Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet
Unsplash: Ahmed Badawy
Blog No. 16
By Marcus Coates, @homeinriyadh, 22nd April 2021
Issues with Romance
Maybe it was due to my childhood house containing one too many Mills and Boom and Jackie Collins novels or maybe I was just too adolescent - but whatever the underlying reason - I grew up as not a great lover of the romance genre.
In those days, I tried from time to time to immerse myself in the pages of romance fiction but soon lost patience when confronted with convoluted love trysts that took my suspension of disbelief beyond where I was willing to take it. And the narrative style never satisfied me: writing that was sentimental, overblown, melodramatic or else erotic and sensual: designed to replace plot development rather than compliment it.
In my early adolescent state of being, I thought, ‘If that was what romance had to offer, then clearly it wasn’t for me.’ And for years afterwards, I stuck to espionage and action thrillers.
Discovering Romance
A few years later, though, I came across Lawrence Durrell’s tetralogy, The Alexandria Quartet, that renewed my faith in the power of the romantic genre and also gave me the travel bug.
The writing was character-driven, with multiple narrators telling the story, not linearly but by order of significance of events. And Durrell’s description of place made me realize that I would forever be limited in my outlook if I chose never to travel beyond the borders of my London suburb.
Through the city of Alexandria and through every social class the narrative moves back and forth and immerses the reader in the main characters’ lives and intrigues.
Lawrence states his theme as ‘modern love’ and makes the reader work hard to fathom what that is: for when it comes to love, all characters are unreliable narrators who only reveal what they choose for you to see.
Justine (1957)
In Justine, Darly, an impoverished and struggling Irish writer and schoolmaster, recounts the events of his doomed love affair with Justine, the wife of a wealthy Egyptian Copt, Nessim. The time is the eve of World War II, and the place is Alexandria, a city that once housed the greatest library and scholarly minds in the world.
On the eve of war, Darly sees the inhabitants of Alexandria as still obsessed with intellect yet in pursuit of the sensual. In his diary, he describes the eclectic Alexandria set that he becomes a part of, outlines their backstories, narrates their intrigues, and is caught up in forbidden romance.
Balthazar (1958)
The second novel, Balthazar, revisits the doomed love affair after a few years have passed. Darly, now living on a Greek island with Nessim’s illegitimate child by Darly’s former (and deceased) lover, Melissa, is visited by Balthazar, who carries with him an interlinear script - heavily marked with corrections - that shows a competing narrative from that presented in Justine. The affair is framed in less romantic and more philosophical and intellectual terms within the interlinear script.
Balthazar also informs Darly of the events that lead to the suicide of a mutual friend and fellow writer, Pursewarden. He provides missing details concerning Darly’s affair; and reveals that, although Darly ended up in Melissa’s arms, it was Clea who loved him.
Mountolive (1958)
David Mountolive, a career diplomat and part of the Alexandria set, retells Darly’s and Justine’s love affair from his perspective. He describes his affair with Leila Hosnani, the mother of Nessim and Narouz, and adds detail to the events surrounding Pursewarden’s suicide. The narrative adds contextual and factual detail to the narratives within Justine and Balthazar minus interpretation.
Clea (1960)
Darly, still living on the Greek island, has managed to survive and write due to the money Pursewarden left him in his will.
The powerful Hosnani family has fallen from prosperity during the war, and Darly returns to Alexandria to seek former acquaintances from his time living there. He seeks out and meets with many of the characters written about in Justine, Balthazar, and Mountolive.
In the street, Darly encounters Clea, and they begin the affair they should have always started: this time, unencumbered by Justine or Melissa’s presence.
The City of Alexandria
Durrell, a lifelong ex-pat, drew on his experience living in Alexandria between 1942 - 1945 to conjure up the Levantine character of Alexandria: a Greco-Arab multi-ethnic hub filled with labyrinthine streets where inhabitants lose themselves in pursuit of intrigue. The reader becomes immersed in the machinations of the central characters and the topography of the Levant.
“We soon learn the geography of the place, from the handsome Rue Fuad to the meshed Arab backstreets, from the elegance of L’Etoile or the Cecil Hotel to the hashish cafés of the slums or the sandy approaches to the Western Desert. We see inside the mansions of rich cosmopolitans and diplomats[;] we visit stifling attic bedrooms, brothels and pleasure pavilions by the sea.”
(Jan Morris, The Guardian Online, 2012).
The Beauty of Romance
Modern love is murky. The Alexandria Quartet provides the reader with a series of interconnected stories told from different perspectives and after various time elapses.
The story reminds us that no single narrator can be trusted in matters of the heart or has access to all the facts; they remember details differently over time, mere fragments or approach with different psychological perspectives. Modern love can be romanticised, presented factually, intellectualised, rationalised, philosophised, but never entirely comprehended from a singular viewpoint.
For me, The Alexandria Quartet is a tetralogy I like to revisit from time to time; and one that I never leave without wanting to return to again to recheck my understanding of the events. Which narrator should I trust? For even our own words and actions will forever be open to interpretation.
Lawrence Durrell (1912 – 1990)
Durrell was born to colonial parents in Jalandher, India (1912), and spent most of his adult life as an ex-pat. He died in France of a stroke in 1990. During his life, he lived in Corfu (1935), a time depicted in Prospero’s Cell (1943) and by his brother, Gerald Durrell, in My Family and Other Animals (1954). Lawrence subsequently spent time in Egypt, Argentina, Yogoslavia (nonextant), Cyprus, and France. He prodigiously wrote wherever based, and also supplemented his writing by working for the British Council and the Foreign Office in the Diplomatic Corps.
The British Library maintains The Lawrence Durrell Collection: novels, poetry, essays, letters, travel and humour writing, dramas, and translation samples show the breadth of Durrell’s literary output (Wikipedia) and his contribution to British literature.
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Romance in literature is as hard to find as it is in real life! Which novels do you recommend?
I can also recommend:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera; and Isabelle Allende, The House of the Spirits.
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