A beautifully written phrase does for me what music sometimes does - at times I have to stop at a particular arrangement of words and turn them over and over in my mind like a melody, letting them stir some deep mood in me. I am in awe of writers that can create richly fluid, lyrical prose without unnecessary floweriness. How do they know just how to put into words the very heart of a thing-- exposing the core of an impression, an emotion, a sense of something that would seem otherwise elusive? When a phrase is beautifully written, it is like some hypnotic perfume that evokes colors, tastes, sentiments and memories of places and circumstances which I have never experienced before, but which nonetheless feel intimately familiar. They are magicians, I think.
Though it feels strange to pluck out passages from the stories - as it would be to pick out favorite notes from a song - I'll randomly choose a handful here and there, and you can imagine that I'm just humming little bits of the tune to you - but really, I would wish that you could hear, all at once, the entire song of each story, complete and whole. Today, I'm remembering how much Justine inspired me.
Justine, from Lawrence Durrell's incomparable The Alexandria Quartet
It takes place in the late 50's, in Alexandria, Egypt...
...and is the first book in the series of 4. The other 3 are:
Here are some of the passages I love:
"The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes..."
"The pale lengthening rays of the afternoon sun smear the long curves of the Esplanade, and the dazzled pigeons, like rings of scattered paper, climb above the minarets to take the last rays of the waning light on their wings..."
"I am thinking back to the time when for the four of us the known world hardly existed; days became simply the spaces between dreams, spaces between the shifting floors of time..."
"The great prayer wound its way into my sleepy consciousness like a serpent, coil after shining coil of words...until the whole morning seemed dense with its marvelous healing powers, the intimations of a grace undeserved and unexpected, impregnating that shabby room where Melissa lay, breathing as lightly as a gull, rocked upon the oceanic splendor of a language she would never know."
"Her long uncertain fingers - I used to feel them moving over my face when she thought I slept, as if to memorize the happiness we had shared."
"...the graceful curtain breathing softly in that breathless afternoon air like the sail of a ship. How often had we not lain in one another's arms watching the slow intake and recoil of that transparent piece of bright linen?"
"I recall the furtive languor with which we dressed and silent as accomplices made our way down the gloomy staricase into the street. We did not dare to link arms, but our hands kept meeting involuntarily as we walked, as if they had not shaken off the spell of the afternoon and could not bear to be separated. We parted speechlessly too, in the little square with its dying trees burnt to the colour of coffee by the sun; parted with only one look - as if we wished to take up the emplacements in each other's minds forever."I hope you get a little hint of how mesmerizing and vivid his writing is, and I hope you get to read the story one day.
The beautiful Anouk Aimee played Justine in the 1969 film version of the novel -- I've not yet seen it, but she looks very much like the Justine that was in my imagination when I read it.
