The Alexandria Quartet

It is truly difficult to envision a novel in the English language published within the past 60 years that can even approach the magnificence of Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet.

It is simultaneously a psychological thriller, delving deep into the mysteries of the human heart. Justine's question, "Tell me who it was who invented the human heart, and show me the tree where he was hanged," encapsulates the profound exploration.

The novel is engaging, hilariously funny at times, and often spine-chilling. Despite my lack of patience for the so-called "occult," there are several supernatural passages in Alexandria that left me thoroughly frightened. And, of course, Durrell's prose, which borders on poetry throughout, is simply overwhelming.

Back in my younger days, when I had rather different priorities, I was with a group of friends, quenching our thirst and discussing the world's problems. The topic of people being not just black or white but shades of gray came up.

I went home and thought about this. At our next gathering, I presented my new perspective. I argued that people are more like gemstones, not because we are especially valuable but because we are multi-faceted. Depending on one's vantage point, a person will appear differently, with different facets showing.

Moreover, the light, the person's stance, and one's own attitude all influence how those facets refract or reflect light. In fact, much of the light we see may be reflected back from ourselves, so we are seeing aspects of ourselves in others.

And this is precisely the case with The Alexandria Quartet. As you progress deeper into the novel, you increasingly realize that your initial impression was incorrect, and you become more accepting of what you might initially have considered "character flaws," but now recognize as simply human traits.

I first read Alexandria when it was first published around 1960, and then re-read it about two years ago. The second reading was even more moving than the first, and I became convinced that this is a masterpiece that surpasses anything I've read since.

If you have a penchant for romance, poetry, political intrigue, psychological thrillers, and the truths of the human heart, I can think of no more suitable book.

rh

Vast but boring.

'The Alexandria Quartet' is allegedly Lawrence Durrell's magnum opus. Four novels ('Justine', 'Balthazar', 'Mountolive', and 'Clea') form this extensive work of over a thousand pages. The initial concept is an ambitious one: to recount the same events from the perspectives of various characters.

First, in 'Justine', a writer, Darley, the narrator retired on an island, recalls and writes about a love story he had with Justine, the wife of a wealthy Copt businessman named Nessim. However, his impressions of Justine's feelings, her relationship with her husband, and Nessim's attitude are misdirected. Balthazar, a friend of the trio who has read Darley's memoirs, will then write to him to correct his mistakes. This is the theme of 'Balthazar', the second installment that comes in to rectify the first. A hazy framework emerges; where the memories of one character construct a tale that the memories of another will deconstruct, only to build yet another one, different yet with not many more elements. Here is a very complex narrative structure, demanding and allowing Durrell to showcase all his skills. Yet, he doesn't stop there!

In 'Mountolive', he gives even more depth to this sentimental story through another character who was previously in the background, the British ambassador David Mountolive. An ex-lover of Leila, Nessim's mother, his position as a diplomat reveals itself to be not only more enlightening regarding the relationships of everyone thus far but also the implications of such relationships. I won't say more, but here the novels take a twisted political turn (the action taking place between the wars, when Egypt was still a British Protectorate...). Build, destroy, rebuild: memories are revealing themselves in as many shades as there are characters to remember them. Only 'Clea' breaks the pattern, as it is set not in the past but in the present. It tells, during WWII, of the meeting of Darley with Clea, a painter who also had a role to play in all the events related previously.

One can only be amazed in front of such an architecture, breathtaking and of such audacious richness! A vast array of characters parades before our eyes: cabaret dancers, diplomats, writers, police officers... Without even mentioning Alexandria itself, the city where these quartet of characters, each playing its own tune, sing the eternal song.

BUT... The writing style is, to say the least, disappointing. Beautiful, crafted, rich in ideas that are sometimes brilliant, very sensual -Durrell can undeniably be a poet too- yet it is soooo boring! It's excessive. Way too excessive. That's all. It slipped from my hands after barely 15 minutes of reading each time, let alone keeping up with it all over more than a thousand pages! It's too flowery, too pompous, too precious, too 'posh'... In short, Durrell knows how to construct a story, but he doesn't know how to tell it. Some passages are great, but the style is irritating to an unforgivable extent.

As far as I'm concerned, then, this is a failed masterpiece.

Today's review is worth four. I'm not reviewing just one book but a complete work: "The Alexandria Quartet" by Lawrence Durrell. This work consists of four books (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea) and it plays in a different league, being in the very first division of literature. Many authors cite Durrell and now I understand why. There are so many fragments that I would love to remember forever!

The first three books place the characters in the same time frame. But as you read one volume after another, it shows different views of the events and other aspects of the characters. When finally the fourth and last volume, Clea, which takes place six years after the others, arrives, the story (past, present, and future) and the relationships between them are finally (?) drawn. If there is one thing that defines this work, it is that it seems to encompass almost all the imaginable forms of love and their possible transformations.

One must approach the quartet with a calm spirit, without haste. Don't look here for a "fast thriller with short and concise sentences" because that way you won't connect with Justine. On the contrary, if you want to live Alexandria, be charmed and surprised by poetic, profound, and vital texts, and get to know absolutely imperfect characters (whose aspects you will discover little by little), this is your book.

The only drawback of admiring this work is that it can make you more critical of others. One should not be carried away by that impulse. To enjoy more in general in life, one must avoid comparing everything to the great works. That's why there are great and small pleasures. Can you guess to which category "The Quartet" belongs?

"-Look! - she exclaimed. - Five different images of the same subject. If I were a writer, I would try to achieve a multidimensional presentation of the characters, a kind of prismatic vision. Why does people only show one profile at a time?"

Complete review and some curiosities at https://denmeunpapelillo.net/el-cuart...

The Alexandria Quartet is a remarkable literary work that consists of four distinct yet interconnected books. Each book not only complements the previous ones but also undermines them in a fascinating way.

The four characters whose names are given to each book are just a few among the plethora of characters that inhabit the vibrant, atmospheric, and complex world of Alexandria as experienced by the narrator(s). The fact that these particular characters are chosen to name the books doesn't necessarily mean they are the main protagonists of the entire quartet. In fact, by the time we reach the fourth book (Clea), we realize who the unlikely main protagonist is and how the narrator's perception of him has changed throughout the books, finally according him his central place in the novel.

The quartet is constructed in a layered manner, similar to an archaeological site. Each book is like an excavation of one of these layers by the narrator. All he has to work with is the knowledge available to him at that time, and based on these fragments of knowledge, he constructs his reality. However, each newly excavated layer provides additional facts that were not known to him at the previous level, and these facts have a profound impact on his understanding (and ours) of reality. His understanding of the people close to him, their motivations, his loves and relationships, and reality itself are all dismantled as more knowledge becomes available.

The greatest subversion of the narrator's perceived reality occurs between the first and second books (Justine and Balthazar). This experience is both mind-boggling for the narrator and for the reader. It becomes clear that reality is not absolute but rather a subjective perception, and the picture we draw of it is always provisional and contingent on the knowledge we have at a specific time. So, the narrator is faced with the challenge of incorporating this new knowledge into his story of Alexandria, which changes his perception of reality in the deepest sense. This also has a significant impact on his understanding of the world around him, but more importantly, on his notion of Self and of Truth (always capitalized in the novel).

Brimming with meta-fiction, the novel playfully explores the concept that if reality is perceived differently by different people, with all narratives equally valid, then perhaps life itself is a selected fiction for each person that skews their view of reality. Consequently, even memory cannot be relied upon as an absolute notion. When new knowledge intrudes upon the memory of what is perceived as reality, the frame of reference is disrupted, and memory, and indeed reality itself, reassemble in a new pattern of reference that will continuously shift as more knowledge and different perceptions become available.

I wholeheartedly agree with Jan Morris, who wrote the introduction to the edition I read, that the Alexandria Quartet is "one of a kind and, as I see it, on the whole, a masterpiece." It is a work that challenges our perception of reality, memory, and self, and invites us to explore the complex and ever-shifting nature of these fundamental concepts.

What is he talking about?

He is discussing various profound and complex themes. He mentions the multiplicity of sexes and how only demotic Greek seems to make distinctions among them. The sexual offerings are astonishing in their variety and abundance, yet the place doesn't seem happy. The symbolic lovers of the free Hellenic world are replaced by something different and subtly androgynous. He describes Alexandria as the great winepress of love, with those who come out of it being the sick, the solitaries, and the prophets, all deeply wounded in the sex.

He also vividly描绘s the empty cadences of sea-water, licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouths of the delta, and boiling upon deserted beaches. The sails, if any, die before the land shadows them, and wreckage is washed up on the pediments of islands, eroded by the weather and stuck in the blue maw of water.

For artists, he says, there is a joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated them in daily life, fulfilling destiny in its true potential - the imagination. Days become the spaces between dreams and the shifting floors of time, of acting, and of living out the topical. Justine would say that they had been trapped in the projection of a powerful and deliberate will - the gravitational field that Alexandria threw down about its chosen exemplars.

This book continues in this vein. Supposedly, Lawrence Durrell was not a very good poet, so he wrote a novel as a disguise, infiltrating his bad poetry into it. Readers might be tricked, thinking they are reading a novel when really they are just reading his bad poetry again. But the author is not fooled. They see his bad poetry and now his bad prose. They refuse to read more than twenty pages of this book, and even that was too much. It is a pretentious piece of work.

The words of Pursewarden, "Si quisieras ser, no digo original sino tan sólo contemporáneo, podrías ensayar un juego con cuatro cartas en forma de novela; atravesando cuatro historias con un eje común, por así decir, y dedicando cada una de ellas a los cuatro vientos," offer an intriguing concept. It suggests a unique way of creating a novel, by using four interconnected stories. This approach could bring a new perspective and depth to the narrative.

The quartet of Alexandria, which includes Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea, seems to follow this idea. Each book in the series likely explores different aspects of a common theme or set of characters.

Pursewarden also states, "Escúchame, lector, pues tú mismo eres el artista." This emphasizes the role of the reader in interpreting and creating meaning from the text. The reader becomes an active participant in the artistic process, adding their own insights and perspectives.

Overall, the works in the quartet of Alexandria and the words of Pursewarden invite us to think about the nature of literature, the relationship between author and reader, and the possibilities of creative expression.

The desire to be near the beloved object initially stems not from the idea of possessing it. Instead, it is simply to allow the two experiences to compare themselves, much like reflections in different mirrors. This comparison enriches the understanding of both the self and the beloved. However, as time passes, there is a risk that love may degenerate. It can turn into a mere habit, where the once passionate connection fades into routine. Then, it may further transform into a sense of possession, as if the beloved is something to be owned. But this path often leads back to loneliness. The true essence of love, which was initially about connection and comparison, gets lost along the way. We must be vigilant to ensure that love does not follow this downward spiral and instead remains a source of growth and fulfillment.

The best book I've ever read is truly a remarkable piece of work.

It is prismatically exquisite, captivating my attention from the very first page.

The author's writing style is masterful, painting vivid pictures in my mind and making me feel as if I was right there in the story.

Every character is well-developed and complex, with their own unique personalities and motives.

The plot is engaging and full of twists and turns, keeping me on the edge of my seat until the very end.

This book is not just a story, but a work of art that has left a lasting impression on me.

I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great read.