The more I read this Quartet, the more I find myself drawn to its allure.

Each page seems to unfold a new layer of depth and complexity that keeps me captivated.

I have decided to reserve my full review for now as I am about to embark on a new journey with Justine.

I am filled with anticipation, eager to explore this new installment.

I have a hunch that I will enjoy it even more this time around.

Maybe it's the familiarity with the world and the characters that gives me this sense of excitement.

Or perhaps it's the promise of new revelations and surprises that lie ahead.

Whatever the reason, I can't wait to see where this next chapter takes me.

I wish everyone could read it and taste what I have tasted. On the one hand, I also know that it is not a work that can be recommended to everyone, whether it is because of its volume or its quality. Firstly, it is definitely not an easy-to-read work. Especially for impatient readers, it is not suitable at all. It is not only because of the plot structure, but also the writing style is a work that is difficult to understand. I'm sure its translation must also have been very laborious.

Just like in real life, in this work, there is only one real version of "what happened". Also, just like in real life, in this work, "what happened" is perceived and processed from the different perspectives of those involved in the events, and each person has a version of the truth according to themselves. As readers, we are trying to reach that truth as if we were peeling off the layers of a fruit one by one. With each volume of the work, we get one step closer, and the fog above the truth gradually dissipates. There are dozens of characters, years pass, we age with them, we die, we go crazy, etc. Everything you said couldn't happen is happening. We see what we call fate in real life page by page. Durrell constructs such sentences and makes such (in my opinion) correct judgments about life that I even read some lines and paragraphs over and over again. Alexandria is already like a character in a novel on its own. As you read, you start to learn its streets, cafes, and barbers, and see how it changes over the years.

I haven't said to myself for a long time that "I'm reading an incredibly beautiful thing right now." It seems that I will probably read The Alexandria Quartet again after a while.

For various reasons, it is complicated for me to write a comment on The Alexandria Quartet. The memories of the novels, the reflections written in them and those that I have made in turn, the relationships between the characters and my own, the conversations I have held and those I have read... everything is intertwined in my mind in a way that might seem strange from the outside. The Quartet has become part of my life like no other book before.

Often, statements like "this book has changed my life" are heard. It has never happened to me, not even this time. On the contrary: my life has marked the quartet, my experiences have given it a new dimension. Reading undoubtedly enriches the reader, but it is no less true that the opposite is also the case: life enriches reading immensely. And this is the reason why these four novels have directly entered my list of favorites: because they have told me about myself, I have felt that, in an unusual way, they were directly addressing me.

I do not write for those who have never asked themselves at what point real life begins.

Many times I have wondered when it would come, what exactly that point would be, that event with which everything begins, with which everything finally takes on some meaning: the appearance of a person, the taking of a difficult decision, a fortuitous event, the ability to leave certain things behind, the pursuit of a dream that once achieved will change everything... always something future, something uncertain, something that surely when it arrives is not entirely sufficient. Perhaps everything is much simpler. Perhaps that point that changes everything is something internal, something intimate that supposes a perturbation, a awakening, a shock after which there is no turning back. It can be through that new person, through a feeling that is born and you did not expect, anything, but it is always an internal transformation. "Real life" perhaps begins at the moment when one begins to find oneself, a search that once started never ends: Growing up takes a whole life. People no longer have patience.

For Durrell, love has a fundamental importance in all this. I will not oppose him: Suddenly, I felt that everything changed, lightened, came into motion. I felt weak, almost sick. I was perplexed. Later, little by little, a clearing opened up. It was a sensation like that of escaping from a paralyzed hand.

The Alexandria Quartet is fundamentally a search. The politics of love, the intrigues of desire, good and evil, virtue and whim, love and crime... the conspiracies and counter-conspiracies. But above all of two things:

On the one hand, of the truth, of what is real and what is not: We live –writes Pursewarden– lives that are based on a selection of imaginary facts. Our vision of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time, not by our personality, as we like to believe. Therefore, every interpretation of reality is based on a unique position. Two steps east or west, and the whole picture changes.

“To recreate reality”, I wrote somewhere; bold and presumptuous words, to be sure, for it is reality that creates and recreates us in its slow wheel.

This search for the truth even affects the structure of the novels (three sides of space, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and one of time, Clea): I suppose (writes Balthazar) that if you decided to incorporate now into your own manuscript on Justine what I am telling you, you would be faced with a curious book; the story would be told, so to speak, in strata. Without meaning to, I have provided you with an unusual form! It is not far from Pursewarden's idea of a series of novels that would be like “sliding panels”, as he called them. Or perhaps like a medieval palimpsest in which different truths are recorded, one on top of the other, some suppressing or perhaps completing the others.

On the other hand, as I said, the search for oneself, for "real life", which here is mainly carried out through love, presented as a necessity, something from which we cannot escape, that forms part of the learning to get to know ourselves deeply, whether we finally reach that Love or not.

From those loves that separate (closer bonds that, although it may seem paradoxical, separate more than they unite, something that human illusion refuses to recognize), that try in some way to enslave the other and the one who is really enslaved is oneself (the need to possess, if not satisfied, transforms the spirit itself into the possessed), that turn the loved one into what he is not, into an idolized object, to, if the love ends, turn him into something else, something alien, perhaps even unpleasant.

Our theme, Brother Ass, is the same, always and irremediably the same; I spell the word for you: a-m-o-r, four letters, each letter a volume. The fable point of the human psyche, the true root of the maximum carcinoma!

But already a character warns from the beginning: In love there is something that I will not call imperfect, because imperfection is in us, but yes something that we have not understood. (…) It can present itself in an infinity of forms, and pour into an infinity of people. Perhaps that which we have not understood is that it is all much simpler than we imagine, that it is something as easy as sailing in a boat or diving into deep waters.

That the only thing we have to look for is to be static figures of a forgotten painting, savoring without haste the happiness granted to beings destined to enjoy each other without reserve or self-contempt, without the premeditated garments of selfishness, the invented limitations of human love.

That perhaps one day we will understand that love is enough, finally stripped of all those other feelings that cloud it, distort it and hurt us, jealousy, possession and selfishness, that love is that, love, and that it can give us exactly the opposite of what we believed: nothing more and nothing less than the jubilation of a completely unknown freedom, that can become our place, for the first time it seemed natural to me to be where I was, a feeling that never separates: "However close we wish to be to the beloved creature, thus, always so separated we remain", writes Arnauti. That phrase no longer reflected our truth.

That love is, simply, a refuge of animal happiness that no word will ever be able to express.

Every reading, especially when we are faced with a great work like this one by Durrell, is a very personal experience. Therefore, although I think that objectively the first two volumes are the ones that we can really consider masterpieces, and the other two are very good, I now have to give the highest rating to Clea. I open the novel, read the last sentence and even remember exactly what I was doing when I finished it, one Monday afternoon in July. And I felt that the whole Universe gave me a hug.

I feel that upon finishing this novel, I am ending something very significant, a crucial stage of my reading life that has served me not only to immerse myself in the pages of one of the most important English literary works of the 20th century but also to test myself as a reader of classic works often classified as inaccessible.

Clea is the conclusion of the Alexandria Quartet and perhaps the most personal, intimate, metaphysical, cryptic, and surreal of the four that make up the narrative set about a group of foreign friends in the still mythical Alexandria, heir to a very profound and mysterious ancestral tradition. It is also, for me, perhaps the weakest of the quartet because of that tangle of reflections and voices that speak throughout the book, always through its narrator, Darley, and that tell events that blend between the past and the present and that subtly but firmly end up giving color to a memorable fresco on human passions and on personal relationships in a foreign land, in a hostile land where the most unconfessable desires can be carried out.

The entire quartet as a whole has been superb, and all the novels that compose it have been superb to a greater or lesser extent. How enjoyable its reading has been. How empty one feels knowing that one will rarely be able to enjoy the reading of such profound, intense, and interesting novels so much.

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I have finally completed The Alexandria Quartet!

Throughout this year, I have devoured a plethora of other books as well. However, my main objective for this year was to read every single one of these particular books.

As I look ahead, I can't help but wonder if perhaps next year my goal could be to embark on reading The Avignon Quintet.

When I reflect upon my reading experience of The Alexandria Quartet, Mountolive and Clea stand out as probably my absolute favorites.

Their stories were so captivating and engaging that they truly left a lasting impression on me.

I'm excited to see what new literary adventures await me in the future.

Sadly, I have reached the conclusion of The Alexandria Quartet*. It has been a truly eye-opening reading encounter, and I now understand precisely why this somewhat dated collection remains not only read but also highly praised and even beloved.

I discovered that Clea was the least engaging of the four novels, perhaps due to the fact that Durrell seems to be winding down, much like the historic city of Alexandria itself. (In present times, it is regarded as an unsafe destination for tourists.) During the period covered by Clea, the British Empire's glorious heyday is drawing to a close. In his unique style, Durrell weaves all of this into a poignant and sorrowful farewell.

Clea, who had always been a rather shadowy presence in the earlier novels, now takes center stage. She is an artist, a painter. Among all the women in the Quartet, she emerges as the most well-balanced; she is like an Earth Mother figure and the feminist of the group. The narrator (whom I presume to be Durrell himself) finally embarks on a love affair with her. He is now older and wiser, but Clea proves to be even wiser.

The End.

*The Books of the Alexandria Quartet:
Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

In the last novel, the ending of each character is developed.

In the previous one, it is shown that the whole story has a political motive.

And now the characters are presented with all the brutality of reality.

Nessim, the one-eyed, Justine without her beauty, the two alone, abandoned and failed.

Leila is very far from Alexandria, Pombal is in love with a married woman, Mountolive is in love with the blind sister of Purserwarden, and Darley is with Clea.

But nothing is the same anymore.

The war has ended everything.

The city is in ruins.

And each character will return to their origin, the paths diverge.

Only Nassin and Justine will continue in their Alexandria.

This story paints a vivid picture of the characters' fates in the aftermath of war, showing how their lives have been irrevocably changed.

It makes the reader reflect on the power of war and its impact on individuals and society.

The detailed descriptions of the characters and their situations add depth and realism to the narrative.

Overall, it is a captivating and thought-provoking work.

“Clea,” the fourth volume of Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet,” commences with the passage of several years since the events of the initial three volumes. Darley, the narrator, resides on a Greek island with the six-year-old illegitimate daughter Nessim, fathered with Melissa. After encountering Balthazar and his Inter-Linear, he ultimately departs for Alexandria once more with the child, filled with both trepidation and anticipation regarding the past and the individuals he knew there.

Upon Darley’s arrival in Alexandria, he almost immediately encounters his old artist friend Clea, and consummates a formerly platonic relationship. Now, their circle of friends is unburdened by the presence of Melissa, who has passed away, and Justine, who is under house arrest for the duration of the novel. This novel contains several meta-fictional aspects more so than any of the others: meditations on art, creativity, and the novel (particularly as revealed through Pursewarden’s letters), and some of Clea’s ideas about painting. All of this is, as always in this tetralogy, beautifully intertwined with Balthazar’s earlier analyses scattered throughout the Inter-Linear.

Reading these four novels has been one of the more profound experiences I have had recently. Most readers may not relish this; it is not action-packed and brimming with adventure. However, if you appreciate writing that endeavors to capture the uniqueness of inner scintillating experiences, the complexities of passion and romantic relationships, and acknowledges the inability to tell “the whole story,” even after nearly one thousand pages of attempting, I hope you will appreciate this as much as I did. As I stated in my review of “Mountolive,” I have simply exhausted all that I can say about how much I adored this. Sometimes, admiration must conclude in silence.

Sin palabras. No puedo describir lo muchísimo que me ha gustado el cierre de este cuarteto, y toda la monumental obra que construyó Durrell con estas maravillosas cuatro novelas.

Poco puedo añadir que no haya dicho ya mientras reseñaba las tres novelas precedentes: "Justine", "Balthazar" y "Mountolive". Tan solo que Lawrence Durrell lo ha vuelto a hacer. Ha creado una auténtica obra de arte y, retomando nuevamente la voz de Darley y la perspectiva narrativa de la primera persona, ha conseguido dar un cierre perfecto a esta preciosa historia que tanto me ha marcado.

Todos los cabos que quedaban aparentemente sueltos han encajado perfectamente por fin en la trama. Y, a mi juicio, el desenlace es emocionante, desgarrador... precioso. Perfecto. Todos estos personajes tan fantásticos que nos han acompañado a lo largo de esta travesía (Justine, Nessim, Balthazar, Mountolive, Liza, Pombal, Amaril, Semira, Clea y nuestro Darley) hallan cada uno, finalmente, su puerto. Y todos sus finales son lógicos y coherentes con la evolución de cada personaje.

Qué historia tan BONITA, tan bien contada. Es que de verdad, soy incapaz de describir lo mucho que me ha impactado (tanto por el fondo como por la forma) y lo que he disfrutado leyéndola. Es de estas ocasiones en que sin lugar a dudas sabes que estás ante literatura con mayúsculas, que además es capaz de dar la vuelta a tu interior como si fueras un calcetín.

En conclusión, es de estas ocasiones en que una agradece estar viva y poder disfrutar de estos placeres que nos proporciona la lectura: la posibilidad de visitar mil lugares y mil vidas. Lawrence Durrell lo ha logrado con esta obra. Y yo no puedo sino rendirme a él y admirarlo de todo corazón.

Ve dörtleme yine doyurucu bir kitapla sona erdi. It's truly astonishing how an author can have such mastery over the text they write, being able to envision it over hundreds of pages and be so proficient in the literary sense. Some people seem to be born to write, creating such excellent characters and texts that they almost assume a demi-god role.

In terms of content, perhaps the fourth book was the weakest of the tetralogy. There wasn't an abundance of things happening, but it was a novel that challenged the heights on every page. The other books in the series were also more or less like this, with no really huge differences in between. Durrell has written every line of the four novels so consciously and planned that this situation (throughout the series) has occurred because it was supposed to be that way, just like everything else remaining, and it is conscious. I'm completely convinced of this. You can surrender yourself to Durrell with confidence :)

I have mixed feelings about this novel. It seems rather disjointed and all over the place. Clea, the main character, appears to be a mess and gives the impression of being a wish fulfillment fantasy on Durrell's part, which is quite unconvincing. I initially considered giving it two stars. However, despite the fact that the previous three novels often verge on silliness (the excessive use of elaborate phrases and obscure words in Justine is just self-indulgent nonsense), this novel is still a tour de force of storytelling. Its unreliability, unknowability, and deception make it a captivating read. At times, it reads like a le Carre novel, and the obsessiveness of love and being in love is beautifully captured. Additionally, it is notable for being one of the earliest uses of the word "psychogeography" outside of Situationists texts.

In conclusion, I probably wouldn't read this particular novel again, and Durrell himself doesn't seem like the most likable character to me. Nevertheless, I am willing to give some of his other novels a try to see if they offer a different and more satisfying reading experience.

Bilješke, Klea:

- Fear trembled within me like a guiding star. It was difficult to give up the territory of my dreams, which I had painfully conquered, in favor of new images, new cities, new arrangements, new loves.

- Words that burned like alcohol on an open wound, but that purified, as every truth does.

- Maybe it's precisely that freedom that keeps me in prison? Who knows? It's completely unfathomable to me. It's strange how that woman pulls me by the hair along the paths of honor - in an unknown place. (Pombal)

- Now for the first time I felt the power to wound her, even to subdue her, with my own indifference.

- We, after all, know nothing about each other, we show each other chosen fictions.

- And indeed, there was no guilt here, the real culprit was my love, which had invented the image that would nourish it. Nor was there any shortcoming, because the image was painted in accordance with the needs of the love that had invented it. Lovers, like doctors, color the unpleasant medicine so that the careless will swallow it more easily.

- Understanding all this for the first time, I began with awe to see the enormous power of the woman's reflection - the fertile passivity with which she, like the moon, borrows her light from the other hand of the male sun.

- To be able to love a person completely, but only in one aspect, so to speak. (...) He had attracted me like an actor, illuminated me to myself. (...) The most essential part of my life was rooted in that crazy adventure.

- Once the magnificent image of my love now lay in my arms, helpless like a patient on an operating table, barely breathing. It was even senseless to repeat its name, in which there was once so much terrifying charisma that it had the power to slow the blood in my veins. Finally, she had become a woman, lying there, tired and listless, like a dead bird in a birdcage, with her hands clenched in fists.

- Life is the master. We live contrary to the direction in which our intellect grows. The true teacher is perseverance.

- After all, people sometimes get stuck like an old gramophone record and can't budge from their jaws.

- It was also an expression of her pride that she slept there in my arms like a wild bird exhausted by the struggle with the beautiful, slippery branch, just as if it were an ordinary summer night in peace.

- We sailed into those calm waters without any premeditation, full of sails, and for the first time I felt that it was natural for me to be where I was, to drown in a dream while her peaceful body lay beside me.

- There is no Other, there is only the self that is constantly confronted with the problem of self-discovery.

- We just need to learn the hardest lesson - that the truth cannot be imposed by force, but must be allowed to represent itself.

- Our theme is the same, always and irreparably the same - I'll whisper you this word: l-o-v-e.

- Sexual and creative energy go hand in hand. They merge into each other. The solar sexual and the lunar spiritual conduct a constant dialogue. They move together in the spiral of time. They encompass the entire human locomotive force. The truth can only be found in our wombs - the truth of Time.

- lorens, The Man Who Died !!! Christ and Moses

- The strong need to blame life, to explain my spiritual states, reminded me of a beggar who arouses compassion by carefully exposing his wounds.

- 1. Relief at the end of the search. 2. Despair at the end of the search. 3. Horror of death. 4. Relief from death. What kind of future was there? 5. A strong sense of shame. 6. The sudden desire to continue the endless search rather than accept the truth. 7. The desire to continue nourishing false hopes.

- He was rather astonished. I wanted to bring forth the truth that I was completely aware of, so that I wouldn't have to change my stance. I didn't want to be deprived of my grief, if you will; I wanted to continue - to continue my own search for what I hadn't bothered to find.

- Human beings are like pride, I thought. Press the button marked 'love' or 'mother' and release the necessary feeling. Sometimes I try to think of all of us as patterns of habits rather than as human beings. I want to say, didn't the Greeks impose on us the idea of individual souls in the vain hope that, just because of their beauty, they would be 'accepted' as we say for a vaccine?

- Even with Klea, there were no problems, perhaps because we deliberately avoided defining her too sharply, and let her follow her natural instincts, to fulfill her own intentions. (...) Those occasional breaks that knew how to last for a week or more sharpened and refreshed our inclination, without violating it. (...) Childish and lively (...) the devoted and passionate image of the lover (...) and so in those meetings there were sharp sighs, an unexpected rekindling of our passion. As if we had been separated by years and not days.

- What have you learned about the meaning of universal love through mine: so that you were ready when the stranger came...

- We were three writers, I see that now, entrusted to one mythical city, from which we had to feed, in which each of us had to prove his gift. Arnauti, Persevorden, Darli - as the Past, the Present and the Future! And in my life, three women, who lined up like three forms of the great verb To Will: Melisa, Justina and Klea.

- Contrasts teach you to value things much more.

-... Sometimes events unfold so quickly that a person could take them into account. And one never knows enough about people and their sufferings to have the right answer ready at a given moment.

- The seeds of future events we carry within us. It is wound within us and unfolds according to the laws of its own nature.

- These are the joys of sailing in ideal time, from which the heart skips a beat. I was seized by silent ecstasy, a mixture of luxuries born of the sun's warmth, the howling wind and the light, fresh touches of raindrops that would sprinkle our faces from time to time.

- That would really be like real life, if art imitated it to that extent.

- The richest love is the one that submits to the judgment of time. (Persevorden)

- And so we add to each other the poisoned hour of love.

- Do you remember how Persevorden knew how to say that artists, like sick cats, instinctively know which herb is exactly what they need to be cured: and that the bitter-sweet herb of their self-flagellation grows only in one place, in France?

- It has become tiresome and useless to me. And yet, how can we not love the places where we have suffered?