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  No stars to guide. Death is that quiet cartouche,

  A nun-besought preserve of praying time,

  That like a great lion silence hunts,

  At noon, at ease, and all because he must.

  His scenery is so old, His sacred pawtouch cold.

  A lupercal of girls remember him

  In nights defunct from lack of sleep

  Tossing on iron beds awaiting dawn …

  He wound up his death each evening like a clock,

  Walked to obscure cafes to criticize

  The fires that blush upon the crown of Etna.

  Leopardi in the ticking mind,

  Lay unknown like an exiled king,

  Printing his dreams among the olive glades

  In orchards of discontent the fruitful word.

  Acknowledgements

  Though all the characters in this book are imaginary I would like to thank some real people who made it possible as well as pleasurable. M. Pages and Madame Robert of Nimes-Voyages for their itinerary and Simone Lestoquard for hunting up the illustrations in Paris.

  LAWRENCE DURRELL

  Index

  A

  Aedoni 146

  Aeschylus 38, 94–95, 109, 148

  Agrigento 69, 78, 131–193, 196–198, 201, 235, 254, 284

  Akragas 93, 150

  Alcibiades 37, 120

  Alexandria 2, 12, 59, 86, 180, 211

  Apollinaire, Guillaume 184

  Arabs 73, 138

  Aristotle 76, 176, 180

  Athens 4, 66–68, 70, 73, 76, 78, 109, 116, 118, 120, 133, 135, 156, 160, 167, 174, 180, 265, 285

  Augusta 58–59, 137

  B

  Baedeker 122

  Baudelaire, Charles 184

  Bellini, Vincenzo 28, 37

  Besaquino 284, 290

  Buddha 180, 217

  Butler, Samuel 218

  Byzantine empire 133, 138, 224, 256, 264

  c

  Caesar, Julius 278

  Calabria 133

  Calatafimi 236–237

  Caltanissetta 148, 164

  Cameirus 43

  Capri 51, 273, 275–276

  Caravaggio 115, 121–122

  Carlentini 43

  Carthaginians 93, 138

  Castello Maniace 101

  Catania 3, 6–7, 10–21, 23, 41, 59

  Catanian Plain 42

  Cavafy 184

  Cefalu 257, 260–264

  Centuripe 284

  Chaos 158

  Charles V, Emperor 216

  Cicero 76, 173

  Colonna, Vittoria della 148

  Corfu 18, 65, 85–86, 100, 149, 262

  Corinth 17, 73

  Cos 236

  Crete 3–4, 15, 17, 77, 81, 183

  Cyprus 2–5, 9, 13, 17, 29, 47, 52, 63, 65, 131, 133, 136, 148, 152–153, 171, 206, 208, 258, 275

  Dali, Salvador 178

  Damarete 93

  Delphi 181, 183, 215

  Diocletian 142, 146

  Diodorus Siculus 190

  Dodecanese Islands 145

  Douglas, Norman 275

  E

  Egadi Isles 216

  Egypt 68, 73, 78, 192, 208, 210

  Empedocles 60 175–176, 178, 180, 183, 286

  Empedocles (port) 195

  Enna 275

  Epicurus 75, 176, 179

  Epidaurus 236

  Erice 212, 214 279

  Eryx 215, 217, 219, 226

  Etna 15–16, 34, 38, 41, 52, 76, 180, 183, 272, 274–275, 284, 286–287, 290

  Euphemius 138

  F

  Famagusta 13

  Favignana 216

  G

  Garibaldi, Giuseppe 37

  Gela 69, 92, 94–95, 141, 148–150

  Gelon 89, 92–95

  Goethe 33, 44, 46, 103, 238

  Guido, Margaret 190

  H

  Hadrian, Emperor 78–79, 146

  Harrison, Jane 78, 107

  Heraclius, Emperor 142

  Hieron I 94

  Himera 88, 93–94, 254, 264

  Homer 74, 134

  Hymettus 78, 160

  I

  Ionian Sea 16

  Ithaca 218

  K

  Kazantzakis 180–181

  Kephissos 75

  Kesserling, Field Marshal 278

  Kininmonth, Christopher 144

  Kyrenia 30, 47

  L

  Lampedusa 103

  Latomie 102, 114, 121, 279

  Lawrence, D. H. 62, 103, 274–275

  Lentini 43

  Leopardi 184, 290

  Leptis Magna 199

  Levanzo 216

  Lindos 85–86

  Lucretius 176

  Lycabettos 108

  M

  Mackenzie, Compton 275

  Marettimo 218

  Marsala 150, 204–205

  Mentobello Beach 245

  Messina 241, 255, 259, 261, 264–268, 284, 286

  Midi 7, 111–112, 123, 136, 138, 187

  Miller, Henry 63

  Minoa 81

  Mistral, Frédéric 184

  Monreale 255

  Monte Giuliano 216

  Monte Pellegrino 251

  Morgantina 146

  Mycenae 192, 234

  N

  Naxos 2, 46, 269 280, 282, 289

  O

  Olympia 80, 234

  Ortygia 85–86, 101

  P

  Paleocastrizza 86, 262, 273

  Palermo 201, 208, 226, 233, 241–242, 244

  Pantalica 284

  Paphos 17, 133

  Parparella 218

  Paul, Saint 121, 180

  Pausanias 69, 78–81, 258, 285

  Persia 17, 208, 270

  Piazza Armerina 141

  Pindar 78, 94, 279

  Pirandello, Luigi 103, 158–159

  Plato 75, 176

  Pliny 273, 280

  Plymerion 120

  Pompey 278

  Porto Rafti 157

  Psychico 157

  Pythagoras 171

  R

  Rhodes 6, 15, 43, 63, 65, 73, 78, 86, 136, 145

  Rimbaud, Arthur 184

  Roger II, Count of Sicily 264

  Rome 2, 6, 8–10, 51, 74, 103, 209, 222, 273, 279

  Rosalie, Saint 249–254

  Russell, Bertrand 176

  S

  Samos 85, 227

  Seferis 181–182

  Segesta 226, 233–242, 283

  Selinunte 192, 195–212, 254

  Sikelianos 180–184

  Simeto river 43

  Simonides 94

  Smyrna 133

  Socrates 76, 180

  Spain 136–137

  Sparta 120

  Split 146

  Suetonius 92

  Swinburne, Algernon Charles 184

  Syracuse 41, 57–59, 60 135, 138, 150, 216, 279, 283

  T

  Taormina 6, 153, 241, 259, 261, 264, 268–269, 270

  Theocritus 241

  Theron 93

  Thucydides 116, 241

  Timoleon 278

  Tinos 80, 187, 227

  Tivoli 146

  Trapani 212, 215–220, 223, 225

  Troy 191, 199, 236

  Turkey 86, 137, 209

  Tyndarus 275, 283

  Tyrrhenian Sea 216

  V

  Verlaine, Paul 184

  Villa Imperiale 141

  W

  William the Good 251, 255–256

  X

  Xante 16

  A Biography of Lawrence Durrell

  Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell’s work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet’s completion, Life called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction o
f our time.”

  Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.

  Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers. He also read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller’s advice and work heavily influenced Durrell’s provocative third novel, The Black Book (1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell’s first book of note, The Black Book was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn’t appear in print in Britain until 1973.

  In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassy. He also wrote Prospero’s Cell, a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.

  Durrell met Yvette Cohen in Alexandria, and the couple married in 1947. They had a daughter, Sappho Jane, in 1951, and separated in 1955. Durrell published White Eagles Over Serbia in 1957, alongside the celebrated memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and Justine (1957), the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet Capitalizing on the overwhelming success of Justine, Durrell went on to publish the next three novels in the series—Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960)—in quick succession. Upon the series’ completion, poet Kenneth Rexroth hailed it as “a tour de force of multiple-aspect narrative.”

  Durrell married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon, who died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973 to Ghislaine de Boysson, which ended in divorce in 1979.

  After a life spent in varied locales, Durrell settled in Sommières, France, where he wrote the Revolt of Aphrodite series as well as the Avignon Quintet. The first book in the Quintet, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize while Constance (1982), the third novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

  Durrell died in 1990 at his home in Sommières.

  This photograph of Lawrence Durrell aboard his boat, the Van Norden, is taken from a negative discovered among his papers. The vessel is named after a character in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. (Photograph held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  One of Nancy Durrell’s photographs from the 1930s. Pictured here is the Caique, which they used to travel around the waters of Corfu. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin, property of the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  This photograph of Nancy and Lawrence Durrell was likely taken in Delphi, Greece, in late 1939. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin and the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  A 1942 photograph of Lawrence Durrell with his wife, Nancy, and their daughter, Penelope, taken in Cairo. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  This manuscript notebook contains one of two drafts of Justine acquired by the British Library as part of Lawrence Durrell’s large archive in 1995. (Notebook held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  A page from Durrell’s notebooks, or, as he called them, the “quarry.” This page introduced his notes on the “colour and narrative” of scenes in Justine. (Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Durrell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.)

  “As well as serving delicious food in an idyllic setting, the Taverna Nikolas at Agni has strong links with the Durrell story in Corfu,” says Joanna Hodgkin of this 2012 photo. Durrell lived in the neighboring town of Kalami, where his famous White House sits right above the shoreline. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  copyright © 1977 by Lawrence Durrell

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  EBOOKS BY LAWRENCE DURRELL

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