Durrell is one of those rare writers whose prose is genuinely poetic. It is sensual. I have rarely, if ever, read prose of such grace. One is conscious of the care given to each sentence - and the manner in which he weaves this descriptive sensuality into a cohesive picture is reminiscent of the brush strokes of Monet or a Cezanne. It leaves you not with just a vivid impression of Alexandria, or of the characters that people the book, but with something more. When I finished I truly felt, to a unique degree, an intimate knowledge of the city. It felt as if I had been there.
It's not that other authors haven't produced a vivid impression on me, it's just that they have not produced the same impression. Durrell gives us Alexandria as an epicure gives us a fine Parisian restaurant, or as a lover describes a new romance. One can smell the profusion of flowers in that city, know the way the city felt at sunset. The novel is intimate: but there is something else here, something a little disconcerting: perhaps the hint of genuine decadence? It's reminiscent of Baudelaire, a profoundly beautiful writer, who yet strongly veered towards decadence.
Clearly Durrell was in love with Alexandria, and in this beautifully written series of novels he communicates that love with singular power, while accomplishing something even more remarkable: he ties together the personal with the universal and these things in turn with our strangely personal perception of time, creating a unique perspective. In Justine he successfully interweaves all these elements in a manner original enough to be an artistic triumph of the highest order.
Yes, he was in love with Alexandria, and he was in love with "Justine. . ."
Yet the title character of this novel remains a mystery. We know the city whereas we cannot know Justine - and she remains a mystery throughout the series of novels. Her mystery forms the thread in this quartet of books, and as she is seen from the perspectives of the differing characters who narrate each separate book she changes, she transforms.
This question "who is Justine?" and through that question the question of "who is the narrator?" is the driving force in these books. Our view of her, and all those involved in the story, expands through the perspectives of different observers until finally we are forced to ask the question, "Can we really know any of these people at all?"
It is here that although I retain the highest admiration for Durrell as a descriptive writer and a writer of many other great attributes, I am confronted with the pervasive moral ambiguity of so many mid-twentieth-century writers. Durrell, it seems to me, answers this question in the negative. "No, we cannot ultimately know these people, he seems to say. We cannot ultimately even know ourselves." And here I, your humble reviewer, will go out on a limb and say I believe this embrace of moral ambiguity has contributed greatly to the decline of Western culture since the mid-twentieth century.
Each generation has its dogma, its beliefs that must be held for the individual to be taken seriously, and it was this I believe shallow cynicism in the guise of existentialism that was his generation's dogma absolute. It was a world-view so widely held at the time that my admiration for Durrell's accomplishment here is only slightly dimmed by his acceptance of it, and I believe it is partly this moral ambiguity that created a tinge of decadence in Justine.
Brent Hightower
Copyright 2015 Brent Hightower
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