From the Elephant's Back (54 page)

[12]
. 10/6 is a pre-decimalization price of a half guinea or ten shillings and six pence. Counting in guineas traditionally indicates a higher class affiliation; hence, pricing to 10/6 would be posh and reflects the target audience of “wealthy poetry lovers.”

[13]
. Ernst Kretschmer was a German psychiatrist who established a typology of human bodies and personalities. The leptosomic is small and weak and prone to fastidiousness.

[14]
. Likely Colletts or Central Books, which would then have been the Worker's Bookshop.

[15]
. For a detailed survey of the composition of
The Waste Land
, see Lawrence Rainey (27–84).

[16]
. This remark by Thomas is included in his letters to Durrell (2–5).

[17]
. The French poet, Paul Valéry (1871–1945), was employed by the Havas news agency for twenty years and only began his writing career after having taken up this flexible position.

[18]
. Durrell resided on Rhodes from 1945 to 1947 while he was director of public relations. He describes this period in
Reflections on a Marine Venus
and this particular winter in “From a Winter Journal” (252–60).

[19]
. Eliot's
Four Quartets
is a set of four poems first published from 1935 to 1942. They were only published as a set in 1943 and 1944 in Britain.

[20]
. Eliot only mentions a grimpen (a term etymologically uncertain but generally seen as invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) in the second section of “East Coker,” the second poem of the
Four Quartets
. The
Oxford English Dictionary
lists both Eliot and Doyle as its only examples of the word in use.

[21]
. D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) was a British novelist and poet who is often regarded as given to peculiar or unusual views on sexuality, psychology, and instinct.

Richard Aldington

[1]
.   Aldington's two books from 1954,
Pinorman: Personal Recollections of Norman Douglas, Pino Orioli and Charles Prentice
and his more contentious
Lawrence L'Imposteur: T.E. Lawrence, The Legend and the Man
(1954), which was retitled the next year for its British publication with the more neutral
Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry
. Douglas (1868–1952) is largely remembered for his novel
South Wind
, to which Durrell alludes in several of his own novels.

[2]
.   Claude Vincedon.

On George Seferis

[1]
.   Seferis was granted the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963.

[2]
.   Prufrock appears in Eliot's famous “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) and Mauberley in Pound's long poem “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” (1920), which is in many ways akin to Eliot's poem, though more overtly autobiographical. Seferis's poem “Stratis Thalassinos among the Agapanthi” is focused largely on exile, but the characters appears across several of his works from 1940 to 1965. Durrell's juxtaposition of Seferis and Eliot shows how he regarded the two poets.

[3]
.   See Eliot's “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” 13–22.

[4]
.   Eliot had a significant impact on Seferis's works, and he was familiar with at least a little of Eliot's work as early as 1931 (Beaton 107–09).

[5]
.   Jules Laforgue (1860–1887) was an important French Symbolist poet who influenced English literary Modernism, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in particular. Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) was also a profoundly influential French poet, though he gave up writing by the time he was twenty-one. Durrell mentions Rimbaud and his lover Paul Verlaine in his first novel,
Pied Piper of Lovers
(190).

[6]
.   Durrell spoke out against the communist politics of Surrealism during and after the 1936 London International Surrealist exhibition and was closely tied to its anarchist revisions in English Surrealism.

[7]
.   All three did significant work as translators. La Carrière (1925–2005) was a writer and translator as well as a personal friend of Durrell's, Bonnefoy (1923–) is a French poet and essayist, and Warner (1905–1986) was a major translator of Greek materials whom Durrell knew well and who introduced Durrell's co-translated edition of Seferis's poetry.

[8]
.   Durrell and Seferis's friendship was particularly strained by Durrell's service to the British on Cyprus during the Enosis struggle. The two, however, maintained friendly correspondences with each other even during the periods in which most critics describe their relationship as having failed. This part of their correspondence is held in the Durrell Library in l'Univesité Paris Ouest, Nanterre, and the Gennadius Library, Athens.

[9]
.   Though Durrell translates the adjective πεισματαρα as “damned,” its meaning is often closer to “stubborn.”

Poets Under the Bed

[1]
.   Through Poetry London, Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu (1915–1983) published several of Durrell's works as well as those of his close friends. Many of the poets involved with
The Booster
and
Delta
, the journals published via the Villa Seurat in Paris in the 1930s, went on to publish through Poetry London. This includes Elizabeth Smart's
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
, which recounts her relationship with George Barker, whom she met through Durrell. Many of the poets associated with the wartime
Personal Landscape
in North Africa and the New Apocalypse in London were similarly involved.

[2]
.   T.S. Eliot was, by this time, an important editor at Faber & Faber.

[3]
.   All of these writers were tied to either the New Apocalypse in London or the Villa Seurat in Paris.

[4]
.   Tambimuttu became important during World War II as a publisher of poetry and literature. He was perhaps the most dedicated publisher of the works of younger poets during the war when such poets were otherwise often excluded from the mainstream. Tambimuttu included several works by Durrell in his periodical
Poetry London
as well as his novel
Cefalû
in the Editions Poetry London book series. Durrell also published Tambimuttu's “Ceylonese Lovesong” in
Delta
in 1939 (14).

[5]
.   This would have been approximately 1939 though perhaps earlier since Durrell first met with Tambimuttu very shortly after his arrival in London.

[6]
.   This is now a high-end pub on 28 South Molton Street, London. Tambimuttu also frequented the Fitzroy Tavern, which is likely where he and Durrell met.

[7]
.   Tambimuttu founded the Indian Arts Council in May 1983 with a grant of £20,000 from Indira Gandhi (Ranasinha 136).

Corfu

[1]
.   An anonymous editorial introduction originally prefaced this article: “Familiar in tourist itineraries, not long ago a British possession, Corfu remains little known to the English public. Nor would many English visitors succeed in capturing, as Mr. Durrell does, those varied essences of the Greek mystery which Corfu distils—groves that are yet nymph-haunted, bays that resound with Homeric echoes, sailors for whom magic lurks in every wave, sibyls whose pronouncements can bind and loose the hearts of men.”

[2]
.   The largest mountain on Corfu. It dominates the landscape of the north of the island.

[3]
.   A village on the southern end of Corfu.

[4]
.   Corfu was never formally controlled by Turkey, though it was by the Byzantine Empire, the Venetian Empire, and Russia. Due to Turkish domination of the Greek mainland, Turkish influences are still significant, though much less so than in the rest of Greece.

[5]
.   The British Government House was built with stone from Malta, an imitation of the Rue de Rivoli from Paris runs beside it, and Corfu Town itself is Venetian in construction. Its hybridity is unmistakable.

[6]
.   The Jewish population of Corfu was largely removed four years later to Nazi extermination camps during World War II, and the ghetto of the town (from Venice's original) was bombed. The Jewish Quarter of Corfu Town still contains many dilapidated buildings that remain uninhabited but were part of the Jewish community. A distinct dialect did exist, and rural communities on the island still integrate elements of Italian into Modern Greek.

[7]
.   A cricket green is still active beside the Liston in the Old Town.

[8]
.   A variety of stories and locations relating to Ulysses are associated with and circulated on the island.

[9]
.   These locations are in modern Kanoni, South of Corfu Town. Durrell's family lived near to Kanoni in Perama. These sites are now in Paleopolis, the old city, and the pediment for the Temple of Artemis is in the Archaeological Museum, though it was housed in the Palace of Saint Michael beside the Pension Suisse in which Durrell first resided.

[10]
. Compare to Durrell's short story “Down the Styx” (417–22).

[11]
. Govia, Gouvia, or Govino Bay is a village north of Corfu Town in an area Durrell would have passed regularly. Though they are not now swampy, this may have been the case at the time. More likely, however, is that he meant the area around Lake Korisia on the southwest of the island. He was well acquainted with both locations.

[12]
. Ipsos is a coastal village north of Gouvia but still southwest of Kalami, where Durrell lived.

[13]
. 1 Corinthians 12:14.

[14]
. The photograph by Nancy Myers was originally included here.

[15]
. John 1.1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”

[16]
. Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) was a Greek king and highly successful conqueror.

[17]
. As Durrell renders it above, “How is Alexander?” “He lives and stills reigns.”

[18]
. The Castle at Kassope on the north of Corfu. It was destroyed by the Venetians and would have been in ruins at Durrell's time, though it was restored in the early 2000s.

[19]
. The sweet lemon.

[20]
. Typically Kanoni, south of Corfu Town in the ancient city centre.

[21]
. Notably, Durrell prepared a typescript entitled “A Village of the Turtle-Doves” set on a Greek island. Kanoni, immediately south of Corfu Town and near to his family in Perama, is likely the setting.

[22]
. The original temple is in ruins, but the pediment is in good condition and on display in the Archaeological Museum in Corfu Town. During Durrell's time on the island, it would have been in the Palace of Saint Michael. The same pediment appears to have influenced the American poet H.D.'s experience of “the writing on the wall” while she was on Corfu, as recorded in her
Tribute to Freud
(52–53).

The Island of the Rose

[1]
.   Smith (1764–1840) was a British admiral who successfully fought the Siege of Acre in 1799 (now Akko in Israel) and turned Napoleon back from his conquest of Syria.

[2]
.   This is still a well-preserved fortress in Rhodes.

[3]
.   The Colossus of Rhodes was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a large statue of the god Helios, stood over thirty metres, and was constructed of iron and bronze between 292 and 280 BCE.

[4]
.   Prior to World War II. Durrell lived on Rhodes following the war and leading up to the accretion of the Dodecanese Islands to Greece.
Reflections on a Marine Venus
, his longest work about Rhodes, was editorially cut to remove most references to the war (Roessel, “‘Cut'” 64–77), so its appearance here and in his other shorter writings shows that, for Durrell, the effect of the Second World War on the local population was important.

[5]
.   Durrell notes this with regard to Jewish populations in other publications from this period, but it is largely absent from
Reflections on a Marine Venus
due to editorial excisions by Anne Ridler at Faber & Faber (Roessel, “‘Cut'” 64–77). His partner at this time (and second wife), Eve Cohen, was a Zionist Jew, as was his third wife, Claude Marie Vincedon, from the Menasce family. Claude wrote a Zionist novel,
A Chair for the Prophet
, during her relationship with Durrell.

[6]
.   Piraeus is the major port of Athens. Durrell arrived on Rhodes from Alexandria, Egypt.

[7]
.   Mario de Vecchi was the fascist governor of Rhodes under Italian rule. He imposed anti-Semitic laws, and many Jews fled Rhodes prior to the German arrival in 1943. Durrell also comments on the oppression and transportation of Rhodes' Jewish population in “Letter in the Sofa” in this volume (325–29).

[8]
.   Both Cicero and Pompey attended Posidonius's lectures on Rhodes. Although Julius Caesar extensively quotes Posidonius, Durrell likely means Cicero here.

[9]
.   Tiberius (42 BCE–37 CE) was the second Roman Emperor. He retired to Rhodes in 6 BCE.

[10]
. Cleobulus was a citizen of Lindos on Rhodes and Plutarch calls him their King. Durrell lived in the Villa Cleobulus while on Rhodes.

[11]
. Kameiros is an ancient city of Rhodes noted by Homer in
The Iliad
. Durrell is likely referring to real inscriptions, though all three were significant Athenians.

[12]
. A Greek poet of 480 BCE. Plutarch quotes Timocrean in chapter 21 of
Themistocles
and is likely Durrell's source here.

[13]
. These World War II images are cut from Durrell's
Reflections on a Marine Venus
, so their presence here indicates his first intentions for that book.