From the Elephant's Back (47 page)

[12]
. This description is quite close to Seferis's argument comparing T.S. Eliot and C.P. Cavafy (121–61), though this was not translated into English and published by Rex Warner until several years after this article. For a discussion of how Durrell appropriated Seferis's comparison to develop a new approach to allusion, see Gifford, “Hellenism/Modernism” (82–97).

[13]
. Olivia Manning translated Papadimitriou at this time, and she also housed Durrell's first wife Nancy when she fled Egypt to Palestine, mainly for safety but also in part to end her marriage. Durrell attempted flights to Palestine to reconcile, but these were not endorsed, and the tensions of the situation seem to expand beyond the Durrells' marital discord. Nonetheless, Durrell continued to promote both Papadimitriou and Manning.

No Clue to Living

[1]
.   Durrell republished this piece several times in minor variants, which indicates its importance. The numerous political references suggest the work is akin to Orwell's “Politics and the English Language” as it relates to Durrell's oeuvre. Charles Dickens (1812–1870), Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) are widely known for the social critiques undertaken in their works. Given Durrell's anti-authoritarian postures in this essay, it is worth noting that Tolstoy was a major anarcho-pacifist thinker, and Dostoyevsky is frequently tied to anarchist concepts.

[2]
.   As peculiar as this combination sounds, Durrell collected precisely these letters in his unpublished typescript, “Price of Glory: Gleanings From a Writer's In-Tray.” This is held in the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

[3]
.   Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) was president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. The pope at the time was Pope John XIII.

[4]
.   Durrell wrote “Two Poems in Basic English” (141–144) in 1946, which predates the UNESCO conference.

[5]
.   A direct reference to George Orwell. Durrell read Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, in which double-think is a method for social control, in 1949 and wrote to Orwell to express his admiration for the novel in the same year. The two authors had previously disputed their differing positions openly (Gifford, “Editor's Preface” viii-ix), so Durrell's admiration and echoing of Orwell again in
The Revolt of Aphrodite
would appear genuine. Durrell, like most readers, regarded
Nineteen Eighty-Four
as an anti-Stalinist work, despite the use of dollars and atomic weapons by Big Brother's regime; the Soviets did not acquire atomic weapons until after the novel's publication. However, Durrell's own
Revolt of Aphrodite
contains a similar critique of corporatism and cultural hegemony.

[6]
.   Chessman (1921–1960) was a famous California convict who was executed after publishing four books he wrote while on death row. Calls for clemency were highly publicized. During his ten years on death row, Chessman received stays of execution, including one during his actual execution in a gas chamber, which would have stalled his execution had the caller not initially dialled a wrong number.

[7]
.   Like Chessman's uncertain stays of execution, this was a time of great uncertainty based on the possibility of nuclear war. It would, however, be anachronistic to read this in light of the subsequent Bay of Pigs Invasion or the Cuban Missile Crisis, although later publications of this article in the 1960s would have aroused that association.

[8]
.    The use of the term “magic” here is akin to Raymond Williams's in “Advertising: The Magic System,” which was published two months later in
The New Statesman
. They may share a common source.

[9]
.   A tradition in French criticism to avoid “the hated I” of the first person singular. Durrell's shift from “a better artist” to “I” is marked here as a refusal of the “society that is swallowing the individual” two paragraphs above. This same pattern from “one” to “I” repeats numerous times in the remainder of the essay, the subsequent paragraph in particular, as a way to emphasize the individual rather than obfuscate him or her.

[10]
. This emphasis on the tension between the individual and the group is also continued in Durrell's next major novel series,
The Revolt of Aphrodite
.

[11]
. Durrell's close friend, Henry Miller, articulates a similar position in his anarchist essay “An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere,” a text that Durrell admired. In contradiction of Paul Éluard's notion of the Socialist Brotherhood of Man, Miller argues, “The brotherhood of man is a permanent delusion common to the idealists everywhere in all epochs: it is the reduction of the principle of individuation to the least common denominator of intelligibility. It is what leads the masses to identify themselves with movie stars and megalomaniacs like Hitler and Mussolini. It is what prevents them from reading and appreciating and being influenced by and creating in turn such poetry as Paul Eluard gives us” (152). To this, he adds, “I am fatuous enough to believe that in living my own life in my own way I am more apt to give life to others” (157).

[12]
.
Pravda
was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
The Daily Mirror
was the largest selling newspaper in the United Kingdom at the time and generally promoted a Labour and working-class perspective. Much like his later
The Revolt of Aphrodite
, Durrell's indictment is of the nature of mass media in general as a degradation of the individual, regardless of the media's left or right political affiliation.

[13]
. Apart from left or right affiliation, Durrell's discomfort is with the unavoidably authoritarian nature of government in general or the state itself. This is akin to the anarchist position of many of Durrell's poetic colleagues, as well Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, which was first translated into English by the Scottish poet Hamish Henderson, whom Durrell had known in Egypt during the Second World War.

[14]
. Durrell lived in Sommières at this time, less than one hundred kilometres from Nostradamus's birthplace and the universities where he studied. Henry Miller also refers to Nostradamus twice in his letters to Durrell in 1959 while in France (Durrell,
Durrell–Miller
343, 363).

[15]
. Notably, these descriptions apply to governments but not to artists or individuals.

[16]
. This is the quandary in which Durrell leaves his readers at the end of each of his major novel sequences.
The Alexandria Quartet
ends with uncertainty just as
Justine
ends with an ambivalent resolution according to the reader's own wants and needs;
The Revolt of Aphrodite
ends with an abolition of contractual obligation in a corporate world; and
The Avignon Quintet
ends with a total reversion to meta-fiction. In all three cases, the reader (and not the author nor critic) is left in an unresolved moment of personal engagement and choice.

[17]
. Durrell refers to “cloth-of-gold” in
The Alexandria Quartet
as well, and he would still have been completing the novel series at this time. Cloth of gold is typically silk wrapped with gold and used as the weft in woven fabric. The “Way” is the Tao, and this sentence combines it with the Western ecclesiastic sense of the cloth as used in church services and for royalty (Psalms 45:13–14). Ray Morrison details Durrell's Taoist interests (446–50).

[18]
. An allusion to the French Symbolist author Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (1838–1889) and his play
Axël
: “Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous” (“as for living, our servants will do that for us”). Both W.B. Yeats and Friedrich Nietzsche frequently quoted this specific passage, and the work also supplied the title for Edmund Wilson's major study of Modernist literature
Axel's Castle
.

This Magnetic, Bedevilled Island That Tugs at My Heart

[1]
.   This article was first published in the
Daily Mail
on August 22, 1974. It was retitled the next day in the
New York Times
, “Must the Lemons Remain Bitter?” This alternate title demonstrates the kinships between this piece and Durrell's travel book,
Bitter Lemons
, which describes his years living on Cyprus during the struggle for Enosis (union). This title, from the
Daily Mail
publication, also connects with Durrell's earlier draft of a novel,
The Magnetic Island
. See Shelley Cox (45–57). I have generally retained the paragraph formatting of the later printing and have eliminated the paragraph headings of the first, which are most likely editorial additions by the
Daily Mail
.

[2]
.   The Cypriot struggle for unification with Greece and independence from British rule, which was fought by EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) using armed conflict from 1955 to 1959. In 1974, Makarios was overthrown in a coup, and Turkey invaded after failing to secure British support for an intervention. Turkey remains on the island.

[3]
.   Sappho Durrell (1951–1985), born from his second marriage to Eve Cohen.

[4]
.   This is both a chapter and location in Durrell's book
Bitter Lemons
, which is set during his life on Cyprus, as well as the title of his poetry collection and poem
The Tree of Idleness
.

[5]
.   EOKA is the acronym for Εθνική Οργάνωσις Κυπρίων Αγωνιστών (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters).

[6]
.   Makarios III (1913–1977), Archbishop of Cyprus and its first president. He was archbishop and enormously influential during the Enosis struggle, and he negotiated the resolution in 1960, which lasted until the Athens-supported coup.

[7]
.   Caramanlis was a former prime minister of Greece who went into self-imposed exile after losing the election in 1963. He won the first election after the end of the Junta in 1974. Originally, Kanellopolous was supported as the interim prime minister to lead the country to elections, and Durrell had tutored him in English during the Greek Government in Exile during World War II.

[8]
.   Venizelos (1894–1964) was an extraordinarily important Greek politician. He was prime minister during the Greek Government in Exile during World War II and had led the Centre Union party. Durrell is tactfully balancing his praise between socialist and conservative forces.

Lamas in a French Forest

[1]
.   Jetsun Milarepa (1052–1135) is one of the most famous Tibetan yogis and poets.

[2]
.   Huxley (1894–1963) was a British novelist best known for
Brave New World
, though he wrote many highly successful works. Maugham (1874–1965) wrote in many genres but is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel
Of Human Bondage
.

[3]
.   Durrell's comparison is bold and marks his pro-Tibet and pro-Greece position. China first invaded Tibet in 1950. The Fall of Constantinople refers to the 1453 conquest of the capital of the Christian Byzantine Empire by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, modern Turkey, which renamed it Istanbul. Referring to the city using the Greek name recalls the attempt in 1922 by Greece to reclaim the city, which failed and led to the Asia Minor Catastrophe.

[4]
.   The quarterly journal began in 1943, replacing
Buddhism in England
, which began in 1926.
The Middle Way
is still published.

[5]
.   Rinpotché (1904–1989) was the modern holder of Shangpa Kagyu lineage. He taught extensively in Europe and North America after being forced into exile from Tibet.

[6]
.   Although Durrell is modest here, this was a fairly extensive campaign, and Durrell wrote giving his support to a variety of French government officials, including the president and minister of culture (MacNiven 660–61).

The Prince and Hamlet

[1]
.   This letter was sent early November 1936 (Durrell,
Durrell–Miller
22). Durrell is playing against the lyrics of “Rule Britannia.”

[2]
.   Although Durrell was not included in their published correspondence, this work relates closely to Henry Miller and Michael Fraenkel's
Hamlet
letters, published in 1939.

[3]
.   From Milton's
Areopagitica
, “a good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life” (7).

[4]
.   The Modernist author D.H Lawrence (1885–1930) and Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903).

[5]
.   J. Dover Wilson (1881–1969) was Regius Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. He was known largely for his work on Shakespeare and his editorship of the
New Shakespeare
complete works through Cambridge University Press, for which
Hamlet
occupied his greatest attention. Durrell is likely referring to his 1935 book
What Happens in Hamlet
, which is still influential, as well as his 1934
The Manuscript of Shakespeare's Hamlet
. J.B. Harrison was a professor at Queen's University and was the editor of the Penguin Shakespeare beginning in 1937. He produced a wide range of critical texts on Shakespeare and Elizabethan literature in general, including several critical editions Durrell was likely to have owned, such as Thomas Nashe's
An Elizabethan Journal
(published in three volumes in 1928, 1931, and 1933). Durrell claimed to have read across the whole of Elizabethan literature before moving to Corfu in 1935.