a s t stanza of Part XV deals with the same sense of negation which
E l i o t found i n the world and which he described i n The Waste Land, but i t
also proposes a solution to the problem:
There i s nothing to hope f o r , my Brother.
We have t r i e d hoping f o r a future i n the past.
Nothing came out of that past
But the r e f l e c t e d d i s t o r t i o n and some
Enduring, and understanding, and some brave.
Into t h e i r c o o l embrace the awkward and the s i n f u l
Must be put f o r they alone
Know who and what to save.
(440)
In the past, the hope f o r the future was based upon 'the wise / Who
the sad valour / Of endurance through the seasons* (313-315)*
teach
those who
understood with t h e i r i n t e l l e c t s but d i d not t r u l y know with the passion
of the a r t i s t .
'Their cool embrace,' t h e i r c l i n i c a l d i s s e c t i o n of the
world and of l i f e , must be set a f i r e by the a r t i s t s who are *awkward and
s i n f u l * i n the eyes of Society, f o r only those who have found i n the basic
forces of l i f e
'our mercy
and
our knowledge of each other* 'know who
what to save.'
For Prospero remains the evergreen
C e l l by the margin of the sea and land,
Who many c i t i e s , plains, and people saw
and
24
Yet by his open door
In sunlight f e l l asleep
One summer with the Apple i n his hand.
(455)
In Part XVI, D u r r e l l , as Prospero, has attained the unity of s e l f f o r
which he has been searching
and i s tempted, not by the vicarious i n t e l l e c t u a l
pursuits, but *to slumber and to sleep.*
D u r r e l l has returned to the 'green
c e l l ' which he had f o r f e i t e d with h i s pursuit o f i n t e l l e c t u a l knowledge, the
earthly paradise i n which he began as a c h i l d .
He s t i l l retains the
capacity f o r t r u t h , but he w i l l f i n d i t i n the sensuality o f the sunlight
rather than i n i n t e l l e c t u a l searching.
Like the Prospero who returns to
Milan and Naples at the end of The Tempest, he has re-entered the world
from which he had i s o l a t e d himself.
Durrell's choice of Prospero as a
•persona' i s f i t t i n g , f o r as Chapter Two w i l l show, Prospero's development
of a r t i s t i c consciousness i n The Tempest i s very s i m i l a r to D u r r e l l ' s
development as seen i n " C i t i e s , Plains and People", the i s l a n d books, and
the l e t t e r s .
CHAPTER I I
"PROSPERO'S ISLE"
26
'THIS ROUGH MAGIC*
The importance of Prospero for Durrell i s clearly stated i n a semfscholarly conjectural article published i n the Tien H'sia Monthly i n 1939.
After attempting to prove that Corcyra (Corfu) i s the scene of Shakespeare*s
The Tempest, Durrell discusses Prospero's reference i n the "Epilogue" to
his earlier abjuration of his magical powers:
And then: the renunciation of ProsperoJ
Concealed behind this fantasy surely
there i s a clear statement of the a r t i s t i c
problem — the problem which finds
expression i n Faust, i n the Abbey Theleme
of Rabelais (which i s only another Prospero's
i s l e ) : the problem, I make so bold to say,,
which the great artist shares with the saint.
Here i s the pure statement of the case — for
a l l who have ears to hear. Prospero's last
words are a beatitude.-^
Earlier i n his article Durrell draws a parallel between Prospero
and St. Spiridian, the patron saint of Corfu, and i n the above quotation
he i s discussing 'the problem . . . the great artist shares with the
saint.'
For Durrell, Prospero i s 'the great a r t i s t ' who has attained
the necessary artistic consciousness. Having presented Prospero's
renunciation, Durrell goes on to i t s importance:
The magician's renunciation of his power i s one of
the most profound things i n Shakespeare: he puts
himself at the mercy of the elements which he has
learned so painfully how to control. Perhaps
Prospero i n these lines shows that he had discovered
the paradox i n things; he had discovered that he
who comes down to earth finds himself nearest to
heaven.
It i s a lesson which a l l magicians must learn
sooner or later: whether they be saints or poets.
13
Lawrence Durrell, "Prospero's Isle", i n Tien H'sia Monthly
(Shanghai), September, 1939, p. 138
14
"Prospero's Isle", p. 139
27
The 'lesson which a l l magicians must learn' comes out clearly i n the
Durrell-Miller correspondence between the summers of 1936 and 1938.
these letters, the references to Hamlet are important,
In
Durrell sees i n
Hamlet, unlike Prospero, the failure to synthesize the inner and outer
selves.
According to these early letters, there i s a quality of loneliness
in Hamlet which Durrell also finds i n himself.
The problem for Durrell i s
England:
But as the play goes on, the inner Hamlet, no longer
Prince, grows and begins to strip his fellow characters
of their masks. The great shock i s to find himself
alone i n l i f e , with no contact, not even with that
sweet but s i l l y l i t t l e wretch Ophelia.
There i s a parallel here with Hamlet, for Durrell saw a similar problem
with the society which demanded that Hamlet be Prince rather than himself:
Then, realising that he should really turn away from these
fakes to his real self, he feels the pressure of society
suddenly on him. He i s forced to be the Prince, however
much his private Hamlet suffers. It i s a marvellous p i c t u r e .
of psychic and social disorganisation i n an individual . . .
My birth and upbringing? I was born in India. Went to school
there — under the Himalayas. The most wonderful memories,
a brief dream of Tibet u n t i l I was eleven. Then that mean,
shabby l i t t l e island up there wrung my guts out of me and
tried to destroy anything singular and unique i n me.17
Durrell considers Hamlet to be a step toward the integration which
Prospero achieves with the outer world at the end of The Tempest which i s
a result of the unification of his b i f i d nature, a process which Durrell
feels i s necessary for the artist.
In January of 1937, Durrell f e l t he 'was born to be Hamlet's l i t t l e
15
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence,
ed. George Wickes (London) Faber (1963), p. 2o" Hereinafter referred
to as Letters.
1 6
Durrell, Letters, p. 26
17
Durrell, Letters, p. 60
28
god-child. °
,L
In " C i t i e s , Plains and People" (1946), however, D u r r e l l
i s no longer Hamlet but Prospero, a d e f i n i t e i n d i c a t i o n that he f e l t he
had attained a u n i t y of s e l f .
D u r r e l l makes h i s reason f o r being no longer
able to associate himself with Hamlet quite c l e a r :
Shakespeare and Lawrence and Co. have been crippled
from the s t a r t by being unable to r e a l i s e themselves.
Consequently the f i n a l drama, the Hamlet, when they
wrote i t , was entangled i n t h e i r own diseases, held
down by them. ^
So i t i s Prospero, and not Hamlet, whom D u r r e l l sees as Shakespeare's
f i n a l expression of the u n i f i e d i n d i v i d u a l and the consciously c o n t r o l l i n g
artist.
In The Tempest, Shakespeare presents Prospero as the magician
who,
through h i s a r t , attempts to control the environment i n which he has been
stranded.
Prospero i s i n e x i l e from Milan, i s cut o f f from society, just
as h i s island i s not, as Donne says, *a part of the main.•
His ' f u l l poor
c e l l * i s a p h y s i c a l p a r a l l e l of the s i t u a t i o n i n Milan before he
was
deposed, a s i t u a t i o n which was the r e s u l t of h i s dedication to the arts,
a dedication which resulted i n h i s i s o l a t i o n from h i s people and
Antonio's
usurpation:
And Prospero, the prime duke, being so reputed
In d i g n i t y , and f o r the l i b e r a l arts
Without a p a r a l l e l , those being a l l my study —
The government I cast upon my brother,
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt i n secret studies.
When D u r r e l l speaks of 'black-hearted Descartes' i n " C i t i e s , Plains and
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 59
19
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 52
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene i i , 11. 73-77,
i n The Complete Works, ed. G. B. Harrison (N.I.).Harcourt, Brace (1952).
A l l , o t h e r references to the play w i l l be i n t e r n a l l y documented.
2 0
29
People", he i s r e f e r r i n g to the theory of dualism.
Prospero, i n h i s
negation of a l l that i s physical i n favour o f what i s i n t e l l e c t u a l , i n
h i s neglect of h i s people i n favour of the l i b e r a l a r t s , i s l i k e a
Cartesian, f o r Descartes proved, at l e a s t to h i s own s a t i s f a c t i o n , that the
mind i s f a r superior to the body:
I ask them to make an object of study o f t h e i r own
mind and a l l the attributes attaching to i t , of
which they f i n d they cannot doubt, notwithstanding
i t be supposed that whatever they have at any time
derived from t h e i r senses i s f a l s e ; and I beg them
not to d e s i s t from attending to i t , u n t i l they have
acquired the habit of perceiving i t d i s t i n c t l y and
of b e l i e v i n g that i t , can be more r e a d i l y known than
any corporal thing.
The crux of The Tempest i s i n Prospero's attitude to Caliban, the
manifestation of the gross p h y s i c a l , and the f i n a l r e c o n c i l i a t i o n o f
Prospero with h i s former enemies, who had usurped him because of t h e i r
gross desires.
Many Shakespearean c r i t i c s , among them Derek Traversi, have concluded
that Prospero brought h i s enemies to h i s i s l a n d to e f f e c t the r e c o n c i l i a t i o n
which takes place at the end of the p l a y .
play that would indicate that t h i s i s so;
2 2
But there i s nothing i n the
indeed, a l l o f Prospero's comments,
as the following quotation w i l l show, tend to indicate that he wants t o
punish them: 'Let them be hunted soundly.
a l l mine enemies' (17, i ,
263-264).
At t h i s hour / L i e at my mercy
This statement i s not that of a man
intent on welcoming h i s former enemies as brothers. Rather, the words are
of one dedicated to vengeance, and f o r t h i s reason the reader i s not
prepared f o r h i s speech to A r i e l at the beginning of the next a c t :
Rene Descartes, Objections and Replies, Postulate I I , trans.
E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, i n Great Books of the Western World,
v o l . 31, p. 131
22
Derek Traversi, Shakespeare:
University Press (1953), p. 194
The Last Phase (Stanford) Stanford
30
Though with t h e i r high wrongs I am struck
to the quick.
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my f u r y
Do I take part. The r a r e r action i s
In v i r t u e than i n vengeance. They being penitent,
The sole d r i f t of my purpose doth extend
Not a frown further. Go release them, A r i e l .
My charms 1*11 break, t h e i r senses 1*11 restore,
And they s h a l l be themselves (V, i , 25-32).
In an o v e r a l l view of the play, these l i n e s denote the change i n Prospero
which i s i n d i c a t i v e o f h i s s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n , the point which D u r r e l l f e l t
a l l a r t i s t s must reach before they can t r u l y create.
Unlike Hamlet, whose
attempts at a f u l l understanding of himself and h i s own capacities were
aborted, Prospero can, rather than k i l l h i s enemies, take the step which
w i l l reconcile him with them.
He has achieved the balance between
emotional and i n t e l l e c t u a l which i s necessary f o r the integration o f the
i n d i v i d u a l and society.
That t h i s balance exists i s made obvious by a comparison of the
preceding quotation with l i n e s which come before i t i n the p l a y :
Ari.
Your charm so strongly works *em
That i f you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.
Pro.
Dost thou think so, s p i r i t ?
Ari.
Mine would, s i r , i f I were human.
Pro.
And mine s h a l l .
Hast thou, which art but a i r , a touch, a f e e l i n g
Of t h e i r a f f l i c t i o n s , and s h a l l not myself,
One o f t h e i r kind, that r e l i s h a l l as sharply,
Passion as they, be k i n d l i e r moved than thou art?
(V, i , 17-24)
The way i n which A r i e l brings about the change i n Prospero i s a subtle
one, and the words used by both characters i n these l i n e s :
'affections*,
*touch*, 'feeling', ' r e l i s h * , 'passion*: are those associated with the
emotional and not the i n t e l l e c t u a l side of man.
Prospero's reference
to h i s •fury* i n the following l i n e s i s an admission on h i s part that a
31
capacity other than i n t e l l e c t u a l does e x i s t f o r him, and t h i s r e a l i z a t i o n ,
coupled with the c o n t r o l l i n g action of h i s 'nobler reason 'gainst [ h i s ]
fury,' indicates the control he now has over himself, f o r any subsequent
action on h i s part w i l l be a product of t h i s balance between i n t e l l e c t u a l
and physical rather than of h i s 'art*.
He has become 'human', the l e v e l
which, according to the Elizabethan concept of an h i e r a r c h i c a l universe,
i s below angelic and above animal*
At
the beginning of Act V, Prospero has reached s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n and
unity, and h i s treatment of Alonso and company i n the closing scenes of
that act i s j o v i a l .
The masque which the King of Naples witnesses before
A r i e l appears as Fate i n Act I I I , Scene i i i i s set against the r e a l i t y
which he sees i n Act V when Prospero reveals Ferdinand and Miranda,
The
dream device which was a precursor to the pronouncement of eternal
p e r d i t i o n on Alonso was a product of the i n t e l l e c t u a l l y - o r i e n t e d hatred
of Prospero, but when Alonso sees Ferdinand and Miranda together, although
he f i r s t mistakes them f o r an apparition, he f u l l y recovers from the dreamworld i n which he had been placed.
E a r l i e r i n the play, Prospero had t o l d
Ferdinand thbt 'We are such s t u f f / As dreams are made on • . .' (IV, i ,
156-157),
I f h i s words have significance i n the play, they r e f e r to the
dream-reality i n t e r p o l a t i o n which leads his enemies to penitence and f i n a l
reconciliation.
The importance of these l i n e s l i e s i n human l i f e as a
b a s i s f o r dreams.
Here i s the a r t i s t i c s i t u a t i o n :
dream-world based on r e a l i t y j
the creation of a
the organization of r e a l i t y i n the mind of
the a r t i s t i n order to produce a response i n the audience which i s
cathartic i n D u r r e l l ' s sense, whether the work i s comedy or tragedy.
D u r r e l l ' s comments on the a r t of the Twentieth Century point to t h i s need
for
catharsis, and h i s view of i t s purpose i n the drama hints at h i s need
for
catharsis i n h i s own
life:
32
The only j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r the a r t of s t a s i s
which i s XXth century art i s i n the
p r e c i p i t a t i o n of c r i s i s * The c r i s i s i n the
drama p r e c i p i t a t e s the c r i s i s i n the audience
— and thus the c a t h a r t i c p r i n c i p l e of change
of stance — the reborn s e l f , '
2
Within The Tempest, the a r t i s t i s Prospero, and i t i s by means of the
dream state and the masque that he reveals the truths of t h e i r situations
to the others on the i s l a n d .
The job of the a r t i s t , to present •Hamlet
and Faust as front-page news,' as D u r r e l l says i n " C i t i e s , Plains and
People", i s to involve h i s audience i n a c r i s i s which w i l l change t h e i r
l i v e s , w i l l bring about 'the reborn self,') and t h i s i s what he achieves.
In a l e t t e r written i n the winter of 1936, D u r r e l l r e p l i e s to M i l l e r ' s
request f o r information about Hamlet:
Why every one i s puzzled by poor Hamlet i s
because they always t r y to see a r e l a t i o n
between the external b a t t l e . . . and the
inner one. A f a i l u r e , because the inner and
outer r e a l i t y move along separate planes,
and only seldom meet. There's your d i a l e c t a l
interplay, but through the r e a l i t y always the
magic i s seen. ^
2
There are two
'battles' happening i n Hamlet, the external one between the
Prince and Claudius, and the i n t e r n a l one i n which Hamlet i s t r y i n g to
understand himself.
The external b a t t l e i s the ' r e a l i t y ' of the play, but
the 'magic' to which D u r r e l l r e f e r s i n h i s l e t t e r i s the dream.
The problem
of the a r t i s t who i s attempting to control the external world, h i s raw
material, i s the fusion of that world with the dream i n order to produce a
catharsis i n h i s audience.
D u r r e l l considers 'Shakespeare, Lawrence and
Go.' to have f a i l e d i n t h e i r attempts to place before t h e i r audiences the
necessity f o r the integration of the dual nature of
23
D u r r e l l , L e t t e r s , p. 224
24
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 26
man.
33
It i s the fusion of the dream and the external world which produces
a r t i s t i c expression of any sort.
outer r e a l i t y . '
There are two r e a l i t i e s ,
'the inner and
The inner r e a l i t y , the dream, i s each i n d i v i d u a l ' s response
to a thing or an event, f o r the early D u r r e l l a response which he attempts
to transcribe i n order to present i t to an audience.
In r e p l y to a l e t t e r
from N i l l e r about surrealism, D u r r e l l states emphatically that 'I believe
f i r m l y i n the i d e a l of cementing r e a l i t y with the dream, but I do not
believe the rest of t h i s stuff,» ^ 'the r e s t of t h i s s t u f f being the
2
purposes of surrealism as a theory of a r t according to surrealism.
Durrell
believes the a r t i s t must communicate the truth as he_ sees i t by means of
'something magical which we recognize i n dream and which makes the face of
the sleeper relax and expand with a bloom such as we rarely see i n waking
life.'
The dream, before i t can be communicated, must provoke a catharsis
i n the a r t i s t , f o r i t i s t h i s response that the a r t i s t i s attempting to
impart.
That every i n d i v i d u a l responds i n his own way to any given object or
occurrence i s pointed up i n M i l l e r ' s d e s c r i p t i o n of h i s and D u r r e l l ' s t r i p
to the astronomical observatory near Athens.
through the telescope, D u r r e l l exclaimed,
When he saw the Pleiades
'RosicrucianJ' This i d i o s y n c r a t i c
response i s not the exception but the r u l e , says M i l l e r :
For D u r r e l l and f o r myself r e a l i t y l a y wholly beyond the
reach of [the astronomers'] puny instruments which i n
themselves were nothing more than clumsy r e f l e c t i o n s of
t h e i r circumscribed imagination locked forever i n the
hypothetical prison of l o g i c .
2 7
And f i n a l l y , even when to my own eye and the eye of
the astronomer (the Pleiades] possesses the same
dimensions, the same b r i l l i a n c e , i t d e f i n i t e l y does
25
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 19
26
Henry M i l l e r , The Colossus of Maroussi (N.Y.) New Directions
(1958), pp. 31-32. Hereinafter referred to as Colossus.
27
Colossus, p. 103
34
not look the same to us both — Durrell*s very
exclamation i s s u f f i c i e n t to prove t h a t . ^
8
The
'hypothetical p r i s o n of l o g i c ' from which D u r r e l l was t r y i n g to escape
i n the e a r l y parts of " C i t i e s , Plains and People" i s the Cartesian
proposition that the mind and the body are d i s t i n c t , and thaft the former
i s f a r superior to the l a t t e r .
In order to achieve integrated consciousness
the i n d i v i d u a l must fuse the s p i r i t u a l and the physical, the Apollonian and
the Dionysiac, the dream and the r e a l i t y .
The l a t t e r process has been
treated at some length i n regards Shakespeare's (and Prospero's) technique
i n The Tempest and the process o f a r t i s t i c creation.
I t remains to discuss
the two former i n respect to t h e i r r o l e s i n the play and i n the d i a l e c t i c
of the growth toward a r t i s t i c consciousness.
In h i s a r t i c l e on The Tempest as quoted e a r l i e r i n t h i s chapter,
D u r r e l l said that perhaps Prospero had discovered 'that he who comes down
to earth finds himself nearest to heaven.•
i s l i k e Goethe's Faust.
In t h i s discovery Prospero
The perfection i n the l i b e r a l arts of which he
boasts to Miranda i s very much l i k e Faust's, and Faust achieves a
recognition of h i s s i t u a t i o n i n Part I I which i s s i m i l a r to Prospero's
renunciation of h i s powers at the end of The Tempesti
A fool*, who t h i t h e r turns h i s b l i n k i n g eyes
And dreams h e ' l l f i n d h i s l i k e above the skies.
Let him stand fast and look around on earth;
Not mute i s t h i s world to a man of worth.
Why need he range through a l l eternity?
Here he can seize a l l that he knows to be.
Thus l e t him wander down h i s earthly dayj
When s p i r i t s spook, l e t him pursue h i s wayj
Let him f i n d pain and b l i s s as on he s t r i d e ,
He! every moment s t i l l u n s a t i s f i e d . 9
2
2 8
Colossus, p. 104
9
Goethe, Faust, trans. G. M. P r i e s t , Part I I , Act V, 11443 11452, i n Great Books o f the Western World, V o l . 47, p. 278. Hereinafter
referred to as Faust,
2
35
The preceding quotation i s a renunciation of Faust's powers, f o r he i s the
' f o o l ' f o r having made a pact with Mephistopheles which w i l l cost him h i s
soul.
Here there i s a second s i m i l a r i t y between Prospero and Faust, f o r
both men have conjured up agents of supernatural powers i n order to increase
t h e i r control of the world, and both have made pacts with these s p i r i t s i n
return f o r t h e i r a i d , Faust to give up h i s soul and Prospero to release
Ariel.
The perfection to which both men
them by t h e i r supernatural servants.
aspire, however, i s n u l l i f i e d f o r
A r i e l indicates to Prospero that the
magician lacks an emotional capacity, that deficiency keeping him from being
'human' l i k e Alonso and Gonzalo.
Mephistopheles, on the other hand, becomes
f o r Faust the manifestation of the grosser aspect of the necromancer's
nature:
Together with t h i s rapture
That brings me near and nearer t o the gods,
Thou gav'st the comrade whom I now no more
Can do without, though, cold and insolent,
He lowers me i n my own sight, transforms
With but a word, a breath, thy g i f t s to nothing.
Within my breast he fans with busy zeal
A savage f i r e f o r that f a i r , l o v e l y form.
Thus from desire I r e e l on to enjoyment
And i n enjoyment languish f o r desire.30
The state which Faust describes here, the giving over of himself to purely
physical pleasures, opposes the necessary balance which allows the i n d i v i d u a l
to be human as much as Prospero's pursuit of purely i n t e l l e c t u a l matters.
From t h i s point of view, A r i e l i s the representative of i n t e l l e c t u a l i t y i n
The Tempest and Caliban i s the epitome of the grossly p h y s i c a l .
As Traversi reminds us, the t i t l e of the play has both actual and
symbolic s i g n i f i c a n c e , ^
1
and the same i s true of the characters. The p l o t
3°
Faust, Part I, 11. 3240-3250
^
Traversi, p. 194
36
and the interplay of personalities shed light upon the movement of Prospero
toward self-realization.
There are two types of magic mentioned i n the play:
the intellectual powers of Prospero and the natural magic of Sycorax, the
mother of Caliban.
At one time Ariel's mistress, Sycorax could not completely
control him, 'for [Ariel] wast a s p i r i t too delicate / To act her earthy and
abhorred commands' (I, i i , 272-3).
Consequently, Ariel suffered the
imprisonment from which Prospero freed him.
Ariel's treatment at the hands
of Sycorax i s the subjugation of the intellectual to the physical, the
reverse of the Cartesian ideal, while the situation which exists during the
action of the play, the subjugation of Caliban to Prospero, i s the norm.
At the end of Act 17 Prospero has not approached the desired balance between
the intellectual and the physical. He considers Caliban 'A devil, a born
devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick' (17, i , 188-9), but this
quality i s Caliban's saving grace.
Unlike Stephano and Trinculo, Antonio
and Sebastian, he i s pure nature and therefore not subject to any judgment
of good and e v i l based on traditional Elizabethan concepts.
He i s not
'human', and therefore cannot be expected to possess the balance between
the intellectual and the physical from which any variation i s a condition
of e v i l .
Prospero must realize f i n a l l y that Caliban i s as much a part of
him as Ariel i s , for as Henry Miller points out,
the great physicians have always spoken of Nature
as being the great healer. That i s only partially
true. Nature alone can do nothing. Nature can
cure only when man recognizes his place i n the
world, which i s not i n Nature, as with the animal,
but i n the human kingdom, the link between the
natural and the divine.'
2
Colossus, p. 77
37
THE PARADISE OF INNOCENCE
The l e t t e r s which pass between D u r r e l l and Henry M i l l e r i n the period
just preceding and during the time chronicled i n Prospero s C e l l are f i l l e d
1
with D u r r e l l o u t l i n i n g his.attempts to f i n d himself and M i l l e r ' s l u c i d and
guiding r e p l i e s .
Throughout t h i s period D u r r e l l and M i l l e r are thinking
along very much the same l i n e s .
The tone and thought of M i l l e r ' s Colossus
of Maroussi, the retrospective l o g of a t r i p made during 1939 to v i s i t
D u r r e l l and tour the Mediterranean, are s i m i l a r to those of Prospero's C e l l
and the bulk of t h e i r communication i s concerned with the a r t i s t and the
growth toward a r t i s t i c consciousness which was outlined i n the previous
chapter.
the
There i s no mention of Prospero as the consummate a r t i s t i n either
l e t t e r s or the Colossus.
Nevertheless, as we have seen, the protagonist
and c o n t r o l l i n g force of The Tempest became the symbol of achievement f o r
D u r r e l l i n " C i t i e s , Plains and People", h i s reminiscent view of h i s own
development.
In 1937, D u r r e l l writes to M i l l e r about h i s need f o r h i s l i t e r a r y
'double', Charles Norden.
Trying to persuade D u r r e l l to drop the pseudonym
under which he had written Panic Spring, M i l l e r r e p l i e s :
A man can f a l l down, can underdo himself, can
go haywire. But he ought not to d e l i b e r a t e l y
incarnate a l e s s e r s e l f , a ghost, a substitute.
The whole thing i s a question of r e s p o n s i b i l i t y
and willingness to accept one's fate, one's punishment, as
well as one's reward. I think that i s only too
p a i n f u l l y c l e a r , i f you ask yourself. You want
Charles Norden to be the scapegoat. But i n the
end i t w i l l be L. D. who w i l l be obliged to k i l l .
Charles Norden. That's the "double" theme . . .
Aaron's Rod i s a good book, on t h i s score —
Lawrence suffered from i t too. And he knew i t . I t
was a l i t t l e d i f f e r e n t , but fundamentally the same
38.
problem. Not accepting oneself i n toto.
integrating.^^
Not
The p a r a l l e l between D u r r e l l and Prospero l i e s i n t h e i r sharing of
same problem [ o f ] not accepting oneself i n toto.*
D u r r e l l * s tone i s one
of praise and awe,
that he considers him a true a r t i s t .
i n 1945,
In the early l e t t e r s
and he repeatedly t e l l s M i l l e r
Much l a t e r i n the correspondence,
D u r r e l l c a l l s M i l l e r 'Prospero', a r e f l e c t i o n of h i s e a r l y
to the author of Tropic of Cancer, whom he saw
view of the
'the
attitude
as possessing the true world-
artist.
For you there i s t h i s powerful t o t a l world
u n r o l l i n g i t s e l f ; you are so deep i n i t that
there i s not time f o r anything e l s e . With me
i t i s d i f f e r e n t . The l i t t l e world, the heraldic
universe, i s a c y c l i c , periodic thing i n me
—
l i k e a bout of drinking.
I am not a permanent
inhabitant — only on Wednesdays by i n v i t a t i o n .
I enter and leave — and presto the ordinary
i n d i v i d u a l i s born, the J e k y l l . ^
What D u r r e l l does not r e a l i z e at t h i s point i n his development i s that
'the
heraldic universe' i s the dream-world which he must recreate as an a r t i s t ,
Nietzsche points out i n The B i r t h of Tragedy that the a r t i s t ' i s , f i r s t
and
foremost, a Dionysiac a r t i s t , become wholly i n d e n t i f i e d with the o r i g i n a l
Oneness, i t s pain and contradiction,
as music, i f music may
and producing a r e p l i c a of that Oneness,
l e g i t i m a t e l y be seen as a r e p e t i t i o n of the world;
however, t h i s music becomes v i s i b l e to him again, as i n a dream s i m i l i t u d e ,
through the Apollonian dream influence.'35
That D u r r e l l f i n a l l y r e a l i z e d
the need f o r balance between s p i r i t u a l and i n s t i n c t u a l i s obvious i n a
l e t t e r to M i l l e r written i n
1958:
5 5
M i l l e r , Letters, p.
108
3 4
D u r r e l l , Letters, pp. 105-106
"
F r i e d r i c h Nietzsche, The B i r t h of Tragedy and The Genealogy
of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (N.I. )""A"hchor (1956), p. 38
39
Here's a quote from de Rougement to ponder and
perhaps p i n up somewhere: "When under the
pretence of destroying whatever i s a r t i f i c i a l —
i d e a l i s i n g r h e t o r i c , the mystical ethics of
'perfection' — people seek to swamp themselves
i n the p r i m i t i v e flood of i n s t i n c t , i n whatever
i s primeval, formless and f o u l , they may imagine
they are recapturing r e a l l i f e but a c t u a l l y they
are being swept away by a torrent of waste-matter
i?36
The need f o r i n t e g r a t i o n expressed i n The Tempest i s seen i n the
r e l a t i o n s h i p of Prospero to A r i e l and Caliban, both on the symbolic and
narrative l e v e l s .
The one character i n the play who i s u n i f i e d i s Gonzalo.
Of a l l the courtiers who have been cast upon the i s l a n d by the storm, only
he i s considered by Prospero to be a f r i e n d .
The services which he rendered
to Prospero and Miranda when they were set a d r i f t showed a cognizance of
both the i n t e l l e c t u a l and physical needs of the castaways.
Henry M i l l e r says o f humanity and human relationships that
the great fundamental lack, which i s apparent
everywhere i n our c i v i l i z e d world, i s the t o t a l
absence of anything approaching a communal
existence. We have become s p i r i t u a l nomads;
whatever pertains to the soul i s d e r e l i c t , tossed
about by the winds l i k e flotsam and jetsam.?
7
In Act I I , Scene i , 143-168, Gonzalo outlines what he would do with the
i s l a n d i f he 'were the King on't.'
The society he would e s t a b l i s h i s i n
i t s d e s c r i p t i o n d e f i n i t e l y a communal one, with the emphasis on the
innocence o f i t s people.
Indeed, he says, 'I would with such p e r f e c t i o n
govern, s i r , / To excel the Golden Age.*
Gonzalo might w e l l have been
answering the need M i l l e r sees, and while h i s proposed society i s U t o p i a n
i t i s the emphasis on innocence that i s the important point i n the p l a n .
36
D u r r e l l , L e t t e r s , p. 345
^
Colossus, p. 122
7
40
What D u r r e l l i s attempting to recapture i s the innocence of a childhood
spent i n the Himalayas which he outlines i n " C i t i e s , Plains and People".
I t i s impossible to return to the earthly paradise, but an approximation
of that s i t u a t i o n can be attained with the integration of the personality.
Indeed,
the wonderful thing . . . i s the sloughing
o f f of the b u i l t - i n man (the man of society,
t r a d i t i o n , education, background, etc.) and
the emergence of the new man r e l y i n g upon
his i n t u i t i o n , knowing that whatever i t i s
he i s p r a c t i s i n g i s "magic".'
8
In Act V of The Tempest Prospero's renunciation of h i s powers i s 'the
sloughing o f f of the b u i l t - i n man'
h i s previously b i p a r t i t e nature.
which i s attained with the fusion of
But the renunciation of one magic must
lead, according to the above quotation, to another, a purer force based
upon the natural power of the i n d i v i d u a l and not that of h i s books.
t h i s happens with Prospero i s seen i n the opening l i n e s of the
That
"Epilogue":
Now my charms are a l l o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which i s most f a i n t .
The magic of which man's integrated nature i s the well-spring i s by f a r
the more powerful and important.
D u r r e l l e a r l i e r complained that he could
reach t h i s inner s e l f 'Only on Wednesdays, by i n v i t a t i o n .
1
h i s problem l i e s i n a l e t t e r from M i l l e r :
So many times, when I am sorely b a f f l e d , I w i l l
say to myself — "Write i t , put i t downi What
difference whether i t makes sense or not."
And
then i t ' s as i f some panel inside one s l i d open,
the musicians are there, the note i s sounded,
the walls give way, the images beckon —
and
you f i n d yourself saying i t without knowing i t .
F a t a l to pause and r e f l e c t . On.' OnJ
U n t i l the
strength gives out. Then, i n quiet, a f t e r a
prayer of thanks, you read — and you see
3 8
M i l l e r , Letters, p.
380
The answer to
41
the traces of another's hand, God's maybe,
or maybe your own, your concealed, your
suppressed s e l f . A l l one.?
9
The music which M i l l e r mentions here, l i k e the music Nietzsche's Dionysiac
hears, i s an ordered harmony, the sound o f the l y r e of Apollo which recreates
the texture of r e a l i t y i n images which the a r t i s t w i l l communicate to h i s
audience.
This music, with i t s i n t r i c a c i e s of melody, i s impossible to
transcribe\
i t can only be
approximated:
How often have I t o l d you that the books I wrote
i n my head were the best, that nothing manifested
i n p r i n t ever approaches them? What we put down
on paper i s but a pale imitation, a f a i n t and faded
remembrance of these sessions with the s i l e n t s p i r i t .
The 'heavenly music' which Prospero summons A r i e l to play i n Act V, Scene i ,
i s external to the magician.
realization j
At t h i s point Prospero has just reached s e l f -
i t i s important to note the p a r a l l e l i n M i l l e r ' s remarks
concerning the music of creation i n which he says that the r e s u l t i n g a r t
form i s a product, not only of the mind of the a r t i s t , but of 'another's
hand, God's maybe, or maybe your own, your concealed, your suppressed s e l f .
A l l one.'
There are, therefore, two musics, the 'heavenly music' which i s
an aspect of the Apollonian forces, and another music which i s an innate
part of the a r t i s t .
'Music i s the noiseless sound made by a swimmer i n the ocean of his own
consciousness.' ^
4
The sea which surrounds Prospero's island can be seen
symbolically as the 'ocean of consciousness', and the voyage to that i s l a n d
as the search f o r s e l f .
The tempest, then, i s a disturbance i n the mind
3 9
M i l l e r , Letters pp. 380-381
4
0
M i l l e r , Letters, p. 381
4 1
M i l l e r , Letters, p. 132
42
which hinders the swimmer, f o r A r i e l ' s description of h i s actions during
the
storm draws the following r h e t o r i c a l question from Prospero:
Who was so firm, so constant, that t h i s c o i l
Would not i n f e c t his reason? ( I , i i , 206-8)
In Hamlet, the Prince f e e l s 'a fever of the mad,'
and the constant
to which he submits himself i s a r e s u l t of the tempest within him.
D u r r e l l i s experiencing
questioning
In
1938
a similar situation:
What I have to say seems such a barren waste of
self-questioning and argument . . . . I have
cast i t i n t o a strange and novel form, that of
a Euclidean proposition: f i r s t a l e t t e r from
God to me explaining and enunciating the theorem;
then a l e t t e r from me to God explaining who I am
and what I have t r i e d to do.
I have l o s t revolution
and anarehy now and am swimming through hundreds of
compass points towards myself. I t i s d i f f i c u l t and
horrifying.*
2
The form i n which D u r r e l l has
cast h i s s e l f-questioning
i s founded upon
l o g i c , an impossible basis f o r any attempt to f i n d oneself.
In his case
the ' s t e r i l e apparatus' of Descartes only l e d him to the concept of dualism,
into a b i f u r c a t i o n of h i s personality rather than toward the necessary
integration.
In 1936
he t e l l s M i l l e r , 'I am discovering what I am.
i t ' s a b i t p a i n f u l because I started i n another d i r e c t i o n . ' *
3
Only
I t i s not
through l o g i c that the f u s i o n of the b i f i d aspects of the personality w i l l
come.
The Meditations of Descartes, a r e s u l t of t h i s cold l o g i c , have
yielded the Logical Positivism which D u r r e l l f e e l s i s keeping Western
from integration.
A quotation
from the "obiter d i c t a " o f Pursewarden, one
of two n o v e l i s t s i n The Alexandria
Quartet, i l l u s t r a t e s t h i s a t t i t u d e :
"Why do I always choose an epigraph from de Sade?
Because he demonstrates pure rationalism —
the
D u r r e l l , Letters, p.
Man
130
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 39
43
ages of sweet reason we have l i v e d through i n
Europe since Descartes. He i s the f i n a l flower of
reason, and the typic of European behaviour. I
hope to l i v e to see him translated i n t o Chinese.
His books would bring the house down and would
read as pure humour. But h i s s p i r i t has already
brought the house down around our e a r s . "
4 4
The two important points i n the above quotation are the r e s u l t i n g chaos
i n a c i v i l i z a t i o n based upon a d u a l i s t i c philosophy, and the humour which
the writings of de Sade would arouse i n China, a country one of whose most
famous philosophical t r e a t i s e s , the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, treats the
human being not as a d u a l i t y of mind and body but as a unity.
Durrell*s
attitude to both i s obvious i n a l e t t e r to M i l l e r dated November 10,
1940:
I see no end to the [war]. I t w i l l go on f o r years
because we are no nearer to the i n d i v i d u a l s o l u t i o n — and the outer struggle i s only a r e f l e c t i o n of i t .
Nothing remains r e a l l y except one's personal honour
and one's love f o r the k i l l e r s . We s h a l l see.
Love to anyone over there who might be i n
need of d i s i n t e r e s t e d love. Ah Lao-tse, we need
you here! 5
4
Although the tone i n t h i s l e t t e r indicates an involvement i n the war, i t
also betrays a f e e l i n g that D u r r e l l i s somehow above the f i g h t i n g .
sense he i s l i k e the Prospero who,
In one
at the end of The Tempest, can pardon
those who betrayed him (Alonso and Antonio) and those who had planned to
k i l l him (Caliban).
The apostrophe to Lao-tse ^ at the end of the l e t t e r
4
i s not to the man but to the philosophy which preaches unity of s e l f and
involvement i n the a f f a i r s of the world.
S e l f - u n i t y i s a prerequisite to
and s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e 3 s the source o f material f o r the a r t i s t s ' communication
with h i s fellow man.
The philosophy of the Tao, from t h i s point of view, i s
44
Balthazar, p. 247
45
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 168
46
Also variously Lao Tzu, Lao Tsu, and Lao-tsu
44
creative, unlike Cartesian dualism, f o r i t i s through the attainment of the
Way
47
that one can influence the world f o r good.
In the following quotation
M i l l e r outlines the goal of the a r t i s t and i t s consequent results :
To l i v e c r e a t i v e l y , I have discovered, means to
l i v e more and more u n s e l f i s h l y , to l i v e more and
more i n t o the world, i d e n t i f y i n g oneself with i t
and thus influencing i t at the core, so to speak.
Art, l i k e r e l i g i o n , i t now seems to me, i s only a
preparation, an i n i t i a t i o n into the way of l i f e .
The goal i s l i b e r a t i o n , freedom, which means
assuming greater r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . To continue
writing beyond the point of s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n
seems f u t i l e and a r r e s t i n g . The mastery of any
form o f expression should lead i n e v i t a b l y to the
f i n a l expression — mastery of l i f e . In t h i s
realm, one i s absolutely alone, face to face with
the very elements of c r e a t i o n . *
8
This would seem to contradict a l l that has been said heretofore, but t h i s
i s not the case.
M i l l e r i s o u t l i n i n g i n the l a t t e r h a l f of the quotation
what he sees as the i d e a l .
The purpose of a r t i s to communicate to the
world at large the s t r i v i n g s of the a r t i s t to achieve s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n .
But t h i s unity, l i k e the Tao, can never be verbalized;
experienced.
i t can only be
Paradoxically, then, a l l a r t i s a search f o r s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n ,
a l o g of that search f o r something which i n i t s e l f can never be communicated.
The problem of the a r t i s t i s therefore insoluble.
He cannot communicate
d i r e c t l y the road t o s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n , but can only approximate i t with
symbols.
The f i n a l d i f f i c u l t y , from t h i s point of view, i s the means of
communication i t s e l f :
language i s my problem. I set out on a voyage
to f i n d myself — and f i n d language.
49
47
48
49
Also the One, the Path.
Colossus, p. 206
D u r r e l l , L e t t e r s , p. 94
45
By 1937 Durrell bad published two novels, Pied Piper of Lovers and Panic
Spring, and had finished The Black Book, which Miller read i n manuscript
form.
The latter was the f i r s t time Durrell had heard his own voice i n his
writing, but he f e l t that something was lacking!
In The Black Book there was nothing for me to be,
really. I'm s t i l l nobody. But I think I w i l l be.
Then I can show myself without the cocoon, the
arty kimono.-'
The "arty kimono' bears a striking resemblance to the magician's robe which
Prospero wears throughout most of The Tempest but which he discards i n Act V,
Scene i , i n favour of the conventional clothing of society.
With the
removal of his robe and the breaking of his staff, he discards the external
signs of his power. In the same way, Durrell intends to discard the outer
vestiges of his craft and return to the world from which he had isolated
himself on Corfu.
The search for the integration of his personality which Durrell
chronicles i n "Cities, Plains and People" i s at the same time his development
as an a r t i s t .
The two go hand-in-hand.
In the poem Durrell rebels against
the dualistic tendencies resultant i n a study of Descartes.
Miller points
out to him the real connection, the dialectal interplay between l i f e and
art, with a quotation from his book on Lawrence which he feels applies to
Durrell and Durrell's work:
"The poem i s the dream made flesh, i n a two-fold sense:
as a work of art, and as l i f e i t s e l f , which i s a work of
art. When man becomes f u l l y conscious of his powers,
his role, his destiny, he i s an artist and ceases to
struggle with reality. He lives out his dream of Paradise.
He transmutes his real experience of l i f e into spiritual
equations. He scorns the ordinary alphabet which yields
at most only a grammar of thought, and adopts the symbol,
the metaphor, the ideograph. He writes Chinese. He
Durrell, Letters, p. 94
46
creates an impossible world out of an incomprehensible
language, a l i e that enchants and enslaves men."51
D u r r e l l ' s development i s toward a f u l l consciousness o f his a b i l i t y and a
more complete knowledge of himself.
The work of art i s an expression of the
growth of the i n d i v i d u a l not only as an a r t i s t but as a member of the society
with which he i s attempting to communicate, and f o r D u r r e l l a r t and l i f e can
never be d i s s o c i a t e d :
the root of the struggle which on paper looks l i k e
the struggle to write i s r e a l l y the struggle to
l i v e . A l l a r t i s t i c d i s l o c a t i o n s and f a i l i n g s go
r i g h t back to the author. Hence my disgust when
re-reading ([The Black Book] from the copy you sent
me. Jesus, I can do better than t h i s * Let me k i l l
the " a r t i s t " i n me and the man w i l l appear — i f
there i s a man.52
There was a man beneath the ' a r t i s t ' and the 'arty kimono' f o r both D u r r e l l
and Prospero.
By the end of The Tempest Prospero has renounced the 'rough
magic' i n favour of h i s own power, and by 1946, the date o f publication of
C i t i e s , Plains and People, D u r r e l l has returned to the world of men from
Prospero's C e l l , the confined world of introspection which allowed him to
achieve u n i t y of s e l f .
On the symbolic l e v e l , the i s l a n d i s h i s true s e l f ,
l y i n g i n 'the sea o f consciousness' through which he must make h i s way i n
order to a t t a i n self-consciousness.
U n t i l such time as he reaches that
metaphorical i s l a n d , he must frequently endure the 'tempest' caused by h i s
' f u r i e s ' and must attempt to communicate his ordeal by w r i t i n g .
The i s l a n d
becomes h i s dream-world, embodying that which i s nameable and unnameable,
u n i v e r s a l and personal, knowable and unknowable, the Paradise of Innocence,
the search f o r which i s common to a l l mankind.
51
D u r r e l l , Letters, pp. 46-7
52
D u r r e l l , Letters, p. 99
CHAPTER III
THE QUALITY OF SILENCE
48
'THE HERALDIC UNIVERSE*
The f i r s t chapter of Reflections on £ Marine Venus i s called "Of
Paradise Terrestre**.
Along with Prospero's Cell, Reflections outlines the
search for a lost paradise which Durrell half-consciously undertook i n the
1930's and which he continued after World War II,
There i s an hiatus i n
the chronicling during the whole of the period of the war, and when i t i s
taken up again i t i s with some misgivings as to what he w i l l find i n Rhodes:
Tomorrow I should see for myself whether
the old Greek ambience had survived the
war, whether i t was s t i l l a reality based
in the landscape and the people —- or
whether we had simply invented i t for
ourselves i n the old days . . . .53
In Rhodes Durrell found a concretization of what he had begun to discover
in Prospero's Cell, and what he stated explicitly about Corfu i n his article
on The Tempest:
I am aware of the symbolic properties of
the i s l e ; I am aware that The Tempest i s
really a lucid parable which touches the
Island of the heart•s desire . . . •.54
Durrell hints at the problem of the recognition of the difference between
the internal and external realities i n Reflections when he wonders i f what
he found i n Greece before the war had been real or fancied.
In the island
books he i s looking for a solution to this problem of the fusion of the
realities, and while he does solve i t to some extent, there i s a realization
at the end of Prospero's Cell that he can never record his discovery i n any
precise way. This discovery i s foreshadowed by Ivan Zarian, one of the
main characters i n the book, during a discussion with Count D.:
5?
Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus: a companion
to the landscape of Rhodes (London) Faber ( T 9 6 O ) , p. 17. Hereinafter
referred to as RefYeciions.
5 4
"Prospero's Isle", p. 137
49
•I am thinking,' says Zarian, 'how nothing i s
ever solved f i n a l l y . In every age, from every
angle, we are facing the same set of natural
phenomena, moonlight, death, religion, laughter,
fear. We make idolatrous attempts to enclose
them i n a conceptual frame. And a l l the time
they change under our very noses.'55
The only solution for the problem i s that there i s no solution, and the
Count•s reply to Zarian, oriented as i t i s toward The Tempest, i s the key
to what Durrell was seeking and what he f i n a l l y found i n the Prospero of
the end of the playj
•To admit that i s to admit happiness — or
peace of mind, i f you l i k e . You, doctor
[Theodore Stephanides], are scandalized
when I suggest that The Tempest might be
as good a guide to Corcyra as the o f f i c i a l
one. It i s because the state of being
which i s recorded i n the character of
Prospero i s something which the spiritually
rich or the sufficiently unhappy can draw
_
for themselves out of this clement landscape.'-'
Durrell's references to Descartes i n "Cities, Plains and People" and
Balthazar point out that any attempt to conceptualize this 'set of natural
phenomena' i s impossible, for the result i s only insoluble d i f f i c u l t i e s
from which the individual must extricate himself. As Count D. points out,
•we knock up against the invisible wall which
bounds the prison of our knowledge. It i s only
when a man has been round that wall on his hands
and knees, when he i s certain that there i s no
way out, that he i s driven upon himself for a
solution.»57
Early i n Prospero's Cell, Durrell makes a definite statement concerning his
leaving England for Greece*
You w i l l think i t strange to have come a l l the
way from England to this fine Grecian promontory
where our only company can be rock, a i r , sky —
'
Lawrence Durrell, Prospero's C e l l : a guide to the landscape and
manners of the island of Corcyra (London) Faber (196277 P« 105
5
6
57
Prospero's Cell, p. 106
Prospero's Cell, p. 106
50
and a l l the elementals. In letters home NlancyJ
says we have been cultivating the tragic sense.'
8
The two most obvious instances of 'the tragic sense' are Hamlet and Faust.
They are examples of the aborted attempt to achieve the unification of the
self which i s necessary for the peace of mind of which the Count speaks.
As characters they have not f u l l y cultivated the 'tragic sense', have not
attained self-realization. They are the failures which Durrell sets against
the achievement of Prospero.
What Prospero found at the end of The Tempest
is the unity of self which Durrell was seeking, and i t i s obvious from the
many references Durrell makes to his loneliness i n the Letters that he
considered himself one of 'the sufficiently unhappy' to whom the Count
refers.
In the f i r s t pages of Reflections he discusses 'islomania, . . . a
rare but by no means unknown a f f l i c t i o n of the spirit,'59
a n
d i t i s i n the
conscious classification of himself as an 'islomane' that his realization
of the attraction the Greek islands hold for him f i r s t appears.
The islands
are the manifestation of the "Paradise Terrestre", for 'there are people,•
he says,
who find islands somehow i r r e s i s t i b l e . The
mere knowledge that they are on an island,
a l i t t l e world surrounded by the sea, f i l l s
them with an indescribable intoxication.
These born 'islomanes' . . . are Hie direct
descendants of the Atlantaans, and i t i s
towards the lost Atlantis that their
subconscious^yearns throughout their island
life . . . .
Atlantis i s just another name for the lost earthly paradise of Adam and Eve,
58
Prospero's Cell, p. 13
59
Reflections, p. 15
60
Reflections, p. 15
51
and at the end of "Cities, Plains and People" Durrell gives us Prospero,
Who many cities, plains, and people saw
Yet by his open door
In sunlight f e l l asleep
One summer with the Apple i n his hand.
There i s a definite series of parallels being drawn here.
In the above
quotation Prospero i s another Adam, but this time an Adam who has retained
his innocence by not eating the Apple from the Tree of Knowledge.
Isle" i s another Eden.
"Prospero's
It i s important for Durrell that the locale of the
Tempest should be the Greek islands, for like the Patmos he describes i n
Reflections they are a l l *a symbol of something for which we a l l keep a
place i n our hearts.'^ It i s important, too, that 'Hoyle refused
[islomania's] application to any but Aegean islands,*** for these are the
2
islands to which Durrell and the rest of the 'islomanes' i n the island
books long to return;
they are a l l to be classified under the general
heading "Atlantis" or "Paradise Terrestre".
The impossibility of
conceptualizing what i s emotion or desire i s also associated with 'islomania',
for 'Sand fone of the characters i n Reflections ] could not bring himself
to look a theory so irrational i n the eye.'63
The whole point of the
search for unity i s that i t cannot be conducted i n the rational manner of
a Descartes but must be experienced by each individual.
The crux of the
a r t i s t i c problem i s that every individual sees external reality i n a
different way, and that the artist's internal reality, the way i n which he
patterns the events of his environment, i s therefore really a fusion of
external reality and his dream of Paradise. In Prospero's Cell Durrell
says that 'there i s no explanation' for what he has done or for 'the
Reflections, p. 76
6 2
Reflections, p. 15
Reflections, p. 15
52
tragic sense* which he i s trying to a c h i e v e M i l l e r makes a most
concrete statement about the attraction Greece holds for him, and the same
i s true of Durrell:
Greece i s what everybody knows, even
in absentia, even as a child or as an
IcTiot or as a not-yet-born. It i s
what you expect the earth to look
like given a f a i r chance. It i s the
subliminal threshold of innocence. 5
6
The above quotation implies that a l l of mankind has a desire to return to
a paradisal existence, and that this desire i s not acquired but inborn.
In
this way the experience of the Greek landscape i s purgative, for i t awakens
*those ageless hordes of ancestral men who stand with eyes closed, like
trees after the passing of a flood, i n the ever-moving stream of the
blood.*
66
Durrell wishes to reach the innocence of a lost paradise, and i n a
letter to Miller he describes his early childhood i n India and the need he
feels for a return to i t :
My l i f e i s like a chopped worm. Until
eleven marvellous memories. White white
the Himalayas from the dormitory windows.
The gentle black Jesuits praying to Our
Lady and outside on the frontier roads
the Chinese walking s t i f f l y and Tibetans
playing cards on the ground, the blue
fissures i n the h i l l s — God, what a
dream •— the passes into Lhasa blue with
ice and thawing softly towards the holy
forbidden city. I think Tibet i s for me
what China i s for you. I lived on the
edge of i t with a kind of nursery-rhyme
happiness. I wanted to go one summer
into the passes. They promised to take me.
But I l e f t without. going — alamort -- i t
i s a kind of unreasoning disease when I
64
Prospero's Cell, p. 13
65
Colossus, p. 153
66
Colossus, p. 155
53
think of i t . , I am i l l o g i c a l again like a
child. ?
6
The dream-like quality of Durrell's childhood i s of the utmost importance
i n the above quotation, for the dream colours the inner reality of the
artist which he attempts to communicate to his audience.
In order to
comment upon them, the artist sets the events of the external world against
the inner dream, and that comment i s based on a set of values which are the
characteristics of the dream-world for which he yearns.
Good and e v i l , for
example, are seen i n relation to the perfection of the dream, but any
attempt to abstract that paradise i n words i s f u t i l e .
In the end, i t i s
not Tibet for which Durrell yearns but the child-like innocence that made
Tibet a paradise for him.
Tibet must, therefore, take i t s place with
Atlantis, Corfu, China, and a l l other designations for the innocent world
of the child.
The importance of the child-like state and the child-like vision
cannot be overstated, for Durrell sees this innocence as being indicative
of the unification of the self and the fusion of dream and reality for
which he i s seeking.
The innocence of childhood i s constantly apposed to
the state of knowledge i n which the adult lives.
The latter i s best
exemplified by Europe, while the former i s seen as manifested i n Greece.
Towards the end of Reflections Durrell muses on 'the dying child,
no less a symbol — but of what? Our world
perhaps. For i t i s always the child i n man
which i s forced to live through these repeated
tragedies of the European conscience. The child
i s the forfeit we pay for the whole sum of our
worldly errors. Only through him shall we ever
salvage these lost cultures of passion and b e l i e f . "
Durrell, Letters, pp.
Reflections, p. 183
60-61
8
54
The 'repeated tragedies of the European conscience' are a result of the
Cartesian theory of dualism which forbade men to consider the mind and
the body as a unity but rather instructed them to regard the body, because
i t could not be logically proved to exist, as a non-existent inferior of
the mind. We must remember that Sand called the 'islomania' theory
'irrational', for the importance of the search for self-unity l i e s i n
irrationality.
However one interprets the Book of Genesis, whether as fact or
allegory, Adam and Eve lost their innocence when they ate of the Tree of
Knowledge. Metaphorically speaking, the Cartesian doctrine was for the
majority of Europeans a Tree of Knowledge i n that adherence to i t s theories
led abruptly away from irrational knowledge to the more scientific logic
and reason which Descartes advocated.
Its Twentieth Century consequence
i s Logical Positivism, and hence Pursewarden can define Europe as 'a
Logical Positivist trying to prove to himself by logical deduction that he
exists.'^
This i s the error of which Durrell speaks: the negation of
a l l that i s irrational —
dreams, desires, emotions —
i n favour of that
which i s logical and can be proved by means of the scientific method.
This can result, not i n the integration of the self for which Durrell i s
seeking, but only i n the madness which a f f l i c t s Hamlet when he recognizes
his b i f i d nature but cannot unify i t .
Man's knowledge about the bipartite
self results i n his f a l l from the innocence of childhood.
It i s not an
actual physical child who i s sacrificed to the god of dualism but the
child-like qualities i n every individual, although Durrell might argue that
many children are killed i n the wars which are a product of the dualist
theory.
^
Balthazar, p. 247
55
There i s a vast difference between the individual who says 'I believe
and one who can say nothing u n t i l he can say *I know.*
1
It i s Durrell s
f
belief that mankind, and especially Western man, must return to the former
condition before he can achieve the self-realization which the Chinese, of
whom Lao Tzu i s the example most often found i n Durrell, have achieved
through reflection and introspection.
Both Prospero's Cell and Reflections are 'residence books* rather than
travel works, for Durrell feels they 'are always about living i n places,
not
just rushing through them.' Both books attempt 'to isolate the germ i n
the
people which i s expressed by their landscape.'
70
The tone of these
books, i s for the most part, one of child-like innocence.
The importance
which he ascribes to the landscape of the particular island on which he i s
resident i s to be seen i n his response to the sights and sounds of his
home. The following quotation from Bitter Lemons w i l l serve to illustrate
the
awe i n which Durrell holds the Greek islandst
In the fragile membranes of light which
separate like yolks upon the cold meniscus
of the sea when the f i r s t rays of the sun
come through, the bay looked haunted by
the desolate and meaningless centuries
which had passed over i t since f i r s t the
foam-born miracle occurred. With the same
obsessive rhythms i t beat and beat again
on that soft eroded point with i t s charredlooking sand: i t had gone on from the
beginning, never losing momentum, never
hurrying, reaching out and subsiding with
a sigh.
Durrell *s islands are as timeless as the sea which surrounds them, and
this timelessness i s pointed up i n the way i n which he sees past and
'
Lawrence Durrell, "Landscape With Literary Figures," i n The
New York Times Book Review, June 12, i960, p. 1
u
7 1
Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons (London) Faber (1959), p. 170
56
present, history and myth, overlapping* In each of the three books there
i s a definite section devoted to the history of the island, but there i s
also a constant reference to the association of particular places with both
history and myth*
The above quotation contains a reference to 'the foam-
born miracle,' the birth of Aphrodite from the sea which traditionally took
place on Cyprus, and at the same time i t i s illustrative of the pure
response to the landscape found i n the island trilogy*
The following
illustrates the common occurrence i n Durrell of the landscape being seen
qua landscape and yet at the same time having a great many associative
qualities$
the landscape, indeed, seems to become almost symbolicJ
To Larnaca through an extraordinary landscape
reminding one of Plato's God 'geometrizing':
low h i l l s , almost perfect cones with levelled
tops suggesting the Euclidean objects found
i n art studios. Wind erosion? But the panel
of geometrical mounds seems hand-made. And
the valleys tapestried with fat-tailed sheep,
plots of verdure, and here and there a cameltrain and palm-tree. A strange mixture of
flavours, the Bible, Anatolia, and Greece.?2
This i s the mind of the artist at work i n a way which was not possible i n
Prospero's Cell, for i n that book historical association with the landscape
i s a result of previous speculation which Durrell had read. The above
quotation, however, i s immediate i n i t s response to the landscape around
Larnaca and i s a result of Durrell's own associative mind.
In these two
quotations there are the child-like response of the artist who i s
describing a dream-world, and the response of the structuring, associating
artist who i s concerned with metaphor and symbol.
That Durrell has married
the two i n Bitter Lemons, the last of the island trilogy, indicates the selfrealization which he has reached.
72
Bitter Lemons, p. 106
57
Cyprus might well have been any Greek island, for each holds for
Durrell the paradisal image for which he i s searching. The Gypriot village
of Bellapaix provided another association for Durrell which i s of value to
the discussion at hand, for i t points up the need to return to a childhood
innocence which has been previously discussed:
crowning every courtyard like a messenger
from my Indian childhood spread the
luxuriant green fan of banana-leaves,
rattling like parchment i n the wind.'?
'Greece i s a l i t t l e like China or India. It i s a world of i l l u s i o n , ' 7 4
a dream-like world i n which the individual finds the closest approximation
possible of the "paradise terrestre" which he envisions. This i s the basic
key to Durrell*s reasons for writing Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a
Marine Venus.
Through his description of l i f e on these islands, Durrell
was able to present the 'island of the heart's desire' for which he yearned
as an islomane.
The correspondence i n which Durrell i s trying to persuade Miller to
come to Greece contains a constant refusal on Miller's part which i s
bolstered by statements indicating that Miller's lack of desire to v i s i t
Greece i s founded on a feeling of dislike for that country.
When he f i n a l l y
does write The Colossus of Maroussi his opinion has changed, and much of
what he records as his response to the country and i t s people i s directly
in the line of Durrell's own feelings.
While there i s no proof of Durrell*s
having influenced Miller's feeling for Greece, comparison of the following
quotation with Durrell's island books should serve as ample evidence for
the statement that the individual responses of the two writers correspond
7?
Bitter Lemons, p. 5 6
74
'
Colossus, p. 4 9
58
to a startling degree:
The landscape does not recede, i t installs
i t s e l f i n the open places of the heart; i t
crowds i n , accumulates, disposes. You are
no longer riding through something — c a l l
i t Nature, i f you w i l l — but participating
in a rout, a rout of the forces of greed,
malevolence, envy, selfishness, spite,
intolerance, pride, arrogance, cunning,
duplicity, and so on,^5
The rout i n which Miller feels he i s taking part when he enters the Greek
landscape i s one which focusses on a l l the errors he and Durrell found i n
Europe, errors which are the result of the idea that the dual aspects of
man's nature are irreconcilable.
For Miller and Durrell, however, 'Greece
presented i t s e l f . . . as the very centre of the universe, the ideal
meeting place of man with man i n the presence of God.'^
With this i n mind,
Miller adds another name to the l i s t of earthly paradises —
Epidaurus:
Epidaurus i s merely a place symbol: the real
place i s i n the heart, i n every man's heart,
i f he wHr"but stop and search i t . Every
discovery i s mysterious i n that i t reveals
what i s so unexpectedly immediate, so close,
so long and intimately known. Tne wise man
had no need to journey forth; i t i s the fool
who seeks the pot of gold at the rainbow's
end. But the two are always fated to meet
and unite. They meet at the heart of the
world which i s the beginning and the end of
the pa^H.
Tney meet i n realization and unite
in transcendence of their roles.II
This i s supporting evidence for the quotation from Colossus i n which Miller
talks about Greece as 'what everybody knows, even to absentia,' but at the
same time i t furthers the concept of self-realization which has become the
main point of this paper.
For Durrell, Greece i s 'the very centre of the
universe,' and i n The Tempest the union of the wise man and the fool takes
75
Colossus, p. 76
76
Colossus, p. 210
77
Colossus, p. 80;
i t a l i c s mine
59
place on the symbolic level with Prospero's realization of his physical
side which i s embodied i n Caliban. While Shakespeare's characters do not
correspond exactly to Miller's wise man and fool, they nonetheless achieve
a transcendence of their roles, for Prospero renounces his 'rough magic' and
Caliban rejects the purely physical:
and I ' l l be wise hereafter,
And seek for grace._ What a thrice-double ass
Was I to take this drunkard for a god
And worship this dull fool! (V, i , 294-297)
The Greece that i s 'the beginning and the end of the path' i s not the world
of Democritus for Durrell but the state of childhood innocence which i s
forfeit when the world of knowledge i s entered and which the adult must
regain i f he i s to achieve a realization of self which w i l l permit the
unification of his b i f i d aspects and the transcendence of his role i n the
world.
On Rhodes, the figure of the Marine Venus exemplifies for Durrell
this return to the sensual, exploratory, responsive world of the child, for
she
has surrendered her original maturity for a
rediscovered youth.
78
Count D. outlines for each of his guests the way i n which they w i l l
respond to Corfu, and i t i s interesting that this description closely
approximates the portrait which Durrell painted, not only i n Prospero's Cell
but i n Reflections and Bitter Lemons:
'And I?' I say. 'What sort of picture w i l l
I present of Prospero's Island?'
'It i s d i f f i c u l t to say,* says the Count.
•A portrait inexact i n detail, containing
bright splinters of landscape, written out
roughly, as i f to get r i d of something which
7 8
Reflections, p. 38
60
was troubling the optic nerves.'
79
A l l three books, i n those parts which concern only the islands as Durrell
saw them and not the history, are the records of response rather than the
intellectual structuring of events.
The landscape i s all-important, and
Zarian provides the basic statement on that significance:
[Corfu i s j a landscape for resolutions and
partings . . . .
A landscape which
precipitates the inward c r i s i s of lives as
yet not f u l l y worked o u t .
80
From this point of view, Corfu was an ideal choice on Durrell's part, as
were a l l the Greek islands, for i n the 1930's his l i f e was most certainly
'as yet not f u l l y worked out.'
'The inward c r i s i s of lives' i s the unresolved dualism of the European
world, and i n 1937 Miller recognized Durrell's dualistic qualities:
I am impressed by your "double" nature. The
man you reveal i n The Black Book i s not the
same man who writes me from Corfu. Perhaps
Corfu i s nearer your climatic source" Anyway,
had you stayed i n England you would have been
done f o r .
8 1
Miller i s quite correct, for the tone of The Black Book i s far different
from that of the letters written at the same time.
The statement that
'Corfu i s nearer [Durrell'sj climatic source' draws the same India (Tibet) Corfu parallel outlined above, and i t i s interesting too that the f i n a l
sentence of the above quotation corroborates what Durrell had already told
Miller about his reasons for leaving England.
Miller's comments on The
Black Book are amazingly close to what has already been said about the
dualistic qualities which Durrell recognized i n himself as early as 1937,
79
80
Prospero's Cell, p. 107
Prospero's Cell, p. 74
81
Miller, Letters, p. 98j
i t a l i c s mine
61
but they point to a unity of self which Miller saw i n his protege but which
Durrell was not to realize u n t i l some time later:
you have performed the astounding feat of
following the schizophrenic trend to i t s
logical, consummate solution, that instead
of the retrogressive neurotic swing back
to the womb ~ the womb being the unattainable,
the Paradise of the Ideal, the Godhood business
— you have expanded the womb-feeling u n t i l i t
includes the whole universe,
82
This unity with the One, which Durrell and Miller both admired i n the
writings of the Lao Tzu, i s the result of introspection.
The t i t l e of
Durrell*s second island book, Reflections on a Marine Venus, sums up the
trend which he was following during his time on Corfu and Rhodes, the
reflections through which he hoped to attain self-consciousness. The
importance of the Marine Venus for Durrell i s the renewed youth which he
saw i n her;
her influence on his l i f e i n Rhodes i s of maximum importance.
Miller's comment on the statue of Antinous i n the museum at Thebes,
•this most wonderful idealization in stone of the eternal duality of man,
so bold and simple, so thoroughly Greek i n the best sense,' 3 i s of
8
pointed interest to the concept of duality.
In a recent article on "The
Other T. S. Eliot", Durrell records the following exchange with him:
•Though your writing betrays great intelligence,'
I once said, 'there i s a mystery i n i t for me.
How can an intelligent man be a Christian, much
less a Catholic?* He gazed smilingly at me for a
moment. I went on. 'After a l l , i f you examine
Christianity from the historical point of view,
you come out somewhere among the Eleusinian
mysteries, no?* *
8
No matter how jokingly Durrell made this remark, i t remains that he has hit
°*
Miller, Letters, p. 79
8 3
Colossus, p. 196
Lawrence Durrell, "The Other T. S. E l i o t , " i n The Atlantic,
Vol. 215, No. 5 (May, 1965), 60-64
8 4
62
upon the essence of the dichotomous aspect of Greek religion, an aspect that
has carried over into the Greek character.
We must accept that he sees
Christianity as stemming from the Eleusinian mysteries, the Orphic rites
originally brought from the Middle East. There are elements i n the Eleusinian
mysteries, then, which are similar to those of the Christian and Middle
Eastern religions, and Miller's remarks on the statue are important as a
further comment on the innate duality of the Greek world as embodied i n i t s
pantheon of gods:
Nothing could better convey the transition from
light to darkness, from the pagan to the Christian
conception of l i f e , than this enigmatic figure of
the last Greek god on earth who flung himself
into the Nile. By emphasizing the soulful qualities
of man Christianity succeeded only i n disembodying
manj as angel the sexes fuse into the sublime
spiritual being which man essentially i s . The
Greeks, on the other hand, gave body to everything,
thereby incarnating the s p i r i t and eternalizing i t .
In Greece one i s ever f i l l e d with the sense of
eternality which i s expressed i n the here and now;
the moment one returns to the Western world, whether
in Europe or America, this feeling of body, of
eternality, of incarnated spirit, i s shattered, 5
8
,
What Miller and Durrell found i n Greece was 'this feeling of body, of
incarnated s p i r i t ' which i s not to be found i n Europe.
Christianity i s an
Apollonian religion, i n that i t depends on the mind of the worshippers. The
Eleusinian mysteries, on the other hand, are both Dionysiac and Apollonian
in Nietzsche's sense of the terms.
The god worshipped at Eleusis was both
physically manifested i n the Bakkos, or chief-priest, and worshipped as a
spirit.
It i s not extraordinary that Miller should find i n the statue of
Antinous the fusion of physical and spiritual which the Greeks portrayed i n
the meeting of Dionysus and Apollo on the Great Frieze of the Parthenon,
for the whole of the Greek pantheon exhibited quite human qualities while
8
5
Colossus, p, 196
63
they remained the guiding forces of the world.
Speaking of a M a i l l o l
statue which he has i n h i s garden, Count D. says of the sculptor,
He was outside the trap of the opposites.
IT was a mindless act of c o i t i o n with the
stone that made him describe the nymph . "
8
The r e c o n c i l i a t i o n of the b i p a r t i t e aspects of h i s nature, a fusion which i s
manifest i n Greek landscape, a r t , and l i f e , placed the a r t i s t without
'the
trap of the opposites' which i s the b e l i e f that the mind and body can never
be reconciled.
The s o l u t i o n l i e s i n something akin to 'that wonderful
Moslem q u a l i t y which i s c a l l e d kayf
—
the contemplation which comes of silence and
ease. It i s not meditation or reverie, which
presupposes a.conscious mind r e l a x i n g ; i t i s
something deeper, a fathomless repose of the
w i l l which does not even pose to i t s e l f the
questions
'Am I happy or unhappy?' ?
8
The importance of the Marine Venus, e s p e c i a l l y as she has an e f f e c t on
D u r r e l l ' s musings, i s her timelessness and her fusion of the 'opposites.'
Like the statue of Antinous, she becomes 'a symbol . . . of the dual nature
of man —
the proposition which l a y at the heart of the ancient r e l i g i o n s
from which she had been d e r i v e d . '
88
Persephone, associated with cyclamens,
anemones, and other flowers, p e r s o n i f i e s t h i s d u a l i t y , f o r she spent the
winter i n Hades and the summer on Earth.
Both the Orphic and the Dionysiac
c u l t s were based upon a s i m i l a r life-and-death dichotomy, and i n describing
a f i e l d of flowers on Cyprus D u r r e l l associates them not only with the
spring landscape but with the old Greek concept of the chthonic forces:
And as we walked across the carpet of [cyclamens
and anemones] t h e i r slender stalks snapped and
8 6
Prospero's C e l l , p. 108;
8
B i t t e r Lemons, p. 73
7
8 8
B i t t e r Lemons, p.
171
i t a l i c s mine
64
p u l l e d around o u r b o o t s as i f t h e y w i s h e d t o p u l l
us down i n t o t h e Underworld from w h i c h t h e y had
s p r u n g , n o u r i s h e d b y t h e t e a r s and wounds o f t h e
immortals. 9
8
I n R e f l e c t i o n s D u r r e l l sees the M a r i n e Venus s i t t i n g i n t h e Rhodes museum
c o n t e m p l a t i n g h e r l i f e , and here he f i n d s a t i m e l e s s n e s s
i n which the
o p p o s i t e s a r e r e c o n c i l e d , j u s t as g l a s s i s worn smooth b y t h e a c t i o n o f t h e
sea:
Everywhere t h e d u a l i s m o f the human p e r s o n a l i t y
has c r e a t e d s i d e b y s i d e p r o f a n i t y and p i e t y ,
t r u t h and f a l s e h o o d , hate and l o v e .
Time i s
always a s p i r i n g t o a dance-measure w h i c h w i l l
e n t a n g l e t h e two i n a dance, a d i a l o g u e , a d u e t :
d i s s o l v e t h e i r o p p o s i t i o n . The r a d i a n c e o f t h a t
worn stone f i g u r e c a r r i e s t h e message t o us
so c l e a r l y . . .
.9°
I n b o t h R e f l e c t i o n s and P r o s p e r o ' s C e l l t h e r e a r e passages d e s c r i b i n g
and commenting upon t h e dances performed b y t h e i s l a n d e r s d u r i n g t h e i r f e a s t
days.
Theodore S t e p h a n i d e s makes t h e f o l l o w i n g remark on t h e C o r c y r e a n
dances,
and D u r r e l l u s e d i t i n R e f l e c t i o n s t o comment upon t h e w r i t i n g o f
poetry:
• A l l t h e c i r c u l a r ones I c a l l s t a r d a n c e s .
I r e a d somewhere t h a t d a n c i n g o r i g i n a t e d i n
a d e s i r e t o i m i t a t e t h e movement o f c e l e s t i a l
- bodies.'91
T h i s i s t h e same attempt t o become one w i t h t h e u n i v e r s e t h a t M i l l e r saw
D u r r e l l a c h i e v i n g i n The B l a c k Book.
M i l l e r ' s concept o f the womb as
'being
t h e u n a t t a i n a b l e , t h e P a r a d i s e o f t h e I d e a l ' i s o b v i o u s l y F r e u d i a n , and
w h i l e i t i s n o t r e a l l y n e c e s s a r y h e r e t o see t h e s t a r dances as s y m b o l i c ,
they nevertheless
f i t t h e d e s c r i p t i o n Jung g i v e s o f t h e
89
B i t t e r Lemons, p . 222
90
Reflections, p.
91
Prospero's C e l l , p .
179
115
'mandala, • a
65
symbol of psychological unity.^
From Jung's point of view, the dances
2
would be a product of the desire for unification i n that they physically
embody that which i s desired by the individual, and as we have seen, creativity
i s the attempt of the artist both to plot his journey toward the self and at
the same time find i t .
Durrell's connection of poetry with the primitive
dances sheds light on this theory, for he says that
writing poetry educates one into the nature of
the game — which i s humanity's profoundest
activity. In their star-dances the savages
try to unite their lives with those of the
heavenly bodies — to mix their quotidian
rhythms into those great currents which
keep the wheels of the universe turning.
Poetry attempts to provide much the same
sort of link between the muddled inner
man with his temporal occupations and the
uniform flow of the universe outside. Of
course everyone i s conscious of these
impulses; but poets are the only ones who
do not drive them o f f .
9 5
The quality of silence which Durrell found on Corfu, the solitude
which he discovered to be a prerequisite for introspection, he found again
i n the V i l l a Cleobolus on Rhodes. Because both are the products of the
cathartic effect of the silence, Durrell has tied his introspection to the
writing of poetry:
It i s much the same feeling as comes over
one when a poem forms i n the mind, i t s
outlines misty, inchoate: u n t i l the white
paper on which you have scribbled a dozen
words and crossed them out, blazes i n your
face like a searchlight and paralyses you
by the multiplicity of possibilities i t
presents, by the silence i t opposes to your
inner tension.
94
The paralysis which Durrell mentions here i s similar to the state i n which
C. G. Jung, Psyche and Symbol, ed. Violet S. de Laszlo (N.I.)
Anchor (1958) p. 50
9 2
9 5
Reflections, p. 48
94
Reflections, p. 54
66
Maillol committed that 'mindless act of coition with the stone that made
It i s also the state i n which the dancers
revolve i n the primitive dances, a 'look quickened by the notation of the
music — i t s e l f (who knows?) a transcription i n the terms of cat-gut and wind
of profounder melodies which the musician has quarried from his native
disenchantments and the earth.'^
The music expresses for the dancers and
the audience the desire for unity with the universe which the dances
symbolize, and i t s intoxicating effect i s similar to that experienced by
islomanes when they find themselves on an island*
Part of what Durrell i s attempting to create i n The Alexandria
Quartet i s 'an heraldic universe.' He has provided pseudo-scientific
explanations of his use of the term, but Henry Miller has given the best
definition, complete with example:
I am gazing blankly at the f i e l d of Irish
green. It i s a Lawrence Durrell f i e l d ,
heraldic i n every sense of the word. Looking
blankly into that field I suddenly realize
what Durrell was trying to t e l l me i n those
long rambling poems he called letters. I
used to think, when these heraldic messages
arrived at the V i l l a Seurat on a cold. Bummer's
day i n Paris, that he had taken a sniff of coke before
oiling his pen. Once a big fulsome sheaf which
looked like prose f e l l out of the envelope —
i t was called "Zero" and i t was dedicated to
me by this same Lawrence Durrell who said he
lived i n Corfu. .1 had heard of chicken tracks
and l i v e r mantic and I once came near grasping
the idea of absolute Zero, . . . but not until
I sat gazing into the f i e l d of Irish green . . .
did I ever get the idea of Zero i n the heraldic
sense. There never was a f i e l d so fieldishly
green as.this. When you spot anything true and
clear you are at Zero. Zero i s Greek for pure
Prospero's Cell, p. 108
9 6
Reflections, p. 171
67
v i s i o n . I t means what Lawrence D u r r e l l says
when he w r i t e s I o n i a n . ^
7
'Coke' o r cocaine brings on a trance o r dream-like s t a t e s i m i l a r t o that o f
.
tf
the star-dancers, on the one ihandi> "and the state o f t h e a r t i s t during
r
;
\ \
c r e a t i o n , on the other.
:
fl "
I n both cases a u n i t y w i t h the universe i s
experienced which r e s u l t s i n the 'mindless act o f c o i t i o n ' w i t h the
materials of c r e a t i v i t y .
There are three meanings f o r ' h e r a l d i c , ' a l l o f which are important t o
the concept o f c r e a t i v i t y as a whole.
The s t a t e o f "Zero" i n which the
a r t i s t r e a l i z e s the essence o f what he i s seeing i s the - f i r s t o f the three.
Also t o be considered i n D u r r e l l ' s use of the term i s the second meaning,
a s e t o f symbols.
As Nietzsche s a w ,
98
symbols are the r e s u l t o f the work
of the Apollonian forces on the mind o f the a r t i s t during the t r a n c e - l i k e
sleep induced by i n t o x i c a t i o n .
I t i s by means o f those symbols that the
a r t i s t communicates w i t h h i s readers, and t h i s communication may w e l l take
the form o f a prophecy, which i s the t h i r d meaning o f 'heraldic.{
Art i s
prophetic i n that i t i s the a r t i s t ' s means o f p o i n t i n g out the wrongs o f
the world.
I t i s important that '{["Zero"] means what Lawrence D u r r e l l says when
he w r i t e s Ionian,' f o r t h i s i s the q u a l i t y which he saw i n Greece, a
country i n which the property of the l i g h t reveals t o the viewer the essence
of what he i s seeing, a t the same time revealing t o him 'the m u l t i p l i c i t y
of p o s s i b i l i t i e s i t presents* l i k e the paper on which the poet f i x e s h i s
stare.
M i l l e r ' s response t o the Greek landscape, l i k e D u r r e l l ' s , i s
h e r a l d i c , f o r '£in GreeceJ every i n d i v i d u a l t h i n g that e x i s t s , whether
9 7
Colossus, pp. 95-96
9 8
B i r t h o f Tragedy, p. 38
68
made by God or man, whether fortuitous or planned, stands out like a nut i n
an aureole of light, of time and space.'99
In that condition, too, the
landscape and the objects within i t are both real and symbolic, and this
explains why Durrell can see an oak tree and associate i t with Zeus, can
see a dead sea turtle on the beach and think of Orpheus' lyre.
are not the best examples of heraldic essence and symbol;
themselves answer the need.
But these
the books
The 'aureole' i n which the Greek landscape
exists has the same effect on an object as the sea has on an island; i t
surrounds and points up that object for the viewer, setting i t off and
showing, like the paintings of Ghika which Miller saw, 'the quintessential
Greece which the artist [^abstracts] from the muck and confusion of time, of
place, of history.'1°°
'TO MOVE TOWARDS CREATION'
Just as Miller f e l t that the individual must throw off the bonds of
society and education i n order to attain s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n , s o Count D.
sets before his audience a similar proposal.
'There i s a morphology of forms i n which our
conceptual apparatus works, and there i s a
censor — which i s our conditioned attitude.
He i s the person whom I would reject, because
he prevents me from choosing and arranging
knowledge according to my s e n s i b i l i t y . ' I
02
The conditioned attitude of England that was being slowly imposed upon him
drove Durrell to Greece, for as an artist he could not exist i f his
•sensibility' was smothered by 'the English death.'
OjQ
Colossus, p. 146
1 0 0
Colossus, p. 52
1 0 1
Colossus, p. 380
1 0 2
Prospero's Cell, p. 106
The rejection of the
69
•censor, too, was necessary, for this would allow him to totally assimilate
1
the events of his surroundings and arrange them as he chose.
The individual
arrangement of knowledge, as pointed out i n the response of Miller and
Durrell to the Pleiades, i s clarified by Count D.:
'And here we are,' says the Count . . ., 'each
of us collecting and arranging our common,
knowledge according to the form dictated to him
by his temperament. In a l l cases i t w i l l not
be the whole picture, though i t w i l l be the whole
picture for you.' ?
10
The artist straggles to achieve the presentation of 'the whole picture' as
he sees i t , and a part of that struggle i s for a technique that i s his own
and no other's. Durrell's early efforts to achieve such a style were
consummated i n The Black Book.
In the attempt to formulate a unique style, the material being
presented can quite easily be clouded.
This i s what happened i n Pied Piper
of Lovers (1935) and Panic Spring (1937), and i t i s with admiration only
slightly concealed that Durrell sees Count D. as
the possessor of a literary mind completely
uncontaminated by the struggle to achieve a
technique; he lacks the artifice of
presentation, the corrupting demon of form.
4
Durrell's concern for the artifice of presentation confounded his search
for himself i n Greece, for he could not devote himself entirely to
introspection but had to write i n order to eat.
His self-realization was
therefore postponed, but i t was again i n the character of the Count that
he saw clearly, for the f i r s t time, the goal he was striving to reach:
'It was a kind of detachment — an idea not
born within the conceptual apparatus but
lodged i n the nervous system i t s e l f . I had
1 0 5
Prospero
Cell, p. 107
104
Prospero's Cell, p. 78
70
become different as a person. Anyone else
would have gone away and written a book about
i t j but I did not want to bring this personal
discovery within the range of the conceptual
apparatus, and thereby spoil i t by consciousness.
The detachment which Durrell was trying to attain i n order to be above
the boundaries of society and of his own intellect was given physical
expression i n his attempted isolation of himself from England i n the Greek
islands.
The f i n a l goal was reintegration into the European society which
he had l e f t , or rather into the society of the world which, because i t i s
beyond the strictures of any one nation or culture, would allow him to
move freely as an artist i n the collection of the material he required as
the basis for communication.
A l l three island books attempt to give the reader the real island
flavour which i s , for the islomane, one of isolation from society:
our existence here i s [ s i c j i n this delectable
landscape, remote from the responsibilities of
an active l i f e i n Europe, have _sicj given us .
this sense of detachment from the real world. ®
10
•Detachment from the real world' implies a dream-like existence, precisely
what Durrell found i n Greece.
The position of the artist i s paradoxical
in that he must be aloof from the petty squabbles of society while at the
same time remaining a part of i t i n order to c r i t i c i z e i t accurately and
recognizably. Even i f , like Durrell, he feels he can only enter his
dream-world
'on Wednesdays —
by invitation,' that world i s of the utmost
importance for him, for i t i s here that he organizes what he has taken
from his environment.
105
Prospero's Cell, p. 77
1 0 6
Prospero's Cell, p. 22
71
Durrell's attitude to the opposites of isolation and integration was
clarified i n a letter to Miller i n 1936:
Let's look at the [ a r t i s t i c j manifestoes.
Begins a p o l i t i c a l discussion. The a r t i s t ' s
place i s i n society. A definite lean l e f t ward. Well, what's wrong with that? Nothing,
providing politics are not going to be confused
with art. I'm tired of p o l i t i c a l people. They
have confused the inner struggle with the outer
one. They want to bread poultice a primary
chancre. Politics i s an art that (Teals i n
averages. Art i s a man that deals i n people.
If the people are wrong, there i s no system
fool-proof enough to stop them cutting each
other's throats. And the artist finds that the
people are wrong. The driving force behind him
i s his self-isolation, the dislocation of the
societal i n s t i n c t ,
1 0 7
The chancre to which Durrell refers must be operated on to effect a cure,
and this i s what Durrell sees as necessary i n the Europe which he has l e f t :
the operation upon the soul of man which w i l l cure him of the dualistic
doctrine of Descartes.
It i s the function of the artist to point out the
basic i l l s which a f f l i c t mankind, and to suggest a possible cure, and i t
i s only through his self-imposed isolation that he can view the happenings
i n the world without being held back by his censor.
In 1937, Durrell had
not realized that his isolation should lead not to loneliness but to
integration.
He f e l t isolated, not only from England but from the world,
although his removal from English society provoked a tension between
wanting to quit 'the English death' and at the same time retain his
connection with the England of Shakespeare and Donne:
I'm one of the world's expatriates anyhow.
It's lonely being cut off from one's race.
So.much of England I loved and hated so much.
The language clings. I try and wipe i t off
my tongue but i t c l i n g s .
1 0 8
107
108
Durrell, Letters, p. 18;
i t a l i c s mine
Durrell, Letters, pp. 108-109
72
Panic Spiring was written under the pseudonym Charles Norden i n an
attempt to avoid the adverse criticism showered on Pied Piper of Lovers.
Miller made several attempts to dissuade Durrell from carrying on under
that name, and his reasons for wanting to retain i t indicate his sense of
isolation and his need for a community»
My double Amicus Nordensis. He i s a double
I need — not for money or any of the fake
reasons I'm always giving — but simply for
a contact with the human world.109
Durrell*s original intention to write travel articles using his pen-name
i s significant, for these are the works which point to his development
most directly, and his use of a 'double' would tend more to prolong his
isolation than to end i t *
He intended to complete his renunciation of
England with the synthesis of Norden, who would take his place as a writer
and allow him to be free i n his criticism.
Miller immediately took him to
task, pointing out the truth about his use of the 'double' and the
inevitable results i f he continued.
And why couldn't you write a l l the other books
you wish as L. D.? Why can't L. D. be the
author of travel books, etc.? .What's to hinder
i t ? It's wrong to think you are cutting
yourself off. On the contrary, you are muscling
in. The other way i s the way to cut yourself o f f .
Better to acknowledge your weaknesses. You can't
put perfection i n one scale and imperfection i n
the other that way. We are imperfect through and
through — thank heaven.H®
Durrell speaks of Norden as 'a contact with the human world,' and there i s
a poorly-disguised fear here of being 'found out,* for he t e l l s Miller
that 'Norden w i l l keep me i n touch with the commonplace world which w i l l
ill
never understand my struggle.'
I®
9
Durrell knew that what he wrote was a
Durrell, Letters, p. 104; i t a l i c s mine
1 1 0
Miller, Letters, pp. 108-109
1 1 1
Durrell, Letters, p. 104
73
product of the tension between the inner and outer realities, and that
u n t i l such time as he could master both i n such a way as to formulate
something unique from their differing aspects his writing would reflect
that struggle. Miller had told him repeatedly to stop worrying about
style and form and simply write. Durrell replied, ' I CAN'T WRITE REAL
BOOKS ALL THE TIME. Once every three years or more I shall try to compose
for f u l l orchestra. The rest of the time I shall do essays, travel-books,
perhaps one more novel under Charles Norden.•
112
The Black Book he
considered to be 'a real book,' and the rest merely 'literary gardening.'113
The use of a pseudonym would allow him to practice his writing without
feeling that he should always 'compose for f u l l orchestra.' Miller's point
i s clear, however, and i t i s far more than an admonition to the petulant
child Durrell sometimes seemed to be i n their early relationship.
It i s
a primary statement of the responsibility of the artist both to his material
and his audience.
Durrell never again published under a pseudonym, and the
sense of responsibility he developed i s an indication of the progress he
was making toward a realization of self which would allow him to accept
his failures as a writer and thereby escape 'the trap of the opposites.*
The 'old Greek ambience' which Durrell hoped to rediscover on Rhodes
was broken i n upon from time to time by the remnants of the war which he
saw there.
The constant vacillation between the outer reality and the
inner i s pointed out i n a section of Reflections i n which he i s on a h i l l
overlooking Phileremo:
The gaunt burnt-out skeleton of the airdrome
beneath with i t s charred aircraft was a
112
Durrell, Letters^ pp. 104-105
113
Durrell, Letters, p. 105
74
reminder that one was, after a l l , i n the world;
for the a i r of Phileremo i s so rare that one
might be forgiven for imagining oneself i n
some more successful dimension where the hero
had f i n a l l y mastered himself, and where the act
had somehow become connected once more with the
concept of love.
4
The sense of the inner world i n which Durrell was living i n the islands i s
virtually Olympian, with i t s rarefied a i r and the concept of the hero,
perhaps Hamlet or Faust, who had i n the end achieved unity and integration.
It i s important, too, that this world i s one of the imagination, for the
recognition of the fact that such a world does not exist i n reality points
to the concretization of Durrell*s view of his role as an a r t i s t that i s
to be found i n the fusion of the worlds of reality and imagination i n Bitter
Lemons.
Through the many friends who visited him on the islands Durrell
retained a connection with the world he had l e f t , although some of them
misunderstood his reasons for isolation:
•Here too I have been visited by friends
who dropped i n like swallows from the sky
— Paddy Patrick Leigh Fermor and Xan
Alexander Fielding : the Corn Goddess:
John Craxton: Patrick Reilly — a l l
bringing with them the flavour of the
outside world . . . . And Boris who
thought I should get a job with Unesco
and said.that "This cult for islands was
becoming deplorable.*'•US
The feeling for Greece and for the islands that Durrell shared with many
others was definitely not a 'cult,' but rather a common desire for
isolation and introspection away from the European world.
At the end of
Reflections, Durrell has found the needed quality of isolation which i s
Reflections, p. 84
^•5
Reflections, pp. 180-181
75
apart from the islands i n that i t i s mental rather than physical, and his
thoughts on that quality point out his ability to detach himself from the
external world without being physically removed from i t :
As I s i t here between Manoli and his wife
I find myself sinking into that feeling of
detachment, almost of peace, which visits me
when I am alone i n a great crowd of people
a l l urgently occupied with their own affairs.
Or else when I am an onlooker, at some drama
which i s going on before my eyes but i n which
I am powerless to take part. At such times
one's individuality seems to focus i t s e l f
with greater emphasisj one overlooks the
affairs of men from a new height, participating
i n l i f e with a richer though a vicarious
understanding of i t ; and yet at the same time
remaining f u l l y withdrawn from i t .
&
In this he i s like the old priest at the bus wreck i n Bitter Lemons,
'simply an onlooker, studying the tragedy and comedy of the l i f e around
him.
,117
The position of the artist which Durrell was so anxious to
achieve i n Prospero's Cell and the early letters to Miller i s this mental
state which allows him to participate i n the world around him and at the
same time remain aloof from i t .
The importance of Greece f o r Durrell l i e s i n the sense of integration
and isolation he developed i n the islands.
In Greece, the lost Western
Atlantis i s fused with the Eastern Eden. Prospero i s another Adam, but
his Eden i s i n the Greek islands, the same islands to which Durrell, as an
islomane, was drawn. The Eastern and Western temperaments are changed i n
the islands by the overwhelming power of
the vertical, masculine, adventurous consciousness
of the archipelago, with i t s mental anarchy and
indiscipline touched everywhere with the taste for
agnosticism and spare l i v i n g ; Greece born into the
116
117
Reflections, pp. 182-183
Bitter Lemons, p. 23
76
sexual intoxication of the light, which seems to
shine upwards from inside the very earth, to
illuminate these bare acres of s q u i l l and asphodel.
This i s the same light which Miller saw surrounding everything i n Greece,
the light which pointed up the essence of every object i t touched by
transporting the viewer to a state of "Zero** i n which things were seen
heraldically.
The intoxication which the light provokes i s also the
intoxication of the islomane when he finds himself on an island, for the
island i s f i n a l l y a symbol of the individual consciousness the essence of
which Durrell was seeking when he moved to Greece.
In the islands, the light illuininates for the observer not only the
physical but the mental, and i t was through that radiance that Durrell
discovered his true nature and was able to unify the opposites within him.
In Reflections there i s another expression of this state, for i t i s through
the influence of the Marine Venus that he feels he saw the true Greece and
his own inner being.
What he has to say concerns only the influence of
the Venus, for just as the path to the ultimate i n self-knowledge cannot
be stated, 'the presiding genius of a place or an epoch may be named, but
she may not be properly d e s c r i b e d . N e v e r t h e l e s s ,
Durrell's comments
signify the f i n a l goal which he attained i n the islands, for they point
out indirectly that what was put down on paper was
IPO
write, but the struggle to live:*
somehow we have learned to share that
timeless, exact musical contemplation
«— the secret of her self-sufficiency
— which has helped her to outlive the
savage noise of wars and change, to
maintain unbroken the fine thread of her
118
Reflections, p. 183
1 1 9
Reflections, p. 37
120
Durrell, Letters, p. 99
'not the struggle to
77
thoughts through the centuries past.
Yes, and through her we have learned to
see Greece with the inner eyes — not as
a collection of battered vestiges l e f t
over from cultures long abandoned —
but as something ever-present and
ever-renewed: the symbol married to the object
prime — so that a cypress tree, a mask, an
orange, a plough were extended beyond themselves
into an eternality they enjoyed only with the
furniture of a l l good p o e t r y .
121
The reflections of the Venus are an 'exact musical contemplation,' and
Durrell has pointed out the efforts of time to provide a music i n which
the opposites w i l l be fused, the same music to which the primitive dances
are set. Here, i n the sharing of the Venus's contemplation, Durrell f i n a l l y
found himself.
The inability of the artist to record the islands of Greece with any
precision i s also to be found i n the above quotation, for instead of
going through a process i n the mind which rendered them symbols, the
objects i n the Greek landscape became symbols by themselves.
For this
reason, Durrell can see Greece as the most exact approximation of the mental
state which he wished to achieve, the dream-world paradise which found i t s
expression i n Atlantis and Eden. In the end, Durrell was not affected by
'that conspicuous i l l - l u c k which . . • always a f f l i c t s islomanes when
they have discovered the island of their heart's d e s i r e , '
122
for he had
acquired the a b i l i t y of entering that paradise through meditation, through
achieving a state of absolute "Zero".
Miller's letter of March, 1937,
was
premature i n i t s judgment of the state Durrell had reached with The Black
Book, but i t w i l l serve here as a comment on what Durrell f i n a l l y became
aware of i n Reflections on a Marine Venus:
1 2 1
1 2 2
Reflections, p. 179
Reflections, p. 36
78
You are now out i n the wide world, the world
of your own creation i n which you w i l l be
very much alone. A terrorizing prospect i f
i t were not for the fact that you know
what i t i s a l l about, that you reveal a
supreme awareness, a superconsciousness.123
The point that Durrell had reached may be summed up i n either of two
identical expressions, 'supreme awareness' and 'artistic consciousness.'
From this point on, Durrell was maturing only as a writer, and perhaps i t
i s most f i t t i n g here to quote from Henry Miller, the man who by turns led
and prodded Durrell toward the goal he sought. Miller's sense of what
he himself achieved i n the Greek islands i s identical to Durrell's:
To move towards creation does one need a
compass? Having touched [Hydra] I lost
a l l sense of earthly direction. What
happened to me from this point on i s i n
the nature of progression, not direction.
There was no longer any goal beyond — I
became one with the Path.
2 4
Miller, Letters, p. 78
Colossus, p. 56
79
BIBLIOGRAPHT
80
Aldington, Richard.
"A Note on Lawrence Durrell. *
April 15, 1959, pp. 13-20
1
Two Cities (Paris),
Descartes, Rene. Objections and Replies, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T.
Ross.
Durrell, Gerald.
Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 31
My Family and Other Animals.
Durrell, Lawrence, and Alfred Perles.
Art and Outrage : A Correspondence
about Henry Miller.
Durrell, Lawrence. Balthazar.
G.B.: Penguin, 1959.
N.Y.J Dutton, 1961.
London* Faber, 1961.
Bitter Lemons. London: Faber, 1959.
The
Black
Book.Faber,
N.I.:1961.
Cardinal, I962.
Clea.
London:
Collected Poems. London: Faber, i960.
"Corfu: Isle of Legend,** The Geographical Magazine,
VIII (March, 1939), 325-334.
"Constant Zarian, Triple Exile. ** The Poetry Review,
XLIII (January-February, 1952),.30-34.
The Dark Labyrinth.
N.I.: Cardinal, 1963.
"Down The Styx In an Air-Conditioned Canoe,"
Cities (Paris), Winter, 1961, pp. 5-9.
Two
"Durrell at Delphi.** Realites, no. 168 (November,
1964), 64, 68-69. Esprit de Corps and S t i f f Upper Lip.
1961.
N.I.: Dutton,
"From a Writer's Journal." The Windmill (London),
II (1947), 50-58.
. "
"Hellene and Philhellene.*' Times Literary Supplement,
May 13, 1949, pp. 305-306. Unsigned".
"The Island of the Rose." The Geographical Magazine,
XX, (October, 1947), 230^239
Justine.
London: Faber, 1961.
"Landscape with Literary Figures." The New York Times
Book Review, June 12, I960, pp. 1, 26, 28"7"lS0"T
Mountolive.
London: Faber, I96I.
"The Other T. S. ELiot." The Atlantic, Vol. 215, no. 5
(May, 1965), 60-64.
. "
81
trans.
1962.
Pope Joan, by Emmanuel Royidls.
and Henry Miller.
London: Consul,
A Private Correspondence, ed. George
Wickes. London: Faber, 1963.
Private Drafts.
Nicosia, Cyprus: Proodos Press, 1955.
Prospero's C e l l : A guide to the landscape^and manners of
the islano" of Corcyra. London: Faber, 1962.
"Prospero•s Isle•" Tien H'sia Monthly (Shanghai),
IX (September, 1939)7^9-139.
Reflections On A Marine Venus: a companion to the
landscape of"^ho*des. London: Faber, I960.
Selected Poems. N.T.: Grove, 1956.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgan von. Faust, trans. G. M. Priest.
Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 47.
Golding, William.
Free F a l l .
G.B.: Penguin, 1963.
Groddeck, Georg.
The Book of-The It, intro. Lawrence Durrell. N.I.:
Vintage, I 9 6 I .
Jung, C. G.
Psyche and Symbol, ed. Violet S. deL szlo.
a
N.T.-: Anchor, 1957.
Knerr, Anthony. "Regarding a Checklist of Lawrence Durrell.'' Papers of
the Bibliographical Society of America, LV (1961), 142-152.
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching, trans. D. C. Lau. G.B.:Penguin, 1963.
Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. N.T.: New Directions, 1958.
' "'
"The Durrell of The Black Book Days." Two Cities (Paris),
April.15, 1959, PP. 3-6
Mitchell, Julian, and Gene Andrewski. "The Art of Fiction XXIII: Lawrence
Durrell." The Paris Review, no. 22 (Autumn-Winter,
I960),
32-6IT
Moore, Harry T., ed. The World of Lawrence Durrell.
Mullins, Edwin.
"Lawrence Durrell Answers a Few Questions." Two Cities
(Paris), April 15, 1959, pp. ,25-28.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.
The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals,
trans. Francis Golffing. N.T.: Anchor, 1956".
Norden, Charles, pseud, of Lawrence Durrell.
Perles, Alfred.
N.T.: Dutton, I 9 6 4 .
"Enter Jupiter Jr."
pp. 7-10
Panic Spring.
Friede, 1937.
N.T.: Covici-
Two Cities (Paris), April 15, 1959,
Potter, Robert A., and Brooke Whiting. Lawrence Durrell: A Checklist.
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961.
Santayana, George.
"The Philosophy of Travel." The Virginia Quarterly
:
Review, Vol. 40 (Winter, 196471Tl3oT
Shakespeare, William.
Thomas, Dylan.
Traversi, Derek.
The Complete Works, ed. G. B. Harrison. N.Ti
Harcourt, Brace, 1952.
"Letters to Lawrence Durrell."
May 16, I960, pp. 1-5.
Two Cities (Paris),
Shakespeare:The Last Phase. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 19551
Vallette, Jacques. "Lettre Ouverte." Two Cities (Paris), April 15, 1959,
p. 88
Young, Kenneth.
"A Dialogue with Durrell."
1959), 61-68.
Encounter, XIII (December,
APPENDIX
"CITIES, PLAINS AND PEOPLE"
Onoe i n idleness was my beginning,
Night was to the mortal boy
Innocent of surface like a new mind
Upon whose edges once he walked
In idleness, i n perfect idleness.
0 world of l i t t l e mirrors in the light.
The sun's rough wick for everybody's day:
Saw the Himalayas like lambs there
Stir their huge joints and lay
Against his innocent thigh a stony thigh.
Combs of wind drew through this grass
To bushes and pure lakes
On this tasteless wind
Went leopards, feathers f e l l or flew:
let a l l went north with the prayer-wheel,
By the road, the quotation of nightingales.
Quick of sympathy with springs
Where the stone gushed water
Women made their water like thieves.
Caravans paused here to drink Tibet.
On draughty corridors to Lhasa
Was my f i r s t school
In faces l i f t e d from saddles to the snows:
Words caught by the soft klaxons crying
Down to the plains and settled c i t i e s .
So once i n idleness was my beginning.
L i t t l e known of better then or worse
But i n the lens of this great patience
Sex was small,
Death was small,
Were qualities held in a deathless essence,
Yet subjects of the wheel, bumed clear
And immortal to my seventh year.
To a l l who turn and start descending
The long sad river of their growth:
The tidebound, tepid, causeless
Continuum of terrors i n the s p i r i t ,
1 give you here unending
In idleness an innocent beginning
Until your pain become a literature.
II
Nine marches to Lhasa.
Those who went forward
Into this honeycomb of silence often
Gained the whole worlds but often lost each other.
In the complexion of this country tears
Found no harbour i n the breast of rock.
Death marched beside the living as a friend
With no sad punctuation by the clock.
But he for whom steel and running water
Were roads, went westward only
To the prudish c l i f f s and the sad green home
Of Pudding Island o'er the Victorian foam.
Here a l l as poets were pariahs.
Some sharpened l i t t l e f o l l i e s into hooks
To pick upon the language and survive.
Some i n search could only found
Pulpits of smoke like Blake's Jerusalem.
For this person i t was never landfall,
With so many representative young men
And a l l the old being obvious i n feeling,
But like good grafty men
He saw the business witches i n their bowlers,
The blackened Samsons of the green estate,
The earls from their cockney-boxes calling,
And knew before i t was too late, London
Could only be a promise-giving kingdom.
Yet here was a window
Into the great sick-room, Europe,
With i t s dull set-books,
The Cartesian imperatives, Dante and Homer,
To impress the lame and awkward newcomer.
Here he saw Bede who softly
Blew out desire and went to bed,
So much greater than so many less
Who made their unconquered guilt i n atrophy
A passport to the dead.
Here St. Augustine took the holy cue
Of bells i n an English valley: and mad Jerome
Made of his longing half a home from home.
Scythes here faithfully mark
In their supple practice paths
For the lucky and unambitious owners.
But not a world as yet. Not a world.
Death like autumn f a l l s
On the lakes i t s sudden forms, on walls
Where everything i s made more marginal
By the ruling planes of the snow?
Reflect how Prospero was born to a green c e l l
While those who noted the weather-vane
In Beatrice*s shadow sang
With the dying Emily. *We shall never
Return, never be young again*.
The defeat of purpose i n days and lichens.
Some here unexpectedly put on the citizen,
Qo walking to a church
By landscape rubbed i n rain to grey
As wool on glass,
Thinking of spring which never comes to stay.
(The potential passion hidden, Wordsworth
In the desiccated bodies of postmistresses.
The scarlet splash of campion, Keats.
Ignorant suffering that closes like a lock.)
So here at last wa did outgrow ourselves.
As the green stalk i s takenfrom the earth,
With a great juicy sob, I turned him from a Man
To Mandrake, i n Whose awful hand I am.
Ill
Prospero upon his island
Cast i n a romantic form,
When his love was f u l l y grown
He l a i d his magic down.
Truth within the t r i b a l wells,
Innocent inviting creature
Does not rise to human spells
But by Paradox
Teaches a l l who seek for her
That no saint or seer unlocks
The wells of truth unless he f i r s t
Conquer for the truth his thirst.
17
So one fine year to where the roads
Dividing Europe meet i n Paris.
The gnome was here and the small
Unacted temptations. Tessa was here whose dark
87
Quickened hair had brushed back rivers,
Trembling with stars by Buda
In whose inconstant arms he waited
For black-hearted Bescartes to seek him out
With a l l her sterile apparatus.
Now man for him became a thinking lobe,
Through endless permutations sought repose*
By f r i g i d latinisms he mated now
To the hard frame of prose the cogent verb.
To many luck may give for merit
More profitable teachers. To the heart
A c r i t i c and a nymph:
And an unflinching doctor to the s p i r i t .
A l l these he confined i n metaphors,
She sleeping i n his awkward mind
Taught of the pace of women or birds
Through the leafy body of man
Enduring like the mammoth, like speech
From the dry clicking of the greater apes
To these hot moments i n a reference of stars
Beauty and death, how sex became
A lesser sort of speech, and the members doors.
(125)
(130)
(135)
(140)
V
Faces may settle sadly
Each into i t s private death
By business travel or fortune,
Like the fat congealing on a plate
Or the fogged negative of labour
Whose dumb fastidious rectitude
Brings death i n living as a sort of mate.
Here however man might botch his way
To God via Valery, Gide or Rabelais.
A l l rules obtain upon the pilot's plan
So long as man, not manners, makyth man.
Some like the great Victorians of the past
Through old Moll Flanders sailed before the mast,
While savage Chatterleys of the new romance
Get carried off i n Sex, the ambulance.
A l l rules obtain upon the pilot's chart
If governed by the scripture of the heart.
(145)
(150)
(155)
(160)
VI
Now November v i s i t i n g
Surprises and humbles
Licks i n the draughty
Like a country member
with rain
with i t s taste of elsewhere,
galleries there,
quickened by a province,
(165)
88
Turning over books and leaves i n haste,
Takes at last her slow stains of waste
Down the stone stairs into the rivers.
And i n the personal heart, weary
Of the piercing innocents i n parks
Who s a i l the rapt subconscious there like swans,
Disturbs and brightens with her tears, thinking:
'Perhaps after a l l i t i s we who are blind,
While the unconscious eaters of the apple
Are whole as ingots of a process
* Punched i n matter by the promiscuous Mind.•
(170)
(175)
711
By the waters of Buda
We surrendered arms, hearts, hands,
Lips for counting of kisses,
Fingers for money or touch,
Eyes for the hourglass sands.
Uncut and unloosened
Swift hair by the waters of Buda
In the shabby balcony rooms
Where the pulses waken and wonder
The churches bluff one as heart-beats
On the river their dull boom booms.
By the waters of Buda
Uncomb and unlock then,
Abandon and nevermore cherish
Queer l i p s , queer heart, hands.
There to futurity leave
The luckier lover who's waiting,
As, like a spring coiled up,
In the bones of Adam, lay Eve.
(180)
(185)
(190)
(195)
7III
So Time, the lovely and mysterious
With promises and blessings moves
Through her swift degrees,
So gladly does he bear
Towards the sad perfect wife,
The rocky island and the cypress-trees.
Taken i n the pattern of a l l solitaries,
An only child, of introspection got,
Her only playmates, lovers, i n herself.
Nets were too coarse to hold her
(200)
(205
89
Where the nymph broke through
And only the encircling arms of pleasure held.
Here for the five lean dogs of sense
Greece moved i n calm memorial
Through her own unruffled blue,
Bearing i n rivers upside down
The myrtle and the olive, i n ruins
The faces of the innocents i n wells.
Salt and garlic, water and dry bread,
Greek bread from the comb they knew
Like an element i n sculptures
By these red aerial cherries,
Or flawed grapes painted green
But pouted.into breasts: as well
By those great quarries of the blood—
The beating crimson hearts of the grenades:
A l l far beyond the cupidity of verses
Or the lechery of Images to t e l l .
(210)
(215)
(220)
Here worlds were confirmed i n him.
Differences that matched like cloth
Between the darkness and the inner light,
Moved on the undivided breath of blue.
Formed moving, trees asserted here
Nothing but simple comparisons to
(225)
The artist's endearing eye.
(230)
Sleep.
Napkins folded after grace.
Veins of stealing water
By the unplumbed ruins, never finding peace.
A watershed, a valley of tombs,
Never finding peace.
'Look' she might say'Press here
With your fingers at the temples.
Are they not the blunt uncut horns
Of the small naked Ionian fauns?'
Much later, moving i n a dark,
Snow-lit landscape softly
In her small frock walked his daughter
And a simile came into his mind
Of lovers, like swimmers lost at sea
Exhausted i n each other's arms,
Urgent for land, but treading water.
IX
Red Polish mouth,
(235)
(240)
(245)
Lips that as for the flute unform,
Gone round on nouns or vowels,
To utter the accepting, calm
•Yes*, or make terrible verbs
Like 'I adore, adore .
1
Persuader, so long hunted
By your wild pack of selves,
Past peace of mind or even sleep,
So longed for and so sought,
May the divider always keep
Like unshed tears i n lashes
Love, the undeclared thought.
X
Now earth turns her cold shoulders to us,
Autumn with her wild packs
Comes down to the robbing of the flowers.
On this unstained sky, printless
Snow moves crisp as dreamers* fingers,
And the rate of passion or tenderness
In this island house i s absolute*
Within a time of reading Ke
Here i s a l l my growth
Through the bodies of other selves,
In books, by promise or perversity
My mutinous crew of f u r i e s — t h e i r pleading
Threw up at last the naked sprite
Whose flesh and noise I am,
Who i s my j a i l o r and my inward night*
In Europe, bound by Europe,
I saw them moving, the possessed
Fedor and Anna, the last
Two vain explorers of our guilt,
Turn by turn holding the taws,
Made addicts of each other lacking love,
Friendless embittered and alone*
The lesser pities held them back
Like mice i n secrecies,
Yet through introspection and disease,
Held on to the unclinching bone,
The sad worn ring of Anna,
Loyal to f i l t h and weakness,
Hammered out on this slender bond,
Fedor's raw cartoons and episodes.
By marriage with this ring,
Companioned each their darkness.
In cracked voices we can hear
These hideous mommets now
Like westering angels over Europe sing.
91
XI
So knowledge has an end,
And virtue at the last an end,
In the dark f i e l d of sensibility
The unchanging and unbending;
As i n aquariums gloomy
On the negative's dark screen
Grow the shapes of other selves,
So groaned for by the heart,
So seldom grasped i f seen.
Love bears you. Time stirs you.
Music at midnight makes a ground,
Or words on silence so perplex
In hidden meanings there like bogies
Waiting the expected sound.
Art has limits and l i f e limits
Within the nerves that support them.
So better with the happy
Discover than with the wise
Who teach the sad valour
Of endurance through the seasons,
In change the unchanging
Death by compromise.
(295)
(300)
(305)
(310)
(315)
XII
Now darkness comes to Europe
Dedicated by a soft unearthly jazz. .
The greater hearts contract their joys
By silence to the very gem,
While the impertinent reformers,
Barbarians with secretaries move,
Whom old Cavafy pictured,
Whom no war can remove.
Through the ambuscades of sex,
The f o l l i e s of the w i l l , the tears,
Turning, a personal world I go
To where the yellow emperor once
Sat out the summer and the snow,
And searching i n himself struck o i l ,
Published the f i r s t great Tao
Which a l l confession can only gloze
And i n the Consciousness can only spoil
Apparent opposition of the two
Where unlocked numbers show their fabric,
He l a i d his finger to the map,
And where the signs confuse,
Defined the Many and the None
As base reflections of the One.
(320)
(325)
(330)
(335)
What b i f i d Hamlet i n the maze
Wept to find; the doppelganger
Goethe saw one morning go
Over the h i l l ahead; the man
So gnawed by promises who shared
The magnificent responses of Rimbaud.
A l l that we have sought i n us,
The artist by his greater cowardice
In sudden brush-strokes gave us c l u e s —
Hamlet and Faust as front-page news.
The yellow emperor f i r s t confirmed
By one Unknown the human calculus,
Where feeling and idea,
Must f a l l within this space,
This personal landscape built
Within the Chinese circle's calm embrace.
Dark Spirit, sum of a l l
That has remained unloved,
Gone crying through the world:
Source of a l l manufacture and repair,
Quicken the giving-spring
In ferns and birds and ordinary people
That a l l deeds done may share,
By this our temporal sun,
The part of l i v i n g that i s loving,
Tour dancing, a beautiful behavious.
(
Darkness, who contain
The source of a l l this corporal music,
On the great table of the Breath
Our opposites i n pity bear,
Our measure of perfection or of pain,
Both trespassers i n you, that then
Our Here and Now become your Everywhere.
XIII
The old yellow Emperor
With defective sight and matted hair
His palace f e l l to ruins
But his heart was i n repair.
Veins like imperfect plumbing
On his flesh described a leaf.
His palms were mapped with cunning
Like geodesies of grief.
His soul became a vapour
And his limbs became a stake
But his ancient heart s t i l l v i s i t s us
In Lawrence or i n Blake.
93
XIV
A l l cities plains and people
Reach upwards to the affirming sun,
A l l that's vertical and shining,
Lives well lived,
Deeds perfectly done,
Reach upwards to the royal pure
Affirming sun.
Accident or error conquered
By the gods of luck or grace,
Form and face,
Tribe or caste or habit,
A l l are aspects of the one
Affirming race.
Ego, my dear, and id
Lie so profoundly hid
In space-time void, though feeling,
While contemporary, slow,
We conventional lovers cheek to cheek
Inhaling and exhaling go.
The rose that Nostradamus
In his divining saw
Break open as the world;
The city that Augustine
Founded in moral law,
By our anguish were compelled
To urge, to beckon and implore.
Dear Spirit, should I reach,
By touch or speech corrupt,
The inner suffering word,
By weakness or idea,
Though you might suffer
Feel and know,
Pretend you do not hear.
Bombers bursting like pods go down
And the seed of Man stars
This landscape, ancient but no longer known.
Only the c r i t i c perseveres
Within his ant-like formalism
By deduction and destruction steers;
Only the t r i t e reformer holds his own.
See looking down motionless
How clear Athens or Bremen seem
A mass of rotten vegetables
(385)
(390)
(395)
(400)
(405)
(410)
(415)
(420)
(425)
94
Finn on the diagram of earth can l i e ;
And here you may reflect how genus epileptoid
Knows his stuff; and where rivers
Have thrown their switches and enlarged
Our mercy or our knowledge of each other;
Wonder who walks beside them now and why,
And what they talk about.
(430)
(435)
There i s nothing to hope for, my Brother.
We have tried hoping for a future i n the past.
Nothing came out of that past
But the reflected distortion and some
Enduring, and understanding, and some brave.
(440)
Into their cool embrace the awkward and the sinful
Must be put for they alone
Know who and what to save.
XVI
Small temptations now—to slumber and to sleep,
Where the lime-green, odourless
And pathless island waters
Crossing and uncrossing, partnerless
By h i l l s alone and quite incurious
Their pastures of reflection keep.
For Prospero remains the evergreen
Cell by the margin of the sea and land,
Who many c i t i e s , plains, and people saw
let by his open door
In sunlight f e l l asleep
One summer with the Apple i n his hand.
(445)
(450)
(455)