I will be leading a discussion about Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell at the Boston Athenaeum on April 25th. It’s interesting to come to the books by the two brothers again so many years after first reading them. I went through all Gerald’s books in middle school and Lawrence’s when I was in college.

On rereading them, Gerald’s book stands up: it’s charming and erudite. Lawrence’s is still excellent, but now the sexism is clear and, in a way, debilitating because you can now see what he missed. He wrote best in and about Greece. Although Caesar’s Vast Ghost is wonderful, nothing he wrote in France is as good as what was sparked by the more difficult landscapes of North Africa and Greece.

Rereading them makes me wonder, when is the best time to find your Ithaca? Both autobiographies recount their days on Corfu. But as Gerald is 12 years younger, he experienced Corfu as the background of a magical childhood. Lawrence, newly married, had the magic of first love in a perfect little beach house, complete with sailboat, good friends, excellent food, splendid weather and the time to write.

So is it better to have an enchanted childhood, and have those memories to fall back on, or perhaps lead you on, for all your life? Or better to have your glorious golden years in your early twenties? Cavafy famously urges you to arrive late in life:

When you set out for Ithaka

ask that your way be long,

full of adventure, full of instruction.

The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,

angry Poseidon – do not fear them:

such as these you will never find

as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare

emotion touch your spirit and your body.

The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,

angry Poseidon – you will not meet them

unless you carry them in your soul,

unless your soul raise them up before you.

 

Ask that your way be long.

At many a Summer dawn to enter

with what gratitude, what joy –

ports seen for the first time;

to stop at Phoenician trading centres,

and to buy good merchandise,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

and sensuous perfumes of every kind,

sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;

to visit many Egyptian cities,

to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.

Your arrival there is what you are destined for.

But don’t in the least hurry the journey.

Better it last for years,

so that when you reach the island you are old,

rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.

 

Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She hasn’t anything else to give you.

 

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn’t deceived you.

Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

When I read My Family I wished I lived on a Greek island, although I had a shorter, but similar, experience: as a child, I spents three weeks every year in the ruins of a sugar mill in the Caribbean. Reading Lawrence’s books in my late teens and early 20s helped pull me out into the world. I wanted to go to the places he described so I managed to get myself to Cairo, Alexandria, Athens, Corfu, Cyprus, Rhodes and other Greek islands, as well as his house in Sommières. But I didn’t find my Ithaca, the Dhofar region, until I was 39. Then I had to move away so I now agree with Cavafy. Arrive at your Ithaca late, so you never have to leave it.

 

Boston Athenaeum – April 25, 10am – https://bostonathenaeum.org/whats-on/discussion-groups/

Join us for a discussion of two very different books which feature the same landscape and main characters. Most people know only one of the Durrell brothers, but each one has his own brilliance. Lawrence writes about the historical and literary landscape in an artistic and serious manner, while Gerald focuses on the local wildlife, a group which includes his older siblings. The juxtapositions between what each one thinks is important and noteworthy makes reading the books in tandem a delight. Gerald doesn’t deign to mention his brother’s wife; Lawrence ignores the fauna. Gerald has nothing to say about Greek myths; Lawrence pretends he is not with his family. Read one book or both and join a short visit to the gorgeous Greek island of Corfu. If the conversation leads to a wider discussion of Lawrence’s fiction (The Alexandria Quartet), Gerald’s impressive improvements in how zoos are designed and the Boston area’s best Greek restaurants, all the better.

Back from Ubar or What to Read if You Insist on Staying Home

Research on Travelers and Tourists in Dhofar

Marriage and Peace – essay published

The Beauty of Beau Geste