64 4A disciple has crossed over by water’: an Analysis of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet in its Egyptian Historical and Intellectual Contexts.” Mike Diboll. Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Leicester. University College Northampton August 2000 UMI Number: U139322 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U139322 Published by ProQuest LLC 2013. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 <DIAOI2 AAEEANAPEY2IN Dedicated to Phyllis (1908 - 1994) and Joan (1916 - 2000). Abstract: “ ‘A disciple has crossed over bv water’: Lawrence Diirrell's Alexandria Quartet in its Egyptian Historical and Intellectual Contexts” by Mike Diboll. This dissertation examines Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet in its various Egyptian contexts. It contests the idea that the Alexandria of the Quartet is essentially a city of the imagination which bears little or no relation to the real city of history. It argues that various strata of Alexandrian history, from antiquity to the nineteen- fifties, are deeply embedded in Durrell’s Quartet. Of particular interest is the tetralogy’s representation of the history of Egypt's Wafdist independence movement in the years 1919 - 1952, and Britain's responses to it. The dissertation argues that the tetralogy can be read as an allegorical treatment of historical events that took place in colonial Egypt. Chapter One of the dissertation provides an over-view of Durrell's Quartet and of the main critical and scholarly approaches which have been used in the study of the tetralogy. Chapter Two continues the exposition, with particular reference to T.S. Eliot's concept of “tradition”, and Edward Said's “Orientalism” as keys for the understanding of the Quartet. This chapter then applies these two concepts to the analysis of the Quartet, and proposes a “tradition of Orientalism” with the tetralogy as the paradigmal text of “late Orientalism”. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is proposed as an important precussor. Chapter Three examines the ways in which the Quartet makes use of the history of Alexandria from the city's founding by the Ptolomies until early modem times, with particular reference to the British occupation of Egypt 1882 - 1956. The chapter then examines the tetralogy's treatment of British Imperial selfhood and the Egyptian “Other”. Chapter Four examines the Alexandria Quartet, in particular Mountolive. in parallel to the history of the Egyptian Wafd party and the struggle for Egyptian independence. It argues that Mountolive should be read as an allegorical treatment of events that took place in Egypt between the years 1919 - 56. Chapter five investigates the relationship between the Alexandria Quartet and the three phases of Durrell's “Egyptian” poetry: that written between 1938 - 40, which utilises themes from ancient Egyptian mythology; that written during Durrell's Egyptian exile between 1941 - 45; and that written in the immediate post-war period 1945 - 50. In this way the historical context brought up to the early nineteen-fifties. Chapter Six concludes the dissertation by asserting the importance of the Alexandria Quartet as a key literary text from a period that saw the end of Empire and the beginnings of de-colonisation, and argues that the tetralogy should be given an enhanced status in the study of colonial and post-colonial English writing. (98, 006 words, 353 pages) Contents Chapter 1: Introduction. Page 1. Chapter 2: Saidian "Orientalism”, Eliotic "Tradition", and Condradian "Darkness" and the Alexandria Quartet. Page 44. Chapter 3. Alexandrian History and Thought: Contexts for the Alexandria Quartet: the Hosnanis as Allegorical Alexandrian Archetypes. Page 91. Chapter 4: Britain in Egypt: the "Coptic" Plot Thickens; the Mountolive-Hosnani Affair as Political Allegory. Page 166. Chapter 5: The Nineteen-Forties: Durrell as a Refugee in War-Time Egyptian Exile; Durrell’s Egyptian poetry as a Key to The Alexandria Quartet. Page 221. Chapter 6: In Conclusion. Page 295. Works Cited Page 336. 1 Chapter 1 Introduction A disciple has crossed over by water. The acorn was planted. In the Ionian vflla among the marble The fountain plays the sea's piano, And by the clock the geometric philosopher Walks in white linen while death Squats in the swallow's eye. "Egyptian Poem” — Lawrence Durrell This work explores the social and historical contexts of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet with a particular emphasis on the tetralogy's Egyptian aspects. It will also explore the ways in which reading the Quartet can enhance understanding of the changes that took place regarding British and Egyptian perceptions of themselves and of each other during the inter-War and post-Second World War decades. This work will demonstrate that the tetralogy is a significant work of literature which explores the social, psychological, political, moral and cultural dimensions of British Imperial decline in the Middle East. Furthermore, this work will argue that the Quartet incorporates aspects of the indigenous Egyptian cultural, social and political movements which eventually displaced British Imperial power in Egypt. Thus, this dissertation will argue that the Alexandria Quartet should be seen as a paradigmatic work of literature concerned with cultural and other consequences of the end of Empire. As such, the tetralogy deserves to be read and studied in greater depth than is currently the case, and this dissertation will attempt to make the case for the relevance of the tetralogy to university curricula concerned with the study of colonial and postcolonial English literature. Firstly, however, it should be acknowledged that clear dangers accrue to reading literature as if it were historical record. For example, in A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf contrasts the wretched position endured by women in society throughout most of history with the elevated depiction of womanhood in literature: A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband. (41) For Woolf, men's elevation of women in literature in part allowed the subjugation of women in society. Critics such as Edward Said make a similar point about the depiction of the "Orient" in Western literature; for Said, the promotion of the Orient as a place of exotic and erotic sensuality in literature and art is closely related to the West's possessive subjugation of the Orient in terms of politics and economics. Any historical treatment of the Alexandria Quartet would need to be mindful of the fact that literature seldom parallels history directly; indeed, literature, especially colonial writing that deals with cultural "Others”, often represents or encodes the desires, frustrations and psycho-sexual displacements of the culture from which it emerges. The socio-historical approach to the analysis of the tetralogy which is adopted in this work presents some immediate problems. The most pressing of these concerns the relationship of the Alexandria Quartet to Egyptian history. It is necessary to pose the questions, “To what extent is the Alexandria Quartet concerned with the "real” Alexandria of history?” Is it not really the case that attempting to read the Quartet historically — by trying to ’’confine" the work within history — is to do violence against the tetralogy and the intentions of its author? Mythic, psychological, psychoanalytic, structuralist, post-structuralist and more latterly post-modernist criticism have been the main critical perspectives from which scholars have studied the Quartet in the years following Lawrence Durrell's death in November 1990. There has been a relative paucity of socio-historic criticism of the tetralogy. Moreover, discussion of the Quartet is strangely absent from the numerous books and curricula that are to be found in Western academe which deal with colonialism and postcoloniality. This introduction will consider the arguments for reading the Quartet as an ahistorical or unhistorical novel, or even as a wilfully ^//-historical novel. Hopefully, playing the devil’s advocate in this way will clarify aspects of the novel's apparent or alleged resistance to a historical reading. The general structure of the Quartet is a good place to start this investigation of the 'non-historic Quartet'. In a much-discussed "Note" prefacing Balthazar. Durrell explains the overall structure of the Alexandria Quartet: Modem literature offers us no Unities, so I have turned to science and am trying to complete a four-decker novel whose form is based on the relativity proposition. Three sides of space