The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea by Lawrence Durrell (PDF)

Description

A four-part story of passion and betrayal in the Mediterranean—voted one of the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the twentieth century. The Alexandria Quartet is a striking and sensuous masterpiece, breathing vivid life into each of its unforgettable characters and the dusty Mediterranean city in which they live. Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years before, during, and after World War II, the books follow the lives of a circle of friends and lovers, including sensitive Darley, passionate Justine, philosophical Balthazar, and elegant Clea. Written in Durrell’s trademark evocative prose, these four novels explore the central theme of modern love, building into a remarkable whole that the New York Times hailed as “one of the most important works of our time.” This ebook features a new introduction by Jan Morris.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Having read a lot of Gerald Durrell when I was younger, and fully accepted his description of his brother’s writing, it took me a while to get to this one. Then, when I saw that Jan Morris wrote the introduction, I thought perhaps there was more to this than I had realized. Now that I have read it, I understand both points of view. I would not say that Lawrence is a very good writer, but this is an incredibly ambitious undertaking, four interlocked novels each playing on major themes of Art, Truth, Love, and Death (capital letters fully intended).Justine: The themes in this book are Love and Alexandria (or the City). This is a love story, of the man meets woman and then falls for another married woman type. The first woman is Melissa, a blond dancer who is poor and has little talent, but remains innocent despite her sordid life. The second woman is Justine, dark, sultry, and beautiful, a high-society woman married to Nessim, who has any number of affairs, a tortured mind, and a sordid past. The man, who remains nameless, is the main character who takes the reader through Alexandrian society, introducing other characters and the social mores. There is a languor to the people and scenes, and a sense of poverty, squalid locations, and long nights of drinking and smoking, which persists through the other books but is strongest here. The prose of this one is perhaps the most belabored of all four, full of obscure and archaic words stuffed uncomfortably into already overburdened sentences. There are snippets of other languages, dashes, ellipses, exclamations, questions, and oh so much romantic pain. The narrative is non-linear too, and presented more in the form of scenes, although as the book continues there are actions that take place.Balthazar: The themes in this book are Truth and the Country. A clever conceit, this book is presented as an “interlinear” of the manuscript of the first book, which is given by Balthazar (a character of the first book) to the man, who now is occasionally referred to as Darley. Balthazar’s notes purport to tell Darley the truth about what took place in the events of the first book, and so this book revisits those events from a different perspective. As part of this, this book also pulls the foundation out from under the first book by fundamentally recasting aspects that Darley had believed to be true. This book also adds characters and stories, both of which are presented as having been present and having occurred as the same time as the events recounted in Justine. It also shifts the focus away from the city to the countryside around it, in particular the home of Nessim, by canals and among peasants.Mountolive: The themes in this book are Art and British disillusionment (?). A complete departure from the first two, this book is narrated by the British diplomat Mountolive, who was only briefly introduced in Balthazar. The locations and characters of this book shift away from those of the first two. Not only that, but the events of the first two, the loves, betrayals, disappearances, and all, are revealed to have been part of a larger diplomatic intrigue, each of the characters playing entirely different roles than earlier suspected. In addition to Mountolive, the novelist Pursewarden takes the center stage here. Both a writer and in the diplomatic service, he is many things to many people, apparently a brilliant author, and there are many statements and writings of his in this one that are clearly meant to be meaningful but often end up mystifying.Clea: The themes in this book are Death and the Sea. In this book, Darley returns to Alexandria from his island exile where he wrote the previous book(s). He encounters all his old friends and acquaintances, and ruminates on how they and the place have changed. With the advent of the Second World War, time has also entered a more linear progression. The male characters seem to have all become well-muscled, upright, and handsome, in contrast to their previous ill-nourished, bespectacled, or weak selves. Darley meets Clea again, the blond painter who appeared in the background of the previous books as a friend to many and lover to none. She seems the full package – compassionate, kind, talented, and attractive to all. In this book, the sea by Alexandria comes into focus, both because of the warships stationed in its port, and because of the excursions on the sea that Darley and Clea go on in her little boat. The city seems washed clean too, sparkling in the sun and with the wholesomeness the characters now have achieved with maturity. The whole book is something of a grand epilogue – it seems intended as a sequel to the previous three, but so much of it is spent in seeing where the characters are now and wrapping up loose ends. The prose of this one is the most simple, and almost straightforward.Do be warned though, there are stereotypes and racism here.

⭐A facebook friend , surprised that I had never read Alexandria Quartet recommended it. Well, from the first few pages it brought to mind middlebrow Galsworthy channeling Proust.I don’t mind the impressionistic scenes, can gloss over the exuberant prose and swallow the sometimes silly notions of Justine’s sexuality, but when Proust already did it all so masterfully in Recherche [multiple lenses/the memories of others/characters altering through time and time itself] should Quartet be considered a masterpiece or a merely an entertaining pastiche?Perhaps Durrell ratchets his game up one step by retelling the same story from other perspectives–yet Justine was published seven years after the film Roshomon was released, and thirty five years after the appearance of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s brilliant short story, In a Grove, which inspired it [ if you haven’t read this writer yet–you are in for a major treat].I suppose the ‘exotic’ Egyptian setting was the draw for post-war readers-and of course that the translation of Proust available at the time is often ponderous. Yet, reading Recherche, for all its difficulties, subtleties and byways is so much more rewarding, since Proust achieves the luminescence Durrell strives for but falls short of.As for the expat setting, I prefer that other exponent of excess, Malcolm Lowry, and though I read it many years ago, I recommend at least the first book in Naguib Mafouz’s Cairo Trilogy–a view of Egypt by an Egyptian master who was also influenced by Proust yet managed to produce something much more original than Durrell did, particularly in his late career.Maybe I am being too harsh, since I believe all literature builds on its predecessors – yet something isn’t quite right here–three and half stars -for effort.

⭐The writing is exquisitely beautiful and haunting. And the main theme that is developed — of place being the creator of experience and even personhood — is unique and intriguing. I fell in love with the characters, who were well developed, yet shifting and changing like shamans throughout the course of this quartet of books, bringing another dimension to the writing — that of perspective and the power of point of view, an important message for today’s world especially. I guess I loved everything about these spellbinding, page-turning books except what I deemed to be, in my point of view, an obsession with egoistic concerns and almost a hedonistic love of pleasure and the senses. For instance, the intrusion of World War II is barely discussed in the books, as if it was a mere nuisance to be endured. That is the quality that came up short as far as making it worthy of being called a classic, like War and Peace or Noah Gordon’s The Physician, two deeply philosophical books dealing meaningfully with the great themes of life on Earth. Durrell’s writing is powerful and his story epic, but the depth of meaning falls just short of greatness.

⭐Seldom, if ever, have I encountered a place more effectively evoked in a novel. While perhaps not quite so thoroughly, the main characters are also chiseled out very effectively, and in some ways the place and characters are used to more deeply develop each other. However, although telling much the same story from four different points of view is done more or less seamlessly, the story itself was not that compelling. Moreover, what appears at first to be an almost profound level of erudition on the part of the author morphs into something closer to pedantry. Never have I had to look up so many words in the reading of a single story, only to discover that the majority of such terms , as used, were archaic. It began to feel as if Durrell was just showing off. Likewise, often when he would be on the point of expressing the essence of an idea or conversation, he would lapse into French. While I recognize this is a literary device and in the style of the time, for a poor monoglot like me, it was very annoying.

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