These are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words;

they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their own kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean.

These precious moments are beyond quantification and description. They are like hidden treasures that lie deep within our memories. We may not be able to put them into words, but we know they exist and have a profound impact on us.

Full review of sorts will ensue when the tetralogy is completed.

Once the tetralogy is finished, a comprehensive review will follow. This review will likely explore the various aspects of the work, including its themes, characters, and plot. It will also analyze the author's writing style and the overall impact of the tetralogy on the literary world.

Lawrence Durrell's writing is a truly shimmering beauty.

His works have the power to make you long for a piece of his Alexandria, just as you simultaneously feel the urge to pity, love, and embrace his characters.

His descriptions and observations of the human condition are as profound as those of any great philosopher. When his prose reaches that high note, it leaves you completely dazzled.

However, I must admit that it is not a straightforward book where the story neatly falls into place with each page flipped. Instead, it requires a concentrated reading. But believe me, such a reading will be more than well worth it.

This book is indeed one of those rare gems that have the potential to leave you a better person. I am eagerly looking forward to the second installment of this quartet, hoping to once again be immersed in Durrell's captivating world.

This book is not without merit.

It has some real gems - sentences or ideas that are wonderful and crystallize clearly something which is true about the world.

For example, "Loving is so much truer when sympathy and not desire makes the match; for it leaves no wounds."

Or "Lovers are never equally matched - do you think? One always overshadows the other and stunts his or her growth so that the overshadowed one must always be tormented by a desire to escape, to be free to grow. Surely this is the only tragic thing about love?"

There's a lot more - I'd say about 25 - 30 good tiny snippets in this novel.

However, unfortunately, these small gems are packed in wads and wads of grey paper which you have to carefully slog through in order to uncover them.

Durrell will write 5 or 10 pages of the most pretentious, boring stuff you've ever read. Then he'll make you perk up with a surprising insight on humanity. Then it's back to the tedious stuff again.

It's not worth it. Really, if I had to advise you, I would say find a website or a list of what are considered the best quotes from this novel and leave it at that. And even that action is up to you - if you skip it altogether there will be no great gap in your life or education.

What is this book about?

Well, that question is extremely hard to answer. I think it's about nothing. Ostensibly it's about modern love and what love and sex signify in modern times, but again - it's mostly a bunch of meaningless drivel. I guess, loosely, you could say it is about a love square between four people living in Alexandria right before WWII. Alexandria is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, filled with prostitutes, child prostitutes, orgies, drugs, and every brand of excess imaginable. All enjoyed as if it were just completely okay to do things like have orgies with 10-year-old girls and stuff.

I don't want you to read what I wrote and get the mistaken idea that this book is actually exciting. It isn't. It's the most boring and pedantic version of hedonism that I've ever had the displeasure of reading about.

I know this book is a classic - but it's also a slog and a mess. Not to mention an intellectual narcissistic masturbatory exercise. Really. You could easily cut out at least 50% of the book. I was rolling my eyes and begging Durrell to shut up about 70% of the time.

I highly advise you to avoid this unless you need to read it for a class.

Drago mi je što je i posle 15 godina od prvog čitanja, Aleksandrijski kvartet ostao predivan tekst na toliko nivoa.

The first part, "Justina," is like a microcosm of the "Aleksandrian Quartet." Written as a series of memoir-like chronological reminiscences of the narrator, it tells a multi-faceted love affair in the city of Alexandria before World War II. A modernist work written in the tradition of the baroque novel, it is not afraid to play with everything and be everything, and yet also be nothing. It is not a novel as a single mirror of the world, but a novel composed of multiple mirrors that capture a multi-dimensional effect and give a certain kind of view through a prism. And this is not to enrich the portrayal of the world, but rather the opposite, to destroy it and to shatter our knowledge of it like an illusion. To succeed in this, Darel uses a full arsenal.

P.S. Baroque, grotesque, Cavafy's poetry, gnosticism, Sophia's fall into materiality, memory, aphorisms about love, lore collected from Prussia, alcohol, Einstein's theory of relativity, femme fatale, writers with empty pockets, a spinning Orthodox monk whose tongue has been cut out, tuberculous prostitutes, minarets under a sky the color of lapis lazuli, crime, spies, Plotinus, colonialism, the Marquis de Sade, Freud, the desert, the library, Huysmans' novel Against, the venereal disease clinic, the kabbalah, turning the tarot cards after sex, autopoetics, Baudelaire's urban spleen.

Oh, accusation, your name is Lawrence Darell!

Lawrence Darell, a name that seems to carry a certain weight and mystery. It is a name that perhaps evokes thoughts of a person with a complex character and a story yet to be fully told.

Accusation often implies that there is something amiss, something that needs to be investigated or proven. In the case of Lawrence Darell, what could this accusation be? Is it a serious matter that could have far-reaching consequences for him?

As we ponder over this, we are left to wonder about the nature of the accusation and how it will impact Lawrence Darell's life. Will he be able to defend himself and clear his name? Or will the accusation prove to be too overwhelming?

Only time will tell the truth behind the accusation and the fate that awaits Lawrence Darell.

I woke up in the middle of the night and made a firm decision to finish this. This is my second Durrell book. I had previously read his travel memoir, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, which I absolutely adored. The prose in this book, which is the first of the Alexandria Quartet, is truly breathtaking. I had my Kindle highlighter on and ready to go.

I posted this one the other day, which sums up the kind of prose and imagery you will encounter: "In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on it, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought it; had it opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled spring soil, dedicated vines."

This was a great book to read on a Kindle. I found both the dictionary and the X-Ray feature of the book extremely helpful in keeping track of the characters.

And a big thank you to the Internet. I was able to listen to a portion of the audio of Lawrence Durrell speaking at UCLA in 1972. In the audio, he talks about his friendship with Henry Miller and other writers. https://youtu.be/4ZTajhgR82M It's also kind of fun. At first, this audio sounds like it could have been recorded recently until the questions start. At about 17:40, some idiot poet starts off by calling those around him intellectual fascists, mentions he isn't allowed on campus during the day for political reasons, whines that poets should be able to make money, and then goes on to demand Durrell read him because he is "quite good." Something you could only find on campus between the late sixties and early seventies.

“I tried to convince myself of how senseless this entire situation was. It was just a banal tale of adultery, one of the cheapest and most common stories in the city. It didn't deserve any romantic or literary adornments. And yet, on a deeper level, I seemed to understand that the experience I had begun would have the eternal finality of a lesson learned.”

Set in Egypt during the 1930s, this book revolves around an unnamed man who is having an affair with Justine, despite claiming to love his long-term girlfriend, Melissa. Justine is married to Nessim, and although she says she loves her husband, she continues to have multiple lovers as if she has no control over this aspect of her nature. Jealousy is a prominent theme throughout the story.

The book is divided into four parts. The first two parts were quite challenging to get through as they mainly described the decadent lives of expats in Alexandria. This kind of subject matter doesn't usually interest me, and I almost gave up on the book. However, the third part becomes more focused as Nessim discovers Justine's affair. The fourth part is truly outstanding and the best part of the entire book.

The writing is elaborate and detailed, which was initially distracting, but by the end, I came to appreciate it. Speaking of the end, the characters finally realize that their actions have consequences, which gives the story more substance. It took me a long time to read this relatively short book (only 250 pages). While I can recognize its literary value, I'm also relieved to have finished it.

**For Once Four Was Too Few for a Quartet**

I made the decision to re-read "Justine" after approximately 30 years, before delving into the subsequent books of "The Alexandria Quartet" for the very first time.

Although I had enjoyed the novel, I suspected that it would gain even deeper meaning and resonance once I completed the Quartet.

Each volume of the Quartet is named after one of the members of the narrator's peer group in pre-war Alexandria. The first page mentions four friends: Justine and Nessim, Melissa and Balthazar. However, only the first and fourth receive their own eponymous volumes. Nevertheless, all four are the subjects of fascinating character studies and feature prominently in the first volume.

Together, they offer a diverse range of perspectives on the nature of time, space, experience, imagination, and love that rival those of Proust.

The novel is superficially written in a realistic style. Structurally, though, it is a work of Modernism, resembling a mosaic or a mirror ball composed of multiple facets.

Each character represents a facet of the Alexandrian world. Likewise, each discrete section of text reveals a separate aspect of one of the characters.

Durrell assembles these facets piecemeal, and meaning accumulates and coheres over time and space. The sequence is not chronological, but it makes sense because our minds impose an order on the information our five senses perceive.

Our senses gather information about their object "like pieces of a broken wineglass." Then, our minds reassemble them, even if they cannot be reassembled in real life. Character, insofar as it is also an object, is described in the same way.

Just as the novel distinguishes the multiple facets, it serves as a prism through which Durrell invites us to observe moments in the lives of the city and a select few of its inhabitants.

It is the role of the author or artist to detect and record these moments, which will live on in perpetuity in the form of a creative work.

What we experience forms the foundation of both our memory and our creativity. Both help us in our ongoing battle with the external world. We remember it as best we can, but we also change it through our imagination of what we have just experienced.

According to Durrell, the function or destiny of an artist's creativity is not to be wounded or defeated by everyday reality, but to complete, perfect, or fulfill the potential of the experience in our imagination. He refers to the relationship between experience and imagination as a "joyous compromise."

It is because the imagination realizes their potential that the moments live on forever. An artist creates something separate from experience that endures beyond the present.

No matter how pleasant or unpleasant the experience, art can preserve it intact. That precise moment will not decay or deteriorate with time.

In a sense, Durrell preserves them in aspect.

Each person is revealed as a link in a chain. Just as Durrell shows us the individual links, he also allows us to step back and see the chain as a whole, the city of Alexandria.

At the beginning, the unnamed narrator is a relatively uncommitted, listless, and unambitious teacher, trapped in routine, until he is introduced to the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated aspects of Alexandrian life.

Loving Justine is not going to be easy. She questions, "Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged."

The narrator says of her, "There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self - because she does not know where to find it."

Yet, we share Justine's problem. We have all been fragmented and torn apart by experience. We are all desperately seeking to put ourselves back together.

At times, Durrell describes our disintegration in Gnostic terms. Ironically, in the Gnostic tradition, it was the original separation from God that gave rise to matter and life on earth.

We continue to search for the harmony of oneness or unity. The narrator refers to "the living limbo of free-will in which my beloved Justine wandered, searching with such frightening singleness of mind for the integrating spark which might lift her into a new perspective of herself."

After disintegrating, we seek integrity, but first, we need "an integrating spark" to achieve it. Perhaps, if we don't find it in God, we hope to find it in love.

The novel explores the nature and abstraction of love. The narrator speculates, "This is a peculiar type of love for I do not feel that I possess her - nor indeed would I wish to do so. It is as if we joined each other only in self-possession, became partners in a common stage of growth."

Love is clearly more than sex. The narrator states, "I know that for us love-making was only a small part of the total picture projected by a mental intimacy which proliferated and ramified daily around us."

Justine's perspective is more nuanced, but potentially less optimistic or idealistic. Her journal entry is worth quoting at length for its abstract beauty.

Despite the abstraction, there is still something tangible and tactile, touching and exciting in their relationship. The narrator recalls, "I recall the furtive languor with which we dressed and silent as accomplices made our way down the gloomy staircase into the street."

Notwithstanding the focus on separation and disintegration, there is a constant desire for unity and harmony, as if it were a return to an original or lost state.

On the other hand, something in the narrator seems to resist the pull of love. Perhaps he fears immersion in something other, or perhaps he wishes to remain disintegrated, believing that he has nothing more to lose.

Ironically, his selflessness betrays an absence or lack of self, or at least a minimalist self. He states, "Beleaguered thus, I was nevertheless defined and realised in myself by the very quality which (of course) hurt me most: selflessness. This is what Justine loved in me - not my personality."

However, there is a sense in which he is indestructible because he has reached the point where he is indivisible. He cannot be further fragmented.

But this is just the first volume in the Quartet. If this is how the narrator begins, how will he end? Does Durrell's "prism-sightedness" promise a "multi-dimensional effect in character"? What better reason could there be to read on than to find out!

A novel that gradually unfolds and matures. The language initially exhibits a rather peculiar 19th-century flamboyance, even within the modern context of its plotless and non-chronological exploration of memory and melancholy.

However, both of these initial impressions can be somewhat misleading. Justine remains predominantly a character study - of the eponymous character, of those whose lives become inextricably intertwined with her bright and captivating presence, and of the city that surrounds and reflects them. Yet, tendrils of plot delicately wind their way in, gently guiding the reader towards the conclusion. More significantly, Durrell's prose, which at first appears overly labored and embellished, like a tapestry that has been pushed almost to the verge of bad taste by the tireless efforts of well-intentioned hands. But just as that tapestry fades and decays on the wall under the influence of air heavy with damp and warmth, revealing in its corruption a certain stateliness and splendor, similar to the aging, over-ripened grandeur of Durrell's Alexandria, so too does his novel slowly inhabit the language that composes it and reveal an arguable perfection.

And thus, the novel and the city are intertwined: the air filled with the rich scents of perfumes and musks; the unforgiving sun; the things that grow, languorous, pallid, and luminous in the shadowed interiors. The flawed characters and the fleeting episodes of their lives are like fruit that dangles, pendulous and already rotting, from creeping vines. This is Justine.

Justine is one of the great novels of the past century. I anticipate and hope that the other three that compose The Alexandria Quartet along with it will also be so. The reasons for this anticipation are not the ones that are relevant here. The relevant reasons have to do with the warmth that emanates from the novel, and the sadness into which the passion of its characters is transmuted due to a life that is unable to give them all that they aspire to. The people in the novel are carried away by desire, which, over time – the novel is a precious exercise in nostalgia – is influenced by the atmosphere of sloth and decadence that surrounds the city of Alexandria. In this city, the sensuality of a “slow step of white sandals” is mixed with the tragedy of impossible choices, with the impotence of not being “neither strong enough nor bad enough to choose.” The narrator, a frustrated writer, begins his story by evoking memories and sensations in a purely emotional order, with a prose that poetically recreations landscapes, feelings, atmospheres, and philosophical reflections. He hopes to obtain the consolation he needs to continue living. Justine, a beautiful and conspicuous daughter of the landscape of her city, appears as a strong, demanding, and arrogant woman. She feels and laments that no one has been able to love her truly. She has “that vertical independence typical of the male attitude,” worships pleasure, and consecrates her gifts to love without stopping to think about the pain she inflicts on her numerous lovers. Justine is a woman walled behind a wound from the past that she needs to recreate again and again to obtain the satisfaction she demands in her unrestrained sexual search for the one who can free her from her pain. This is the amoral path that Justine chooses in pursuit of something that gives meaning to her existence. It is a path without measure, traveled with a voracious hunger for knowledge and wisdom. In fact, this path has little to do with sex and much to do with the longed-for encounter with those few beings who are our complements in the world.

Lawrence Durrell's "Justine" is a captivating and complex work that combines elements of different literary styles. The quote, "I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price," sets a profound tone. The description of the book as a mix of Henry Miller, John Fowels, Anthony Powell, and Paul Bowles, with the added flavors of sex and refuse of Alexandria, creates a vivid and intense image. It is both lush and brutal, beautiful and horrible, all at once. The prose is so rich that it is infinitely quotable, sometimes bordering on the grotesquely lyrical. Reading it makes one feel like a peeping tom and a historian before a disaster. It dances, seduces, pounces, and feeds on the reader, making them nervously flip through the pages. After finishing "Justine," the anticipation for the next book in the series, "Balthazar," is palpable.

"I see at last that none of us is properly to be judged for what happened in the past. It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price."
- Lawrence Durrell, Justine



It feels like reading a unique blend of literary greats, with the distinctiveness of Alexandria's sex and refuse adding an extra layer of complexity. It was a reading experience that was both overwhelming and enchanting.

Next up: Balthazar.

This is a highly representative work of the fatuous Larry that we are familiar with and love from the "Durrells in Corfu".

It is a masterpiece of Gnostic eroticism, yet it may have lost its audience due to its blatant chauvinism. In Durrell's world, women seem to exist merely as fetish objects for male writers and poets.

Durrell describes his alluring heroine thus: "Justine was a walking abstract of the writers and thinkers whom she had loved or admired - but what clever woman is more?" This charming novel indeed has the potential to incense feminists.

Durrell places a quote from the Marquis de Sade's novel "Justine" at the start of this novel, presumably to prompt the reader to seek points in common between his heroine and de Sade's. However, Justine is more than just a libertine woman capable of inspiring sexual fantasies in every man she meets. She is also embarked on a deep spiritual quest in the gnostic-cabalistic vein.

"Bending over the dirty sink with the foetus in it, Justine, like Sophia of Valentinus, wondered if mankind was the work of an inferior deity, a demiurge who wrongly believed himself to be God? Heavens! How probable it seems!"

I am awarding "Justine" a mere three stars because it does not hold up independently. Nevertheless, it sets the stage magnificently for the rest of the quartet as it very effectively establishes the themes of sadistic love and Gnostic spirituality.