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Prospero's Cell

Page 17

by Lawrence Durrell

Henry Jervis White-Jervis, History of the Island of Corfu and of the Republic of the Ionian Islands.

  S. Atkinson, An Artist in Corfu (1911).

  Viscount Kirkwall, “Four Years in the Ionian.”

  William Goodisson, AB., A Historical and Topographical Essay upon the Islands of Corfu, etc. (1822).

  D. T. Anstead, The Ionian Islands (1863).

  Index

  A

  Adams 131, 138, 139

  Anastasius 22, 29–31, 54–59, 87, 97, 99

  architecture 11

  Arsenius, St. 17

  B

  Barba Giorgos 84, 86

  Basil 44, 52

  Boulgaris 40

  brain cutlets 168–171

  C

  Cadi, the 80, 84

  Caliban 121–123, 232

  Calypso’s island 95

  Cape Stiletto, legend of 32

  Carbide-flare fishing 32

  Caroline 195–196, 200 – 202, 208

  chutney 135, 138

  Cicero 100, 103, 113

  Colyva 151

  Corfu

  derivation 108

  synoptic history 19

  costume, island 21

  Count D. 115–116, 151

  Cressida stream 91, 127

  Cricket 3 133–134

  D

  Demetrius Poliorcetes 112

  Dervenagas 84

  Diodorus 109, 110, 112

  dishes, Greek 71

  Dorothy 185

  drinks 150, 175, 181

  dynamiter 155

  E

  Earl of Guilford 131

  eel 29–31, 58

  F

  Fano Island 41, 95, 99

  Father Nicholas 21, 30, 61–65, 71, 73–74, 77–78, 80, 87, 99, 134, 177–182, 188

  Forts, Corfu 106, 137, 139, 218

  Fynes Morison 107

  G

  geology 2 19, 11

  Germanicus 113

  Gladstone 132

  Gnio-Gnio 79, 85

  Golden Book 139, 141

  Goodisson 126, 245

  Govino 32, 63, 142

  Grand Vizier, the 80

  grapes 23, 28

  treading 194, 199–200

  H

  Hadjiavatis 74–78, 84

  Hermones, Cave of 92

  I

  Ionian Academy 131

  J

  Jason 109, 218

  Judas Iscariot 127

  K

  Kallikanzaroi 162

  Kalocheiritis 37–39

  Karaghiosis 69–86, 211

  Kassopi 90, 100, 110, 146, 221

  Kastellani dance 177–183

  Kirkwall, Viscount 135

  L

  Lakones 23, 102, 221

  Lanassa 112–113

  Lithgow 105, 107, 122

  “Lord,” the 80, 235

  Lycophron 111

  M

  Macria 109

  Maillol 165

  Mantinea 168, 172, 173, 175

  Medea 109

  Mnesippus 103, 111, 214

  Mouse Island 91, 102, 131, 143

  Mustalevria 200

  Myrtiotissa 154, 182, 201, 218

  N

  Napoleon 4 130, 166

  Nausicaa 90, 95, 99

  Nelson 60, 205

  Nero 100, 166

  Nimiec 27, 70, 72, 80, 82, 108, 140, 192, 194, 195, 201, 208

  O

  octopus 29, 54, 56–57, 219

  Odysseus 98–100

  Odyssey 89–90, 98–99

  olive 229

  gathering 101, 147

  oil 55, 58, 145, 189, 212

  pressing 148

  trees 21, 23, 31, 64, 66, 105, 131, 147, 149, 150, 161, 192, 194, 237

  P

  Pagan survivals 151, 154

  Paleocastrizza 23, 91–99, 102, 125, 176–177, 185, 215, 218

  Paleopolis 91, 102, 114

  Pan 162

  Paramythia 39

  peasant remedies 214

  peasants, time sense 96

  Peltours 27, 53, 70

  Periander 111–112

  Places to See 218

  Prospero’s Island 121, 166

  puppets 78, 86

  Pyrrhus 112

  R

  Richard Lionheart 104

  S

  salt pans 91, 122–123

  Scheria 109

  sea legend 125–126

  sea scorpion 55

  Shadow play 70–72, 81, 83

  shoulder net 58

  “Sign of the Partridge” 16

  Spiridion, St. 12, 19, 28, 35, 36, 43, 104, 135, 189, 217, 218

  church 6 35–36, 40–43, 50, 61, 100, 138, 153, 158

  clock 50–51

  miracles 37, 43

  procession 41–42, 85

  Spiro Americanos 143

  squid 54, 56–58, 81

  Stephanides, Theodore 14, 19

  Stephano, St., lighthouse 59

  submarine 73

  sweetmeats, Greek 41, 71, 220

  Sykopita 200

  T

  Tempest, The 9, 121–124, 164, 232, 243

  Theodora Augusta, St. 38, 43

  Theodore Stephanides 14, 19

  Things to Visit 218

  Thorpe 124

  Tiberius, villa of 100–102

  tobacco, smuggled 59

  Totila 114–115

  Trata 183

  U

  Ulysses 20, 89–91, 95–96, 98, 103, 105, 109, 131

  V

  vampires 153, 159

  Van Norden 28, 32, 58–59, 71, 94–95

  Veronica 27, 185

  Vetrano 104, 215

  Vido Island 136–137, 141, 142

  Village festivities 6 100, 133, 141

  Villehardouin 104

  W

  water

  tasting 150

  wines, local 14, 221

  A Biography of Lawrence Durrell

  Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) was a novelist, poet, and travel writer best known for the Alexandria Quartet, his acclaimed series of four novels set before and during World War II in Alexandria, Egypt. Durrell’s work was widely praised, with his Quartet winning the greatest accolades for its rich style and bold use of multiple perspectives. Upon the Quartet’s completion, Life called it “the most discussed and widely admired serious fiction of our time.”

  Born in Jalandhar, British India, in 1912 to Indian-born British colonials, Durrell was an avid and dedicated writer from an early age. He studied in Darjeeling before his parents sent him to England at the age of eleven for his formal education. When he failed to pass his entrance examinations at Cambridge University, Durrell committed himself to becoming an established writer. He published his first book of poetry in 1931 when he was just nineteen years old, and later worked as a jazz pianist to help fund his passion for writing.

  Determined to escape England, which he found dreary, Durrell convinced his widowed mother, siblings, and first wife, Nancy Isobel Myers, to move to the Greek island of Corfu in 1935. The island lifestyle reminded him of the India of his childhood. That same year, Durrell published his first novel, Pied Piper of Lovers. He also read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and, impressed by the notorious novel, he wrote an admiring letter to Miller. Miller responded in kind, and their correspondence and friendship would continue for forty-five years. Miller’s advice and work heavily influenced Durrell’s provocative third novel, The Black Book (1938), which was published in Paris. Though it was Durrell’s first book of note, The Black Book was considered mildly pornographic and thus didn’t appear in print in Britain until 1973.

  In 1940, Durrell and his wife had a daughter, Penelope Berengaria. The following year, as World War II escalated and Greece fell to the Nazis, Durrell and his family left Corfu for work in Athens, Kalamata (also in Greece), then Alexandria, Egypt. His relationship with Nancy was strained by the time they reached Egypt, and they separated in 1942. During the war, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British
Embassy. He also wrote Prospero’s Cell, a guide to Corfu, while living in Egypt in 1945.

  Durrell met Yvette Cohen in Alexandria, and the couple married in 1947. They had a daughter, Sappho Jane, in 1951, and separated in 1955. Durrell published White Eagles Over Serbia in 1957, alongside the celebrated memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and Justine (1957), the first novel of the Alexandria Quartet Capitalizing on the overwhelming success of Justine, Durrell went on to publish the next three novels in the series—Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960)—in quick succession. Upon the series’ completion, poet Kenneth Rexroth hailed it as “a tour de force of multiple-aspect narrative.”

  Durrell married again in 1961 to Claude-Marie Vincendon, who died of cancer in 1967. His fourth and final marriage was in 1973 to Ghislaine de Boysson, which ended in divorce in 1979.

  After a life spent in varied locales, Durrell settled in Sommières, France, where he wrote the Revolt of Aphrodite series as well as the Avignon Quintet. The first book in the Quintet, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize while Constance (1982), the third novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize.

  Durrell died in 1990 at his home in Sommières.

  This photograph of Lawrence Durrell aboard his boat, the Van Norden, is taken from a negative discovered among his papers. The vessel is named after a character in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. (Photograph held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  One of Nancy Durrell’s photographs from the 1930s. Pictured here is the Caique, which they used to travel around the waters of Corfu. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin, property of the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  This photograph of Nancy and Lawrence Durrell was likely taken in Delphi, Greece, in late 1939. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin and the Gerald Durrell Estate.)

  A 1942 photograph of Lawrence Durrell with his wife, Nancy, and their daughter, Penelope, taken in Cairo. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  This manuscript notebook contains one of two drafts of Justine acquired by the British Library as part of Lawrence Durrell’s large archive in 1995. (Notebook held in the British Library’s modern manuscripts collection.)

  A page from Durrell’s notebooks, or, as he called them, the “quarry.” This page introduced his notes on the “colour and narrative” of scenes in Justine. (Photo courtesy of the Lawrence Durrell Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.)

  “As well as serving delicious food in an idyllic setting, the Taverna Nikolas at Agni has strong links with the Durrell story in Corfu,” says Joanna Hodgkin of this 2012 photo. Durrell lived in the neighboring town of Kalami, where his famous White House sits right above the shoreline. (Photo courtesy of Joanna Hodgkin.)

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  copyright © 1945, 1975 by Lawrence Durrell

  cover design by Jason Gabbert

  This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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