From the Elephant's Back

by Lawrence Durrell

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

  Poets Under the Bed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Corfu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  [13]. 1 Corinthians 12:14.

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

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

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

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

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

  [19]. The sweet lemon.

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

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

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

  The Island of the Rose

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  [14]. Hippodamus of Miletus (498–408 BCE) is described by Aristotle as the first man to plan a city in order to shape society. Durrell’s interest in city structures here foreshadows his later work in The Alexandria Quartet and The Revolt of Aphrodite, both of which are concerned with how urban space influences its residents.

  [15]. Strabo (63 BCE–24 CE) is known primarily for his seventeen-volume work, Geographica.

  [16]. Stadia are an ancient measurement of length. Approximately 14,800 metres or nine miles.

  [17]. Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) wrote of Rhodes in his Natural History.

  [18]. King Richard I (1157–1199) resided briefly in Byzantine Rhodes during the Third Crusade before continuing to Cyprus.

  [19]. The accretion of the Dodecanese Islands to Greece was completed in 1947 with the Peace Treaty with Italy, and union was formalized in 1948.

  [20]. Mussolini imposed a formal program of Italianization on the island, but it did not succeed.

  [21]. Although the Dodecanese are literally “twelve islands,” they include 150 smaller islands.

  [22]. Lago was governor from 1923 to 1936. In contrast to his successor, his term is seen as harmonious and peaceful.

  [23]. Cesare Maria De Vecchi (1884–1959) was a lifelong fascist. He is also responsible for much of the oppression of Rhodes’ Jewish population prior to their removal to concentration camps by the Nazis.

  [24]. Charles Thomas Newton (1816–1894) published this work in 1865 while professor of archaeology at University College, London.

  [25]. Newton 207.

  [26]. The Homeric epithet in The Iliad is actually “white-gleaming” αργινοεις (2.656), often translated as “chalky.”

  [27]. Demetrius I (337–283 BCE) unsuccessfully besieged Rhodes and invented several new siege engines to do so. Durrell’s source is Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius.

  [28]. The Knights Hospitaller built the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes in the fourteenth century, after 1309.

  [29]. This garden is where Durrell lived in the Villa Cleobolus during his time on Rhodes.

  [30]. Durrell is drawing from the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor (758–818) in which the remains of the Colossus are reported as sold by Turkish conquerors to a Jew from Edessa.

  [31]. Cecil Torr (1857–1928) wrote both Rhodes in Ancient Times (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1885) and Rhodes in Modern Times (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1887). Durrell also refers to Torr several times in Reflections on a Marine Venus.

  [32]. In Ancient Greek materials, nereids are water nymphs who are typically helpful to sailors. In Modern Greek myths, they are any form of nymph or fairy, typically quasi-demonic.

  [33]. Sir Sacheverell Sitwell, 6th Baronet CH (November 15, 1897–October 1, 1988) was an English writer, best known as an art critic and writer on architecture, particularly the baroque. He was the younger brother of Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell.

  [34]. Sitwell’s collection, Canons of Giant Art: Twenty Torsos in Heroic Landscapes (1933).

  Can Dreams Live on When Dreamers Die?

  [1]. Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius (395–423), a Roman philosopher, wrote two books on The Dream of Scipio that make this stratification of dreams, as did Calcidius, a fourth-century translator of Plato from whom Chaucer drew materials. Durrell may also be referring to Artemidorus, a Greek geographer of the second and first centuries BCE who wrote the five-volume Oneirocritica, or The Interpretation of Dreams, though he does not expressly make this same classification.

  [2]. Asclepius is the Greek god of medicine and healing. In the Cult of Asclepius, the injured or sick would make a pilgrimage to the temple where they would undergo a variety of cleansing rituals followed by spending the night in the sanctuary, after which they would report their dreams to the priest for interpretation and prescription. The god would visit the pilgrims during sleep to prescribe or carry out healing. Epidaurus was the most famous asclepieion, but there were many others, including Butrint in Albania, a short journey by boat from where Durrell had lived in Kalami.

  [3]. Both sites are well preserved, and Epidaurus is famous for the astonishing acoustics of its theatre. Kos is near to the Dodecanese, where Durrell served at this time, and was home to Hippocrates (460–370 BCE), from whom we derive the Hippocratic Oath.

  [4]. Durrell later returned to Epidaurus with his wife Nancy after parting ways with Henry Miller en route, who was planning to return to America for fear of the impending invasion of Greece. This previous 1939 visit is not otherwise recorded.

  [5]. Henry Miller describes a visit to Mycenae with George Katsimbalis in his 1941 book The Colossus of Maroussi, which Durrell had read by this time.

  [6]. In the Cult of Asclepius, the god might appear to the pilgrims during their night in the temple.

  [7]. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which organized relief for the victims of World War II.

  [8]. Like penny dreadfuls, yellowbacks were inexpensive sensational or adventure novels.

  [9]. Carl Jung (1875–1961), the famous Swiss psychiatrist, wrote to Durrell on December 15, 1947 via the BBC after reading this piece. Jung notes, “Having had some experience of a similar kind I should very much like to know in what your further observations consist” as he was keen “to learn about your hellenic dreams” (Jung n. pag.). Only two letters are extant from Jung, the second sent directly to Durrell in Argentina, in which he responds to Durrell’s comments on Georg Groddeck. Jung’s interest focuses on Durrell’s dream experiences during travel with the implication that these express the “extraordinary relations between our unconscious mind and what one calls time and space” (n. pag.).

  Family Portrait

  [1]. Modern day Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Slovenia, and Croatia in the Balkans. Durrell served in communist Yugoslavia from 1948 to 1952 while Josip Broz Tito was in power. He was first posted there when Tito broke ties with Stalin’s Cominform.

  [2]. This plurality of cultures, ethnicities, and politics was always “the problem” and has ultimately led to the dissolution of the state. Ljubljana is now the capital of Slovenia; Zagreb is the capital of Croatia; Belgrade is the capital of Serbia; and Skoplje is the capital of Macedonia.

  [3]. Sir John Falstaff is a comic yet complex character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, Henry IV, Part II, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

  [4]. Dubrovnik is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and idyllic city on the coast of Croatia.

  [5]. A major city in Serbia known for construction and industry.

  [6]. The nerve centre.

  [7]. Durrell voiced his dislike of Marxism beginning in the 1930s, despite its fashionable nature among poetry circles of the time. Despite his anti-establishment pose and critique of social norms, as well as his critique of consumerism and capitalism, Durrell never voiced support or serious interest in Marxism. This is most likely due to his alignment with a variety of anti-authoritarian views (Gifford, “Anarchist” 57–71; Gifford, “Surrealism’s” 36–64) until his posting to Yugoslavia, after which a tone of conservatism entered his public comments, though his fiercest critiques of consumerism and cultural hegemony were in the novels of The Revolt of Aphrodite (Tunc and Nunquam), published in 1968 and 1970.

  [8]. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which are German but richly illustrated in many editions.

  Letter in the Sofa

  [1]. Rhodes had been hard pressed under a fascist and anti-Semitic Italian governor and then the Nazi occupation. In 1944, 1,673 Jews were taken from Rhodes and transported to Auschwitz where approximately 150 survived. A Rebecca Capelouto was among the survivors, and she may be Durrell’s inspiration in this text.

  The Moonlight of Your Smile

  [1]. Durrell initial
ly moved to Cyprus as an English teacher at the Pancyprean Gymnasium in order to spend his time writing, but he was drawn into public relations work for the British government and editorship of the Cyprus Review during Greek agitation for union with Greece and independence from British rule.

  [2]. Ultimately, these crises included the planting of an incendiary bomb in Durrell’s garage and his flight from the island after having been informed he had become a target (MacNiven 439). This was during the struggle for Enosis, union with Greece.

  [3]. Durrell edited the Cyprus Review from 1954 to 1956. It had been run as a vehicle for British propaganda since 1942 but was meant to become a vehicle for Cypriot pride as well as literary and artistic materials (MacNiven 418). It is unrelated to the modern journal Cyprus Review.

  [4]. The National Organization of Cypriot Fighters who fought for union of Cyprus with Greece.

  [5]. Durrell left Cyrpus under much different circumstances, and his comments here minimize the desperation of the situation and his personal fears of assassination after an incendiary bomb was left in his garage and Greek friends told him he was a potential target. Durrell fled Cyprus quickly on August 26, 1956.

  [6]. After fleeing Cyprus and leaving his house in Bellapaix, Durrell returned to London in August 1956 with little money and lived with Claude, who would become his third wife, in friends’ homes and with his mother for a time. It was a poor homecoming after so many years in service abroad, and they moved to France little more than four months later, very early in 1957.

  [7]. At this point in 1960, after four years out of British government work, it was unlikely Durrell would accept another posting for any reason, but the text may date to the period prior to his publication of Bitter Lemons and Justine in 1957 when the financial necessity would likely have been stronger, and it is possible this was initially meant to form a scene in Bitter Lemons.