“Balthazar” by Lawrence Durrell (1958) – 243 pages

“English life is really like an autopsy.  It is so, so dreary.” – Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell is one of those writers whose reputation as a literary writer could go either way.  It has been over fifty years since he wrote the Alexandria Quartet, a group of novels which take place in Alexandria, Egypt for which he won his most acclaim.  It has been twenty three years since he died.  Even during his lifetime, Durrell was known for his lush over-writing, his luxuriant romantic prose.  One wonders how his novels would go over with today’s readers who have been brought up on sparse realistic prose, matter-of-fact characters, and cut-and-dried plots.

Here is typical Durrell prose.

 “And spring? Ah! There is no spring in the Delta, no sense of refreshment and renewal in things.  One is plunged out of winter into: wax effigy of a summer too hot to breathe.  But here, at least in Alexandria, the sea-breaths save us from the tideless weight of summer nothingness, creeping over the bar among the warships, to flutter the striped awnings of the cafes upon the Grand Corniche.” 

And when it comes to discussing women and sex, his prose gets even more rampant.

“In a sense everything that Clea felt was at this time meaningless to her.  As a prostitute may be unaware that her client is a poet who will immortalize her in a sonnet she will never read, so Justine in pursuing these deeper sexual pleasures was unaware that they could mark Clea for years; enfeeble her in her power to give undivided love – what she was most designed to give by temperament.  Her youth, you see.  Yet the wretched creature meant no harm.  She was simply a victim of that Oriental desire to please…”

Lawrence Durrell was close friends with the writer Henry Miller.  They shared an obsession with sex which came to play in their novels.

The city of Alexandria, Egypt is as much of a character in “Balthazar” as any of the humans.  These novels take place while the British still ruled Egypt.  At that point Alexandria was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. A Mediterranean seaport, Alexandria, over the centuries from the time Alexander the Great founded the city, had become home to a wide variety of different ethnic groups.   Durrell described it as “a great sprawling jellyfish” of a city.  One wonders about Alexandria today.  In 1973 Egyptian President Nasser forced all foreigners to leave Egypt, and one can only imagine that Alexandria has only gotten even more isolated since then.

Durrell had an interesting colonial background.  He was born in northern India to an English father and an Irish-English mother. When Lawrence was seven, his family moved to England, and he hated it and spent the rest of his life outside the country.  Alexandria was particularly suitable for him.

The Alexandria Quartet was considered a literary classic in its time.  I found that once I cut through the jungle of some of its prose, there is an interesting story and original insights in Balthazar.  However I wonder if the modern reader has the patience and endurance for the over-the-top purple prose.