Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

* * * Clea always has a horoscope cast before any decision reached.

* * * Clea’s account of the horrible party; driving with Justine they had seen a brown cardboard box by the road. They were late so they put it in the back and did not open it until they reached the garage. Inside was dead baby wrapped in newspaper. What to do with this wizened homunculus? Perfectly formed organs. Guests were due to arrive, they had to rush. Justine slipped it into drawer of the hall desk. Party a great success.

* * * Pursewarden on the ‘n-dimensional novel’ trilogy: ‘The narrative momentum forward is counter—sprung by references backwards in time, giving the impression of a book which is not travelling from a to b but standing above time and turning slowly on its own axis to comprehend the whole pattern. Things do not all lead forward to other things: some lead backwards to things which have passed.

A marriage of past and present with the flying multiplicity of the future racing towards one. Anyway, that was my idea.’…

* * *

‘Then how long will it last, this love?’ (in jest).

‘I don’t know.’

‘Three weeks, three years, three decades…?’

‘You are like all the others … trying to shorten eternity with numbers,’ spoken quietly, but with intense feeling.

* * * Conundrum: a peacock’s eye. Kisses so amateurish they resembled an early form of printing.

* * * Of poems: ‘I like the soft thudding of Alexandrines.’ (Nessim).

* * * Clea and her old father whom she worships. White haired, erect, with a sort of haunted pity in his eyes for the young unmarried goddess he has fathered. Once a year on New Year’s Eve they dance at the Cecil, stately, urbanely. He waltzes like a clockwork man.

* * * Pombal’s love for Sveva: based on one gay message which took his fancy. When he awoke she’d gone, but she had neatly tied his dress tie to his John Thomas, a perfect bow. This message so captivated him that he at once dressed and went round to propose marriage to her because of her sense of humour.

* * * Pombal was at his most touching with his little car which he loved devotedly. I remember him washing it by moonlight very patiently.

* * * Justine: ‘Always astonished by the force of my own emotions — tearing the heart out of a book with my fingers like a fresh loaf.’

* * * Places: street with arcade: awnings: silverware and doves for sale. Pursewarden fell over a basket and filled the street with apples.

* * * Message on the corner of a newspaper. Afterwards the closed cab, warm bodies, night, volume of jasmine.

* * * A basket of quail burst open in the bazaar. They did not try to escape but spread out slowly like spilt honey. Easily recaptured.

* * * Postcard from Balthazar: ‘Scobie’s death was the greatest fun.

How he must have enjoyed it. His pockets were full of love-letters to his aide Hassan, and the whole vice squad turned out to sob at his grave. All these black gorillas crying like babies. A very Alexandrian demonstration of affection. Of course the grave was too small for the coffin. The grave-diggers had knocked off for lunch, so a scratch team of policemen was brought into action.

Usual muddle. The coffin fell over on its side and the old man nearly rolled out. Shrieks. The padre was furious. The British Consul nearly died of shame. But all Alexandria was there and a good time was had by all.’

* * * Pombal walking in stately fashion down Rue Fuad, dead drunk at ten in the morning, clad in full evening dress, cloak and opera hat — but bearing on his shirt-front, written in lipstick, the words

‘Torche-cul des republicains.’

* * * (Museum) Alexander wearing the horns of Ammon (Nessim’s madness).

He identified himself with A because of the horns?

* * * Justine reflecting sadly on the statue of Berenice mourning her little daughter whom the Priests deified: ‘Did that assuage her grief I wonder? Or did it make it more permanent?’

* * * Tombstone of Apollodorus giving his child a toy. ‘Could bring tears to one’s eyes.’ (Pursewarden) ‘They are all dead. Nothing to show for it.’

* * * Aurelia beseeching Petesouchos the crocodile god . . Narouz.

* * * Lioness Holding a Golden flower…

* * * Ushabti … little serving figures which are supposed to work for the mummy in the underworld.

* * * Somehow even Scobie’s death did not disturb our picture of him. I had already seen him long before in Paradise — the soft conklin-coloured yams like the haunches of newly cooked babies: the night falling with its deep-breathing blue slur over Tobago, softer than parrot-plumage. Paper flamingoes touched with goldleaf, rising and falling on the sky, touched by the keening of the bruise-dark water-bamboos. His little hut of reeds with the cane bed, beside which still stands the honoured cake—stand of his earthly life. Clea once asked him: ‘Do you not miss the sea, Scobie?’ and the old man replied simply, without hesitation, ‘Every night I put to sea in my dreams.’

*******

I copied out and gave her the two translations from Cavafy which had pleased her though they were by no means literal. By now the Cavafy canon has been established by the fine thoughtful translations of Mavrogordato and in a sense the poet has been freed for other poets to experiment with; I have tried to transplant rather than translate — with what success I cannot say. the city You tell yourself: I’ll be gone To some other land, some other sea, To a city lovelier far than this Could ever have been or hoped to be — Where every step now tightens the noose: A heart in a body buried and out of use: How long, how long must I be here Confined among these dreary purlieus Of the common mind? Wherever now I look Black ruins of my life rise into view.

So many years have I been here Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.

There’s no new land, my friend, no New sea; for the city will follow you, In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly, The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age, In the same house go white at last — The city is a cage.

No other places, always this Your earthly landfall, and no ship exists To take you from yourself. Ah! don’t you see Just as you’ve ruined your life in this One plot of ground you’ve ruined its worth Everywhere now — over the whole earth? the god abandons antony When suddenly at darkest midnight heard, The invisible company passing, the clear voices, Ravishing music of invisible choirs — Your fortunes having failed you now, Hopes gone aground, a lifetime of desires Turned into smoke. Ah! do not agonize At what is past deceiving But like a man long since prepared With courage say your last goodbyes To Alexandria as she is leaving.

Do not be tricked and never say It was a dream or that your ears misled, Leave cowards their entreaties and complaints, Let all such useless hopes as these be shed, And like a man long since prepared, Deliberately, with pride, with resignation Befitting you and worthy of such a city Turn to the open window and look down To drink past all deceiving Your last dark rapture from the mystical throng And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria leaving.

Page 18. ‘The Poet of the city.’ C. P. Cavafy.

Page 18. ‘The old man.’ C. P. Cavafy.

Page 39. Caballi. The astral bodies of men who died a premature death ‘They imagine to perform bodily actions while in fact they have no physical bodies but act in their thoughts.’ Paracelsus.

Page 39. ‘Held the Gnostic doctrine that creation is a mistake….

The imagines a primal God, the centre of a divine harmony, who sent out manifestations of himself in pairs of male and female.

Each pair was inferior to its predecessor and Sophia (“wisdom”) the female of the thirtieth pair, least perfect of all. She showed her imperfection not, like Lucifer, by rebelling from God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him. She fell through love.’ E. M. Forster, Alexandria.