On Thursday the 8th August we left Bathurst in a convoy of sorts with my brother-in-law Kevin and his good wife Sandy for a long weekend’s camping at Yellowsands on the Kwelera River a few kms north of East London. Kevin and Sandy had recently acquired a new Sherpa caravan which they wanted to put to the test, and we simply put clean bedding in the rooftop - and off we went. We chose to stay down on the river rather than up on the crowded terraces, and what an absolute pleasure it was. Very basic (the way we like it), but very clean, with great walks, the opportunity to learn to do a bit of basic fishing, and some great photo opportunities. The four day jaunt meant missing the Bathurst Country Affair which is an annual village highlight that pulls in people from all over to participate in a wide range of real country events while enjoying all the venues that the village has to offer in terms of food, drink and general merriment. I believe that this year it was an absolute blast.
The time on the river away from the non-stop pressure of trying to finish the house and get on with the contracts in hand ………….. our first break in 18 months ………… gave me the opportunity to reflect for a little while on the name of this blog, “Spirit of Place”, and the influences that originally brought me to define what I read, the places I visited and the people that I met in terms of the essential landscape values that this phrase evokes.
This reflection lead me back (as always), to Justine , whom Durrell’s narrator, Darley, loves and has a passionate affair with. Justine was largely the success that it was because of the novel-within-the novel called Moeurs.
Moeurs ("Mores") is another parallel and fictional novel by a former husband of Justines, which the narrator reads obsessively in his search for clues about Justine's past life. In doing so, he learns of her propensity for many lovers, her complex sexuality, and her perpetual angst. He also discovers a diary that is kept by Justine, and quotes long passages from it in telling her story. Conveniently, all the other main characters have read Mouers, too and as a device it allows Durrell to offer Justine’s early life as a discussion among the other characters. It also allows him add to her legend and her mystery, because we learn that this Arnauti never figured Justine out either. Here I could go on forever about the complexities of the Quartet, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea …………… suffice to say for the moment that Justine changed me forever.
Durrell quotes, “I dream of a book powerful enough to contain the elements of her—but it is not the sort of book to which we are accustomed these days. . . . I would set my own book free to dream.” (Durrell’s italics.) and with this phrase he hooked me ….. then - and now …………… he had me with that phrase, “I dream of a book.” I did. I still do. Here I should perhaps mention as an aside (if you are doubtful of Durrell’s credentials and contributions to English literature), that while the notes and thoughts about the novel Justine may have taken a few years to gel in his mind, he actually wrote the novel in five weeks, and his editor, one T.S.Eliot, chose not to change one single thing in the original manuscript prior to publication.
But I digress. At much the same time I was reading Justine and the rest of the Alexandria Quartet, I was also reading Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinian short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator. His best known books are probably Fictions and The Aleph. Published in the 1940s, they are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, philosophy, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, and mythology. His works have been considered by some critics to mark the beginning of the magic realist movement in 20th century. The nature of his stories sparked something in me which would take up a great deal of my “thinking” time …………. I would play a ‘Borges’ trick on Durrell.
At the time that I was reading these books Durrell was living in Sommieres, France …………. a relatively short drive to Avignon (which he used as the base for his Quintet - the first book of which “Monsieur - The Prince of Darkness”, I had him inscribe for my eldest son Caradoc who was named for a character in another of his novels - The Revolt of Aphrodite).
Anyway - I had read that Durrell had a favorite haunt in Avignon ……….. a little backstreet bookshop where he would oft scour the shelves in search of inspiration. Wouldn’t it be simply the best practical joke ever if one day - while searching the shelves - he came across a copy of the book Mouers by Jacob Arnauti …………. the very book that he had invented as his vehicle for tracking Justine’s past in the Quartet. I spent a great many hours copying all of the excerpts from Mouers in the four novels, and then began filling in the blanks. The idea was to publish it on paper of the period and bind it in the manner in which books were bound at the time ………. scuff it and age it ………… and somewhere within the text leave some small reference as to the origination of the idea. With all of this done there was only one problem …………. Arnauti wrote Mouers in French, and struggling through the early Seventies in London, and subsequently on the farm out near Ewelme in Oxfordshire with my young family, I simply had not the resources to hire a translator and get the whole publishing thing done.
No matter - it gave me tremendous pleasure while it lasted, along with the opportunity to really get to know one of the english language’s greatest ever exponents.
YELLOWSANDS
CASTING A NET
CORMORANTS
REFLECTING LOGS
