Lawrence Durrell - Blue Thirst - Tales of Life Abroad

Now what I did was to bring along a few old and somewhat faded pictures from my scrap book in the hope of making this talk a bit actual, of illustrating it with places and faces. Well, when I asked the backroom boys to knock me up some lecture slides they looked at the quality of my prints and burst into tears. But I pinned my faith to the fact that after all this was an advanced technological institute and therefore able to perform wonders — after all, these were the people who were keeping Sky-lab in the sky. Surely they could keep poor Durrell talking? My faith was not misplaced; they dried their tears and got to work, and the magnificent results, many in color, you will see right now. So without more ado let us unleash the artwork. Behold!

Taken by the village photographer during my first year in Corfu. Second from left my landlord, on extreme right myself next to his wife.

The temple of Delphi where you make your big wish.

Niko, who sails like a demon and taught me Demotic Greek.

These marvelous monks combed their beards and sang Gregorian chants.

Well, now, this is the white house about which I was talking. Corfu town is in the distance there. It’s a good 2½ hours on caïque. And this little white house is the place where I lodged on this promontory here which is directly facing Albania, and where at night you get the most extraordinary displays. For example, in the autumn a kind of bacteria which I’m sure you must know, is washed up into the sea. The sea becomes thick and curdled and when you dive into it you’re set on fire. I mean, you’re not scorched or anything, but this animal, I’ve forgotten it’s name, it throws out sparks so that when three or four people dive in you see figures of flame going into the water and off that point at night so frequently in the autumn we did that wondering why we weren’t burnt because if you open your eyes you really do think you’re going to be scorched.

Here’s a closeup of the house and a bad picture of the caïque coming to take them off, and that’s my landlord up there looking wistful, I don’t know why. This was taken much later. I lived on the top floor and the family lived on the bottom floor, and we had a boat which since has sunk, which used to be attached in that boat house. In winter the sea was so rough that it really came up to that balcony and swamped it. We had to completely tear away the vine and everything there. And it’s very amusing. Now it’s a place of pilgrimage. The Club Mediterranee charged people enormous sums to go look at it as the Durrell residence and serve them Coca-Cola for even larger sums. I don’t know how posthumous you can feel, but my brother and I put on dark glasses and funny hats and we went on one of these trips, and I’ve never heard so much misinformation about our family and in such strange French. I think they were all Syrians. Anyway, we drank Coca-Cola in our own honor and sneaked off back to town.

There is a very pleasant fancy which is a far eastern one, namely, that you have two birth-places. You have the place where you were really born and then you have a place of predeliction where you really wake up to reality. One day you wake up and it’s there, and in your inner life, in your dreams and so on and so forth, it’s the place of predeliction that comes forward and which nourishes you. It’s particularly useful in yoga to realize the difference between the two birthplaces. This my predeliction place. It’s a shrine of St. Arsenius. He’s a funny old cross-eyed saint, nobody knows much about him. He has brief mention in the calendar, but an ikon was washed up here after a storm. Naturally, a fisherman found it and decreed that it had to be housed properly, so the priest came and they built this little shrine for him and we found when we got here that this is one of those wonderful places. There’s a very deep rock pool here and a cave about as big as a stage opening through a flue on the other side so it’s fully lighted with a little pebble beach inside and reached by ducking under that lintel you find yourself in this extraordinary cave. We built a huge statue there in clay every year when we were there but in the winter the sea gets up and it licks out the cave like a hollow tooth and the statue just disappeared. Well now this is the place where I finished the Black Book and where my first poems were being selected when I was really working properly and beginning to feel my feet as a writer. It is also the place where we bathed naked all the time. We were extremely careful not to offend susceptibilities in Greece, and they were exteremely proper, the peasant girls and so on, so we didn’t do ony of the idiocies you see Swedes doing now, running about Athens all naked. It brings great shame and discredit on our nations when we do that. Anyway, we were very careful about their susceptibilities, but we used to bathe there because those rocks completely prevented anyone from getting near the place. In fact I finished the Black Book naked one day, and then later on when the war came I got a letter from a friend of mine in the British Embassy in Athens saying, “What sort of orgies are you having up there?” This puzzled me a great deal. The war was just being declared and I didn’t pay much attention, but I was living with my wife, legitimately married to her in a hamlet of four people and no orgies whatsoever, there was hardly enough to drink. And working every day at the shrine. What had happened was this. When I got to Athens and was taken on to the staff of the British Embassy I discovered a report by the local consul, who was a Greek, against me saying that I bathed naked with a woman. Now what happened was the British fleet used to visit the town 20 miles away and on Sundays they used to invite visitors aboard to have a look at the ships and during this one of the prize things to show was the range-finders of HMS Barham with a 25 mile range and they picked us up sitting there like Adam and Eve, and so the consul who was deeply shocked wrote a confidential report on me.

My second birthplace, the shrine of St. Arsenius.

The Ionian Bar on Rue de Rivoli — the happiest drinks, warmest sunlight…

With Katsimbalis in Athens.

That’s Niko, the sailor, and that’s his boat, just a little rig, old-fashioned caïque, moves like honey. He’s still there and he’s still sailing like a demon. I saw him a couple of years ago and he’s still speaking a very personal French. He’s the man who showed me all these new books, the Demotic versions of Homer, which so touched me. I owe my first lessons in Greek to him and many is the drink we had under that vine. That’s his house, actually, it’s right alongside mine, and that’s the morning caïque coming in and that’s some unidentified child who doesn’t look at all pleasant.