"In quoting others, we cite ourselves." —Julio Cortázar
"One should never be cured of one's passions." Marguerite Duras 1964
"Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection." Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
Greg Gerke posted a page from Deleuze: "In reality writing does not have its end in itself, precisely because life is not something personal. Or, rather, the aim of writing is to carry life to the state of a non-personal power.
Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues II found this info by searching the above passage and found it on a blog xenographic.com/2023/03/11/spring-fragments/
now to complete copying the long Deleuze passage: "the aim of writing is to carry life to the state of a non-personal power. In doing this it renounces claim to any territory, any end which would reside in itself. Why does one write? Because it is not a case of writing. It may be that the writer has delicate health, a weak constitution. He is none the less the opposite of the neurotic: a sort of great Alive (in the manner of Spinoza, Nietzsche or Lawrence) in so far as he is only too weak for the life which runs in him or for the affects which pass in him.
To write has no other functions: to be a flux which combines with other fluxes — all the minority-becomings of the world.
A flux is something intensive, instantaneous and mutant — between a creation and a destruction.
It is only when a flux is deterritorialized that it succeeds in making its conjunction with other fluxes, which deterritorialize it in their turn, and vice versa.
In an animal-becoming a man and an animal combine, neither of which resembles the other, neither of which imitates the other, each deterritorializing the other, pushing the line further. A system of relay and mutations through the middle. The line of flight is creative of these becomings. Lines of flight have no territory. Writing carries out the conjunction, the transmutation of fluxes, through which life escapes from the resentment of persons, societies and reigns.
Kerouac's phrases are as sober as a Japanese drawing, a pure line traced by an unsupported hand, which passes across ages and reigns. It would take a true alcoholic to attain that degree of sobriety.
—-Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues II "On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature." essay in Dialogues II
This could work so well to describe what Lax's writing is all about. Lax's line as sober and pure as Kerouac's and the Japanese drawing. Lax's work as lines of flight, conjunctions through the middle, where life escapes from the resentment of persons, societies and orders/kingdoms/sovereignties [churches].
Akkad: "From the cosmic point of view, to have opinions or preferences at all is to be ill; for by harboring them one dams up the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a river, bears us down to the ocean of everything's unknowing." Durrell Constance 343
Affad was thinking with deep desire mingled with remorse of that secret field or realm which constitutes the moral geography of the mystic. His friend Balthazar had once said ruefully, "I thought I was living my own life but all the time it was really living me without any extraneous aid. It had taken half a century for me to realise this! What a blow to my self-esteem!
The Avignon Quintet 972
Stalag 17
Any memories of when we staged "Stalag 17" at LaSalle? I do vaguely recall being onstage in it, we all wore our khakis, I may have had one line.
How innocent we were of what it was all about!!!
""The most ethereally beautiful music of the twentieth century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Görlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen wrote most of it after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940. The première took place in an unheated space in Barrack 27. A fellow-inmate drew up a program in Art Nouveau style, to which an official stamp was affixed: 'Stalag VIIIA 49 geprüft [approved].' Sitting in the front row—and shivering along with the prisoners—were the German officers of the camp." -- Alex Ross, The New Yorker "
This piece showed up in a notice about a concert coming up here in Abq in a week,
performing Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time." And a personal tag: one day in Madrid years ago I walked past a notice saying a concert was happening that very day of a work by Messiaen with the symphony. I had the afternoon free so bought a ticket and went in. Afterwards everyone hung around because it turned out Messiaen was there and they all wanted to shake his hand. I got in line and shook his hand too. He must have been in his late 70s or 80s. Had I even ever heard of him? Not sure about that. The music was astonishing. There was a second performance the next afternoon so I bought a ticket and went again the next day. Did we all shake Messiaen's hand once again? Not sure about that but it may have happened.
—-
Sat Feb 24
Dear Bob,
If you can retreat from winter by fleeing to New Mexico, I have engineered February in Nairobi. My excuse is two ‘important’ meetings at either end of the month and the need to hire a new Africa program manager. It has been a very welcome change of pace (though next week will be full on)!
As I sit on the veranda of my lodge, I have continued my re-reading obsession (my astrologer friend would attribute this to my Saturn return). Presently I am in Patrick White’s The Tree of Man. You never step into the same book twice - and so it is compelling to see both what is remembered (and what not) and how it resonates now.
How is the Lawrence Durrell fest going? I had eyed the Alexandra Quartet to bring with me but skipped it on this occasion, though I am fully expecting it to join the rereading queue! Have you read the poetry? He is very good. Of all his works that I have read, it is those I remain faithful to.
Spent the day with a friend and ex-Oxfam colleague who has retired here. She has built a beautiful house - everything redeemed from elsewhere and upcycled and overflowing with wonderful examples of Kenyan art. She also makes a formidable Long Island Ice Tea!
Love, Nicholas
Dear Nicholas
From the sound of your voice I thought you were some place high in elevation and sure enough Nairobi is at 5889 feet.
So on the globe we are both now at 5-6000 feet. We have not yet driven up to Santa Fe which is at a clear 7000. I love
the high desert air and dryness.
I'm glad you're having this nice trip to Nairobi. How soon are you relocating to UK? I got the impression it would happen
this year? But is it 3-5 years away. Am very curious to see where you will end up. And whether this will be a stopover before
the real retirement nest on the west coast of Scotland further down the road.
We are having a fine quiet time so far. Virginia has us ship out all the photos and paintings from Plymouth so we unpack those
and play house at deciding where to put them. We will no longer short-term rent the house so it is starting to feel much more like
ours for real as we place our things all around. We see our four friends once a week on Sunday mornings when we all go to
the "church of beethoven" as it was called when it started years ago. Now it is called Chatter. Meets in a sort of club warehouse venue, about 80-100 people, mostly our age group(s). Chamber players of varying instruments and programs. Today was very
avante music, all brass horns and one baritone. Always ten minutes of a poet reading and two minutes of silence. 75 mins in total.
I have read some of Durrell's poems and just ordered a copy of the collected to have here since the other copy is back east. I am
about two hundred pages from completing the Avignon Quintet. Durrell would have made an excellent guest speaker at a Temenos
conference. Late Durrell and the poet. I am still enjoying him greatly.
I do want to suggest that you read the Avignon quintet first. You read the Alexandria years ago and you have some slight memory
of how stunning that work is. Avignon is different in so many ways and the work of the older writer who now has nothing to lose
and can explore his strange collection of obsessions and curiosities as he wishes. Alexandria is the work of the young writer
coming into the peak of his powers and is brilliant in all those ways. Avignon explores and meditates more serenely and darkly.
Some of the war hovers over it for a while. I won't give more away except to say that Durrell critiques and weaves all the themes
of the times, Freud, Jung, the Cathars, the Templars, the gnostics, the psychoanalysts. I've been surprised that he explores
a character who is autistic. I think I first heard of autism in Hyde Park when I became aware of the foundation there run by
Bruno Bettleheim. Anyway, I will see how he ends the quintet, finished it seems shortly before he died. As I mentioned I've been
purposely holding off reading much biography. It will be good to read all of the poetry next before turning to the delightful, lesser
travel books which it seems he wrote to keep funds trickling in.
We will both turn 80 in late spring. There is a number for you. It has a weight and power over one's imagination unlike any of the
previous ones. We both saw our doctor last week. All is basically well. We have one friend back east who will be 89. Your mother
is in her early 90s now I believe. What to say? Each day is most wonderful and on we go. One of my colleagues has had a
terminal cancer diagnosis for four years now. He's only 70, a medicine has been holding the cancer at bay for longer than anyone
has expected. He just sent me the last chapter of his memoir, a life in twenty chapters. He already published a small book about the shock of getting the diagnosis. He's now fly fishing in Arkansas for a few weeks.
The museum here has a great exhibit of arts of the natives of northwestern Canada, beautiful bird masks, turtle and whale motifs. Temperatures are starting to level into the 70s. Always the brilliant skies and sunlight. Almost always. Bit overcast at the moment.
Kenya must be quite beautiful. Where to after that?
Love, Bob
Feb 26
Dear Bob,
The return to the UK is planned for the summer. Initially landing relatively close to my mother while the Scottish hunt is on! I sincerely wish I could retire now - but not quite there yet!
I have ordered the Avignon Quintet - and look forward to reading it. I will report back!
Next stop is taking my mother to the sea in April!
Love and best wishes, Nicholas
Dear Bob,
A slim Durrell book I remember with affection was: A Smile in the Mind’s Eye when the Taoist philosopher and tai chi practitioner, Jolan Chang comes to stay and they discuss Chang’s book The Tao of Love and Sex. It is funny, touching and, at times, profound.
Best wishes, Nicholas
Dear Nicholas
Yes, you had mentioned that book a while back and I read it. Valuable key to how these themes thread through
the large works.
B
——-
“how was it before we emerged, I often wonder? Perhaps trees were the original people, anterior to humankind. Man sprang from the humus when it was mixed with water. Thus the mystics desire to regress into the unassailability of plant life–the insouciant lotus–in order to recapture the down-drive into dissolution, echoing the force we call gravity upon body and mind.”
— The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, and Quinx by Lawrence Durrell
"No escape from the dozing notebook of the brain." 94 Quinx
"all the gibberings of Paracelsus are coming back to us under a Tibetan imprimatur!" page 1261
"I am suddenly reminded of a curious fact about myself, that when I like a writer profoundly I can read anything he writes and enjoy it—and I mean literally "anything". In a recent work Cendrars writes that he is the sort of reader who when he takes to an author not only reads him all the way through — and in the original language — but reads everything that was ever written about him. That I can't do. But again, what I am trying to say is — and this is undoubtedly my conscious "plaidoirie" —- what one looks for is the man, and the man is always there if you will examine the fibre of his creation." 235-236 Henry Miller to Durrell in the Durrell-Miller Letters
11 March
Yes, that would be it! I was described recently as a widely read person and thought that was not quite right. I mean I have an outline of nineteenth-century English literature in my head yet have read very little in breadth but at a point in time I consumed George Eliot (except the poetry - not even my admiration could stretch to that)! So Miller's quote here is very apposite -I have a biographical attitude to reading - I want to see the person as whole as possible and through them, and their ideas, see the world. It works in religion/spirituality too - the world through the eyes of specific saints!
3-4 hours I expect if you factor in weekends/holidays and have always been a quick reader. Looking forward to retirement:-)
Love and best wishes, Nicholas
——
Henry Miller to Durrell June 5, 1953 "Spain is a remarkable country. I don't think I'd want to live here, but it is certainly worth knowing. The landscape (always wonderful) often reminded me of Greece. But in no country have I ever been stared at so much! They have the curiosity of primitives. Andalusia is all it's reputed to be. The impress of the Moors is tremendous — and always good. Seeing the Alhambra, the Alcazar, the Mezquita (Mosque), I feel I have seen three of the seven wonders of the world. Catholic Spain is dark, morose, sinister, brutal. [. . .] 270-271
Bob,
Good question. It took a long time before I really began to understand and appreciate Berry. I started out, as a high school student, reading Thoreau. He really spoke to me. Which is dangerous for an 18 year old. But Berry, I eventually came to see, shared my values and, more importantly, my allegiances. And he could express them in a way I never could, even to myself. More and more I'm seeing the same thing in Aldo Leopold, the conservationist who taught in Madison but also had a small derelict farm near Baraboo. In any case, I suppose it could have been someone else other than Berry. But who?
Just finished a long conversation with my cousin Joe about alfalfa.
Dick
——
"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our natures—and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection . . ." 1 Bitter Lemons of Cyprus Today is 18 March 2024
DurrellSociety (@Durrell Society) posted:
Who among us, looking back down the path of no return, can say they followed it in the right way?
— Fernando Pessoa
"May I venture an explanation: writing is the ultimate recourse for those who have betrayed." Jean Genet
