From the Elephant's Back: Collected Essays & Travel Writings

by Lawrence Durrell

  [5]. Miller, Tropic 3.

  [6]. Walt Whitman’s 1855 poetic magnum opus.

  [7]. The Durrell–Miller correspondence lasted from 1935 to Miller’s death in 1980. Two critical editions are published, the first edited by George Wickes and the second by Ian MacNiven.

  [8]. All three are common self-descriptions for Miller found in both his letters and Tropic of Cancer. The “gold standard” is a significant theme in the novel and also reflects the financial turbulence of the interwar years.

  [9]. Of epileptic origins in classification. Miller also uses this term to self-describe (Henry Miller On 91). Durrell’s sense is tied to Kretschmer’s types, an early psychological classification system for personalities: normal, hysteroid, cycloid, schizoid, and epileptoid. Also see Durrell’s 1937 poem “Ballad of Kretschmer’s Types” (253–54).

  [10]. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) and Hamsun (1859–1952) are frequent references in Miller’s works. Maria Bloshteyn contends, “the impact of Dostoyevsky on Miller is enormous” (vii), and Miller describes Hamsun as “that Dostoevski of the North” when discussing a letter he received from Hamsun (Sexus 367). Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) and August Strindberg (1849–1912) are also frequent references for Miller. In Tropic of Cancer, he recounts visiting Strindberg’s rooms in the Pension Orfila (180–84).

  [11]. Miller’s first two novels were published posthumously as Moloch and Crazy Cock. As Durrell notes in his letter commenting on the book The Happy Rock, “I am probably the only person who has read all the Cancer ones as well as the two early bad novels and the original Tropic MSS” (Durrell–Miller 200).

  [12]. Miller discusses all these topics in several places as well as in his correspondence with Durrell. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a major influence on Miller (Nandyal 11–14). Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) was largely known for his book Decline of the West, which posited a historical process of rising and falling cultures. Miller highly valued Elie Faure’s works on art history, and he wrote a lengthy critical reflection on Lawrence, The World of Lawrence. Miller was less kind to James Joyce in his comments but did integrate a section of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake into Tropic of Cancer (286).

  [13]. Sigmund Freud, Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939), Carl Jung, and Otto Rank were referred to frequently by both Durrell and Miller. Miller knew Rank personally in Paris and New York.

  [14]. Miller eventually broke from the Surrealists based on their communism, which conflicted with his own anarchism (Gifford, “Surrealism’s” 42–45). See Miller’s “An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere” (151–96).

  [15]. The “mechanistic” approach to the unconscious is typical of critiques of the communist component of Surrealism.

  [16]. Miller’s use of Surrealist techniques is well-established, as is his admiration for several Surrealists, but he remained markedly outside of Surrealism as a movement. Miller states, “Surrealism is the secret language of our time, the only spiritual counterpart to the materialist activities of the socialist forces that are now driving us to the wall. The seeming discrepancies between the language of Breton, Lenin, or Marx, are only superficial” (“An Open” 178). This same difference is asserted as “it is a mistake to speak about Surrealism. There is no such thing: there are only Surrealists….The desire to posit an ism, to isolate the germ and cultivate it, is a bad sign. It means impotency” (181). Durrell’s position is similar and stated clearly in his letters to Miller (Durrell, Durrell–Miller 17–19), but he was more directly involved than Miller with the English Surrealists, many of whom adopted Miller’s anarchist revision to Surrealism.

  [17]. A group of young actors known for the 1937 film Dead End.

  [18]. Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) was the pseudonym of Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, whom Miller admired greatly. Miller also wrote a book on Lawrence, The World of Lawrence, but it was only published posthumously.

  [19]. The Obelisk Press was run by Jack Kahane and published several of Miller’s works as well as Durrell’s The Black Book. Tropic of Cancer was first published in 1934. Though the Obelisk published pornographic materials, it also included serious literary works by Richard Aldington, James Joyce, Cyril Connolly, and Frank Harris.

  [20]. Although Miller wrote in the first person, in many respects his “Henry Miller” is also a character, and the novels are unreliable as autobiography.

  [21]. D.H. Lawrence. The Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Fanny Hill, and Tropic of Cancer trial in England was a landmark legal decision in censorship of obscene materials. Also see Durrell’s Preface to Lady Chatterley’s Lover (vii–xi).

  [22]. Orwell discusses Miller’s Tropic of Cancer extensively as well as Durrell’s The Black Book in his famous essay “Inside the Whale” (9–50). Durrell and Orwell disagreed publicly over The Booster, the periodical produced through the Villa Seurat by Durrell, Miller, and Perlès (Orwell, “Back” 30–31). Tyrus Miller identifies Orwell’s essay on Miller as the quintessential moment of Late Modernism (1–9, 209–10).

  [23]. Aldous Huxley’s (1894–1963) comic novel Antic Hay was first published in 1923.

  [24]. A general term for literary work of the Sitwell siblings, Edith (1887–1964), Osbert (1892–1969), and Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988). Thomas Balston, in 1928, compiled a list of their works published under this title as well.

  [25]. Both James Joyce (1882–1941) and D.H. Lawrence faced censorship difficulties due to the sexual content of their works.

  [26]. T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) was by this time known for his religious sequence Four Quartets.

  [27]. Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) was an English naval officer famous for winning the Battle of Trafalgar. Durrell was fond of using Nelson as a target for critiques of British prudery, such as in his poem “A Ballad of the Good Lord Nelson” (113–14).

  [28]. Charles Edward Mudie’s lending library had a strong influence on Victorian fiction by emphasizing a three-volume structure and family values.

  [29]. A generic term for unionized writers groups. This is likely in reference to the Writer’s Guild of America, East, which was founded in 1912.

  [30]. Marie Stopes (1880–1958) was a eugenicist and innovator in family planning who wrote the sex manual (while claiming to be a virgin) Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of the Sex Difficulties. She openly supported forced sterilization and Adolf Hitler during World War II, even sending him poetry. In contrast, stoats are weasel-like animals whose winter coats are used for the royal fur ermine. They are known for their promiscuous breeding, about which Durrell would have likely been aware through his brother Gerald Durrell, who mentions stoats in his animal books and pioneered captive breeding programs for small mammals.

  [31]. “Art for Art’s Sake.” The notion is often tied to Symbolist literature and Oscar Wilde, but the Latin version appears in MGM’S logo with a roaring lion.

  [32]. A character played by Mickey Rooney in a series of sixteen comic films from 1937 to 1958 as well as conservative public service announcements. They promote traditional American values in a small-town environment.

  [33]. In this sense, a utopia.

  [34]. A famous Ancient Greek aphorism inscribed on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi: γνωθι σεαυτόν.

  [35]. Miller wrote in praise of Durrell’s typescript of The Black Book, “You can grasp it again when you think of history as quite meaningless—as a repetition ad infinitum of the wrong way of living, which is never overcome on the historical plane, by new ideologies, new wars, new revolutions, new conversions, etc.” (Durrell and Miller 60).

  [36]. The 1931 film directly by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff as the monster, not Mary Shelley’s novel of the same title.

  [37]. Paraphrased (Miller, Tropic of Capricorn 322–23).

  [38]. Broadway Follies of 1943 likely refers to Ziegried Follies of 1943 on Broadway as well as the 1945 film Ziegfried Follies. Quai de Brumes (Port of Shadows) is a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Carné considered the best of the Poetic Realism
movement. La Femme de Boulanger (The Baker’s Wife) in a 1938 French film directed by Marcel Pagnol. The Lost Horizon is a famous 1937 American film by Frank Capra based on James Hinton’s novel of the same name—it is set in Shangri-La amidst highly politicized pre-World War II international tensions. The Phantom President is a 1932 American musical film directed by Norman Taurog about a presidential look-alike used to woo voters. Orage (Storm) is a 1938 French film by Marc Allégret about infidelity and romantic complications amidst relatively free sensuality. Un Chien d’Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a very short 1929 French surrealist film directed by Luis Bruñel and co-written with Salvador Dalí—it is probably the most famous of the surrealist film experiments. Le Sang d’un Poete (The Blood of a Poet) is Jean Cocteau’s 1930 French film and the first part of his Orpheus Trilogy.

  [39]. St. Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) Confessions is the first autobiography, as such, and hence influenced Miller’s chosen novelistic form significantly. Lao Tse was the central figure of Taoism, and the Gita is the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. Honoré de Balzac’s (1799–1850) novel Séraphîta is based on an androgynous person caught between love relationships with a man and a woman. The Polish ballet dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950) is referred to several times in works by both Durrell and Miller. In a letter to Miller, Durrell recounts, “I always remember the time I brought you back Nijinsky’s letters from London—how you took the book, opened it, and walked out of the room (crowded with merry makers) into the street—there you absently leaned against a lamp post and read it from cover to cover—or almost” (Durrell–Miller 201). Vasily Rozanov (1856–1919) was a controversial Russian writer who focused on sexuality. William Blake (1757–1827) was an English Romantic poet often tied to early anarchism, the visual component of his poetic works, and spiritualism. Durrell alludes and refers to Blake frequently in his works.

  [40]. Patagonian is in relation to Ferdinand Magellan’s mythic race of giants in South America. Caliban is the monstrous son of the witch Sycorax in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

  Studies in Genius VI

  [1]. Durrell first encountered Groddeck’s Book of the It while in Alexandria and wrote to Miller about it in September 1944: “I’m absolutely bowled over by Groddeck’s Book of the It—it’s simply terrific. I have written England to send you a copy” (Durrell, Durrell–Miller 175). Groddeck was also greatly admired by W.H. Auden (Mengham 165) who would inscribe and send copies of The Book of the It to friends. Since Horizon originally published this essay and was co-edited by Auden’s close friend Stephen Spender, who was with Auden during the time he discovered Groddeck, it is likely this essay would have been known to him. This essay has also appeared as the introduction to Groddeck’s The Book of the It, and it refers to Groddeck’s other works, from which Durrell borrowed plots for The Alexandria Quartet, such as Semira’s nose from The Unknown Self (Gifford, “Noses” 2–4), and in it Clea discovers with her new hand, “IT can paint!” (Durrell, Alexandria 874). Groddeck is explicitly mentioned in The Avignon Quintet. Groddeck is out of favour in psychoanalytic communities and was discounted by Carl Jung (1875–1961) in his brief correspondence with Durrell. For more on Durrell’s use of Groddeck, see Christensen’s “An Overenthusiastic Response” (63–94) and Sobhy’s “Alexandria as Groddeck’s It” (26–39).

  [2]. Most quotations from Groddeck have not been identified. This anti-authoritarian theme in Groddeck may have been a significant part of his appeal to Durrell at this time, which coincides with his publishing several works through anarchist presses, most notably “Elegy on the Closing of the French Brothels” (30–32) in George Woodcock’s NOW in 1947, Zero and Asylum in the Snow through Circle Editions 1947, “Eight Aspects of Melissa” (1–8) in Circle in 1946, and many poems in the second and third issues of Robert Duncan’s Experimental Review in 1940–1941.

  [3]. First published as Das Buch vom Es in 1923. Durrell’s copy would have been the 1923 printing by Funk & Wagnalls. Durrell’s annotated copy of Groddeck’s The Unknown Self is held by the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria. A later copy, the 1951 Vision printing, is also held by the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, as well as seven other volumes of Groddeck’s work. However, the Morris Library’s holdings are mainly in French, and only Exploring the Unconcsious predates this article in printing (1933). Durrell’s first copies appear lost during his travels after Egypt.

  [4]. Groddeck, Book of the It 15–16. Durrell quotes this passage in a letter to Henry Miller, February 28, 1946 (Miller–Durrell 195).

  [5]. “A writer who, from personal motives, vainly asserts that he has nothing to do with the rigours of pure science. I am speaking of George Groddeck….We need feel no hesitation in finding a place for Groddeck’s discovery in the structure of science” (Freud, The Ego 23).

  [6]. E. Graham Howe (1896–1975) was a theosophist and psychoanalyst whose works Durrell had reviewed in the 1930s.

  [7]. René Descartes (1596–1650) famously proposed “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am).

  [8]. Hermann Graf Keyserling (1880–1946) was a German philosopher who studied under and was treated by Groddeck.

  [9]. Keyserling 12.

  [10]. William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (1824–1907) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), both scientists, are held up as examples of determinism and Victorian scientific rationalism.

  [11]. Otto Rank (1884–1939) was a psychoanalyst close to Freud whom Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin knew well. Durrell first read Rank’s The Trauma of Birth in 1938 and wrote an essay on Rank that year—it was declined by Purpose, which later published his essay on Howe, “The Simple Art of Truth” (MacNiven 201). Purpose also published Groddeck’s essays in the 1920s.

  [12]. Groddeck’s novel Thomas Weltlein was published in 1919 and translated into English as The Seeker of Souls. Freud had significant praise for this novel.

  [13]. The Latin term for the triangular bone at the base of the spine and back of the pelvis.

  [14]. Freud derived the term for the Id from Groddeck (das Es, literally “the It” in English). Likewise, “Unknown” is Unbewusst in psychoanalytic terminology, typically rendered in English as “Unconscious.”

  [15]. Shri Krishna Prem in The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita quoting Srimad Bhagavada (167). Shri Krishna Prem was born Ronald Henry Nixon and taught English at Lucknow University but changed his name when he studied under the university’s vice-chancellor, Yashoda Ma. The two founded an Ashram at the Radha-Krishna temple they built in Mirtola, India. He was the first Westerner to practice Vaishnavism.

  [16]. The English version of The Book of the It has been cut; it is not the full text of the original German edition.

  [17]. This chapter is divided into subsections on “Massage and Psychotherapy,” “The Body’s Middleman,” and “Bowel Function.”

  Constant Zarian

  [1]. Zarian (1885–1969) was an Armenian poet and writer whom Durrell first met on Corfu in the 1930s. He escaped the Armenian Genocide by fleeing to Bulgaria but later returned to Istanbul. He taught at Yerevan State University (1922–1925), Columbia University at the same time as the Frankfurt School in exile (1944–1946), and the American University of Beirut (1952–1954). Zarian knew Vladimir Lenin in Geneva, where both lectured, and he befriended Apollinaire, Pablo Picasso, Céline, and Paul Éluard, among other artists and writers. His autobiography, Countries and Gods, covers the period when he was on Corfu in Durrell’s company. Also see Vartan Matiossian’s “Kostan Zarian and Lawrence Durrell: A Correspondence” (75–101).

  [2]. Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916) was a Symbolist Belgian poet.

  [3]. George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) was a passionate supporter of the Armenian cause and the Armenian language. He also wrote English Grammar and Armenian and Armenian Grammar and English, and he continued to translate Armenian materials until his death.

  [4]. Respighi (1879–1936) was a famous Italian composer who set several of Zarian’s text
s to music, though he does not appear to have ever set this specific work.

  [5]. Zarian was a professor of comparative literature at this time.

  [6]. Durrell’s anti-communist sentiments were already well-established in the 1930s and intensified after his residence in Yugoslavia. Whether this derived from conservative inclinations or his associations with anarchist authors remains a critical debate.

  [7]. Bloomsbury is an area of London but also identifies a literary group that dominated British Modernism. It was strongly associated with the Fabian Socialists, though it was not as strongly tied to communism, per se.

  [8]. George Bernard Shaw and J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964) were both prominent socialists, and Haldane eventually became an outspoken communist, though professionally he was a geneticist.

  [9]. Again, the uncertainty over Durrell’s own politics is important here. Durrell often voiced his resentment for socialist, Marxist, as well as conservative and retrograde values. The conflict in which he places Zarian between socialist and reactionary politics suggests an anti-authoritarian, personalist third option. At the time Durrell wrote this article, he was completing four years of service for the British Council in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, following Josip Broz Tito’s break with Joseph Stalin and the Cominform in 1948.

  [10]. The Fabian Society is a British Socialist movement famously associated with the Bloomsbury circle of writers and intellectuals. It is closely tied to the Labour Party.

  [11]. Durrell employed these terms in his own work, The Alexandria Quartet, only a few years later, such as in the introductory note to Balthazar. This suggests he is articulating his own notions here rather than Zarian’s.

  [12]. Both works are from the early 1930s. Nearly all the texts by Zarian to which Durrell refers were originally published in Boston in the periodical Hairenik.

  [13]. Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) was a Russian novelist best known for his satiric work.

  [14]. See Zarian, Girk‘ diwts‘aznergut‘eants‘ (1978).

  [15]. Given the political nature of Durrell’s discussion of Zarian, his alignment with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence, and William Blake is telling. Blake is often regarded, with William Godwin, as a forerunner to modern anti-authoritarian anarchism, as is Shelley, who married Godwin’s daughter Mary. Simon Casey has established the link between Lawrence, who was deeply sympathetic to Blake and Godwin, and anarchism (2–12). Byron is the most suitable alignment based on his deep ties to Armenian literature and culture as well as his involvement in revolutionary movements of independence.