Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell , writer and British traveller , born the February 27th 1912 with Jalandhar (the British Indies) and dead the November 7th 1990 with Sommières (France).

Course

Born with Jalandhar (in the area of Darjeeling) from a father engineer in English civil engineering, Lawrence Samuel Durrell, and of a Protestant Irish mother, Louisa Florence Dixie, themselves born in the Indies. Sent to the the United Kingdom at the 11 years age to make its education, it undergoes the British life that it regards as a drudgery, and ends up refusing to pass its examinations to the Université. He wants to be writer and publishes its first novel, Pied Piper off Lovers , in 1935, and a second, Panic Spring , in 1937, this time under the pseudonym of Charles Norden.

1935 was for him one year decisive. He persuaded his mother, his family and his wife Nancy Myers to go to settle on the Greek island of Corfou, in order to live there more simply and to escape the rigor of the British climate. It was also this year that it decided to write with Henry Miller after having read her Tropic of Cancer (1934). This first letter was the beginning of a friendship which was going to last 45 years. After six years spent with Corfou and Athens, Durrell and its wife were forced to flee the Greece in 1941 because of advanced German army. They were installed on other bank of the the Mediterranean, with their daughter Penelope Berengaria, born in 1940.

In 1942, separated from his wife, Durrell moved with Alexandria, and became press attaché for the British Information Office, station which was used to him as " couverture" to take as a starting point the Egyptian life during the Second world war and to earn its living. It is in this city that it met Eve Cohen, Jewish of Alexandria who was to become her model for Justine , first volume of the Quatuor of Alexandria , also called Livre of Dead the ( Book off the Dead ). Durrell married it in 1947, after having divorced Nancy Myers. They had a girl, Sappho Jane, in 1951.

In 1945 it could find the Greece. It spent two years to Rhodos as director of the public relations for the Islands of the Dodécanèse. Then it leaves Rhodos for the Argentine, where it occupied the position of director of the British Institute with Cordoba in 1947 and 1948. It returns in Europe in 1949, period during which he was press attaché with Belgrade, in Yugoslavia (until in 1952). It drew the soft-bitter diplomatic chronicle from it Wild Eagles Over Serbia , published in 1957.

Durrell found the Greek world which he liked so much in 1952. There it bought a house with Cyprus, hoping to be able to find serenity necessary to the writing. It taught the English Littérature there. But the peace of Cyprus was brutally broken by the engagements between the Cypriot Greeks, who wished fastening in the continent, the British, who hoped to make of Cyprus a colony, and Cypriot Turkish, who wished the independence of the island. Durrell, which had taken the post of officer in load of the public relations of the British Crown with Nicosie, told its impressions relative to this period disturbed in Bitter Lemons (1957 - transl. acid Citrons ; on Cyprus according to 1974, and the tragedy of the missings - History of Cyprus - it is necessary to also read the Castle of silence , novel of Olivier Delorme, French writer declared admiror of Durrell).

With Cyprus, Durrell started has to work on what was going to become the Quatuor of Alexandria . After its forced departure (still one) of the island in prey to the war, Durrell settled with Sommières, in the south of the France (between Montpellier and Nimes). Durrell remaria twice still. Death in 1967 of the continuations of a Cancer of his third wife, Claude-Marie Vincendon, married in 1961, devastated it. Its fourth and last marriage, with Ghislaine de Boysson, celebrated in 1973, ended in 1979. It was also very affected by the suicide of his daughter Sappho Jane in 1985.

Lawrence Durrell died in Sommières the 7 November 1990, carried by an heart attack which put an end to a long combat against the Emphysème.

He is the brother of Gerald Durrell, Zoologiste and Naturaliste (1920 - 1995).

Bibliography (incomplete)

Novels

Foot Piper off Lovers , 1935
Panic grass Spring (under the pseudonym of Charles Norden), 1937
The Black Book , 1938 (transl. france the black notebook )
The Dark Labyrinth (Cefalu), 1947 (transl. france Cefalù )
White Eagles Over Serbia , 1957
The Alexandria Four-bit byte

Justine , 1957
Balthazar , 1958
Mountolive , 1958
Clea , 1960

The Revolt off Aphrodite

Tunc , 1968
Nunquam , 1970

The Avignon Quintet

Sir, gold The Prince off Darkness , 1974 (transl. france Sir, or the prince of darkness )
Livia, gold Buried Alive , 1978 (transl. france Livia, or Buried lives )
Constance, gold Solitary Practices , 1982 (transl. france Constance or solitary practices )
Sebastian, gold Ruling Passions , 1983 (transl. france Sébastian or sovereign passions )
Quinx , 1985 (transl. france Fifth, or the version Landru )

Accounts of voyage

Prospero' S Concealment , 1945 (transl. france the island of Prospero )
Reflections one has Marine Come , 1953 (transl. france Venus and the sea )
Bitter Lemons , 1957 (transl. france acid Citrons )
Blue Thirst , 1975
Sicilian Carousel , 1977 (transl. france the sicilian carousel )
The Greek Islands , 1978
Caesar' S Vast Ghost , 1990 (transl. france infinite shade of César )

Collections of news

Stiff Upper Lip , 1958 (transl. france a Little behavior, Sirs! )

External bonds

International The Lawrence Durrell Society
The Lawrence Durrell Collection @ The British Library (with photograph of the writer)
Library Lawrence Durrell of the University Paris X - Nanterre
Lawrence Durrell Bibliography (Inventions off Spring)

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