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LIBRARY
Michigan State
University

J..- i

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Lawrence Durrell' s Avignon Quintet:

 

A Book of Miracles

presented by

Helen Mary Kay

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

 

the Ph.D. degree in English

 

WW

Major professor

 

Date June 5th., 1987

 

MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

 

MSU
LIBRARIES
A—g—A.

 

RETURNING MATERIALS:
Place in book drop to
remove this checkout from
your record. VFINES wiii
be charged if book is
returned after the date
stamped below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAURENCE DURRELL'S AVIGNON QUINTET:

A BOOK OF HIRACLES

By

Helen Mary Kay

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1987

 

 

 

Copyright by
HELEN MARY KAY

 

 

ABSTRACT

LAWRENCE DURRELL'S AVIGNON QUINTET:
A BOOK OF MIRACLES

By

Helen Mary Kay

Lawrence Durrell's interest in Gnosticism achieves its
most complete formulation in IRS Avignon Quintet, where a
Gnostic structure of thought informs the spiritual progress
of the protagonists. Conversely, their Nazi antagonists, who
seek to emulate Gnosticism, actually invert its principles,
with the result that National Socialism embodies the worst
traits of Judeo-Christianity. Gnosticism also supplies the
foundation for alchemy, in which Jung has discovered a
kinship with the individuation process. The attempt to
transmute base metals into gold signifies man's desire to
redeem the divine spirit from its imprisonment in matter. It
is therefore, Jung argues, a symbolic statement of the
psychological imperative to recover the content of the
unconscious and, through its reconciliation with the
conscious mind, create an integrated psyche. Aubrey
Blanford, the narrator of the Quintet, illustrates this
psychological and spiritual movement from fragmentation to

self-realization. Sexual love, as the primary alchemical

 

2221232232 and traditional Gnostic means to man's
fulfillment of his own capacity for godhead, effects the
transformation.

The protagonists eventually converge upon Avignon, to
find the Templar treasure for which they have all been
searching. The resolution of their political, theological
and sexual differences culminates in the production of the
quincunx, and hence the ultimate reconciliation of matter
with spirit{ Blanford is now able to realize his role as
Logos, and so to "write" the Qttttgt. In Mgtttgtt, he
creates a "fictive" representation of the "real" events
which comprise the remaining volumes. Thus the structure of
the novels echoes their content; from the 23133 materia of
the first come the four differentiated versions of the
succeeding novels, which lead, when read together, to the
apprehension of "reality prime." Just as the characters
discover the quincunx which designates the location of the
Templar treasure, so does the reader discover the quincunx
which the novels form. As the sign for Mercury, who is also
Hermes Trismegistus and the Egyptian Thoth, the quincunx
clearly designates the hermetic elements of the spiritual

illumination which Durrell advocates.

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the scholarly contributions of my guidance
committee I owe a debt which this work scantily repays. My
thanks go to Professor Victor N. Paananen, whose
illuminating remarks and unstinting encouragement sustained
me during my "dark nights of the soul"; to Professor John A.
Yunck, the kindest of mentors; to Professor Michael R.
Lopez, for his good sense and humor; and to Professor M.
Teresa Tavormina, whose industry, charity and brilliance
have long been a source of inspiration. I am fortunate
indeed to have studied with such people and, above all, to
count them amongst my friends. I am equally indebted to
Matthew Nikkari, whose insights have proved invaluable on
many an occasion, and to my closest acquaintances for their
patience during my enforced hibernation. In particular, I am
grateful to Martin; his intellectual and emotional support
has helped immeasurably. Finally, I should like to thank my
parents Pamela and Emrys, to whom I owe most of all. For
their unfailing love and wisdom no words of mine are

sufficient.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO00.0.00000000000001

ONE: A Quincunx: The "relation of form to content."......8

The Intellectual Substructure
of Durrell's Vision..H..u..u..n..u..u..18
The Universe Outside Man...................18
The Universe Within........................21
The Occult Perspective.....................25
The Hermetic Context of the Quincunx.......32
Conclusion......................................39

TWO: Gnosticism: The "grammar of dissent."..............44

THREE: From Gnostics and Knights Templar to Nazis:
The "rotting palimpsests of the past.".............78

From Knights Templar to National Socialists:

A Mythology..................................84
From Manichaeans to Nazis:

A Psychology of Passion......................97

FOUR: Alchemy and Individuation:
"what that bastard Jung is up to."n.u.n.u.u.J17

The Substance of Blanford's Narrative..........131
The Structure of Blanford's Narrative..........148
The Final Vision of Reality Prime..............158

FIVE: Conclusion:
The "moral geography of the mystic."..............165

BIBLIOGRAPHYOOOOOOOOCOOOOOCOO... ....... 0.0.00.00000000000201

iii

 

 

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure L.The Quincunxial Structure of the Novels.u.uu.158

Figure 2. Durrell's Quincunx of Themes...................188

iv

 

 

Ti-

INTRODUCTION

Lawrence Durrell is both a prolific and versatile
writer. Since the publication of his first full length work
in 1935, he has produced novels, travel books, several
volumes of humor and a substantial collection of poetry. He
has also tried his hand at detective fiction, verse drama
and the autobiographical essay, as well as venturing briefly
into literary criticism. In addition to this already
prodigious output, Durrell's anecdotes and correspondence
are the subject of some four editions. In all, he has
twenty-three works of prose, three plays and nearly twenty
volumes of poetry to his name.1

The extent and variety of Durrell's writing reveal a
man as eclectic as he is industrious; a man whose interests
embrace wine, women and material pleasure as passionately as
the more intellectual pursuits of philosophy, psychology and
religion. These somewhat diverse concerns are reflected in a

number of his novels, where the conflict between hedonism

and mysticism is a recurring theme. The Avignon Quintet, in

 

 

particular, explores the antithetical relation of spirit to

matter. All the oppositions it addresses, whether they be

 

 

mental, sexual or political in nature, prove ultimately to
be aspects of this fundamental dichotomy.

The gttttgt is clearly the product of Durrell's
maturity. Not only is it the last of his works to be
completed, but it is also the final articulation of issues
which have continued to engage him throughout his entire
artistic career.2 Lee Lemon remarks that, in "a lesser
writer, .. . such repetitions indicate a paucity of
imagination . .. . In Durrell, as in other great writers,
it indicates rather a persistence of vision" ("The Uses of
Uncertainty" 41). Durrell has indeed been faithful to that
vision. With the completion of the Quintet, he has fulfilled
the ambition he first formulated in 1937.

Writing to Henry Miller of his gratitude for Miller's
exuberant comments on the manuscript of Ttg tlggt @935,
Durrell observes that he has "planned AN AGON, A PATHOS, AN
ANAGNORISIS. If I write them," he adds, "they should be The
Black Book, The Book of Miracles, The Book of the Dead"

(Wickes, A Private Correspondence 83). Some three months

 

later, in July 1937, he had changed their sequence, telling
Miller that "the gtgt [would] come out, and be followed by
the Book of the Dead, the Book of Miracles, etc." In the
same letter, he defends himself from Miller's criticism for
agreeing to the publication by Faber and Faber of an
expurgated edition of its B1335 ngt: "You see, I CAN'T
WRITE REAL BOOKS ALL THE TIME," he explains. "It's like an

electric current: increase the dose very gradually. Already

 

the tdlzhas played havoc with meJ'Significantly, Durrell
then predicts the pattern his own work was to follow. "Once
every three years or more," he remarks, "I shall try to
compose for full orchestra. The rest of the time I shall do
essays, travel books.n." From an early age, therefore,
Durrell has expressed the intention to create a series of
related novels which would represent his "real" work, as
distinct from the "kind of literary gardening" designed to
produce an income and preserve his health (Wickes, A Private

Correspondence 104-105).

 

By the spring of 1945, he was already engaged in the
second part of this sequence. Writing from Egypt to inform
Miller of his progress, he reports, "I have drafted about
twenty pages of the new version of the Book of the Dead--
it's about incest and Alexandria, inseparable ideas here,
but will take me a year or so to do" (Wickes, A gttggtg

Correspondence 201). In July 1947, Durrell had "about 200

 

pages of material and a mass of notes" (Wickes 245), but
personal circumstances then intervened to prevent him from
finishing. In the years which followed-~an unhappy time for
Durrell, as he coped with his wife's collapse, the
subsequent responsibilities of single parenthood and a
political profession--the opportunity to complete his book
steadily receded. This enforced period of gestation, during
which he revised the title, hOping now "to make Justine a

worthy successor to The Black Book" (Wickes 298), ended in

 

1956. Only a year later _._I_usti_n_e_ was published and, by 1960,

 

 

Durrell had concluded all four volumes of The Alexandria

 

Quartets Fifteen years after its inception, he had at last
produced his "Book of the DeadJ'

The success of the Quartet transformed Durrell from an
obscure novelist into an author of international repute. His
critical reception was mixed, but he was clearly recognized
as a writer who could not be ignored. In fact, the more
positive responses ranked ka1 with Joyce and other
acknowledged giants of the literary world. Profiting from
this acclaim, Durrell turned his full attention to writing.
No longer beset by the monetary difficulties which had
previously diverted his energy, he began, early in 1960, to
envisage his next task.1\letter to Richard Aldington, his
neighbour and recently acquired friend, expresses the desire
to "try a big comic book if I could; something like the

Satyricon!" (MacNiven and Moore, Literary Lifelines 129).

 

 

With the publication of‘Tunc and Nunguam, in 1968 and 1970

respectively, Durrell achieved his admn The Revolt gt

 

Aphrodite, as the two volumes were called collectively, was
partly inspired by the work of Petronius, although it was
equally an experiment in science fiction. Ironically,
however, this "double-decker" novel, in which he attempted
"to take a culture-reading"("Postface," Nunguam), did not
secure his reputation. It was generally regarded as an
interesting failure, and Durrell himself as an author in
decline.

Yet, even in the process of conceiving The Revolt gt

 

 

 

 

Aphrodite, Durrell seems to have been contemplating a more

serious project. The very letter which indicates his
intention to write a comedy reveals a concurrent
preoccupation with "Jung's work on alchemy and
psychoanalysis in which the search for the Philosopher's
Stone is studied." Durrell explains that he is "trying to
use these things like crude symbolisms" and, thinking always
of how his reading may be turned to advantage in his
writing, remarks that he "may later do a book on Da Capo in

Smyrna; we shall see" (Literary Lifelines 129). Now

 

Capodistria, to whom he thus refers, is the satanic figure
whose interest in Paracelsus provides a subsidiary theme of
Clea. It is obvious, therefore, that Durrell was already

speculating upon a sequel to The Alexandria Quartet, and

 

hence a work to conclude his related series of "real"
novels.

Egg Avignon Quintet fulfills that role. Completed only
in 1985, it is the culmination of a vision first articulated
in Its Btggk Eggt. Indeed, Durrell himself acknowledges
that, with the publication of the Qttntgt, he has finally
accomplished the plan which he formulated some fifty years
ago. Writing to James Carley, he depicts his literary

development in the following terms:3

an a an
Agon Pathos Anagnorisis
The Black Book The Quartet The Quinx

 

Durrell's conception of the Quintet as an anagnorisis,
or recognition, is a useful, and much needed, clue to its

interpretation. If The Blagk Book is a kind of genesis, The

 

Avignon Quintet is most certainly a book of revelations. In
fact, the words of Rob Sutcliffe, one of its two putative
authors, suggest the precise nature of this evolution.
Describing his exposure to Gnosticism, Sutcliffe expresses a
"dissatisfaction with [his] own rather carefully landscaped
novels with their love-motivated actorsJ' He realizes,
however, that he is "not really ripe to write about the
Other Thing," which he has "vaguely situated in or around
the region demarcated off by the word 'Godm (Monsieur 214-
214). Durrell, too, has produced "rather carefully
landscaped novels" and, in the Quartet particularly, claims
to have investigated the various forms of modern love.But
the Qttttgt demonstrates that, like Sutcliffe, he finally
discovered the capacity "to write about the Other Thingfl

The result is a "Book of Miraclesfl

 

mil

 

Notes

1 These figure exclude the letters and essays, which
appear under the name of their respective editors. However,
they do include Durrell's second novel, which was published
under the pseudonym Charles Norden, and the four volumes of
his selected or collected poetry.

2 Durrell has said thathe hasno intentionof‘writing
another book, and claims that he is planning his retirement
to a Tibetan monastery in southern France, where he has made
his home for the last thirty years.

3 "The Avignon Quintet and Gnostic Heresy" 240.

 

 

Chapter One

A Quincunx: The "relation of form to content!

Begun in 1974 with 34.222222 2:4 :22 351222 2:
Darkness, Durrell's "quincunx" of novels which comprise The
Avignon Quintet spans eleven years in its composition. In

common with The Alexandria Quartet, the titles of the

 

individual volumes are generally derived from the names of
important characters, although in the helpful addition of
subtitles which summarize major themes Durrell has departed
from his earlier pattern. Thus £3113; 23; Btttgg Alllfi
(1978) evokes the medieval punishment for heresy and
homosexuality, of which the Knights Templar were convicted
Practices (1982) occurs largely in the isolation of Avignon
during the Nazi Occupation; and §§B§§Ei§fli 2:; Bflllflg
Passions (1984) explores "the problems of the human heart in
conflict with itself" (Faulkner, "Address upon Receiving the
Nobel Prize for Literature"). Similarly, Qfilflii 22; It;

fitgper's [gig (1985) suggests the religious quest which

 

concludes, in this last volume, with the dramatic moment

when the Veil of Maya is finally removed. Neither the

 

 

volumes nor their themes exist entirely independently of

each other, however, for the narrative resembles a tapestry
in which different strands recur. In this respect, it is
like the medieval quest literature in which contemporary
romance has its origins, and better read as 933 text
containing five interdependent novels that "belong to the
same blood group, five panels for which your creaky old
Monsieur would provide simply a cluster of themes to be
reworked in the others" (£1113 11).

The approach adopted in the following pages is likewise
structured on that "cluster of themes." The first chapter
addresses those issues which inform both the style and
substance of Durrell's work. Amongst the various interests
he has expressed, and applied in his novels, are an
untutored but nonetheless extensive concern with the
concepts of modern physics and a substantial knowledge of
psychology. Durrell has also studied a number of occult
practices, in particular, the symbols which originated with
the Orphic cults, but are equally embedded in the mystical
systems of alchemy and the tarot. A preliminary discussion
of these ideas is especially valuable in ascertaining the
immediate implications of the quincunx, which functions as
the presiding symbol of Egg Avignon Quintet.

The remaining chapters examine those themes in greater
depth. Hence Chapter Two explicates and evaluates the
Gnosticism to which several of the protagonists adhere.

Chapter Three traces its ramifications: in the alleged link

 

10

between the Gnostics and Knights Templar, and in the Nazi
regime, which Durrell portrays as a perversion of
Gnosticism. The fourth chapter considers the related topics
of alchemy and individuation. It analyses the manner in
which the characters mature through a process analogous to
the alchemical procedure. Here, the evidence of Jung's
influence upon Durrell is quite obvious. The focus of
Chapter Five is Durrell's eventual synthesis of these ideas.
The convergence of protagonists whose affiliations have
earlier conflicted results fix: a reconciliation <3f the
opposites for which they stand. Collectively, they form a
quincunx and, in so doing, create the conditions for their
mystical experience of what Durrell calls "reality primeJ'
More immediately, Durrell suggests that the apparently
disparate models of physics and religion are mediated by the
"divine" function of number, from which the quincunx itself
is ultimately derived.

This brief statement of the direction to be pursued in
the present study indicates the extent to which Durrell's
themes are not simply clustered, as he disarmingly implies,
so much as they are actually connected by a common symbolic
foundation. The complexity of those connections is reflected
fix: the structure 04‘ the narrative, which appears
superficially chaotic, but on closer inspection reveals a
detailed "relation of form to contents" It seems profitable,
therefore, to preface the discussion of Durrell's interests,

as they apply to the Quintet, with a necessarily concise

 

 

11

recapitulation cxf the events which supply its subject
matter.

The sequence begins with an apparently autobiographical
account by Bruce Drexel of the "conventional menage t ttgtg
reversed" (Monsieur 110), in which he, Piers and Sylvie have
all become entangled. The various manifestations of their
love (heterosexual, homosexual and incestuous), together
with their exposure to the Gnostic religion in its present
eastern form, supply the content of "Monsieur," a sub-plot
which later proves to be Aubrey Blanford's fiction. This
narrative gives way'1x> a second "autobiographical" version
of events, "The Prince of Darkness," which is allegedly
written by Rob Sutcliffe, brother-in-law to Bruce and
husband of the lesbian Pia. Eventually, however, the reader
discovers that this too is a fiction within a fiction, for
Blanford has invented Rob as an alter ego and is thus the
author of both works. Rob decries his creator, whom he names
Bloshford, "that apotheosis of the British artist, the
animated tea-cosy!" (Mggglggg 178). But Bloshford-Blanford
is in turn<displaced by Durrell, whose novel comprises the
two subsidiary texts and, of course, their respective
titles. His "Envoi," which concludes this composite, depicts
the relationship between the various writers as a hierarchy
of realities:

So D.
begat Blanford
(who begat Tu and Sam and Livia)

who begat Sutcliffe
who begat Bloshford (Monsieur 296)

 

 

12

In the ensuing volumes Blanford decides to abandon the
fictive enterprise, recognizing that he has distorted the
complexities on which it was based. He determines instead to
.cooperate with Sutcliffe, who appears to symbolize the
affective part of his temperament, in telling "the true
story of your love, our love, for Constance and indeed for
Livia despite what she did to you, to us, to me" Qtllig 7).
He narrates the details of his disastrous marriage to Livia
and subsequent relationship with her sister Constance, both
of whom have supplied aspects of Pia and Sylvie. Each of his
earlier fictive characters is revealed, in fact, as having
one or more counterparts in "realityfl' Thus Akkad, the
Gnostic businessman from Monsieur, is a fusion of the
genuinely ascetic Affad with the rather more worldly Prince
Hassad; Trash and Thrush are virtually interchangeable, as
the disruptive female lovers of Pia and Livia respectively;
while Rob Sutcliffe is derived in part from Sam, husband to
Constance, and in part from Blanford himself. However, the
boundaries between fiction and reality are not to be so
easily maintained, fer Rob resolutely refuses to stay
conveniently relegated to the world of Blanford's fiction,

and reappears in Constance entirely independent of his

 

creator's wishes. Any demarcation of material reality is
proved to be unstable, as, indeed, is the existence of
personality, for "people are not separate individuals as
they think, they are variations (n1 themes outside

themselves" (Constance 378).

 

 

 

13

The activities of the protagonists, real and fictive,
unfbld against the panoramic backdrop of World War II. Both
Sam and Aubrey Blanford are casualties of the war, though
the latter survives, crippled in body, as he is in his
emotions, until he can be healed through his love for
Constance. Meanwhile Livia, who has previously deserted
Blanford to enlist in the Nazi party, is literally blinded,
a fate which echoes the metaphorical blindness she has
displayed for much of her life. Finally, she commits
suicide,1§isillusioned by the Nazis, who have executed her
brother Hilary. On a broader perspective, Hitler's
persecution of the Jews is linked with the persecution of
the Knights Templar, both being inversions of a spiritual
quest that result in its opposite, an inquisition conducted
for material gain. Yet the war is only one symptom of a
world-wide spiritual disease, against which the protagonists
fight by resorting to various systems of knowledge, or
"gnosis." Thus Constance becomes a psychoanalyst, while her
lover, Sebastian Affad, is a Gnostic. But each is humbled by
the discovery of the limitations of his or her system of
belief, and fOrced eventually to acknowledge that no single
system can prevail. If there is a solution, it lies only in
rejecting the principle of exclusion, and remaining open to
multiple possibilities.

The palimpsestic quality of Durrell's narrative, in
which one "truth" continually replaces (n: contradicts

another, is hardly surprising to those familiar with The

 

 

14

Alexandria Quartet, where Darley is forced to revise both
his understanding of events and his story; There, however,
it is the individual volumes which supplant each other,
whereas the Quintet lacks such obvious demarcations. The
assumption of some reviewers has been that Durrell's most

recent work is therefore a roman fleuve.1 The term suggests

 

a narrative as meandering as the river from which it takes
its name; a linear chronicle that functions through
association of ideas rather than a strict architectural
form. But, when the Quartet was likewise classified, Durrell
denied it, claiming to have "adopted, as a rough analogy,
the relativity proposition." He insisted, moreover, that
"even if the group of books were extended indefinitely the

result would never become roman fleuve" ("Preface," 2M3

 

Alexandria Quartet).

 

Both the vehemence of his remark and the internal
evidence of the 9233223 itself are enough to indicate the
importance to Durrell of form. His correspondence with Henry
Miller, initiated in 1935 with an ecstatic response to
Tropic pt Cancer, confirms Durrell's long struggle to become

a "conscious artist" (Wickes, A Private Correspondence 224).

 

From a young disciple's lavish praise for that "freedom from
literary canons of style which was necessary to write the
Tropic of their age" (Wickes 6), he shifts to condemnation
of "the American artist [who] has no sense of form" (Wickes
247). By 1949, nearly a decade before the publication of the

Quartet, Miller's Sexus is the object of his criticism, for

 

 

 

15

its "moral vulgarity" and "chunks of puerile narrativeJ'
"This book," concludes Durrell, "needs taking apart and
regluing" (Wickes 265). Clearly, the divergence between
patron and pupil, tempered though it is by mutual respect
and affection, emerges as a result of Durrell's increasing
artistic and technical discipline.

Yet neither a history that demonstrates his profound
concern with form nor his warning in the "Preface" to the

Quartet has ameliorated the confusion which The Avignon

 

thptgt apparently elicits. The reason may be partly
attributable to our expectations as readers, since, as Alan
Warren Friedman observes, "only a few multivolume novels
seem capable of this sort of length without assuming the

form of the roman fleuve." Amongst such novels he includes

 

Proust's _A _l__a_ recherche _dp temps perdu, which has been one

 

 

of Durrell's acknowledged sources of inspiration, Faulkner's
Yoknapatawpha cycle and Salinger's Glass family saga, "all
complexly dynamic in their unfoldings, highly wrought and
richly imaginative fictional constructs" ("The Modern
Multivalent Novel" 126). The characteristics Friedman
identifies within those three works are, in fact, equally
true of the Quintet. Furthermore, Durrell himself has
reiterated the claim he made for the Quartet, remarking that

the Quintet also "pg deviendra jamais pp roman fleuve"

 

 

(Durrell's italicsh2 But a second source for this confusion
about its form may perhaps be traced to the observations of

Rob Sutcliffe, whose avowed aim in collaborating with

 

 

16

Blanford, the primary narrator of the Quintet, is
that ideal book--the titanic do—it-yourself kit,
le £2933 appareil. After all, why not a book full
3? spare parts of other books, of characters left
over from other lives, all circulating in each
other's bloodstreams--yet all fresh, nothing
second-hand, twice chewed, twice breathed.
(Constance 122-123)
The description is a little misleading in its suggestion
that the reader must assemble the novel—-except insofar as
that is entailed by any act of interpretation. In Durrell's
work, at least, there is a structure so carefully designed
that permutations of identity and reality occur without loss
of authorial control. The result is, rather, as Blanford has

planned all along, "a roman gigogne" (Livia 11). It is often

 

dangerous to attribute to a writer the intentions of his
character, but Blanford, like his predecessors Darley and
Pursewarden, does frequently function in this manner. His
claim within the text is reinforced by Durrell's statement
that he "was intending to go over five books this time .. .
a telescopic form, what the French call gigognefl3

One characteristic of the ppmgp gigogne is its emphasis
upon structure as an integral aspect of meaning; hence the
importance of determining in what form Itp Avignon Quintet
has been written. The issue is as central to the reader's
understanding of the novels as it is to the putative
authors' ambitions for them. Indeed, it is actually Rob
.Sutcliffe who first questions "the relation of form to
contentJ' Blanford tells him that the "books would be roped

together like climbers on a rockface, but they would all be

 

17

independent. The relation of the caterpillar to the
butterfly, the tadpole to the frog. An organic relation"
(£1113 11). Clearly, Durrell envisages a dynamic kinship
between structure and subject matter, between the individual
texts and the whole. Additional illumination of the analogy

can be gleaned from _A Key tp Modern British Poetry, in which

 

Durrell compares the way ideas work with the activities of

the siphnophora. This single cell organism was alleged at

 

one time to join up with other such cells, thereby forming
an equally complete but entirely different animal. The
originally self-sufficient cell then performed only one of
the biological functions of the larger entity and ceased to
remain separable. "So," says Durrell, "it is with ideas.
Existing singly, they also have the power to modify, and
form greater wholes in other contextsc"“ In this sense, both
the books and the ideas that inform them are "organicJ'

Closer study of'A Key tp Modern British Poetry proves

 

instructive in isolating some of those ideas for, whether or
not this series of lectures delivered in Argentina in 1948
lives up to its name, it is certainly a key to the
intellectual substructure of Durrell's vision. As he remarks
himself,"the artistiisoften dependentcnithe armature of
philosophic ideas or religious concepts, and we can
sometimes surprise his intentions if we examine them" (Mpg

7).

 

 

18

The Intellectual Substructure of Durrell's Vision

For Durrell all temporal concepts reflect the
irreversibility of process and hence the inevitability of
death; time "is the measure of our death-consciousness" (531
4). When those ideas are revised, as they have been in
recent years through the discoveries of physics and
psychology, our concepts of‘ life and Ideath alter
accordingly, eventually to infiltrate the domain of the
arts. It is important to recognize that Durrell does not
claim to possess more than a layman's understanding of these
developments.5 Instead, he is concerned with the changes in

our epistemological paradigms that arise from them.

The Universe Outside Man

In the realm of physics, the divergence of contemporary
models from the mechanistic perception of the universe which
prevailed after Newton's day is what interests him. Durrell
suggests that the theory of relativity did not simply effect
a synthesis of earlier scientific discoveries about
radioactivity, but also "joined up subject and object in
very much the same way as it joined up space and time." The
importance of Einstein's achievement, then, is the
possibility it offers (on a theoretical level only) for the
reconciliation of man and his environment; it is "the
symbolic act of joining what is separated" (M31 26).

However, the theory has further implications, since it

 

 

 

19

radically changes our notion of time. The new conception of
it, Durrell observes, is "not a past-present-future object"
but "a sort of time which containEs] all time in every
moment of time" (K31 28-29). In addition, he argues,
relativity theory calls causality into question, while the
Principle of Indeterminacy establishes that we "cannot
observe the course of nature without disturbing it" (Mpy
29). The picture of the universe which emerges from these
findings is, Durrell concludes, a highly provisional one:
If reality is somehow extra-causal, then a whole
new vista of ideas is opened up--a territory
hitherto only colonized by intuition. If the
result of every experiment, of every motion of
nature is completely unforeseen and
unpredictable-~then everything is perpetually
brand new, everything is, if you care to think of
it like that, a miracle. (Key 30)

Durrell is fascinated by these developments both for
their intrinsic value and as they pertain to literature. He
suggests that modernist poetry "unconsciously reproduces
something like the space-time continuum in the way that it
uses words and phrases: and the way in which its forms are
cyclic rather than extended" (Key 26). The artist struggles
to depict past, present and future-—or birth, life and
death--as synchronic in each moment of time, not as a linear
progression. This portrayal of a multiple state, birth-life-
death, can be discerned, he believes, in the work of poets
such as Rilke. For Rilke,

Death is the £193 t_tit§ that is turned away from
us: we must t y to achieve the fullest

consciousness of our existence, which is the same
in the two unseparated realms, inexhaustibly

nourished by both. There is neither a here nor a

2
r

 

 

 

20

beyond but tM3 gtggt pptt1 . .. . (M31 38)
In Rilke's words, which he actually cites, Durrell sees a
mysticism that also expresses something of the philosophy
implicit in relativity theory.

Now the conception of time which results from
contemporary physics requires that we "accept two
contradictory ideas as simultaneously true." Time is
paradoxically "always-present yet always recurring" (M31
31). Durrell observes that the duality inherent in this
model was quite alien to materialist thought, although the
identity of opposites was an accepted premise long before.
He speculates, then, that, if the influence exhibited by
modern physics has effected a change in literary forms, a
second consequence has been the rediscovery of an analogous
duality in language. In other words, we acknowledge that
"the use of a phrase calls up its opposite—-for if we had no
idea of evil we should be unable to measure goodnessfl
Statement is therefore "a relative affair," rather than
absolute in its value, as the more simple minded of our
Victorian predecessors once thought (M31 46-47). The impact
of modern physics on literature has thus been both
conceptual and semantic, Durrell concludes, for "art is only
a dialect of a language, and .. . we get a wider view of it
if we don't rope it off from everything else and try and

consider it as an isolated phenomenon" (Ke1 44L

 

 

21

The Universe Within

The epistemological paradigm resulting from quantum
mechanics and relativity theory obviously unites the
dichotomy between mind and matter. Simultaneously, however,
in the realm of psychology a similar union was being
effected between mind and body. Freud's study of dreams
establishes that they are meaningful productions of the
unconscious mind, and the psychic disturbances of the
patient can be mediated by their interpretation. He
originally assumed that dreams express a repressed fear or
desire originating from an actual experience, recollection
of which would result in removal of the associated
inhibition. But the case history of the "Wolf Man" compelled
him to reformulate his hypothesis in a direction that
brought it significantly nearer to the concepts underlying
modern physics. The patient's childhood dream about wolves
outside his bedroom window was interpreted as the symbol of
an infantile experience in which he had observed his parents
engage in sexual intercourse in the manner of animals. Yet,
although both psychoanalyst and subject agreed as to the
validity of this interpretation, there seemed to be no
"objective correlative." That is, the patient could not
recall such an event taking place, even after the
interpretation had been negotiated, nor was there any other
evidence to confirm its truth. Freud surmised that the dream
had been a retrospective fantasy, created by the young boy

in the Oedipal stage of his relations with his father. He

 

 

22

recognized, moreover, that the interpretation had achieved a
therapeutic effect precisely because his patient had
experienced the fantasy as though it were objectively true.
He concluded from this that,
If neurotics are endowed with the evil
characteristic of diverting their interest from
the present and of attaching it to these
regressive substitutes, the products of their
imagination, then there is nothing for it but to
follow upon their tracks and bring these
unconscious productions into consciousness; for,
if we disregard their objective unimportance, they
are of the utmost importance from our point of
view, since they are the bearers and possessors of
the interest which we want to set free so as to be
able to direct it on to the problems of the
present. (Three Case Histories 237)
This revision of his position is significant in a number of
respects. It accepts the indeterminacy of dream causation
and, even more importantly, acknowledges that the goal of
psychoanalysis is not the recovery of facts but the
exploration of a reality subjectively created and then
translated into the symbol system of the dream world.

The impactcafthis new paradign10n modern poetry is,of
course, the focus of Durrell's enquiry in M Ke1 t3 Modern
British Poetr1. He suggests that "the literature of our age
is distinguished by two sorts of compression which reflect
both the changes in the idea of time . . . and also the
change in our attitude to the psyche" (Ke1 64-65). Poetry,
that is, functions in a manner analogous to the dream, where
temporal relations are represented in a non-linear fashion

and a multiplicity of associations is compressed into one

symbol. Moreover, the multivalence of those symbols, and of

 

 

23

language itself, enriches the poet's medium, for he can draw
upon meanings which have been made newly conscious. Some of
those associations are actually in conflict with each other
and thus it is the poet's task to establish a "creative
balance" between opposing forces, in much the same way that
for Jung the aim of treatment was "not a pure cause and
effect operation, but a spiritual reintegration" (M31 63).
Indeed, Durrell goes so far as to claim that this oxymoronic
function is a moral imperative; the modern artist must
shoulder "his responsibility as a creature entangled in
opposites which it is his business to resolve in the
interests of the general pattern" (M31 67).

Clearly, the direction of Durrell's thought is
metaphysical. He sees in the convergence of physics and
psychology the possibility of "an attitude which might have
the sanction of the realistic physicist no less than the
mystic" (M31 70). It is no surprise, then, to find him
returning to Georg Groddeck, whose work he had earlier
described in a letter to Henry Miller as a "Heraclitean
adaptation of Freud which makes organic sense of the
discoveries as a system, instead of a mechanistic attachment

to Victorian physics" (Wickes, 5 Private Correspondence

 

209). In 153 3335 3t tM3 Mt Groddeck articulated the view
"that man is animated by the Unknown, that there is within
him an 'Esfl an 'Itfl some wondrous force which directs both
what he himself does, and what happens to him" (16).The It

expresses itself symbolically through both man's illness and

 

 

24

his health, for "sickness, whether it be called organic or
'nervousfl and death, too, are just as purposeful as playing
the piano, striking a match, or crossing one's legs" (:33
3335 pt t53 Mt 117). Thus man's physical and mental
condition are treated as an organic whole that is motivated
by a power largely beyond the limits of consciousness. When
the It conflicts with man's rational understanding of
himself, its repressed wishes, distorted and translated into
symbolic form, must be reinterpreted in the language of the
ego for reintegration of the warring opposites to take
place. Groddeck's "ego-It polarity" is, then, in Durrell's
view, "a brilliant rationalization of the Eastern mystic's
position--who seeks to free himself from the opposites of
being, and to emerge into Reality" (M31 83).

It should by now be apparent that the reconciliation of
"opposites is a common feature of the several avenues of
thought which inform Durrell's intellectual perspective.
Seeing literature as "only one facet of the prism we call
culture," he explores physics and psychology as "different
dialects of the same language, all contributing towards an
attitude to life" (M31 1). Redefinition of the universe——
both internal and external--permits the healing of that
earlier fracture between man, his mind and his environment.
Art, as a dialect of this language, shares in the moral
responsibility to resolve the conflicts in human experience
and admit the possibility of a transcendent principle that

will bridge even those differences in dialect:

 

 

25

in the last resort great poetry reflects an
unknown in the interpretation and understanding of
which all knowledge is refunded into ignorance. It
points towards a Something which itself subsists
without distinction.”.at its highest [power] it
reflects a metaphysical reality about ourselves
and the world. (Key 90)
The Occult Perspective
Durrell's version of that metaphysical reality is the
"heraldic universe," a term he first coined in 1936. He
explains in a letter to Henry Miller that he has chosen the
word "heraldic" "because in heraldry I seem to find that
quality of magic and spatial existence which I want to tack
on to artJ'A very confused description of what he means by
the expression immediately follows: "I am trying to
isolate.nthe exact moment of creation, in which the maker
seems to exist heraldically. That is to say, time as a
concept does not exist, but only as an attribute of matter--

decay, growth, etc. In that sense then, it must be

memoryless" (Wickes, 5 Private Correspondence 23). The

 

following yearkuaadmits,"my petEsic] isin avery muddled
state just at the moment" (Wickes 65), but by 1945 the
heraldic universe had begun to take much clearer shape in
his mind, partly through his association with a small
cabalistic group directed by one Mr. Baltazian. He writes:

What they have to say is interesting: the pure
symbol, which is non-formulable in the rational
sense. You have to grow the extra-sensory
awareness of the symbol and accommodate it in your
experience-—not express it. I think I have
mastered the first two thought-forms, whose
"contemptible" representation are the circle and
the square. It is very exciting. It is as if
everything to date had taken place on the minus
side of the equation—-with the intention of

 

 

26

producing One-ness.
Dividing his page into two columns, Durrell then uses the
left part to explain this minus side as the necessary
psychological preparation for entry into the heraldic
universe. It is

the establishment of a non-conscious, continual
STATE or stasis: a point of cooperation with time.
In order to nourish conceptual apparatus,
moralities, forms, you imply a deficit in the
self. Alors all this WORK or STRIVING—-even Yoga--
aims at finding Rest or relaxation in Time. It
aims at the ONE.

In the right-hand column, he shows how, having achieved that
STATE, the mind moves onto a different level of
consciousness, in which

NEW FORMS EMERGE. BeCause "contemptible" numbers
are the only way to label them, you can say 1st
State, 2nd State, 3rd State, like an etching. This
is what I have called THE HERALDIC UNIVERSE. You
cannot define these forms except by ideogram: this
is "non-assertive" form. THE HERALDIC UNIVERSE.
(Wickes, 5 Private Correspondence 202—203)

 

What Durrell seems to be suggesting here is the mystical
apprehension of a "One-ness" akin to Rilke's "great unity."
The preliminary stage of this process requires a suspension
of the intellect in order simply to experience.
Subsequently, in the act of "non-conscious" contemplation,
whereby the mind is emptied of all conscious knowledge, the
mystic strives to transcend the boundaries of time and
space, and enter into the eternity of the One. The
achievement of this final state results in a vision of the
universe as a totality. In effect, therefore, the heraldic

universe is, as J. Christopher Burns has remarked, the "full

 

 

27

consciousness of the universe and one's self within that
universe" ("Durrell's Heraldic Universe" 377).6

It is especially important to note, moreover, that the
ideograms which first emerge in Durrell's cabalistic studies
are the circle and the square. He explains in another
context that the "rectangle is the system; the circle is the
organism. The struggle for our culture is played out between
the two forms" (Alyn, 333 333 33333335 42). By "system"
Durrell makes it clear that he means all logical structures
of thought, for "the word 'system' implies a Cartesian
approach" (Alyn 40), whereas organisms possess a spiritual
dimension as living matter. In one of his numerous epigrams,
Durrell remarks that "Once an organism learns to think, it
loses the ability to regenerate an amputated limb" (Alyn
145). Presumably he intends to suggest that human evolution
has resulted in cognition at the expense of intuition, with
a corresponding estrangement from nature. Man, then, "must
try to fit the rectangle inside the circle, which represents
health, in the Pythagorean sense. Health equals balance"
(Alyn 42). The mathematically insoluble problem of squaring
the circle symbolizes the integration of the rational mind
with the capacity for intuition. As Balthazar, the foremost

exponent of Gnosticism in The Alexandria Quartet, comments

 

about Cavafy, the "old poet" of the city, "To the Cartesian
proposition:'I think, therefore I am,'he opposed his own,
which must have gone something like this: 'I imagine,

therefore I belong and am free"%79-80L

 

28

In fact, Durrell's "heraldic universe" which, in the
Quintet, he has renamed "reality prime," closely resembles

Jung's unus mundus, the one world preceding its realization

 

in matter. Similarly, the inner reflection which leads to
this perception of cosmic unity approximates what Jung has
termed "active imagination": that is, the undirected
exercise of imaginative meditation, "by which one may
deliberately enter into contact with the unconscious and
make a conscious connection with psychic phenomena" (M33 and

his Symbols 219). Jung, too, is of the opinion that in the

 

"civilizing process, ‘we have increasingly divided our
consciousness from the deeper instinctive strata of the
human psyche, and even ultimately from the somatic basis of

the psychic phenomenon" (Man and his SymbolsS 36). These

 

instinctive strata remain part of the unconscious, however,
and periodically manifest themselves in symbols, either
individual or collective in their nature. The latter are
what Jung calls archetypes, because they "are without known
origin; and they reproduce themselves in any time or in any
part of the world--even where transmission by direct descent
or 'cross-fertilization' through migration must be ruled

out" (Man and his 31mbolsS 58). Amongst such collective

 

 

symbols, or archetypes, are the circle and square, both,
typically, functioning as representations of the Self. In
the words of Aniela Jaffe,
the circle is a symbol of the psyche (even Plato
described the psyche as a sphere). The square (and

often the rectangle) is a symbol of earthbound
matter, of the body and reality. In most modern

 

 

29

art, the connection between the two primary forms
is either nonexistent, or loose and casual. (Man
and his Symbols 284)

 

This, she concludes, is evidence of modern man's
dissociation from his psyche.

A second, and related, meaning resides in their history
as religious sumbols. The circle was traditionally used to
represent the deity, dormant and concealed in matter, while
the quaternity signified the differentiated aspects of the
divinity. With Christianity the image of God was
reformulated as a Trinity and the fourth element separated
to represent matter, or the lord of matter--the devil
himself. Alternatively, it was relocated in the Virgin Mary
as Mother of God on earth. The difference between the two
symbols illustrates the antithetical nature of their
underlying moral and philosophical premises, for, in its
complete division of spirit from matter, the Trinity places
God outside man, while the quaternity insists on the
essential identity of the two. Moreover, the entirely.
masculine character of the Trinity excludes the feminine
principle of the unconscious mind.7 In contrast with this
the quaternity expresses the integration of the unconscious
and acknowledges the element.of’evil.As Jung observes, it
"needs no particular effort of imagination to guess the far-
reaching spiritual consequences of such a development"

(Psychology and Religion 63).

 

Jung has also pointed out the extent to which the idea

of quaternity was "familiar among students of the Hermetic

 

 

30

philosophy," whose four—horned serpent was "a symbol of

Mercury and an antagonist of the Trinity" (Man and his

 

3133333 62). In fact, he goes substantially further in
concluding that "if the historical roots of our symbols
extend beyond the Middle Ages they are certainly to be found
in Gnosticist' The psychological condition prevailing
within Gnosticism, he argues, continued "under the disguise
of alchemy," with its "two parts indispensable to each
other--on the»one side theichemical research proper and on

the other the 'theoria' or 'philosophia'" (Psychology and

 

Religion 97-98). One of the central symbols of hermetic

alchemy was the quadratura circuli, which signified the

 

fusion of matter with spirit, and hence the wholeness of man
as mind and body. This is an unmistakably Gnostic notion.
Moreover, the metaphysical aspect of alchemy bears a close
correspondence to the Gnostic creation myth, according to
which the world was created by an evil demiurge, the product
of an aborted passion. Jung's formulation of these somewhat
confusing religious and alchemical views is particularly
helpful for its lucid exposition:

The anima mundi, the demiurge or the divine spirit
that incubated the chaotic waters of‘ the
beginning, remained ix) matter in :3 potential
state, and the initial chaotic condition persisted
with it. Thus the philosophers, or the "sons of
wisdom" as they called themselves, took their
prime materia to be a part of the original chaos
pregnant with spirit. By "spirit" they understood
a semimaterial pneuma, a sortcxf"subtle bodyfl'
which they also called "volatile" and identified
chemically with oxides and other dissoluble
compounds. They called this spirit Mercurius,
which (was chemically quicksilveru.and
philosophically Hermes, the god of revelation,

 

 

 

31

who, as Hermes Trismegistus, was the arch-

authority on alchemy. Their aim was to extract the

original divine spirit out of the chaos, and this

extract was called [amongst other things] quinta

essentia. (Psychology 3 Religion 98-100) ______
In chemical terms, this quintessence was endowed with the
power of turning ordinary compounds to gold as the perfect
(and most stable) substance; hence the pursuit of alchemy by
such characters as Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman, whose dreams of
material wealth perverted the original metaphysical meaning
of his profession. The search for the Philosopher's Stone
was more properly understood as a search for the divine
spirit, for which gold was but one more metaphor. Its
figurative character was actually obvious from its
representation as a circle, the symbolic expression of the
deity.

The source and history of such symbols is clearly known
to Durrell, both through his reading of Jung's work and his
own hermetic studies under Mr. Baltazian. In an interview
with Marc Alyn, he directly acknowledges that, in trying to
understand "the pure and dedicated quest for a new
ascetism," he "studied all kinds of religions-—secret
religions as well as openly practised ones." Amongst these
were the Gnostics, whom he sees as "the original Christians,
the precursors, as it were, of the Cathars," and whose
theology supplies "the hidden weft of the 3333t3t" (Alyn,
333 333 33pposer 17). Few people seem to have read 333

Alexandria Quartet in this fashion, since Durrell's claim

 

that it is a "word continuum" has received far greater

 

 

32

attention ("Preface," The Alexandria Quartet). But in this
sense, perhaps, the 3333t3t can be seen as having "a

preserving Heraldic structure . . . which puzzles [its]

enjoyer" (Wickes, 3 Private Correspondence 203). It also

 

illuminates Durrell's insistence that 333 Avignon Quintet be
read as a 33333 gigogn . For the quincunx is surely its
"preserving Heraldic structure," and relevant not only as an
organizing principle but also, indeed to a much greater

extent, as a part of its meaning.

The Hermetic Context of the Quincunx .

The word "quincunx" originates from the Roman coin
valued at five-twelfths of an 33, but is more commonly used
to designate the pattern of trees planted in intersecting
diagonal lines, or extended quaternities. It is with this

aspect that Sir Thomas Browne begins The 33rde3 of Cyrus,

 

his disquisition on "the quincuncial, lozenge, or network
plantations of‘ the ancients, artificially, naturally,
mystically considered" (139). He remarks that "since even in
paradise itself the tree of knowledge was placed in the
middle of the garden, whatever was the ambient figure, there
wanted not a centre and rule of decussation" (145-146). Thus
the pattern is seen to have divine application. Within the
Christian tradition, of course, it recalls the fall of the
human race, but it is significant to note that in the
Gnostic version the tree of knowledge awakened man to the

evil of the demiurge and hence began his quest for the real

 

 

 

33

God. Appropriately enough, then, the quincunx is also
alleged, in its cruciated character as the Greek 333, to
have been invented by Hermes Trismegistus (Browne 166),
whose cult produced the Poimandres, "an outstanding document
of gnostic cosmogony and anthropogony independent of the
speculations of the Christian Gnostics" (Jonas, 333 Gnostic
33333333 147). Moreover, as the alleged descendants of the
hermetic tradition, the Knights Templar are supposed to have
buried their wealth under a quincunx of trees, and in the
Quintet the various characters seek its location.

It is, however, a fundamentally human symbol in several
respects, for five is the number of digits on each hand and
foot, the number of the senses that man possesses. Moreover,
according to Plato, the quincunx symbolizes the first
hermaphrodite, divided by Jupiter into the original man and
woman, both of whom sought thereafter for the half from
which they had thus been separated (313333333 189-193). This
idea finds its counterpart in many myths and religions
through the figure of the Cosmic Man, or Gnostic Anthropos,
who embraces and contains the whole cosmos. As an
omnipresent being the Cosmic Man expresses the unity of all
humanity beyond its individual manifestations, and hence the
harmony of the entire universe. In its bisexual nature the
symbol also "reconciles one of the most important pairs of
psychological opposites--male and female" (M33 333 333
3133333 216).8 The quincunx, then, symbolizes totality both

in its shape and in its numerical significance. In the

 

34

latter aspect, it is, as Browne points out, "the conjugal or
wedding number" of antiquity, while "in the Hebrew mysteries
and cabalistical accounts [it] was the character of
generation" (333 333333 33 31333 184 & 185). In fact, the
use of the quincunx to signify a mystical marriage leads
logically to its designation as the quintessence, for, in
hermetic alchemy, the essence was either to be extracted, or
to be created by a sort of synthesis called the conjunctio.
The author of the "Rosarium Philosophorum," for instance,

instructs his reader: "Make a round circle of man and woman,

 

extract therefrom a quadrangle and from it a triangle. Make
the circle round and thou shalt have the Philosopher's
Stone."9 It is clear from his remarks that the Stone, the
quintessence and Cosmic Man are one and the same.

In its architectonic application the quincunx also
supplies the form of the four-sided pyramid. Smirgel, the
German double—agent in Durrell's 3333t3t, specifically
comments upon its metaphysical properties within
architecture, where "the quincunxial shape was considered a
sort of housing for the divine power--a battery, if you
like, which gathered into itself the divinity as it tried to
pour earthward, to earth itself--just like an electrical
current does" (33333 131). His explanation actually refers
to the five contiguous caves which are alleged to hold the
long sought Templar treasure, but it applies equally to the
pyramid as a three-dimensional quincunx. Of course, the

spiritual significance of the pyramid shape is obvious from

35

its use for the tombs of the Pharaohs, but at least one
scholar has attempted to link it directly with the cult of
Thoth, the Egyptian precursor of Hermes Trismegistus.
According to Mead's summary of the argument, Marshall Adams
claims that the long misnamed Book of the 233d, which
depicts the rituals of the mystery-cultus, was called by its

initiates The Book of the Master gjtthe Secret House, that

 

 

Secret House being, in fact, the Great Pyramid. Mead,
himself a leading theosophical scholar at the turn of the
twentieth century, remains somewhat sceptical of Adams'
argument, but considers it an interesting hypothesis.1O

Yet another unverified claim connects the Major Arcana
cards in the tarot to the hermetic tradition. Writing in

Monde Primitif in 1781, Court de Gebelin argued that the

 

cards constituted the Egyptian hieroglyphic Book of Thoth
and contained the sum of all mystical knowledge. As god of
wisdom and the occult, to whom was attributed the invention
of numbers and sacred writing, Thoth was cdearly the
appropriate deity to invoke, but the discovery of the
Rosetta Stone in 1799 and the solution of its cipher in 1822
did nothing to confirm de Gebelin's theory. Despite the lack
of evidence, however, his argument was taken up by<others
and, ‘with the French occult revival of the nineteenth
century, became still more widely disseminated. It was
linked with, amongst others, the Knights Templar (themselves
undergoing a dramatic metamorphosis from failed military

order to practitioners of the arcane mysteries), and

 

 

36

introduced to England in 1888 through the publications of
MacGregor Mathers, a founding member of the Hermetic Order
of the Golden Dawn. His fellow members Waite and Crowley
continued to advance the theory, the latter publishing a
guide to the tarot and its predictive uses, which he

actually called The Book of Thoth (Kaplan, The Encyclopedia

 

of Tarot 12 & 22-23). There exists, in fact, little but
romantic speculation to support the theory in this form, but
in recent years it has reappeared with modifications that
suggest a less direct connection. As late as 1975 it was
argued that the "Tarot cards, invented by some unknown in
the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, would seem to

be the sum of'a system of belief‘in death and resurrection

 

up to that time" (Butler, Dictionary of the Tarot 13). The

 

cards, that is, borrow from the symbol systems of hermetic
alchemy and the Jewish kabbalah, which are derived, in turn,
from the Gnostics and thus the cult of Hermes Trismegistus,
or Thoth in his Egyptian manifestation.

The degree of truth in this particular version of the
theory is difficult to ascertain, but what is clear is the
importance of the number five in the tarot cards themselves.
Of the twenty two Major Arcana cards, five fall within each
suit. Moreover, five is the number signified by the suit of
Pentacles, or coins, an association which recalls the
symbolic meaning of gold in alchemy. The five Major Arcana
cards which represent the most powerful forces in this suit

include the High Priestess, Hierophant, Wheel of Fortune,

 

 

37

Devil and the Tower. The High Priestess is generally
associated with wisdom in its various forms, while the
Hierophant symbolizes a religious or spiritual leader, as
his name implies. Both the Wheel of Fortune and the Tower
express the idea of mutability, of process and sudden
alteration respectively, characteristics which are also
attributed to Thoth in his role as a god of equilibrium. The
Devil, who is often depicted with an inverted pentagram,
traditionally symbolizes evil, bondage, self-destruction and
inversion. However, in more recent decks there have clearly
been attempts to link this card with the Gnostic demiurge,
who inverts the natural order by usurping the throne of
Christ. Thus Crowley incorporates the winged caduceus of
Hermes in his design and, in the BJLT.A. cards produced by

the American occultist Paul Foster Case, the planetary sign

“:1

of Mercury marks the Devil's belly (Butler, Dtgttgflgty __
ttg Igtgt 167). Spurious or not, the association of the
tarot with Hermes Trismegistus is persistent, and something
of which Durrell is obviously aware.

In her study of the QEEEEEE Carol Marshall Peirce in
fact observed over twenty characters and situations
corresponding to the Major and Minor Arcana of the Rider
tarot deck ("'Intimations of Powers Within': Durrell's
Heavenly Game of the Tarot" 200-213). Similarly, Ian
MacNiven argues that the card of the Devil

fits almost exactly the main themes and action of
the Quintet: the protagonists operate on half-

knowledEET especially in their often futile
applications of that incomplete science,

 

38

psychoanalysis; black magic is suggested as a
means of combatting Hitler; .. . the pattern of
inversion covers not only man's loss of his
natural place as lord of terrestrial creation,
guaranteed in Genesis, but the many sexual
inversions which poison at least three of the
marriages; finally, the bondage theme is
everywhere: from Sutcliffe as "bondsman" to his
creator, Blanford, to the bondage of Lord Galen to
the Templar treasure, to the bondage of various
lovers to one another. ("The Quincunx Quiddified"
12)
In addition, a number of characters within Quinx have their
fortunes predicted by the gipsies through divination of the
tarot. Sabine, the renegade bourgeois daughter of Lord
Banquo, explains "the provisional nature of prophesy" (186),
but some, at least, of the predictions are confirmed in
their metaphorical validity.Thus Blanford is told that he
is "worried about a building, a structure, something like a
house which you wish to make beautiful. But it takes much
writing" (Quinx 87). He immediately interprets this as a
reference to his novel, as does the reader of that novel,
the Quintet itself. Likewise, the treasure-seekers Lord
Galen and Prince Hassad are warned that the Templar trove is
protected by dragons. They prove to be the Austrian sappers
who have mined the caves and whose emblem is indeed the
dragon. The avarice of Galen and the Prince recalls the suit
of Pentacles, as Ian MacNiven remarks ("The Quincunx
Quiddified" 11), for Galen, certainly, has succumbed

entirely to the lure of gold in its literal rather than its

figurative sense. He displays none of the philosophical

understanding for which his namesake, the Greek philosopher

 

 

39

and physician, was renowned. In contrast, Quatrefages, whose
name "suggests 'the eating of the four” (Carley, "Its
Avignon Quintet and Gnostic Heresy" 238), the gipsies and
many of the other characters in the novels seek the far
larger treasure of illumination. In this way they remain
true to the principle of quintessence, and hence the four-
in-one of the quincunx, instead of being seduced by the

materialism of the Pentacle.

Conclusion

What becomes increasingly apparent is the importance of
the quincunx as both a structural and a thematic device, and
the corresponding need to examine the symbol systems that
supply its meaning. Durrell is neither a modern-day Gnostic
nor a Jungian, but it is plain from the subject matter of
The Avignon Quintet that his own metaphysical ideas have
been greatly influenced by both.11 The entire direction of
his thinking is concerned with the quest for complete
apprehension "of the universe and one's self within that
universe," of the balance between unity and difference. Such
a goal leads, almost inevitably, to the quincunx, for, as
Jung observes,

22121 229 9222222322 appears united in the
quincunx . .. , the four forming, as it were, a
frame for the one, accentuated as the centre. In
the history of symbols, quaternity is the
unfolding of unity. The one universal Being cannot
be known, because it is not differentiated from

anything and cannot be compared with anything. By
unfolding into four it acquires distinct

 

40
characteristics and can therefore be known.
(Civilization ifl Transition “07)
The quincunx, then, symbolizes both the ineffable for which
there are no words, and its conscious comprehension by means
of the intellect. It squares the circle.

It is a reconciling symbol in still another sense,
however, for it also unites all the subjects in which
Durrell has expressed an interest. Within the parameters of
Gnosticism and the hermetic philosophy underlying alchemy,
the quincunx possesses a religious significance as the
symbol of the differentiated deity. But Jung's studies have
shown that it is equally to be understood as a symbol of
psychic wholeness. In psychological terms, that is, the
quincunx represents the realization, and hence fulfillment,
of the individual self. Finally, in its numerical dimension,
the quincunx participates in what Durrell has called the
"dialect" of physics, where the cosmology of the space-time
continuum has led scientists such as Alexander to suggest an
identity between space—time and "the primordial reality out
of which things have evolved" (Egy 32).These ideas will be
discussed in much greater depth in the remaining chapters,
but it is important to recognize that, for Durrell, the
quincunx provides a symbolic foundation which is common to
the various systems of knowledge. It does so by reflecting
"a metaphysical reality about ourselves and the world," by
teaching us that

the opposition between the human world and the

higher world is not absolute; the two are only
relatively incommensurable, for the bridge between

 

”1

them is not entirely lacking. Between them stands
the great mediator, Number, whose reality is valid
in both worlds, as an archetype in its very
essence. (Jung, Civilization lfl Transition 409)

 

42

Notes

1 Nicholas Shrimpton, for example, comments in his
review of Sebastian: "He overwrites. He sentimentalises. He
has a weakness for theories (particularly about sex) of an
almost Lawrentian looniness. As if this weren't bad enough,
he works in a form--the £9933 fleuve--which is supposedly
outmoded. The awkward fact remains that Lawrence Durrell now
seems to be four fifths of the way through one of the great
novels of our time" ("The Whodunnit Gnostic-style" 41L
Shrimpton's ambivalence seems to be typical of many casual
readers of Durrell's work.

2 de Montremy, Jean Maurice. "Lawrence Durrell et
Variations: Avigon, troisieme mouvement." t3 Croix (Paris),

1 December 198M, 2. Qtd. in MacNiven, "The Quincunx
Quiddified" 1.

 

3 Durrell explains the term as "those clusters of
tables, you open one and it opens another and you open a
third and so on and so forthJ'He adds a specific declaimer
of any intention to write a roman fleuve and reiterates his
own emphasis upon form: "gradually the thing should become
on the one hand more flou, that is to say more dispersed
apparently, and much tighter in its inner organization and
lie anchored on Avignon and a very small group of people.
But it would open not in the Quartet sense but in a
telescopic sense, knuckle by knuckle so to speak" (Carley,
"An Interview with Lawrence Durrell on the Background to
Monsieur and its Sequels" A6).

A A Key t9 Modern British Poetry 3. All subsequent
references to this work will be included within the text
under the abbreviated form Key.

 

5 See, for example, Alfred Bork's remarks in "Durrell
and Relativity" 191-203. Bork examines Durrell's exposition
of relativity theory in A Key t9 Modern British Poetry and

concludes that his understanding of it is derived entirely
from popular interpretations.

6 In the same article, Burns convincingly argues that
Durrell's various states, through which one must pass in
order to experience the "cosmic consciousness" of the
heraldic universe, have been influenced, at least
indirectly, by the philosophy of Plotinus. It is worth

 

 

     

. ."- n- -_a!".-."'P"" ""-"' 7'"- '

43

observing that the system advocated by Plotinus bears a
close correspondence to the Gnostic cosmology. There is a
primordial unity from which everything else emanates in
differentiated form. The last of these emanations is matter,
which implicates man. The individual is thus trapped within
a space-time world but impelled by his own longing for the
eternity of the one.

7 Jung's argument that the Trinity is entirely
masculine in character rests on the ientification of the
fourth element with the Virgin Mary. In pre-Christian symbol
systems this element usually signified the feminine
principle and, therefore, he concludes, its relocation in
Mary continues that custom. However, the result of its
exclusion from the Trinity is that the Christian formulation
of’God'becomes solely male.]1;is worth noting that Jung's
views conflict with a significant tradition in Christian
theology, according to which Sapientia, as the second person
of the Trinity, is partly female. A different version of
this idea finds expression in the androgynous quality with
which Christ is sometimes endowed.

8 This symbol of totality is common to a number of
myths and religions. In the West, for example, the Cosmic
Man is often identified with Christ, and in Jewish mysticism
reappears as Adam Kadmon. It is interesting to observe that
Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of a man with arms and legs
extended to touch the rim of a circle expresses the same
idea.

9 "Rosarium Philosophorum" (in Art. Aurif (1593), II
261), alleged to have been written by Petrus Toletanus, and
qtd. in Jung, Psychology and Religion 67-68.

 

 

10 W. Marshall Adams, Th___e_ B_9___ok of the Master, or The
Egyptian Doctrine of the Light born of the Virgin Mother
(London 1898). The information concerning his argument is
derived from Mead's discussion in Thrice-Greatest Hermes I:

68-69.

11 In his interview with James Carley, Durrell
criticized the Gnostics for their extremism, and suggested
that the heresy was "a disease caused by the Christian
context" ("An Interview with Lawrence Durrell on the
Background to Monsieur and its Sequels" 45). Carley also
remarks in a footnote to his subsequent article on Monsieur,
"Durrell has assured me»that.he is in no way a<disciple of
Jung. The parallels between their ideas suggest similar ways
of treating the same material" ("Lawrence Durrell's Avignon
Quincunx and Gnostic Heresy" 166 n. 27).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

Gnosticism: the "grammar of dissent.’I

In deciding "to give the devil his due, so to speak,

and to call [his novel] t3 Mgtttgtt," Aubrey Blanford

acknowledges the importance of Gnosticism within The Avignon

Quintet (Monsieur 275).1 Its principles supply that "fateful

 

grammar of dissent" in which the characters engage (Monsieur

194), opposing the five Ms of their Judeo-Christian
inheritance--Monotheism, Messianism, Monogamy, Materialism
and mgtgt (Mggglgtt 141)-—with a "theology of revelation"
that denies the reality of the material world (Lyons &
Antrim 49). This conflict in values is epitomized by
Alexandria and Avignon, the two great cities in which much
of the narrative action occurs, for they were the one time
centers of Gnosticism and of Catholicism respectively.
Alexandria, with a heterogenous populace including
Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and Babylonians, became the great
meeting point between East and West. Its library housed the
most ancient expressions of Hellenistic thought, while its
museum, or university, provided a further forum for
intellectual activity. But this predominantly Greek

inheritance was gradually modified by the accretions of

44

 

45

Jewish philosophy, Babylonian astrology and different
Oriental mystery cults, thereby producing "the incipient

terminology of a new mysticism" (Jonas, The Gnostic Religion

 

.25). In the work of men such as Philo Judaeus (a
contemporary of Christ) that language is already present,
together with a structure of thought which has obvious
similarities to Gnosticism. From such mixed origins, then,
the Gnostic systems emerged during the first and second
centuries AuD. as the most complete synthesis of occidental
philosophy with oriental spiritualism, and the foremost
threat to Christianity. Something of this syncretistic
history is actually supplied by Sebastian Affad, when he
muses upon the
successive waves of esoteric knowledge which, like
a tropical fruit, were the harvest of Indian
thought,od‘Chinese thought,of‘Tibetan thought.
. . . pouring into Persia, into Iran, and into
Egypt, where they were churned and manipulated
into linguistic forms which Inade them

comprehensible to the inhabitants of the Middle
Eastern lands. (Sebastian 43)

 

Just as the birth of Gnosticism can be credited, partly
at least, to Alexandria, so can its death throes be traced
to Avignon. Suppressed by the Church Fathers in the third
and fourth centuries A.D., the Manichaean belief in dualism
survived, however vestigially, in various aberrant sects
like the Bogomils, only to resurface in southern France in
the guise of the Albigensian heresy. Despite papal
opposition the movement flourished until Innocent III

declared the Albigensian Crusade in 1208, and throughout the

 

 

us

succeeding century it was slowly eradicated. Medieval
Avignon was thus, paradoxically, both a stronghold of
perhaps the greatest European challenge to Christianity and
a focal point for the Catholic Church. As the papal
residence from 1309 to 1378 and the home of the anti-popes
during the Schism, the city incarnated all that was worst in
Christianity--its materialism, decadence and spiritual
decay. The resurgence of Gnosticism was therefore hardly
surprising. Nor was its eventual elimination, for the
subsequent geographical proximity of the popes ensured their
alignment with the interests of the French monarchy, and
_hence any menace to the ascendancy of the Catholic Church
was also, ultimately, a menace to the supremacy of the king.
For reasons as much political as they were religious, then,
it was in Avignon, "cathedral to Mammon," that "our Judeo-
Christian culture finally wiped out the rich paganism of the
Mediterranean! Here the great god Pan was sent to the gas-
chambers of the Popes" (ttyta 48).

Alexandria and Avignon represent the two poles of
experience between which the characters gravitate. Thus the
protagonists of Blanford's novel reside at Verfeuille, the
crumbling chateau in Provence, but their spiritual life
begins only at Macabru where, in Gnostic terminology, they
are awakened from the slumbers of the soul within matter to
the consciousness of evil as the presiding cosmic reality.
Severed from their past by a "sense of inner estrangement

and alienation from the so-called real world which [is] the

 

 

47

mark of the religious nature when once it awakes from its
sleep in the world" (Mgflsiett 136), they renounce the
comforting fiction of Christianity and its concomitant
affirmation of the Old Testament God. Piers, indeed, carries
what Durrell himself calls the "Gnostic refusal of the lie"
to its logical conclusion ("Foreword," 1M3 gtgstigt 8), in
dying, apparently, according to the beliefs of his sect.
He, Sylvie and Bruce function not simply as initiates,
however, for their love, we are told, "forms a sort of
disembodied illustration of the precepts of the gnostic
incarnation" (Monsigtt 139). There are, in fact, many
versions of this cosmogony, since the formulations of
Gnosticism are nearly as numerous as its followers, but the
specific variant to which Akkad refers, in his role as
psychopomp throughout Mgflttgtt, is derived from the
refutations of Hippolytus and, more particularly, his
account of the writings of Justinus. Akkad describes
three unbegotten principles of the universe, two
male and one female. One male principle is called
Good, who takes forethought for the course of
things; the other male is called Father of the
Begotten, but he is without foreknowledge and
invisible. The female is without foreknowledge,
wrathful, double-minded, double-bodied, a virgin
above and a viper below. She is called Eden, she
is called Israel. (Monsieur 139)

Likewise, in the lost ngk gt B33332 (an early text on the

gnosis), Justinus articulates the
three principles of the Universe: (id The Good,
or all-wise Deity; (iiJ the Father, or Spirit,
the creative power, called Elohim; and (iiiJ the
World-Soul, symbolized as a woman above the middle

and a serpent below, called Eden. (Mead, Fragments
gt a Faith Forgotten 194)

 

 

48

This concept of a triune godhead preceding the creation of
the material world is a common feature of the Gnostic
literature, although the names and relationships of the
three principles differ to some degree.

Within the version of the myth framed by Justinus, the
whole of creation comes into existence through the twenty-
four angels of the Father-Spirit (Elohim), twelve of whom
follow his will and twelve that of the World-Soul (Eden).
She, in turn, produces animals from her lower part and men
from her upper part, deputing to man the soul, as does
Elohim the spirit. Subsequently, Elohim discovers that he
has a superior and, abandoning Eden, enters into the Light-
realm of the Good Deity. From jealousy, then, Eden torments
what remains of the Spirit in man and incites him to sexual
passion. Worst offender amongst the World-Soul's angels is
Naas, the serpent and symbol of animal passion. But Elohim
sends one of his own angels to prohibit man from consuming
the fruit of the Tree (which is also called Naas), for the
serpent has "given rise to adultery and unnatural
intercourse" (Mead, thggggtg gt g Egttt thggttgg 196%
Elements of the personal history in which Piers, Sylvie and
Bruce have been caught up clearly echo this myth, since
Piers certainly pursues a higher plane of spiritual
existence, while all three characters have engaged in
unnatural intercourse. However, their history also suggests
that the female principle is responsible for the creation of

matter in conjunction with her spouse, rather than by a

 

 

49

mistaken act of parthenogenesis.

The more typical systems of the Egyptian-Syrian Gnosis,
such as that formulated by Valentinus, present a somewhat
different narrative. Here, the highest principle, who is a
pre-existent power for good, creates from itself a female
principle called Thought. Prior to this self-division, it is
androgynous, containing a potential for gender
differentiation that is realized only when the one principle
has become two. Their union results in the Mind (Nous), also
called Father, Logos, and Beginning of all beings, together
with the feminine Truth. This syzygy produces a further pair
who, in turn, create yet another couple, and so on, in a
descending order of perfection, until the last female Aeon,
or power, who is the Sophia, completes the Pleroma-—that is,
"the fully explicated manifold of divine characteristics"

(Jonas, The Gnostic Religion 181).But disaffections arise

 

in the Pleroma, for only the Mind is privileged to commune
with the highest Good. Eventually, the Sophia, youngest and
most impetuous of the Aeons, leaps from the embrace of her
spouse towards this highest principle and, in so doing,
becomes insane. She falls "not like Lucifer by rebelling
against God, but by desiring too ardently to be united with

him" (The Alexandria Quartet 39).

 

A similar fate awaits the hapless Sylvie, although
unlike Semele (a mythological variant upon the Sophia
figure), she is not destroyed by the incandescence of the

divinity. Like the Sophia, however, her loyalties are in

 

 

50

conflict, for she loves both Bruce, her spouse, and Piers,
her brother. It is this very conflict to which Blanford
attributes her mental collapse:
The division of objectives in loving is something
woman finds impossible to face; it threatens the
fragile sense of her identity, the unity of her
vision of things seen through the unique lens of
human love. Once this sense of uniqueness is put
in doubt or dispersed the self breaks up (itself
the most fragile of illusions) and all the
subsidiary larval selves, demons and angels, come
to the surface to splinter and confuse the central
ego. (Monsieur 282)
Of course, Sylvie's history is echoed by that of Pia, one of
the many "larval selves"--both fictive and "real"--from
which her character is composed. In this second trio equal
distress prevails, for Rob Sutcliffe has "formed (without
knowing it) the third in a trinity just as ill-starred, with
Pia and pretty Trash as the other partners" (Monsieur 174).
Torn by her inverted passion for Trash and her genuine, if
sexually unsatisfactory, love for her husband Rob, Pia
gradually disintegrates under the strain. The anguish of her
"fragmented love" cannot be resolved by Freudian
psychotherapy (Monsieur 212), since all this achieves is the
recognition of a like inversion in Rob.

The problem lies not in the characters themselves,
however, so much as it does in the world they are condemned
to inhabit, for, by inverting the real spiritual order of
things, the Judeo-Christian God has thrown nature out of
true. To his malign influence Sutcliffe attributes the

sharp differentiation of the sexes in our culture

[which] was shaped most probably by monogamy and
monosexuality and their tabus. It was an abuse of

 

 

 

51

nature. Thus the typological couple which has come
to dominate our style of psyche was the baby-
founding duo, husband and wife, city founders.
(Monsieur 215)
Yet the emancipation of woman from the sexual bondage of
undesired conception has restored to her the self-respect
she enjoyed in the pre-Adamic state of wholeness for which
the Gnostic yearns. This, Sutcliffe concludes,
is why the sharp distinction between the sexes has
begun to blur, with man becoming more feminine and
vice versa. In this context [his] trio of lovers
must present the prototype of a new biological
relationship, foreshadowing a different sort of
society based on a free woman. (Monsieur 215)
Parodoxically, then, although both Sylvie and Pia are
fragmented by their experience, the trio itself is an image
of reconciliation; it admits the possibility of a principle
that transcends the division between body and spirit,
between man and woman. Indeed, even the concept of an
identity with clear delineations must be qualified, for the
accompanying perception "of the individual in this world is

not of an individual at all, but of an organ or part of the

great organism" (Campbell, Occidental Mythology 398). Thus

 

what seems at first to Sutcliffe an "unholy trinity" of
lovers suddenly reveals its "underlying unity . . . as a
total ggtt, or the symbol of such an abstractionfl' He
recognizes in it the Gnostic formulation of the godhead as
"a triune self, composed of two male and one female partner
[sic]" (Mgggtggt 214), and hence the degree of man's
participation in divinity.

The story of the Sophia has other implications for

 

 

52

humanity, however, since her actions directly result in the
creation of the material world and, with it, man. From her
folly a formless passion is parthenogenetically conceived,
imperfect in its nature because she has thereby arrogated to
herself a power possessed only by the highest good. The
Pleroma must be restored to its former purity, and so the
Sophia is separated from both the passion to which she has
thus given birth and the Intention with which she conceived
it. The latter are banished beyond the Light-realm, where
the Intention is hypostatized to become the lower SOphia, a
quite separate entity from the upper Sophia as the original
Sophia is now called. But the suffering of this lower
Sophia, and her ignorance concerning the Father, eventually
elicit the compassion of the Aeons. They send Jesus to be
her consort and I“? in turn externalizes Mg: passions,
providing them with a substantive existence of their own.
Thus is formed
ggttt according to the stiffening of terror; then
ggtgt, according to the movement of fear; Elfiv
according to the flight of grief; the ttgg,
however, is inherent in all of them as death and
corruption] jugt as ignorance is hidden in the
three pass1ons.
Subsequently, Jesus informs the lower Sophia of the Father's
presence, illuminating her ignorance with knowledge, and
imparting to her a portion of the Spirit. She finally takes
matter (passion) and the psychical substance (soul) which

she has earlier received from turning back to the light

source, and fashions from them the Demiurge, or father of

 

 

 

53

all material things.

But the manufacture of the hylic world is one long
history of pride and error, for the Demiurge creates
everything in ignorance of his forefather. Believing himself
supreme, he claims that he is the One God, and, even when
initiated by his mother into the mysteries of the Light-
realm, chooses to suppress that knowledge from his prophets.
Jahweh, for such he is, deceives man as to his true
temperament and status within the hierarchy of cosmic
powers, introducing a reign of darkness that inverts the
natural order. He "is the spirit of matter, and he springs
fully armed from the head of classical Judaism of which all
European religions are tributaries. The Prince [of Darkness]
is usury, the spirit of gain, the enigmatic power of capital
value embodied in the poetry of gold" (Monsieur 140).

This radical version of the world's genesis is a vital
feature of Gnosticism. Clearly, it denies "the fundamental
Christian doctrine of Original Sin," and instead blames the
"parlous state of the universe (”1 the act of creation

itself" (Campbell, Creative Mythology 149). Indeed, far from

 

being intrinsically evil, and hence needing a transmundane
Savior, man actually possesses a gggggg, or spirit, which
partakes of the same essence as that comprising the unknown
God. The Christian tradition of the Word made Flesh is
turned inside out, enui man is invited in) mine his own
spiritual resources.11‘"you do not make yourself‘equal to

God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like."3

 

54

The human race is thus opposed to the terrestrial sphere in
a dichotomy directly analogous to that between the deity and
matter. As Hans Jonas observes, in "this three-term
configuration—-man, world, God--man and God belong together
in contraposition to the world, but are, in spite of this
essential belonging-together, in fact separated precisely by
the world" (Egg Gnostic Religion 326).

The unmistakable existence of evil must, then, be
attributed to a different source, and lies, so Durrell
suggests, "in the extraordinary death drift .. . inherent

in the Christian way of looking at things from the very

 

beginning."” In contrast, Gnosticism, as articulated by
Akkad, claims that the "realisation of one's own death is
the point at which one becomes adult" (Monsieur 42). For
Piers, and later for Sebastian Affad, this realisation
assumes a literal dimension through their belief that only
in the repudiation of life on earth can the true spiritual
life be affirmed. To face death with the knowledge of its

imminence is to outface Monsieur, while, without such

 

knowledge, they "are just ordinary people, dispossessed,
taken unawares; the original sin!" (§gtg§tggg 87).
Ignorance, therefore, and not evil, is the root of man's
disinheritance. His salvation lies only in the diametrically
opposite condition of gnosis, whereby he is informed of his
true circumstances within the material universe. But the

acquisition of knowledge is not a result of logic, despite

the overwhelming evidence of evil. It is, rather, a

55

suprarational experience akin more to belief than to reason,
for "the findings of direct intuition" are not subject to
proof, or "a slavish belief in causality and determinism"
(Monsieur 197).

The revelation of the usurping God to which the
protagonists of Blanford's novel are brought is just such an
instance of‘ mystical illumination. Overcoming 'the
preliminary hardships of their journey through the desert,
they are ferried across the river in a "Stygian situation

and mood" (Monsieur 100), to enter into the underworld of

 

Macabru. They wander through the Arab bazaar, where an
atmosphere of festivity prevails, but the true carnival--a

carni vale, or valediction to the flesh--is to be celebrated

 

only by the chosen few. The ritual begins, as Durrell takes

care to explain, with readings from the Pistis Sophia, an

 

Ophitic text dating probably from the first half of the
third century.5 During this part of the ceremony the candles
are extinguished and relit at regular intervals "as if to

mark a distinct pause in the proceedings" (Monsieur 119).

 

The gesture is reminiscent of the three bells rung at the
consecration of the Eucharist in the Roman Catholic mass,
but what follows is, of course, an inversion of the mass.
The details have been adapted from a denunciatory account
supplied by St. Epiphanius (0. 315-402), of a Christian
Ophitic ceremony which he once mistakenly attended:

They have a snake, which they keep in a certain

chest--the cista mystica--and which at the hour of

their mysteries they bring forth from its cave.
They heap loaves upon the table and summon the

 

 

56

serpent . . . .[Ilt crawls up on the table and
rolls in the loaves; this, they say, is the
perfect sacrifice. Wherefore, as I have been told,
they not only break the bread in which the snake
has rolled and administer it to those present, but
each one kisses the snake on the mouth, for the
snake has been tamed by a spell, or has been made
gentle for their fraud by some other diabolical
method. And they fall down before it and call this
the Eucharist, consummated by the beast rolling in
the loaves. And through it, as they say, they
send forth a hymn to the Father on high, thus
concluding their mysteries.

Similarly, in the rites at which Piers, Toby, Sylvie
and Bruce are present, Sabine embraces Ophis, although the
four untried novices show an understandable reluctance to
follow suit. Subsequently, in their parody of the doctrine
of transubstantiation, all "partake of the holy mummia" and

consume drugged wine (Monsieur 122). What each then sees,

 

during the altered state of consciousness that naturally
ensues from this, is evil incarnate in the form to which his
perception best lends itself. Thus Toby, as a historian,
visualizes something rather like the tomb of the Black
Prince, while Bruce sees "a kind of huge [black] dung-beetle

with the head of a dog" (Monsieur 124). This insect, which

 

feeds on animal waste, clearly suggests the world of organic
matter, a world contaminated by excrement and increment
alike.7 Yet such ritual inversions merely echo the more
profound theological inversion whereby the serpent,
traditional harbinger of damnation, becomes instead the
means of illumination. The reversal of associations fits
coherently within the Gnostic scheme, for, if Jahweh is

evil, it is the snake sent by the Sophia who first alerts

 

 

57

Eve to her true state in the Garden of Eden, and induces her
to eat the fruit of knowledge. In violating the command of
the Demiurge she thus begins the work of redemption. Hers is
indeed a fortunate fall.

In fact, a wealth of symbolic asssociations attach to

the serpent, as Akkad indicates in a "confirmation

breakfast" which follows upon the initiation and baptism of

his new converts (Monsieur 131).!l"symbol of'the caduceus

 

of Aesculapius, of the spinal column, of the kundalini-
serpent of the Indians, .. . [i]t is also the sacred
phallus of Greece and Egypt and India, as well as the coiled
intestines from which one can perform divination by entrails
as our ancestors did" (Mggglggg 133). In its sexual
dimension, it represents the generative powers of the
universe; as man was conceived in the womb from a "serpent"
and an "egg," so was the cosmos. Thus the snake ultimately
signifies the supreme deity, and the egg his female spouse,
the Great Mother from whom everything else emanates. Coiled
around the nucleus of the universe, it illustrates "the

continual cycle that goes from the One to the All and comes

back from the All to the One" (Lacarriere, The Gnostics 81).

 

Similarly, as the caduceus of Hermes and the thyrsus of
Dionysus, it heralds the passage from life to death and
hence to life again. It is an image of process, of renewal.
Within kundalini yoga, too, it symbolizes the "serpentine
force in man, which when following animal impulse is the

force of generation, but when applied to spiritual things

 

58

makes of man a god" (Mead, Fragments f 3 Faith Forgotten

 

 

204). Parodoxically, therefore, the snake is both the
indirect instrument of man's death in punishment for his
violation of Jahweh's law, and an image that unites the
sexual with the spiritual realm in affirmation of life.

This very paradox informs Akkad's distinction between
the principles of Christianity and those of his own
Gnosticism. Death, he claims, is the dominant value in a
Judeo-Christian tradition which elevates possession above
freedom; possession of the loved one dictating monogamy,
possession of goods materialism, and possession of the one
true God a monotheism steeped in blood. Within "this death-
desiring culture," the "new sacrament was to spill blood,
not to spill sperm and impregnate the universe. To hoard
gold and to spill blood were now the imperative, and this is
the order against which our small communion of gnostics are
opposed" (Monsieur 217). In their stead he places the life-
affirming value of Sperm,

for our world is a world not of repression and
original sin but of creation and relaxation, of
love and not doubt. This is what sets us apart
from the others who today rule everything in the
name of death. (Monsieur 141) '
Freedom, "which is simply the power of spending," finds its
prototype ix: the orgasm, while hoarding leads 1X) the
foundation of "cultures based on key repressions" (Monsieur
217). Akkad, then, urges expression rather than repression,

and thus the inversion ofzn1already inverted cosmic order

to restore its former harmony. Moreover, sincerthe "act<)f

 

59

sexual congress as the spirit-developer, the idea hatcher is
the source of all science, all art, all information which

the spirit needs as its aliment" (Monsieur 262), the most

 

logical means of redressing the death drift is an opposing
sexual licence.

This association of carnal with spiritual knowledge
has, of course, a long history. We have only to recall the
impassioned medieval celebrations of the Virgin Mary to
appreciate how basic is the similarity between the two
experiences of the sublime. Yet the kinship is a primarily
anti-Christian one, and implicit within the signification of
the serpent. As Joseph Campbell remarks,

Wherever nature is revered as self-moving, and so
inherently divine, the serpent is revered as
symbolic of its divine life» And accordingly, in
the Book of Genesis, where the serpent is cursed,
all nature is devaluated and its power of life

regarded as nothing in itself. (Creative
Mythology 154)

 

 

Thus any attempt to dethrone the God of the Old Testament
implies a corresponding exaltation of nature. But for the
Gnostic this is a Platonic ideal, and not to be confused
with the biological reality of'flfletre mangeant l'étre et
mange par l'étre."'The latter can only be the work of the
Demiurge, who is "une intelligence sans coeur" (Mgflgigg:
138).

The sexual act is similarly idealized, not as an
expression of human love but rather as the path to God.
Woman is both the chosen vessel of the light, from whom all

creation thereafter stems, and the source of that salvatory

 

60

revelation which exposes the Demiurge. She is not,
therefore, simply an object of male gratification, but has
importance in her own right. Her significance lies, however,
in her sex and not her individuality, for she is a type of
the original Sophia. Thus man unites not wit11"a woman but

the incarnation of Woman" (The Alexandria Quartet 61), in a

 

syzygy that emulates the first coupling. This distinction
is, as Jacques Lacarriere points out, a vital one, since,

if the Gnostics were able to magnify sex and at
the same time reject love as a sentiment, if they
achieved a total and radical dissociation between
these two domains, it was because all the force of
their love, their sense cxf fusion and
identification, was turned towardsifluetrue God,
the distant kingdom which they could reach only
with the help of woman, through her and with her.
(The Gnostics 94-95)

 

Akkad's insistence upon the spiritual nature of sexual union
ultimately, then, implies the abnegation of its human
character.

It exists, of course, in conjunction with a complete
disengagement from the presiding system of values which is
equally characteristic of the Gnostic faith. When the moral
structure of the whole universe is believed to be inverted,
it is clearly unproductive to conform to its lemma, whether
natural or ethical. Accordingly, Gnosticism invokes
gigobedience to the existing moral order, in renunciation of
"the empty world" (Monsieur 13). Historically, this took the
form either of an extreme ascetism intended to diminish
corporeal existence without actually inducing death, or of

an extreme licence in which the violation of every

 

61

prohibition somehow used up its evil. Akkad's physical
appearance hints at both courses, "for he sometimes looked

heavy and fat, and sometimes thin and ascetic" (Monsieur

 

105). But the nature of the dissent he advocates is clearly
a radical libertinism:
All those emblems of a hunger which engenders
self-destruction, which pushes things to the very
limit of the sensibility, those belong to us; and
they must be strictly differentiated from the
privations and prohibitions which spring from the
tenets of any branch of Judaeo-Christianity. Their
laws are different and based on violent
repressions; ours are absolute but personal.
(Monsieur 139-140)
It is important to understand that his remarks are not a
simple invitation to profligacy of every kind, however. The
deliberate and ritual pursuit of what is deemed immoral by a
structure evil in itself is finally a moral act; and
regeneration, not degeneration, is its goal.

In fact, the readiness of Akkad's inner circle to die
for their belief is a clear indication of its essentially
religious nature. They are willing to carry their refusal to
cooperate with the world to its logical conclusion, despite
the relative insignificance of this gesture when all

"individual deaths [have] been resumed by the death of God?‘

(Monsieur 10). Suicide in the literal sense is, of course,

 

prohibited, for, as Bruce remarks (in a pun which is typical
of Durrell), the Gnostics anwa "dead against. self-

destruction" (Monsieur 81).8 In the same way that sexual

 

union is invested with ritual status, so is dying; and it

must therefore be conducted in the right way:

62

Everything lies in the act of acceptance, to join
finally the spiritual trust of the mature who have
tasted the world to the full and wish to be purged
of the physical envelope. They join the inner
circle and make an act of acceptance--that is what
constitutes the gnostic suicide. They accept,
then, their own execution, but it is not their own
hand that is raised against them. (Monsieur 144-
145)

This distinction between self-inflicted death and complicity
in a suicide pact, which seems at first mere sophistry, has
an ulterior significance. It embraces the element of chance,
in the selection of an executioner by lot, and so emulates
process, that "self-perpetuating act of insight on the part

of the universe as a whole" (Alyn, The Big Supposer 144). In

 

this way the original rhythm of nature is restored and man's
redemption begun, for in "the theology of process, . . .
coincidence and contingency rule, but never fortuitously"
(Monsieur 145).

Indeed, Gnosticism is just such a "theology of
process," since its entire structure is founded upon a
belief in contingency. Contrary to the Christian drama, in
which man is placed center-stage and his fate considered an
integral part of the divine scheme, the Gnostic cosmogony
establishes the tragedy as having preceded man's existence.
He is therefore an accidental by—product of creation, and
not its cause as, in his egoism, he chooses to believe. The
same is true of his environment, since the whole material
world results from the fall of the Sophia, and hence "the
stability of the gnostic universe is quite inadvertent; the

conformity of matter to models or modes is very precarious

63

and not subject to causality." With this recognition of
contingency, then, "the notion of death is born and gathers
force so that you start, not to live according to a

prearranged plan or model, but to improvise" (Monsieur 167).

 

Moreover, precisely because this world of matter is not a
part of some divine plan, but controlled instead by the
machinations of the Demiurge, death itself ceases to hold
terror. It signifies the welcome release of the pneuma from
its bondage to the flesh, and its reunion with the eternity
of the Light-realm.

For Piers, therefore,<deathijsthe joyful culmination
of a spiritual quest begun at Macabru and symbolically
enacted in his voyage down the Nile. Just as "the Hindus had
a Heavenly Ganges.nand an earthly Ganges, so had the
heavens a Celestial Nile, and Egypt a physical Nile, the

life-giver of the land" (Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes 1:

 

110-111). His "timeless journey into ancient Egypt" is a
pilgrimage through the territory of Osiris and Isis
(Monsieur 158), from whose religion his own derives, and the
simulacrum of that final journey into the timeless region of
the heavens.Ifi;is this same voyage from life»to death, and
hence to the eternal, the tggt life, that Blanford

contemplates as, in the conclusion to Monsieur, he awaits

 

the "letter with an Egyptian postmark" which will place his
name too on "the death-map of the stars" (Monsieur 295).
The tenets of Gnosticism appear most fully explicated

in this first text, but they continue, of course, to inform

 

 

64

the remaining volumes of the Quintet. Like Piers, Bruce and
Sylvie, the protagonists act out the roles of the Gnostic
trinity in its different aspects. Livia, for example, is
repeatedly identified with the serpentine part of the
feminine principle; she is variously described as "like a
lizard, like a snake" (Constance 6), and a "snake with a
trigger in its tongue" (tiyig 116). Similarly, her
incestuous relationship with her brother Hilary, suggested
in the second book and confirmed by Smirgel's account of
"this unlucky passion which neither could renounce" (Qgtgt
119), recalls the marriage of Osiris and Isis, who were
united in the womb. Even her physical details correspond
with those of the goddess. She has "black soft hair [which]
seemed to fly out of the crown of her head and flow down the
sides in ringlets reminiscent of Medusa" (tlylg 39), just as
Isis is depicted with "a plain circlet in fashion of a
mirror, . . . borne up on either side by serpents that
seemed to rise from the furrows of the earth .. .. 9 The
susceptible Blanford perceives this kinship with "some
ancient Greek goddess" (ttytg 111), and certainly, in her
dealings with men, Livia is as capricious as any female
deity.
It is she, in fact, who openly espouses the Orphic
tradition, telling Blanford,
before that bunch of thugs who ruled Olympus there
were others like Uranus who ruled the earth and
was castrated by Chronos. Those severed genitals
were thrown still frothing and writhing into the

sea, and the foam they generated gave birth to
Aphrodite. (Livia 110)

65

The dismemberment of Osiris, Uranus, Dionysus--each is a
necessary sacrifice to ensure the "fruitful" world of
passion. Blanford, who has observed the emasculation of
Thrush's husband and fears "that this same gloomy fate of
Zagreus" will be his (tiylg 70), is naturally rather alarmed
by the role in which he sees himself cast. His apprehensions
are confirmed when he does indeed undergo a symbolic
castration; for Livia inflicts a psychic wound to his sex in
her peremptory dismissal of his adolescent infatuation for
her, which foreshadows the physical injury he later sustains
to his spine. Both wounds are, of course, essential for
Blanford's spiritual growth, since a new self cannot emerge
until the old has died. His sexual initiation with Livia
"literally scorched him awake, precipitated him from raw
youth into adulthood" (ttytg 104), and the first faint
glimmerings of "reality prime" (ttytg 176), while
subsequently, with Theodora, he rises "from the dead"
(tgggtgggg 99), after a "rape" that effects his
resurrection. However, his lack of passion, "a power-cut now
so markedly symbolised by the physical disability under
which he labour[s]" (tgggtgggg 341), cannot be so easily
healed, and it is only in Constance, who ministers to both
body and soul, that he finally finds salvation.

The terms in which these experiences are depicted
reveal their debt to Gnosticism. Woman introduces anguish

and death into the world, but she is also the agent of

 

66

instruction and redemption. The episode with Livia, although
painful, "awakens" Blanford from the spiritual sleep which
has characterized his stunted youth. A "viper below," it is
she who first arouses his sexual energy, and hence the
latent serpentine power which, with Constance, he learns to
harness for the fulfillment of his own godhead. As a result
of this coupling, then, Blanford is at last able to complete
the novel he has long struggled in writing, to realize his
own role as author and Logos. His dream of "a book which,
though multiple, embodie[s] an organic unity" (ttytg 38), is
a fitting tribute to Osiris, from whose limbs, rent by
Typhon and restored by Isis, comes the promise of the
future.

Yet, if Blanford emerges as a type of Horus from the
ashes of his own past self, there is also a sense in which
he owes his spiritual paternity to Affad. Like Akkad, for
whom he supplies the prototype, Affad is explicitly Gnostic
in his affiliations. Known to the fellow members of his sect
as Ptah, one of many designations for the cosmic God, he
embodies the androgynous features of the eternal essence.
Indeed, he is actually called Sebastiyanne--a name clearly
intended to convey the double-sexed and double-visioned role
of Tiresias.10 It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find
him articulating a theory of gender differentiation that
implies cross-sexual characteristics:

when the couple was created out of the original
man unit, clumsily divided into male and female

parts, the affective distribution did not
correspond at all with the biological. The sex of

67

the man is really the woman's property, while the
breasts of the woman belong to the man .... .The
male and female commerce centres around sperm and
milk--they trade these elements in their love-
making. (Constance 284)

 

In fact, Affad's remarks appear to be an adaptation of the
sexual philosophy attributed to Simon Magus, earliest and
most colorful of'the Gnostic prophets. Essentially, Simon
argued that within man there are two forms of divine fire-—a
psychic form manifested in the desire to beget, and a
physical form, which is blood. From this latter come two
complementary fires, which take the form of semen in the
male and milk in the female. Thus Sexual fusion liberates
the divine fire in man and facilitates a union of souls in
accordance with the primary order of the cosmos. Simon
evidently acted upon the logical consequences of his own
doctrine, and propagated it to others, traveling with a
companion whom he identified as the fallen Sophia--although
his Christian opponents believed her a fallen woman of a
rather more prosaic sort! But one of the implications of his
philOSOphy has direct bearing on the role of woman. As
Jacques Lacarriere observes,
In opposition to the Bible's truncated image of
the couple, where the woman is made out of the man
and not coexistent with him, Simon offers us the
image of a primordial couple with the woman
existing at the same time as the man whose destiny

Jehovah foiled and who therefore could not come
into being. (The Gnostics 50)

 

 

Simon's position is consistent with the general trend in
Gnosticism to elevate woman from her subjugation to the

male, and Affad merely extrapolates from its implicitly

 

68

Platonic features. He replaces the conventional metaphors
for sexual love as a battle or mercantile proposition with
the idea that it is an "exchange rather than investment"

(Constance 285), an equal and reciprocal emulation of the

 

divine syzygy.

If sexual union is thus seen as a microcosmic
reflection of, and contribution to, the unity of the
macrocosm, then its apotheosis is the shared orgasm, which
"admits you1x>the realm beyond death and rebirth" through
its participation in the timeless eternity of the pleroma
(Q3133 15). The Metaphysical conceit in which death is a
synonym for sexual ecstasy now bears new meaning, since
"each orgasm is a dress rehearsal for something deeper,
namely death, which becomes more and more explicit until it
happens and revives the whole universe" (Q3133 16). But that
instant achieved outside the chronological domain of Jahweh
is also important for the purpose of procreation. Death ii
life in the Gnostic equation, and hence the momentary death
of the orgasm is a prerequisite for further life on
spiritual as much as biological grounds. The fusion of cells
in conception symbolizes that greater fusion through which
the fragmented spirit 1J3 released froun its individual
constraints.11 When, therefore, Constance invites Blanford
to deal in his projected novel with "human love which isza
yogic thought form, the rudder of the human ship of fools"
(33133 16), it is appropriate that he should describe the

task in images of pregnancy. Only after he has fully

 

69

understood the knowledge imparted by Affad to Constance and
so, in turn, to himself, can he be "brought to term" of a
book conceived from that experience (33333 165).

Ironically, however, the very love which Affad is able
to create by virtue of his Gnosticism is also the source of
his own apostasyu In caring for Constance, rather than for
what she represents, Affad is seduced from the immediate
goals of his faith. He begins to suspect "that there are
spirits of love sent into the world who, if recognised,
cannot be resisted, should not be resisted at the risk of
betraying nature herselffl' Accused of jeopardizing the

Gnostic attempt "to face the primal trauma of man, namely

 

death, and all for the sake of'a.3g333" (Sebastian 39), he

 

is reminded with horror that he has succumbed to transitory
passion as an end in itself. Indeed, so far has he departed
from his earlier repugnance for the material world that he

actually desires to "engender a child" (Sebastian 41). In

 

view of the spiritual importance attached to procreation
this may not seem so heinous a wish, but in practice it
perpetuates the kingdom of Jehovah on earth. Thus Affad is
guilty of taking literally what is meant symbolically; as

Philo observes in his work, 33 the Contemplative Life, the

 

true Gnostic "longing is not for mortal children, but for a
deathless progeny which the soul that is in love with God
can alone bring forth . . .."12

Of course, Affad's defection is only temporary, but it

is enough nonetheless to suggest the ultimate failure of all

 

70

Gnosticism. Just as Constance has something to learn from
hiu1,so does Affad learn from her, and what he learns is the
fundamental power of love. Denying, as he does, the
Christian burden of guilt for man's fall, Constance instead
asserts the possibility of joy in that domain which the
Gnostics dismiss as a living death:

birth is no trauma but an apotheosis: here I part

company with my Viennese colleagues for they were

born into sin. But in reality one is born into

bliss--it is we who cause the trauma with these

mad doctrines based on guilt and fear. (33133 17)
Her affirmation of life reaches its highest expression when
she symbolically bears Affad's child, by restoring to him
the son he has earlier fathered. But this act of redemption
conforms only to the Gnostic idea of woman as an instrument
of salvation and not to the extremity of its solution. The
young Affad's autism has resulted in a mental disengagement
from the world which parallels that of his father, and the
answer Constance proffers is the same for both. Recognizing
that the boy "was not asleep, he was breathing. He was just
not fully alive, that was all" (Sebastian 71), she provides
him with the love his mother has been unable to sustain, and
so eventually returns him to the realm of feeling. Her
subversion of Gnosticism is complete: in its method, which
derives from a quite different structure of knowledge; and
in its achievement, which insists on the significance of
tttg world in all its complexity.

Affad's response to the reintegration Constance has

thus effected is equally revealing.He admits that, having

 

 

71

seen what "you had done for the child--with your science
which I found so limited—-I could not do otherwise than come
and thank you for the tremendous gift" (Sebastian 147). In a
corresponding act of love, he revokes his decision to leave
her, and resumes the relationship, although the terms on
which he does so make clear his intention of remaining loyal
to his own persuasion. Yet, given the purport of the
drubbing he has so recently earned from his fellow Gnostics,
it is difficult to see how that very reunion with Constance
does not, in fact, implicate his religious beliefs. As James
Nicholls concludes, she appears to have at last "overcome
the inversions of Affad's Gnosticism and brought him to a
commitment to life and fecundity" before his death ("The
Risen Angels in Durrell's Fallen Women" 9%

How appropriate, then, that he should die in a manner
as ambiguous as the way in which he has lived! Deprived of
the letter Mnemidis has concealed, Affad is destined
"without that knowledge .. .[to pass] on a feeble signal.
Like a dirty spark plug!" (33333t133 150). And yet,
ironically, Mnemidis is (albeit unintentionally) the perfect
agent for his execution. A "mystic of crime" (Sebastian
160), he "feels the fact of being a sort of cosmic mishap"
(Sebastian 13), and seems even to have been involved in the
Alexandrian sect of which Affad is a member. His choice of
weapons is similarly apt; those same "two flashing, sabre-
like" knives with which the nuns have earlier performed

"their absorbed Christian sacrifice, cutting up the body of

 

 

 

72

Christ into eatable-sized slices" (Sebastian 104). Seeing
this manifestation of the Word made flesh, Mnemidis takes it
upon himself, as "the incarnation of Primal Man . . . .
perfected in [his] sainthood" (Sebastian 107), to complete
the Communion. But he does so in a fashion that inverts its
symbolic function and thus, incidentally, recalls the
Gnostic inversion of the Eucharist depicted in Monsieur.

A like inversion underlies his escape from the asylum
in which he has formerly been incarcerated, for, exploiting
his impenetrable disguise as a nun, Mnemidis promptly
seduces the youthful driver of the baker's van. The anti-
Christian implications of this highly comic scene are clear:
the clerical vow of chastity is itself a "hideous inversion
of man and woman, a rejection of humanhood in fellow
sympathy and love, and a denial of man's Godhead as a
fecund and creative being" (Nicholls, "The Risen Angels in
Durrell's Fallen Women" 6).However, the homosexual nature
of the encounter renders it physically just as sterile, and
so, in this respect at least, analogous to the deliberately
childless unions of the Gnostics. Mnemidis has been
sufficiently identified with Gnosticism to suggest the more
invidious conclusion that it too is ultimately barren; and
complicity in its radical solution indeed an act of lunacy.

Affad's death at the hand of Mnemidis is, then, an
equivocal denouement. Even as it concludes the "grammar of
dissent" he has articulated, so does it complete the

argument against Gnosticism.13 But to assume therefore that

 

 

73

nothing can be learned from its tenets would be an error of
extremism as grave as that of which the Gnostics stand
accused. Clearly, Durrell is very much in sympathy with
their rejection of a mechanistic perspective, and
corresponding insistence upon the life of the spirit. He is
equally "convinced that there is a profound link betwen
sexual and psychic energies" such as Affad claims (Alyn 33).
What he cannot advocate is a fanaticism that excludes the
entire province of material reality and seeks fulfillment
only in extinction. It is possibly this apparent
prevarication over death which elicited criticism from John

Arthos for a failure of courage in The Alexandria Quartet:

 

it is one thing to let one's imagination explore a
system of thought, and another to square it with
one's commitments. The Gnostic saints and martyrs,
those whose memory is recorded in the Catacombs,
evidently recognized the responsibility of
thought, the obligation to follow through, and
their lives paid for their intuitions--death, it
appears, was a price they were ready to pay. But
for Durrell's characters, one after another, death
is the most horrible of eventualities, more to be
feared than the evil that is life. ("Lawrence
Durrell's Gnosticism" 372-373)

Events in the Quintet confirm that Durrell's protagonists do
indeed let their "imagination explore a system of thought;'
and the ones who profess it pay the price for their
intuitions. But the author's commitments are not to be
confused with those of his characters, for Durrell himself
is engaged in the evaluation of Gnosticism and not in being
its exponent. Perhaps, then, it is appropriate to conclude

with his own conviction (rather than the words of his

 

 

74

creations) that

the refusal [to cooperate with the Christian
vision] can be operated without actually taking it
so far as to die. It's a good deal saner way of
dealing with this problem of dissent than the
gnostic way which is so extreme. (Carley, "An
Interview with Lawrence Durrell" 45)

 

 

75

Notes

1 It is possible to identify some, at least, of the
works Durrell has actually consulted in his study of the
Gnostics.G.R.S.Mead is explicitly mentioned in Monsieur,
while parts of his major work, EEEEEEEEE gt‘g tgtth
Forgotten, are fictively attributed to Akkad, one of several
who give voice to their Gnosticism in the 33tgtgt. Durrell
is probably also familiar with Mead's three volume opus,
Thrice-Greatest Hermes, although there is no specific
quotation to confirm this. Other sources include The
Gnostics, a less scholarly work by Jacques Lacarriere, whiEh
contains a "Foreword" by Durrell himself, as well as
supplying further passages of Akkad's exposition, and
possibly Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology, the third
volume in his four part sequence, ttg Mgggg gt ggg.
Campbell's contrast of the mosque with the church (III: 397-
98) is similar to that of Constance in her remarks to
Schwarz (Constance 292). However, this may be alternatively
explained by a common earlier source in Spengler's Decline
gt ttg Mggt (I: 200), to which Durrell refers on many
occasions.

Readers who wish for additional information on
Gnosticism should consult the work of Hans Jonas, in
particular, tgg Gnostic Religion, his superb study of its
philosophical implications. Other materials are listed in
the general bibliography, but Pheme Perkins' The Gnggttg
Dialogue is also worth noting here, both for its—Uséfhlness
and for its remarks on Durrell's version of Gnosticism as
depicted in Monsieur. She comments: "Durrell paints pictures
of pseudo-intellectual decadence that is drawn to the
mysterious Gnostic shaman Akkad. Perhaps not surprisingly,
the gnosis they encounter is equally decadent, that of the
magic formulae and mystic interpretations of the Pistis
Sophia which are chanted and commented upon in a strange
Ophite ritual. One suspects that Durrell's imagination has
painted as good a picture as any of the esoteric ritual of
such a form of gnosis" (209).

2 Irenaeus, Adressus Haereses I. 5, 4. Quoted in
Jonas, The Gnostic Religion 189.

 

 

 

 

3 Corpus Hermeticum XI 20b. Quoted in Campbell,
Occidental Mythology 366.

u

 

 

Carley, "An Interview with Lawrence Durrell on the

 

 

76

4 Carley, "An Interview with Lawrence Durrell on the
Background to Monsieur and its Sequels" 42. All subsequent
references to this article will be identified within the
text as "An Interview with Lawrence Durrellfl

5 The first quotation, depicting the resurrection of a
Jesus very different from his Christian counterpart, is
taken from the opening paragraph of the Pistis Sophia: "It
came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he
passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples, and
instructing them only up to the regions of the First
Commandment and up to the regions of the First Mystery, that
within the Veil, within the First Commandment, which is the
four-and-twentieth mystery without and below-—those [four—
and—twenty] which are in the second space of the First
Mystery which is before all mysteries,—-the Father in the
form ofa dovefl

The second, appropriately enough, describes the fate of
the good man who has not yet been initiated, but will, in a
succeeding birth, be given the Cup of Wisdom: "there cometh
a receiver of the little Sabaoth, the Good, him of the
Midst; he bringeth a cup full of intuition and wisdom, and
also prudence, and giveth it to the soul, and casteth the
soul into a body which will not be able to fall asleep and
forget, because of the cup of prudence which hath been given
unto it, but will be ever pure in heart and seeking after
the mysteries of light, until it hath found them, by order
of the Virgin of Light, in order [that that soul] may
inherit the Light for ever" (Mead, Pistis Sophia: 3 Gnostic

Gosgel 1 & 323).

6 Panarion Haeresium 1. 37, 5. Quoted in Campbell,
Creative Mythology 151-152.

 

 

 

7 As Jolande Jacobi remarks, "In mythology, scarab
beetles often appear golden; in Egypt they were sacred
animals symbolizing the sun. But if they are black, they
symbolize the opposite side of the sun--something devilish"
(M33 333 Mtg Symbols 365L

8 In this context it is interesting to note Durrell's
own attitude to self-destruction, especially as it has been
such a recurring preoccupation. In an interview with Marc
Alyn he observes that "Action is the only way out, but it's
also the most difficult. Basically most people are in
despair. I can only say again, either I kill myself or I
create something" (ttg 33g Supposer 98).

9 This passage is taken from the translation by
William of Adlington (1566), quoted by Robert Graves in The
Etttg Goddetg 63, and subsequently by Carol Peirce in an

excellent paper discussing the roles of Pursewarden and his
sister Liza, themselves variants upon the Osiris and Isis

 

 

77

myth, "That 'one book there, a Plutarch': Of Isis and Osiris
in The Alexandria Quartet" 9.

 

10 Affad is also depicted with a thread around his
neck, the "umbilical cord which united him with the buried
world [the Gnostics] were trying to bring to light"
(Constance 298). This is almost certainly a reference to the
"Noose of Ptah," an Ankh-tie and symbol of life, "of which
the older form is a twisted rope, probably representing the
binding of male and female life in generation" (Mead,
Thrice-Greatest Hermes 1: 61).

11 In his discussion with Jolan Chang, author offlttg
Tao gt Love and Sex, Durrell repeats many of these ideas.
THEy are neither exclusively nor entirely Gnostic in origin,
but formed quite frequently from an amalgam of Taoist, Hindu
and Buddhist thought. While his remarks to Chang do not add
greatly to what he has already said in the Quintet, they are
easier to grasp in this much less complex work and for that
reason useful. See 3 Smile 33 the Mind's Eye 23-29.

 

 

 

 

12 Trans. by G.R.S. Mead and quoted in Fragments gt 3
Faith Forgotten 75.

 

 

13 James Carley remarks that, "like the gnostics, . .
. Durrell shows a metaphysical interest in the structure of
the word. The gnostic systems all visualize a hierarchical
universe whose workings are understood only through a
complex arcane verbal knowledge. Both The Alexandria Quartet
and The Avignon Quintet take physical models of’the universe
and eXplore their linguistic ramifications: in each series,
the form is a logical--or at least psychological and
philosophical--manifestation of contemporary theories of
knowledge" ("The Avignon Quintet and Gnostic Heresy" 229).
This may well be the reason why Durrell has chosen "grammar"
as the metaphor for Gnosticism. However, it is worth adding
that some formulations of Gnosticism (for example, those of
Monoimus and Marcus) show an equal interest in number
systems, which is hardly surprising in view of their
Pythagorean associations. .

 

 

 

 

Chagter Three

From Gnostics and Knights Templar to Nazis:

the "rotting palimpsests of the pastJ'

Just as the religious principles of Gnosticism inform
the content of the novels which comprise tgg gttgggg
Quintet, so do its temporal concepts inform their structure.
Time is not, as the Greeks envisaged it, an indefinite
succession of cycles which, by their recurrence, assure the
permanence of things within the visible world, and hence
emulate the perfect immobility of the divine; nor is it the
finite, linear and, above all, purposeful, progression from
genesis to judgement urged by Christianity. For both these
formulations assume a relationship between the temporal
universe of matter and the atemporal essence of the heavens
which the Gnostic cosmogony denies. It operates, indeed, on
the quite contrary premise that, precisely because the
phenomenal world is the product of a lie, it cannot partake,
in any respect, of the order which characterizes the Light-
realm. Thus time, since it results from the imperfect
productions of the Demiurge, is a degradation of the

spirit--neither the image of, nor the means to, its

78

 

79

redemption. Salvation is correspondingly seen as a condition
exterior to time, achieved momentarily through the
individual apprehension of immanence, and ultimately in the
redemption which follows from that illumination. This latter
notion is, of course, explicit in the sexual philosophy
articulated by Sebastian Affad, for congress is significant
to the degree that it liberates man and woman from their
temporal prison. Clearly, however, the more prolonged state
in which they reside is one of abhorrent servitude to time
and matter. It is important to examine the terms of this
experience more closely, in order to establish its impact on
the structure of :33 gytgggg Quintet.
For the Gnostic, as Henri-Charles Puech remarks,
time, whose instants engender and destroy one
another, in which each moment arises only to be
engulfed in the next moment, in which all things
appear, disappear, and reappear in a twinkling,
without order, without aim or cessation or end--
time contains within it a rhythm of death beneath
an appearance of life.
In its radical disjunction from the eternity of the Light-
realm time is itself a lie—-one, moreover, designed to
deceive man into procreation, and hence perpetuation of its
thrall. As if this were not enough, those to whom gnosis is
denied in one existence are condemned to yet others, through
a series of reincarnations in which they must work out their
destiny before they can resume their place in the pleroma.
To this extent time participates in the Hellenic conception
of a cycle, but, far from being beautiful in its fidelity to

the motion of the celestial spheres, it is now an

 

 

80

interminable revolution that, by its very remorselessness,
reveals the hand of Jehovah. Nor is it redeemed, as in
Christianity, by the advent of a Saviour who intervenes in
time and thus achieves a historic existence, for the Jesus
who figures in Gnostic soteriology is never made flesh. He
is instead, according to this doctrine of "docetism," a
phantom whose efficacy is not concrete but symbolic.2 As
Akkad informs Toby, he "is simply a cipher for us. He has no
connection with what you call Our Saviour" (Monsie33 130).
This view is obviously consistent with the Gnostic
conviction that no sustained contact exists between the
worlds of darkness and light; a Christ who is not incarnate
can never be subject to temporality. But it also
demonstrates a characteristic tendency to mythopoesis.
Events in the pleroma, being antecedent to time, are myth,
while events in the material universe occur within time and
are therefore history. Both time and history, as constructs
of the Demiurge, refute the possibility of a progressive
tradition; they supply only those "rotting palimpsests of
the past" in which man's recurring misery is confirmed
(M23123 249).

Two aspects of this Gnostic perspective are
particularly relevant to our understanding of time in the
Quintet. On a microcosmic scale, the protagonists shift from
one persona to another, one life to another, and often,
indeed, endure quite contradictory fates. Rob Sutcliffe, for

example, is made to die in Monsieur, to exist only as a

 

 

81

figment of Aubrey Blanford's imagination in Livia, and to
again consigned to the frustrating role of alter ego in
Quinx. Similarly, Pia is a conflation of the two sisters,
Livia and Constance, while the Le Nogres, condemned to death
and insanity respectively in the first volume, reappear in
Constance surprisingly healthy for their past tribulations.
But the explanation for this somewhat unusual conduct lies
in Blanford's avowed intention to write "a series of books
through which the same characters move for all the world as
if to illustrate the notion of reincarnation" (ttytg 41).
And so they do, materializing in discontinuous form to work
out a different destiny in which, it is to be hoped, they
will more nearly approach redemption.

Yet, if the individual histories of the protagonists
exemplify this tendency to reincarnation, so too does the
universal history in which they are participants. For the
microcosm is a faithful replica of the macrocosm, and events
prove just as susceptible to permutation as the people to
whom they occur. Thus the Nazi crusade for "a new order of
things which would be more in keeping with the order of
nature" eventually collapses into the Templar "tradition of
chivalry" (tgggt3ggg 42 & 237), which, in its turn,
collapses into the Gnostic quest for illumination. Equally,
the inquisition to which Affad must answer for his lapse
from Gnosticism recalls those other inquisitions conducted

under the aegis of the cross and swastika. A common retreat

 

82

into myth, prompted by fanatical and often totally misguided
aspirations, results in actions that alike reveal their
"heart of darkness." Various characters claim that their
respective movements have actually been inspired by each
other. Smirgel, for example, insists that Hitler's real aim
is to create an inversion of the Templar Order, while both
Toby and Quatrefages believe the Knights Templar to have
been secret Gnostics. But the principle that unites these
disparate moments in time is one of repetition rather than
succession. Humanity does not progress through its errors--a
lesson made painfully clear by the very immediacy of the
Nazi regime--so much as it reenacts past follies in
different form. History "repeats itself eternally .. .. In
the history books it will always be a Friday the thirteenth"
(Constance 363L3

On both a personal and a universal level, then, the
idea of recurrence pervades the structure of tgg Avignon
Quintet. Ironically, however, what the characters strive
most to emulate is frequently the very opposite of what they
actually become. They duplicate the past in precisely the
roles against which they have defined themselves, and thus
perpetuate the same values they seek to overthrow. In
particular is this true of the Nazis, who claim as their
inheritance a version of Gnosticism, only to demonstrate, in
their real allegiance to National Socialism, the antithesis
of every Gnostic ideal. The connections which Durrell weaves

between the Gnostics and Nazis are two-fold in nature; they

 

83

may loosely' be <distinguished as Inythological and
psychological. 'Working 11) the dimensions <xf myth, he
suggests that the Gnostics were the spiritual precursors of
the Knights Templar. Hence, the Germans, having determined
to replace the Templar Order with their own, invoke an
inversion of the existing moral and political structure. But
the practical consequences of the Nazi movement indicate
that they have inverted Gnosticism itself, and have thereby
imitated the Judaism which they so despise. In short, the
Aryan myth merely prolongs "this materialist funeral of
living man" (31313 162).

The psychological reasons for the German defection are
rooted in a similar ancestry. Durrell depicts the influence
of the Gnostics as a continuous tradition from the time of
the troubadours, although ittunsbeen subjected during the
course of its history to several bizarre revisions.
Specifically, he portrays the response to Gnosticism as a
complex dialectic between idealism and cynicism, which
results in a perversion of the original ideal. In this
latter thesis, he has clearly been swayed by the arguments
of Denis de Rougemont, who sees in the Nazi regime a.
resurrection and corruption of the Gnostic desire for death.
It is here that Durrell's perspective primarily departs from
that adopted by de Rougemont, for Durrell represents the
subversion of the Germans as so complete that they
correspond, rather, to those who have butchered their

opponents in the name of Judeo-Christianity. The two

 

8”

dimensions on which the narrative functions are obviously
related, but it is helpful to consider them separately. The
first part of this chapter accordingly addresses the
mythology which underlies the history of the Knights Templar
and National Socialism. The second part traces Durrell's
application of de Rougemont's ideas, and hence the
Ipsychology which culminates in the Nazi war machine.Both
perspectives ultimately confirm the malefic recurrence of

the past.

From Knights Templar to National Socialists: A Mythology

The heavy hand of the Demiurge is especially apparent
in the story of the Knights Templar, for, as Toby Goddard
explains, on

Friday the thirteenth in [October] 1307, in
conformity with the lettres de cachet sent out by

King Philippe le Bel to all the seneschals of
France . . . the 5,000 field officers of the
Templar order . . . were arrested at the
instigation of the Chancellor of France, Guillaume
de Nogaret. (Monsieur 237)
Accused of heresy and homosexuality, the knights were
tortured with a brutality that appalled even their
contemporaries, and by 1312 the destruction of the Order was
complete. There seems actually to have been little concrete
evidence in support of those allegations, and it is
therefore more probable that, as the bankers for much of
western Europe, they were the victims of a "put up" case to

acquire their wealth. This was, at any rate, the prevailing

view amongst those who were not Philip's henchmen. It is

 

w

85

also the opinion expressed by Lord Galen, when he remarks
with an irony of which he is sublimely unaware, that "the
burning question for the investigators who tortured them was
financial rather than ecclesiastical" (Livia 129). But the
primary argument informing the Quintet is clearly based upon
a subsequent accommodation of history to concur with Philip
II's official version of the Templars' guilt and even,
indeed, to exaggerate it with claims of a secret Gnostic
conspiracy.” This is the perspective urged by Toby,
that there was in fact a Templar heresy,
contracted perhaps in the Orient . . . . While
they were outremg: in the service of the Cross
they became contaminated with the secret gnostic
beliefs which coloured their notions of good and
evil and which qualified their allegiance to the
Pope and Christendom. (Monsieur 240)

Toby's assertion that the Knights Templar "were a
degenerated valentinian order," and that the idols they
allegedly worshipped "represented the eons" (Monsieur 2H5),
closely resembles the claims made by Joseph Hammer, an

eighteenth century orientalist whose imagination exceeded

his scholarship. In the Mystery of Baphomet Revealed,

 

 

Hammer resurrects the idea formerly propounded by a German
Masonic bookseller, Friedrich Nicolai, that the "Templar
Masons, through the medieval Templars, were the eventual
heirs of an heretical doctrine which originated with the

early Gnostics" (Partner, The Murdered Magicians 129%

 

Nicolai, no less prone to fantasy than Hammer, argued that
the etymology of Baphomet, chief amongst the Templar idols,

was a compound of two Greek words meaning "baptism" and

 

 

86

"spirit"; not, as it is in fact, a corruption of the Middle
French for Mohammed. Toby, of course, entertains this
possibility that the name comes "from baphe metégs, the
baptism of wisdom" (Monsieur 245). But it is to Hammer's
more extensive mythopoesis that he owes the remaining ideas
for his proposed dissertation. Hammer suggests a connection
between the Persian Order of Assassins and the Knights
Templar, finding the latter "convicted by their own
monuments as guilty of apostasy, idolatry and impurity, and
of being Gnostics or even Ophites" (Partner 139). He
interprets the accusations of sodomy made during the trial
of the Templars with similar licence, and supplies evidence
of a sexual depravity corresponding in nature to the equally
fictitious orgies imputed by Epiphanius to the original
Gnostics.

Toby is obviously faithful to this romantic vision--or,
rather, revision--of the Templar story, both in reading to
Bruce from his notes, and in concluding that the knights
"had gone too far, clear beyond the Orphics, beyond the
double sex, the gnostic two, Tiresias and all that bedlamJ‘
From his perspective, however, the Templars have been lured
into evil. Losing their balance, they "plunged into this new
and terrifying darkness where they could realise all flesh
as excrement only, decay as the only truth, death as the
great Motive of the usurping godhead" (Monsieur 295).
Quatrefages expresses the opposite point of view. A Faustian

figure with good reason to fear that midnight visitor "come

 

 

87

to propose some sort of compact with the Devil" (gilig 156),
he also believes that the Templars were Gnostics.5 But, in
his opinion,
The knights were systematically destroyed by the
hooded anonymous butchers of the Inquisition in
order to secure the .. . pre-eminence of matter
and will in the world .. .. They were accused of
every kind of sorcery, whereas the only conjuring
they indulged in was the flat refusal to continue
living the great lie. (nglg 161-162)
Quatrefages has been employed by Lord Galen to find the
Templar treasure, which was allegedly buried beneath a
quincunx of olive trees to prevent its annexation by Philip
II. Beginning "in good economic faith," he subsequently
realises that Galen and his business associates, in hunting
for substantive wealth, "have reduced the whole thing to a
vulgar matter of £533, of booty. They have missed the whole
point of this tremendous apostasy" (£1113 161). As he
explains to the dubious Blanford, "our search for the
quincunx of trees concerns another sort of treasure" (Elllé
163).

In fact, buried treasure is a prominent and recurring
feature of the Templar myth. So too is the diversity of
opinion about its form. As Peter Partner observes, the "more
high-minded . .. may have interpreted the hidden gold as a
symbol of heavenly wisdom, but thousands of greedier and

more literal-minded persons took the allusions to point to

real gold and real treasure" (The Murdered Magicians 111—

 

112). It is to Joseph Hammer's inventive brain that

Quatrefages owes his particular conception of the Templar

 

88

wealth. For Hammer, in a departure from the existing stories
entirely his own, claimed that the medieval Grail legend
was actually Gnostic in origin. Basing his argument on
Wolfram of Eschenbach's Parzifal, in which the knights who
seek the Holy Grail are called Templeisen, he concludes
that the legend describes the Knights Templar, and that the
Grail itself symbolizes Gnostic illumination. With the
assistance of Nicolai's linguistic fictions about Baphomet,
he even manages to incorporate King Arthur and the Round
Table in his theory of a continuous Gnostic tradition
(Partner 141-142). Despite the obscurity of his publication,
Hammer's ideas were successfully transmitted to early
twentieth century anthropologists like Sir James Frazer and
Jessie Weston. Through the work of the latter, these ideas
found a new, and more literary, application. One such
instance is, of course,‘T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land,
which was partly inspired by Weston's From Ritual to
flgmance.6 But clearly Quatrefages also comes from this
syncretistic pattern of thinking. As Smirgel later explains
to Constance, he is
deeply steeped in the lore of the gnostics and the
Templars. All this apparent rubbish had great
symbolic importance for him--he felt himself to be
on the track of the Grail, the Arthurian grail,
nothing less. The treasure might have been a
simple wooden cup or a priceless chalice or a
loving cup buried by the knights; it could have
been the cup out of which Jesus drank at the Last
Supper. (Constance 236)

The unlucky clerk, tortured by the Nazis to reveal

secrets he has never possessed, interprets his experience in

 

89

terms of the persecution to which the Knights Templar were
subjected: "Now he had fallen into the hands of the new
Inquisition, though the priests of the day wore field-grey

and bore swastikas as badges and amulets" (Constance 2).

 

Confined eventually in the sanatorium at Montfavet, after a

mental collapse he perhaps feigns to escape further torture,

Quatrefages is again disturbed by

the projections of troubled memory, once full of
armoured knights riding down infidels in a
gorgeous array of plumes and helms—-like great
fowls on horseback; now the same space peopled
with the dark-robed exemplars of the new
Inquisition, thirsty for booty, not for knowledge.
(Constance 365)

 

But Smirgel, whose work as a double agent also brings him to
Montfavet, expresses a view no less romantic in its
opposition. Selling information to the Egyptians, he
nonetheless subscribes 1x) the orthodox: Nazi position.
Indeed, he tells Constance, with all the conviction of a
genuine convert, that Hitler's real interest is "a lost
tradition of chivalry which he wishes to re-endow and make a
base for a new European model of knighthood. But of a black

order, not white" (Constance 236).

 

What seems to Quatrefages an inquisition is thus, for
Smirgel, a quest to replace the Knights Templar with a Nazi
"order of black chivalry." Ironically, though, the very
method he outlines to Constance, in explaining the purpose
of the Nazi regime, is drawn from the same Gnosticism for
which the Templars were condemned as "a heretical sect

convicted of religious malpractice" (Constance 272). Arguing

 

 

90

that the inversion of contemporary values will lead to the
recovery of an older mythical order, Smirgel predicates the
exhaustion of evil through its actual commission, in a
manner analogous to that urged by some of the early
Gnostics:

You cannot belittle the enormity of the evil we
have unleashed in order to outface it; we Germans
are a metaphysical race par excellence--beyond
good and evil stands the new type of man the
Fuhrer has beckoned up. But so that he perfects
himself‘we must first go back and start from the
wolf so to speak. We must become specialists in
evil until the very distinctions are effaced. Then
he will come, the new man whom Nietzsche and
Wagner divined. (Constance 236)

 

 

Just as Gnosticism inverts the existing moral structure in
its denial of the material world, so does Smirgel's
articulation of the Nazi philosophy claim inversion as the
means to an illumination which is heterodox in origin.
Exhorting Constance to understand the beauty of the New
Order, he explains,

We are not washed in the blood of the Christian
lamb, but in the blood of inferior races out of
which we shall fashion the slaves which are
necessary to fulfil our designs. It is not
cupidity or rapacity which drives the FUhrer but
the desire for once to let the dark side of man
have his full sway, stand to his full height. Seen
in this way Evil is Good, don't you see?
(Constance 237)

 

Quite naturally, Constance does not see anything of the
kind. Appalled bykfixsvision of destruction, she perceives
Smirgel as "a praying mantis, with all the mechanical fury

of such a thing in love" (Constance 237). Her words recall

 

Akkad's conviction that this insect, which "devours its male

 

 

 

91

even while it is fecundating her" (Monsieur 137), is but one
more instance of the evil that the demiurge has introduced.
Thus, despite the fact that Smirgel advocates a fanatical
transgression of the moral norms which has its basis in
Gnosticism, he and his fellow Nazis are actually the
faithful, if unwitting, servants of Jehovah.

Smirgel's inversion of the Templar Order to justify the
New Order of the Nazi regime results, therefore, in a
perversion of Gnosticism. It is typical of the ironies which
abound, however, that if the Germans least resemble what
they think to emulate, they are indeed implicated by a
similarity with the tradition they oppose. For the history
of National Socialism depends as much upon an act of
mythopoesis as that to which the story of the Knights
Templar was subjected during the so called Age of Reason.
Moreover, both National Socialism and the "Templarism" which
then abounded owe a good part of their vitality to that
master of fabrication, the Abbé Augustin de Barruel, a

French Jesuit whose work spawned the Protocols of Zion.

 

Barruel'srnassive five-volume text, Mémoire pour servir a

 

l'histoire 92 Jacobinisme, which he published between the

 

years 1797 and 1798, was a diatribe against the Knights
Templar, Freemasons and Bavarian Illuminati. In his fevered
imagination, the Templars had survived as a secret society,
pledged to the destruction of monarchies, the papacy, and
all other institutions in which power was vested. Its

pernicious influence had culminated, indeed, in the French

 

92

Revolution. Barruel made no mention of the Jews in this
work, but in 1806 he enthusiastically decided to redress the
omission, after receiving a letter which claimed that the
Revolution was really part of a Jewish conspiracy. By 1820,
shortly before his death, Barruel was convinced that the
Jews had designs upon not just France but the whole of
Europe, and that in the Freemasons they had access to a
network of communications which crossed national boundaries.

Barruel's letter was destined, after emendations that
made it still more virulent, to form the basis for the
Poooooolo. The history of their fabrication and
dissemination is relevant to the Quintet only insofar as it
informs Durrell's depiction of the Nazis. But their
importance is indicated by his express desire to include
them in an appendix to Constanoo ("Author's Note").For the
world, and the extraordinary Will of Peter the Great,
equally a plot to redeem it through Pan-Slavism" (Constance
u2—u3), confirmed the existence, in Judaism and Communism,
of a historically recognizable enemy against whom the Nazis
could define their position. In particular, the evils of
industrialization and technology, together with the poverty
which often accompanied them, could all be laid at the door
of the Jews, since the few who were visible tended to be
successful in the more innovative areas of politics and
commerce. Appealing, then, to romantic visions of a previous

era when the Teutonic race was supreme, the Nazis found a

 

93

fertile climate in which to propagate the New Order. As

Norman Cohn observes of their supporters,

When these people looked to the past, to the ideal
state which they supposed to have preceded the
modern age, they looked a very long way back. They
looked far beyond throne and altar, back to an
infinitely remote and almost entirely mythical
world. For them "the Jew" was not only, or mainly,
the destroyer of kings and the enemy of the
Church--he was above all the age-old antagonist of
the German peasant, he was the force which for two
thousand years had been undermining the true,
original German way of life. Historical
Christianity itself was a Jewish creation which
had helped to destroy the archaic German world;
and now capitalism, liberalism, democracy,
socialism, and the u ban way of life were
continuing this process.

The same romantic retreat intoeacloud cuckoo land<3f

mythical origin explains Liviawsrhetoric.lkzher recently

discovered enthusiasm for the Nazi cause, she tells

Blanford,

With the death of Goethe the new world was born,
and under the aegis of Judeo-Christian materialism
it transformed itself‘into the great labour camp
that it is. In every field--art, politics,
economics--the Jew came to the forefront and
dominated the scene. Only Germany wants to replace
this ethos with a new one, an Aryan one, which
will offer renewed scope for the old values as
exemplified by Goethe's world. (Livia 109)

Dismissing "all the Jewish brokers of psychoanalysis" as

part of a "barren mechanism [which] betrays its origins in

logical positivism" (Livia 110), she, like Smirgel, equates

the Nazi movement with the Orphic tradition, in which Uranus

must be castrated before Aphrodite can triumphantly emerge

from the waves. Yet the sterility of their mutual vision is

obvious,

for the only value which the Nazi war machine

 

9H

upholds is death, and Livia, at least, is one of its
casualties.

Perhaps the supreme irony of the regime she eSpouses,
however, is its hidden desire to become what it professes to
hate most of all. The Nazis replace the "great labour camp"
of Judeo-Christianity not with that "old world of humanism
and liberalism and faith" to which Livia aspires (Livia
109), but with the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau
and Belsen. As Toby perceives with an acuity greater than
Livia has shown, what the Germans really intend is to
establish themselves as the new elite:

They want tx> be the Chosen People--they have
announced the fact. They want to do away with the
Jews so that they can take their place .. .. The
Chosen Race! Whose blood is thicker than whose?
Washed in the blood of whose lamb if I may ask?

This is where Luther's great worm bag has led
them. (Constance 319)

 

The accuracy of his remarks is in fact substantiated by no
less a person than Hitler, whose conversations with Hermann
Rauschning were published by the latter in his book Hitler

Speaks. There Hitler comments, "I have read the Protocols of

 

the Elders o_f_‘ gioo and it simply appalled me. The

 

stealthiness of the enemy, and his ubiquity. I saw at once
that we must copy it--in our own way of course" (Cohn,
"Introduction" xxiv).

But what results from this Nazi paranoia is a copy only
in the sense that it replicates the "barren mechanism" for
which Livia has blamed the Jews, and thus indeed betrays its

origins in myth. Moreover, the technological dreams of Lord

 

95

Galen, for all that he conforms to the German stereotype of
the Jew, are exceedingly benign when compared with the Nazi
machine for destruction. Vulgar and materialistic though he
may be, Galen visualizes a world founded on childhood
readings like The Romance of S2339, in which he has learned
that the "steam-engine is a mighty power for Good" (E3133
118). In contrast, General Von Esslin gains a "schoolboyish
pleasure" from the sight of his amassed tanks:

for him the thought of them and of their crews was
one of joy unredeemed by any reservation. The 10th
Brigade, the 7th Panzers--this vast grouping of
steel was breath-taking in its battle-power, its
beetle-power. The slither of mesh as the
caterpillars cackled across the asphalt of major
highways, the roar and slither of the engines-~all
this was a Wagnerian paeon of malevolent power
which would soon be unlocked. (Constance 3H)

 

Yet, in succumbing, like his fellow Nazis, to a relish for
the technology of death, Von Esslin actually reneges upon
the originally romantic impulse of the Aryan myth. The full
extent of that betrayal is revealed by the role in which
humanity'is now recast.bhnlis no longer conceived as part
of an organic whole, or an incarnate fragment of the divine
spirit. On the contrary, he is reduced to a mere cog in the
machine, for "the mighty rhythm engendered by the Grand Army
in movement is irresistible, is all-engulfing. They were all
diminished as individuals, shorn of their personal
responsibility by the power of its motion." Caught up in the
"coils and meshes" of this great apparatus for war, the
Germans are swept along "as if on the breast of some great

river . .. . But a river of chain—mail, a river of meshed

 

96

steel" (Constance an), the antithesis of those "great rivers

 

of'the human sensibility threading the jungles and swamps
and forests of lost continents. The big rivers like Nile or
Mississippi ferrying their human freight from one world to
another" (L_i_y__i_a_ 37).

The Nazi quest for a Teutonic ideal uncompromised by
the Luciferian elevation of matter to which history
testifies is doomed, then, to repeat history rather than to
break with precedent. Its inversion of the moral order which
rules the modern world results only in perversion and death;
not in the recovery of a pre-Lapsarian realm in which man
fulfills his own divinity. Indeed, the reverse is true,
since the New Order proves instead an awesome illustration
of man's capacity for diabolism. Under the auspices of
National Socialism quest becomes inquisition. The affinity
between the two experiences is actually apparent in their
etymological kinship, for both are cognates of the Old

French ooooto, deriving from the Latin quaestio, or

 

question. Their juxtaposition reveals that the vocabulary we
choose to delineate people and things is determined by our
ideological vantage point. In other words, something may be
either quest or inquisition, depending upon the referential
framework of the observer.

Durrell invites us to learn from the example of the

Nazis how essential it istx>question our own ideological

 

assumptions, to ensure that the rhetoric of redemption does

not, in fact, become the instrument of our damnation. But

 

97

his underlying pessimism about humanity is obvious from his
depiction of what replaces the Germans. Quatrefages,
incarcerated at Montfavet under a regime he perceives as the
"new Inquisition," unthinkingly perpetuates its values when
he leads the inhabitants of the Dangerous Ward on yet
another quest to Avignon. Criminals and lunatics, "each with
his personal vocabulary, the triumph of his destiny over
reason," these are the "crusaders of the new reality?‘
(EQEEEEEEE 374). Dubbed, moreover, as Michael Begnal
observes, "with the names of some of the original Templars--
Baudoin St.-Just, Tortville, Jean Taillefer, Raynier de
Larchant, Pairaud, and Molay" ("The Mystery of the Templars
in Tho Aligooo 9212222" 5), they suggest that history is
inescapable; that it will always describe "the victory of
divine entropy over the aspirations of the majority-—the

hope for a quiet life this side of the grave" (Constanoo

363).

From Manichaeans to Nazis: A Psychology of Passion

If the mythological level of Durrell's narrative
suggests that National Socialism is simultaneously an
imitation and inversion of Gnosticism, so too does his
depiction of its psychology. A self-proclaimed "burglar" of
ideas (Lyons & Antrim #5), he is indebted for some of his
notions on romance to Denis de Rougemont's Logo io goo
Wootogo Woolo, a provocative work published in 19A0, and

substantially revised for a second edition in 1956.

 

 

98

Distinguishing "pagan" Eros from Christian Agape, de
Rougemont claims that the myth of Tristan and Iseult
glorifies self-destructive passion in a consciously encoded
transmission of Manichaeanism by the troubadours; and that
its gradual secularization has resulted in the failure of
Christian love within the institution of marriage. In
particular, he sees the lure of the East, which "pursues
understanding in the progressive abolition of diversity," as
responsible for the rise in recent years of the totalitarian
regime.8 Adesire to obliterate the individual self is, he
argues, the fundamental impulse of such movements. In
effect, they have translated the erotic passion for death
which the Tristan myth disguises into the realm of politics.
It is interesting to note that Durrell first read Logo
lo goo Western Woolo in 1957, and appears even then to have
been considering its potential use for his own fiction. In a
characteristically ebullient telegram to Richard Aldington,
he remarks that de Rougemont's text contains
A LOT ABOUT LANGUE D'OC AND A NEW THEORY OF
PROVENCAL LOVE POETRY, CATHARS' BELIEFS AND
HERESIES ETC. DO YOU KNOW ANY GOOD BOOK ALONG
THESE LINES? THAT THE LOVE-CONVENTIONS OF THE
POETRY DISGUISED A KIND OF METAPHYSIC OF MYSTICAL
ILLUMINATION SHARED BETWEEN LOVERS? AND THAT

CONTINENCE NOT LICENCE WAS THE TIP? IT SOUNDS VERY
ODD . . . . (Literary Lifelines 26)

 

The more cautious Aldington, obviously unimpressed by
Durrell's terse summary of its content, responds doubtfully
in a letter dated 24 August 1957,

I don't know the De Rougemont book, but should say

the thesis is questionable. If you read the poems
of the troubadours, and not merely theories about

 

 

99

them, it is obvious that in the pre-Albigensian
Crusade period they are pour le bon motif, i.e.
the poets think it would be a good idea to have
their mistresses naked in bed. But after the
atrocious crime of the Albigensian Crusade and
under the influence of R.C. shits the
metaphysical-mystical was developed, as you have
doubtless read in Dante's Vita Nuova. The original
Provencal amour courtois was certainly taken from
the Arabs of Spain, who were far indeed from
mysticism, though I believe they started that too.
(Literary Lifelines 28)

 

 

 

Aldington's reservations are quite legitimate, if somewhat
reductively expressed, but Durrell seems to have forgotten
the warning.9 Writing again, some three years later, in a
letter of 20 July 1961, he remarks,
On Saturday we are being visited by Denis de
Rougemont, a writer I much admire. I think you
would be quite omballed if not actually degringled

[toppled over] by his Love lo the Western World--
philosophic work. (Literary Lifelines 180)

 

In fact, it is productive to consider the content of

Love lo the Westeoo Woolo in some depth, since its thesis

 

informs several of the more important connections in the
Quintet, especially that between the Gnostics and the Nazis.
Durrell has actually indicated the measure of his debt by
dedicating £3113 to its author. Beginning with the Tristan
story, de Rougemont ends up encompassing the major part of
western literature and military history in his argument,
with a vision which is impressive for its sheer ambition
alone! He suggests that Tristan and Iseult are not in love
with each other, but rather with an ideal of love that is
abetted by its very frustration. Indeed, neither is even

capable of seeing the other as he or she actually is, for

 

100

both experience that other only in terms of the selfh What
they share is not love but narcissism. To fuel this passion,
then, they must seek ever greater obstructions to its
physical fulfillment. In overcoming externally imposed
perils they affirm life. However, in subsequently creating
self induced restrictions, they display a repressed desire
for death. Hence Tristan marries the wrong Iseult, and by
his celibacy subverts the institution of marriage, together
with its life-affirming values. Erroneously believing that
to die for love will somehow transfigure them, he and the
true Iseult equate suffering with knowledge in a manner
analogous to that of the mystics.

Thus analysed, the myth seems to de Rougemont to share
certain correspondences with Gnosticism; specifically,in
its essentially lyrical expression of a faith which cannot
be objectively described, and a death—wish in conflict with
the desire for sexual communion. But the similarity, he
argues, is no accident, for the rhetoric of courtly love
reached the Provencal poets at the same time that
Manichaeanism was spreading to fruition in the Albigensian
heresy, and by the same routes. Moreover, the troubadours
who composed and transmitted this poetry often sought
patrons who were known for their Catharist sympathies. Both
poets and patrons could safely communicate religious
convictions disruptive to the predominant power structure by
encoding them within a formal mode which disguised their

true import. In short, he concludes,

 

101

the passionate love which the myth celebrates
actually became io the twelfth century:-the moment
whoo 13 first began to 133 cultivated--a religion
In the full sense of'the word; and io particular 3
Christian heresy historically determined. (L3!
137)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References to this alleged link between the troubadours
and the Gnostics occur throughout the whole of the
Quintetu10 Piers dresses for Christmas dinner at Verfeuille
in "the narrow bootlace tie and the ribbon of the felibre"
(Monsieur 59), a costume clearly intended by its association
with the Provencal poets to undermine an overtly Christian
celebration. Subsequently, he makes the connection more
explicit, observing in his conversation with Bruce that

the cathars have always been self-elected and
self-created gnostics. But what about the Courts
of Love and their gradual extinction? The love the
troubadours extolled made orthodoxy very
thoughtful—-in particular because it posited a new
freedom for the woman, and a new role as Muse and
refiner of the coarser male spirit“ This was not
to be relished by people who felt happier within
the iron truss of the Inquisition . . .
(Monsieur 160)
Blanford too hints of a Gnostic heresy buried deep in the
Provencal tradition of poetry. Encountering a genuine member
of the Felibre on his first journey to Avignon, he is
initially puzzled by the mysterious announcement of'death
with which Brunel is met. He adds only that he later "read a
modern history of the Felibre .. . and discovered the names
of that sad little group waiting under the ramparts of the
city" (Livia A8).

Apparently, Blanford also realizes that narcissism

supplies the foundation for his relationship with Livia,

 

102

since "what he saw was not Livia but his own transfigured
version of her—-the reflection of his love" (Lilia 16“).
Like Rob Sutcliffe, whose passion for the unfortunate Pia is
equally frustrated, he is at last compelled to admit that
"the projection of one's own feelings upon the image of a
beloved [is] in the long run an act of self-mutilation"
(Monsieur 111). Nor are the two men alone in idealizing
their sexual partners. When Constance, in the ecstasy of her
infatuation with Sam, compares him to Donatello's David,
Blanford immediately diagnoses her problem, observing from
bitter experience that
Everyone sees himself or herself as somebody quite
different. Hence the confusion because everyone is
acting a part. He sees you as Iseult, whereas you
are really Catherine of Russia. You see him as
David, but I see only the eternal British
schoolboy in love, elated because he is undressing
his mother. (Constance 1“)
Erotic love, as all the protagonists discover for
themselves, is not knowledge of another so much as it is a
reflection of the self. And the suffering it elicits is
productive only upon reflection, being at best the means to
self-knowledge.

Durrell's depiction of passion conforms thus far to
the Tristan story as de Rougemont suggests it should be
read, but he is indebted still more extensively to his
source in the argument that ensues. De Rougemont's study of
the various convolutions by which Manichaeanism results in

National Socialism appears to operate on the principle "Only

connect," and Durrell, seeing rich fodder for his own work,

 

 

103

follows suit. Tracing successive "profanations" of the
Tristan myth in western literature, de Rougemont identifies
two related trends. Both, he argues, are present in the

Roman go a Rose. The first part idealizes a distant lady in

 

 

the manner established by the troubadours, while the second
reacts against this excessive refinement with a cynical
emphasis upon sensual pleasure. The "two Roses," as he calls
them, in turn begot two distinct traditions. Dante and
Petrarch, in whom the "language of Love had at length become
the rhetoric of the human heart" (LEW 181), were descendants
of Guillaume de Lorris. But the inversion of their extreme
idealism produced an antithetical tradition in the salacious
fabliaofi. This conflict between material and spiritual
which a
soul just parted from its body assails its
erstwhile companion with bitter reproaches,
alleging that if it is condemned to damnation the
body is to blame. But the body retorts with a Lo
guogue (which has some justification!) So, keeping
up their belated recriminations, the two go
forward together into everlasting torment. (LWW
185)

Progressing through Shakespeare and Milton, in whose
work he sees the vestiges of Arthurian romance, de
Rougemont claims that by the seventeenth century its
"mystical element was degraded into pure psychology" (LWW
193). Social order took precedence over the implicitly

nihilistic features of romance, and the happy conclusions of

comedy prevailed. A few writers, he argues, remained

 

104

faithful to the ”original implications of the myth in
continuing to depict the suicidal aspect of passion, but by
the eighteenth century its eclipse was complete. When the
distinction between mind and body replaced that of body and
soul, "the result was to divide a human being into
intelligence and sex" (L!!! 208), with a corresponding
diminution in the importance of passion.

De Rougemont contends, however, that the desire for
courtly love, and its concomitant experience of the
transcendent, could not be so easily suppressed. It
reappears in the shape of Don Juan, who discards his
successive conquests in search of that one elusive woman
with whom he can finally slake his passion. Deceived by his
conviction that in the realm of the senses he can find the
immanence he really seeks, Don Juan deliberately violates

the rules of amour courtois through rape and infidelity, to

 

end not in heaven but hell. De Rougemont sees him as the
converse of Tristan and, in the contradiction between the
two, an explanation for the peculiar moral philosophy
advanced by the Marquis de Sade, whose ancestor, Hugues de
Sade, married Petrarch's Laura. Caught between the
anachronistic desire for ideal love and the cynicism of his
age, de Sade tried to exorcise the tyranny of the senses
through a debauchery intended to exhaust evil and ultimately
redeem the purity of love. This analysis of de Sade recalls
the version of Gnosticism articulated by Smirgel in his

description of the Nazi position.

 

105

De Rougemont argues, in effect, that there is a three-
fold movement, in which the inversion of idealism leads to a
cynicism that is itself inverted to produce a oogversion of
the original ideal. His analysis illuminates the dilemma in
which Durrell's characters find themselves, once they fall
in love; and that they should do EH) in Avignon is
particularly appropriate, since there "one is reminded that
the Middle Ages are not so very far behind us--as a reality
rather than an abstraction" (Mogglggg 226). Medieval
Avignon, with its conflict between Catharist Pure and
degenerate Catholics, reveals just such a tension between
idealism and cynicism in the history of religious love as
exists in the erotic love experienced by the protagonists of
the Quintet. Moreover, its past inhabitants were responsible
for first expressing both romanticism and the sadism which
is its perverted offspring. As Blanford remarks to Felix
Chatto in their nocturnal wanderings,

It has one thing, this town, for me. The huge span
of human aspiration and human weakness are [sic]
symbolised by two figures from its bestiary, so to
speak. I mean Petrarch's Laura who invented the
perfect romantic love and the Marquis de Sade who
carried it right back into its despairing infancy
with the whip. What a couple of guardian angels!
(£3112 88)

The juxtaposition is reinforced more poignantly for
Blanford when Livia, in whom he mistakenly perceives a
second Laura, takes him on a tour of the museum. There he
sees some

medieval documents which mentioned the marriage of

Petrarch's sweetheart, and hard by, some pages of
handwriting torn from the letters of the Marquis

 

 

106

de Sade . . . . He had forgotten that both the

libertine and the Muse were from the same family.

(93133 108)
Of course, Blanford actually marries his Laura and learns
the error he has made. For Livia is in truth a female Don
Juan, able only to be the recipient of love, and never its
donor: "Yes, she gave herself, but it was only a smear of a
woman who responded to the kiss. Affectively she was
anaesthetic, her soul was rubberised" (El-.112 20). Livia's
promiscuity is motivated by a hunger for passion which,
precisely because she cannot satisfy it sexually, she
eventually transposes onto politics. This perversion of both
her sexual preferences and her political alignments
expresses an inversion of the idealism which characterizes
Blanford. He acknowledges the kinship in admitting to
Sutcliffe that

There are only two ways out of Avignon, the way up

and the way down, and they are both the same. The

two roses belong to the same family and grow on

the same stalk--Sade and Laura, the point where
extremes meet. (Constance 353)

 

In fact, all the protagonists must choose either the
way up or the way down; whether, that is, to apply the
serpentine force of passion to fulfillment of their own
divinity or merely to sensual gratification. This renewal of
the medieval debate "de l'ame et du corps" is specifically
articulated by Blanford and Sutcliffe, in the roles of body
and soul respectively. Originally conceived as "an imaginary
a'«lthor called S" (£132 115), Sutcliffe suggests by his very

name the serpentine power to which he gives voice.

107

Similarly, in claiming "like Tiresias [to have] breasts
which see all, and a forked tail in the shape of a lightning
conductor" (Lilli 25), he expresses its potential either for
salvation or for damnation. Indeed, he even illustrates the
two alternatives in his own lives, the one culminating in
infantile regression and death, the other in that final
moment with its promise of "reality prime" (Q3335 201).
Displaying a somewhat more independent and fractious turn of
mind than his creator welcomes, then, Sutcliffe is the soul
who retorts to Blanford's recriminations with his own To

googue (Livia 25 & 53). He explicitly acknowledges this

 

function as, together, they venture on their last book
before "body and soul must end their association" (golox
21).

The dialogue continues in the example supplied by the
other characters. Thus Sam, who reneges upon his commitment
to Constance, is condemned to a death which, by its very
futility, indicates the measure of his betrayal. Seduced by
the excitements of war, he asserts that, beside combat,
"love-making is a charming adventure, nothing more"
Cgooogofloo 73). The belief he professes is clearly
r‘eiterated by his actual choice of profession. In deciding
to stay a soldier, he directly opposes Constance, whose
energy is devoted to the preservation of life, instead of
its annihilation. It is no surprise that he should "feel a
cOmplete traitor to Constance, to all she believes in"

(Constaooo 72), since he has indeed chosen the course of

 

 

108

immediate gratification. Killed by his own side in target
practice, rather than dying withaa"certificate for glory"

(Constance 75), Sam illustrates the emptiness of his values

 

through an equally meaningless death. He leaves Constance
with the recognition that she too has deceived herself, for

they had been acting a part, the part of two
golden immortals from some romantic opera. Now
here they were, under the wheels of the
Juggernaut--or rather, she was; in a sense he had
escaped and left her to gather up the remains of
the thought "deathfl (Constance 118)

 

This allusion to "some romantic opera" which culminates
in the revelation of death and a corresponding revulsion on

the part of Constance, is clearly derived from Love in the

 

Western World, where de Rougemont concludes his survey of

 

European literature with Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. He

 

argues that if de Sade illustrates the myth in its most
profane form, Rousseau was to reverse the trend by
resuscitating its spiritual values. The German romantics

followed his example and, in Tristan und Isolde, the

 

rseligious content of the story reached its most complete
ar~ticulation. But precisely because Wagner had "transgressed
tJne taboo" to reveal its secret meaning (LEW 228), the myth
n<>w lost its true function, and hence its potency. All that
isurvives, so de Rougemont suggests, is the degenerate middle
Class fiction of the "eternal triangle," in which cuckold,
gigolo and bored housewife parody their counterparts in the
Original drama.

Though the myth may'be "dead"ixaliterature, however,

 

 

109

it has enjoyed a secondary existence in the analogous arena
of war. Pointing out that in the rule of chivalry there
existed a code of conduct applicable to the arts of both
love and war, de Rougemont remarks on its social purpose in
confining the lawless force of passion within a limiting

framework. He analyses the history of war in Europe as a

series of oscillations between idealism and cynicism,
corresponding to the dialectical movement he sees in
literature. But with the military developments of World War
I, fighting ceased to be contained by the accepted formal
modes for its control. In substituting total devastation for
its earlier, symbolic role, war thus turned upon the
instinct to which it owed its origin and, like erotic love,
ceased to remain the theatre for passion.

Yet passion itself is indestructible, and has instead,
de Rougemont argues, been displaced onto politics. In
particular is this true of totalitarian regimes, where the
personified Nation subsumes individual passions“ Moreover,
the existence of several totalitarian states supplies each
with an obstruction to its fulfillment, so that the "real,
tsacit, and inevitable aim of the totalitarian elevation [is]
tJnerefore war, and war means ooogh" LEEE.268)~ Citing the
iJIstance of Hitler, to whom the German masses responded as a
1nIOman to her suitor, de Rougemont recalls the prophetic

VHDrds he wrote for his first edition of Love Lo the Western

 

‘Worfld: "It will need a superhuman Wagner to orchestrate the

Stupendous catastrophe of passion become totalitarian"

 

 

 

110

(270). Clearly, he sees in World War II the confirmation of
his worst fears.

Durrell's depiction of the war is, of course, informed
by this perspective. A profane version of Gnosticism
supplies the metaphysical foundation for National Socialism
in the Quintet, while Von Esslin reveals how the projection
of personal passion onto the collective body of the state
results in the abnegation of individuality. Nor is this
merely a feature of the Nazi movement, since Sam, in
fighting for the Allies, revels in the same "individual lack
of responsibility [which] is so wonderful--it enables the
whole race to act from its functional roots, in complete

obedience" (Constance 73). But the danger of such a total

 

abdication from personal accountability is obvious, for, as
Durrell observes in an interview with Marc Alyn, "our
political systems are structures that can be manipulated

this way or that" (The Big Supposer 41). In the hands of a

 

ciictator, power redefines morality to serve its own needs
arui the individual conscience is suppressed. Hence, for the
Nazis , Hitler becomes

the man-god of the future who was delineating for
them the spiritual frontiers of the new estate.
The prospects of the freedom these ideas offered
made them feel buoyant and shriyen; for all that
they were going to do now the Fuhrer offered them
an absolution in advance. Belief--that was all
that was necessary for them; the rest followed
automatically. (Constance A0)

 

The abeyance of normal ethical considerations is

traditionally an aspect of war, but it is equally

 

 

111

characteristic of love, as Blanford ironically recalls when,

in the narration of Constance, he quotes that old adage,

 

"All's fair in love and war!" (101%.The Nazis express both

forms of passion; "madly in love with the Leader" (Constance

 

100), they carry out his instructions with a fervor that
exposes its erotic origins. Indeed, the vision of Hitler's
triumphant procession through Paris is almost enough to
evoke tears in the normally stiff-lipped Von Esslin.
Similarly, Hitler appeals to Wagner's celebration of a
romantic love in which the desire for union with the beloved
extends to the willing sacrifice of the self in death:
He had consecrated a whole day to the convulsions
of Wagner'snnusic .. .. apparently wishEing] it
to be clear that the intellectual and emotional
foundations of the present German postures and
actions were to be traced to the artist. The

spiritual justifications of the new faith were
there. (Constance 33)

 

At the core of the Nazi experience there thus exists that
desire for death which proves so abhorrent to Constance, and
Hitler is the "superhuman Wagner" who orchestrates its
fulfillment.

The fusion of eroticism and politics in war is
i.llustrated on a smaller scale by General Von Esslin, who
tzreats sexual intercourse as an extension of his military
activities for the Nazi cause. His relationship with the
Polish maidservant at his mother's home is based on a
"Silent combat" in which "she submitted, and the thought
exCited his cupidity; he overwhelmed her as his army would

SOon overwhelm her country and people, raping it, wading in

 

112

its blood" (Constance 37 & 38). Attracted by her "death-

 

mask" face and hair that resembles the "sort of tresses

which grow on Eastern corpses after death"(Cbnstance 37),

 

Von Esslin reveals the necrophilic quality of his lust.
Moreover, in choosing the same sexual object as his father,
he betrays a displaced desire for incest with his mother. It
is no coincidence that, like Oedipus, he loses his sight;
nor that this retribution should be exacted by Krov, the
Polish slave whose action unwittingly avenges the servant's
suicide.

Though Von Esslin inverts the chivalric code on which
he was raised, and so becomes perverted in his sexual
practices, he is relatively harmless in comparison with
Fischer. As an officer in the Waffen S.S., Fischer has ample
opportunity to indulge the "capacity for cruelty and
mischief which [gives] him an almost sexual radiance"

(Constance 1829. A modern de Sade, he literally purchases

 

Nancy Quiminal's body with the lives of his potential
victims, and subjects her to humiliation for his own
[aleasureu "He could deprave, this man, simply by smiling"
(Constance 180). Both Fischer and Von Esslin illustrate in
tdieir personal lives the pattern of conduct which the Nazis
exemplify as a whole. The political and sexual deviations of
'dhich they are guilty reflect the extent to which they have
ESubverted the true function of passion, by subduing it to
Sensual gratification at the» expense <3f spiritual

development. Idolizing Eros, they end by embracing Thanatos,

 

 

 

 

 

113

but theirs is the path to hell.

The grim spectacle of National Socialism which Durrell
thus evokes is unquestionably colored by de Rougemont's
Freudian synthesis of mythology and psychology. It is hardly
surprising that Durrell's imagination should have been fired
by such ideas, since his own inclination is likewise to seek
a relation between events that results in a larger vision of
reality. However, Durrell's conclusions about the Nazi
regime ultimately differ from those of his source in one
vital respect. Whereas de Rougemont sees in the Nazi
phenomenon a resurgence of Gnosticism, admittedly perverted

in :Rnwn, Durrell insists that this perversion finally

 

effects a reversion in) all that implicates Judeo-

 

Christianity. In their persecution of others, the Germans
have merely replicated the persecution to which the Gnostics
and Knights Templar were subjected under the banner of a
Christian God. They have accordingly betrayed the myth which
.inspired them, to become the agents of evil.T%fijsis truly
to repeat the past.

De Rougemont's answer to passion is, then, for Durrell,
110 answer whatsoever. Seeing Eros and Agape as mutually
exclusive alternatives, de Rougemont turns to the very
tn“adition which repels Durrell, concluding that "charitable
1J>ve, Christian love" will save mankind from its romantic
fOlly'(LflW 311%.Durrell is also profoundly suspicious of

"crude antithetical thinking," which he perceives as "the

 

 

 

 

 

114

mark of the second-rate mind" (93123 41). Realizing, like de
Rougemont, that "the target [is] not between the thighs," he
insists upon the transfiguring quality of love, for the real
target is "between the eyes--the pineal gland of the white
vision" (Constance 136). Rejecting de Rougemontfls solution,

therefore, he searches for a third, transcendent principle

of love, and finds it not in Agape but in alchemy.11

 

 

 

 

 

115

Notes

1 Henri-Charles Puech,"Gnosis and Time" 65-66.This
ar‘ ticle is a particularly clear and helpful exposition of
the highly complex Gnostic conception of time.

2 The content of the Pistio Sophio underlines this
d i fference between the Christian and the Gnostic
perspective, since it alleges to report the teachings of

Je sus over an eleven year period succeeding his
r e surrection .

3 Oswald Spengler, whom Durrell has long admired,
argues for a similar view, in claiming that "the expression-
fk>rcms of world-history are limited in number, and that eras,
eep>ochs, situations, persons are ever repeating themselves
tt‘lje to type" (The Decline of the West II: AL

4 Introduction, The Murdered Magicians: 2M5 Templars
Eilfl LMoLo Myth xxi. This is one of the best accounts
a\railable of _both the limited historical evidence and the
e\rolution of the myth surrounding the Knights Templar.
Paartner point out the complexity of the reasons for the
d0\dnfall of the Templars, and emphasizes that the Order had

incurred many enemies by its m1ngling of martial with
religious values.

 

 

5 In this context it is interesting to note that the
legend of Simon Magus is generally regarded as one of the
forerunners of the sixteenth century Faust tradition.
According to various Christian commentators, his magic
D01ders stemmed from a diabolical compact in which he had
enslaved the spirit of a boy, "unsullied and violently
Slain, and invoked by unutterable adjurations," to assist
him in his evil. For a discussion of Simon as the prototype
for Faust, see the work of Philip Mason Palmer and Robert
Pattison More in The Sources of the Faust Tradition. Fooo
Simon Magus to Lessing— 9— M1.

 

Durrell remarks that "the main bias for [his] own thinking .
- . has developed out of a study of anthropologists like
Tylor, Frazer, Rivers, etc .. . J'(xii). In addition, T.S.
Eliot, in his capacity as a director of Faber and Faber,
encouraged the young Durrell in publishing The Black Book.
Durrell's correspondence with Miller indicates that Eliot
was an important influence upon him, and it is probable that

6 In his "Preface" to A Key to Modern British Poetry

 

 

 

116

is first exposure to the work of such writers stems from
ha. is period in his life.

7 Cohn's "Introduction" to Herman Bernstein's book,
.223 Truth about "The Protocols of Zion" xix. This is a brief

but illuminating analysis of the conditions resulting in the

J e wish Holocaust, and the part which the Protocols o_t_‘ Zion
played in its history.

8 Love in the Western World 318. All subsequent
re ferences to this work will be included in the text in the
abbreviated form LMM.

I)
t;

 

9 In fact, Aldington's reservations about L__ove in the

W estern World are as forcefully articulated by Joseph
Ea tnpbell, who points out that, "whereas according to the
Gn ostic-Manichaean view nature is corrupt and the lure of
t h e sense to be repudiated, in the poetry of the
tr oubadours, in the Tristan story, and in Gottfried's work
above all, nature in its noblest moment--the realization of
love is an end and glory in itself; and the senses, ennobled

and refined by courtesy and art, temperance, loyalty and

courage, are the guides to this realization" (Creative
Mythology 176).

10 It is probable that Durrell has actually named the
oasis to which the protagonists of Monsieur travel for the
Gnostic rite of initiation after Marcabru, the Troubadour
poet whose verse de Rougemont quotes: "Wise beyond doubt I
hold him who divines what each word in my song means" (Love
_i_51_ the Western World 96). It is also possible that Durrell
Chose to alter the name to Macabru in order to suggest the

macabre element of Gnosticism, but there is no evidence to
confirm this speculation.

11 In his refusal to accept de Rougemont's binary
structure Durrell actually comes close to the position
articulated by Joseph Campbell in his criticism of Love in
the Western World: "our theologians still are writingo 5T
agape and er__o_s and their radical opposition, as though these
two were the final terms ofthe principle of 'love': the
former, 'charity,' godly and spiritual, being 'of men toward
each other in a community,’ and the latter, 'lust,' natural
and fleshly, being 'the urge, desire and delight of sex.‘
Nobody in a pulpit seems ever to have heard of goo}: as a
third, selective, discriminating principle in contrast to
the other two. For amor is neither of the right- hand path
(the sublimating spirit, the mind and the community of man),
nor of the indiscriminate left (the spontaneity of nature,
the mutual incitement of the phallus and womb), but is the
path directly before one, of the eyes and their message to
the heart" (Creative Mythology 177).

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

Alchemy and Individuation:

"what that bastard Jung is up to."

When Constance discusses with her fellow psychoanalyst
Schwarz, "what that bastard Jung is up to," she implicitly
admits the convergence between two apparently unrelated
systems of knowledge. Remarking that the "alchemical work is
in distillation or decoction--the personal ego decants
itself in thoughts which are really acts and slowly, drop by
amazing drop, virtue, which is voidness, precipitates"

(Sebastian 22), Schwarz specifically recalls Jung's

 

discovery of the relationship between alchemy and
psychology. It is significant, moreover, that hermetic
alchemy, in which Jung has identified the archetypes of the
individuation process, owes its ancestry to the Gnosticism
Constance has resisted in Affad. As Jung himself observes,
"when we come to the original basic ideas of alchemy we find
elements that derive from pagan, and more particularly from

Gnostic, sources" (Psychology and Alchemy 357).

 

Both systems attribute salvation to knowledge--that is,

117

 

 

 

 

118

to gnosis of the ineffable rather than to knowledge attained
as the result.of'logic or reason. The articulation of this
knowledge is characterized by a rich symbolism which
illustrates the genuine difficulty in describing a numinous
experience, and at the same time ensures its preservation
from the uninitiated. Moreover, despite superficial
differences in these symbolic formulations, Gnosticism and
alchemy alike espouse as their transcendent aim the recovery
of the quintessence from its imprisonment in matter. For the
Gnostic this entailed the liberation of the pneuma from its
bondage to the flesh and hence its reintegration with the
divine principle of the pleroma. For the alchemist it was a
chemical Operation, by means of which the elements could be
distilled from the primordial chaotic mass and synthesized

once more 111 the "corpus subtile, ea transfigured and

 

resurrected body" which formed the counterpart to the divine

unity (Psychology and Alchemy 427). While the solitary

 

labors of the alchemist therefore assumed a distinctly
concrete dimension in the laboratory, it is obvious from the
tenor of the extant literature that they were primarily
spiritual in purpose. Adepts like Paracelsus and Gerhard
Dorn clearly envisaged their experiments as both physical
and metaphysical, recognizing too that production of the
elusive essence depended as much upon their own mental
condition as it did upon any chemical reaction. Thus the
physical goal of alchemy was gold, the panacea,

the elixir of life; the spiritual one was the
rebirth of the (spiritual) light from the darkness

 

 

 

 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIl!!!!§!!:g:======:r——————

119

of Physis: healing self-knowledge and the
deliverance of the pneumatic body from the
corruption of the flesh. (Jung, Myooooloo
Coniunctionis 90)

 

The actual procedure for achieving this goal is equally
redolent of Gnosticism. As we have already seen, according
to the Gnostic cosmogony matter originated from the
seduction of the lowest aeon, whose externalized passions
resulted in the creation of the four elements, earth and
air, fire and water. The alchemist emulated this division of
the primordial chaos into its four parts when he sought to
distill the four elements or their qualities, moist, dry,

warm and cold, from the prima materia over which he toiled.

 

The work itself was conceived as a four-fold process, during
which the quicksilver, or whatever other substance was used

to represent the massa confusa, underwent changes in color

 

reflecting the stages of nigredo, olbedo, rubedo, and

citrinitas respectively. As its name suggests, the nigredo

 

signified the blackness and corruption of the original
material, either present from the beginning as one of its
qualities, or else produced by the separation of the

elements. If the prima materia was assumed to be divided in

 

its initial condition, the alchemist had then to effect a
union of opposites metaphorically analogous to the union of
male and female. When the product of this first conjunction
died, the nigredo followed. Subsequently, with repeated
distillations, the nigredo was sufficiently purified for its

transformation to the albedo, which, being white, contained

 

 

 

120

all colors. This change in states was alternatively likened
to the reunion of the body which had earlier "died," with
the soul released at its death, and so took on the
properties of a resurrection. For many alchemists the
albedo could only be secured at such cost that it was prized
as though it were the ultimate goal. But not until the
albedo had been heated by the most intense fire did it turn

into the rubedo, and finally the citrinitas, or gold, which

 

heralded the completion of the alchemical process. By the

sixteenth century, however, the citrinitas had ceased to be

 

considered significant, and the procedure more commonly
ended with the manufacture of the rubedo. Symbolically
described as Sol or King, the rubedo joined with the albedo,
as Lunacn‘Queen, inalsecond conjunction which celebrated
the "chymical wedding" of the elements in a higher unity.
Now a number of people in the Quintet profess to be
alchemists. Affad, indeed, appears to symbolize the
synthesis produced by the chemical wedding. Admitting that,
as a child, he "preferred to lock [him]self‘up and indulge
in abstruse studies like alchemy and mathematics," Affad
tells Constance that he "stood between [his] father and
mother, each held a hand, as if between a great king and

queen, two gods" (Constance 293 & 325). Similarly, Constance

 

herself, despite the scepticism which results from her
scientific training, claims to have "hunted not an ethos but

the curve of a perfect licence charged with truth," so that

 

 

 

 

 

121

she "was an alchemist without knowing it" (Liylg 2H9).
Quatrefages too has turned "towards symbolic mathematics,
enigmas, emblems and the shadowy reaches of alchemy and
astrology" (Lilia 91). Engaged in tracking down the Templar
treasure, he insists that its real value is spiritual rather
than material, and Blanford, who has also dabbled in the
occult, recognizes that he is referring to the Philosopher's
Stone. The "least mercuric" of men, Blanford in fact uses an
image which "one would have had to be an alchemist to
understand," in describing his feelings for Livia: "What he
loved in her was her 'water'--as of a precious stone. It is
after all what is really loved in a woman--not the sheath of
matter which covers her--but her 'signature"'(Llyig 28 &
153). Yet the most important illustrations of alchemy in the
interests expressed by some of the characters. It is in what
happens to the protagonists, andruflzin the vocations they
pursue, that the alchemical process is clearly revealed; for
the characters actually undergo a sequence of changes in the
course of their spiritual development which parallels the

transformation of the ppima materia into the quintessence.

 

In short, they become alchemists who are simultaneously the
substance of their own experiments.

In this respect, they conform to Jung's discovery that
alchemy is really an attempt to explore the hidden provinces

of the human mind; a truth unrecognized or, at best, only

 

122

incompletely realized by the medieval and renaissance adepts
who sought evidence of their success in external reality.
Indeed, the unanimous failure to secure their goal indicates
that the elusive quintessence which the alchemists struggled
either to create or to extract from matter did not exist
outside the realm of their imagination. Jung points out that
it was always conceived as
a celestial substance, iue., something
transcendental, which, in contrast 1x) the
perishability of all lawn“) matter, was
incorruptible, inert as a metal or stone, and yet
alive, like an organic being, and at the same time
a universal medicament. Such a "body" was quite

obviously not to be met with in eXperience.
(Mysterium Coniunctionis 525)

 

From observations formed during an extensive number of
psychoanalyses, in which the dreams of his patients appeared
quite frequently to employ alchemical symbols whose
production could not be explained by any conscious knowledge
of their history or meaning, Jung concluded that alchemy was
a spontaneous expression of the unconscious mind. The adept,
in other words, "experienced his projection as a property of
matter; but what he was in reality experiencing was his own

unconscious" (Psychology and Alchemy 245).

 

A brief digression may be helpful here to clarify
Jung's understanding and use of alchemical symbols. Both
their generation and the conscious apprehension of their
particular significance are features of the psychic

development which he has called "individuation." Jung uses

 

 

123

this term "to denote the process by which a person becomes a
psychological 'in-dividual,' that is, a separate,

indivisible unity or 'whole'" (The Archetypes and the

 

Collective Unconscious 275). In fact, the process is

 

intrinsic to man in the sense that it originates from the
repertoire of latent images, or archetypes, which Jung
believes to have been imprinted on the brain during its
organic evolution. Jung has identified four archetypes of
especially widespread importance--the self, persona, shadow
and animus or anima--but it is specifically the archetype of
the self which facilitates individuation. Responding to its
powerful stimulus, the undifferentiated, yet nonetheless
complete, psyche with which every human being is born
gradually matures into 23 fully differentiated personality.
Such, at least, is the ideal result, although in practice
the process varies both as to its extent and its expression.
For the level of individuation actually attained by any one
person depends upon the degree to which the conscious ego is
able to assimilate the contents of the unconscious.

However, the integration of unconscious phenomena is no
easy feat, because they generally "manifest themselves in

fairly chaotic and unsystematic form" (The Archetypes and

 

the Collective Unconscious 276). In contrast with the

 

conscious mind, which is characterized by its awareness of
distinctions and subject to a certain amount of individual

control, the unconscious is an entirely autonomous whole,

 

124

whose hidden contents may irrupt at any time. Naturally,
therefore, the revelations of the unconscious are frequently
associated with mental discomfort, since they occur
involuntarily and, often, in order to compensate for the
deviations of the ego from its instinctual foundations. But
to deny such unwelcome intrusions into the arena of
consciousness would be injurious to the psyche, which is a
synthesis of these two antithetical functions. Only through
assimilation of the unconscious does the virtual image of
the self become actual, then; and in that universal human
process, Jung suggests, lies the source of the myths with
which man has attempted to account for his existence:

The essence cxf the conscious mind is
discrimination; it must, if it is to be aware of
things, separate the opposites, and it does this
contra naturem.]klnature the opposites seek one
another--les extremes oo touchent--and so it is in
the unconscious, and particularly in the archetype
of unity, the self. Here, as in the deity, the
opposites cancel out. But as soon as the
unconscious begins 1x) manifest itself they split
asunder, as at the Creation; for every act of
dawning consciousness is a creative act, and it is
from this psychological experience that all our
cosmogonic symbols are derived. (Psychology and
Alchemy 25)

 

 

 

Thus the prima materia over which the alchemists

 

labored is, like the Gnostic primordial chaos, an expression
of the inherited unconscious. Equally, the division of
matter into its four constituents corresponds with the
differentiation that results from dawning consciousness. In
other words, all human beings possess four aspects of

psychological orientation, since

125

we must have a function which ascertains that
something is there (sensation); a second function
which establishes 21112.2 it is (thinking); a third
function which states whether it suits us or not,
whether we wish to accept it or not (feeling); and
a fourth function which indicates where it came
from and where it is going (intuition). (Jung,
Psychology and Religion 167)

 

Informed by the four functions of consciousness, then, the
various archetypes individuate, as each must, for the
development of a balanced personality. Apart from the
archetype of the self, which initiates this process, there
are the three spontaneously personified archetypes which
Jung identified as being of particular frequency and
importance: that is, the persona, shadow and anima (in a
man) or animus (in a woman). Of course, they manifest
themselves differently in every human being, precisely
because it is the environment and experience of the
individual which activate their potential. However, the
function of each archetype remains the same, regardless of
the specific shape it takes in any one man or woman. The
persona, for exampleg has a primarily social function, as
the exterior facade with which an individual conducts
himself in public. It enables him to cooperate with his
mommunity, and hence to profit from the collective strength
of the social group to which he belongs. In this fashion the
preservation of both the individual and the race is ensured,
for the persona promotes the necessary quality of
conformity.

Just as the archetype of the persona is responsible for

 

126

the production of our social skills, so is there a
complementary archetype whose function it is to remind us of
our animal and instinctual foundations. This immediate
antagonist is the shadow, a figure of the same sex as the
subject who is undergoing individuation. Containing the
unknown or little-known attributes of the ego, the shadow is
an
"inferior" personality....nede up of everything
that will not fit in with, and adapt to the laws
and regulations <3f conscious .life. It is
compounded of "disobedience" and iii therefore
rejected not on moral grounds only, but also for

reasons.of‘expediency. (Psychology and Religion
198)

 

Clearly, the shadow is antisocial in its tendencies and for
this reason, as well as for the depth of its roots in our
historical evolution, carries an enormous potential for
destruction. Yet, because it is also a source of great
vitality, and often, in fact, expresses values which are
needed by consciousness, the shadow cannot simply be
repressed as a rather undesirable aspect of human nature
which would be best kept hidden. Indeed, Jung argues that
the results of such a course can be seen in the carnage of
the twentieth century; for, he suggests, it was an
abnormally widespread irruption of the shadow, in reaction
to its earlier repression, which precipitated World War II.1

If the archetype of the shadow is an endowment arising
from the earliest period of the evolutionary process, then

the archetype of the anima or animus is our more immediate

 

 

 

127

biological inheritance. Derived, so Jung believes, from the
minority'of’chromosomes opposite'in gender to those which
have determined an individual's sex, the anima is an
unconscious feminine personality present in the male psyche,
and the animus conversely an unconscious masculine image
existing in the female psyche.2 Actually, both genders have
acquired these cross-sexual characteristics culturally as
well as biologically, through their continuous interaction
over many generations. However, the "blueprint" of the
opposite sex which is thereby created takes specific form in
an individual only when it has been activated by projection
onto the appropriate parent--that is, by the child's
unconscious identification of this inner personality with
its opposite-sex parent. All subsequent relationships with
members.of’the opposite gender are directly influenced by
this unconscious image, and the degree to which a particular
person conforms to its shape. The archetype of the anima or
animus is thus a mediating factor in that it facilitates
comprehension of each sex by the other, and so promotes
their perpetuation.

It is also a principle of mediation in a second sense.
Much as the persona negotiates between the ego and the
environment to modulate an individual's relations with the
exterior world, so the anima negotiates between the ego and
the unconscious to modulate his interior psychic relations.

Hence the archetype of the anima or animus performs a

 

128

crucial role in the individuation process; for, in providing
access to a a man or woman's unconscious phenomena, it
supplies the preliminary conditions for their transition to
the conscious mind. It is hardly surprising, therefbre, that
the anima elicits something of the ambivalence which
characterizes our attitude towards unconscious contents, a
fact illustrated by the symbolic expression it receives as
both psychOpomp and siren. Yet union of the anima with the
ego is the supreme goal of individuation, and the difficulty
in attaining this point is addressed by the alchemists
through their symbolic formulations of the process.

Their first task was, of course, the production of the
nigredo; in psychological terms, the recognition of the
shadow. This alone is no easy achievement, as Jung indicates
in his description of the accompanying mental state:

Confrontation with the shadow produces at first a
dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral
decisions and makes convictions ineffective or
even impossible. Everything becomes doubtful,

which is why the alchemists called this stage
nigredo. (Mysterium Coniunctionis 497)

 

Obviously, the adept conceived his experience of the
darkness within himself in terms of matter, and so was
merely sustaining that paradigm when he articulated the
purpose of his labor as the liberation of’the tainted soul

(or shadow) from the body by means of the separatio. But the

 

descriptions of his prolonged and troublesome endeavour
afterwards to distill the soul of its impurities reveal that

what the alchemist was actually engaged in was the attempt

 

 

 

 

129

to rid himself of his own projections. As Marie-Louise von
Franz explains, in commenting upon the psychological
significance of the albedo,

Whiteness suggests purification, no longer being
contaminated with matter, which would mean what we
call technically, and so lightly, taking back our
projections . . . . It needs a long process of
inner development and realization for a projection
to come back. (Alchemy: An Introduction to the
Symbolism goo Psychology 222) I. T’—

In effect, then, the transition from the nigredo to albedo

 

 

describes the painful process of inspecting the shadow, in
order to recover the psychic contents which have been
transferred to external objects but are rightly the features
of the subject. With the restoration of these contents the
soul returns to the body, a resurrection clearly equivalent
to the recovery of the psychic energy which was earlier
projected elsewhere. Thus the albedo corresponds with
spiritual development through knowledge of oneself, and its
elusiveness is in this context entirely understandable.
Having once extracted the pure spirit from substance,
or, in other words, identified the contents of his own
unconscious, the adept had next to assimilate his
illumination. He had, that is, to reconcile the insights
supplied by his unconscious with the warring impulses of his
conscious mind. At first this process of integration is a
"fiery" conflict between the two antithetical functions, but
eventually it leads to the "melting" or synthesis of

opposites which the alchemists called rubedo. The image of

 

 

130

the hierosgamos with which they depicted this final phase is

 

not merely a convenient analogy; for the conjunction of Sol
and Luna, or Logos and Eros, signifies that harmony between
reason and emotion which is achieved only through union of
the (male) ego with the (female) anima. Similarly, the gold,
Philosopher's Stone and whatever other forms of higher unity
were said to result from the alchemical procedure prove
ultimately to be symbols of the fully individuated self,
which, like the hard won treasures of the crucible, "is
absolutely paradoxical ix) that 11: represents 1J1 every
respect thesis and antithesis, and at the same time

synthesis" (Psychology and Alchemy 19).

 

Though eflJ. the archetypes participate in the
development of the self, therefore, the alchemical procedure
specifically addresses the integration of the ego with the
shadow and anima, both of which reside in the deeper layers
of the unconscious. It describes the course by which

unconscious phenomena (the prima materia) surface into

 

consciousness. Perception of the shadow (the nigredo)
precedes its eventual "cleansing" through the recognition
that the characteristics contained in the shadow actually
belong to the self (the §__l__b__e_9_o). In the ensuing struggle to
accommodate this new understanding the individual
experiences a psychological conflict which is finally
resolved by the integration of his originally unconscious

contents with consciousness (the rubedo). From the

 

 

131

"marriage" of the anima with the ego comes his discovery of
the gold which has been hidden all the while inside him,
and is tuna fully realized as the individual self (the

citrinitas).

 

This correlation between psychology and alchemy informs

the movement of The Avignon Quintet. The protagonists--those

 

at least who do not succumb to the darkness within
themselves, or to the war which is its external and
universal manifestation--mature from their youthful
posturings to that more complete apprehension of themselves
which is a pre-condition for self-fulfillment. In particular
is this true cxf Aubrey Blanford, whose successful
individuation permits him to write the fictive account of

that experience in Monsieur and the "autobiography" which

 

comprises his subsequent novels. The form he employs in
creating the text is, moreover, an apt response to the
lessons which supply its content, being equally a synthesis

of parts. From the prima materia of Monsieur come the four

 

 

differentiated elements of Livia, Constance, Sebastian and

 

 

QoLoy, which culminate, when read together, in the totality
of the Quintet. Hence the work owes both its substance and
its structure to the literature in which the alchemists
struggled to express their lonely vision.

It is helpful to consider the two aspects--substance

and structure--separately, although the division is

 

 

 

 

132

obviously an artificial one in the sense that each is an
interrelated feature of the whole text. Nonetheless, its
complexity justifies such an approach for purposes of
clarification. The ensuing discussion, then, is comprised of
two parts. The first addresses the substance of Blanford's
personal narrative, specifically its alchemical and
psychological significance for Constance and himself\ The
second has a wider focus; it examines the structure of that
narrative, including the relation of Mooolooo to the
remaining novels, and the larger symbol system of the quest,
which concludes with the collectiVe anticipation of‘"reality

prime."

The Substance of BlanfOrd's Narrative

Blanford's inauguration as both man and artist
results, of course, from his relationship with Livia. He
readily acknowledges that "without her and the frightful
jolt she gave inml he might never have entered the
immortality stakes" (LLy_i__a_ 66); for it is she who, having
read his notebooks, first calls him a poet, and so gives
meaning to his scarcely formulated ambitions, "as if she had
suddenly invented him anew, invented his career and the
whole future shape of his inner life by the magic of such a

phrase" (Constance 6). Equally, it is "the lovely and pliant

 

Livia's destiny to initiate" Blanford sexually and, indeed,

to marry him (Livia 68). In view of Livia's proclivities,

 

 

 

133

the liaison is clearly doomed from its inception. Yet, when
she subsequently departs for Germany to espouse the fascist
cause, their separation plunges Blanford into a depression
he describes as "omega greyJ'Inwing his troubled dreams the
whole world appears to partake of this color, "the deepest
grey before complete blackness; .. . the almost black of
death"(Liygg.196).

Stripped of its elaborate explication, the pattern to
which Blanford's experience conforms is thus obvious. In his
union with Livia he undergoes a preliminary conjunction
symbolically analogous to the polo mooLoLLo of the
alchemists. This initial syzygy represents the synthesis of
the spirit and the soul, after the latter has been drawn
away from its servitude to the body. But because the soul is
tainted still by its association with matter, it must be
totally separated from the body for the extraction of the
nigredo. Similarly, his relationship with Livia produces in
Blanford a new sense of his own spiritual potential, and
thereby precipitates that "dark night of the soul" which
always accompanies confrontation with the chthonic
unconscious.

Subsequent events confirm inns extent to which
Blanfordwsdevelopment parallels the alchemical procedure.
The separation of soul from body, which is a feature of the
nigredo, naturally results in the death of the body. Indeed,

as Jung observes, the philosophers "therefore called this

 

 

 

 

 

139

state the grave, corruption, mortification, and socnr,and
the problem then arose of reanimation, that is, of reuniting

the soul with the 'inanimate' body" (Mysterium Coniunctionis

 

521). While Blanford does not actually die, he nonetheless
experiences a fate which is symbolically equivalent, when he
receives the spinal injury that leaves him paralysed.
Reflecting upon the implications of this wound, he feels
that.his "future ha[s] vanished as inexorably as the past"

(Constance 95). Significantly, Blanford's illness also

 

coincides with the defection of Rob Sutcliffe. Originally
his imaginary alter ego, Sutcliffe now enacts the part of
Blanforstincarnate soulfl3His fictive status has already
incurred suspicion with the mysterious appearance of Freud's

sofa, wrapped in paper which bears his name (Constance 19).

 

But the fact that he has sent the sofa to Constance, rather
than to Bruce, as Pia has requested, indicates that he
remains subject to Blanford's authority. This is no longer
the case when Sutcliffe materialises in Geneva, where he
encounters Constance and displays a lively insubordination.
Unwilling to forego his recently acquired independence,
Sutcliffe even refuses to welcome the convalescent Blanford
on his return from Egypt. Angered by this flagrant
disobedience of his wishes, Blanford complains, "because my
power is not absolute over him--he is after all my creation;
but he can sometimes break loose and show traces of free

will" (Constance 331). At this point, then, the division

 

 

 

 

135

between Blanford and Sutcliffe is complete, signifying a
like separation of body from soul.

However, Sutcliffe's importance is by no means
exlusively alchemical in its depiction, since he is equally
a portrait of Blanford's shadow--that is, the psychological

aspect of the same phenomenon which, in alchemy, is depicted

as the impure soul. Typically, acknowledgement of the shadow
first occurs in response to the infliction of a psychic
wound. Rob Sutcliffe owes not only his freedom, but his very
existence, to the injuries which Blanford sustains; for, in
much the same way that he has been enfranchised by the
events of Aby Fahym, so does he earlier originate from
Blanfbrd's humiliation over the theft of his diary. To
"guard against a repetition of such torture Blanford ha[s]
attributed his thoughts and ideas to an imaginary author
called S" (L3y3g 115). When Livia subsequently violates his
privacy a second time, Blanford hastily pretends that it is
Schopenhauer to whom he thus refers, but already he
envisages "a large fleshy nun) with pink knees pressed
together, penis en trompe-l'oeil as he might say, whirling
dumb-bells before an open window" (L313; 116). This curious
alter ego represents the antithesis of ewerything his
inventor seems to be. In contrast with the somewhat priggish
Blanford, Sutcliffe is indisciplined, flamboyant and
frequently crudeu He accordingly embodies both the animal

spirits of man's primitive nature and that latent creativity

 

 

 

136

to which the shadow generally gives voice.

Sutcliffe's portrayal is consistent with the properties
of this archetype in yet another sense. In being an image of
the same gender, the shadow signifies an individual's own
sexual characteristics. It is hardly surprising, therefore,
that Sutcliffe's sexual history corresponds in many of its
details with the mésalliance between Blanford and Livia.
Falling deeply in love with the frail Pia, he insists upon
marrying her, only to discover that she is actually a
lesbian. Then, like Blanford, he is forced to suffer the
anguish of losing his wife to a female rival. Clearly,
Trash, the beautiful negress who seduces Pia,iisa fictive
counterpart to Thrush, the "little Martinique" with whom
Livia is unfaithful. The two men even proffer identical
explanations for their choice of sexual partners. Sutcliffe
learns from the psychological texts which he so earnestly
peruses in hope of illumination about his wifefls collapse
that "the reasons behind his own choice of an investment in
Pia [include] the shadow of another incomparable inversion"

(Monsieur 180). Similarly, Blanford has to confront the

 

"unconscious springs of inversion" in himself, :3 condition

he ascribes to his "mother fixation" (Monsieur 292). In

 

short, Sutcliffe describes the problems of his creator,
which Blanford can only express once he has become aware of
them. Ironically, the act of depicting Sutcliffe testifies

to Blanford's increased consciousness of who he really is,

 

 

137

at the same time that the depiction itself reveals the
extent to which he was earlier unconscious.

The full import of Blanford's first adult experiences
should, by now, be apparent. Ignorant and unsure of himself,
he promptly falls prey to the dubious charms of Livia, but

is sufficiently perceptive to detect "the presence of a

shadow which stEands] forever between them" (L3y3o 170).
There is indeed such a shadow, and the inevitable failure of
the relationship provides a catalyst for that process of
inner reflection through which he learns to locate the
shadow 1J1 himself. Blanford's subsequent hardships, in
particular his paralysis and long convalescence, supply the
occasion for further introspection. This period of
unhappiness equates with the alchemical production of the
o3goooo from the oo3o moooo33o, and its laborious
transformation to the purified state of the albedo.

The next stage in Blanford's develOpment is thus the
reanimation which attainment of the albedo actually effects.
It occurs when Theodora, the Greek nurse whom Prince Hassad
has secured to take care of Blanford, awakens in him the
capacity2fln~sexual response.Her immediate ministrations
include an erotic massage to "check if it work[s]," and the
grateful Blanford acknowledges that with "this bold stroke

she restored nu: to life" (Constance 98). However, his

 

transition to the albedo is not complete until he haslalso

recovered control over the still rebellious Sutcliffe, and

 

 

 

138

hence the custodianship of his own soul. It is significant
that before the reunion takes place Rob Sutcliffe undergoes
an almost identical experience. Just as Blanford becomes the
involuntary object of Theodora's sexual pleasure, in a
fashion that amounts to "rape, the infantile dream of being
tied down and raped forcibly by someone who smel[ls] like
your mother," so is Sutcliffe later "raped by Trash--very

enjoyably but against [his] will" (Constance 99 & 340). This

 

duplication of events suggests that body and soul are
converging once more, in readiness for their eventual
reconciliation. It is soon followed by the telephone call in
which Sutcliffe renews contact with his creator, and the two
men agree that they "must meet one day in order to exchange

versions" (Constance 3112). They even decide to collaborate

 

with each other in writing their respective novels, and
shortly afterwards Sutcliffe visits the recumbent Blanford
to discuss this joint project. To their mutual surprise they

discover that they "see eye-to-eye" and so (Constance 352),

 

with the harmony of soul and body at last established,
Blanfbrd's attainment of the albedo is secure.

All that now remains for him is the supreme union of
opposites which heralds the completion of the alchemical
process. Indeed, Blanford actually remarks that, together,
he and Sutcliffe are "moving towards [their] apotheosisf'
but with characteristic pessimism he is dubious about its

outcome, perceiving his alter ego "as a fat, sad oracle,

 

139

[himself] as a post-war crock with designs upon the

Underworld only" (Sebastian 1H4). His fears are, of course,

 

unjustified, for what he learns is that his life so far has
been a long, if unwitting, preparation for that second and
final conjunction by means of which "male and female", are

melted into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore

incorruptible" (Psychology and Alchemy 37). This most

 

formidable of tasks is naturally attended by difficulties--
not least the temporary deviation from her normally
heterosexual preferences to which Constance succumbs with
Sylvie. Yet all those obstacles which have previously seemed
to Blanford quite insurmountable are finally dissolved, when
he and Constance undergo the submersion that produces their
release from the constraints of the past.

Significantly, Constance has undertaken Blanford's
physical therapy, although, unlike her predecessor Theodora,
she preserves the distinction between medical and sexual
proximity. Nonetheless, their sustained contact creates a
new intimacy, and Blanford observes that she "spoke to him
now quite wordlessly, while she was working on his back.
'How strange that you should be my first love, my worst
love,‘ she told him. 'The only one with whom I could make no
progress whatsoever. And of course I yours”'(Qg3p3 150).
When Blanford actually articulates his feelings, Constance
insists that their love is unredeemable, they cannot undo

"the whole blessed attrition of time" (Quioy 151). But

140

circumstances prove otherwise, for shortly afterwards their
habit of taking a nocturnal swim nearly results in the death
of both. Blanford is able to avert the danger only by
drawing upon a strength which he has never before realized
that he possesses, in order to save Constance and himself
from drowning. Clearly, the immersion has a number of
symbolic implications. The fact that it occurs at night
suggests’the darkness which accompanies our dealings with
the world of the unconscious. Moreover, water is a universal
symbol of the feminine principle, and thus connotes, for
Blanford at least, the confrontation with his anima figure
which constitutes the real, psychological difficulty in
achieving the chemical wedding.1k>be overwhelmed by the
contents of the anima would indeed approximate to drowning.
Yet Blanford survives the experience and emerges from his
ordeal a renewed man.

A second set <yf associations explains this
rehabilitation, for water also has the life-giving and
purifying properties which originally resulted in its use
during the rite of baptism. As Jung observes of the Catholic
sacrament, the "ordinary water . .. acquires the divine
quality of transforming and giving spiritual rebirth to man.

This is exactly the alchemical idea . . . ." (Psychology and

 

Religion 101%.But the spiritual renaissance signified by

 

baptism involves no corresponding abnegation of the body. On

the contrary, the water itself is an express recognition of

 

1111

man's hylic nature. The connection is not surprising when we
recall that, in the Gnostic cosmology, matter is explicitly
identified with the female Sophia. Whether water is one of
the the four elements produced from her passion, or merely
implicit in the Narcissus motif with which several versions
account for the seduction of the Light, it is always a
feature of the Gnostic genesis. Hence Blanford's immersion
ultimately symbolizes the synthesis of his spirit and soul
with a body cleansed of its impurities, and so imperishable.

The hierosgamos which he thereby celebrates through the

 

reconciliation of his own warring aspects in a higher unity
concludes with the sexual conjunction that is its literal
enactment. Blanford finally discovers the confidence to
claim Constance as his partner, for "something radical ha[s]
changed--the whole cloud of inhibitions which had paralysed
him in his dealings with her suddenly seemed to have lifted"
(Qo3o3 155). With the removal of this affective disorder, he
can overcome his physical disability, to "generate the power
and the glory of the complete sexual encounter" (Q3333 156).
Constance, in the fullness of her womanhood, restores to
Blanford the forfeited powers of his own body and, as the
quotation from the Pater Noster implies, it is truly a
religious experience.

Yet Blanford is not alone in undergoing a spiritual and
psychological preparation analogous tx> the alchemical

procedure. Before Constance can participate in the

 

192

hierosgaooo which is equally her achievement, she too
contends with the darkness of the nigredo and endures the
suffering it entails. Her relationship with Sam is the oo3o
mentalis with which that process begins, for though it may
be a happier liaison than Blanford's with Livia, it is no
less ill-fated. Impulsively deciding to marry Sam when the
war is declared, Constance is sufficiently uncertain of her
choice to seek corroboration from Blanford. But the very
question "meant that, in fact, she EEE doing the wrong
thing, and that somewhere in her inner consciousness she
knew it" (L3y3g 180). For all her lately discovered
knowledge of Freudian psychology, Constance actually makes
the same romantic error that Blanford has committed, in
mistaking the true temperament of her lover. Indeed, she
privately conceives a programme to effect his education,
according to which Sam "would realise through her all that
she divined in him now .. .; she would pierce through the
crust of his flippancy, the friendly footlings of his idols
. .. and strike sparks off his inmost soul!" (Constanoo 8).
Her ambition is misplaced, however, since Constance has not
"divined" Sam's real potential so much as she has projected
onto his image the man she wants him to be. Constance is
still far from attaining the knowledge of herself and others
that is a necessary condition for her own fulfillment.

Sam's demise signals the end of this first stage in her

development, but Constance must deal with a second and

 

 

 

 

143

related loss, in the baby she has aborted because she "did
not wish to risk that [Sam] might stay with [her] against
his will" (Constance 127). When the product of their union
dies, then, the result is a perfect simulacrum of the
alchemical mortificatio. Constance, that is, has suffered a
uniquely female death of the body, equivalent in meaning
to the paralysis which cripples Blanford. Naturally
distressed by this double blow, she considers returning to
Britain, where she believes that she can better contribute
to the war effort. But Prince Hassad correctly diagnoses her
reaction as a sense of guilt, telling Constance that she
"want[s] to be punished," and therefore seeks "action, fear,
discomfort" (Constaooo 151). The solution he advances
involves an even greater danger, for he suggests that she
return, in the capacity of Red Cross aide, to Avignon.
However, his proposal is more appropriate than the Prince
appears to realize, since the "city has been from time
immemorial a vast sanatorium as well as a political cross-
roads" (Constanco 152).There, Constance is forced to work
under the restrictions of the Vichy regime, and witness the
atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. Thrown entirely upon
her own resources, she lives in the isolated Tu Duc with
ample opportunity for reflection. Her circumstances thus
accord in every detail with the o3goooo, which, as Jung
remarks, "not only brought decay, suffering, death, and the

torments of hell visibly before the eyes of the alchemist,

 

 

 

 

1411

it also cast the shadow of its melancholy over his own

solitary soul" (Mysterium Coniunctionis 350).

 

Of course, in psychological terms, it is exactly the
shadow with which Constance now grapples, and everywhere
around her is evidence of the catastrophe that occurs when
man succumbs completely to its dark appeal. In the
collective example supplied by the Germans, she observes
"nothing less than the first outbreak of epidemic insanity,
an irruption of the unconscious into what seemed to be a
tolerably well-ordered world" (Jung, L3y333goo3oo 3o
Transition 212). The more immediate and painful example is
provided by her sister. Livia advocates a Dionysian vision
of "impassioned dissolution, where all human distinctions
are merged in the animal divinity of the primordial psyche"
(Boychology goo 33ooooy 90).She actually conforms to this
vision in two respects. The more obvious is her choice of
National Socialism as a substitute for any personal
philosophy. But her incestuous relationship with Hilary
further reveals the degree to which Livia has lost herself
in the depths of the unconscious. Significantly, Hilary is
blond, while Livia is dark in coloring, a description which
suggests their roles as Sol and Luna respectively. Yet the
hierosgaooo, when it occurs in the form of a brother-sister
pairing, is no longer an expression of mature consciousness.
In fact, Jung explains that

incest is the aberrant natural form of the union

of opposites, a union which has either never been
made conscious at all as a psychic task, or if it

 

145

was conscious, has once more disappeared from
view. (Mysterium Coniunctionis 92)

 

There is thus a peculiar logic to the retribution which is
eventually exacted from both. With Hilary's execution for
espionage and Livia's "apotheosis" from suicide case to war

hero (Constance 257), the greater shadow of the Nazis

 

extinguishes those who have lived according to the dictates
of the shadow.

In the terrible fate of her siblings, Constance has
warning of the dangers to which she too is exposed.‘1 But her
opposition to the Germans is indicative of the inner
strength with which she confronts the nigredo. By the end of
her sojourn in Avignon she is able to admit Sam's death to
Livia, and hence to herself. The words bring their own
consolation, for Constance is finally rid<3fkfiesphantom,
"the figment she had been carrying around inside her like an

unaborted child" (Constance 241). Clearly, however, the

 

terms in which she depicts that sense of release recall the
profound wound to her womanhood which Constance has earlier
sustained. Moreover, in the same way that Blanford's injury
is a symbolic castration which reveals his artistic
impotence, so is the mutilation of her sexuality evidence
that Constance cannot fulfil her own creative energies. It
is particularly important therefore that her first sexual
contact with Affad conveys a forcible reminder of her power
to conceive. Affad is "overwhelmed with gratitude for he

realised that it was for him, this dark menstrual flow"

 

 

146

(Constance 265). During the passionate affair which follows,
he shows Constance how the true achievement of love exists
in mutual submission, and not the attempt to dominate one's
partner that converts every sexual act into an assault. The
lesson is especially valuable, sincershe has actually been
guilty of just this fault in her relationship with Sam. And
the fruits of her knowledge are commensurate; in
surrendering control, Constance discovers that she has
paradoxically "assumed herself, her full femininity--
something which had remained always a sort of figment, a

symbol which gave off no current" (Constance 273).

 

The union through which her maimed sexuality is thus
healed signifies a corresponding revivification of the body.
Indeed, the specific circumstances cxf its initial
consummation demonstrate that Constance has successfully
attained the albedo. As Jung points out, "blood is a

primitive symbol for the soul" (Alchemical Studies 143).

 

Hence the menstruation which so excites Affad is also'a sign
of the reanimation that occurs when the soul resumes its
place in the body; Constance is intuitively aware of this
change, recognizing that the "embrace of Affad had _in some
singular way acted upon her as the drop of scalding oil had

done upon the cheek of sleeping Eros" (Constance 292).

 

Awakened, like the divinity, from the dream world of the
unconscious, she too is free to realize the god within.

Moreover, the mark of her new consciousness is the

 

 

147

generosity which she can now display towards Affad, disagree
though she may with the death pact he has undertaken for the
sake of his religion. In a manner consistent with the myth
of Cupid and Psyche, she is forced to endure the pains and
tribulations of separation, although itijsactually Affad
who leaves her. Nonetheless, Constance is able to see her
lover as he really is, and not through the distorted lens of
her own projections. In the seeing lies her acceptance, and
hence the psychic maturity which leads to godhead.

Her brief interlude with Sylvie, which precedes
the final conjunction with Blanford, seems after this to
suggest a temporary regression. As Constance explains to
Jourdain, the psychoanalyst at Montfavet, "the base must
have been some slumbering and neglected homosexual
predisposition, but the motor which set it off was,
inexplicably enough, the death of Schwarz" (Q3333 45).
Certainly, the suicide of her longtime friend and colleague
is a severe loss. It throws her off balance, so that "from
some depths of inner numbness [she] ha[s] lost all power of

evaluation" (Sebastian 196). Yet it would be wrong to

 

dismiss the incident as a mere error of judgment, for it
also expresses an androgynous quality in Constance, similar
to that which Affad has revealed. Since bisexuality is,
furthermore, an aspect of the highest principle in the
Gnostic pleroma, before the division which produces male and

female, it clearly symbolizes a unity that transcends

 

 

148

distinctions. The alchemists likewise emphasized the
hermaphroditic nature of the Philosopher's Stone. Thus the
androgyny which Constance perceives in herself may prove
disturbing to Blanford, but it is ultimately a symbol of her
totality. She has at last achieved that harmony between
body, soul and spirit which is the supreme task of self-
realization.

With the recognition and integration of her opposing
attributes, Constance completes the process of individuation
that culminates in the chemical wedding. Nonetheless, she is
irretrievably a "man's woman" (Q3333 45), and so must turn
to Blanford for its consummation. In this final union of man
and woman, she communicates her gnosis to him, thereby
translating into the exterior world of their love the
synthesis which she has already accomplished as an interior
condition. Sabine, who claims of course to have foreseen the
conjunction, explains its significance to Blanford.
Constance has "realised that if she staked her claim and
risked everything [he] might get reborn, re-created" (Q3333
169). In redeeming Blanford as a man, she also redeems him
as an artist, freeing him to complete the sequence of novels
over which he has labored for so long. It is a joint
enterprise, however, since Constance knows that "the whole
oo3333 for which he was going to try was as much her work,
her responsibility, as his" (Q3333 198). Hence the book

itself is the product of their union, a synthesis of

 

 

149

opposites that occurs in some "third thing, which represents

not a compromise but something new" (Mysterium Coniunctionis

 

536). Affirming the mystical marriage by its very existence,
the Quintet which Blanford "writes" is equally a celebration
in its substance. It indeed "exemplif[ies] in the flesh the
royal cobra couple, the king and queen of the affect, of the
spiritual world. 'My spinal I with her final she."'(Q3333

198).

The Structure of Blanford's Narrative

The text which thus results from Blanford's conjunction
with Constance reflects the properties of the Philosopher's
Stone in its structure. As Jung observes, the "place or
medium of realization is neither mind nor matter, but that
intermediate realm of subtle reality which can be adequately
expressed only by the symbol" (Psychology 333 Alchemy 283).
The Q333333 itself is such a symbol, for, if its content
depicts the process of the alchemical opo3, its structure
describes the product. Monsieuo supplies the raw material
for the remaining novels, and is therefore analogous to the
33333 confusa. In fact, Durrell explicitly states that this
first volume "is a terrible muddle because it's got all the
themes in it, it's an old suitcase full of all the themes I
intend to develop" (Carley, "An Interview with Lawrence
Durrell" 46). Monsieur introduces everything: the tenets of

Gnosticism; the various sexual inversions, which echo this

 

(

 

% ’. I -r"
I-

150

theological inversion; the dichotomy between quest and
inquisition; instability of the discrete ego; and so on.5
Yet Blanford is dissatisfied with the execution of his
ideas, regretting the "many corners he ha[s] left
unexplored, :M) many potentialities undeveloped simply
because he ha[s] firmly decided not to write 'the ordinary
sort of novel'" (Monsieur 275).

Disappointed, then, by the inadequacies of his text, he
resolvestx>try again, wondering whether'fimlthe next book
about these people he could not cut down a layer or two to
reveal the invisible larval forms, the root forms which had

given him these projections?" (Monsieur 282) Blanford's

 

scheme for a second volume clearly demonstrates his
intention to identify the fundamental features of his
characters. He wants, that is, to differentiate the elements
which comprise his subject matter. In order to achieve this
task Blanford adopts a new tactic. He puts aside the evasive
fictions with which he has earlier attempted to record
events, and chooses instead to write the facts. Letting "his
memory draw him back to the very beginning of the story"
(33333 26), he starts the narrative afresh, with an account
of his "real" experiences in Avignon, and the "real" people
whose lives have influenced his. Obviously, Blanford does
not simply exchange art for autobiography, since, in
describing incidents of which he cannot possibly have first

hand knowledge, he is still constructing a fiction. But the

was '-

 

\"1

151

explanation he offers Constance, when she reads the
incomplete manuscript of Mo333333, illuminates his
conception of the other books. This initial work is "only a
novel, the bare bones of a draft of a story"; yet it is also

a story "based on true findings" (Constance 345).

 

With Livia, therefore, Blanfbrd begins.the process of

separating his material into its respective parts. He
recalls the "Summer Sunlight" of his youth, to depict the
love affair which initiates him in the mysteries of alchemy.
The substance of his narrative thus resembles its position
with respect to the entire Quintet. In being the preliminary

extract from the prima materia of Monsieur, Livia is

 

 

equivalent to the nigredo. In fact, the very title provides
a clear indication of this, for Livia's name suggests an
association with the word "livid," which signifies both
blackness and, through its derivation from the Latin verb
livere, the color of‘lead. (Black lead was, of course, one
of‘the most common chemicals from which the adepts sought to
manufacture gold and, in view of the symptoms it induced as
a poison, proved a particularly appropriate symbol for the
nigredo.) Similarly, the subtitle of the novel acknowledges
its psychological dimension. As Toby actually explains, in
the middle ages homosexuality "was punishable by being

burned alive cm: buried alive" (Monsieur 242), anui the

 

femoral incision with which Constance later ensures Livia's

death reiterates this motiih However, Blanford has also to

 

 

152

distinguish the homosexual component in himself, something
he is unable to do until he has assimilated the contents of
his own unconscious. He is indeed "buried alive," buried by
the weight of his ignorance.

Constance records Blanford's ensuing struggle to

 

unearth these phenomena through the "solitary practices" of
meditation and reflection. The difficulty of his task is
mimicked by the structure of the text; for it is here that
the reader first has to contend with what William Godshalk
calls "the shocking interpenetration of primary and

secondary [realities]" ("Durrell's Game iJl'Tbe Avignon

 

3333333" 4). In other words, Mo333333 is a secondary
reality, being Blanford's fiction, while L3y33 supplies the
primary reality on which that fiction is based. But the
distinction between the two dimensions immediately
collapses, once Sutcliffe and Toby associate with Constance.
Obviously, in the introductory pages of L3y33, Blanford
talks with his alter ego. Yet it is easy to attribute their
conversation to the eccentricities of age and illness, or
the delusions of an author who has lived too much in the
realm of the imagination. Since Blanford has already
displayed somewhat aberrant behavior in the closing lines of
Monsieur, when he apparently believes himself to be dining
with the long dead Constance, mental instability seems a

probable eXplanation.

With the refutation of this theory, the reader is left

 

 

153

totally bewildered by the interweaving of realities instead
of their more conventional juxtaposition. However, the
dissolution of the boundaries between worlds which have
previously appeared quite separate is essentially what
happens when the ego is invaded by the_unconscious.
Furthermore, it is specifically through the presence of Rob
Sutcliffe, in his capacity as the personification of
Blanfordls shadow, that most.of’the violations occur. Thus
Sutcliffe's irruption from the ostensibly contained world of
Eggsigur into the reality which Blanford regards as
exclusively his emulates the autonomous irruptions of the
unconscious. Clearly, acknowledgement of the shadow and the
accompanying work of purification are analogous to the

alchemical task of converting the nigredo to the albedo.

Hence the internal structure of Constance actually

 

demonstrates that transition in process. The confusion of
realities which results from the manifestation of Sutcliffe
equates with the problems of the adept as he struggled to
transform the nigredo. Similarly, the completion of the
novel indicates 23 successful conclusion ‘UD Blanford's

labors. In Constance he at last produces the albedo.

 

If Constance is the second extract to be distilled from

 

the chaos of Monsieur, Sebastian is obviously the third, and

 

therefore corresponds with the rubedo. Once again, the
subtitle of the novel supplies a clue as to its

classification within the various stages of the alchemical

 

 

 

154

procedure. The rubedo describes that "fiery" war between the
two halves of the personality--conscious and unconscious--
which precedes their final reconciliation. In like fashion,

Sebastian depicts the "ruling passions" of the protagonists,

 

who, torn by their conflicting impulses, struggle painfully
to negotiate a middle ground. Sebastian Affad is caught
between his loyalty to Gnosticism and his love for
Constance. She, in turn, is faced with the dilemma which
Mnemidis precipitates when he steals the letter intended for
Affad. This material difficulty aptly expresses her own
divided inclinations in loving Affad and yet maintaining a
professional commitment to the preservation of life.
Blanford also runs his share of emotional troubles.
Discovering his true feelings for Constance, he then has to
contend with the jealousy which qualifies his affection for
Affad, and later with the hostility he dare not express to
Sylvie. But the central conflict, which effectively subsumes
every other instance of ambivalence, is clearly that between
Blanford and Sutcliffe, in their symbolic capacities as body
and soul, or ego and shadow. It is this universal problem

which Sebastian specifically addresses through its

 

structure.

The running dialogue in which the two men have engaged
is characterized by their humorous quips at each other's
expense, and an underlying gravity of purposeu Thus, when

Sutcliffe mocks Blanford's preoccupation with the form of

 

155

their "double concerto," he does so in a jocular response
that is nonetheless seriously meant. Spelling words and
sentences backwards, he suggests that they should employ the

principle of "enanteiodromion." In this way, "everything

 

would be seen to be turning into its opposite, even our book

which would take on a mighty shifty strangeness, become an

enticement for sterile linguists to parse in their sleep"

(Sebastian 123). Now, as Jung explains, "enantiodromia or

 

 

conversion into the opposite . .. . makes possible the
reunion of the warring halves of the personality and thereby

brings the civil war to an end" (Psychology and Religion

 

3H2). Hence the significance of Sutcliffe's remarks lies in
his tacit recognition of the rubedo and the proposal that
their text should accordingly reflect its properties. Aubrey
Blanford agrees; in fact, he says that he is "deliberately
turning the novel inside out like a sleeve" and "then back"
(Sebastian 124).6 Ironically, however, in their very

discussion of enantiodromia as a structural principle, both

 

men are demonstrating that principle in operation.

With Sutcliffe%;persistent refusal to remain a mere
fictive construct, the distinction between reality and
illusion has already disintegrated. But, if the transition
from fiction to reality is possible, then so, presumably, is
its reverse, the transformation from reality to fiction.
Certainly, this is what Sutcliffe implies, in reminding

Blanford, "you have admitted to yourself that I exist--or

 

156

rather that you only exist in function to me" (Sebastian

 

133%.Later (within the chronology of’the novels, although
earlier in their order of production), when Blanford insists
that he invented Sutcliffe, his alter ego replies, "Or I
you, which? The chicken or the egg?" (Livia 10). His
question is not as frivolous as it might seem. Sutcliffe is
suggesting that, since all realities are relative, and
therefore mental constructs, there is little except the
investment of belief to separate them from fictions. Indeed,
he even offers to write "a book to prove that the great
Blanford is simply the fiction of one of his fictions"
(£1113 53). Not only has the barrier between their two
worlds totally collapsed, then, but each man is starting to
partake of the other's dimension. Just as Sutcliffe has
become increasingly real, :M) is Blanford's reality
increasingly suspect.7 This exchange of roles is effectively

an instance of enantiodromia. Both Blanford and Sutcliffe

 

are slowly undergoing a transfiguration into the opposite,

and thus converging in their paths. By the end of Sebastian,

 

they are sufficiently in harmony to leave Geneva, "capital

of human dissent" (Sebastian F73),and begin the long trip

 

back to Provence. There, in "Avignon, rose of all the world"

(Constance 354), every difference will 2“: last be

 

reconciled, through that final synthesis of male and female,
spirit and matter, the "Noumenon and the Phenomenon--reality

turned inside out like a sleeve" (Sebastian 199).

 

 

 

 

 

 

157

The process of differentiation which the earlier novels
have described culminates, in Quinx, with the complete
integration of the conscious and the unconscious; and hence

the production of the citrinitas. Rob Sutcliffe, who before

 

has expressed the desire to "change hearses in midstream"

and become "Jack the Stripper or someone more colourful"

(Constance 323), is now accepted as an active participant in

 

the construction of the text. Indeed, the fact that it is as
much the "Ripper's Tale" as it is Blanford's "quinx"

(Constance 351) is clear from the title they choose for

 

their book. SutclifTE's pseudonym is especially appropriate.
In being the epitome of Blanford's unconscious, he rips
aside the veil of illusion which has originally obscured his
creator's vision. As Durrell puts it, Blanford's "powers
are somewhat diminished, he can't see very far, whereas SUT
is the third eye, so to speak. His belly-button pierces the

future, the all-seeing eye of time" (Quinx 28).

The transcendent nature of this experience is reflected‘

in the fragmentation of the narrative. Approximately the
first forty pages of Quinx are written in a style that
intimates, through its disjunctions, internal dialogues and
"jump-cutting as with cinema film" (Q2335 99), how
inadequate language really is to express the ineffable:
"Either one twigged or not; there was nothing to say about
so private an inkling of truth" (Quinx 61). As co-author and

critic, Sutcliffe actually complains to Blanford about "this

 

 

 

 

158

weird prose barbecue," which characterizes all the works.
However, Blanford explains that the "apparent disorder is
only superficial." What he intends by the technique is
the admission that reincarnation is a fact. The
old stable outlines of the dear old linear novel
have been sidestepped in favour of soft focus
palimpsest which enables the actors.to turn into
each other, to melt into each other's inner
lifespace if they wish. Everything and everyone
comes closer and closer together, moving towards
the one.(Quinx 99)
The content of Quinx indicates that progression towards
unity through the gradual convergence of all the characters,
from all dimensions of space and time, fiction and reality,
as they gather outside the caves which allegedly hold the
Templar treasure. Yet, in the same way that the caves have
been constructed as a quincunx, a "sort of housing for the
divine power" (Quinx 131), so is the Quintet organized on

principles that lead to the apprehension of "reality primeJ'

With the achievement of the citrinitas, which is

 

implicit in the conclusion of Quinx, the individual novels
reveal their relationship to each other as a quaternity.

From the undifferentiated unity of Monsieur come the four

 

books which epitomize the four elements, the four stages of
the alchemical procedure. The opposition of earth and air is
expressed by the darkness of EEXEE and the corresponding
illumination of Quinx. Between the beginning and end of this

narrative stand Constance and Sebastian, which depict the

 

 

cleansing water of the albedo and the melting fire of the

rubedo respectively. Each of the novels therefore represents

 

 

159

a single element of the massa confusa from which it has

 

originated. But, just as the protagonists complete their
story with the recognition of a higher unity which resolves
every opposition, so does the reader complete the perusal of
that story with a like recognition. In the larger entity of
the Quintet the four return to the One. Jung notes that the
"pairs of opposites are arranged in a quaternio when they
represent a totality. The totality appears in quaternary
form‘only when it is not just an unconscious fact but a

conscious and differentiated totality" (Mysterium

 

2221222121229 203). Thus the 9.2.1.2222 itself is
simultaneously an account of the alchemical procedure and,
in its totality, an expression of the unity which is

alchemy's ultimate goal.

 

(earth-nigredo) (water-albedo)
Livia Constance
Monsieur

(prima materia)

/ \

Sebastian Quinx

 

 

(fire-rubedo) (air-citrinitas)

 

Figure ii The Quincunxial Structure of the Novels

 

 

\‘1

160

The Final Vision of Reality Prime

The collective character of the sublime experience
which the Quintet anticipates in its closing lines suggests
that this unity is both personal and universal. Such proves
indeed to be the case, for the superficially material
pursuit of wealth which Lord Galen and Prince Hassad have
initiated discloses an underlying hermetic significance. The
sign which is said to designate the burial place of the gold
is a quincunx of trees. But, as Jung remarks, the "tree
appears frequently in the medieval alchemical texts and in
general represents the growth of the arcane substance and

its transformation into the philosophical tree" (Alchemical

 

Studies 27a).8 Obviously, the biblical account of the
world's creation associates the tree of knowledge with the
serpent, which is a symbol for the chthonic Mercury. It is
he who tells Eve that,iJ?Adam and she consume the fruit,
they "shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis
3.5J. In the Christian tradition, then, precisely because
man and God are conceived as essentially separate, man's
hubris is the original sin for which he is cast out from
Paradise. But, in the hermetic philosophy of Gnosticism and
alchemy, the identity of God and the ego is assumed to be

self-evident. Man is "both the one to be redeemed and the

 

 

redeemer." Instead of leaving the,

 

work of redemption ....to the autonomous divine
figure .. . [he] takes upon himself the duty of
carrying out the redeeming opus, and attributes

 

 

 

161

the state of suffering and consequent need of
redemption to the anima mundi imprisoned in
matter. (Psychology and Alchemy 306)

 

Hence the tree is a figurative expression of the gnosis
which is necessary for man's metamorphosis. With the
knowledge it signifies, man can realize his own divinity
and, accordingly, become "as GodJ'

Before he can do so, however, he must first extract the
world-creating spirit, for which the serpent is a symbol,
from its concealment in matter. In other words, man must
look into his own unconscious and contend with the darkness
he finds there, if he is also to obtain its illumination.
Now the characters engaged in the quest for the Templar
wealth are faced with dangers of a similar sort. Lord Galen
and the Prince are warned by the gipsy soothsayer to whom
Sabine introduces them of the hazards entailed by their
search. The "treasure is a real and very great one, but it
is locked in a mountain and guarded by dragons who are
really men" (Quinx 88). The prophecy comes true in a
surprising fashion. General Von Esslin, who is recuperating
from his injuries at the Eye-Clinic in mees, tells
Constance of a rumour that the treasure has already been
discovered by a regiment of Austrian sappers. Shortly after
mining the area to preserve it from others, they had been
executed by the Nazis for refusing to destroy Avignon.
Curiously enough, the "sappers had been formed from a

disbanded regiment of Imperial dragoons and were entitled to

 

‘\A

 

 

162

wear a dragon on their shoulder-flash in memory of their
origins" (Quinx lll).

Literally, then, it is "dragons who are really men"
from which the danger to Lord Galen's venture arises. Yet
the dragon is also "a symbol combining the chthonic
principle of the serpent and the aerial principle of the
bird. It is .. . a variant of the Mercurius" (Psychology
and Alchemy 292). Indeed the uroboros depicts the entire
alchemical process, for the dragon which devours itself
describes that circular movement from one unity to a second
and higher unity, which is signified by the transformation
of the EEEEE materia into the Philosopher's Stone. Thus the
dragons are also a symbol of the unconscious phenomena which
all the protagonists engaged in the quest for the Templar
treasure must acknowledge and assimilate, if they are ever
to secure the gold. As Jung explains,

only one who has risked the fight with the dragon
and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the
"treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine
claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the
dark ground of his self and thereby has gained

himself. This experience gives him faith and
trust, the pistis in the ability of the self to

sustain him, for everything that has menaced him
from inside he has made his own. (Mysterium
Coniunctionis 531)
By implication, at least, all who are present at the opening
of the caves have "risked the fight with the dragonfl
Furthermore, the fact that the treasure they seek is

actually hidden in a series of caves is confirmation of its

psychological dimension. As Sutcliffe tells Blanford, in his

 

 

 

 

163

account of Felix Chatto's exposure to Zen Buddhism, "Plato's
cave [is] the unpurged cave of human consciousness" (Q3135
63).9 It is "the dark ground" of the self.

With the realization of the self comes the concomitant
recognition of its relation to the universal spirit, which

is to be found not only in man but in every aspect of

matter. Durrell attributes to Affad the articulation of this
idea that the "ego .... is only a sort of negative for the
superlative esoteric state--tiny glimpses of wholeness; as
if light passed through them, printing out a different
reality" (32333135 137).10 That reality, which Durrell has
called "reality prime," is the equivalent of Jung's BEBE
mundus, the one world which existed prior to the phenomenal
actuality that resulted from its division into heaven and
earth. For it is a feature of material reality, as it is of
consciousness, that everything be differentiated, and hence
two or more in number. But the original condition of the
universe was unity and not multiplicity. In the words of
Gerhard Dorn, "as there is only one God and not many, so he
willed in his mind to create from nothing one world, and
then to bring it about that all things which he created
should be contained in it, that God in all things might be
one."11 It is with this vision of wholeness that Durrell
concludes the Qgintgt, as "reality prime rushed to the aid
of fiction and the totally unpredictable began to take

placeU'(Quinx 201). He invokes, not the fragmented world of

 

"1

 

 

164

human experience, but "a potential world, the eternal Ground

of all empirical being" (Mysterium Coniunctionis 534).

 

 

 

 

165

Notes

1 In his essay "The Fight with the Shadow," Jung
remarks that.the "Germans wanted order, but they made the
fatal mistake of choosing the principal victim of disorder
and unchecked greed for their leader .. .. He represented
the shadow, the inferior part of everybody's personality, in
an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they
fell for him" (Civilization in Transition 223). This volume
contains all of JungHs"Essays on Contemporary Eventsfl'in
which he discusses the conditions which resulted in World
War II. Naturally, Jung does not dismiss the economic and
social factors which contributed to the outbreak of another
world war, but he is primarily concerned in his own analysis
with the psychological reasons for its occurrence.

 

 

2 Jungwsexplanation of cross-sexual characteristics
which are acquired biologically is actually inaccurate. To
be precise, twenty two of the chromosome pairs have no role
in the determination of gender. It is only the X and Y
chromosomes (the twenty third pair) which are relevant.
Specifically, the presence of a Y chromosome results in a
male, while its absence results in a female, but the
chromosomes themselves have no gender. However, since men
and women secrete both male and female sex hormones, there
is indeed a biological explanation for the cross-sexual
characteristics which manifest themselves psychologically.

3 See Chapter Three (106-107) above for a discussion
of Sutcliffe in his symbolic capacity as Blanford's soul.

u Obviously, Constance does not know the history which
explains the deaths of Hilary and Livia until Smirgel
confesses his own part in their fate. But she is aware of
the fact that both have died; for it is she who discovers
Livia, and later, during her conversation with Smirgel,
indicates her belief that Hilary "had been killed on active
service with the Intelligence Corps" (Quinx 118).

5 Ian Macniven makes a similar observation about the
manner in which Monsieur generates all the themes for the
subsequent novels, although he does not address its
alchemical significance ("The Quincunx Quiddified" 6).

 

6 Candace Fertile comments upon the similarity between
Blanfbrd's observation and the view expressed by Darley in
The Alexandria Quartet that Pursewarden's irony is "really
tenderness turned inside out like a gloveJ'She adds that,

 

 

 

 

166

whereas Pursewarden seeks "the whole pointless joke»" for
Durrell the "merger of illusion and reality. .. is a joke
with a point" ("Lawrence Durrell: Devil or Deity?" u).

7 Many of the other characters undergo a like
metamorphosis from fiction to reality. Piers and Sylvie
return in Constanceeas Piers and Sylvaine LeNogre, friends
of Affad; Bruce Drexel reappears as the doctor who takes
care of_Blanford when he is injured in Alexandria, and also
perhaps as the Bruce who ministers to Blanford after his
drunken attempts to forget Livia; while Akkad is transformed
from mystic to criminal in Livia. As Ian MacNiven remarks,
the reader "is invited to play the game of deriving the
characters and actions, in retrospect, of Monsieur from the
other books, in a parody of the way critics search for
sources in an author's life" ("The Quincunx Quiddified" 6).

 

 

8 In fact, Durrell probably got the idea for a
quincunx of trees from Mead's commentary on the Book of the
Great Logos According to the Mystery; There, the "mast5?:
mysteries of the Light-treasure are those of the Five Trees
and of the Seven Voices and of the Great Name" (Fragments of
3 Faith Forgotten 523).

 

 

 

 

 

9 Yet another reference1x>the unconscious exists in
the dedication of a grotto in the caves to the patron saint
of the gipsies, who is known as Saint.Sara, "the tenebrous
one" (Quinx 162).

10 To be precise, the "self is not only the centre,
but also the whole circumference which embraces both
consciousness and the unconscious; it is the centre of this
totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness"
(Psychology and Alchemy 41). Thus realization of the self
archetype is a necessary condition for intuition of the unus
mundus, but the ego is the medium through which man becomes
aware of his essential unity with the rest of the world.

11 Theatrum chemicum I, M15. Quoted in Jung, Mysterium
Coniunctionis 362, n. 39.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

Conclusion: The "moral geography of the mystic."

The reconciliation of body, soul and spirit in "a
separate indivisible unity or 'whole"' completes that
process of individuation which is exemplified most fully by

Constance and Blanford (Jung, The Archetypes and the

 

Collective Unconscious 275). Paradoxically, however, their

 

 

very attainment of psychological individuality culminates in
the perception of a supraphysical reality that subsumes all
such distinctions. Within this potential world which Durrell
has designated by the name "reality prime,"1flnadualities
that characterize man's empirical knowledge of his
environment reveal their underlying unity. Thus "self" and
"other" lose their meaning entirely in the larger context of
a reality which transcends the most fundamental of schisms
in mundane experience, that between Spirit and matter.

In the preceding chapters we have seen how this rift
results in the equal and opposite reactions of Gnosticism
and National Socialism. If the Gnostics elevate the

spiritual realm at the expense of matter, the Nazis,

167

 

 

 

168

inspired by a similar nostalgia for some mythical past
miraculously untainted by materialism, are seduced by the
very structure which they seek to overthrow. The god they
serve is a god of evil, the same god whom the Gnostics take
to be Jehovah, the recalcitrant son of the Sophia. Hence the
New Order of the Germans, far from restoring the divine
order it invokes, actually perpetuates the dominion of
matter. Durrell's depiction of Gnosticism aux! National
Socialism illustrates, then, the two extremes which arise
from the dichotomy between spirit and matter.

A like polarity is true of the protagonists themselves.
Just as they participate in the external conflicts which
characterize their political and religious environment, so
do they also grapple with the internal conflicts which the
individuation process requires them to address. Both
alchemically and psychologically, the task which confronts
them amounts ultimately to the integration of matter and
spirit. The difficulties which attend this challenge have
already been discussed, but for Blanford and Constance at
least, they lead to the discovery of a transcendent
principle of unity.

In fact, the notion of a universal Self which resolves
every pair of opposites into a harmonious whole is primarily
eastern. It finds expression in the Buddhist "Wisdom of the
Yonder Shore" and in the Gnostic postulation of a pre-

temporal pleroma which can be recovered only through the

 

 

h

 

 

 

169

cultivation of spiritual gnosis. In contrast to this vision
of an ancient and noumenal unity, so Durrell suggests, is
the egocentric orientation which distinguishes western
thinking, with the result that only what is available to the
conscious mind is accorded any value, this being the
province of the ego. Reason supersedes intuition, phenomenon
supplants noumenon, and reality is accordingly conceived in
exclusively rational terms. A second product of this
solipsism is the occidental attitude to death; as James
Carley remarks, the "formulation of a theory of an
individual ego . . . entails the concept of death on a
personal level as an unspeakable but inevitable calamity"

("The Avignon Quintet and Gnostic Heresy" 231). Clearly,

 

aggrandizement of the ego and the concomitant fear of its
expunction in death are antithetical to the belief in a
superior spiritual world where neither individual identity
nor mortality has any place. For the Gnostic, then, both are
the tricks of Jehovah, intended only to perpetuate his
manipulation of humanity. Indeed, Sebastian Affad observes
that the "real seed of the [western] neurosis is the belief
in the discrete ego; as fast as you cure 'em the
contemporary metaphysic which is Judeo-Christianity

manufactures more I's to become sick Meww (Constance 304).

 

Durrell's sympathy with the eastern perspective is
obvious. Traces of his preoccupation with hermetic

philosophy exist in works as early as The Black Book. But,

 

 

 

170

in a letter to his friend Ian MacNiven, in which Durrell

discusses his plans for the Quintet, he explicitly

 

acknowledges his intention to address the conceptual
differences between eastern and western thought. More
particularlyy :it is his ambition to reconcile the two
through his art:

[Man] fitted into our behavioristic notion of
individual psychology as consisting of two parts,
conscious and unconscious, male and female--
materially making up a cube anatomically; a four-
power animal with the possible existence of a
fourth dimension! This was our religion. But in
oriental terms this isn't true for the human
personality is far from discrete, it is five-
powered and five-sided. It ain't stable but a
"congeries" of elements. Seen in this way my five-
power novel should give a much more "flou" effect
for its personas are not wholes but collections of
spare parts. They could be each other by a simple
slip of contingency. As for death which, like
matter, rules the western novel, that doesn't
exist either. Oriental thinking regards it as
Simply changing your violin case for another! Nor
does reality itself have outlines, borders,
because it is provisional and not fixed and
demarcated. The multiplicity of possible lives in
each of us is quite overwhelming--how to reduce it
to an artistic formula is the problem? I have
tried to do So while still remaining a European.1

Durrell's attempt to fuse the eastern "thought-forms" he has
studied with the western views he has inherited supplies the
focus for this chapter. Seeking to modify the materialistic
impulse of the Occident through the spiritual insights of
the Orient, he explores the crucial relationship between
spirit and matter. With the resolution of this polarity, in
"that secret field or realm which constitutes the moral

geography of the mystic" (Sebastian 1-2), Durrell completes

 

 

 

171

the quincunx, and so concludes the task of The Avignon

 

Quintet.

The debate has its roots in the different theories of
value to which the various characters subscribe. Moreover,
the Significance they attributetx>gold, in particular, is
symptomatic of the social and political alignments they each
displayu Thus the issue is neither academic nor arcane; it
is as vital to the protagonists of the Quintet as it was to
the medieval alchemists, whether they were genuine adepts
for whom gold was a symbol of Spiritual riches or impostors
who saw in alchemy'a means to material gain. Naturally, as
the precursor of the alchemical tradition, it is Gnosticism
which advances the spiritual perspective most overtly.
Akkad, for example, decries that "radical shift of emphasis

which pushed the balance over from the domain of
spirit into matter." When this fall from grace occurred,
The whole axis of the human sensibility was
altered .. .. The ancient vegetation gave place
to our new steel vegetation, flowering in bronze,
then iron, then steel . . . . The table of the
essences gave place to the table of the elements.
The Philosopher's Stone, the Holy Grail of the

ancient consciousness gave place1x>the usurping
values of the gold bar. (Monsieur 217)

 

In support of his argument against the materialism evinced
by those who reduce gold to the status of bullion, Akkad
refers to "Marx's great analysis of our culture or the
Freudian analysis of value as based upon infantile attitudes
to excrement," concluding that the "cornerstone of the

culture then is another M--merde. The golden bar is the

 

 

172

apotheosis of the human turd" (Monsieur 141).

 

Affad too articulates this view and, like Akkad,
imputes the presence of such pervasive materialism to the
malign influence of Judeo-Christianity. Indeed, he even
suggests that the war has arisen as a result of the German
revulsion against its tenets; the philoSOphical implications
of Judeo-Christianity being exemplified by that "triad of
great Jews who have dominated thought--Marx, Freud,
Einstein)‘ All are

adventurers in the realm of matter. Marx equated
human happiness with money--matter; Freud found
that the notion of value came from faeoes, and for
him love was called investment; Einstein, the most

Luciferian, is releasing the forces sleeping in
matter . . . . (Constance 320)

 

Obviously, for both Akkad and Affad, the preeminence of
material thought, however brilliant, is merely confirmation
of Jehovah's supremacy, and hence the tragedy which has
befallen man. But other characters, who are not affiliated
with Gnosticism, or not directly at any rate, express
similar opinions. Blanford, for instance, observes that
"Europe was fast reaching the end of the genito-urinary
stage in literature--and he recognised the approaching
impotence it signalled" (Liyig 174). In other words, he
parallels the relationship which Freud has established
between excrement and increment with a second equation
between cupidity and sterility.1usCarole Mablekos points

out, corruption provides our means for gauging material

 

production, which is then inverted to indicate a lack of

 

 

173

reproduction, artistic and otherwise.2 Condemning this

 

"audio-judeo-visual age" which he believes to be emerging,
Blanford also considers that it explains the "jealousy of
the Germans" (Lilli 174).

Given the virulence of the criticism to which Judaism
is thus subjected, it is not difficult to see why Durrell
might be suspected of anti-semitism. The problem is

compounded by the fact that, in the Quintet, he is

 

addressing a period which has gone down in history as being
perhaps the worst occasion of man's brutality to the Jews.
Durrell is aware of, and sensitive to, such charges, but
insists that his argument Should not be misconstrued. In the
transcription of "The Kneller Tape," which was actually
recorded in Hamburg, he implies that his position is
philosophically grounded, and not an expression of prejudice
against a particular people.3 More Specifically, he contends
that the "imaginative link with Plato and Heraclitus was
snapped forever" by the teachings of Judaism, thereby
denying "the religious continuity of thingsJ'AJexandria,
with its tradition of syncretism, supplies the connection
between the orphic mysteries and Rome; yet it is precisely
this inheritance which the Old and New Testaments repudiate.
Durrell argues, then, that in the refusal to acknowledge
"Hermes [as] the chap Jesus took over from" (through the
continuous transmission of a wisdom which originated in

India), Judaism severed the "vital link with a primordial

 

 

 

174

world which really knew itselfJ'He emphasizes thatkneis

"not talking racial nonsense" (Moore, The World of Lawrence

 

 

Durrell 168), and appeals to the precedent established by
Philo Judaeus in asserting a congruence betweeen Platonic
philosophy and the Jewish creed.

Of course, history also demonstrates the manner in
which a philosophical argument can be perverted to justify a
policy for which it was never meant. We have only to recall
that, in the hands of the Nazis, Nietzsche became an
instrument of anti-semitic propaganda, to appreciate the
potential for abuse. Durrell is alive to the dangers of the
position he advocates, and introduces a note of caution in
the character of Affad. Believing the Germans to be
motivated by a repugnance for the materialism which he too
despises, Affad is nonetheless an active opponent of the
Nazis. In his opinion, the true problem is "the refusal to
see that the Jewish faith is not a confession but that the
Jews are really a nation bereft of a homeland and forced to

become the world's cuckoo" (Constance 321). For this reason

 

he engages in surreptitious manoeuvres against the British,
seeking to further the formation of a Jewish state. In
short, there is no necessary causal relation between the
religious myths and the political views of the Nazis. On the
contrary, Affad is proof that an alternative, and
considerably more humane, deduction is both possible and

preferable.

 

 

 

175

If Durrell depicts the underlying philosophy of Judaism
as stacked in favor of matter, his Quintet is clearly no
less critical of Christianity. Indeed, Sutcliffe observes
that "Europe's behaviour was appropriate for those who drank
symbolic Sunday blood and munched the anatomy of their

Saviour" (Constance 25). Durrell's typically parodic forays

 

against Christianity have already incurred the wrath of some
readers. Edward Kopper, for example, writing on the Quartet,
remarks that in "his use of religious imagery in general
Durrell reveals almost embarrassingly his own patronizing
and half comprehending view of'theology" ("A Note on the

Religious Imagery in The Alexandria Quartet" 119). The

 

 

accusation is, in one respect at least, unjust; Durrell may
be offensive, even patronizing perhaps, but he is certainly
not ignorant.

The substance of his antipathy to the Christian Church
is equally rooted in the dialectic between spirit and
matter. A number of passing references accrue to suggeSt
that the chain of associations by which Blanford identifies
corruption with materialism also applies to Christianity.
Abandoned by Livia, he visits a prostitute, only to be
confronted by the sight of "a crucifix over the bidet"
(Liyi§_192).8hortly afterwards” he discovers that she has
stolen his wallet, thus confirming the connection between
money, monotheism EHHi merde. Similar connotations

characterize the story of Imhof, whose "massive investment"

 

 

«1’ '1.

 

176

in bidets precipitates a fall from reason that echoes the
fate of the Sophia (Elllfl 240). Lord Galen, who subsequently
inherits the thousands of bidets in which his one time
business partner had speculated, is troubled by no such
sensitivity. On the contrary, he is able to sell the bidets

for a "nice little sum."‘They are purchased by none other

than the Society of Jesus, which has "found a way of
printing 'Jesus Saves' on them in several languages"

(Sebastian 180), and proposes to export them to the Far East

 

as part of a modern day religious crusade. Finally, in hot
pursuit of the culture which it is his new task as Minister
for Culture and Information to define, Galen goes on a
prolonged debauch that concludes with his symbolic
crucifixion at the house of pleasure run by the infamous,
but aptly named, Mrs. Gilchrist. Invited to relinquish his
"ghastly monotheism which has led to man's separation from
nature and released the primal devastator in him," Galen is
then plastered with lipstick graffiti in a "veritable
fertility rite" that asserts the Dionysian aspects of the

Christian drama (Sebastian 139 & 140). Eventually, he is

 

taken from the brothel by his indignant nephew Felix, in a
manner which resembles the removal of a corpse, and
cheerfully resurrected at Blanfbrd's feet.

The individual episodes in which the Freudian equation
of faeces with wealth isaarecurring theme culminate inza

vision of Avignon as the center of this obsession with

 

177

matter. In fact, Durrell explains that.he "wanted the city
to convey some of the unease, some of the despair, and some
of the disgust [he] feelES] about Christianity" (Carley, "An
Interview with Lawrence Durrell" 43). It is Blanford who
makes the association explicit. Observing the pomp; E 93399

on its nightly round of the different guartiers, he

 

perceives that it "is sucking out the intellectual excrement
of the twentieth century in a town which was once Rome." The

quotation from St.Augustine occurstx>hinn Inter faesces

 

[sic] gt urinam nascimur. Somberly, Blanford meditates upon

 

the ironic appropriateness of the words, recalling that
Avignon "had been, after all, Augustine's 'City of God,’
transplanted once upon a time to this green and innocent
country" (£1113 262-263);” The city epitomizes everything he
abhors about Christianity. Containing within its precincts
both the Palacerof'the Popes and the Monument des Morts--a
proximity which suggests their innate kinship—-Avignon
indeed becomes "a realized symbol for the development of the
'signature'containedzhlJudeo-Christian thought"(Carley,
"Lawrence Durrell's Avignon Quincunx and Gnostic Heresy"
163).

The antagonism which Durrell feels for Christianity is
reinforced by his reading of Jung. Briefly, Jung argues that
"the orthodox Christian formula is not quite complete,
because the dogmatic aspect of the evil principle is absent

from the Trinity and leads a more or less awkward existence

 

 

178

on its cm”) as the devil" (Psychology and Religion 59).

 

Examining the various ways ix: which Christianity has
attempted to account for the origin of evil, he concludes
that there are only two alternatives: either evil is a
privatio boni (as St. Augustine claimed) or it has substance

and shape in the autonomous figure of the devil. Jung

believes the negative definition of evil to be
unsatisfactory in a number of respects. Most obviously, it
"robs evil of absolute existence and makes it a shadow that
has only a relative existence dependent on lightJ'Yet the
power to corrupt creation, thus necessitating God's
incarnation in Christ and his whole work of redemption, is
hardly to be credited to a figure whose potency derives
merely from the privation of good. Jung reasons, therefore,
that the "devil as an autonomous and eternal personality is
much more in keeping with his role as the adversary of
Christ and anfli the psychological reality of evil"

(Psychology and Religion 168 & 169).

 

If this is actually the case, a still more vexed
question immediately arises, since in "a monotheistic
religion everything that goes against God can only be traced

back to God himself" (Psychology and Religion 169). In other

 

words, an omnipotent God who is solely responsible for the
creation of the universe, and all that lies within it, must
be the ultimate source of evil, as well as of good. The

inference is clearly disturbing, and Jung suggests that it

 

 

 

179

illuminates the traditional theological insistence upon
God's formulation as a Trinity. The spontaneous symbol of
the quaternity represents good and evil as the moral aspects
of a natural polarity; yet it is exactly this idea which
Christianity finds so uncomfortable. Thus the indisputably
quaternal Cross, "set midway between heaven and hell as a

symbol of Christ's struggle with the devil" (Psychology and

 

Religion 170), depicts, not the divinity itself, but the

 

Passion which God endured in his encounter with the world of
matter. It is the refusal to locate evil within the Sphere
of the divinity, and hence to accord it an identity
independent of its relation to good, which Durrell finds
objectionable. He argues that we have "overweighed the frail
bark of Christianity by denying totally the reality of evil"
(Carley, "An Interview with Lawrence Durrell" 43). The
result, as with any repression, is an uncontrollable
resurgence of what has been denied, either in a direct
manifestation of evil or in the displaced form of an
obsession with matter.

Though Durrell condemns both Christianity and Judaism
for their materialistic bias, it is actually in his analysis
of National Socialism that he comes to grips with "the
reality of evilJ'As Sutcliffe flippantly warns Blanford,
"if you go mucking about with the discrete ego youlnust be
careful not to make a mistake and release a whole lot of

indiscreet ids" (Sebastian 136). This is precisely the

 

180

disaster which overtakes the Germans, when they succumb 33
mass; to the impulses of the Shadow. Aspiring to free the
world of the tyranny which matter exercises in the shape of
the prevailing western religions, they are themselves
implicated by the very god they wish to dethrone.

Significantly, the German enterprise begins with an

outrageous success, "as if all they touched turned to gold"

 

(Constance 100). Soon, however, the occupation of Avignon
exposes the real affiliation of the Nazis. Constance notices
how the town, which "had always been somewhat dirty and
dilapidated," changes character: "the smell of rotting
garbage became pronounced, . . . mountains of it,
overflowing from dustbins and packages everywhere." The
contamination resulting from the presence of the Nazis is
appropriately summarized in her ensuing discovery that the
only public phone booth has been used as'wasort of urinal

by persons unknown" (Constance 184).

 

In the same vein, she later learns from Nancy Quiminal
that Fischer, who embodies all the worst traits of the
Germans, is tormented by a sense of inadequacy which is

"based on shame--for he wet his bed" (Constance 199).

 

Similarly, it is in the lavatory that Lansdorf chooses to
commit suicide, when it becomes evident that the Allies are
succeeding in their counter offensive. The particular nature
of his retreat recalls that of the departing troops, who

"had expressed themselves in a manner which had become for

181

them conventional in war. Everywhere there was excrement, on

tables,on chairs,in doorways,cn1stairs"(Constance 370).

 

Far from being aligned with the Spiritual values to which
they originally lay claim, the Nazis only prove the
supremacy of matter. In their attitude to race and religion,
everything, that is, "to do with monotheism, monolithic
organisation, everything mono, which leads to this self-
induced paranoia called Western Civilisation .. . . The
Germans are Simply following out the whole pattern in their

usual gross fashion" (Constance 276).

 

In fact, the "death-desiring culture" which the Nazis
thus exemplify'is a logical result of the Judeo-Christian

transition from gold to faeces (Monsieur 217). The inversion

 

of values which it signifies leads from material corruption
to the corruption of matter. Ironically, Smirgel appeals to
alchemy as a justification for the genocide which the
Germans have planned, when he explains to Constance that
"the Jew is the slave of gold. Spiritually we are on the
gold standard of Jewish values." The New Order he envisages
"will be based no more on gold, but on blood-~the document

of the race-might" (Constance 236).5 In alchemical terms, of

 

courseg blood is a symbol for the soul, and hence suggests
the initial purpose of the Nazis; to redeem it from
imprisonment in the Judeo-Christian world of matter. Yet
their actual practice is inspired not by alchemy but by the

swastika, with its "dark red of bull's blood, upon which

 

182

the crooked cross had been overstamped" (Constance 185). Now

 

the swastika is a quaternity, but the Nazi version is
usually considered to rotate in a counter-clockwise
direction. As Jung observes, "in general, a leftward
movement indicates movement towards the unconscious, while a

rightward (clockwise) movement goes towards consciousness.

The one is 'sinister,' the other 'right'" (The Archetypes

 

and the Collective Unconscious 320%.The swastika itself,
then, reveals that the Germans have inverted the alchemical
process. For the self-development which is its underlying
aim, they have substituted the "crooked" goal of regression.
Descending into the abyss of the unconscious, they thereby
illustrate the warning of Eliphas Levi:'fll?you embark on
the course to sainthood and fail to achieve your goal you
are condemned to become a demon" (Lilia 184).

In celebrating "the central horror of death; being
sucked down the great sink like an insect, into the plpppp
ppfiipp of death," the Nazis exhibit their true alignment

with "the anus mundi" (Livia 5). Their orientation is thus

 

the very opposite of the Gnostic attitude to death as a

cumulative restoration of the anima mundi. This distinction

 

is apparent in Affad's reaction to the death-bed vigil which
he Shares with Constance. Watching their mutual friend
Dolores, as she finally relinquishes her hold on life, he
observes that "one breath is hooked into another... .. In

between the breaths is the Space where we live, between the

 

183

befbrebreath and the afterbreath is a field or realm where

time exists and then ceases to exist" (Sebastian 88).

 

Affad's explanation is rooted in the etymological affinity
between "breath" and "soul." Their relationship is most

obvious in the derivation of the Latin spiritus, or spirit,

 

from the verb spirare, meaning to breathe. However, both the
Greek ppgppg and the Latin Epipp (cognate to the Greek
gpgmppj wind) also have this dual connotation. Hence it is
between the inhalation and exhalation which comprise the
rhythm of material existence that Affad seeks the great
breath of the universal soul.

The same sense of contact with the anima mundi informs

 

his conception of wealth. For Affad, it is neither excrement
nor blood, but sperm that "is really riches, money in its

physical aspect" (Constance 268). Criticizing the

 

devaluation of sexual passion, he tells Constance that
contemporary love is "mostly debased currency, the timid
investments of undischarged bankrupts with nothing to offer

but undocumented sperm, trivial aggressive lusts" (Constance

 

299). In their stead, he asserts the importance of a sexual
connection which partakes of the transcendental connection
with the divine spirit. It is in the "little Space, between
the breaths," he claims, "that we have started to expand the
power of the orgasm, as a united synchronised experience,
making it more.and more conscious, mobilising its power and

fecundity umini every kiss" (Sebastian 88-89). Affad's words

 

 

 

 

 

184

suggest that he sees in the universe a process of
development analogous to individuation. Just as the union of
the ego with the anima effects the supreme goal of self-
realization, so does the union of the ego with the ppipg
pppgi, through sexual conjunction, achieve the realization
of the universal Self.

Eros and Thanatos are therefore directly linked, "like

a single centaur joined at tflua waist" (Constance 350).

 

Sexual intercourse, "that supreme fiction of joining"

(Constance 336), anticipates the real fusion with the

 

eternal spirit, which occurs only after death. Motivated,
then, by an idealism which the Nazis have inverted, Affad
makes the ppm; association between erotic love and the
desire for death. Yet there is one significant difference in
the practical consequences of their common equation, a
difference which reveals the antithetical extremes that
Gnosticism and National Socialism represent. Whereas the
perverted sexual exploits of General Von Esslin and Fischer
demonstrate a relish for destruction that is aimed at
others, the object of Affad's death-wish is himself\

Not unnaturally, Constance balks at this conclusion,
which is in her opinion an equally unacceptable elevation of
death over life. As a Freudian psychoanalyst, she is well
aware that Eros and Thanatos are the primary instincts,
directed during the intermediate phase of the autoerotic

stage in infancy at the selfh But the desire to regress to

 

 

 

 

185

the original condition of inorganic matter, which Freud
speculated was the source of this instinct, is in normal
development averted from its primary object by displacement.
In other words, an instinct for self-preservation emerges,
with the result that the death-wish is projected against
others in the altered form of an instinct for destruction.
So, for Constance, Affad's active pursuit of death is not an
indication of his spiritual maturity, but evidence of its
very lack. Remarking on her error in thinking the
Mediterranean races wiser than the Germans, she curses "that
collection of dismal death-worshippers projecting their

infantile death-wish out of a ruined Egypt!" (Sebastian 65).

 

The conflict between the lovers reveals a clash of
values as powerful as that which characterizes the
opposition between the Gnostics and Nazis. Moreover, it too
is based upon the dichotomy between spirit and matter.
Adopting the logical positivist view expounded by Freud,

Constance sees death as a regression to the state of total

 

inanimacy, an end of individual consciousness and hence

reduction to matter. In contrast, Affad subscribes to an

 

organic view of the world, according to which death is a

progression and extension of consciousness through

 

 

liberation of the spirit contained in matter. The difference
between the two perspectives is obvious; logical positivism
emphasizes the ultimate importance of death, as distinct

from the Optimistic stance of Gnosticism, in which death is

 

186

merely a transition from one state of being to another. The
disagreement between Affad and Constance provides a second
arena, then, for discussion of the relationship between
spirit and matter. More specifically, the opposing pairs,
male/female and Gnosticism/National Socialism (as a subset

of Judeo-Christianity) present different aspects of that

central split, spirit/matter.

The reconciliation of opposites which evolves from
these conflicts is likewise carried out on several levels:
psychic, sexual and universal. Constance supplies a
particularly clear example of how the synthesis is achieved,
for she embraces all three dimensions of experience and, in

this respect, is indeed "a key" (Constance 353). Clinging to

 

her western prejudice that death signifies extinction, She
is, of course, initially appalled by Affad's commitment to
the Gnostic sect which Rob Sutcliffe has earlier called a

"grubby little suicide academy" (Monsieur 244). Yet her

 

education is at odds with her intuitive conviction that
"trying to want only what happened, and to part with things
without regret . . . . made [her] sort of on equal terms
with death" (11113 248)15 Emotionally, therefore, Constance
is already equipped to understand something of the Gnostic
position; that it is wiser "to co-operate with the
inevitable and learn to profit by this unhappy state of
things--by realising and accommodating death," than to

resist "the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a

187

river, bears us down to the ocean of everything's unknowing"
(Constance 343). She instinctively senses the natural and
intrinsic relation of life to death, but has no formal
system of belief to support her intuitions. What Affad
offers her is a rich "schema of which [she] had a profound
need," so that she can at last "rest [her] intellect upon
something which seems solid" (Constanpg 288). Through the
expression of his sexual ardor, Affad is able to communicate
a spiritual awareness which he has himself derived from
Gnosticism. Although he never succeeds in converting
Constance entirely to his way of thinking, that knowledge
does qualify her original adherence to logical positivism.
With Affad's help, then, Constance finally begins to
resolve the polarity between intuition and intellection. Her
psychic development continues and she, in turn, transmits
what She has learned from Affad to Aubrey Blanford. In this
final union both find their completion. However, the
significance of their achievement (as we have seen) lies in
its reconciliation of opposites. On a psychological level,
the union represents fulfillment of the individuation
process--a reconciliation of the schism between
consciousness and the unconscious. In its alchemical
function, the relationship describes the reconciliation of
male with female, and the emergence of some new thing which
combines spirit and matter. Thus the alchemical coniunctio

effects a synthesis of psychic and sexual antitheses.

 

‘]

 

 

188

But the dimension on which it operates has implications
beyond the exclusively personal realn1<of the protagonists,
for the inner world of the emotions is not divorced from the
outer world of their social and political obligations. On
the contrary, they are interpenetrating and mutually

informing realities. Just as Affad's Gnosticism profoundly

influences the love he shares with Constance, so does that
same love influence his commitment to Gnosticism. Constance,
who is no less concerned with the quest for spiritual
illumination (as her interest in yoga actually indicates),
recognizes the inherent limitations in Affad's religion.
Indeed, she reflects that "the true yogi knew the hour of
his death, and did not need artificial reminders in order to
render it a conscious act." Understanding, then, how
impertinent is the attempt "to pre-empt reality when destiny
may well be preparing to make an end of us in the next five

minutes" (Sebastian 15H), Constance actively subverts

 

Affad's loyalty to the suicidal tenets of Gnosticism. In the
expression of her love for him, She affirms the value of
life; and her triumphant restoration of Affad's son to the
world of feelingfrom which he has been estranged by his
autism results in a like recovery of Affad himself37 The
degree to which she succeeds in her endeavour is apparent
from the implications of Affad's death. When he dies as a
substitute for Constance, what he achieves is not the

perfect Gnostic act of self—sacrifice, designed to redeem

 

189

death, but a redemption of life instead.

As Affad's Gnosticism is mediated by his love for
Constance, so an equivalent process of disenchantment
qualifies Smirgel's allegiance to National Socialism. It is
their mutual adherence to the Nazi party which originally
unites Smirgel and Livia. Eventually they become lovers, but
then he, like Blanford, his predecessor in Livia's
affections, detects that "profound reserve which prevented
her from really giving herself in love" (Q2131 116).
Accidentally discovering the details of Livia's incestuous
relationship with Hilary, Smirgel correctly recognizes that
She will never "be cured, so long as the magnet of Hilary's
presence existed somewhere in the world."'This knowledge has
"poisoned his waking life" (32131 119), and he therefore
resolves upon vengeance. Ironically, the opportunity
presents itself through the increasing frustration of his
political ideals, a disappointment which parallels the
tribulations of his emotional life. As Smirgel later
explains to Constance, "at long last I too grew
disillusioned with the Nazis and ashamed of my own passivity
in the face of Nazi doctrines and acts" (Q2131 120).
However, he is still sufficiently imbued with the Nazi
bloodlust to exploit the German military resources as an
instrument of revenge. Thus, after arranging for Hilary to

join the French Resistance, Smirgel promptly betrays him to

the Germans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

190

The ramifications of Smirgel's treachery are far
greater than he has anticipated. Compelled to watch Hilary‘s
execution, Livia atones for her earlier lack of vision by
blinding herself. Her subsequent suicide precludes the
reconciliation for which Smirgel has hoped, and thereby
defeats his whole purpose. Though Smirgel himself survives,
the loss of the woman he loves completes his disengagement
from the political structure which brought them together. At
the same time, then, that the incident reveals a change of
heart analogous in some respects to the experience of Affad
i1) his relationship 1flith Constance, the different
conclusions to each intimacy emphasize the polarity of the
beliefs which have sustained them. Whereas Affad saves
Constancehzmwnn death, albeit unwittingly, Smirgel is
actually the cause of Livia's demise. He exhibits in his
personal relations precisely that destructiveness which
distinguishes both National Socialism and the Judeo-
Christianity to which it has reacted, only to become its
imitation.

Yet, despite this opposition of values, the movement of
the entire narrative clearly heralds a rapprochement. In the
same way that the sexual liaisons of the various characters
lead them steadily towards personal assimilation, so does
the modification of their convictions, through those
liaisons, lead to the assimilation of the external world.

Significantly, Durrell depicts the achievement of this final

 

 

 

191

state, in which all the factors are ultimately reconciled,
as a collaborative effort. The protagonists abandon their
previous hostilities to cooperate in the recovery of the
Templar treasure. Lord Galen and Prince Hassad provide
financial backing, as well as the political immunity for
which Smirgel, in return, contributes the map of the
quincunxial caves made by the Austrian sappers. Similarly,
Quatrefages shares what he has learned, and the gipsies
appoint a delegate to safeguard their interest in the caves,
where they have long worshipped the patron saint of their
tribe. In this assorted range of people, every past
alignment is thus represented, whether it be Gnostic, Nazi
or Judeo-Christian.

In like fashion, the participation of Blanford and
Constance is required, for their recently consummated union
invests them wfilfli a new figurative importance. Joined
together in a conjunction which corresponds to the

hierosgamos of the alchemists, they have assumed a symbolic

 

dimension as the universal principles of male and female
respectively. When, therefore, they too appear at the
ceremony which is a ritual preliminary to the opening of the
caves, the conditions for production of the quincunx are at
last complete. More specifically, in the common purpose
which restores harmony amongst his protagonists, Durrell
resolves the thematic oppositions between male and female,

Gnosticism and the Judeo-Christianity of which National

 

192

Socialism is an extreme example. The quaternal structure of

 

the Quintet is thus reinforced by the quaternity of its

themes.

Gnosticism male

female Judeo-Christianity

Figure 21 Durrell's Quincunx 31 Themes

Now one of the properties of this structure is, as Jung
observes, that "the middle term of the second pair of
opposites would coincide with the middle term of the first
pair. The resultant figure is a quincunx, Since the two
pairs of opposites have a common mean or 'third form"'
(Psychology and Religion 125%. In this way the figure
depicts the paradox which comprises the "One born of Four"

(Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis 316); it acknowledges the

 

dualities upon which it is founded but simultaneously
describes their synthesis in a totality. The mutual aim
which unites the protagonists of the 331313}; clearly
provides such a mean. Yet the particular significance of the
quaternity is its reconciliation of the most basic polarity

in human experience, that between spirit and matter. Whereas

 

193

the Christian Trinity emphasizes their eternal bifurcation,
the quincunx symbolizes that transcendent reality in which
the binary opposition of spirit and matter is resolved.8

The constituents of Durrell's quincunx have already
revealed an underlying relevance as aspects of this very
dichotomy. In the antithetical relation of Gnosticism to
Judeo-Christianity, the real issue is the allegiance of the
characters to the values of spirit and matter respectively.
A like meaning informs the sexual antithesis, for it is the
male Logos who inhabits the pneumatic realm and the female
Sophia who conceives concrete reality. Hence the union of
dualities which comprises the Avignon quincunx is finally a
symbol of the indestructible world which results from the
fusion of Spirit with matter. Appropriately enough, then, it
is only when the protagonists have been liberated from the
constraints of their original condition, that they are at
last empowered to enter the place "where the Grail lies hid"
(Q2131 134).For the "moral geography" of mysticism charts
the paths to a gold which can neither decay nor corrupt,
that imperishable gold in which the attributes of spirit and

matter are wedded.

The more immediate implication of Durrell%;quincunx is
its assertion of'a congruence between eastern and western
thought. In reconciling the oriental wisdom which suffuses

Gnosticism with the clearly occidental traditions of the

 

 

 

194

Judeo-Christian world, Durrell argues that they are
complementary, rather than contradictory, visions of the
same reality. "Inner is Western and Outer Eastern"

(Sebastian 199), but only in their union can we encompass

 

the complexity of the human condition. Only, therefore, when

intellection combines with intuition, and empiricism with

mysticism, can we begin to apprehend man's place in the
universe. This, indeed, is the attitude which Schwarz
articulates,

hoping that something like the Principle of
Indeterminacy as posited by our physicists for
reality will find its way into the religious
values of the new state; . . . . hOping for a
materialism Mflfilfll is profoundly qualified by
mysticism--a link between Epicurus and Pythagoras,
so to speak. (Sebastian 174)9

 

Durrell's belief in the correspondence between science
and religion is illuminated by the studies of Marie-Louise
Von Franz. In her investigation of the conceptual models
which supplied the foundation for classical physics, Von
Franz demonstrates how the archetypal image of the sphere
"formed the basis of scientific ideas about time and about
space as three-dimensionally conceived." It was likewise
from the image of the sphere that atomic theory originated;
in the mythical formulations of Leucippus and Democritus,
the smallest indivisible particle was envisaged as a kind of
"soul-atom," which, together with other such particles,
provided the totality of the universal soul.10 Von Franz

concludes, then, that a projection of the 1333 archetypes is

195

responsible for the concepts of both classical physics and

religion: "all these fundamental scientific hypotheses are,

 

 

 

13 the enL derived from _a_ mandala-formed God image"

 

 

 

(Projection and Re-Collection 13 Jungian Psychology 61).

 

 

A similar relationship to its archetypal origins is
true of contemporary physics, She argues, although the
precise form of the God image has altered to accommodate new
ideas about physical reality. Einstein's theory of
relativity, for example, posits a four-dimensional world
which is not, in itself, subject to time. In other words,
time supplies one of the coordinates for its description,
but nmuvs "consciousness merely moves along the world-lines
of his body and his immediate surroundings and thus
subjectively experiences the world as a temporal factor"

(333ber and 1133 190). Now the determinism which is

 

predicated by the timeless world of general relativity
theory is antithetical to the findings of quantum theory.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle converts the laws of
physics into statements about relative, instead of absolute,
certainties. Various attempts to reconcile the two theories
have entered into the realm of metaphysical speculation. One
such instance, of particular interest to Von Franz, is the
suggestion first put forward by Aloys Wenzl, a German
philosopher of science who is somewhat dubiously regarded by
mainstream physicists. Wenzl proposes that the four-

dimensnnmfl.continuum of the Einsteinian world-model

 

196

possesses only a potential existence.11 When space-time
reality is conceived in this way, it is not difficult to see

a resemblance to Jung's unus mundus. In psychological terms,

 

that;is, the continuunacan be understood as an essentially
quaternal representation of the one world which exists 13

potentia, prior to its actualization in matter.

 

An identical view is expressed by Affad, in claiming
that "Einstein's non-discrete field, Groddeck's HRH, and
Pursewardenfis'heraldic universe' [are] all one and the same
concept and would easily answer to the formulations of
Patanjali" (Sebastian 28).12 As he explains to Prince
Hassad, the movements of yoga become mental acts, and "the
basic realisation which meditation really brings is n-

dimensional" (Sebastian 32L.For Affad, as for many of the

 

characters in the Quintet, physics and psychology lead
ultimately to the religious experience of "reality primeJ'
Affad's assertion of a convergence between physics and
theology requires both amplification and qualification. Some
of the ideas which inform contemporary physics do indeed
share a resemblance to concepts existing in other, and
earlier, structures of thought. But, with the transition
from visual representations of reality to mathematical
equation systems of increasing complexity, an accurate
translation of those ideas into the medium of language has
long been impossible. It is therefore only the philosophy of

physics, and not physics itself, which can be the subject of

 

197

any comparison. Nonetheless, a number of physicists have
addressed the issue, amongst them no less an authority than
Werner Heisenberg. In the modern conception of energy as the
basic substrate of all matter, Heisenberg sees a
correspondence withtnueHeraclitean world-fire.Believing
fire to be the underlying substance of the universe, from
which everything else was derived, Heraclitus surmised that
it was thus the source of both spirit and matter. However,
as Von Franz points out, this idea is actually a refinement
of‘the Greek Logos, that "all-directing world mind" which

is, equally, an aspect of Gnosticism (Projection and Re-

 

Collection 13 Jungian Psychology 67).13

 

 

Similarlyg in the fact that mathematical forms alone
can describe micro- and macro-cosmic reality, Heisenberg
sees a reactivation of the Pythagorean belief that physical
matter was ultimately geometrical in nature. According to
Pythagoras, the five regular solids could explain, or even
comprised the essence of, the entire material world.“4
Number was sacred, then, for it was the principle of order
by which God regulated creation. What prompted Pythagoras to
reach this conclusion was the discovery of the relationship
between arithmetical ratios and Imusical notes, an
observation which led to the idea that the harmony of the
spheres was both mathematical and musical. In this context,
it is worth remarking Rob Sutcliffe's<desire to produce a

"book arranged in diminished fifths from the point of view

 

 

'-

198

of orchestration" (Constance 123). His words suggest that

 

the structure of the 3313333 is likewise inspired by the
"divine" function of number.

An analogous sense of number as the eXpression of the
divine will characterizes the complicated number-system
which was formulated by Marcus, one of the earliest Gnostics
to emerge from the school of Valentinus. Indeed, Hippolytus
actually claimed that "the whole of Valentinianism was based
on the numbers and geometry of Pythagoras and Plato" (Mead,

Fragments 31‘ 3 Faith Forgotten 315).15 It is thus possible

 

to see, in the recurrence of ideas which bear a resemblance
to certain philosophical concepts found in Gnosticism, what
Durrell means by the convergence of contemporary physics and
religion. He argues that the ontological principles which
inform them are the same, although they have resulted in
very different theories of knowledge.In this respect, he
clearly agrees with Jung, who has observed that "the
physicistJS models ultimately rest on the same archetypal
foundations that also underlie the Speculations of the
theologian. Both are psychology, and it too has no other

foundations" (Psychology and Religion 187).

 

 

Number itself, Jung concludes, is the mediating factor
between psychic and physical reality. It is "something on

the one hand mathematical1y abstract and on the other hand

 

 

fabulous and mythological" (Civilization 13 Transition 409).

 

 

Concurrently, therefore, numbers possess a quantitative

 

199

aspect, in the sense that they provide a system of
measurement for objects in the tangible world, and a
qualitative aspect as the instrument for creating or
perceiving order. The two aspects of number coalesce in the
experience of acausally synchronistic phenomena; that is,
"the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with
one or more external events which appear as meaningful
parallels to the momentary subjective state," although there

is no causal connection (The.Structure and Dynamics 33 the

 

Psyche 441). But the significance of acausal synchronicity
is the fact that id; implies the existence of "two
essentially heterogeneous world-systems, whose sporadic
interlocking causes certain aspects of wholeness to manifest
themselves" (323333 333 1133 247). Hence the unitary
representation of number in acausally synchronistic
phenomena suggests to Jung that number is actually the
principle which reconciles matter with spirit in the

intermediate realm of the unus mundus.

 

Jung's belief that the mathematical and mythological
functions of number are thus the two facets of one,
transcendent reality seems very similar to Durrell's

conception cxf number ix] the Quint33, Its symbolic

 

application is obvious: in the numerous pairings which
express the binary oppositions of conscious/unconscious,
matter/spirit, and so forth, as well as being models of the

divine syzygy; similarly, in the triadic relationship

 

\A

200

between Piers, Bruce and Sylvie, which signifies the
synthesis of those oppositions "as a total self, or the

symbol of such an abstraction" (Monsieur 214). From this

 

triadic formulation of wholeness, which is solely spiritual,
the Quintet progresses to the fourness of the quaternity:

the four-dimensional world of space-time reality, the fOur
stages of the alchemical procedure, the four which expresses
the integration of body and spirit. In this way, it arrives
at the four-in-one of the quincunx, supplanting the five Ms
for which Affad condemns the occident with that self-
realization which culminates in the vision of "reality
prime."16

Number thus resonates throughout the entire Quintet, as
the common ordering principle of Gnosticism and alchemy, as
the clue to the very essence of the Templar treasure. It
supplies the patterns from which the protagonists must seek,
and decipher, the meaning of their own lives. This, Durrell
implies, is the function of number which the western world
has forgotten. In the desire to quantify reality, man has
succeeded only in divesting that reality of a qualitative
dimension which is equally vital, if we are ever to

understand its significance. The responsibility Durrell

assumes as his task in The Avignon Quintet is, then, to

 

recover the balance. Believing that salvation lies in the
meeting of East and West, in the fusion of ancient wisdom

with modern science, he struggles to "free the novel from

 

 

201

the shackles of causality with a narrative apparently
dislocated and disjointed yet informed by mutually
contradictory insights" (Q2131 165-166). The recognition of
that realm wherein they unite has resulted in his final
artistic accomplishment, the long-projected "Book of
Miraclesd"What Durrell has thereby achieved is most aptly
expressed in his own words: "When the mathematical and the
poetical co-exist as they were always meant to; a collision
of worlds takes place and you write a hymn to Process"

(Quinx 141).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

202

Notes

1 Unpublished letter to Ian MacNiven, 15 December
1984. Quoted by MacNiven in "The Quincunx Quiddified" 5.

2 Carole Mablekos addresses this theme in her
excellent article on Tunc and Nunguam, but her comments are
equally applicable to the Quintet, in which Durrell is
dealing with similar views ("Lawrence Durrell's Tunc and
Nunguam: Rebirth Now or Never" 52).

3 Certainly Durrell's personal life is no evidence of
anti-semitism, since his second wife was actually Jewish.

4 It is interesting to note that Augustine was a
Manichaean for nine years before converting to the Christian
faith, which his mother, Saint Monica, had adopted. Joseph
Campbell remarks that "Every bit of his enormously
influential theology is shot through with a Gnostic-
Manichaean revulsion from the flesh" (Creative Mythology
148). His analysis of Augustine is somewhat reductive,
however, and ignores the extent to which Augustine revolted,
in turn, from the anti-materialistic stance of Gnosticism.
It was Augustine who stamped the Western tradition with the
affirmation that matter, being created by God, is good.

 

5 Ironically, Smirgel's articulation of the German
rationale bears a close resemblance to the plans allegedly
produced by the Jewish Wise Men in the Protocols 311133.
See, for example, Protocol No. 3, which proposes to "create
by all the secret subterranean methods open1x>us and with
the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, 3 universal
economic crisis whereby we shall throw upon the streets
whole mobs of workers simultaneously in all the countries of
Europe. These mobs will rush delightedly to shed the blood
of those whom, in the Simplicity of their ignorance, they
have envied from their cradles, and whose property they will
then be able to lootJ'It is also worth noting that, in the
same Protocol, the snake is used as a symbol of Jewish
power: "The whole long path we have trodden is ready now to
close its cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolise
our people. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe
will be locked in its coils as in a powerful vice” (Quoted
from Bernstein's work, The Truth about "The Protocols of

110n" 302 & 305). Significantly, in Durrell's depiction of

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

203

World War II, it is the Germans themselves who invoke the
serpentine powers of the Dionysian tradition, only to abuse
those powers in a fashion which is every bit as destructive
as the intentions they attribute to the Jews.

6 In an interview with Joan Goulianos, Durrell appears
to be discussing the same idea that Constance exresses, when
he observes that oriental philosophies are not passive, but
operate on the basis of "the willpower of desirelessness.
It's a technique of not interfering but influencing. It's
not ascetism either. It's what Tran Tzu calls the fasting of
the heart" ("A Conversation with Lawrence Durrell about Art,
Analysis and Politics" 164).

7 For a fuller discussion of the way in which
Constance qualifies Affad's adherence to Gnosticism, see
Chapter Two.

8 Jung argues that the "union of one pair of opposites
only produces a two dimensional triad .. .. This, being a
plane figure, is not a reality but a thought. Hence two
pairs of opposites, making a quaternio . .. are needed to
represent physical reality" (Psychology and Religion 121).

 

 

 

9 A rather more flamboyant version of this idea is
propounded by Rob Sutcliffe, when he writes in lipstick,
"Ezmc2 with the legend ERECTION EQUALS MEDITATION PLUS
CONNIVANCE SQUAREDu" To this parody of Einstein he adds,
"MEDITATION OVER FORNICATION LIKE MASS OVER FORCE YIELDS
REINCARNATION" (Constance 323).

‘0 It is only, of course, in the development of high
energy physics that the discovery of subatomic particles has
been made.

11 Wenzl speculates that the Einsteinian world-model
is a "pattern of Space-time reality, insofar as this can be
determined, and strictly the potential scope of
possibilities, insofar as a free actualization can take
place in them" (Metaphysics 31 Contemporary Physics 128-129.
Quoted from Von Franz, 133ber and 1133 190). His
interpretation of'the model which results from relativity
theory is clearly similar to that of Alexander, whose work
Space, Time and Deity Durrell certainly knows. Wenzl also
writes that this "world , if we are to make a statement about
its essence, is a world of elementary Spirits" (quoted from
Frank, Philosophy 31 Science: The Link Between Science and
Philosophy 235). Clearly, this is run; the traditional
language of physics. Frank's book provides a good counter
balance to such views; it is a cautious and thorough study
of the problems inherent in classifying contemporary physics
according to philosophical concepts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

204

12 Patanjali was a second century B.C. Indian
philosopher and the founder of Yoga.

13 In fact, Durrell picks up on this idea when he
depicts the metaphysical challenge of Gnosticism as the need
"to turn back the tide of Spiritual entropy" (Sebastian 81).
If energy is the substance from which both h 1e and pneuma
are created, then entropy can be seen not just as a loss '0'?
energy in the material world, but also as a diminution of
the pleroma.

1” The five regular solids of Pythagoras are the
tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron.
His view of the world as a geometrical expression of God's
will was refined by Plato in the 113aeus. It was from
Plato's cosmology, of course, that Jung deduced the
universal significance of the quaternity.

15 The idea is not as preposterous as it might
initially seem, for the Pythagorean schools were part of the
orphic communities, from which Gnosticism is descended. Mead
discusses the possible validity of Hippolytus' assertion,
and the implications of number as a cosmological symbol. It
is interesting to note that Mead concludes his discussion by
remarking that it suggests a union of the past and present:
"It is at this point that the intuitions of antiquity and
the most recent discoveries of modern science should meet
face to face" (Fragments 31 3 Faith Forgotten 332).

16 Von Franz remarks that, in China, "the number five
possesses the same significance as four does with us,
because it is taken to represent the centered four. This
concept is also found in the West, in the alchemical idea of
the quinta essentia. The quinta essentia is not additively
joined onto the first four as a fifth element, but
represents the most refined, spiritually imaginable unity of
the four elements" (Number and Time 120-121). Clearly,
Durrell's quincunx is to be understoOd in the same sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"BIBLIOGRAPHY"

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arthos, John. "Lawrence Durrell's Gnosticisnu" Personalist
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Begnal, Michael H. "The Mystery of the Templars in The
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Bernstein, Herman. The Truth about "The Protocols 31 Zion":
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Bork, Alfred M. "Durrell and Relativityy" Centennial Review
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Browne, Sir Thomas. Religio Medici Hydriotaphia and The
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Burns, J. Christopher. "Durrell's Heraldic UniverseJ' Modern
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Campbell, Joseph; Creative M tholo . Vol. 4 of The Masks
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---. Occidental Mythology. Vol. 3 of The Masks 31 the
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Carley, James P."Ah Interview with Lawrence Durrell on the
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---. "Lawrence Durrell's Avignon Quincunx and Gnostic
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---. "The Avignon Quintet and Gnostic Heresyu" Friedman
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Chang, Jolan. The T of Love and Sex. New York: E. P.
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---. 3 Key 33 Modern British Poetry. Norman: University of
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---. Monsieur: 33 The Prince 31 Darkness. London: Faber &
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Friedman, Alan Warren. Critical Essays 33 Lawrence Durrell.
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--—. "The Modern Multivalent Novel: Form and Functionfl
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Groddeck, Georg. The Book of the It. Trans. by V. M. E.

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Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien

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Jung, Carl G. Collected Works. Trans. by R. F. C. Hull.
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---. Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the
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Kaplan, Stuart R. The Engyclo edia 3f Tarot. New York: U. S.
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Lemon, Lee T. "Lawrence Durrell: The Uses of Uncertainty!‘
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Lyons, Eugene & Harry T. Antrim. "An Interview with Lawrence
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Mablekos, Carole. "Lawrence Durrell' s Tunc and Nun uam:
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MacNiven, Ian S. "The Quincunx Quiddified." Paper presented
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MacNiven, Ian S. 8: Harry T. Moore. Ed. of Literary
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Mead, GJLS. Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. [c. 1906] New
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---, trans. Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Gospel. [1921] New
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---. Thrice-Greatest Hermes: Studies 33 Hellenistic
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209

Moore, Harry T., ed. The World 33 Lawrence Durrell.
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Nicholls, James R. "The Risen Angels in Durrell's Fallen
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Durrell's Quincunx and The Alexandria QuartetJ'

Paper presented at On Miracle Ground: The Fourth
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Palmer, Philip Mason & Robert Pattison More. The Sources 33
the Faust Tradition: From Simon Magus 33 Lessing. New
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Partner, Peter. The Murdered Magicians: The Templars and
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Peirce, Carol Marshall.'"Intimations of Powers Withinh
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213.

---. "That 'one book there, a Plutarch': Of Isis and Osiris
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Perkins, Pheme. The Gnostic Dia33gue: The Early Church and
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Plato. The Symposium. Trans. by Walter Hamilton. .
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Puech, Henri-Charles. "Gnosis and Timeu" Man and Time:
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Shrimpton, Nicholas. "The Whodunnit Gnostic-styleu" Rev. of
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Spengler, Oswald. The Decline 33 the West. Trans. by Charles
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Wickes, George, ed. Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller: 3
Private Correspondence. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.,
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210

General References

Adams, Robert M. 333erjoyce: Studies 33 Fiction after
Ulysses. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

 

 

Ashworth, Ann. "Durrell's Hermetic Puer and Senex in The
Alexandria Quartet." Critique: Studies 33 Modern Fiction

26 (1985): 67-80.

Brown, Sharon Lee. "The Black Book: A Search for MethodJ'
Modern Fiction Studies 13 (1967): 319-328.

 

 

 

 

 

Budge, E. A. Wallis. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. 2
vols. 1911. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1973.

 

Card, James Van Dyck.'”Tell Me, Tell Me': The Writer as
Spellbinder in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria QuartetJ'

Modern British Literature 1 (1976): 74-83.

Chapman, R. T. "Dead, or Just Pretending? Reality in The

Alexandria Quartetw" Centennial Review 16 (1972): 408-
418.

 

 

Creed, Walter G. "Pieces of the Puzzle: The Multiple
Narrative Structure of The Alexandria Quartets" Mosaic
6.2(1973):19-35.

 

Crowder, Richard. "Durrell, Libido, and Erosu" Ball State
Teachers College Forum 3 (Winter 1962-1963): 34-39.

 

 

 

Eliade, Mircea. The For e and the Crucible. Trans. by
Stephen Corrin. 1956. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962.

Fraser, George S. "Lawrence Durrell." Essays 33 Twentieth
Century Poets. Totawa, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield,
1977. 175-181.

 

 

---. Lawrence Durrell: 3 Critical Study. With bibliography
by Alan G. Thomas. London: Faber 8: Faber, 1968.

 

 

Friedman, Alan Warren. Art for Love's Sake: Lawrence gurrell
and The Alexandria Quartet. Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1970.

 

 

---. "Place and Durrell's Island Books." Modern Fiction
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Godshalk, William Leigh. "Aspects of Lawrence Durrellfl'
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211

Grant, R. M. Gnosticism and Early Christianity. 2nd. ed.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.

 

Halio, Jay L. "Fiction about Fiction." Southern Review 17

 

Hamard, Jean. "Lawrence Durrell: A European Writer." Durham
University Journal 29¢3(1967-1968): 171-181.

 

Heisenberg, Werner. The Physicist's Conception of Nature.
London: Hutchison Scientific & Technical, 1958.

 

 

Henig, Suzanne. "Lawrence Durrell: The Greatest of Them
Adl." Virginia Woolf Quarterly 2 (1975): 4-12.

 

Hopper, Vincent Foster. Medieval Number §ymbolism: Its
Sources, Meaning and Influence on Thought and
Express1on. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.

 

 

 

 

Howarth, Herbert. "Durrell Snapped in a Library;" London
Magazine 12é2(April-May 1972): 71-84.

 

Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional
Paradox. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University
Press, 1980.

 

 

 

Jennings, Elizabeth. "Lawrence Durrell: The Vision of an
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Vision Press, 19761 81-109.

 

 

Johnson, Ellwood. "Automatic Writing and the Auto-NovelJ'
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Kellman, Stephen G. The Self-Begetting Novel. London:
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Kruppa, Joseph E. "Durrell's Alexandria Quar333 and the
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Lemon, Lee T. "The Imagination of Reality: The Reality of
Imagination." Paper delivered at On Miracle Ground: The

Fourth International Lawrence Durrell Conference, April
1986.

Levitt, Morton P. "Art and Correspondences: Durrell, Miller,
and The Alexandria Quartet." Modern Fiction Studies 13

 

 

 

Lewis, Wyndham. Time and Western Man. 1927. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1957.

 

 

212

MacNiven, Ian S. "A Room in the House of Art: The Friendship
of Anais Nin and Lawrence Durrell." Mosaic 11.2 (1978):
37-57 0

Martin, Jay. Always Merry and Bright: The Life 33 Henry
Miller. Capra Press: Santa Barbara, 1978.

 

 

Mitchell, Julian & Gene Andrewski. "The Art of Fiction
XXIII: Lawrence Durrell." Paris Review 22 (1960): 32-
61.

 

Morcos, Mona Louis. "Elements of the Autobiographical in
The Alexandria Quartets" Modern Fiction Studies 13 (1967):

3 3-359.

Morris, Robert K; "333 Alexandria Quartet: Art and the
Changing Vision." Continuance and Change: The
Contemporary British Novel Sequen33. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1972. 51-70.

 

 

 

 

Nag Hammadi Library 33 English. Trans. by Members of the
Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for
Antiquity and Christianity. Dir. by James M. Robinson.
Leiden: EHL Brill, 1977.

Overstreet, David. "Oxymoronic Language and Logic in Quantum
Mechanics and James Joyce»" Sub-Stance 28 (1980): 37-59.

 

Pagels, Elaine. The Gnostic Gospels. New York: Random House,
1979.

 

Peirce, Carol Marshall. "Pynchon's 37 and Durrell's
Alexandria Quartet: A Seminar in the Modern Tradition)‘
Pynchon Notes (February 8 1982): 23-27.

 

 

Read, Phyllis J. "The Illusion of Personality: Cyclical Time
in Durrell's Alexandria QuartetJ"Modern Fiction Studies
13 (1967): 389-399.

 

 

Rexroth, Kenneth. "Lawrence DurrellJ'.Assa 3. Norfolk,
Connecticut: New Directions, 1961. 118-130.

---. "Gnosticismfl' Assay . 131—142.

Russo, John Paul. "Love in Lawrence Durrell." Prairie
Schooner 44 (1970): 396-407.

 

Schlegel, Richard. "The Impossible Spectator in Physich'
Centennial Review 19 (1975): 217-231.

 

Scholes, Robert. Fabulation and Metaf3ction. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1979.

 

213

Scholes, Robert & Robert Kellogg. The Nature 33 Narrative.
London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

 

 

Suttie, Ian D. The Origins 33 Love and Hate. 1952. New
Yerkn Julian Press, Inc.,1966.

 

 

Taylor, Chet. "Dissonance and Digression: The Ill-Fitting
Fusion of Philosophy and Form in Lawrence Durrell's
Alexandria QuartetJ' Modern Fiction Studies 17 (1972):

 

 

 

Thomas, Alan G. & James A. Brigham. Lawrence Durrell: 33
Illustrated Checklist. Carbondale & EdwardSVille:
Sonhern Illinois university Press, 1983.

 

 

Unterecker, John. "Fiction at the Edge of Poetry: Durrell,
Beckett, Green." Forms 33 Modern British Fiction. Ed. by
Alan Warren Friedman. Austin, Texas: University of Texas
Press, 1975. 166-199.

 

---. "Lawrence Durrell." Columbia Essays 33 Modern Writers.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1963. Rpt. in 333
Contemporary Novelists. Ed. by G. Stade. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1976. 219-269.

 

 

 

Wedin, Warren. "The Artist as Narrator in The Alexandria
Quartet." Twentieth Century Literature 18 (1972): 175-
180.

 

 

 

Weigel, John A. "Lawrence Durrell's First Novel." Twentieth
Century Literature 14 (1968): 75-83.

 

 

 

---. Lawrence Durrell. New York: E. P. Dutton 8: Co., Inc.,
1966?

 

Yudin, Florence L. "Lawrence Durrell's Songs to SyntaxJ'
Lan uage and Style: 33 International Journal 16 (1983):
77- 6-

 

 

 

   

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