Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar: Core of nostalgia steeped in honey and tears

 



In 1967, Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz wrote Miramar, a novel about four characters with divergent political values who live in a pension in post-revolutionary Alexandria.

Once again we see a novel opening with a description of the city itself as a site of nostalgia both bitter and sweet. The very first sentence: "Alexandria. At last. Alexandria, Lady of the Dew. Bloom of white nimbus. Bosom of radiance, wet with sky water. Core of nostalgia steeped in honey and tears."

(Mahfuz, Najib. Miramar. London : Heinemann, 1978.)

Durrell's Alexandria Quartet

The Alexandria Quartet

Justine 1957

Balthazar 1958

Mountolive 1958

Clea 1960

During his time in Alexandria Lawrence Durrell found inspiration to write the Alexandria Quartet, a tetralogy set there during that period. Justine, the titular character of the first book, is widely believed to be based on his second wife, an Alexandrian named Eve Cohen.
Reviewers describe Alexandria as one of the characters in the series and indeed Justine is prefaced with a note assuring the readers that the personages are fictional; “only the city is real”. The theme is described as ‘modern love’ but I think ‘ empty affairs’ might be more fitting. There appears to be an Orientalist objectification of women throughout the series that matches Durrell’s description of Alexandrian women in his letter to Miller. The women pictured on these covers of Balthazar and Mountolive certainly reflect the books' Orientalist tone.

A short excerpt from the beginning of Justine:

"Capitally, what is this city of ours? What is resumed in the word Alexandria? In a flash my mind’s eye shows me a thousand dust-tormented streets. Flies and beggars own it today – and those who enjoy an intermediate existence between either.

Five races, five languages, a dozen creeds: five fleets turning through their greasy reflections behind the harbour bar. But there are more than five sexes and only demotic Greek seems to distinguish among them. The sexual provender which lies in hand is staggering it its variety and profusion. You would never mistake it for a happy place. The symbolic lovers o the free Hellenic world are replaced here by something different, something subtly androgynous, inverted upon itself. The Orient cannot rejoice in the sweet anarchy of the body – for it has outstripped the body. I remember Nessim once saying – I think he was quoting – that Alexandria was the great winepress of love; whose who emerged from it were the sick men, the solitaries, the prophets – I mean all who have been deeply wounded in their sex." (p. 11)

In Justine, Durrell makes numerous references to the Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), whose work he helped relay to Western readers. Cavafy was a friend of E.M. Forster, who introduced his work to T.S. Eliot. More on him to come.

Eve Cohen, Durrell's second wife

Excerpt from a letter to Henry Miller from Lawrence Durrell

When Greece fell during the Second World War, Lawrence Durrell fled to Alexandria, where he served as a press attaché to the British Embassy.

Here is a colourful excerpt from a letter he wrote to Henry Miller about his experience there in February, 1944:

 “The Alexandrian way of death is very Proustian and slow; a decomposition in greys and greens – by the hashish pipe or boys. But the women are splendid – like neglected gardens –rich, silk-and-olive complexions, slanting black eyes and soft adze-cut lips, and heavenly figures like line-drawings by a sexual Matisse. I am up to my ears in them – if I must be a little literal. But, as my friends remark, “Kess femmes, comme les peintures d’Alexandrie, ont trop de technique mais peu de temperament.” But one has never had anything lovelier and emptier than an Alexandrian girl. Their very emptiness is a caress. Imagine making love to a vacuum – you must come here for a week after the war. After that you’ll be so completely emptied of worldly goods that you’ll be ripe for Tibet and all it means. Meanwhile we are crawling through the ever-narrowing conduit of this bloody war. Do write from time to time – you are like a voice from something very far but completely understood – while here one talks into the air round people and words fly flatly off into space – sound and fury.

[…]

Larry

[P.S.] Now I think of the correct simile for the Alexandrians. When they make love it’s like two people in a dark room slashing at each other with razors – to make each other feel _____?”

Alexandria - a poem by Lawrence Durrell 1946

Durrell's house in Alexandria

To the lucky now who have lovers or friends,

Who move to their sweet undiscovered ends,

Or whom the great conspiracy deceives,

I wish these whirling autumn leaves;

Promontories splashed by the salty sea,

Groaned on in darkness by the tram

To horizons of love or good luck or more love

As for me I now move

Through many negatives to what I am.

Here at the last cold Pharos between Greece

And all I love, the lights confide

A deeper darkness to the running tide;

Doors shut, and we the living are locked inside

Between the shadows and the thoughts of peace;

And so in furnished rooms revise

The index of our lovers and our friends

From gestures possibly forgotten, but the ends

Of longings like unconnected nerves,

And in this quiet rehearsal of their acts

We dream of them and cherish them as facts.

Now when the sea grows restless as a conscript,

Excited by fresh wind, climbs the sea-wall,

I walk by it and think about you all:

B. with is respect for the Object, and D.

Searching in sex like a great pantry for jars

Marked ‘Plum and apple’; and the small, fell

Figure of Dorian ringing like a muffin-bell–

All indeed whom war and time threw up

On this littoral and tides could not move

Were objects for my study and my love.

And then turning where the last pale

Lighthouse, like a Samson blinded, stands

And turns its huge charred orbit on the sands

I think of you –indeed mostly of you,

In whom a writer would only name and lose

The dented boy’s lip and the close

Archer’s shoulders; but here to rediscover

By tides and faults of weather, by the rain

Which washes everything, the critic and the lover.

At the doors of Africa so many towns founded

Upon a parting could become Alexandria, like

The wife of Lot –a metaphor for tears;

And the queer student in his poky hot

Tenth floor room above the harbour hears

The sirens shaking the tree of his heart,

And shuts his books, while the most

Inexpressible longings like wounds unstitched

Stir in him some girl’s unquiet ghost.

So we, learning to suffer and not condemn

Can only wish you this great pure wind

Condemned by Greece, and turning like a helm

Inland where it smokes the fires of men,

Spies weathercocks on farms or catches

The lovers at their quarrel in the sheets;

Or like a walker in the darkness might,

Knocks and disturbs the artist at his papers

Up there alone, upon the alps of night.

Durrell's house in Alexandria is slated for demolition this year.