Thursday, April 7, 2011
Journal 8
LIT 4303 Dr. Lillios ________________________________________________________________________ Lawrence Durrell’s Justine Reading Assignment: Read the book by Thursday, April 7 Schedule: Tuesday, April 5: Videotape of Durrell, Alexandria in history Thursday, April 7: The Book of the Dead and the Eastern journey of the hero Monday, April 11: Submit Durrell journal entry to http://www.postww2lit.blogspot.com (see below) by midnight. Be sure to sign your entry. Journal 8 Assignment: Read the excerpt below from Edward Said’s Orientalism (NY: Vintage, 1979). Unlike the Americans, the French and British—less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portugese, Italians, and Swiss—have had a long tradition of what I shall be calling Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western Experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. . . . It will be clear to the reader...that by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient—and this applies whether the persion is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist—either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she says or does is Orientalism. . . . Related to this academic tradition, whose fortunes, transmigrations, specializations, and transmissions are in part the subject of this study, is a more general meaning for Orientalism. Orientalism is a style of thought based upon ontological and epistemological distinction made between "the Orient" and (most of the time) "the Occident." Thus a very large mass of writers, among who are poet, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, "mind," destiny, and so on. . . . the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . despite or beyond any corrsespondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient. (1-3,5) ** View video of interview with Said at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwCOSkXR_Cw ** Go to JSTOR and search for article by Joseph Boone, “Vacation Cruises; Or, the Homoerotics of Orientalism.” Write about a page or 200-250 words about Orientalism in Justine. Do you detect distortion in the way Durrell describes Egyptian people, culture, or landscape? If so, what do you think is his purpose?
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Joseph Boone’s “Vacation Cruises; or, Homoerotics of Orientalism” was very eye opening to me. What caught my attention the most was the photograph of the Near Eastern male brothel. The photograph is inaccurate because it glamorizes the prison that was, and still is, human trafficking. This distorted photograph, and the mindsets of those that Boone refers to through the article were heavily influenced by “Western colonialist fantasy” (91). Durrell refers to this type of blindness that results from extreme emotion. Darley explains that, “It is not love that is blind, but jealousy” (Durrell 151). Jealousy in essence is resenting the personal gains of another. It could be argued then that jealousy is closely related to envy. If you are envious, you desire something that someone else has that you do not have. The “vacation cruise mindset” views the “mythic East as an object of desire” (91). It is ignorant of the reality of the Orient and in turn morphs it into something that it is not. I believe that Durrell does this to show that modern love still has many flaws. The book makes much of enlightenment, yet Darley and the other characters have these instances where they seem completely oblivious and blind to the reality of the situation. His flowery and infatuated descriptions of Justine are starkly contrasted with his indifference to her marriage. While he does acknowledge that she is a married woman, nothing seems to be able to keep him away from his desire as the Occident for his Orient, Justine.
ReplyDeleteSarah Joseph
Orientalism is clearly noted throughout Justine. Durrell builds the structure of the work around the city of Alexandria. Multicultural Alexandria allows exchanges of ideas, sensations and temptations. The Orient was a place of romance, exotic beings and remarkable experiences. Justine embodies impossible qualities as a hybrid of cultures and possesses a powerfully mysterious force to transform people she encounters. The acts and interactions of the international cast, including Arabs, Jews, Africans, and Anglos, are not the results of free will, but are reactions to Justine who is affected by her lifelong residence in Alexandria. She acts out in cycles of irrational sensual and destructive behaviors and is impulsively driven to find self-acceptance to remain faithful to her loving husband Nessim.
ReplyDeleteSaid’s Orientalist theory identifies that Western Europe or the West in general defined itself as being of the "contrasting image” of the East, one illuminating a sensual culture which exuded sexuality polar to Euro-Christian culture which viewed women as being asexual. Orientalism therefore is based upon biological generalizations, cultural constructions, and racial and religious prejudices. A colorful cast of characters surround the story. Added into the mix are a cabaret dancer/prostitute; a diplomat; an intelligence officer; a writer; an artist; a broker; a Cabalist; cross-dressing transvestite and other residents of the city. Each character is different, however because Durrell assigns each a title, the reader develops their own sense of how each should act. This sets up a series of thorough and sometimes extravagant observations of love, lust, jealousy, and obsession.
Lauren Supersano
I think we see a clear usage of Orientalism in Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, in both the senses that Said and Boone explore. Durrell paints Alexandria with a kind of romantic distortion; giving it to the audience through a tinted lens of mysticism, romance, intrigue, and general “otherness”. Durrell uses the isolation of the narrator from the other characters to play off the exotic contemporary cosmopolitanism (and busy-ness) of the setting; infiltrating the narrative with the sands of an Oriental timelessness (Said video) as Darley is unable to connect to anyone in a city which has “deep camphor-scented afternoon[s]” (Justine 15) and “the same streets you’ll wander aimlessly” (“The City” by CP Cavafi, Justine 251). Durrell makes the ordinary - sunlight through a window, dust in the streets - extraordinary by his word choice and description, but he does not do it in a “magical” way. Instead, he softens the focus on the lens when taking a picture of the ordinary, making the picture rich with Orientalist overtones; a timeless setting which exists only for the characters caught in its spell. In summation: “Somewhere out there…lies Alexandria, maintaining its tenuous grasp on one’s affections through memories which are already refunding themselves slowly into forgetfulness…The slow unreality of time begins to grip them, blurring the outlines – so that sometimes I wonder whether these pages record the actions of real human beings …“ (245)
ReplyDeleteI can agree with and appreciate Boone’s observations about the prevalence of the portrayal of Eastern homoeroticism and its subsequent impact on Western Orientalist philosophies and opinions. We see examples of that in Justine where, for example, Clea was desperately in love with a woman and it was generally accepted. Or, Balthazar who is identified as a potential homosexual on page 91, and revealed as a fully accepted one only one page later: “Often I have entered his little room…and found him asleep in bed with a sailor. He has neither excused himself at such a time nor even alluded to his bedfellow” (92). This homosexual characterization could contribute to Balthazar’s general strange and mystical characterization. Upon first meeting Balthazar, Darley “[finds himself] wondering what was the quality in him which arrested [him]” (91). This might be the audience’s first glimpse of what Boone argues is Darley’s repressed homoerotic desires which work themselves out during the course of The Quartet, (“Vacation Cruises” 96), but otherwise I don’t think we generally see a lot of homoerotic imagery or references concerning Darley throughout the course of the novel.
With regard to Durrell, what the readings reminded me of the most was his own experiences, or rather the experiences he detailed in the footage we watched. His desire to write a work centered around such a far-off and also such a cosmopolitan location seems to stem from his own experience as somebody who has lived amidst such disparate cultures. The question is how they really affected him and also how he affected them in return.
ReplyDeleteDurrell’s adoption of the ideologies of Eastern cultures seems deep and sincere, and likely it absolutely is, but this sort of exchange has always been part of the colonial experience. It by no means spells an end to it. While India was subject to the British Empire, all things Indian became fads of varying longevity in Britain proper. Anything that could be imported back to the motherland was, and this exchange was far from mutually beneficial. The effects of this were wide-reaching; to this day, Indian cuisine (as well as a number of dubious derivations of the same) is deeply entrenched as an everyday part of British life. If the repercussions are that deep in the culture of the colonizer, one can only imagine what the traffic going back was doing to India.
Obviously Durrell is not to blame for any of this. He’s perfectly allowed to absorb the culture surrounding him no matter whether or not he “should” be there as long as he does no harm to that world himself. It is still valid, though, to question any depiction of another culture as seen solely through the eyes of an outsider. More to the point, it is dangerous to be exposed to such a culture through that lens and no others. Many readers inclined to immerse themselves in other ways of living will do so through the stories of affluent white Westerners and their experiences abroad. There are obvious reasons why one might want to experience something new through an intermediary, somebody who is at home in both worlds, but we also have to leave our comfort zone. If I want to understand Buddhism, for example, the last place I want to look is an account of the faith and its native culture as understood by an Englishman whose parents happened to raise him in the land their ancestors stole.
- Robbi Ramirez
_Justine_ is not only Orientalism but also Otherness. There is a deep seeded try that Durrell makes with writing _Justine_. It is not the homoeroticism the article takes from the East, or it is… and simply hetero-ized. I personally found it somewhat difficult to get into and then continue to read. A lot of things happen that aren’t part of the American discourse community, and it kept its foreignness to the end. _Justine_ showed off exotic and weirdness, but also tried very hard to help the world understand a not so well know culture and people. But Durrell distorted them somewhat to what the article tells us. There is a whole world in North Africa of homosexuality. Something that Durrell makes forgettable, and Bonne won’t let you forget. As I read Bonne’s article, I kept thinking, could the story for _Justine_ by an altered perception of Egypt? Could the character of Justine be a male, a Justin?
ReplyDeleteThere is distortion there, none though for Durrell’s description of the Egyptian landscape. But that, the landscape, is so hard to deviation from—vastness of sand, then old cityscapes, then to the Mediterranean Sea. His purpose in creating distortion in the people and culture is not something I believe he is doing consciously, as I should say: he uses his perspective, and what he knows to create an Otherness. Durrell’s _Justine_ proves there is not one ‘real’ Orient because perspective does play a role. Durrell in telling his Alexandria Quartet did not start (and without having read the other books, I’m not 100% sure) he told of the homoeroticism of Orientalism but the Orientalism blanketed across the Near East and Middle East, using even somewhat of he knew in India.
Lastly, after reading the article, I can’t seem to get the unjustified grouping of homosexuality and pedophilia. It reflects on worldly authors that go there for the unbridled freedom of sexuality but simultaneously speak of the child trafficking, or child prostitution. As I understood it, those are two completely different things.
Ian.
I agree that Durrell uses Orientalism because he creates a character out of the city, and he is portraying the city as an element and a character who is romanticized, distorted, and seen mostly through ‘rose colored glasses’. The narrator is isolated, and it seems as though the job of the other characters is to show the setting of the story. How busy it is, how life seems to move so fast, how this fast moving pace is what makes the narrator feel isolated in the first place. This shows the oriental timelessness, something that Said discussed, because Darley cannot feel any sort of closeness to the characters within the novel. Durrell is capable of taking simple things and giving them life like qualities, something that magical realism had a focus on, and also something that gives the book strong Orientalism. The western influence is mostly shown in the fact that the world Darley lives in is drastically different from the world that the Eastern world lives in. The impact of Orientalism and the Western tradition is an element that makes this novel magical realism, because some ideals of that culture seem far fetched at times.
ReplyDeleteAs another note, there is definitely some idea of the Eastern homoeroticism and its impact on the Western world that Boone discusses as well within the novel, Clea being a major example of this when she was in love with a woman. This homoeroticism is another thing that seems to impact the Western world, and in turn having an impact on the Orientalism of the novel.
-Lauren
Romanticizing the East is what Said attempts to dispel and Durrell, in some cases, solidifies. Orientalism, as applied to literature, explains Western stereotyping as it applies to Eastern cultures. Predecessors of Said basically communicated, whether through poetry or theory, that all people from the Orient, no matter the country or location, were the same. Growing up in India, Durrell had the opportunity to be familiar with a culture that most Westerners will never experience beyond a postcard or movie. Due to his many years in an Eastern environment, Durrell has adopted the culture in which he was raised. The Western influence in the novel is mostly represented in Durrell’s character Darley because he views the others he comes in contact with through the view of Orientalism as Said defined. Ultimately, the novel subjects the reader to the view point of Darley who has a very Western mindset in an Eastern environment. Said would probably, in regards to the last sentence, comment that the viewpoint Durrell exposes through his character Darley has an ulterior motive (based on the youtube video).
ReplyDeleteSaraBeth Vanemon
Symbolism is the methodology of Durrell who states that “Alexandria was the great wine press of love ; whose who emerged from it were the sick of men, the solitaries, the prophets – I mean all who have been deeply wounded in their sex” (14). According to Durrell Alexandria’s erotic sense, its metropolitan movement, the city moves through the sands of times as though it moves as the currents of the ocean. No one knows whether or not the city will be evil one day or the next. The distortion of the landscape is most noticeable because I have been to Alexandria. First off, he describes Alexandria as a place “[l]ong sequences of tempera [and] [l]ight[s] fliter[ing] through the essence of lemon” (Durrell 14). Alexandria is a place of a multitude of people. However, it is not a place set where citrus groves and grow. Instead it is a place of arid waste lands tamed by the Coptics, who were overthrown by the Arabs. According to the landscape, the rivers never overflowed their bounds. Water is scarce in the region. Thus, Alexandria in the “Justine” is far from realistic. Thus, it is necessary harmonize the work with symbolism. Alexandria is symbolic of materialism being the abyss of the desert of spirituality, which is dry, never overflowing, as the rivers of Alexandria, the city of Egypt.
ReplyDeleteEric Brame
Orientalism does play a central role in Justine, in my opinion. Durell's characters' personalities and reactions to one another show readers that either he joined the general consensus regarding Middle Eastern culture, or that he wanted his novel to be considered a manisfestation of Western opinions on the area and its residents. The author makes Justine out to be this mysterious, strong woman whose behavior is somewhat alien to him. She, and the environment itself, seem exotic and captivating to this Englishman, probably because of the preconceived notions regarding the area. The characters seem to be naive and intrigued throughout the novel with one another. Hints of homoeroticism can be seen in characters such as Clea and Balthazar who both came to accept their sexual preferences and were not totally castigated for those choices.
ReplyDeleteThe basic idea behind Said’s Orientalism is the ever present friction between the Occident and the Orient—the dominant culture and the Other. Central to this theory is the clash between the two cultures and the resulting hybrid culture that is a product of each one’s awareness of the other. A result of this clash between cultures is a multiplicity of perspectives, leaving one with the difficult task of uncovering the objective truths buried amongst the contrasting views. This theme of a multiplicity of perspectives and ultimate questioning of objective truths is present throughout Durrell’s novel. In a knowledge-power relationship, it is hard to rest one’s head on definite and concrete truths. In the novel, Justine can be seen as the resulting culture that comes from the clash of several. She is a woman who seems to embody more than one person, and her ethnic background reflects her multiplicity. Justine verbally reflects this multiplicity of perspectives when she is sitting in front of several mirrors and say, “…five different pictures of the same subject. Now if I wrote I would try for a multi-dimensional effect in character, a sort of prism-sightedness. Why should not people show more than one profile at a time” (Durrell 27). The Occident-Orient culture clash blurs reality, giving Durrell’s novel the very Nietzschian ability to call into question established truths by introducing opposing ones. Durrell’s novel offers no fundamental moralistic or ethical proposal. Rather it reveals characters from various ethnic backgrounds that represent the countless perspectives and cultures that exist in the world. The city of Alexandria itself can be seen as the hybrid culture that results from the clash, and Justine—the embodiment of the city.
ReplyDelete-Sam Krop
Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, looked at in the light of Orientalism, seems to lack a clear cultural identity for Egyptian Alexandria. Egyptian characters are few, and in-depth discussions of Egyptian culture—ways of life or religion—are essentially nonexistent. (One of the few instances that Durrell shows of Egyptian life is the story of a pack of Egyptian men beheading a Western woman who has been left unattended in her car.) Ultimately, the novel is about the interaction of Western expatriates with the city of Alexandria and each other. But, after reading Joseph Boone’s article, it becomes clearer that Durrell may have been working within the Orientalist framework of an eroticized Egypt.
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest commentaries that Durrell makes about Egypt and Alexandria is that it is a place where sex and eroticism run rampant. The main group of friends is constantly visiting dancing clubs where women perform, Melissa is one of these erotic dancers, and they are having sex with each other despite the restraints of marriage or previous relationship. Durrell places Alexandria as a character that inspires these sexual encounters and libidinal activities. In this way, Durrell is adhering to the idea of an extremely erotic Near East that is far more sexually deviant than the Western cultures where these visitors come from. Durrell likely continued this Orientalist notion of a sexualized Egypt because he had set out to write a novel about modern love, and what better place could that story unfold than in this erotic, and neurotic, atmosphere? In order to understand what form of love Durrell was talking about, it should be asked, did Durrell see this form of love in India growing up or in his brief years in England? The answer to that question might help readers understand whether Durrell was, in a way, recording what he saw in Egypt or was using an Eroticized Egypt to further and frame his ideas on modern love.
Kyle Kretzer
Said’s theory of the Orient is an immensely influential concept to the realm of literature, especially to those texts depicting instances of post colonialism and of the “other.” The Orient not only stands independently as a definition for an “othered” culture, but it additionally aids in the defining of Europe through a system of binary oppositions. As Said explains, “the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.” It is safe to conclude that through the understanding of one, we know the other. These ideas formulated by Said are important in reading Durrell’s Justine as the novel does depict various instances of the Egyptian “other,” or the Orient. I find it rather difficult to affirmatively determine whether Durrell distorts the Egyptian culture in his novel. As the novel depicts an experience which so happens to occur in a foreign land, it is natural that the Egyptian culture will appear “exotic,” (especially to a Western reading audience). If there is any distortion within the depiction of the Egyptian culture, then perhaps Durrell wanted to emphasize the novelty of a new culture to his Western readers. I find that so much negative connotation is embedded in the terms Orient and “other” that it is sometimes difficult to acknowledge a benefit of it being so.
ReplyDelete-Taissa Rebroff
In Joseph Boone’s “Vacation Cruises; or, Homoerotics of Orientalism” he begins by making the claim that Western men, now, more than ever, are sexualizing and erotically exploiting the Near East, or Orient. He further analyzes the nature of both; presenting a patterned relationship of struggle and dominance of the West over the East. Boone makes emphasis on the "homosexual" subject, one that is based not around sexuality, but it's mixture into non-Western cultures and races. Boone asserts that "this appropriation of the so-called East...mirrors Western psychosexual needs" (89). This yearning to engage with the erotic nature of the East is displayed prominently throughout Durrell's work. Durrell begins the novel with a somewhat orientalist voyage within Darley's mind and his highly sexual remembrance of Justine. This relationship remains highly erotic throughout, symbolizing the interconnected nature of both and the fetishism of the Occident in regards to the Orient. The city of Alexandria does create a lucid backdrop for the novel in that it thrives due to the excessive mixture of cultures, creating a hybridization and merger of both East and West. It is in this way that Alexandria acts as the foundational catalyst of sexual desire within Darley, and the other characters, as well as a means in which Boone's idea of the homoerotic can be displayed.
ReplyDeleteIn my eyes, there is indeed some amount of this "distortion" of the Alexandrian reality through the western perspective of the narrator, Darley. He is quick to gush on the topic of the city, its nature, its populations and cultures.
ReplyDeleteThat is an important distinction – the voice of the author and the voice of the narrator – and while it can be argued that in Durrell some of that distortion exists, it is not the harmful, closed-minded prejudice of the Occidental westerner viewing the Oriental through some figurative anthropological microscope. He intends to do justice to the place – he is excited to share his experiences with the reader. There is little harm in that. This distortion is, in my mind, a bit of an unfair criticism on the part of Said. While I agree that the false mantle of topical mastery that some Occidentals slip in to is harmful to the international reputation of the Oriental, I do not see Durrel or (for that matter) Darley as stooping to that villainous level. By false mastery, I refer to the "...ideas about the Orient... despite or beyond any correspondence [...] with a "real" Orient," which Said speaks of in the highlighted excerpt of his dissertation. By villainous, I mean that the westerner whom refers to him or herself as some kind of expert on the (incredibly vague) "Orient" (an "otherly" place) or "Oriental" (a person of a culture hailing from an Orient) is speaking in impossible terms: An occidental cannot know the orient, for taking real part in the oriental experience is fundamentally exclusive to BEING of the oriental culture in question. Durrell does not approach that logical precipice as an author nor as a person.
The principles of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” play an integral role in Lawrence Durrell’s Justine. The middle-eastern city of Alexandria has a superior hold on Durrell’s characters, where “flies and beggars own it today” and the competing multi-cultural pockets of “five races, five languages, a dozen creeds” (Durrell 13-15). These images uphold the Western stereotypical notion of Alexandria as being dominated by pests, dust, and impoverished citizens who hold their hand out to Western “generosity.” While Durrell begins by painting the city in this light, he continues to expose Western racist judgment and postcolonial tendencies. Durrell recreates Alexandria to offer a more feminized version of the city, where the streets curve like the curvaceous outline of a female body. By assigning feminine qualities to the city, Durrell confronts the Western tendency to sexualize and erotize the East, as argued by Said and Joseph Boone in “Vacation Cruises; or, The Homoerotics of Orientalism.” Quoting Edwardes and Masters, Boone writes, “’Since the time of the Prophet,’ one of these records proclaims, ‘fabulous Araby has reeked of aphrodisiac excitement’” (Boone 89). Durrell’s character, Nessim describes Alexandria as the “winepress of love” (Durrell 14). After describing Justine in all her beauty eating an apple, which is profoundly symbolic for indulging in the forbidden fruit, Durrell writes, “[Justine] could not help but remind me of that race of terrific queens which left behind them the ammoniac smell of their incestuous loves to hover like a cloud over the Alexandrian subconscious” (Durrell 20). The combination of the forbidden fruit with “incestuous love” in Alexandria presents Said and Boone’s contention that the Orient is cast in an eroticized light. For these two characters, Darley and Justine end up indulging in an affair of forbidden love, lust, and passion. As Justine is bound in matrimony to Nessim, Darley is also in a relationship with Melissa. This love affair transforms throughout the novel, but begins as a bud of amorous temptations. Boone explains this notion in his essay, “The geopolitical realities of the Arabic Orient become a psychic screen on which to project fantasies of illicit sexuality and unbridled excess” (Boone 89). Later on in the novel, Baltazar becomes a fundamental role in the portrayal of Orientalism through his Cabal meetings and teachings. He offers the Eastern Cabal perspective to “indulge but refine” ourselves (Durrell 100). Baltazar’s sexuality is alluded to, and as a character, he serves to both expose and undercut principles of Orientalism.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to sign my posting--above posting by Kerri Libra.
ReplyDeleteThe East, especially the Orient, has always been a fascinating subject for writers. The place, the setting influences the writer’s objectivity to the topic. In Justine, Durrell writes about the “five races, five creeds” that make up Alexandria. Alexandria is an ancient city that was constructed by Alexander the Great himself and the home of Cleopatra, two of history’s most famous subjects. Alexandria the city seems to be the novel’s ever present, if not most important character. Without the city, Justine and her characters may not have the same story. The Egyptian existence itself, before its colonization was one of the oldest civilizations so it makes sense that Durrell, having been brought up in the East, in India would choose to set his novel in a city and area of the world that is as used to change and historically speaking trade. Thus there is a trade off. In the colonization that followed Egypt, it become “orientalized” meaning the inhabitants of that region became the signifying “other” that gave England is place and status and even identity throughout the world. Without the “other” testifying to your existence, you cannot have them proclaiming your greatness around the world if they are not colonized and transformed. Said writes of ‘orientalism’
ReplyDelete“ Yet none of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. . . .”
Thus without the other, the colonizer would mean nothing. As a way of interpreting Justine, the importance of the city and how they react to the ever changing dynamic of the flux in ideology, culture, religions, art and language have as much effect on their personal relationships as their emotional bonds.
Joseph Ragoonanan
“[...] screams in the night behind other shutters in that crooked street: the bey beating his wives because he was impotent. The old herb-woman selling herself every night on the baked mud street, late at night. Our room bulging with darkness and pestilence, and we Europeans in such disharmony with the fearful animal health of the blacks around us. The copulations of boabs shaking the house like a palm-tree. Black tigers with gleaming teeth. And everywhere the veils, the screaming, the mad giggles under the pepper-trees, the insanity and the lepers” (Durrell 62).
ReplyDeleteAny number of Durrell's descriptions of Alexandria express Orientalism. Joseph A Boone describes the history of scholars and thrill seekers who are compelled to visit the Orient on their journey to understand eroticism saying, “For such men, the geopolitical realities of the Arabic Orient become a psychic screen on which to project fantasies of illicit sexuality and unbridled excess” (Boone 2). Durrell's Alexandria seems a place of inescapable vice and his narrator, Darley, Writes as if he conceives reality through the lens of Orientalism. Given the novel's theme of conceiving a new and ideal form of love, the Orient works in its favor by allowing a playground in which Durrell can abstract everything he wishes. But Durrell also seems to see the problem in this as Darley lacks consistent coherence, his narrative ping-pongs between concrete and abstract description, and the novel refuses definite chronology. In the Orient Darley dreams of a relationship not based on possession, but the result is total chaos which is both beautiful and horrifying, the Orient.
~Ben Slaughter
Orientalism in Justine depicts to some extent the image of what Boone write about in his article, of the incarceration of Western authors when writing about the vivacity of male sexual encounters in the East, and from and the sexual desires experienced by the forces of a city opposite to the ones from the West as explained by Said. In Justine, Durrell centers life on the city of Alexandria for its capacity to promote the sporadic behavior in characters as if they have no control over their actions and thoughts. Alexandria is described as the major source of influence, and as a result of the Oriental ideology of sexual freedom, the city allows for all the forbidden romances natural in the Eastern world. But Justine, although Oriental for its physical descriptions of landscape, culture and people, doesn’t fully parallel the image portrayed in Boone’s and Said’s writing because the concept of male homoeroticism in the novel is much subtle and rather focuses on the specific love of a character. The Orientalism in Durrell’s novel rather comes from the love for the city, from people’s vulnerability to polymorphous desires and the freedom of the psyche to explore, and from Egypt’s role as the intermediate zone between the East and West, just to mention a few. At least in Justine, Orientalism, which seems more a way of being rather than a literary genre, connects the existence of the characters and the city to give an immeasurable desire for possession of the other. The novel is not so much focused on the grandiose of (male) sexual encounters, but on the control or helplessness of people at the hands of such a mystifying Oriental city.
ReplyDelete~ Salo Steinvortz
At the beginning of the novel, Durrell describes the Egyptian surroundings, “The sexual provender which lies to hand is staggering in its variety and profusion” and the city of Alexandria as “lined with the coloured booths of prostitutes whose thrilling marble bodies were posed modestly each before her doll’s house, as before a shrine. They sat on three-legged stools like oracles wearing coloured slippers, out in the open street” (14, 188). Where its narrator sat in “an idle and pragmatic death in a city to which I did not belong” (Durrell 190). This is clearly where East meets West or where the occidental tourist meets the Orient as Boone might describe it. Durrell blames the city for thrusting is perversion on the traveler, rather than the traveler who acts per choice to partake, “It is the city which should be judged though we, its children, must pay the price” (13). For what purpose? “It seemed to me that now one might learn some important truths about human behavior” (Durrell 208). Perhaps it is love. Love, that which does funny things to people. By the end of the novel “never had the city look so entrancing in that soft morning air” and its narrator had become “so drunk was I on the beauty of the city which I had almost forgotten” (Durrell 237).
ReplyDeleteCassie Turner