Read Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu Online
Authors: Lawrence Durrell
Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu (32 page)
V
IEW FROM THE
B
ENIZZA
R
OAD, NEAR
G
ASTOURI
, C
ORFU
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements for material used in this book must be made to:
Dr. Theodore Stephanides, R.A.M.C., who has placed five unpublished monographs at my disposal containing the fruits of ten years’ research; Mr. Jean Tricoglou of Cairo for helpful matter; Mr. Theodore Moschonas for valuable suggestions; and to Miss Y. Cohen for invaluable aid in copying out manuscripts.
Brief Bibliography
in English
Henry Jervis White-Jervis,
History of the Island of Corfu and of the Republic of the Ionian Islands.
S. Atkinson,
An Artist in Corfu
(1911).
Viscount Kirkwall, “Four Years in the Ionian.”
William Goodisson,
AB., A Historical and Topographical Essay upon the Islands of Corfu,
etc. (1822).
D. T. Anstead,
The Ionian Islands
(1863).
Index
A
Anastasius
22
,
29–31
,
54–59
,
87
,
97
,
99
architecture
11
Arsenius, St.
17
B
Boulgaris
40
brain cutlets
168–171
C
Calypso’s island
95
Cape Stiletto, legend of
32
Carbide-flare fishing
32
Colyva
151
Corfu
derivation
108
synoptic history
19
costume, island
21
Cricket 3
133–134
D
Demetrius Poliorcetes
112
Dervenagas
84
dishes, Greek
71
Dorothy
185
dynamiter
155
E
Earl of Guilford
131
F
Father Nicholas
21
,
30
,
61–65
,
71
,
73–74
,
77–78
,
80
,
87
,
99
,
134
,
177–182
,
188
Fynes Morison
107
G
Germanicus
113
Gladstone
132
Grand Vizier, the
80
H
Hermones, Cave of
92
I
Ionian Academy
131
J
Judas Iscariot
127
K
Kallikanzaroi
162
Kalocheiritis
37–39
Kastellani dance
177–183
Kirkwall, Viscount
135
L
Lanassa
112–113
Lycophron
111
M
Macria
109
Maillol
165
Medea
109
Mustalevria
200
N
Nimiec
27
,
70
,
72
,
80
,
82
,
108
,
140
,
192
,
194
,
195
,
201
,
208
O
Odysseus
98–100
olive
229
pressing
148
trees
21
,
23
,
31
,
64
,
66
,
105
,
131
,
147
,
149
,
150
,
161
,
192
,
194
,
237
P
Paleocastrizza
23
,
91–99
,
102
,
125
,
176–177
,
185
,
215
,
218
Pan
162
Paramythia
39
peasant remedies
214
peasants, time sense
96
Periander
111–112
Places to See
218
Pyrrhus
112
R
Richard Lionheart
104
S
Scheria
109
sea legend
125–126
sea scorpion
55
shoulder net
58
“Sign of the Partridge”
16
Spiridion, St.
12
,
19
,
28
,
35
,
36
,
43
,
104
,
135
,
189
,
217
,
218
church 6
35–36
,
40–43
,
50
,
61
,
100
,
138
,
153
,
158
clock
50–51
Spiro Americanos
143
Stephano, St., lighthouse
59
submarine
73
Sykopita
200
T
Tempest, The
9
,
121–124
,
164
,
232
,
243
Things to Visit
218
Thorpe
124
Tiberius, villa of
100–102
tobacco, smuggled
59
Totila
114–115
Trata
183
U
Ulysses
20
,
89–91
,
95–96
,
98
,
103
,
105
,
109
,
131
V
Van Norden
28
,
32
,
58–59
,
71
,
94–95
Village festivities 6
100
,
133
,
141
Villehardouin
104
W
water
tasting
150
A Biography of Lawrence Durrell
Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell’s work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet’s completion,
Life
called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time.”
Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.
Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel,
Pied Piper of Lovers.
He also read Henry Miller’s
Tropic of Cancer
and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller’s advice and work heavily influenced Durrell’s provocative third novel,
The Black Book
(1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell’s first book of note,
The Black Book
was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn’t appear in print in Britain until 1973.
In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British Embassy. He also wrote
Prospero’s Cell,
a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.
Durrell met Yvette Cohen in Alexandria, and the couple married in 1947. They had a daughter, Sappho Jane, in 1951, and separated in 1955. Durrell published
White Eagles Over Serbia
in 1957, alongside the celebrated memoir
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus
(1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize,
and Justine
(1957), the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet Capitalizing on the overwhelming success
of Justine,
Durrell went on to publish the next three novels in the series—
Balthazar
(1958),
Mountolive
(1958), and
Clea
(1960)—in quick succession. Upon the series’ completion, poet Kenneth Rexroth hailed it as “a tour de force of multiple-aspect narrative.”
Durrell married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon, who died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973 to Ghislaine de Boysson, which ended in divorce in 1979.
After a life spent in varied locales, Durrell settled in Sommières, France, where he wrote the Revolt of Aphrodite series as well as the Avignon Quintet. The first book in the Quintet,
Monsieur
(1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize while
Constance
(1982), the third novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize.
Durrell died in 1990 at his home in Sommières.
