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The Alexandria Quartet #1
Justine
"Demands comparison with the very best books of our century . . . A truly important writer . . . His people, his places are masterly." � New York Times Book Review
Durrell's masterpiece is onne of the world's greatest romances, rich in political and sexual intrigue. This seductive tale of four tangled lovers in wartime Egypt is set in thecity of Alexandria once home to the world's greatest library, attracting scholars dedicated solely to the pursuit of knowledge. But on the eve of World War II, the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel find that their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know-and possess-the other.
Durrell's masterpiece is onne of the world's greatest romances, rich in political and sexual intrigue. This seductive tale of four tangled lovers in wartime Egypt is set in thecity of Alexandria once home to the world's greatest library, attracting scholars dedicated solely to the pursuit of knowledge. But on the eve of World War II, the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel find that their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know-and possess-the other.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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13.9k people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Durrell
221books860followersLawrence George Durrell was a critically hailed and beloved novelist, poet, humorist, and travel writer best known for The Alexandria Quartet novels, which were ranked by the Modern Library as among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century. A passionate and dedicated writer from an early age, Durrell’s prolific career also included the groundbreaking Avignon Quintet, whose first novel, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and whose third novel, Constance (1982), was nominated for the Booker Prize. He also penned the celebrated travel memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. Durrell corresponded with author Henry Miller for forty-five years, and Miller influenced much of his early work, including a provocative and controversial novel, The Black Book (1938). Durrell died in France in 1990.
The time Lawrence spent with his family, mother Louisa, siblings Leslie, Margaret Durrell, and Gerald Durrell, on the island of Corfu were the subject of Gerald's memoirs and have been filmed numerous times for TV.
The time Lawrence spent with his family, mother Louisa, siblings Leslie, Margaret Durrell, and Gerald Durrell, on the island of Corfu were the subject of Gerald's memoirs and have been filmed numerous times for TV.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,167 reviews
September 19, 2014
“In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. It’s dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of sea-water licking it’s own wounds,sulking along the mouths of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches� empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds." - Lawrence Durrell, Justine
Sometimes you discover a new author and know you’re going to be friends for life. A one-sided friendship but you know you’ll be better off for it.
I just finished one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I have never read such exquisite descriptions in my life. This is a story focusing on the intertwining lives of the unnamed Irish narrator; Melissa, his girlfriend; Justine, the woman everyone is infatuated with; and her husband, Nessim, living in Egypt just before the break of the First World War. You expect there to be affairs, and there are, but the pull of the story to me is more than the scandal, it’s primarily the writing itself.
“Capitally, what is this city of ours? What is resumed in the word Alexandria?� To me , someone who has never been to Egypt, Alexandria is a place where the biggest library in the world once stood, the loss of which was a tragedy to all bibliophiles. To Durrell it was a racially diverse city with its many religions and culture co-existing in one region, a place for academics and writers. Alexandria is also an important character in this book, as mysterious with its diversity as is Justine, the titular character.
This is my ideal book; an interesting story in a fascinating locale, plenty of philosophy and poetic prose. The words Durrell used were like poetry and left me stunned. His characters are so well-developed, which maybe makes this one stand out to me a bit more than those in Anais Nin books (I do find their styles similar and I can see why Nin admired him so much). The characters seemed so real to me, one of the most interesting being Scobie:
“Scobie is a sort of protozoic profile in fog and rain for he carries with him a sort of English weather, and he is never happier than when he can sit over a microscopic wood-fire in winter and talk…Whenever he speaks of the past it is in series of short dim telegrams� as if already communications were poor, the weather inimical to transmission.�
The fact that there are three more books in the Alexandria Quartet fills me with such excitement. I have a new favourite writer:)
Sometimes you discover a new author and know you’re going to be friends for life. A one-sided friendship but you know you’ll be better off for it.
I just finished one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I have never read such exquisite descriptions in my life. This is a story focusing on the intertwining lives of the unnamed Irish narrator; Melissa, his girlfriend; Justine, the woman everyone is infatuated with; and her husband, Nessim, living in Egypt just before the break of the First World War. You expect there to be affairs, and there are, but the pull of the story to me is more than the scandal, it’s primarily the writing itself.
“Capitally, what is this city of ours? What is resumed in the word Alexandria?� To me , someone who has never been to Egypt, Alexandria is a place where the biggest library in the world once stood, the loss of which was a tragedy to all bibliophiles. To Durrell it was a racially diverse city with its many religions and culture co-existing in one region, a place for academics and writers. Alexandria is also an important character in this book, as mysterious with its diversity as is Justine, the titular character.
This is my ideal book; an interesting story in a fascinating locale, plenty of philosophy and poetic prose. The words Durrell used were like poetry and left me stunned. His characters are so well-developed, which maybe makes this one stand out to me a bit more than those in Anais Nin books (I do find their styles similar and I can see why Nin admired him so much). The characters seemed so real to me, one of the most interesting being Scobie:
“Scobie is a sort of protozoic profile in fog and rain for he carries with him a sort of English weather, and he is never happier than when he can sit over a microscopic wood-fire in winter and talk…Whenever he speaks of the past it is in series of short dim telegrams� as if already communications were poor, the weather inimical to transmission.�
The fact that there are three more books in the Alexandria Quartet fills me with such excitement. I have a new favourite writer:)
June 28, 2020
The opening novel of Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet didn’t leave me indifferent.
It’s probably one of the best well written books I have ever read. Durrell’s mastery of the word is indisputable. Surreal descriptions of place, evocative and provocative, tinged with poetic melancholy.
“The ripple and flurry of the invisible colonies of birds around us increases. Slowly, painfully, like a half-open door the dawn is upon us, forcing back the darkness.�
This delicious quote is part of quite a long scene at the end of the novel, just before the unnamed narrator goes back to his dear Alexandria to visit the child of his deceased lover. One can’t help but notice the polished use of language as well as the tension building up towards an end that leaves the reader with a feeling of emptiness, the kind that is forged in disappointment and sadness.
And this is mainly what I found marvelous about this novel. The atmospheric use of color and mood, the powerful sense of place, of the city that is the true protagonist of this story: The city that merged “five races, five languages, a dozen creeds: five fleets turning through their greasy reflections behind the harbor bar� . The 1930s city of Alexandria.
The rest sounded shallow to this reader's ears. The melodramatic characters. The crisscrossed, doomed love affairs. The psychoanalytical and rather useless chatter of the narrator. Everything but the city was depicted with any substantial depth, everything paled in comparison to the great detail with which magnificent Alexandria was brought to life.
Durrell’s attempt at psychology, which is written with finesse both in sound and rhythm, so very pleasant to read, can’t beat the underlying grandiloquence of his sentences that bear latent misogynistic vibes, such as attributing abuse as the reason for the femme fatale's promiscuity. "Justine" gives the title to this novel and yet she ends up being a mere sketch, a tenuous presence that comes in and out of the main stage where the nameless narrator builds his case.
A brilliant novel that failed to move me as I expected it would. As I turned the last page, I felt sad to see the exquisiteness of Durrell’s prose go, knowing at the same time that I would forget Justine’s tribulations in no time at all.
Funnily enough, “G�, Ducornet’s lesser known heroine still haunts my dreams from time to time.
It’s probably one of the best well written books I have ever read. Durrell’s mastery of the word is indisputable. Surreal descriptions of place, evocative and provocative, tinged with poetic melancholy.
“The ripple and flurry of the invisible colonies of birds around us increases. Slowly, painfully, like a half-open door the dawn is upon us, forcing back the darkness.�
This delicious quote is part of quite a long scene at the end of the novel, just before the unnamed narrator goes back to his dear Alexandria to visit the child of his deceased lover. One can’t help but notice the polished use of language as well as the tension building up towards an end that leaves the reader with a feeling of emptiness, the kind that is forged in disappointment and sadness.
And this is mainly what I found marvelous about this novel. The atmospheric use of color and mood, the powerful sense of place, of the city that is the true protagonist of this story: The city that merged “five races, five languages, a dozen creeds: five fleets turning through their greasy reflections behind the harbor bar� . The 1930s city of Alexandria.
The rest sounded shallow to this reader's ears. The melodramatic characters. The crisscrossed, doomed love affairs. The psychoanalytical and rather useless chatter of the narrator. Everything but the city was depicted with any substantial depth, everything paled in comparison to the great detail with which magnificent Alexandria was brought to life.
Durrell’s attempt at psychology, which is written with finesse both in sound and rhythm, so very pleasant to read, can’t beat the underlying grandiloquence of his sentences that bear latent misogynistic vibes, such as attributing abuse as the reason for the femme fatale's promiscuity. "Justine" gives the title to this novel and yet she ends up being a mere sketch, a tenuous presence that comes in and out of the main stage where the nameless narrator builds his case.
A brilliant novel that failed to move me as I expected it would. As I turned the last page, I felt sad to see the exquisiteness of Durrell’s prose go, knowing at the same time that I would forget Justine’s tribulations in no time at all.
Funnily enough, “G�, Ducornet’s lesser known heroine still haunts my dreams from time to time.
May 4, 2018
"I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price."
- Lawrence Durrell, Justine
It feels like reading Henry Miller and John Fowels mixed with Anthony Powell and Paul Bowles, salted, smoked, and flavored with the sex and refuse of Alexandria. It was lush, brutal, beautiful, and horrible all at once. It made me want to go (while knowing Durrell captured a place and time that will never exist again). I felt like a peeping tom and a historian before a disaster. The book was infinitely quotable, with prose that sometimes bordered on almost grotesquely lyrical. It danced, seduced, pounced, and fed on me as I nervously flipped from one page to the next.
Next up: .
- Lawrence Durrell, Justine
It feels like reading Henry Miller and John Fowels mixed with Anthony Powell and Paul Bowles, salted, smoked, and flavored with the sex and refuse of Alexandria. It was lush, brutal, beautiful, and horrible all at once. It made me want to go (while knowing Durrell captured a place and time that will never exist again). I felt like a peeping tom and a historian before a disaster. The book was infinitely quotable, with prose that sometimes bordered on almost grotesquely lyrical. It danced, seduced, pounced, and fed on me as I nervously flipped from one page to the next.
Next up: .
November 14, 2017
I woke too soon. Unfortunately, I think that’s the problem with this one. I feel like someone getting surgery who has gotten an insufficient dose of anesthesia, or someone who opens her eyes wide in the midst of a hypnotist act. I really wasn’t looking to make you look bad, and quite frankly I’d prefer it if you’d put me back to sleep, but here I am, nonetheless, looking at you. Durrell feels like he was put in charge of the puppet show before he was ready. This is a test product, not something FDA approved to sell on the market. There’s stuff about it that works and stuff that doesn’t, and he decided to let everyone see his notes on his experiment before it was done. He tosses out sentences like he’s dictating this drunk with his legs up on his desk, jabbing his finger at some poor secretary who is being kept late to capture her boss� “brilliant ideas� before they disappear. And some of his metaphors and incantations are, truly, brilliant. He’s able to place the right idea with the right paint color and the right speaker and send them forth one after the other until he builds up a really great rhythm that almost makes me fall asleep. But then there’s something so tinny, so echoingly bad or false that I wake up laughing in his face.
I’ve had a lot of experience with this sort of book, books that are about creating a lush phantasmagorias of dreams, cultural imaginaries, personal fears and endless regrets. These books are written as unreliable elegies that try to lift all their memories out of their boxes one by one to look at them as long as they can� and how they get transfixed or transformed doing it. This is about a lost, probably-never-fully-was Alexandria, where scenes are bundles of portentous dialogue and impressionistic descriptions, interspersed with jarring realism and humor that reaches for wry but often comes across as bitter. The thing with these sorts of books is that they require a lot of prep work, and an incredibly delicate touch in the telling. Durrell does a pretty decent job of painting the scenery and giving it a smell, a taste and a feel, at least at the beginning. He also does a perfectly fine job of inserting suitable characters to wander in it- the observant, but unremarkable fish out of water narrator, the glittering Master of the Universe, the Madonna, the Whore, and the grotesques that dance in the background and remind us that we’re watching Comedie Humaine, not Tristan and Isolde. We wander through the circles of hell for awhile, being shown everyone’s punishment, and so far we’re on the right track.
But then he forgot that the tale is not just in its contents, its in the telling. Somewhere around the halfway mark the story seems to lose momentum and focus, and becomes much more about watching the freak show than guiding us through it and making us understand that we’re going towards an endpoint that will tie all the threads together. Durrell gets really pleased with his own voice and with using characters an excuse to explore slightly ridiculous philosophy. It becomes less about an elegy and more about a political judgement, less about a world and more about a pose. The jealous, conflicted love triangle makes a pretty good amount of sense until it becomes a quadrilateral, at which point the characters start acting things instead of being things and then it becomes less a literary novel than a soap opera with tortured metaphors and unnecessary digressions into esoteric religious things. Without the momentum, it seems to lose the magic as well. In order to make the elegy worth it, you’ve got to make us understand why the living are writing it, and Durrell lost the plot for me there. This was probably in large part due to my increasing frustration wit his writing in the back half of the novel. The point was in the magic for this one, and without it, there’s not much point continuing.
I might finish it at another time, but I’d like to do it at a point where I might be able to appreciate the intent behind the metaphors and ignore the frustrating digressions. I did like the first part of this so much. But now is not that time.
To be continued.
I’ve had a lot of experience with this sort of book, books that are about creating a lush phantasmagorias of dreams, cultural imaginaries, personal fears and endless regrets. These books are written as unreliable elegies that try to lift all their memories out of their boxes one by one to look at them as long as they can� and how they get transfixed or transformed doing it. This is about a lost, probably-never-fully-was Alexandria, where scenes are bundles of portentous dialogue and impressionistic descriptions, interspersed with jarring realism and humor that reaches for wry but often comes across as bitter. The thing with these sorts of books is that they require a lot of prep work, and an incredibly delicate touch in the telling. Durrell does a pretty decent job of painting the scenery and giving it a smell, a taste and a feel, at least at the beginning. He also does a perfectly fine job of inserting suitable characters to wander in it- the observant, but unremarkable fish out of water narrator, the glittering Master of the Universe, the Madonna, the Whore, and the grotesques that dance in the background and remind us that we’re watching Comedie Humaine, not Tristan and Isolde. We wander through the circles of hell for awhile, being shown everyone’s punishment, and so far we’re on the right track.
But then he forgot that the tale is not just in its contents, its in the telling. Somewhere around the halfway mark the story seems to lose momentum and focus, and becomes much more about watching the freak show than guiding us through it and making us understand that we’re going towards an endpoint that will tie all the threads together. Durrell gets really pleased with his own voice and with using characters an excuse to explore slightly ridiculous philosophy. It becomes less about an elegy and more about a political judgement, less about a world and more about a pose. The jealous, conflicted love triangle makes a pretty good amount of sense until it becomes a quadrilateral, at which point the characters start acting things instead of being things and then it becomes less a literary novel than a soap opera with tortured metaphors and unnecessary digressions into esoteric religious things. Without the momentum, it seems to lose the magic as well. In order to make the elegy worth it, you’ve got to make us understand why the living are writing it, and Durrell lost the plot for me there. This was probably in large part due to my increasing frustration wit his writing in the back half of the novel. The point was in the magic for this one, and without it, there’s not much point continuing.
I might finish it at another time, but I’d like to do it at a point where I might be able to appreciate the intent behind the metaphors and ignore the frustrating digressions. I did like the first part of this so much. But now is not that time.
To be continued.
June 29, 2019
"Si nuestro mundo fuera un mundo de verdad, habría templos donde Justine podría refugiarse y encontrar la paz que busca. Templos donde podría superar esa herencia que ha recibido; no esos malditos monasterios llenos de jovencitos católicos granujientos que han convertido sus órganos sexuales en asiento de bicicleta.�Justine es una de las grandes novelas del pasado siglo, y preveo y deseo que lo sean también las tres restantes que con esta componen El cuarteto de Alejandría y con las que me deleitaré en una experiencia lectora que se convertirá para mí en algo muy especial por razones que no vienen al caso.
Las otras razones, las que sí vienen al caso, tienen todas que ver con el calor que emana de la novela, por la tristeza en que se trasmuta la pasión de sus personajes por causa de una vida incapaz de darles todo lo que de ella ambicionan. Personas que se dejan llevar por el deseo que, pasado el tiempo –la novela es un precioso ejercicio de nostalgia� lo revisten con el influjo del ambiente de pereza y decadencia que envuelve a la ciudad de Alejandría, una ciudad donde la sensualidad de un “paso lento de sandalias blancas� se mezcla con la tragedia de las elecciones imposibles, con la impotencia de no ser "ni bastante fuertes ni bastante malos para elegir", donde la sensualidad y el ascetismo se reconcilian de tal manera que hace de sus habitantes personas histéricas y extremistas pero también amantes incomparables.
El narrador, un escritor frustrado, arranca su relato evocando recuerdos y sensaciones en un orden puramente emocional con una prosa que recrea poéticamente, con cierto barroquismo y hasta cripticismo, paisajes, sentimientos, atmósferas y reflexiones filosóficas, con la esperanza de obtener el consuelo que precisa para continuar viviendo. Una vuelta al pasado que el narrador emprende confiando en enriquecer el recuerdo de sus dos amores trágicos, Melissa y Justine, y poder así transmutar su dolor en arte.
“El dolor mismo es el único elemento de la memoria; porque el placer termina en sí mismo�Pronto la neblina de ese caos de escenas que nos envuelve y nos confunde en los primeros pasajes se va levantando para darnos paso a una esplendorosa Alejandría de principios del siglo pasado que el autor nos recrea magníficamente en sus olores y sonidos, en las luces y sombras de sus rincones, una ciudad que “impone a sus mujeres la voluptuosidad del dolor y no del placer, condenándolas a perseguir a aquellos a quienes menos quisieran encontrar.�
“En la época que conocí a Justine yo era casi un hombre feliz.�En esta primera cara del prisma que conforma la novela que inicia El cuarteto de Alejandría, Justine, bella y conspicua hija del paisaje de su ciudad, aparece como una mujer fuerte, exigente, arrogante, que siente y lamenta que nadie haya podido amarla de verdad, una mujer que posee “esa independencia vertical propia de la actitud masculina�, que rinde culto al placer y consagra sus dones al amor sin parar mientes en el dolor que inflige a sus numerosos amantes a los que ama “tan bien y sin embargo tan poco�. Justine es una mujer amurallada tras una herida del pasado que necesita recrear una y otra vez para obtener la satisfacción que exige en su desenfrenada búsqueda sexual de aquel que consiga liberarla de su dolor. Este es el camino amoral que elige Justine en pos de ese algo que dé sentido a su existencia, un camino sin medida y recorrido con un hambre devoradora de conocimiento y sabiduría, un camino que en el fondo poco tenía que ver con el sexo y sí mucho con el anhelado encuentro con esos pocos seres que son nuestros complementarios en el mundo.
“Lo que me falta de corazón me sobra de alma. Y ahí está la raíz del mal�Este camino emprendido por Justine sirve al amante-narrador-autor para regalarnos una geografía abrupta del amor, ese “incendio de dos almas empeñadas en crecer y manifestarse independientemente��, íntimamente relacionado demasiadas veces con el sentimiento de posesión, que debería estar más allá de orgullos o envidias, que debería darse indeliberadamente y sin esperar contrapartida alguna y que, sin embargo, es tan absoluto que toma o pierde todo, que es capaz de alimentarse de celos, que impide disfrutar de su objeto tal cual es, tan contradictorio que nos ata con la misma fuerza que nos impele a escapar, tan paradójico que la entrega sexual al otro puede ser la única forma de eludir el peligro de enamoramiento.
“Cuesta mucho luchar contra el deseo del corazón; todo lo que quiere obtener, lo compra al precio del alma�Y junto al amor, la relación turbadora y tormentosa que con él ha tenido siempre el sexo, ese matrimonio que gusta tanto de los tríos con la moral, donde “las prohibiciones crean el deseo que pretenden curar� y que a menudo viene acompañada del sentimiento de culpa que solo en el castigo encuentra satisfacción. Así las cosas, Durrell se queja tanto del abandono del cuerpo que el sexo ha emprendido para establecerse en los dominios de la imaginación como de que le estemos quitando todo su sabor transformándolo en mero deporte sin alma.
“Me pregunto quién inventó el corazón humano. Dímelo, y muéstrame el lugar donde lo ahorcaron.�Justine es una novela que requiere una lectura atenta y reflexiva, repleta de frases dignas de enmarcar y con la que se tiene siempre la sensación de no ser capaz de abarcarla en su totalidad. Será un placer volver a ella en un futuro para encontrar los rincones no visitados de esta soñada Alejandría de Durrell.
December 6, 2013
I have been meaning to read the Alexandria Quartet for many years and now seems to be a good time. The first part of the Quartet focuses on a struggling writer (Darley); it tells in retrospect the story of a doomed love affair between Darley and Justine, the wife of an Egyptian Copt called Nessim. It is set in Alexandria and there is a strong supporting cast of characters: Pombal, an official at the French consulate who lives with Darley; Capodistria, a Greek who is a broker; Scobie, a transvestite; Pursewarden, another novelist. Clea and Balthazar have their own novels.
The writing is poetic and luscious and you can feel the shimmering heat of Alexandria and its scents, colours and sounds. The city is almost another character; a city of dreams and lost horizons. The whole thing is magical, erotic, steeped in Freud. The poetry of Cavafy at the end is especially apt.
The events are not in order chronologically, but there is coherence to them; the setting is the 1930s. This is only the first piece and the tale is retold in the rest of the Quartet, but the imagery is as shimmering and dreamlike as the city. There is also a great deal of symbolism and Melissa (Darley’s lover) has a central and sacrificial role. It is certainly one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read; but I think there is a yearning and searching at the heart which isn’t resolved in this volume.
All of life is here; can’t wait for the next one.
The writing is poetic and luscious and you can feel the shimmering heat of Alexandria and its scents, colours and sounds. The city is almost another character; a city of dreams and lost horizons. The whole thing is magical, erotic, steeped in Freud. The poetry of Cavafy at the end is especially apt.
The events are not in order chronologically, but there is coherence to them; the setting is the 1930s. This is only the first piece and the tale is retold in the rest of the Quartet, but the imagery is as shimmering and dreamlike as the city. There is also a great deal of symbolism and Melissa (Darley’s lover) has a central and sacrificial role. It is certainly one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read; but I think there is a yearning and searching at the heart which isn’t resolved in this volume.
All of life is here; can’t wait for the next one.
February 23, 2025
This book's unique narrative style is fascinating. It evokes wandering, memory, or dreaming and is adorned with beautiful literary and poetic flashes. While the story lacks articulation and consistency, it effectively captures the ambiance of Alexandria in the 1930s. Despite its calm and monotonous rhythm, this historical backdrop adds depth to the narrative, making it an exciting read from a literary perspective.
May 10, 2015
For Once Four Was Too Few for a Quartet
I decided to re-read "Justine" after something like 30 years before starting the subsequent books of "The Alexandria Quartet" for the first time.
As much as I enjoyed the novel, I suspect that it will acquire even greater meaning and resonance once I've finished the Quartet.
Each volume of the Quartet is named after one of the members of the narrator's peer group in pre-war Alexandria. The first page mentions four friends: Justine and Nessim, Melissa and Balthazar. Only the first and fourth receive their own eponymous volume of the Quartet. Yet all four are the subject of fascinating character studies and feature heavily in the first volume.
Collectively, they constitute a diversity of perspectives on the nature of time, space, experience, imagination and love that rival Proust.
Yao Xiao - "Justine" (Wall Street Journal)
Facets and Fragments
Superficially, the novel is written in a realistic style. However, structurally, it's a work of Modernism that resembles a mosaic or a mirror (ball) comprised of multiple facets.
Each character is a facet of the Alexandrian world. Equally, each discrete section of text displays a separate facet of one of the characters.
Durrell assembles the facets or aspects together piecemeal. Meaning aggregates and coheres over time and space. The sequence isn't chronological. However, it makes sense, because our minds impose an order on the information our five senses are discerning.
Our senses glean information about their object "like pieces of a broken wineglass". Then, our minds reassemble them (even if they can't be reassembled in real life). Character, insofar as it is equally an object, is described in the same manner:
"Now if I wrote I would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of prism-sightedness. Why should not people show more than one profile at a time...a hybrid: a joint."
Prismatic Perpetuity
Just as the novel distinguishes the multiple facets, it is the prism through which Durrell invites us to observe moments in the lives of the city and a select few of its inhabitants.
It's the role of the author or artist to detect and record these moments that will collectively live on in perpetuity in the form of a creative work:
"One can return to them time and time again in memory, or [use] them as a fund upon which to build the part of one's life which is writing."
Preserved in Aspect
What we experience is at once a foundation of both our memory and our creativity.
Both assist us in our constant battle with the external world. We remember it as best we can. However, we also change it by virtue of how we imagine what we have just experienced.
The function or destiny of an artist's creativity, according to Durrell, is not to be wounded or defeated by everyday reality, but to complete, perfect or fulfil the potential of the experience in our imagination. He refers to the relation of experience and imagination as a "joyous compromise".
It's because the imagination fulfils their potential, that the moments live on in perpetuity. An artist creates something separate from experience that survives the present.
No matter how pleasant or unpleasant the experience, art can preserve it intact. That precise moment will not rot or deteriorate in time:
"One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them."
In a way, without trying to be overly facetious, Durrell preserves them in aspect.
Eve (Cohen) Durrell and mirror image (the apparent inspiration for Justine and the person to whom the novel is dedicated: "To Eve - these memorials of her native city")
The City Access(oris)ed by a Chain
Each person is revealed as a link in a chain. Just as Durrell shows us the individual links, he allows us to step back so that we can see the chain as a whole, the city of Alexandria:
"I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we used to inhabit together: the city which... precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: Alexandria...It is the city which should be judged, though we, its children, must pay the price."
Domains of Feeling
At the outset, the un-named narrator is a relatively uncommitted, listless and unambitious teacher, trapped in routine, at least until he receives an introduction into the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated elements of Alexandrian life.
I'll mention Clea first, because in many ways she says something that defines the apparent motivation of the novel:
"There are only three things to be done with a woman, said Clea once. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature."
The narrator confides, "I was experiencing a failure in all these domains of feeling."
That is, until he meets Justine, who is married to Nessim:
Melissa: "You are falling in love with Justine."
Narrator: "No, Melissa, it is worse than that."
Loving Justine
Loving Justine isn't destined to be easy. She queries:
"Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged."
The narrator says of her:
"There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self - because she does not know where to find it."
Yet, we share Justine's problem. We have all been fragmented and torn apart by experience. We are all seeking desperately to put ourselves back together again.
Such Divine Harmony
At times, Durrell describes our dis-integration in Gnostic terms:
"Broken from the divine harmony of herself [with God], she fell..."
Ironically, in the Gnostic tradition, it was the original separation from God that gave rise to matter and life on earth. We had to separate, so that we could exist, so that we might be.
Yet, we continue to quest after the harmony of oneness or unity. The narrator refers to:
"...the living limbo of free-will in which my beloved Justine wandered, searching with such frightening singleness of mind for the integrating spark which might lift her into a new perspective of herself..."
Having disintegrated, we seek integrity, but first we need "an integrating spark" with which to achieve it. Perhaps, if we don't seek or find it in God, we hope that we will find it in love.
Brett Whiteley - "Justine (Bondi)" 1986 (Whiteley's wife Wendy reading a copy of "Justine")
The Abstraction of Love
So much of the novel concerns the nature and abstraction of love.
The narrator speculates:
"This is a peculiar type of love for I do not feel that I possess her - nor indeed would wish to do so. It is as if we joined each other only in self-possession, became partners in a common stage of growth. In fact we outrage love, for we have proved the bonds of friendship stronger."
Love is clearly more than sex:
"I know that for us love-making was only a small part of the total picture projected by a mental intimacy which proliferated and ramified daily around us."
The mental intimacy is conceptualised as a single shared entity, a unity, that is projecting a total picture.
Reflections on the Beloved Object
Justine's perspective is more nuanced, but potentially less optimistic or idealistic. This is an entry in her journal that is worth quoting at length, not least for its abstract beauty:
"Idle to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them.
"Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining his or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors.
"All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point - for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness."
Durrell to Henry Miller: "Gypsy Cohen provides a cyclone every day with a real generous and mad beauty which is touching and exciting."
Furtive and Tactile Emplacements
For all the abstraction, there is still something tangible and tactile, touching and exciting in their relationship:
"I recall the furtive languor with which we dressed and silent as accomplices made our way down the gloomy staircase into the street. We did not dare to link arms, but our hands kept meeting involuntarily as we walked, as if they had not shaken off the spell of the afternoon and could not bear to be separated. We parted speechlessly too...with only one look - as if we wished to take up emplacements in each other's mind forever."
Desire as Restoration of Harmony
Notwithstanding the focus on separation and disintegration, there is a constant desire for unity and harmony, as if it might be a return to an original or lost state.
On the other hand, something unexplained or unexplainable in the narrator seems to resist the pull of love. Perhaps he fears the immersion in something other, whether or not it is of his own creation, whether or not it is a sole or joint creation. Perhaps he wishes to remain disintegrated in the expectation that he cannot be disintegrated any further, at which point he would have nothing to lose.
The Unbreakable Self
With nothing to lose, he could give selflessly, without fear of loss of self or integrity. Ironically, his selflessness betrays an absence or lack of self, or at least a stripped down or minimalist self:
"Beleaguered thus, I was nevertheless defined and realised in myself by the very quality which (of course) hurt me most: selflessness. This is what Justine loved in me - not my personality...
"Justine loved me because I presented to her something which was indestructible - a person already formed who could not be broken."
However, there is a sense in which he is indestructible, only because he has reached the point where he is now indivisible. He cannot be further fragmented, he cannot be divided into even tinier parts. There is no smaller manifestation that is still identifiable as a functioning human being capable of giving and receiving love.
Onward Towards Prism-Sightedness
But this is just the first volume in the Quartet. If this is how the narrator starts, is it how he ends?
Does Durrell's "prism-sightedness" promise "a multi-dimensional effect in character"? What better reason can there be to read on, but to find out!
REVIEWS OF "THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET":
"Balthazar" (Vol. 2 of 4)
/review/show...
"Mountolive" (Vol. 3 of 4)
/review/show...
"Clea" (Vol. 4 of 4)
/review/show...
SOUNDTRACK:
Scenes and social life from the Cosmopolitan era of Alexandria
Constantine Kavafis (Cavafy) - "The City"
Art of Noise - "Moments In Love"
Percy Sledge - "When a Man Loves a Woman"
I decided to re-read "Justine" after something like 30 years before starting the subsequent books of "The Alexandria Quartet" for the first time.
As much as I enjoyed the novel, I suspect that it will acquire even greater meaning and resonance once I've finished the Quartet.
Each volume of the Quartet is named after one of the members of the narrator's peer group in pre-war Alexandria. The first page mentions four friends: Justine and Nessim, Melissa and Balthazar. Only the first and fourth receive their own eponymous volume of the Quartet. Yet all four are the subject of fascinating character studies and feature heavily in the first volume.
Collectively, they constitute a diversity of perspectives on the nature of time, space, experience, imagination and love that rival Proust.
Yao Xiao - "Justine" (Wall Street Journal)
Facets and Fragments
Superficially, the novel is written in a realistic style. However, structurally, it's a work of Modernism that resembles a mosaic or a mirror (ball) comprised of multiple facets.
Each character is a facet of the Alexandrian world. Equally, each discrete section of text displays a separate facet of one of the characters.
Durrell assembles the facets or aspects together piecemeal. Meaning aggregates and coheres over time and space. The sequence isn't chronological. However, it makes sense, because our minds impose an order on the information our five senses are discerning.
Our senses glean information about their object "like pieces of a broken wineglass". Then, our minds reassemble them (even if they can't be reassembled in real life). Character, insofar as it is equally an object, is described in the same manner:
"Now if I wrote I would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of prism-sightedness. Why should not people show more than one profile at a time...a hybrid: a joint."
Prismatic Perpetuity
Just as the novel distinguishes the multiple facets, it is the prism through which Durrell invites us to observe moments in the lives of the city and a select few of its inhabitants.
It's the role of the author or artist to detect and record these moments that will collectively live on in perpetuity in the form of a creative work:
"One can return to them time and time again in memory, or [use] them as a fund upon which to build the part of one's life which is writing."
Preserved in Aspect
What we experience is at once a foundation of both our memory and our creativity.
Both assist us in our constant battle with the external world. We remember it as best we can. However, we also change it by virtue of how we imagine what we have just experienced.
The function or destiny of an artist's creativity, according to Durrell, is not to be wounded or defeated by everyday reality, but to complete, perfect or fulfil the potential of the experience in our imagination. He refers to the relation of experience and imagination as a "joyous compromise".
It's because the imagination fulfils their potential, that the moments live on in perpetuity. An artist creates something separate from experience that survives the present.
No matter how pleasant or unpleasant the experience, art can preserve it intact. That precise moment will not rot or deteriorate in time:
"One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them."
In a way, without trying to be overly facetious, Durrell preserves them in aspect.
Eve (Cohen) Durrell and mirror image (the apparent inspiration for Justine and the person to whom the novel is dedicated: "To Eve - these memorials of her native city")
The City Access(oris)ed by a Chain
Each person is revealed as a link in a chain. Just as Durrell shows us the individual links, he allows us to step back so that we can see the chain as a whole, the city of Alexandria:
"I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we used to inhabit together: the city which... precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: Alexandria...It is the city which should be judged, though we, its children, must pay the price."
Domains of Feeling
At the outset, the un-named narrator is a relatively uncommitted, listless and unambitious teacher, trapped in routine, at least until he receives an introduction into the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated elements of Alexandrian life.
I'll mention Clea first, because in many ways she says something that defines the apparent motivation of the novel:
"There are only three things to be done with a woman, said Clea once. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature."
The narrator confides, "I was experiencing a failure in all these domains of feeling."
That is, until he meets Justine, who is married to Nessim:
Melissa: "You are falling in love with Justine."
Narrator: "No, Melissa, it is worse than that."
Loving Justine
Loving Justine isn't destined to be easy. She queries:
"Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged."
The narrator says of her:
"There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self - because she does not know where to find it."
Yet, we share Justine's problem. We have all been fragmented and torn apart by experience. We are all seeking desperately to put ourselves back together again.
Such Divine Harmony
At times, Durrell describes our dis-integration in Gnostic terms:
"Broken from the divine harmony of herself [with God], she fell..."
Ironically, in the Gnostic tradition, it was the original separation from God that gave rise to matter and life on earth. We had to separate, so that we could exist, so that we might be.
Yet, we continue to quest after the harmony of oneness or unity. The narrator refers to:
"...the living limbo of free-will in which my beloved Justine wandered, searching with such frightening singleness of mind for the integrating spark which might lift her into a new perspective of herself..."
Having disintegrated, we seek integrity, but first we need "an integrating spark" with which to achieve it. Perhaps, if we don't seek or find it in God, we hope that we will find it in love.
Brett Whiteley - "Justine (Bondi)" 1986 (Whiteley's wife Wendy reading a copy of "Justine")
The Abstraction of Love
So much of the novel concerns the nature and abstraction of love.
The narrator speculates:
"This is a peculiar type of love for I do not feel that I possess her - nor indeed would wish to do so. It is as if we joined each other only in self-possession, became partners in a common stage of growth. In fact we outrage love, for we have proved the bonds of friendship stronger."
Love is clearly more than sex:
"I know that for us love-making was only a small part of the total picture projected by a mental intimacy which proliferated and ramified daily around us."
The mental intimacy is conceptualised as a single shared entity, a unity, that is projecting a total picture.
Reflections on the Beloved Object
Justine's perspective is more nuanced, but potentially less optimistic or idealistic. This is an entry in her journal that is worth quoting at length, not least for its abstract beauty:
"Idle to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them.
"Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining his or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that she communicates with her fellow, but this is false. The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors.
"All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning point - for from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness."
Durrell to Henry Miller: "Gypsy Cohen provides a cyclone every day with a real generous and mad beauty which is touching and exciting."
Furtive and Tactile Emplacements
For all the abstraction, there is still something tangible and tactile, touching and exciting in their relationship:
"I recall the furtive languor with which we dressed and silent as accomplices made our way down the gloomy staircase into the street. We did not dare to link arms, but our hands kept meeting involuntarily as we walked, as if they had not shaken off the spell of the afternoon and could not bear to be separated. We parted speechlessly too...with only one look - as if we wished to take up emplacements in each other's mind forever."
Desire as Restoration of Harmony
Notwithstanding the focus on separation and disintegration, there is a constant desire for unity and harmony, as if it might be a return to an original or lost state.
On the other hand, something unexplained or unexplainable in the narrator seems to resist the pull of love. Perhaps he fears the immersion in something other, whether or not it is of his own creation, whether or not it is a sole or joint creation. Perhaps he wishes to remain disintegrated in the expectation that he cannot be disintegrated any further, at which point he would have nothing to lose.
The Unbreakable Self
With nothing to lose, he could give selflessly, without fear of loss of self or integrity. Ironically, his selflessness betrays an absence or lack of self, or at least a stripped down or minimalist self:
"Beleaguered thus, I was nevertheless defined and realised in myself by the very quality which (of course) hurt me most: selflessness. This is what Justine loved in me - not my personality...
"Justine loved me because I presented to her something which was indestructible - a person already formed who could not be broken."
However, there is a sense in which he is indestructible, only because he has reached the point where he is now indivisible. He cannot be further fragmented, he cannot be divided into even tinier parts. There is no smaller manifestation that is still identifiable as a functioning human being capable of giving and receiving love.
Onward Towards Prism-Sightedness
But this is just the first volume in the Quartet. If this is how the narrator starts, is it how he ends?
Does Durrell's "prism-sightedness" promise "a multi-dimensional effect in character"? What better reason can there be to read on, but to find out!
REVIEWS OF "THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET":
"Balthazar" (Vol. 2 of 4)
/review/show...
"Mountolive" (Vol. 3 of 4)
/review/show...
"Clea" (Vol. 4 of 4)
/review/show...
SOUNDTRACK:
Scenes and social life from the Cosmopolitan era of Alexandria
Constantine Kavafis (Cavafy) - "The City"
Art of Noise - "Moments In Love"
Percy Sledge - "When a Man Loves a Woman"
January 6, 2022
Kesinlikle kolay bir okuma değil, bazı noktalarda bir kaç sayfa geriye döndüğüm hangi zamanda olduğumuzu kaçırdığım dahi oldu açıkcası. Ancak o kadar güzel bir anlatısı var ki, kendinizi İskenderiye’de kaybolmuş gibi hissediyorsunuz. Uzun zamandır kendi içine bu kadar çeken ve anlattığı toprakları bu kadar iyi yaşatan bir kitap okumamıştım. Çok iyi. Önümüzdeki ay serinin ikinci kitabına devam edeceğim. Çok çabuk bitmesin istediğim serilerden birisi olduç
January 3, 2022
Vay anasını, vay anasını. En baştan söyleyeyim: hayatta en sevdiğim kitapların arasına ihtişamlı bir girişle dalıverdin Justine, hoş geldin. Ne diyeceğimi pek de bilemiyorum � biraz çarpılmış gibiyim. Bu bir kitap değil, bir şarkı resmen: Uzun zamandır okuduğum en müzikli şey. Dantel gibi işlenmiş, satırlarından melankolik bir şiirsellik akan, tariflemesi çok zor bir eser. Her kelimesini, her cümlesini aklıma kazımak istiyorum. Bir kent (Durrell’in sözcükleriyle; “İskenderiye � Belleğin Başkenti�) ancak bu kadar atmosferik tasvir edilebilirdi, gerçek olan nerede bitiyor, edebiyat nerede başlıyor, ayırması öyle güç, öyle güzel. Justine kolay bir kitap sayılmaz, zira yazar zamanda atlıyor, gidiyor geliyor. Sanırım bu kitabı en iyi, kitapta geçen bir başka kitap için yazarın bir karaktere söylettiği şu cümleler tarif edebilir: “Anlatının ileriye doğru olan hızı zamansal geriye gönderimlerle frenlenir, böylece a noktasından b noktasına doğru ilerleyen değil, bütünü kavramak amacıyla zamanın dışında, zamana yukarıdan bakan ve kendi ekseni çevresinde ağır ağır dönen bir kitap izlenimi yaratılır. Her şey bizi ilerideki şeylere götürmez; bazıları da geriye, geçmiş şeylere götürür.� Aslında söylemek istediğim çok fazla şey var ama kendimi dörtlünün ikinci kitabı olan Balthazar’ın kollarına bırakmak istiyorum izninizle. Şununla bitireyim: “İnsan aşık olduğu kişinin aşık olmayı seçtiği kişiye de aşık olur.�
November 12, 2019
Concise Summary:
The book is difficult. Words such as immoral sophistry and highbrow drivel come to mind.
The last part induced me to raise the rating from one to two stars. In this part Lawrence Durrell switches from excessive philosophizing to a resolution to the "characters" egotistical behavior. Things actually happen; we see what these people have brought down on themselves. In fact there ARE some wonderful descriptions.
There is no humor.
I fail to believe that Lawrence Durrell delivers a balanced view of Alexandria, the city itself, in the 1930s. It is one-sided.
Any positive attributes of Lawrence Durrell's book are completely destroyed by Jack Klaff's narration. Justine's voice sounds like a ghost: weak, feeble, about to disintegrate before our eyes. Balthazar's voice resembles that of an automaton. It is quite simply impossible to listen to this without either laughing or leaving the room. By the end, I wanted to continue with "Balthazar", but I simply couldn't due to the terrible narration.
*
I struggled with this book. I hated it until the very end of Part Three, of which there are a total of four. My opinion changed dramatically at that point. It went from a one star to a four star book. I know what changed and I know what didn’t change. I will try and explain so you can decide whether this is a book for you, but this is just my personal reaction to the book. Each one of us approaches a book with different baggage.
For the majority of this book all I saw were four characters egotistically satisfying their own desires, needs and wishes. Self-centered characters using people. Sex and jealousy and self-gain. I tremendously disliked the style of writing. The adjectives that went through my head were highbrow drivel, pretentious language and convoluted philosophizing. A friend here at GR, Sandra, described it as “amoral sophistry�. I thought she hit the nail right on its head.
The book presents the thoughts of an unnamed narrator that has a girlfriend called Melissa, but he also has an affair with Justine, who is married to Nessim. Sexual jealousy leads Nessim to have an affair with the narrator’s girlfriend, Melissa,the typical “I am going to get back at you� response. So, two couples, both playing around. is about “modern romance�; this book, is the first of the four books. The first three books look at the same events but from different individuals� perspectives. The second book, is from Balthazar’s perspective. The third book is and the fourth is . Only the latter book moves forward in time, the first three set in Alexandria before WW2, and the last extends through the war and is set in Corfu. These four books are about how couples relate to each other.
For much of the novel I was both disgusted with the complicated language and the ridiculous philosophizing. Then in the last part I all of a sudden felt a shift from the egotistical self-centered choices to what are the consequences of this behavior. The focus became relationships and how people interact and how we hurt each other and how what we do is affected by our past experiences. Adultery is going to affect not only the two who are cheating but the other partners and related friends. There are secrets, there are lies and none are left unscathed. What starts as egotistical flirtation turns into a huge deception having tremendous repercussions. Each will draw different interpretations of what really happened. Is there one truth? The majority of the book follows people going after their own personal goals, the end follows what then happened, what were the consequences of these choices. It was this that interested me. The next novel will give another interpretation of the given facts. I NEED to know more. I thought I would not continue, but really I have to at this point. There is no stopping now. “Balthazar� is my next read!
I like how the author describes events that occur and sceneries and places, much more than his complicated theorizing and philosophizing. At the end there, when things start happening, there is a marvelous description of a hunt. It really came alive for me.
To be fair, I have to show you what you must deal with before things start moving along. The following lines begin with the narrator’s thoughts and then are followed by Justine’s in quotes.
In this plain courting of martyrdom, I realized that we showed out love at its hollowest, its most defective.
“How disgusting I must seem to you,� said Justine once. “With my obscene jumble of conflicting ideas. All this sickly preoccupation with God and a total inability to obey the smallest moral injunction from my inner nature like being faithful to a man one adores. I tremble for myself, my dear, when I tremble. If only I could escape from the tiresome classical Jewess of neurology. If only I could peel it off. �! (At the beginning of part three.)
These lines are quite simply too high brow for my taste. Say it simply, please! Or just be quiet�.. On top of the content, if you choose the audiobook narrated by Jack Klaff, as I unfortunately did, you have to hear these lines, and the experience is not pleasant. The narration is terrible! This is the worst narration I have ever encountered. Whisper Justine’s lines hoarsely, slowly, in a low masculine voice, as if you were trying to impersonate a weak, feeble figure that is about to disintegrate. Do remember that Justine is NOT old, she is a woman, and she is young. This is the worst narration I have ever come across. Hereto forth Jack Klaff is blacklisted�.at least by me. His voice for Balthazar is horrible too; only the book’s narrator’s voice is OK. I tremble when I think that I have to hear more of his narration as I continue the next book. I must make a conscious effort to listen to the words and their meaning rather than how they sound. Honestly the narration is BAD!
I would not continue listening to the next audiobook unless I felt I had to, but I simply HAVE to understand these characters more fully. I don’t want to leave them. I have to see each one’s perspective. I guess it all comes down to the fact that I care for these self-centered foolish idiots that so annoyed me in the beginning. I will focus on the author’s description of events and places rather than his excessive philosophizing. Since I feel I have to continue, I must give this book three stars. It is that simple.
One more thing: I don't think this book gives an accurate picture of Alexandria in the 30s. It overemphasizes the negative. All cities house whores and sexual deviants. Little of that which is nice is described. Will the following books be more balanced? I hope more is related about the city's multicultural atmosphere rather than focusing on aberrant sex.
The French in the novel is not translated.
ETA: I tried . I really did. I AM curious, but I simply cannot listen to another minute more of the narration by Jack Klaff. Neither can I take hours more of Durrell’s philosophizing. I give up. It is too much for me. I am giving this book two stars. No more. Sorry, I changed my mind.
The book is difficult. Words such as immoral sophistry and highbrow drivel come to mind.
The last part induced me to raise the rating from one to two stars. In this part Lawrence Durrell switches from excessive philosophizing to a resolution to the "characters" egotistical behavior. Things actually happen; we see what these people have brought down on themselves. In fact there ARE some wonderful descriptions.
There is no humor.
I fail to believe that Lawrence Durrell delivers a balanced view of Alexandria, the city itself, in the 1930s. It is one-sided.
Any positive attributes of Lawrence Durrell's book are completely destroyed by Jack Klaff's narration. Justine's voice sounds like a ghost: weak, feeble, about to disintegrate before our eyes. Balthazar's voice resembles that of an automaton. It is quite simply impossible to listen to this without either laughing or leaving the room. By the end, I wanted to continue with "Balthazar", but I simply couldn't due to the terrible narration.
*
I struggled with this book. I hated it until the very end of Part Three, of which there are a total of four. My opinion changed dramatically at that point. It went from a one star to a four star book. I know what changed and I know what didn’t change. I will try and explain so you can decide whether this is a book for you, but this is just my personal reaction to the book. Each one of us approaches a book with different baggage.
For the majority of this book all I saw were four characters egotistically satisfying their own desires, needs and wishes. Self-centered characters using people. Sex and jealousy and self-gain. I tremendously disliked the style of writing. The adjectives that went through my head were highbrow drivel, pretentious language and convoluted philosophizing. A friend here at GR, Sandra, described it as “amoral sophistry�. I thought she hit the nail right on its head.
The book presents the thoughts of an unnamed narrator that has a girlfriend called Melissa, but he also has an affair with Justine, who is married to Nessim. Sexual jealousy leads Nessim to have an affair with the narrator’s girlfriend, Melissa,the typical “I am going to get back at you� response. So, two couples, both playing around. is about “modern romance�; this book, is the first of the four books. The first three books look at the same events but from different individuals� perspectives. The second book, is from Balthazar’s perspective. The third book is and the fourth is . Only the latter book moves forward in time, the first three set in Alexandria before WW2, and the last extends through the war and is set in Corfu. These four books are about how couples relate to each other.
For much of the novel I was both disgusted with the complicated language and the ridiculous philosophizing. Then in the last part I all of a sudden felt a shift from the egotistical self-centered choices to what are the consequences of this behavior. The focus became relationships and how people interact and how we hurt each other and how what we do is affected by our past experiences. Adultery is going to affect not only the two who are cheating but the other partners and related friends. There are secrets, there are lies and none are left unscathed. What starts as egotistical flirtation turns into a huge deception having tremendous repercussions. Each will draw different interpretations of what really happened. Is there one truth? The majority of the book follows people going after their own personal goals, the end follows what then happened, what were the consequences of these choices. It was this that interested me. The next novel will give another interpretation of the given facts. I NEED to know more. I thought I would not continue, but really I have to at this point. There is no stopping now. “Balthazar� is my next read!
I like how the author describes events that occur and sceneries and places, much more than his complicated theorizing and philosophizing. At the end there, when things start happening, there is a marvelous description of a hunt. It really came alive for me.
To be fair, I have to show you what you must deal with before things start moving along. The following lines begin with the narrator’s thoughts and then are followed by Justine’s in quotes.
In this plain courting of martyrdom, I realized that we showed out love at its hollowest, its most defective.
“How disgusting I must seem to you,� said Justine once. “With my obscene jumble of conflicting ideas. All this sickly preoccupation with God and a total inability to obey the smallest moral injunction from my inner nature like being faithful to a man one adores. I tremble for myself, my dear, when I tremble. If only I could escape from the tiresome classical Jewess of neurology. If only I could peel it off. �! (At the beginning of part three.)
These lines are quite simply too high brow for my taste. Say it simply, please! Or just be quiet�.. On top of the content, if you choose the audiobook narrated by Jack Klaff, as I unfortunately did, you have to hear these lines, and the experience is not pleasant. The narration is terrible! This is the worst narration I have ever encountered. Whisper Justine’s lines hoarsely, slowly, in a low masculine voice, as if you were trying to impersonate a weak, feeble figure that is about to disintegrate. Do remember that Justine is NOT old, she is a woman, and she is young. This is the worst narration I have ever come across. Hereto forth Jack Klaff is blacklisted�.at least by me. His voice for Balthazar is horrible too; only the book’s narrator’s voice is OK. I tremble when I think that I have to hear more of his narration as I continue the next book. I must make a conscious effort to listen to the words and their meaning rather than how they sound. Honestly the narration is BAD!
I would not continue listening to the next audiobook unless I felt I had to, but I simply HAVE to understand these characters more fully. I don’t want to leave them. I have to see each one’s perspective. I guess it all comes down to the fact that I care for these self-centered foolish idiots that so annoyed me in the beginning. I will focus on the author’s description of events and places rather than his excessive philosophizing. Since I feel I have to continue, I must give this book three stars. It is that simple.
One more thing: I don't think this book gives an accurate picture of Alexandria in the 30s. It overemphasizes the negative. All cities house whores and sexual deviants. Little of that which is nice is described. Will the following books be more balanced? I hope more is related about the city's multicultural atmosphere rather than focusing on aberrant sex.
The French in the novel is not translated.
ETA: I tried . I really did. I AM curious, but I simply cannot listen to another minute more of the narration by Jack Klaff. Neither can I take hours more of Durrell’s philosophizing. I give up. It is too much for me. I am giving this book two stars. No more. Sorry, I changed my mind.
June 7, 2017
This book is suffused with wistful nostalgia, with Mediterranean languor and the love and lust of yesterday. I lived in Egypt many years ago and this book brought back my own nostalgic memories of carefree youth. So perhaps I'm a biased reader. But who isn't?
August 29, 2024
Drago mi je što je i posle 15 godina od prvog čitanja, Aleksandrijski kvartet ostao predivan tekst na toliko nivoa. Prvi deo "Justina" je "Aleksandrijski kvartet" u malom. Napisan kao niz memoarskih ahronoloških reminiscencija pripovedača na višeugaonu ljubavnu aferu u gradu Aleksandra Makedonskog pred Drugi svetski rat. Modernističko delo napisano u tradiciji baroknog romana, ne plaši se da igra na sve i da bude sve, a i da ne bude ništa. Ne roman kao jedinstveno ogledalo sveta, nego roman sačinjen od višestrukih ogledala koji hvataju višedimenzionalni efekat i daju neku vrstu pogleda kroz prizmu. I to ne da bi se prikaz sveta obogatio, već naprotiv da bi se uništio a naše znanje o njemu raskrinkalo kao iluzija. Da bi u tome uspeo, Darel koristi punu artiljeriju.
P. S. Barok, groteska, Kavafijeva poezija, gnosticizam, Sofijin pad u materijalnost, sećanje, aforizmi o ljubavi, fore pokupljene od Prusta, alkohol, ajnštajnova teorija relativiteta, fam fatal, pisci praznih džepova,, vrtlar pravoslavni monah kome je odsečen jezik, tuberkulozne prostituke, minareti pod nebom boje ćilibara, krimić, špijuni, Plotin, kolonijalizam, Markiz de Sad, Frojd, pustinja, biblioteka, Uismansov roman Nasuprot, klinika za venerične bolesti, kabala, obrtanje tarota posle seksa, autopoetika, Bodlerov gradski splin
P. S. Barok, groteska, Kavafijeva poezija, gnosticizam, Sofijin pad u materijalnost, sećanje, aforizmi o ljubavi, fore pokupljene od Prusta, alkohol, ajnštajnova teorija relativiteta, fam fatal, pisci praznih džepova,, vrtlar pravoslavni monah kome je odsečen jezik, tuberkulozne prostituke, minareti pod nebom boje ćilibara, krimić, špijuni, Plotin, kolonijalizam, Markiz de Sad, Frojd, pustinja, biblioteka, Uismansov roman Nasuprot, klinika za venerične bolesti, kabala, obrtanje tarota posle seksa, autopoetika, Bodlerov gradski splin
April 25, 2019
I enjoy the exquisite language and the general atmosphere of Alexandria wich Durrell puts down in this first book of the Alexandria quartet. But for me, though it was the intention, it is not for the whole near 1000 pages full quartet. I have to confess it gets a bit dull for me.
March 29, 2016
This book is not without merit. It has some real gems - sentences or ideas that are wonderful and crystallize clearly something which is true about the world.
Loving is so much truer when sympathy and not desire makes the match; for it leaves no wounds.
Or
Lovers are never equally matched - do you think? One always overshadows the other and stunts his or her growth so that the overshadowed one must always be tormented by a desire to escape, to be free to grow. Surely this is the only tragic thing about love?
There's a lot more - I'd say about 25-30 good tiny snippets in this novel.
Unfortunately, these small gems are packed in wads and wads of grey paper which you have to carefully slog through in order to uncover them.
Durrell will write 5 or 10 pages of the most pretentious, boring stuff you've ever read. Then he'll make you perk up with a surprising insight on humanity. Then it's back to the tedious stuff again.
It's not worth it. Really, if I had to advise you, I would say find a website or a list of what are considered the best quotes from this novel and leave it at that. And even that action is up to you - if you skip it altogether there will be no great gap in your life or education.
What is this book about?
Well, that question is extremely hard to answer. I think it's about nothing. Ostensibly it's about modern love and what love and sex signify in modern times, but again - it's mostly a bunch of meaningless drivel. I guess, loosely, you could say it is about a love square between four people living in Alexandria right before WWII. Alexandria is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, filled with prostitutes, child prostitutes, orgies, drugs, and every brand of excess imaginable. All enjoyed as if it were just completely okay to do things like have orgies with 10-year-old girls and stuff.
I don't want you to read what I wrote and get the mistaken idea that this book is actually exciting. It isn't. It's the most boring and pedantic version of hedonism that I've ever had the displeasure of reading about.
I know this book is a classic - but it's also a slog and a mess. Not to mention an intellectual narcissistic masturbatory exercise. Really. You could easily cut out at least 50% of the book. I was rolling my eyes and begging Durrell to shut up about 70% of the time.
I highly advise you to avoid this unless you need to read it for a class.
Loving is so much truer when sympathy and not desire makes the match; for it leaves no wounds.
Or
Lovers are never equally matched - do you think? One always overshadows the other and stunts his or her growth so that the overshadowed one must always be tormented by a desire to escape, to be free to grow. Surely this is the only tragic thing about love?
There's a lot more - I'd say about 25-30 good tiny snippets in this novel.
Unfortunately, these small gems are packed in wads and wads of grey paper which you have to carefully slog through in order to uncover them.
Durrell will write 5 or 10 pages of the most pretentious, boring stuff you've ever read. Then he'll make you perk up with a surprising insight on humanity. Then it's back to the tedious stuff again.
It's not worth it. Really, if I had to advise you, I would say find a website or a list of what are considered the best quotes from this novel and leave it at that. And even that action is up to you - if you skip it altogether there will be no great gap in your life or education.
What is this book about?
Well, that question is extremely hard to answer. I think it's about nothing. Ostensibly it's about modern love and what love and sex signify in modern times, but again - it's mostly a bunch of meaningless drivel. I guess, loosely, you could say it is about a love square between four people living in Alexandria right before WWII. Alexandria is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, filled with prostitutes, child prostitutes, orgies, drugs, and every brand of excess imaginable. All enjoyed as if it were just completely okay to do things like have orgies with 10-year-old girls and stuff.
I don't want you to read what I wrote and get the mistaken idea that this book is actually exciting. It isn't. It's the most boring and pedantic version of hedonism that I've ever had the displeasure of reading about.
I know this book is a classic - but it's also a slog and a mess. Not to mention an intellectual narcissistic masturbatory exercise. Really. You could easily cut out at least 50% of the book. I was rolling my eyes and begging Durrell to shut up about 70% of the time.
I highly advise you to avoid this unless you need to read it for a class.
December 8, 2024
Justine is the first volume of the revered The Alexandria Quartet, the celebrated quartet from the 1950s by Lawrence Durell. It was based upon the premise that people and events seem different when considered from different angles and perspectives as well as periods of time. While the four volumes concern the same characters, several narrators tell the story from different viewpoints and told at different times. But at the heart of these stories, is Alexandria set just before World War II as it colors this entire work.
The novel begins intriguingly as we meet an unnamed narrator living on an unnamed island with a child that he identifies as that of Melissa. And it is through his narration that we learn of his love for Justine as he begins to conjure up the images of Alexandria and the expatriate circle to which he belonged, known as “The Cabal.� Melissa is almost a reverse-image of Justine with one strong and implacable and the other delicate and charitable. And then there is Nessim, the devoted and wealthy husband of Justine but aware of her infidelity. It is a wonderful cast of characters, and the beautiful prose is exquisite. I am looking forward to reading the next three volumes of The Alexandria Quartet.
The novel begins intriguingly as we meet an unnamed narrator living on an unnamed island with a child that he identifies as that of Melissa. And it is through his narration that we learn of his love for Justine as he begins to conjure up the images of Alexandria and the expatriate circle to which he belonged, known as “The Cabal.� Melissa is almost a reverse-image of Justine with one strong and implacable and the other delicate and charitable. And then there is Nessim, the devoted and wealthy husband of Justine but aware of her infidelity. It is a wonderful cast of characters, and the beautiful prose is exquisite. I am looking forward to reading the next three volumes of The Alexandria Quartet.
“At night when the wind roars and the child sleeps quietly in its wooden cot by the echoing chimney-piece I light a lamp and walk about, thinking of my friends—of Justine and Nessim, of Melissa and Balthazar. I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city which we inhabited so briefly together: the city which used us as its flora-precipitated in us conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria!�
“Alexandria. . . . . Justine and her city are alike in that they both have a strong flavor without having any real character.�
December 25, 2022
It was during my time of poverty and poetry when I read Justine, the first book in The Alexandria Quartet. I was 19 years old and was living outside in Missoula, Montana. I slept mostly way up on Mount Sentinel. My small tent was hidden in the trees near the mountain's top, and each night when the library on campus closed, I would hike up to my tent. And it was a cold winter. Weeks of sub zero temperatures. Around that time I had also become friends with the poet Richard Hugo, and he had suggested I read Justine. So each night, by candle light, I would slowly read a few pages before falling asleep. Slowly because I had trouble reading then - Dyslexia - and because Durrell's poetry in his prose demanded slowness. Now transition to the book itself: it's in the 1940s in Alexandria. The narrator has suffered a conflicted love triangle, or, depending on how it is looked at, is suffering from being jilted, and to find the cure of the pain he writes. And Justine is the woman he was in love with. And this first book of the Quartet looks at the relationship head on, while each of the next 3 books look at the same settings and characters from a different perspective. Probably the best book I had ever read, and still one of the best. And, back when I was reading Justine, it was better than my hunger, my cold, the hard ground, and far better than the loneliness of homelessness. The Alexandria Quartet -- and 'Justine,' this first book, more so then the other three -- was the food that my soul so desperately needed. This book offered an explanation of why our hearts can be broken. We reach for words for the music and the story, and discover we are human by what we sometimes find: each other.
November 21, 2020
Living on this bare promontory, snatched every night from darkness by Arcturus, far from the lime-laden dust of those summer afternoons, I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price.
*
In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. Its dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of sea-water licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouths of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches � empty, forever empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds. If there are ever sails here they die before the land shadows them. Wreckage washed up on the pediments of islands, the last crust, eroded by the weather, stuck in the blue maw of water � gone!
*
How is it you are so much one of us and yet � you are not?
*
We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it. I can think of no better identification.
*
[...] I have always been so strong. Has it prevented me from being truly loved?
*
I see now that she was not really a woman but the incarnation of Woman admitting no ties in the society we inhabited.
*
It is only as the train begins to move, and as the figure at the window, dark against the darkness, lets go of my hand, that I feel Melissa is really leaving; feel everything that is inexorably denied � [...] I stand as if marooned on an iceberg.
*
I walk here with those coveted intimations of a past which none can share with me; but which time itself cannot deprive me of.
*
How much of him can I claim to know? I realize that each person can only claim one aspect of our character as part of his knowledge. To every one we turn a different face of the prism.
*
Something had been building itself up inside him all this time, grain by grain, until the weight of it had become insupportable. He was aware of a profound interior change in his nature which had at last shaken off the long paralysis of impotent love which had hitherto ruled his actions. The thought of some sudden concise action, some determining factor for good or evil, presented itself to him as an intoxicating novelty. He felt (or so I divined it) like a gambler about to stake the meagre remains of a lost fortune upon one desperate throw.
*
how small can a world become?
*
Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us? So that�
*
In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. Its dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of sea-water licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouths of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches � empty, forever empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds. If there are ever sails here they die before the land shadows them. Wreckage washed up on the pediments of islands, the last crust, eroded by the weather, stuck in the blue maw of water � gone!
*
How is it you are so much one of us and yet � you are not?
*
We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it. I can think of no better identification.
*
[...] I have always been so strong. Has it prevented me from being truly loved?
*
I see now that she was not really a woman but the incarnation of Woman admitting no ties in the society we inhabited.
*
It is only as the train begins to move, and as the figure at the window, dark against the darkness, lets go of my hand, that I feel Melissa is really leaving; feel everything that is inexorably denied � [...] I stand as if marooned on an iceberg.
*
I walk here with those coveted intimations of a past which none can share with me; but which time itself cannot deprive me of.
*
How much of him can I claim to know? I realize that each person can only claim one aspect of our character as part of his knowledge. To every one we turn a different face of the prism.
*
Something had been building itself up inside him all this time, grain by grain, until the weight of it had become insupportable. He was aware of a profound interior change in his nature which had at last shaken off the long paralysis of impotent love which had hitherto ruled his actions. The thought of some sudden concise action, some determining factor for good or evil, presented itself to him as an intoxicating novelty. He felt (or so I divined it) like a gambler about to stake the meagre remains of a lost fortune upon one desperate throw.
*
how small can a world become?
*
Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us? So that�
February 15, 2015
This is my third time reading this book, but this time I listened. It was amazing how much of the words I had internalized, and I found myself smiling along with some of the parts that were familiar.
I'm looking forward to actually finishing the quartet this time around (fingers crossed) and reading the other parts of the story.
The narrator does a decent job although some of the voices are so heavily accented they are almost hard to understand! The audiobook also had a track at the end where a Durrell scholar discusses the quartet and the city of Alexandria as a character. I got a lot out of it, and was glad I listened to those 24 minutes.
I'm looking forward to actually finishing the quartet this time around (fingers crossed) and reading the other parts of the story.
The narrator does a decent job although some of the voices are so heavily accented they are almost hard to understand! The audiobook also had a track at the end where a Durrell scholar discusses the quartet and the city of Alexandria as a character. I got a lot out of it, and was glad I listened to those 24 minutes.
November 10, 2024
In the cosmopolitan milieu of Alexandria, Egypt, under British dominion during the 1930s and 1940s, an unnamed Irishman, later revealed as Darley in subsequent novels, ruminates on his tempestuous love affair with Justine, an enigmatic Jewish woman. Justine is wed to Nessim, a prosperous Egyptian Copt, and the novel meticulously explores the intricacies of their relationships against the vibrant backdrop of a city brimming with cultural and religious diversity.
Darley's fervent and clandestine liaison with Justine is laden with tension and secrecy, as they navigate the perils of their illicit love while striving to conceal it from Nessim, who is both Darley's confidant and Justine's spouse, as well as Melissa, his paramour. The affair profoundly affects all involved, precipitating a series of dramatic events, including confrontations, a hunting expedition with fatal repercussions, and Justine's eventual exodus from Alexandria. Their attraction is vividly illustrated during secret meetings, such as an intimate moment on a secluded beach where they share deep conversations under the moonlit sky. Amidst this, the narrator's interactions with the eccentric Scobie and his pet mongoose provide moments of comic relief, while the discovery of Justine's past through the fictional novel Moeurs adds layers of intrigue and complexity to her character.
Durrell portrays Alexandria's exotic and often sordid atmosphere in rich and poetic prose. I absolutely loved the dreamy language and how Durell describes the Mediterranean basin under British control and how beautifully he captures the endeavors of early Zionism that Justine embarks upon in Eretz Israel.
Darley's fervent and clandestine liaison with Justine is laden with tension and secrecy, as they navigate the perils of their illicit love while striving to conceal it from Nessim, who is both Darley's confidant and Justine's spouse, as well as Melissa, his paramour. The affair profoundly affects all involved, precipitating a series of dramatic events, including confrontations, a hunting expedition with fatal repercussions, and Justine's eventual exodus from Alexandria. Their attraction is vividly illustrated during secret meetings, such as an intimate moment on a secluded beach where they share deep conversations under the moonlit sky. Amidst this, the narrator's interactions with the eccentric Scobie and his pet mongoose provide moments of comic relief, while the discovery of Justine's past through the fictional novel Moeurs adds layers of intrigue and complexity to her character.
Durrell portrays Alexandria's exotic and often sordid atmosphere in rich and poetic prose. I absolutely loved the dreamy language and how Durell describes the Mediterranean basin under British control and how beautifully he captures the endeavors of early Zionism that Justine embarks upon in Eretz Israel.
December 19, 2022
Yıllardır arada aklıma takılan Lawrence Durrell’in İskenderiye Dörtlüsü’nün 1961 Faber basımı komple temiz bir setini geçen ay bir sahafta komik bir fiyata görünce almamazlık edememiştim. Fena bir karar olmuş. İlk cilt Justine’i 195. sayfada bıraktım, bitime 50 sayfa kala yani. Ama mücadelem kitabın birinci sayfasında başladı desem abartmış olmam. Anlamsız bir inatla niye bu kadar sabrettim diye kızdım kendime.
Durrell efendi tam bir melodram meraklısıymış. Olay örgüsü hak getire. Haydi ondan vazgeçtik, iyi bir kitap için her zaman şart değil, ama karakterler de pek ikna edici değil. Ana karakter zaten İskenderiye şehri, ama onu da öyle anlatmış ki anında soğutuyor şehirden. Bir de kelime cambazı. Üslupçuluk yapacağım diye bol kılçıklı, ağdalı bir metin kaleme almış. Buram buram gösteriş, fiyaka peşinde. Oryantalist, emperyalist tondaki yaklaşımlara ise hiç girmiyorum.
Durrell’i ve 20. yüzyıl İngilizce edebiyatının başyapıtlarından biri olarak kabul edilen, benim için ise ilk kitapta meşum kategorisine giren bu dörtlüsünü Allah sevenlerine bağışlasın diyor, önümüzdeki kitaplara bakıyorum.
Durrell efendi tam bir melodram meraklısıymış. Olay örgüsü hak getire. Haydi ondan vazgeçtik, iyi bir kitap için her zaman şart değil, ama karakterler de pek ikna edici değil. Ana karakter zaten İskenderiye şehri, ama onu da öyle anlatmış ki anında soğutuyor şehirden. Bir de kelime cambazı. Üslupçuluk yapacağım diye bol kılçıklı, ağdalı bir metin kaleme almış. Buram buram gösteriş, fiyaka peşinde. Oryantalist, emperyalist tondaki yaklaşımlara ise hiç girmiyorum.
Durrell’i ve 20. yüzyıl İngilizce edebiyatının başyapıtlarından biri olarak kabul edilen, benim için ise ilk kitapta meşum kategorisine giren bu dörtlüsünü Allah sevenlerine bağışlasın diyor, önümüzdeki kitaplara bakıyorum.
March 19, 2020
О, претенция, твойто име е Лорънс Дърел!
September 15, 2024
bazı kitaplarla ilgili ne düşündüğümü yazmaya başlamadan önce derin bir nefes verdiğimi fark ettim; bu da onlardan biriydi. kafam kitaba dair her şeyle o kadar dolu ve ben bu doluluğu ifade edecek kelimeleri seçmekten o kadar uzağım ki, o kadar olur. harika bir kitap. çok yoğun, çok gerçek. edebiyata dair en sevdiğim şeylerden biri bu kitapta vardı: okurken okuduğun gerçeklikte değil, kitabın gerçekliğinde olma hissi. sıcağıyla, tozuyla, teriyle iskenderiye'deydim ben bu kitabı okuduğum süre boyunca. bir metin anca bu kadar "akdeniz" olabilirdi, ve ben justine'i kaş'ta yaptığım deniz tatiline, ve doğum günüme denk getirmiş olmaktan nasıl mutlu olduğumu da anlatamam, kitaba dair hislerimi de anlatamadığım gibi. ne kadar da "iyi ki yazılmış" bir kitap. çok keyifliyim, teşekkürler.
November 6, 2018
This is a highly representative work of the fatuous Larry that we know and love from the "Durrells in Corfu". It is a masterpiece of Gnostic eroticism that may have lost its audience due to its outrageous chauvinism. Women exist in Durrell's world to be fetich objects for male writers and poets. Durrell writes of his alluring heroine. "Justine was a walking abstract of the writers and thinkers whom she had loved or admired - but what clever woman is more?" This charming novel certainly has the potential to rile feminists.
Durrell places a quote from the Marquis' de Sades novel "Justine" at the start of this novel presumably to encourage the reader look for points in common that his heroine has with de Sade's. Justine is however more than a libertine woman capable of inspiring sexual fantasies with every man she meets. She is also on a deep spiritual quest in the gnostic-cabalistic vein. "Bending over the dirty sink with the foetus in it, Justine like Sophia of Valentinus, wondered if mankind was the work of an inferior deity, a demiurge who wrongly believed himself to be God? Heavens ! How probabale it seems!"
I am giving "Justine" a mere three stars because it does not stand on its own. However it sets the table splendidly for the rest of the quartet as it very effectively establishes the themes of Sadistic love and Gnostic spirituality.
Durrell places a quote from the Marquis' de Sades novel "Justine" at the start of this novel presumably to encourage the reader look for points in common that his heroine has with de Sade's. Justine is however more than a libertine woman capable of inspiring sexual fantasies with every man she meets. She is also on a deep spiritual quest in the gnostic-cabalistic vein. "Bending over the dirty sink with the foetus in it, Justine like Sophia of Valentinus, wondered if mankind was the work of an inferior deity, a demiurge who wrongly believed himself to be God? Heavens ! How probabale it seems!"
I am giving "Justine" a mere three stars because it does not stand on its own. However it sets the table splendidly for the rest of the quartet as it very effectively establishes the themes of Sadistic love and Gnostic spirituality.
January 6, 2008
As you most likely know, this is the first book of Lawrence Durrell's acclaimed Alexandria Quartet. What is it about? Stupid question. Unless by "about" you mean, what does it feel like? It feels like a warm, ancient, beautiful, decaying, diverse, passionate, decadent city that seems to permeate the lives of its inhabitants, most of whom seem obsessed with sex. So it is a lot about sex and what it means, and how it relates to love and manipulation, and if any of this has any moral basis.
There is at least an implied plot, but this is more of a spatial exploration of the main Alexandrian characters who will no doubt resurface in the subsequent novels. Events are related thematically without much regard to chronology, but the whole thing plays out to a satisfying non-conclusion. In fact I couldn't stop thinking about the last line of the book. The writing style is luscious, very poetic...much of the story told through descriptions. Oh and I'll save you some grief...you never learn the name of the narrator.
So I will definitely read on. I'll let you know how Balthazar turns out.
There is at least an implied plot, but this is more of a spatial exploration of the main Alexandrian characters who will no doubt resurface in the subsequent novels. Events are related thematically without much regard to chronology, but the whole thing plays out to a satisfying non-conclusion. In fact I couldn't stop thinking about the last line of the book. The writing style is luscious, very poetic...much of the story told through descriptions. Oh and I'll save you some grief...you never learn the name of the narrator.
So I will definitely read on. I'll let you know how Balthazar turns out.
September 18, 2021
The start, I hope, of a long-term interest in this author. Highly impressed on every level, I am. At first his style seems forced, but it winds, riverine, recapitulating itself, strengthening as it goes along, so that it is clear, having read much of Henry Miller, that their friendship bled into aesthetic similarities, apart from surface level themes. A treasure trove of exotic, Paul Bowles-level atmosphere, in the crisp, dusty histori-city of Alexandria. All-around classic, engaging scenes, and free associative descriptions of eccentrics, artists, beauties. 3 more volumes to go in this epic, plus dozens of other books by this author in similar veins. Could they all be this good?
January 3, 2025
Complicado hacer reseña de una lectura que apela al interior de la persona, expectativas, frustraciones y sensualidad con un lenguaje tan escogido; parece que con un análisis tan pragmático como este le estamos restando valor a la obra. Es todo un viaje para los sentidos.
Esa Alejandría de excesos y contradicciones, imbuida por una turba de religiones, lenguas, razas, nacionalidades, culturas y pionera en las mil formas de vivir la sexualidad. Lo logra no siendo explícito en exceso, siempre susurrando, Durrell logra transportarte de forma magistral a un territorio que, de no conocer su existencia, pensarías que es un zona imaginaria del autor, de esos territorios míticos que crearon Faulkner u Onetti para sus novelas.
¿Cómo logra llevarnos a ese territorio? Con el lenguaje que usa y con la capacidad que tiene Durrell para que el lector se abstraiga en el momento de la lectura y se remonte a ese norte de Egipto tan ignoto y atractivo.
“Viviendo en este promontorio desnudo, arrancado cada noche a la oscuridad por Arturo, lejos del polvo cargado de cal de aquellas tardes de verano, veo por fin que ninguno de nosotros debe ser juzgado por lo que sucedió en el pasado. Es la ciudad la que debe ser juzgada aunque nosotros, sus hijos, debamos pagar el precio.�
El lenguaje es importantísimo no en vano la producción principal de Durrell es poética, su lenguaje es poesía en prosa; aquí debo decir que pocos logran atraparme con ese lenguaje tan brillante (Marsé y pocos más).
Conocía bien Durrell el ambiente colonial, su padre fue diplomático en distintos puntos, entre ellos Alejandría. Esa vida de las colonias tan característica y tan propia. Rápidamente recuerdas lecturas de Kipling, Conrad o esos viajeros infatigables como el mismo Melville, y ese clima que les dan a sus novelas tan propios de la ultramar británica.
La sensibilidad y goce al leer este libro, contrasta con el momento final en que el protagonista sale de Alejandría e inevitablemente se compara esa salida, con la estancia en la ciudad y la sensación como que la vida no se vive al 100% si no es en Alejandría, como que la vida en otros lugares es una vida anestesiada o sin pleno goce.
Como cierra esta primera parte del Cuarteto de Alejandría, me pareció muy buena, más pragmática que el desarrollo general del libro: deja a cada personaje perfectamente cerrado o insinuado su futuro. En los próximos libros de la serie veremos su desarrollo. To be continued.
Esa Alejandría de excesos y contradicciones, imbuida por una turba de religiones, lenguas, razas, nacionalidades, culturas y pionera en las mil formas de vivir la sexualidad. Lo logra no siendo explícito en exceso, siempre susurrando, Durrell logra transportarte de forma magistral a un territorio que, de no conocer su existencia, pensarías que es un zona imaginaria del autor, de esos territorios míticos que crearon Faulkner u Onetti para sus novelas.
¿Cómo logra llevarnos a ese territorio? Con el lenguaje que usa y con la capacidad que tiene Durrell para que el lector se abstraiga en el momento de la lectura y se remonte a ese norte de Egipto tan ignoto y atractivo.
“Viviendo en este promontorio desnudo, arrancado cada noche a la oscuridad por Arturo, lejos del polvo cargado de cal de aquellas tardes de verano, veo por fin que ninguno de nosotros debe ser juzgado por lo que sucedió en el pasado. Es la ciudad la que debe ser juzgada aunque nosotros, sus hijos, debamos pagar el precio.�
El lenguaje es importantísimo no en vano la producción principal de Durrell es poética, su lenguaje es poesía en prosa; aquí debo decir que pocos logran atraparme con ese lenguaje tan brillante (Marsé y pocos más).
Conocía bien Durrell el ambiente colonial, su padre fue diplomático en distintos puntos, entre ellos Alejandría. Esa vida de las colonias tan característica y tan propia. Rápidamente recuerdas lecturas de Kipling, Conrad o esos viajeros infatigables como el mismo Melville, y ese clima que les dan a sus novelas tan propios de la ultramar británica.
La sensibilidad y goce al leer este libro, contrasta con el momento final en que el protagonista sale de Alejandría e inevitablemente se compara esa salida, con la estancia en la ciudad y la sensación como que la vida no se vive al 100% si no es en Alejandría, como que la vida en otros lugares es una vida anestesiada o sin pleno goce.
Como cierra esta primera parte del Cuarteto de Alejandría, me pareció muy buena, más pragmática que el desarrollo general del libro: deja a cada personaje perfectamente cerrado o insinuado su futuro. En los próximos libros de la serie veremos su desarrollo. To be continued.
February 9, 2018
I pored toga što me je u više navrata ujeo za srce, Darel je odličan pisac i ovo je odličan roman. Narativa pozitivno nedefinisana, nabacana tako da se dalja i bliža i najdalja i najbliža prošlost mešaju sa sadašnjošću na jedan potpuno maničan, a opet veoma pitak, organski način. Psihologija likova (i to kakvih) bez „psihoterapije� kojoj je kao kontrast vrlo sklon pisac romana u romanu. Upečatljive slike i cela ona razvratna atmosfera karakteristična za npr grupu umetnika u Pinčonovom V (ne bi me čudilo da je odavde pokupio štošta) ili Hemingvejevom Suncu. Lep stil, na trenutke previše kitnjast (a moji kriterijumi za „previše� su stvarno visoki pošto inače volim kitnjastu prozu), ali prečesto i duboko upečatljiv. Zanima me samo kako će mi se sleći roman nakon nekog vremena, tojest da li ću zbog onako prirodno haotične narative „prisećanja� romana zaboraviti šta se desilo pre nego što predjem na drugi deo (što će biti uskoro, planiram da pročitam kvartet cik-cak kako se ne bih presitio), no za sad je to i više nego odlično.
5
5
November 4, 2024
اولین جلد از چهارگانه اسکندریه که کمترین تعداد ستاره رو بین بقیه جلدها داره،داستان روابط آدمها از طبقات اجتماعی مختلف...
داستان از زبان راوی که اسمش رو نمیدونیم روایت میشه و شرح رابطه عاشقانه اش با زنی به اسم ژوستین که همسر نسیم یکی از بانکدارهای پرنفوذ شهر اسکندریه هست.
داستان در نگاه اول پیچیدگی خاصی نداره ولی کتاب،کتاب آسونی نیست.
یکی از نکات جذاب کتاب حضور پررنگ اسکندریه به عنوان شهری که اتفاقات در اون اتفاق می افته هست.توصیفات شهر بسیار قوی هستن.
گفته میشه که داستان در جلدهای بعد هست که قوت میگیره و پرکشش تر میشه ولی تا الانم برای من به اندازه کافی جذاب بوده
داستان از زبان راوی که اسمش رو نمیدونیم روایت میشه و شرح رابطه عاشقانه اش با زنی به اسم ژوستین که همسر نسیم یکی از بانکدارهای پرنفوذ شهر اسکندریه هست.
داستان در نگاه اول پیچیدگی خاصی نداره ولی کتاب،کتاب آسونی نیست.
یکی از نکات جذاب کتاب حضور پررنگ اسکندریه به عنوان شهری که اتفاقات در اون اتفاق می افته هست.توصیفات شهر بسیار قوی هستن.
گفته میشه که داستان در جلدهای بعد هست که قوت میگیره و پرکشش تر میشه ولی تا الانم برای من به اندازه کافی جذاب بوده
November 26, 2018
NB: There are spoilers in my review but, really, the book hasn't much in the way of plot anyway. It's all character study. I normally don't write such long reviews but I've had a lot of thoughts on my love/loathe reaction to this one, and it helps me to write about it, for my own clarification and future reference. I completely understand if others do not care to read through my rambles, and apologise ahead of time for any suffering I cause.
If I were rating Justine only on the quality of the writing, I would give it six stars for the eloquence of Durrell's descriptive prose: writing so beautiful at times that one can forget, almost, the emptiness at its heart.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway vs. Durrell
I read Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night just before this book, and was comparing Fitzgerald's style to Hemingway's. I decided that Fitzgerald is the better writer stylistically (or, I should say, more to my taste nowadays) but that Hemingway was very wise to write only what characters do and say, while describing the scenery, and avoiding psychoanalytic speculation on their motivations, at all cost. That said, Fitzgerald was clear, intelligent, and minimal in his explorations regarding Nicole Diver's "madness" (as perceived through her psychiatrist-husband's eyes) and, for the time in which he published, it was bold of Fitzgerald to cast blame on Nicole's father for having sexually molested her in her childhood. It was unusual at that time, firstly, to call out fathers for this common but hidden crime; secondly, women were regularly accused of being lying hysterics (see Charcot and Freud) for disclosing abuse at the hands of fathers, uncles, brothers, et al. So, I respected Fitzgerald's taking this position and did not find his assumptions ignorant and simple-minded.
Hemingway avoided, scrupulously, picking apart people's hearts and minds. I respect him for that. You can read Hills Like White Elephants a dozen times and nowhere will you find a direct reference to abortion or the couple's feelings about it. The reader may infer what she likes, but Hemingway will not spoon-feed you second-rate psychology or shallow spirituality that cheapens his characters. He presents them to you whole so that their integrity is maintained, but still they are only snapshots of a particular moment in time, which is just like real life, actually.
Durrell leaves nothing to the imagination while trying to second-guess his own characters, and yet he is at his worst while doing so. Nevertheless, he persists! Similar to Nicole in Fitzgerald's book, Durrell's Justine has been sexually assaulted by a man in her childhood (not her father, though he did beat her regularly). Durrell seems to be trying to represent his characters as nearly-literal Jungian archetypes but archetypes, if they can be said to "exist" at all, do so at the level of myth (i.e. collective unconscious). It's easy to oversimplify them and reduce them to the point of ridiculousness; likewise, it's easy to over-complicate them. When you try to make them overtly real, to analyze them too closely and deconstruct their mystery, they lose both their mystery and their potency.
Indeed, my perception of Durrell's characters were far from mythic. I found them quite ordinary, despite the fact that he keeps claiming they aren't: They are mostly shallow, self-absorbed, and cynical dilettantes who founder drunkenly in puddles whilst believing they inhabit an ocean. I found the pondering on psychology and spirituality, through the mouths of Durrell's characters, absolutely cringe-worthy and nearly threw the book across the room on several occasions (but since it's an expensive Folio edition given as a gift by my husband, I refrained).
It's not merely that I did not like them, for I did like some of them, at least to some degree; besides, I can dislike characters but still find them fascinating (as with everyone in Lolita, for instance). We are told in the Introduction that Justine is the lover of a group of "remarkable men" but I could find nothing remarkable about them. I did not feel that Durrell managed to make most of his people even interesting, at least not to me . . . perhaps not to Justine, either. These men are mostly crashing bores, full of themselves and their own sexual avarice to the point of self-destruction. That said, Nessim did capture my attention; he did seem to be a man of substance and integrity, battling real demons both externally and within himself.
Mostly, though, the men depicted in Justine made me wonder how tedious Durrell must have been as a husband, lover, and father. Despite the fact that Durrell claims the characters are all fictional, that is only true in degree. They are clearly based on himself and his circle of friends during his time in Alexandria.
Justine
Justine represents glamour and the feminine mystique to every man in her life, we are told, yet Justine did not come across as enigmatic to me: in her way, she is as direct and honest as Melissa (the Innocent, or the suffering Madonna figure): You should know Justine will betray you because that is her nature. She never promises fidelity, except presumably to Nessim, to whom she is married; but she is clear with him from the beginning that she does not love him and probably never will, and he marries her with that understanding. He wants her to be with him and offers her a secure home and money, which she hopes to use to find her missing child. She says upfront that this is what she wants and yet, he is persistent that he wants her to marry him. Getting frustrated with Justine for her easy lies, her secrets, her evasiveness, and her infidelities, is like getting angry with a fox for being a fox. You force your hand into the fox's mouth dreaming that, in this way, you will tame it. Now you've been bit, but who is to blame? The fox?
Justine gathers people to her and offers them what they all seem to want: sex. She is upfront and not at all coy about this. This reflex is common in women who've always been treated as sexual objects rather than human beings, and especially those who've been sexually molested in childhood. In exchange, Justine takes whatever knowledge and life lessons she can gain from her men, as well as their money and connections, in hopes of using these to find her missing child. There is nothing mysterious about her except that Durrell feels it necessary to give her many ridiculous motivations that seem contrived and beside the point. I could completely understand why Justine, at one point, tries to burn her husband's (Arnauti's) novel about her because through this action she sends a clear, but silent, message: You have not understood me at all. Her first husband, Arnauti, tries to reduce her with his pen to something manageable, conveniently packaged as a book: small enough to tuck in his pocket, yet accomplished enough to gain admiration from his peers. Justine sees this, rightly enough, as just another way of stealing a person's selfhood, of trying to own what isn't yours. She smells the rot and burns it, in her own version of a cleansing ceremony.
Justine is far more interesting when she acts than when she speaks. If one stands back and watches her, her behaviour seems completely consistent and coherent. Interestingly, in Durrell's own working notes at the back of the book, he symbolises Justine as "the straight arrow in the dark": That is one symbol that makes complete sense to me. Justine is not as confused as she seems; her words may obscure, evade, or baffle, but her actions do not. Her aim is true. She will keep heading the same direction, whatever the rigmarole going on around her.
But Durrell will not leave well enough alone, endlessly trying to explain her feelings and behaviour in ways that ring false. This very nearly ruined my enjoyment of the novel. It seems that Justine was based on a real woman in Durrell's life (or so it is said, though like most characters, she is probably an amalgam of women): a woman whom he felt he understood on one level but who completely baffled him on another.
Justine offers the same deal to all of her lovers: You can have her body but not her soul. And please don't make her explain herself because the moment she opens her mouth to do so, it's all a terrible muddle. While trying to be profound, she makes sweeping grand statements that sound poetic but are ultimately trite (but that is true of most of her friends, too). I assume this is because Durrell himself could not explain the woman or women he knew, only their effect on him. I think, had he stuck with observing women's behaviours and describing what he saw and heard, he would have been a far better writer, playing to his strengths.
Yet for Durrell, that wasn't enough. And for the male characters in his book, what Justine gives them is never enough: They want to fully possess her. It is clear as the Sun that Justine, though a generous lover, wants to possess herself, not to be owned by others. Most of all, she would love to find her child again. Only Nessim seems to grasp just how vital this need is in her. In the end, she escapes these grasping lovers and becomes a less-glamorous version of herself � "a stout peasant" (as Clea calls her) � but at least she is free to be herself, and has cut loose these dull and needy men who seem to want to crawl inside her and live there. The fox has bolted and all are left bleeding.
I kept thinking of this classical art meme while reading the dialogue about Justine.
More on Hemingway and Durrell
Another way in which Hemingway was wise is that he avoided serving up cheap and easy philosophies and even pretending to a coherent worldview. He was not given to banal aphorisms. What are we to make of Balthazar and Justine and her lovers and all their empty cliches delivered in world-weary voices roughened by wine, whiskey, and cigarettes? Half the time, it reminded me of the conversations we used to have when I was an undergrad away at university, or living in New York soon after, and my friends and I would be half drunk, lounging on old couches or the floor, smoking and talking, listening to music, and thinking our slurred utterances profound. (We were very young, forgive us.)
When I realised that Durrell had written Balthazar as their guru to the "mysteries" of the transcendental life, all hope was lost. I suppose he was meant to be the archetypal Wise Sage figure but he in no way comes across as wise. As a contemplative, he is a joke. Like Pursewarden, Balthazar serves up sophistry as if it were clever and profound. His aphorisms are simply the hollow and cheap wooings of a jaded poseur. His speculations on his friends' feelings and behaviours are likewise empty: Once you start summing up your friends with self-congratulatory insights which pretend to explain the complexities of their lives, you are no longer their friend. Wise old Hemingway would have said, 'Let's just have another Pernod, eat some olives, and gaze at that sun-splashed ocean, pal.'
I once had a friend who drank himself into alcoholism. The more he drank, the more profound he thought he was. I thought of him whilst reading Justine because these men drink a lot and, the more they drink, the more insufferable they become. My friend's lovers, too, ended up leaving him. For him, this was a mystery. After all, he had his attractions. Unfortunately, the more he drank and philosophised, the less attractive he became. When I tried to explain to him that women do not take lovers in hopes of being psychoanalysed by them, to be picked apart with crude mental tweezers, he seemed baffled; didn't everyone dissect their lovers? Isn't it helpful to point out their flaws and relate every behaviour in their lives back to event X in their childhood? (Insert parable about pulling the log out of your own eye before pointing out splinters in others'.)
This book, in many ways, is like an exquisite perfume sprinkled on a corpse: its polished elegance masks, from a distance, its internal rot. It offended my own sensibilities on so many levels, yet I am still impressed by its lyrical qualities and I am rather pleased that Durrell allowed Justine's escape from the fox-tamers. For myself, I believe that deep emotions are better felt silently and inferred subtly, rather than dissected crudely, with chilly needles; that spirituality is better lived-out quietly than preached loudly by fools; that drunken, hollow cynicism shared at the bar is best kept at the bar.
Perhaps part of my disenchantment is that I had expected so much of this book. Indeed, I own the Folio edition because I had so long coveted it and anticipated its exotic grandeur. But you know, these people, these characters, never really came alive for me: They were trapped between the covers of a book from whose aesthetic framework they could not even hope to escape. Perhaps they suspected themselves, when overhearing their self-conscious, literary dialogue, that they were only characters in a novel and not real people at all? I wonder. Justine got trapped in a book, after all, despite her best efforts to escape!
The reason I am rating Justine three stars is because I give it six for its descriptive eloquence and zero for its philosophical, psychological, and spiritual nonsense. I have already begun the second book in the quartet, Balthazar, and I'm enjoying it more than the first already, but that is probably because Balthazar himself hasn't appeared yet. I have been reading gorgeous descriptive paragraphs about Nessim's trip to his family farm, to visit his brother and mother. It's wonderful writing but I am wary of what will come later.
If I were rating Justine only on the quality of the writing, I would give it six stars for the eloquence of Durrell's descriptive prose: writing so beautiful at times that one can forget, almost, the emptiness at its heart.
Fitzgerald and Hemingway vs. Durrell
I read Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night just before this book, and was comparing Fitzgerald's style to Hemingway's. I decided that Fitzgerald is the better writer stylistically (or, I should say, more to my taste nowadays) but that Hemingway was very wise to write only what characters do and say, while describing the scenery, and avoiding psychoanalytic speculation on their motivations, at all cost. That said, Fitzgerald was clear, intelligent, and minimal in his explorations regarding Nicole Diver's "madness" (as perceived through her psychiatrist-husband's eyes) and, for the time in which he published, it was bold of Fitzgerald to cast blame on Nicole's father for having sexually molested her in her childhood. It was unusual at that time, firstly, to call out fathers for this common but hidden crime; secondly, women were regularly accused of being lying hysterics (see Charcot and Freud) for disclosing abuse at the hands of fathers, uncles, brothers, et al. So, I respected Fitzgerald's taking this position and did not find his assumptions ignorant and simple-minded.
Hemingway avoided, scrupulously, picking apart people's hearts and minds. I respect him for that. You can read Hills Like White Elephants a dozen times and nowhere will you find a direct reference to abortion or the couple's feelings about it. The reader may infer what she likes, but Hemingway will not spoon-feed you second-rate psychology or shallow spirituality that cheapens his characters. He presents them to you whole so that their integrity is maintained, but still they are only snapshots of a particular moment in time, which is just like real life, actually.
Durrell leaves nothing to the imagination while trying to second-guess his own characters, and yet he is at his worst while doing so. Nevertheless, he persists! Similar to Nicole in Fitzgerald's book, Durrell's Justine has been sexually assaulted by a man in her childhood (not her father, though he did beat her regularly). Durrell seems to be trying to represent his characters as nearly-literal Jungian archetypes but archetypes, if they can be said to "exist" at all, do so at the level of myth (i.e. collective unconscious). It's easy to oversimplify them and reduce them to the point of ridiculousness; likewise, it's easy to over-complicate them. When you try to make them overtly real, to analyze them too closely and deconstruct their mystery, they lose both their mystery and their potency.
Indeed, my perception of Durrell's characters were far from mythic. I found them quite ordinary, despite the fact that he keeps claiming they aren't: They are mostly shallow, self-absorbed, and cynical dilettantes who founder drunkenly in puddles whilst believing they inhabit an ocean. I found the pondering on psychology and spirituality, through the mouths of Durrell's characters, absolutely cringe-worthy and nearly threw the book across the room on several occasions (but since it's an expensive Folio edition given as a gift by my husband, I refrained).
It's not merely that I did not like them, for I did like some of them, at least to some degree; besides, I can dislike characters but still find them fascinating (as with everyone in Lolita, for instance). We are told in the Introduction that Justine is the lover of a group of "remarkable men" but I could find nothing remarkable about them. I did not feel that Durrell managed to make most of his people even interesting, at least not to me . . . perhaps not to Justine, either. These men are mostly crashing bores, full of themselves and their own sexual avarice to the point of self-destruction. That said, Nessim did capture my attention; he did seem to be a man of substance and integrity, battling real demons both externally and within himself.
Mostly, though, the men depicted in Justine made me wonder how tedious Durrell must have been as a husband, lover, and father. Despite the fact that Durrell claims the characters are all fictional, that is only true in degree. They are clearly based on himself and his circle of friends during his time in Alexandria.
Justine
Justine represents glamour and the feminine mystique to every man in her life, we are told, yet Justine did not come across as enigmatic to me: in her way, she is as direct and honest as Melissa (the Innocent, or the suffering Madonna figure): You should know Justine will betray you because that is her nature. She never promises fidelity, except presumably to Nessim, to whom she is married; but she is clear with him from the beginning that she does not love him and probably never will, and he marries her with that understanding. He wants her to be with him and offers her a secure home and money, which she hopes to use to find her missing child. She says upfront that this is what she wants and yet, he is persistent that he wants her to marry him. Getting frustrated with Justine for her easy lies, her secrets, her evasiveness, and her infidelities, is like getting angry with a fox for being a fox. You force your hand into the fox's mouth dreaming that, in this way, you will tame it. Now you've been bit, but who is to blame? The fox?
Justine gathers people to her and offers them what they all seem to want: sex. She is upfront and not at all coy about this. This reflex is common in women who've always been treated as sexual objects rather than human beings, and especially those who've been sexually molested in childhood. In exchange, Justine takes whatever knowledge and life lessons she can gain from her men, as well as their money and connections, in hopes of using these to find her missing child. There is nothing mysterious about her except that Durrell feels it necessary to give her many ridiculous motivations that seem contrived and beside the point. I could completely understand why Justine, at one point, tries to burn her husband's (Arnauti's) novel about her because through this action she sends a clear, but silent, message: You have not understood me at all. Her first husband, Arnauti, tries to reduce her with his pen to something manageable, conveniently packaged as a book: small enough to tuck in his pocket, yet accomplished enough to gain admiration from his peers. Justine sees this, rightly enough, as just another way of stealing a person's selfhood, of trying to own what isn't yours. She smells the rot and burns it, in her own version of a cleansing ceremony.
Justine is far more interesting when she acts than when she speaks. If one stands back and watches her, her behaviour seems completely consistent and coherent. Interestingly, in Durrell's own working notes at the back of the book, he symbolises Justine as "the straight arrow in the dark": That is one symbol that makes complete sense to me. Justine is not as confused as she seems; her words may obscure, evade, or baffle, but her actions do not. Her aim is true. She will keep heading the same direction, whatever the rigmarole going on around her.
But Durrell will not leave well enough alone, endlessly trying to explain her feelings and behaviour in ways that ring false. This very nearly ruined my enjoyment of the novel. It seems that Justine was based on a real woman in Durrell's life (or so it is said, though like most characters, she is probably an amalgam of women): a woman whom he felt he understood on one level but who completely baffled him on another.
Justine offers the same deal to all of her lovers: You can have her body but not her soul. And please don't make her explain herself because the moment she opens her mouth to do so, it's all a terrible muddle. While trying to be profound, she makes sweeping grand statements that sound poetic but are ultimately trite (but that is true of most of her friends, too). I assume this is because Durrell himself could not explain the woman or women he knew, only their effect on him. I think, had he stuck with observing women's behaviours and describing what he saw and heard, he would have been a far better writer, playing to his strengths.
Yet for Durrell, that wasn't enough. And for the male characters in his book, what Justine gives them is never enough: They want to fully possess her. It is clear as the Sun that Justine, though a generous lover, wants to possess herself, not to be owned by others. Most of all, she would love to find her child again. Only Nessim seems to grasp just how vital this need is in her. In the end, she escapes these grasping lovers and becomes a less-glamorous version of herself � "a stout peasant" (as Clea calls her) � but at least she is free to be herself, and has cut loose these dull and needy men who seem to want to crawl inside her and live there. The fox has bolted and all are left bleeding.
I kept thinking of this classical art meme while reading the dialogue about Justine.
More on Hemingway and Durrell
Another way in which Hemingway was wise is that he avoided serving up cheap and easy philosophies and even pretending to a coherent worldview. He was not given to banal aphorisms. What are we to make of Balthazar and Justine and her lovers and all their empty cliches delivered in world-weary voices roughened by wine, whiskey, and cigarettes? Half the time, it reminded me of the conversations we used to have when I was an undergrad away at university, or living in New York soon after, and my friends and I would be half drunk, lounging on old couches or the floor, smoking and talking, listening to music, and thinking our slurred utterances profound. (We were very young, forgive us.)
When I realised that Durrell had written Balthazar as their guru to the "mysteries" of the transcendental life, all hope was lost. I suppose he was meant to be the archetypal Wise Sage figure but he in no way comes across as wise. As a contemplative, he is a joke. Like Pursewarden, Balthazar serves up sophistry as if it were clever and profound. His aphorisms are simply the hollow and cheap wooings of a jaded poseur. His speculations on his friends' feelings and behaviours are likewise empty: Once you start summing up your friends with self-congratulatory insights which pretend to explain the complexities of their lives, you are no longer their friend. Wise old Hemingway would have said, 'Let's just have another Pernod, eat some olives, and gaze at that sun-splashed ocean, pal.'
I once had a friend who drank himself into alcoholism. The more he drank, the more profound he thought he was. I thought of him whilst reading Justine because these men drink a lot and, the more they drink, the more insufferable they become. My friend's lovers, too, ended up leaving him. For him, this was a mystery. After all, he had his attractions. Unfortunately, the more he drank and philosophised, the less attractive he became. When I tried to explain to him that women do not take lovers in hopes of being psychoanalysed by them, to be picked apart with crude mental tweezers, he seemed baffled; didn't everyone dissect their lovers? Isn't it helpful to point out their flaws and relate every behaviour in their lives back to event X in their childhood? (Insert parable about pulling the log out of your own eye before pointing out splinters in others'.)
This book, in many ways, is like an exquisite perfume sprinkled on a corpse: its polished elegance masks, from a distance, its internal rot. It offended my own sensibilities on so many levels, yet I am still impressed by its lyrical qualities and I am rather pleased that Durrell allowed Justine's escape from the fox-tamers. For myself, I believe that deep emotions are better felt silently and inferred subtly, rather than dissected crudely, with chilly needles; that spirituality is better lived-out quietly than preached loudly by fools; that drunken, hollow cynicism shared at the bar is best kept at the bar.
Perhaps part of my disenchantment is that I had expected so much of this book. Indeed, I own the Folio edition because I had so long coveted it and anticipated its exotic grandeur. But you know, these people, these characters, never really came alive for me: They were trapped between the covers of a book from whose aesthetic framework they could not even hope to escape. Perhaps they suspected themselves, when overhearing their self-conscious, literary dialogue, that they were only characters in a novel and not real people at all? I wonder. Justine got trapped in a book, after all, despite her best efforts to escape!
The reason I am rating Justine three stars is because I give it six for its descriptive eloquence and zero for its philosophical, psychological, and spiritual nonsense. I have already begun the second book in the quartet, Balthazar, and I'm enjoying it more than the first already, but that is probably because Balthazar himself hasn't appeared yet. I have been reading gorgeous descriptive paragraphs about Nessim's trip to his family farm, to visit his brother and mother. It's wonderful writing but I am wary of what will come later.
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