A Study of The Expression of Lawrence Durrell's Heraldic Universe in A Selection of His Fictional Work

A Study of the Expression of Lawrence Durrells Heraldic Universe in a Selection of
his Fictional Work

Lynne Lowes
A STUDY OF THE EXPRESSION OF

LAWRENCE DURRELLS HERALDIC
UNIVERSE IN A SELECTION OF
HIS FICTIONAL WORK
Lynne Lowes
April 2003

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Lynne Lowes
CONTENTS
An Introduction to the Heraldic Universe
Page 1
Chapter One
Eastern Philosophy, Buddhism and The Heraldic Universe
Page 7
Chapter Two
Durrell and Freudian Theory
Page 12
Chapter Three
Durrells Adoption of Einsteins Space-Time Concept
Page 19
Chapter Four
The Influence of Groddeck
Page 25
A Summary of Durrells Heraldic Universe and its

Use in the Fiction of his Canon
Page 32
Endnotes
Page i
Bibliography
Page vii

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An Introduction to the Heraldic Universe

According to Professor Paul H. Lorenz, Durrells literary canon springs from many
sources and merges many idioms (1) and it is from the same basis that the content of
Durrells philosophy, a system which he called The Heraldic Universe, is formed. This
thesis will explore some of these sources and idioms, relate them to The Heraldic
Universe, which is inherent in Durrells work, and investigate the translation of the
system into the literature of four of his novels: The Black Book, The Alexandria
Quartet, The Revolt of Aphrodite and The Avignon Quintet.
As early as August, 1936, when Durrell was only twenty four years old, he was already
formulating his philosophy as he wrote to the American novelist, Henry Miller:
What I propose to do is to create my HERALDIC UNIVERSE quite alone.
The foundation is being quietly laid. I AM SLOWLY BUT VERY
CAREFULLY AND WITHOUT ANY CONSCIOUS THOUGHT
DESTROYING TIME. (2)
The Heraldic Universe was the title Durrell gave to his then embryonic ideology
which was to underpin his future literary achievements; its importance to the young
Durrell is apparent when he writes The Heraldic Universe when I get through with it
will be the only habitable place. It will be full of creators of real caliber. (3) In another
letter to Miller, Durrell further clarifies his thoughts on this subject as he relates how:
All great art of every kind and degree is this struggle to impose the inner on the
outer, to transform the material, the social, to the psychic. The Heraldic
Universe is just a name for that element in which that queer fish the artist
swims. THE PRECISE NATURE <POSITION> OF THIS REALITY, WHICH
DEMANDS AS YET A REAL PHILOSOPHIC PLACE IN THOUGHT, I
WANT TO TRY AND FIX. !!!!!!<each writer establishes the nature for himself.
But I want a philosophic admission of this reality. (4)
Durrells objective was to give his imagination free rein and allow his thoughts and
ideas, whatever their content, to be illustrated unreservedly and without deference to
what was considered to be acceptable at the time. This aspect of the artist was to reside
in the Heraldic Universe where Durrell would be allowed to write exactly as it suited
him to do so; freely and without adhering to the already established and accepted
methods of novel writing. The resultant novels clearly illustrate the achievement of
his aims by allowing the influence of the Heraldic Universe to permeate them; they
are consequently also modernistic and innovative. For example, in writing The
Avignon Quintet Durrell toys with well-known concepts; he uses a frame within a
frame within a frame, a Russian doll effect, and one assumes that Durrell, as author,
creates his narrator, Blanford, who is also an author. Blanfords life and the lives of
his friends are depicted in the pages of The Quintet courtesy of Lawrence Durrell.
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Blanford, as a fictitious novelist, writes about a character called Sutcliffe who is also
a novelist. Sutcliffe, in turn, writes about his life and friends. But Durrells style is
not actually so simplistic.
The reader, whilst being unaware of Durrells intrusion, is made very aware of
Sutcliffes intrusion into Blanfords life. In the first volume of The Quintet,
Monsieur, the reader is introduced to Blanfords protagonist and narrator, Bruce
Drexel, who refers to Rob Sutcliffes famous novel about us all. (5) This implies that
Rob Sutcliffe is a contemporary of Bruces and therefore a fictional character created
by the un-named, as yet, author who has created Bruce. This is further corroborated
when Bruce meets the recumbent Toby whose sleeping likeness to Rob Sutcliffe
was almost uncanny two huge short-sighted men with sandy unruly hair and
colourless eyelashes while looking down at the sleeping Toby I was also seeing
Rob Sutcliffe. (6) Indeed Sutcliffe is mentioned several times as a figure contemporary
to Bruce Drexel; it is revealed that he married Drexels sister, Pia, and, later in the
volume, there is a whole chapter narrated by Sutcliffe himself. The reader is further
confused, however, as the account of Sutcliffes thoughts on a plot for a new novel
about Oakshot, his fictitious hero, are revealed; Sutcliffes thoughts are not
apparently his own. As he contemplates translating personal experience into the novel he
observes You could have him saying to Oakshot in despair what he once said to me
I mean to Sutcliffe. (7) The readers confusion is intensified; just exactly who is the
narrator?
As the novel progresses fiction and reality are fused even further. The character,
Sabine, who moves with ease amongst the pages of The Avignon Quintet and exists as
the same character with the same name (the others have doppelgangers with
different names) in all the different levels of narrative throughout, reads the plot of
Sutcliffes novel from the Tarot: in her slow and thoughtful description it was all there
... The lady in her evening gown; tippet sleeves and sequins which of the many
versions, all disastrous? (8) Sabine can obviously see all the potential versions which
the several authors may write, therefore reality is further confused and the
subterranean levels that exist within the novel are exposed. The chapter continues,
causing the reader to experience reality and unreality simultaneously, a dream-like state,
fulfilling Bruce Drexels observations earlier in the book: I notice the shift of verb
tenses in these hasty notes they throw my memories in and out of focus, as time
itself and reality melts in and out of focus when you dream. (9) The application of
Durrells Heraldic Universe to the plot is very clear as the reader observes these shifts
and inconsistencies.
The Avignon Quintet is far from being a novel in the accepted stylistic sense which is
usually a descriptive sequential account of peoples lives, a roman fleuve. Indeed,
Durrell states this within The Quintet as the character, Sutcliffe, says the ideal book
le roman appareil. After all, why not a book full of spare parts of other books, of
characters left over from other lives, all circulating in each others bloodstreams - yet all
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fresh, nothing second-hand (10) and it is the mechanistic roman appareil style that
Durrells work can be most closely associated with. Thus Sutcliffes characters are
Blanfords characters twice removed; but eventually all of Sutcliffes characters
become a part of Blanfords life also. So, whereas in the first volume of The Quintet:
Monsieur, the lives and exploits of Toby, Piers, Sylvie, Banquo, Bruce Drexel, Pia and
Sabine are narrated by Sutcliffe; in the second volume, Livia, the reader is greeted with
the first person narrative of Aubrey Blanford, the real narrator, as he receives news of the
death of Constance. The rest of the volume does not contain Sutcliffes characters from
Monsieur but we are introduced to a new set of people: Constance, Livia, Hilary,
Sam, Quatrefages, Lord Galen, Prince Hassad, and Felix Chatto; or indeed
doppelgangers, for all the new characters seem to have their alter-ego in Sutcliffes
creations. Throughout The Quintet, and indeed in other Durrell novels, the characters
are depicted as one-dimensional; they are enigmas, abstracts, entities; their
personalities are intangible and ethereal. Thus by the third volume of The Quintet,
Constance, there is an amalgamation of the two sets of characters and both
Blanfords and Sutcliffes characters appear together. The Quintet progresses in this
manner, moving between reality and unreality, real and imaginary characters; but
all becomes nebulous. In the final volume, Quinx, the reader is finally assured of what
is happening although it is still perplexing. As the story draws to an end a festival
is described in which:
The Prefet made a slow official circuit now to shake the hands of the invitees,
noting with interest that some of them came from other time-fields or other
contingent realities like Toby and Drexel, who was there with his two
charming and juvenile ogres who seemed rather like impersonations of
Piers and Sylvie of the past. In fact there was hardly anyone missing. (11)
It is apparent, therefore, that the Prefet at least has been an acquaintance of both
Blanfords and Sutcliffes characters in the past as well as in the present. Indeed the
fictional characters of Sutcliffes are often to be found residing in the asylum
featured in Blanfords narrative which clearly indicates how Durrell is attempting to
illustrate the separation of the mind and the body, the spirit and the soul, the ego and
the id, the essence of madness. Where does fiction end and reality begin?
It is this problem that Durrell addresses in his novels in a desire to illustrate his Heraldic
Universe theory, and, Anna Lillios, in her article, A Brief Analysis of Lawrence Durrells
Fiction, comments on this same point. Lillios states that Durrells aim in writing is
to sum up in a sort of metaphor the cosmology of a particular moment in which we
are living ... through his characters [he] asks philosophical questions such as what is
the nature of reality? How does the artist describe it in words? (12) Lillios refers to
Durrells origins in India and the subsequent amalgamation of Eastern and Western
philosophies, including Buddhism, in the adult Durrell. She also refers to the influences
of Freud and Einstein. It is these components, together with the The Book of the It
by psychologist Georg W. Groddeck, which form the backbone of Durrells Heraldic
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Universe, a personal philosophy that summarises his intellect and influences his literary
work.
The following pages will investigate how each of these four major contributors
influenced the formation of Durrells ideology, and examples from four of his major
novels, The Black Book, The Alexandria Quartet, The Revolt of Aphrodite, and The
Avignon Quintet, will be used to illustrate how the Heraldic Universe is translated into
Durrells literary canon.

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Chapter One
Eastern Philosophy, Buddhism and the Heraldic Universe

Although his time in India was brief, and Durrell was only a child, he often referred to
the influence Eastern culture had on him:
Until eleven marvellous memories - white, white Himalayas from the
dormitory windows. The gentle black Jesuits praying to our lady and outside on
the frontier roads the Chinese walking stiffly and Tibetans playing cards on the
ground: the blue fissures in the hills. God what a dream, the passes into Lhasa blue with ice and thawing softly towards the holy forbidden city I lived on
the edge of it with a kind of nursery-rhyme happiness. I wanted to go one
summer into the passes. They promised to take me. But I left without going alamort - it is kind of unreasoning disease when I think of it. (1)
In Lawrence Durrells biography, Ian MacNiven clarifies this by observing that

Durrells deepest regret was that he had not been given the promised trip to Tibet. All
his life Tibet - as much as India - would haunt him. "I was really trying to find my way
back to India", he said ... by way of explaining his intellectual and spiritual odyssey. (2)
Lillios believes that for Durrell the closest equivalent philosophical system [to The
Heraldic Universe]... can be found in Eastern philosophies. According to Buddhism,
once the ego stops its selfish cravings, it enters a state of oneness with the universe.
She adds that the quests on which his characters embark do not exactly follow the
traditional pattern of the western hero. Instead, these journeys more closely correspond
to the movement of the soul in reincarnation. (3) Reincarnation is a particularly Eastern
and Buddhist belief; one in which Durrell had already expressed great interest after
reading of the mummification ritual in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the journey
of the soul in the Tibetan Book of the Dead; a good example of Lillios former
observation can be found in the multi-layered text of The Avignon Quintet where
Durrell consistently illustrates the rejection of permanence for the soul and uses his
multi-layered characters in their several different lives to depict this. The gipsy and
soothsayer, Sabine, succinctly illustrates this idea as she reveals that:
we each have as many destinies stacked up inside us as a melon has seeds. They
live on in potential so to speak. One does not know which will mature ... You
have many discernible destinies - in one you are to die in childbirth ... in
another you will die together ... It is part of a great accident, something like an
earthquake. All of you, all of us, have as many destinies as the sands of the
seashore. (4)
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Durrells preoccupation with the quest of ones soul and its unlimited potential is
revealed also in the characters of his canon who seem to be mostly one dimensional;
they appear to have no actual bodily substance to deter them from their spiritual quest.
In fact in The Black Book, the character Tarquin, in a moment of heightened self
realization, exclaims of himself and his fellow characters: we do not exist; we are
fictions (5) and in The Alexandria Quartet the character, Clea, in describing her friend,
Justine, comments that she simply and magnificently is; we have to put up with her,
like original sin. (6) As we have seen, Durrell is still exploring this theory of the quest
of the soul by his last great novel, The Avignon Quintet, as Blanford rhetorically asks
where do people end? Where do their imaginations begin? (7) Talking about his plans
for The Avignon Quintet Durrell summarised his mature thoughts on the merging of
Eastern and Western philosophies, whilst simultaneously acknowledging Buddhist
doctrine:
The non-ego attitude is its ideal, and its science emphasises the
insubstantiability of matter, and posits a kind of energy over mass state of
mind ... I would like to try and use the by-products of Asiatic
philosophy ... people? They will be spare parts of one another from the
cosmic point of view Underneath the action will I hope be the Asiatic
notion of a world renewed afresh with each thought. (8)
and, as we have seen in the introduction to this thesis, The Avignon Quintet does
indeed contain people who are spare parts of one another.
Durrells earlier work, The Alexandria Quartet, was given the working title The
Book of the Dead, obviously having been influenced by Durrells admiration of both
the Egyptian and Tibetan Book[s] of the Dead. In an interview with Marc Alyn,
Durrell begins to explore the technique and reasoning behind his own Book of the
Dead: To my eyes, Proust had exhausted the literary potential of our society; I had
to find something else ... to go back to the origins: The Book of the Dead, ... to the
occult traditions which are still alive in the East. (9) Evidence that this was indeed
what happened is contained in a letter dated 1941 when he wrote to Henry Miller
the cloud lifted and I saw the WHOLE BOOK OF THE DEAD lying below me
like a forbidden superb city. I am ready to begin it now. (10) The superb city became
the Alexandria of The Quartet, which, according to the biographer, Bowker, became
synonymous with something wider: a universe of ideas which Durrell had evolved
through his own metaphysical quest for meaning. (11) In The Quartet itself the exiled
narrator, Darley, muses about his past in Alexandria and relates the city to the realm
of his own artistic imagination: From this vantage point ... rereading, re-working
reality in the light of all I now know ... perhaps then the destruction of my private
Alexandria was necessary. (12) Later, when he has been summoned to return to
Alexandria, Darley realizes that for him it was the one city which ... always hovered
between illusion and reality ... Alexandria, the capital of memory. (13)
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On the same city as a field of imagination theme the critic, Cecily Mackworth,
claims that in the Alexandria of The Quartet the landscape is a living limbo of
freewill ... The world with its polite lid off ... a perfect culture in which the full
"multiplicity" of the various characters can develop, free from the restrictions that
would be imposed on them by an occidental society. (14) Thus Durrell had created
a parallel of the Heraldic Universe in the Alexandria of The Quartet. Living in the
city allowed the characters to express themselves as freely as Durrell was able to
practice his literary art in his own Heraldic Universe. Therefore Alexandria was
created as an arena where the imaginative journeys of the psyche and the soul of each
character is replicated, as prescribed by The Book of the Dead.
It was, therefore, the adoption of Eastern ideologies, particularly those contained in
the Tibetan Book of the Dead which influenced Durrells creation of Alexandria and
the characters who reside in that space. The Tibetan Book of the Dead explains, in
Buddhist terms, what happens to the soul once it has begun its journey following the
death of the body. The essence of the teaching is: each persons after-death
experiences ... are entirely dependent upon his or her own mental content. In other
words ... the after-death state is very much like a dream state, and its dreams are the
children of the mentality of the dreamer. (15) Similarly, as we have seen, The
Alexandria Quartet is concerned with the free imagination of the characters, which
could be compared to a dream state, and the journeys of the soul in the form of unstable
egos; it also offers a surreal landscape where dream-like figures live, work and love.
Considering the Eastern influence MacNiven comments that Durrell would have
liked nothing better than to change the way we think ... the key to the reform of the
Western personality was the grip of the ego, and here Buddhisms denial of a unique,
discrete self was central to his thinking. (16) Durrell has expressed this idealism in
The Alexandria Quartet; he has illustrated the rejection of the discrete ego among the
living. (17) Indeed Lillios states that in his writing Durrell used characterization that
[was] more amorphous and ambiguous (18) than D. H. Lawrences old stable ego and
she concludes that the major influence on this aspect of Durrells philosophy was, of
course, Freud.

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Chapter Two
Durrell and Freudian theory

Durrell aired his thoughts on Freud in an essay entitled The World Within recorded in
the book, A Key to Modern British Poetry. In the essay he considers the influence of
Freuds theories on literature, and, simultaneously, reveals Freuds effect on the
formation of the Durrellian Heraldic Universe philosophy. Durrell painstakingly
explains how it was Freuds interpretation of dreams which has led to the
extensive use of symbolism in literature and explains that the test of the dream, as of
the modern poem, is the law of association. (1) Whilst he acknowledges Jungs and
Adlers contributions to psychology it is from Freudian findings ... another thing was
becoming clear - that words in the unconscious were double in meaning, just as so
many of the impulses were double. (2) His subsequent novels bear witness to this
belief; within them Durrells characters lead multi-faceted lives, nothing is ever as it
first appears as the conscious mind accepts things at face value but the unconscious
mind reads beneath the surface. The first page of the second volume of The Revolt
of Aphrodite takes the reader immediately into this Freudian concept: Asleep or
awake - what difference? Or rather, if there were a difference how would you
recognize it? And if it were a recognisable difference would there be anything or
anyone to care if you did or not. The narrative continues in a dream like way: He
wakes, then, this manifestation of myself so vaguely realized that it is hard to believe
in him ... well, where am I then? (3) The narrator is attempting to ground himself, as
in sleep he is unsure if he is the subject or the object of his observations, hence the
changes in narrative from first to third person. This disruption of the narrative
contributes to the dream state of this particular waking mind and often in Durrells
work the reader will find that tenses and narrators change imperceptibly. Durrell
uses this technique to illustrate the mechanics of the psyche which Freud had taught
him was not whole but split, that there was indeed a subconscious mind which had a
great influence on our conscious one.
As Durrells essay progresses, he ponders on this puzzle which Freud addressed:
was there ... a part of the mind not accessible to conscious thought ... was
there an unconscious as well as a conscious part of the mind? (4) Durrell
continues by suggesting that the literature of our age is distinguished by ... the
change in our attitude to the psyche; (5) and he stresses that certain by-products of
psychoanalysis, in its effects on language and symbolism are the main aspects of
Freuds theory with which he is concerned. Disentangling dreams ... fantasies ... race10

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myths ... folk-tales, (6) and the sexual preoccupations of childhood, were all Freudian
ingredients which Durrell used to develop characters and plot. Therefore the dreams
of Justine are disentangled in The Alexandria Quartet and recorded in a book entitled
Moeurs; fantasy is re-enacted in The Revolt as Julian directs the creation of the robot
Iolanthe, the woman he had loved from afar whilst she was alive; The Quartet, is
abundant with race-myths, the richness of Egyptian life together with the resident
historic Jewish and Greek population of Alexandria providing abundant material;
for the re-writing of folk-tales one should turn to the examination of the templar
Knights, Gnostic beliefs and treasure hunting which are contained within The Quintet;
and finally, the sexual preoccupations of childhood are to be found in the eccentric
characters who reside in the Regina Hotel of The Black Book. However, the marvel
of Durrells palimpsest novels is that all of these Freudian ingredients can be
traced within the pages of all of his novels; no single novel contains only one aspect
as Durrell consistently uses these Freudian foundations to build plot and character. The
Heraldic Universe incorporates Durrell's Freudian beliefs and, as we have seen,
Durrell writes as an artist from within that exalted realm.
According to Durrell's biographer, MacNiven, Durrell 'had been reading Freud
diligently by 1934 and dabbling in the psychoanalysis of his family and friends'. His
debut novel, Pied piper of Lovers, was subsequently a self-analysis in part and,
interestingly in this respect, MacNiven observes Durrell saying, perhaps
dangerously, of Freud's psychoanalytic theory 'if it's true ... then none of us can be
really responsible for our actions.' (7) Durrell's private life remains his own, but this
observance in Pied Piper is a parallel of the beliefs of Oscar Wilde and devotees of
the fin de siecle who chose to interpret Pater in a similar way leading to an often
debauched and degenerate artifice. Expounding Freud's psychoanalytical theory the
same approach to life can be found, albeit on a lesser scale, in Durrell's writing. In
The Black Book, the primary narrator, Lawrence Lucifer, describes an assignation with
an un-named lover whom he describes as a:
Flesh robot with cold thighs and fingers of icicles ... If I can find her moist and
open between two sheets anywhere among the seven winds, you can have
everything that lives and agonizes between the twin poles ... my personality has
been snipped from my body now. (8)
The cold detachment of the narrator from the presumably warm and welcoming body
of his lover describes the assertion of the sub-conscious and intimates the resultant
dangers as Lucifer's personality is detached from his ego and the moral restraint
imposed by the Superego. As the couple make love, in a surreal scene where they lie
upon snow and are surrounded by cattle, Lucifer's imaginative artifice is given free rein
as he fantasizes how:
her spine has been liquefied, drawn out of her. She is filleted, the jaw
telescoped with language, eyes glassy. Under my mouth a rouged vagina
speaking a barbaric laughter and nibbling my tongue. It is all warm and raw: a
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spiritual autumn with just that scent of corruption, that much death in it, to
make it palatable ... I am happy. (9)
Fortunately Lucifer's imagination is enough to satisfy the needs of his subconscious,

his unrestrained id, but the psychotic possibilities are clearly indicated and in later
Durrellian novels this tendency actually manifests itself in certain characters. For
example, in The Revolt of Aphrodite, the character Iolanthe kills her homosexual
brother by cutting his throat; her justification simply being that she saved her father
from committing the horrible deed.
Homosexuality and sexual inversion of every kind is included in Durrell's canon, and this
Freudian-Durrellian attitude to love and sex was later to be crystallized into what
Durrell termed 'modern love' in The Alexandria Quartet. Clea, one of the main
characters of The Quartet and one whose name is given to the fourth volume in the
series, tells Darley, the narrator:
there is something about love ... something we have mistaken about its
nature. For example, the love you now feel for Justine is not a different love
for a different object but the same love you feel for Melissa trying to work
itself out through the medium of Justine. Love is horribly stable, and each of
us is only allotted a certain portion of it, a ration. It is capable of appearing in
an infinity of forms and attaching itself to an infinity of people. But it is limited
in quantity, can be used up, become shop-worn and faded before it reaches
its true object. For its destination lies somewhere in the deepest regions of the
psyche where it will come to recognize itself as self-love, the ground upon
which we build the sort of health of the psyche. I do not mean egoism or
narcissism. (10)
What Clea is stating here is that an individual has a virtual product called love which is
fixed within you. You have to apply it to people and objects and can do so repeatedly
but your supply of love is limited, it can be used up. The ultimate object for the product
is the self, and Clea warns that you must be careful to save some of your love for the
self, self-love being essential for psychic health. This, therefore, is what Durrell
means when he uses the term 'modern love', the love of the self primarily, and your
application of it to others. Within The Quartet are depicted two extremes of this;
Melissa, the whore with a heart of gold, another common figure in Durrell's canon,
is an exotic dancer and a prostitute. However she uses all her love on the men in her
life, particularly Darley, who does not reciprocate; ultimately Melissa dies. Justine,
meanwhile, is the complete opposite of Melissa, being aloof and coldly sexual.
Justine's love is kept mainly for herself, and she survives although she is maimed.
Durrell quantifies his Freudian beliefs, which are incorporated into the Heraldic
Universe, in an interview with Jean Fanchette, editor of the magazine, Two Cities.
Durrell was asked about his claim that The Alexandria Quartet was 'an investigation of
modern love', to which Durrell replied that 'love [is] the point faible of the psyche;
human and divine love ... Freud has disintegrated 'the old stable ego' ... and restored
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the old double sexed Eros of Plato. There is such a thing as modern love.' (11) Thus
Durrell believes that through the work of Freud, modern love has become an
amalgamation of the beauty of the body and the beauty of the mind. However, in
referring to the 'double sexed eros of Plato', surely Durrell is also inferring Pausanias'
common eros, the love of the common man who is as likely to fall for a woman as a
boy. Certainly from the sexual variations to be found in his novels, Durrell does indeed
expound this notion.
Bowker, in an unofficial biography of Lawrence Durrell entitled Through the Dark
Labyrinth, provides a useful, succinct summary of the influence of Freud on Durrell's
development of the Heraldic Universe and its subsequent application to The Alexandria
Quartet:
Freud opens the path into the human interior, no longer clear, whole and fixed,
but obscure, divided and unstable. His ideas on sex lead away from its being
seen as a unifying and joining process towards the view that it is one of division
and disjunction. Analysis was moving away from causal explanation towards
the idea of creative balance; similarly the artist is moving from the selfcontemplative form towards the resolution of contradictions for the sake of the
overall pattern. All this anticipates and underpins his [Durrell's] Alexandria
Quartet. (12)
Bowker's statement confirms what is illustrated in Durrell's novels: sex no longer

unifies but separates. Similarly, in contemporary analysis, creative balance was
becoming the popular idea and this was echoed by the attempt of the artist to create an
overall pattern in his work, an attempt which was successfully achieved by Durrell
who created his own 'overall pattern' within the environs of the Heraldic
Universe. Durrell himself summarises the effect of Freud's influence on the
Heraldic Universe at the end of his essay 'The World Within':
To us, living in the fifties, it seems that the pendulum has swung out very far in
the direction of the 'romantic' or the 'mystical'. We are probably in the midst of
reaction still. ... Cosmology, in an attempt to remain inclusive of the so-called
'known facts of science', finds itself all but joining hands with those who favour
a deeply mystical view of the world. (13)
From this statement it is apparent that Durrell had satisfactorily aligned Freudian
theory with his Buddhist and Eastern theological influences. There were now only a
couple more ingredients essential for the completion of the mature Heraldic Universe
philosophy. Returning to Anna Lillios, she explains how for Durrell 'if ... the human
personality is not fixed, the cosmology of the age needs to reflect these uncertainties';
she believes that 'in Durrell's' view, Freud's discovery of the universe inside humankind
parallels Einstein's investigations into the world outside,' (14) and it is to Einstein's
theory of Relativity that Durrell turned to add the space-time dimension to the Heraldic
Universe.
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Chapter Three
Durrell's Adoption of Einstein's Space-Time Concept

Durrell believed that Einstein's theory of Relativity 'joined up subject and object, in
very much the same way as it joined up space and time.' (1) He goes on to clarify the
parts of the theory with which he was concerned from a literary point of view:
As far as we are concerned only two aspects of it interest us: its attitude to
time and its attitude to the subject-object relationship ... It showed us that the
picture which each observer makes of the world is in some degree subjective.
Even if different observers all take their pictures at the same moment of
time, and from the same point in space, these pictures will not be alike
unless the observers happen to be moving at the same speed. Only then would
they be identical. (2)
Consequently in writing The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell created a four-decker novel

based on Einstein's theory. Three of the four volumes of the quartet were spatial and
depicted the same events as experienced by three different people who, although they
lived in close proximity to each other, actually dispersed space in time at fractionally
different moments and thus experienced slightly differing perspectives. In other words
these three characters, apropos of Durrell's adaptation of Einstein's theory of Relativity,
were not moving at the same speed, thus occupying different space and viewpoints
although they were all in the same place and time. Thus what the protagonist, Darley,
believes he has understood and experienced in Alexandria is modified by Balthazar
who was in Alexandria at the same time but viewing events from a distortion of space
caused by speed. The character Clea also offers her own perspective on the same
events but again, her observations are distorted. The 'fixed' volume novel of the four,
Mountolive, is narrated in the third person rather than by Darley, and it provides the
'fixed in space' axis upon which the other three accounts are moving. Although it is
'fixed' in space, time flows in a straight line throughout Mountolive, unlike the three
sibling, spatial novels.
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Durrell eagerly welcomed the new ideas on time into the Heraldic Universe and, although
modernists such as Woolf and Joyce had already experimented in their own work
with the issues of time, it was the addition of Durrell's Heraldic Universe to the concept
which made his own investigation very different. Durrell was, however, attacked
for his approach; he was accused of being entirely unoriginal by Martin Green who
'argues that if you pushed the Quartet back forty years into the context of Norman
Douglas' South Wind and similar novels, a good deal of the strangeness of the
Quartet would disappear.' (3) Fraser agrees with him, believing that:
Perhaps a little too much has been written about the importance of Durrell's
ideas about time in relation to the Alexandria Quartet ... [it is] not Durrell's
invention. It is, if anybody's, Conrad's and Ford Madox Ford, in The Good
Soldier. (4)
But Durrell defended himself 'after reading The Good Soldier on advice [he] said "I'm
so glad I didn't read [it] before writing Justine [the first volume of The Quartet] or I
might never have finished her!' He added that whereas The Good Soldier is 'all tucked
in and painless ... the ragged ends [in Justine] illustrate the principle of indeterminacy.'
(5) The similarity between The Good Soldier and The Alexandria Quartet is also pointed
out by Bowker, but, in Durrell's defence, he concludes that 'the haunting quality of
his poetic prose, here brought to perfection, made this an extraordinarily
distinctive literary achievement;' (6) and, in his own defence, Durrell, keen to adopt
the Relativity theory of Einstein into his Heraldic Universe, explained in his essay,
'Space Time and Poetry':
w h e n w e v i e w o u r s e l v e s i n s p a c e a n d t i m e o u r consciousnesses are
obviously the separate individuals of a particlepicture, when we pass beyond
space and time (presumably into the continuum which is formed of a mixture
of both) they may perhaps form ingredients of a single continuous stream of
life. (7)
This observation is very much in tune with his burgeoning Freudian beliefs and the
influential Buddhist doctrine of the East. Whereas the theories of Freud had influenced
Durrell to believe that we are not solely responsible for our actions, and Eastern
philosophy had espoused the desired state of oneness with the universe; Einstein was
now complementing the two by adding a dimension beyond space and time. Durrell
felt that this dimension would be the ideal arena for Freud's collective
unconscious and Buddhism's ultimate destination of the soul. Above all Einstein
was offering a place which was a mirror image of Durrell's own Heraldic Universe. It
was now up to Durrell to portray the journey he himself had made into the Heraldic
Universe, a similar task to that undertaken in the past by William Blake as he strove to
translate into poetry his complex symbolism and personal mythology; and that of Gerard
Manley Hopkins poetic depiction of his 'instress' and 'inscape' ideology.
Consequently in The Alexandria Quartet Durrell himself provides a simple
directive of how he aims to achieve the portrayal of his quest:
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You might try a four card trick in the form of a novel, passing a common
axis through four stories say ... human personality seen across a continuum
would become prismatic ... it might raise in human terms the problems of
causality or indetermination ... tackled in this way you would not, like most
of your contemporaries, be drowsily cutting along a dotted line! (8)
Another clue can be found earlier in the novel as the narrator, Darley, reveals 'what I
most need to do is to record experiences, not in the order in which they took place
for that is history but in the order in which they first became significant for me.' (9)
Durrell believed that following these directives would enable the depiction of SpaceTime in the novel. Lionel Trilling, however, is not convinced.
In an essay entitled 'The Quartet: two Reviews', Trilling reduces Durrell's claim of
having created a 'four-decker novel whose form is based on the relativity proposition'
to the more acceptable, in his view, 'purpose of ... the difficulty of ever
knowing (especially in love affairs) what has actually happened and what peoples
motives really are ... be careful to accept no statement at its face value.' (10) This
observation has the effect of greatly simplifying the somewhat complex theories
which Durrell expounds, thus making the understanding of this aspect of the Heraldic
Universe seem slightly less formidable. MacNiven, meanwhile, wholly accepting
Durrell's Heraldic Universe, comments 'In Einstein Larry [Lawrence Durrell] hoped
he had found an answer: by embracing relativity, he could seize the moment and
repeat it at will;' (11) and ultimately the evidence of the success of Durrell's approach
to, and use of, the Relativity theory is clear when one reads The Alexandria Quartet.
Looking outside of Durrell's work it is possible to find further evidence to support
Durrell's adaptation of Einstein's theory. Bowker observes the effects of Einstein's
theory of Relativity on literature in general:
Einstein's theory had relativized not only our view of the material world but
also the human personality. Dickens and Dostoevsky, whose narratives progress
along a straight line, represent the old thinking; Joyce, Proust and Eliot, whose
work proceeds through spiralling and counter-spiralling motions, represent the
new. (12)
Quite obviously Durrell belongs with the 'new thinking' novelists and Bowker
concludes that Durrell wanted to 'avoid thinking along straight lines when science
informs us that time is curved;' (13) thus Durrell's resultant work, particularly within
The Black Book, The Alexandria Quartet and The Avignon Quintet successfully
follows the pattern previously laid down by Durrell.
Another supportive example of Durrell's Space-Time literary experiment can be found
in the book Supernature written by the biologist Lyall Watson. This time the example is
not referring to literature but still portrays how Durrell's adoption of the Relativity
theory was perfectly feasible. Durrell's message is confirmed by Watson as he
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introduces a chapter within Supernature entitled 'New Dimensions' which includes,

of course, Time:
Nothing is what it seems. We see two things happen and we say that one took
place before the other, we can even measure the time interval between the
two with one of our artificial time keepers, but this may not be what took place
at all. If the two events were sufficiently distant from us and from each
other, information about them would come to us at different times. Someone
watching from another vantage point might see them taking place
simultaneously, and for a third person, in yet another position, the order of
events could be completely reversed. (14)
Watson is unintentionally reiterating the plot of The Alexandria Quartet in his account
of time within cosmic law and order; indeed, Durrell would have found, within the work
of Watson, scientific support for the whole of his Heraldic Universe theory.
For Durrell, then, the fusion of his knowledge of Eastern and Western philosophies,
Buddhism, the psychoanalytical work of Freud, and now the Relativity theory of Einstein
cemented the foundations of the Heraldic Universe which was to permeate most of
his future canon. The ultimate source which was necessary to complete Durrell's
philosophy and therefore bear an influence on his novels, was the work of a minor
psychologist, Georg W. Groddeck and his extraordinary book, for Durrell at least,
entitled The Book of the It.
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Chapter Four
The Influence of Groddeck

Durrell had discovered Groddeck by 1944 when he wrote to Henry Miller 'I'm
absolutely bowled over by Groddeck's The Book of the It. (1) He believed that
Groddeck's 'system [was] ... simple, and lends itself to an easy summary ... he is the
first analyst to try to go beyond the ego in his conception of human personality'.
Durrell goes on to compare the work of Freud and Groddeck: 'Freud saw the
psyche as an intricate two-piece mechanism, consisting of conscious and
unconscious. To Groddeck the ego and its works were functions of something else. In
his work he applied analysis ... to organic disease.' (2) Ultimately Groddeck espoused
what he called "The It", which was 'The sum total of an individual human being,
physical, mental and spiritual, the organism with all its forces, the microcosmos, the
universe which is a man, I conceive of as self unknown and forever unknowable. ' (3)
Durrell wrote, that whereas Freud believed in the supremacy of the ego, 'Groddeck
considered the ego a mere mask which deluded the human being into thinking that he
was responsible for what he was ... he was convinced that illness or disease was 'one
of the psyche's ways of expressing itself. (4) Above all, Groddeck's view was that
disease was 'a disposition of the It, illnesses are chosen by the It.' (5) Throughout
Durrell's canon there are many examples of this Groddeckian view: Clea, the artist in
The Alexandria Quartet loses a hand in a terrible accident but becomes transformed as
a painter because of the artificial hand she is given. She tells Darley:
its powers are so comprehensive that I am a little frightened of it ... IT can
paint! I have crossed the border and entered into the possession of my kingdom,
thanks to the Hand ... pictures of truly troubling originality and authority were
born ... I know that the Hand was responsible ... 'There is nothing, it seems, that
it cannot do impressively better than I can. (6)
Clea's artistic talent is unleashed once she feels that she is no longer in control of the
work she produces. Durrell's implication here is that she purposefully, although
subconsciously, chose to have the accident where she lost her hand in order for her art
to assert itself, a particularly Groddeckian act. Another example, this time in The
Avignon Quintet, is of a more general nature as Piers states that 'people who can no
longer fall in love can simply pine away, go into a decline, and select unconsciously
a disease which will do the work of a pistol.' (7) In other words if one wishes to die
the 'It' will achieve that wish for you by ensuring your body succumbs to a fatal
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illness; and, in a further general observation later in the novel, the narrator observes
that 'if man did not have his illnesses he would have nothing to shield him from
reality and who could stand that?' (8) Durrell is illustrating how the 'It' asserts
itself to protect the delicate human psyche from the actuality of life, a hard reality
which many sensitive people cannot cope with.
On a related theme, that of hiding from the awful reality of life but in this instance
en masse, the character Banubula, in The Revolt of Aphrodite, explains the epidemic
of Shook Yong, or Koro; this is an actual occidental epidemic which creates mass
panic. Banubula explains:
it is a belief that those who contract this disease experience a sudden feeling of
retraction of the male organ into the abdomen ... accompanied by a hysterical
fear that should the retraction be allowed to proceed ... the whole penis will
simply disappear into the belly with fatal results for the owner ... it spreads like
wildfire, whole communities ... experience utter terror and in their anxiety to
hold on to their own property they grab and pull it to prevent it vanishing:
worse still they often use instrumental aids such as rubber bands, string, clamps,
clothes-pegs and chopsticks, and frequently inflict severe bruising or worse
damage on the organ. (9)
Durrell was obviously greatly interested in this type of mass neurosis which he felt
could be related to Groddeck's theory. The fact that Koro only occurs where there is a
great cultural emphasis on fertility and procreation proved to Durrell that it was not
only in the individual that Groddeck's theory was manifest; socio cultural factors
exerted their influence on the 'It' of the population. If men are pressurized by their
society to procreate, then the fear of any possible failure can be shielded by a desired
'disease', in this instance, Koro. If the penis of the man disappears inside his body he is
no longer physically able to procreate and thus the cultural pressure is eased. The 'It' of
the sum of the whole culture has asserted itself and shielded the male population from
unwanted pressure. Banubula's cure for this epidemic, within the novel, is the
manufacture of a fertility God which was then sold to the afflicted men. Presumably
the cure was brought about by the possibility of the transference of the blame for any
lack of fertility onto the effigy rather than the men blaming themselves for such an
occurrence.
On a lighter note in The Revolt of Aphrodite the mildly depressed Felix observes how
his glands and sense of humour must be related: 'The glands all down one side are
swollen the sense of humour is grossly inflamed;' (10) and a final example, out of so
very many to choose from in the canon, is the following from The Black Book. This
novel was written in 1938, six years before Durrell discovered Groddeck's Book Of
The It. However, a predisposition to Groddeck's influence is apparent, as one can
easily trace the cause and effect of illness throughout the book. This particular
example concerns the character, Gracie, who becomes ill. Gregory writes:
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Superimposed always across our world was the notation of the disease,
with its movements up and down the chart, unpredictable. Yes, it was my
world dying ... without any sort of emotion we were waiting for the last
convulsion of matter, the last shaky dredging out of the lungs, bright spurt
of blood, untying of fingers and knees ... Gracie died just at the time
when I had no emotion whatsoever to spend on her. (11)
Durrell's implication is that Gracie chose to die when Gregory had no emotion to give
to her in order for her to fulfill her own opinion of herself: that she was not of
any importance to him. It is clear from his words, however, that in actual fact his
world was dying along with Gracie, but similarly the 'It' of Gregory has influenced
the negation of any emotion within him thus preventing an emotional crisis he is
unable to handle.
Although Durrell had previously adopted Freudian psychoanalytical theory and found the
principal of causality to be of great interest, the discovery of Groddeck's advanced
theory, particularly the aspects relating to human illnesses, was a triumph and was readily
accepted by him. Durrell had long been interested in illness, disease, and medical
matters, and it is a consequence of this that his novels contain characters that are
maimed, ill, or dying. In The Avignon Quintet alone there is: a hunchback maid;
the tubercular Quatrefages; the wheelchair bound Sutcliffe; the autistic son of Affad;
several deaths and suicides; and the obligatory, for Durrell, psychotic characters such
as Sylvie and the madman, Mnemidis whose illness and treatment are particularly
Groddeckian in manner.
Constance is told by an Egyptian doctor, who formally treated the psychotic murderer,
that Mnemidis:
had a paranoid delusion that the walls of his room were closing in on
him. Well, I had a detention cell specially made for him in which the
walls really did close at the rate of five inches a day. You know, he
reacted positively when it became obvious that it was not a delusion, it
was true: the walls were closing in! One is at home in one's delusions and
only asks to have them verified. (12)
Once Mnemidis realised that the walls actually were moving he became cured from
that particular delusion. The Groddeckian 'It' was causing the paranoia, probably
because Mnemidis was interned, but once the 'It' realised that the fear of the walls
moving was not a fear but a reality, the delusion was no longer valid and Mnemidis
psyche was calmed.
In a similar Groddeckian vein in The Revolt of Aphrodite, Durrell relates how the
narrator, Charlock, uses his invention, a computer named Abel, to attempt to analyse
the film star and former prostitute, Iolanthe. Later, following her death, she is
brought back to life in the form of a robot and the computer is used again, this time
to imprint the recorded personality of the original Iolanthe onto the automaton. An
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instruction is given that upon awakening the Iolanthe robot: 'nothing must be said in
the presence of the dummy to suggest to her that she is one, that she is not real. She
must not be made to doubt her own reality because that might lead to some sort of
memory collapse.' (13) Again the 'It' is happy to believe the psyche of the robot is
real but in this instance the 'It' could influence an illness for the robot's distressed
personality to hide behind were the robot to discover it was not a real person. This
idea allows Durrell to throw open a whole new aspect of the existence of the human
psyche which one would assume could not exist in an automaton. Durrell's implied
answer to this within The Revolt is that because his computer has recorded the
psyche, including the 'It', one presumes, from the living Iolanthe, the whole is
transferable as an entity. Durrell chooses to leave the matter there but the implications
and possibilities are multifarious.
In his introduction to the Vision publication of The Book of the It, Durrell relates that
whilst Groddeck admired and respected Freud, his acknowledgement to him begins
and ends with 'the nature of the dream, ... the meaning of resistance and
transference'. Durrell continues: 'fundamentally he [Groddeck] did not share Freud's
views upon the nature of the forces within the human organism which make for health
or sickness', and Durrell then quotes Groddeck directly: 'I assume that man is
animated by the It, which directs what he does and what he goes through, and that
the assertion "I live" only expresses a small and superficial part of the total experience
"I am lived by the It".' (14) Durrell reiterates: 'the illness, then, bears the same relation
to the patient as does his handwriting ... Groddeck insisted on approaching his
patient, not to meddle with his `disease' but to try and interpret what his 'It' might
be trying to express through the disease.' (15) He quotes Groddeck again: 'I do
maintain ... that man creates his own illnesses for a definite purpose,' (16) and, as we
have seen, Durrell uses this premise over and over again in his novels. Groddeck
found that the 'It' was often troubled enough to cause a disease when there was a
problem within the psyche. The problem areas he concentrated on were:
mother/child relationships; symbols and association; repression and transference;
cruelty; sadism and pain, and all these ideas are to be found in Durrell's novels where
he explores them fully and habitually. Thus Durrell's themes often include heroines
who have lost a child, motherless children, rape, incest, and sexual perversion, together
with the resultant, previously mentioned illnesses, diseases and deformities. This added
dimension can therefore be attributed to the work of Groddeck for Durrell eagerly
grasped at the idea of disease being a form of self expression, added it to his refined
Freudian based theories and translated the whole into yet another part of the Heraldic
Universe.
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A Summary of Durrell's Heraldic Universe and

its use in the Fiction of his Canon
We have now explored some of the major sources and idioms which underpin
Durrell's Heraldic Universe and therefore his literary canon. In summary they are:
Eastern philosophy and Buddhism; Freud's interpretation of dreams and splitting of
the human psyche; Einstein's Relativity theory; and the consolidation of Freud's Id,
Ego and Superego into the 'It' of Groddeck, with its subsequent influence on Durrell's
literary treatment of the diseases and illnesses of humankind.
The Heraldic Universe was, for Durrell then, the culmination of his beliefs
and understanding, of certain aspects of these philosophical, cultural and scientific
theories, all of which were bound together by Durrell's own intellect and interests. Quite
obviously someone's personal philosophy transmutes throughout their life, but,
certainly for Durrell, the factors previously cited provided the foundation from
which the Heraldic Universe was constructed. As we have seen, Durrell was
already formulating a philosophy of his own as early as 1936 when Durrell told
Miller he was destroying time to create his Heraldic Universe. Durrell wrote to
him once again on this personally important and vital subject and, in his next
recorded letter to Miller dated early November 1936, two months after his
revelation about destroying time, Durrell sets out in much more detail his thought
processes which were building on the time foundation. It seems that Durrell had
recently read Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, which triggered complex feelings about
life and art in the young novelist and poet. Throughout his future correspondence with
Miller and often in his novels, Durrell uses the term Hamlet as a collective
pseudonym for allusions to matters concerning the Heraldic Universe. An
example of this can be found in The Avignon Quintet in the chapter entitled 'Dinner at
Quartila's'. The chapter depicts a surreal scene where the creator of the second level
of fictional characters, Blanford, has dinner with the recently deceased Duchess of
Tu (Constance). In their imaginary conversation Blanford refers to his creation, the
novelist Rob Sutcliffe, as a Hamlet figure. They discuss the tragedy of Sutcliffe
which Blanford has written about in a parallel of his own life; Sutcliffe married
Pia whilst Blanford married Livia. Both women were lesbians and eventually left
their husbands for other women. The resultant psychic damage to Blanford and
his alter ego Sutcliffe is paramount, and, in discussing Sutcliffe, the character
Blanford is actually revealing his own torment. Blanford refers to Sutcliffe and his
mental torture as 'The first version of Hamlet' and goes on to explain why, using the
character and problems of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a parallel to the situation of both
Sutcliffe and Blanford:
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nailed to the mother cross he was a good symbol for the inversion which
ruined his life and Pia's, as well as Livia's and my own ... in my panic I got all
my symbolism mixed up everything to do with our personal consummatum
est ... In Hamlet ... it was not only an Oedipus situation, but something more
complicated; he discovered that his Ophelia and Laertes were lovers. To be
or not to be really meant "Should this marriage go on or not? Ophelia had
already told him that Laertes must be the master-mistress of his passion. It was
the pressure of this guilty knowledge ('I'll fit you') that bore down on him,
and then, through him, on her and made them see that there was no way out of
the problem except madness. Which is never any solution. (1)
Durrell has summarized the mnage a trios, which affected the marriages of both
Sutcliffe and Blanford, by alluding to Hamlet, Ophelia and Laertes, for he believed
that within Shakespeare's play lay the answer to Everyman's problems. In short there
are no problems, not externally at any rate. Returning to Durrell's previously
cited 'Hamlet' letter to Henry Miller, he reiterates this concept; there are no actual
problems, problems in reality that is. As an example he refers to Hamlet's frenzied
oration at Ophelia's grave.
Durrell observes:
The terrible irony of his ravings at the grave has never been experienced except
by me. To assure himself? No. Simply because he was so far beyond
anything like her death, living in his own chronology, he engaged in a wordduel with her too-protesting brother. Irony beyond anything ever seen. Two
minutes after, he picks himself up like a drunk and goes off with Horatio,
chattering away. Ophelia is the external tragedy SHE DOES NOT COUNT.
(2)
In his correspondence with Miller, Durrell is fervent as he describes how he needs to

'try and tell ... what I feel'. He describes Hamlet as 'a perfect picture of the inner
struggle, done in terms of the outer one'. To clarify this Durrell states that anyone
trying to rationalize the moods of Hamlet with what is going on around him cannot
ratify the two, because he believes that 'There are two Hamlet's'; the evidence of
Freud's influence on Durrell is clearly seen here. Durrell claims that it is 'only
through the chinks in his armour that we can see the inner man, the worm turning in
the bowels of compassion.' (3) The correspondence continues with Durrell advising
Miller in 1937 that he should read Hamlet again 'because you have the idea that it is
purely a drama of the ideal. But there is more to it. Subtract the ideal, and you have
the framework of your own struggle, every great artist's struggle, stated terribly.' (4)
Clearly Durrell identifies the torment of the artist with Shakespeare's play and to
reiterate this Bowker comments: 'This assertion of the greater significance of the
artist's inner reality compared to the outer reality of everyone else was to evolve
and persist with him, [Durrell].' (5) The idea was not, of course, new. In 1922 Joyce
touched on the same subject in the groundbreaking novel Ulysses. During a
conversation in the library Russell observes:
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Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about
a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring ... the words of Hamlet, bring our
minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the
speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys. (6)
and Mr. Best continues Russell's theme as he explains to Stephen Dedalus and John
Eglinton that Mallarme had written a poem about Hamlet where he described how he
was 'reading the book of himself; (7) and later adds 'But Hamlet is so personal, isn't
it? ... I mean, a kind of private paper ... of his private life.' (8)
Ultimately for Durrell, Hamlet the play had become synonymous with his own inner
and outer struggle as an artist striving to be taken seriously and seeking perfection in
his craft. As the ex journalist and neo novelist, Keats, comments in The Alexandria
Quartet, 'The man of action and the man of reflection are really the same man,
operating on two different fields. But to the same end!' (9) This reiterates
Durrell's explanation of Hamlet's dual character.
In his own work Durrell often refers to this inner struggle with which the artist is
concerned and the difficulty of transposing it into literature. In Livia, the second
volume of The Avignon Quintet, the novelist Blanford confesses that 'the
consolations of art are precious few. He always had a sneaking fear that what he wrote
was too private to reach a reader.' (10) He considers his creation and alter ego,
Sutcliffe and 'he wondered where in his imagination, which was his real life,
Sutcliffe might be he would have liked to talk to him.' (11) Similarly the primary
novelist of The Alexandria Quartet, Darley, confesses how he:
began to see too that the real 'fiction' lay neither in Arnauti's pages nor
Pursewarden's nor even my own. It was life itself that was a fiction we
were all saying it in our different ways, each understanding it according to his
nature and gift ... It was now only that I began to see how mysteriously the
configuration of my own life had taken its shape from the properties of those
elements which lie outside the relative life in the kingdom which
Pursewarden calls the 'heraldic universe'. We were three writers ... confined to a
mythical city from which we were to draw our nourishment. (12)
He is actually stating how life is the fiction and what is within one's mind, or the
Heraldic Universe in Durrell's case, is the reality. This is because life is subjectively
viewed by each individual and interpreted according to his particular psychic make
up. Thus it is possible for three people observing the same events to record different
experiences as Durrell has previously claimed from his adoption of Einstein and his
explanation of the construction of The Alexandria Quartet.
The main sources and idioms which influenced Durrell, and consequently the
Heraldic Universe, have now been explored, but there are, of course, other elements
that Durrell incorporated into his ideology. The centrality of Durrell's innate
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loneliness to his work, and his great interest in the Elizabethans, their culture and
literature, are of further importance to the canon. Regarding the theme of loneliness,
Durrell himself was inherently lonely, as indeed many people are. The American
novelist, Thomas Wolfe clarifies this: 'My view of the world is based on the firm
conviction that solitariness is by no means a rare condition, something peculiar to
myself or to a few specially solitary human beings, but the inescapable, central fact of
human existence' and Georg Lukacs adds: 'Man, thus imagined, may establish contact
with other individuals, but only in a superficial, accidental manner; only, ontologically
speaking, by retrospective reflection. For the others, too, are basically solitary, beyond
significant human relationship.' (13) Durrell's debut novel, The Black Book, contains
many traces of this loneliness. For example Gregory's notebook reveals that:
In the flat that my body inhabits ... I am suddenly aware of the lives
potential in me which are wasting themselves ... each of us contains many
lives, potential lives. They are laid up inside us ... like so many ... railway
lines. Riding along one set toward the terminus, we can be aware of those
other lines, alongside us, on which we might have traveled on which we
might yet travel ... This is simply my way of saying I am lonely. (14)
The theme of loneliness is indeed, central to the majority of Durrell's characters as

they each move through the pages of his novels, seeking solace. In The Avignon
Quintet, the consul, Felix Chatto, suffers from terrible loneliness and insomnia. In a
poignant passage the reader is told of his nightly wanderings:
His real calvary began well after midnight when he rose ... and slowly dressed,
pausing for long intervals to gaze into the bathroom mirror or stand in
bemused silence before the cupboard mirror gazing at his own reflection ...
who was this familiar shadow? He felt completely disembodied as he looked, ...
he stayed in the sitting room gazing at the print hanging over the chimney ...
he would pause awhile before setting off on one of his all-too-frequent night
walks round the town which he had come to regard as the most
melancholy in the whole world. Its eminence, its history, its monuments the
whole thing drove him wild with boredom; mentally he let out shriek after
shriek of hysteria, though of course his lips did not move and his consular face
remained impassive, as befitted a Crown Servant. (15)
and later in the revelations about Chatto's misery we learn that this loneliness can
actually sow the seeds of madness: 'He felt that unless he could find himself fully
occupied the weight of his present boredom and anguish might unseat his reason and
lead him towards what was then known as "a brain fever". He whispered, "Oh God,
not that, someone to talk to, for the love of God!' (16)
Moving from loneliness and on to the importance of Elizabethan literature and
culture, the theme of despair, which is a mark of loneliness, is continued. Durrell had
always been interested in the Elizabethan period and used it as a basis for much of his
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Lynne Lowes
future reflection on matters concerning art. Richard Pine notes that for Durrell 'the
Elizabethan world, - one which he insisted had not evolved from that of the morality
play but was a pristine, original phenomenon was concerned with schizophrenia,
with the very foundation of meaning, despair.' (17) Indeed, Durrell's canon has the
foundations of the Heraldic Universe steeped in the despair of the individual which
Durrell believed was at the heart of Everyman's problems. The Elizabethan's
universal order consisted of the chain of being, the correspondences and the
cosmic dance: 'every speck of creation was a link in the chain,' (18) but horizontally,
across the vertical chain of being, there were a number of planes, or macrocosms
and the whole was 'in a state of music ... it was one perpetual dance.' (19) This
Elizabethan view was in harmony with Durrell's Heraldic Universe which can be
imagined as operating on a similar plan, and, in The Alexandria Quartet, Darley
identifies with other writers in an unintentionally Elizabethan way: 'I saw ... that we
artists form one of those pathetic human chains ... an uninterrupted chain of humans
born to explore the inward riches of the solitary life on behalf of the unheeding
unforgiving community.' (20)
The Heraldic Universe is a private realm where Lawrence Durrell's artistic
imagination and talent reside. Through his work, Durrell has completed the quest to
reach his personal ideology whilst simultaneously recording his journey in his
literature. He is both a baroque and an Epicurean writer; his literature is often exotic,
his lyrical prose movingly beautiful. The extent of his vocabulary results in a richness
and texture rarely seen. His work has had a profound influence on writers such as
Thomas Pynchon and John Fowles for whom Durrell had become 'the girot of a
community of writers whose chief signature was the confusion of identities, of
meaning, of intention.' (21) Above all it must be admitted that Durrell's writing
would not be so absorbing were it not for the influence of the Heraldic Universe, for
it is on that plane that the artist in Durrell was truly set free.
26

his Fictional Work
Lynne Lowes
Endnotes
An Introduction to the Heraldic Universe Pages 1- 6
1. Lorenz Paul H., On Miracle Ground XII Lawrence Durrell and Co.: A Multicultural Circle, The
International Lawrence Durrell Conference, www.cas.ucfedu/durrell/omg12.htan, 19/08/01
2. MacNiven Ian S. (ed), The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80, Faber and Faber, London, 1989, p.18.
3. ibid., p.20.
4. ibid., p.27.
5. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Faber and Faber, London, 1986, p.8.
6. ibid., p.79.
7. ibid., p.194.
8. ibid., p.202.
9. ibid., p.50.
10. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Constance, Faber and Faber, London, 1983,
p.123.
11. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Quinx, Faber and Faber, London, 1985, p.192.
12. Lillios Anna, A Brief Analysis of Lawrence Durrells Fiction, International Lawrence Durrell
Society, http://www.cas.ucf.edu/durrell/ana.htm , 05/02/01
Chapter One - Eastern Philosophy, Buddhism and The Heraldic Universe Pages 7 -11
2. MacNiven Ian S., Lawrence Durrell A Biography, Faber and Faber, London, 1998, p.50.
3. Lillios Anna, A Brief Analysis of Lawrence Durrells Fiction, International Lawrence Durrell
Society, www.cas.ucfedu/durrell/ana.htm, 05/02/01
4. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Quinx, Faber and Faber, London, 1985, p.169.
5. Durrell Lawrence, The Black Book, Faber and Faber, London, 1977, p.37.
6. Durrell Lawrence, The Alexandria Quartet, Faber and Faber, London, 1962, p.68.
7. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Quinx, Faber and Faber, London, 1985, P. 33
9. Durrell Lawrence, The Big Supposer, Lawrence Durrell, A Dialogue with Marc Alyn, translated
from the French by Francine Barker, Abelard-Schuman, London, 1973, p.62.
11. Bowker Gordon, Through the Dark Labyrinth. A Biography of Lawrence Durrell, Sinclair-
27

his Fictional Work
Lynne Lowes
Stevenson, London, 1996, p.227.
13. ibid., p.657.
14. Moore Harry T. (ed), The World of Lawrence Durrell, Southern Illinois University Press, USA,
1962, p.28.
15. Evans-Wentz W. Y., (ed), The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Oxford University Press, 1968-3, p.34.
17. ibid., p.118.
18. Lillios Anna, A Brief Analysis of Lawrence Durrell's Fiction, International Lawrence Durrell
Chapter Two - Durrell and Freudian Theory Pages 12 -18

1. Durrell Lawrence, A Key To Modern British Poetry, University of Oklahoma Press, 1952, p.57.
ibid., p.63.
2. Durrell Lawrence, The Revolt of Aphrodite: Nunquam, Faber and Faber, London, 1970, p.11
4. ibid., p.65.
5. ibid., p.53.
8. ibid., p.62-3.
1962, p.157.
11. Bowker Gordon, Through the Dark Labyrinth. A Biography of Lawrence Durrell, SinclairStevenson, London, 1996, p.191.
13. Lillios Anna, A Brief Analysis of Lawrence Durrell's Fiction, International Lawrence Durrell
Chapter Three - Durrell's Adoption of Einstein's Space-Time Concept Pages 19 - 24

2. ibid., p.28.
28

his Fictional Work
Lynne Lowes
1962, p.136.
4. Fraser G. S., Lawrence Durrell A Study, Faber and Faber, London, 1973, p.139.
5. ibid., p.124.
8. Durrell Lawrence, The Alexandria Quartet, Faber and Faber, London, 1962, p.757-758.
9. ibid., p.97.
1962, p.56.
13. ibid., p.191.
14. Watson Lyall, Supernature, Coronet Books, Hodder Paperbacks Ltd., London, 1974, p.290.
Chapter Four - The Influence of Groddeck Pages 25 - 31

3. ibid., p.74.
4. ibid., p. 74 75
8. ibid., p.273.
9. Durrell Lawrence, The Revolt of Aphrodite: Nunquam, Faber and Faber, London, 1970, p.75.
10. Durrell Lawrence, The Revolt of Aphrodite: Tunc, Faber and Faber, London, 1968, p.18.
12. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Sebastian, Faber and Faber, London, 1985, p.100.
13. Durrell Lawrence, The Revolt of Aphrodite: Nunquam, Faber and Faber, London, 1970, p.246.
14. Groddeck Georg M. D., The Book of the It, Vision Press Limited, London, 1979, P- vi.
29

his Fictional Work
Lynne Lowes
15. ibid., p. x.
16. ibid., p. xii.
A Summary of Durrell's Heraldic Universe and its Use in the Fiction of his Canon Pages 32 - 39
3. ibid., p.21.
4. ibid., p.45.
5. Bowker Gordon, Through the Dark Labyrinth. A Biography of Lawrence Durrell, SinclairStevenson, London, 1996, p.84
6. Joyce James, Ulysses, ed. Dams Rose, Picador, London, 1997, p.177.
7. ibid., p.179.
8. ibid., p.185.
10. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Livia, Faber and Faber, London, 1986, p.3.
11. ibid., p.4.
13. Lodge David, (ed), 20th Century Literary Criticism, Longman, London and New York, 1994,
p.476.
14. Durrell Lawrence, The Black Book, Faber and Faber, London, 1977, p.37-8.
15. Durrell Lawrence, The Avignon Quintet: Livia, Faber and Faber, London, 1986, p.77-78.
16. ibid., p.80.
17. Pine Richard, Lawrence Durrell: The Mindscape, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994, p.312.
18. Tillyard E. M. W., The Elizabethan World Picture, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
1986, p.3.
19. ibid., p.109.
30

his Fictional Work
Lynne Lowes
Bibliography
Bowker Gordon, Through the Dark Labyrinth. A Biography of Lawrence Durrell, Sinclair-Stevenson,
London, 1996
Davis Michael Justin, The Landscape of William Shakespeare, Webb & Bower, Michael Joseph,
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French by Francine Barker, Abelard-Schuman, London, 1973
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his Fictional Work
Lynne Lowes
Lodge David, (ed), 20th Century Literary Criticism, Longman, London and New York, 1994
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ix
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