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Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet 8 A Quartet that is a Quartet: Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet Just as the term “symphony” denotes both an orchestra and the form of work performed by an orchestra, so the musical term “quartet” denotes both “a composition for four solo performers” and the four performers themselves. The technical term for the quartet form is “sonata,” which “refers to the structure of an individual movement” within a work, rather than “the overall form of a multi-movement work.”1 Unlike other literary works (such as The Raj Quartet, which merely has four parts, Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata,” which is merely named for the sonata performed by a character in the work, or the movie Intermezzo, which has no relationship to music form, Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet is indeed a literary application of the musical sonata (quartet) form. Durrell’s letters to Henry Miller indicate that he had given a great deal of thought to the application of the musical quartet form to litera- ture. In September, 1937, Miller suggested to Durrell the idea of creating a quartet of writers—Alfred Perlés, William Saroyan, Durrell, and him- self.2 Years later Durrell wrote to Miller that he had supplied the title for Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” By calling the work a quartet, he indicates that he is aware that a work with four movements may be called a “quartet.” Also by suggesting the title “Four Quartets” (in the plural) rather than simply “Quartet,” Durrell shows that he is aware that “quartet” refers to a movement rather than a complete work. According to Ian S. MacNiven, “Durrell had no (or very little) formal musical training, although Miller had at one time considered a professional keyboard career and may have talked music theory to him. [Also] Durrell remained a lover of classical music and became friends with Yehudi Menuhin, who always saw to it that Larry received free tickets whenever he performed near Sommières.” Durrell “was fascinated by Beethoven’s quartets” and even “carried re- cordings of some of them to Corfu in 1935.”3 136 LITERATURE AND MUSIC Durrell wrote to Eliot that the four poems which make up Four Quar- tets “remind me of that gruesome last quartet of Beethoven. So arid, so abstract, and so dry, and yet so rich in another way.” In a 1970 interview he said, “At that time … [Eliot] hadn’t in mind uniting all those four poems up.” Durrell explained that Eliot had not given much thought to the poems, but said “I truthfully believe that the idea of the Beethoven quartet struck him. He didn’t write me to say thank you for the title, but the correspon- dence is all about Beethoven’s last quartets.” Durrell also said, “I was thinking of The Alexandria Quartet as novels, but I was also struck by the relevance of the musical comparison.”4 Apparently he was also thinking of his quartet in relationship to four-dimensional reality, a concept which is analogous to the musical concept of a form which presents three differ- ent movements and then incorporates and goes beyond them all in the final movement. Most quartets have four movements, all in sonata form except the third movement, which is often a rondo or scherzo. In presenting the many characters, complexities of plot, and contradictions of subjective truths which make up the world of his fictional Alexandria prior to and during World War II, Durrell follows this pattern. Justine, Balthazar, and Clea are thematically consistent and follow sonata form. Movement I, Justine, is a relatively straightforward twentieth century vision of a declining civili- zation, of a filthy, seedy, and often violent metropolitan city, and of its impoverished and despairing inhabitants. Balthazar presents a different view of Alexandria. Unlike the Europeanized Alexandria which Darley describes, Balthazar’s Egypt is oriental, subversive, occult, primitive, often rural, and, ultimately unknowable. A breeding ground for political intrigue, betrayal, and murder, this Egypt is part of a world in a downward spiral toward world war. Balthazar is a second, slower movement in a minor key. Melissa, Scobie, and Toto de Brunel die. Darley is confused and dis- illusioned, and simple resolution of the plot of Justine is impossible. In a similar vein, Clea parallels the structure, incorporates the themes, and re- peats the motifs of Justine and Balthazar with many variations. Clea pro- vides new perspectives on the themes and characters from the previous novels at a later point in time. Mountolive functions as a simpler third movement with seven chapters of rising action followed by two of climax and seven of falling action. Standing in stark contrast to the complex— even convoluted and deceptive—polyphonic plot of the other novels, Mount- olive’s plot is analogous to the simple melody of a monophony. Durrell calls Mountolive “a straight naturalistic novel,”5 which is “tame … but the fulcrum of the quartet.”6 He also calls it “the third movement.
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