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Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: 'The politics of love, the intrigues of desire, good and evil, virtue and caprice, love and murder, moved obscurely in the dark corners of Alexandria's streets and squares, brothels and drawing-roomsâ??moved like a great congress of eels in the slime of plot and counter-plot.' In Balthazar, the second volume in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, the story and the characters come more clearly into focus. Darley, the reflective Englishman, receives from Balthazar, the pathologist, a mass of notes which attempt to explain what really happened between the tempestuous Justine, her husband Nessim, Clea the artist, and Pursewarden the writer; new figures emerge and play key roles. Balthazar, in his 'Interlinear', explains and warns.… (more)
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The technique is thus reminiscent of the "unreliable narrator" technique famously associated with The good soldier, but with the additional twist that Justine was a complete, self-contained novel in its own right: a reader who wasn't aware of the existence of the second book would have no reason to doubt the narrative authority of the first. Of course, now that we have been told that the narrator could be wrong once, we may reasonably enough wonder if we are getting the full story in Balthazar - especially since Durrell's introductory note makes it clear that we are going to get this story at least once more...
Balthazar is similar in style and structure to Justine - a relatively disjointed series of scenes shifting us backwards and forwards in time; descriptions that range from delightful pin-point economy to full-scale, all-guns-blazing, thick, creamy purple soup. At its worst, it is as though Durrell had decided to write a dictionary of quotations, supplying all the material himself; at best it is wonderful.
The second volume is the Darley's review of an interlinear sent to him by Balthazar a psychiatrist acquaintence who presents another more informed view of the situation described in Justine. Key information not earlier available is supplied and the historical accuracy of events are supplemented by another layer of experience and interpretation. The personalities of the characters are shown to be less fixed and more determined by planned and chance events and locations than the narrator presented in volume one of the quartet.
When there is limited information and insight, a point of view relies on Darley's projections of his own personality and life history necessarily limiting the understanding of a city, its citizens, and the artistic conception of the characters. Balthazar is a psychiatrist who focuses on realistic interpretations of emotions related to character interactions rather than presenting psychoanalytic jargon to obfuscate psychological history. Darley gains startling insight from the writing of Balthazar, his perspective broadens and deepens, and he adds the relativity of time as a factor in his understanding of emotions, especially love and betrayal.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to the next layer of the story, Mountolive, the third dimension of this evolving work of art. The analysis will continue in the third volume from the point of view of Mountolive, a British Ambassador.
Experimental fiction that was reportedly a commercial and critical success when first published, it has not aged well. Some of the stylistic quirks, such as heavily quoting the words of a fictional author in the story, just seem odd, while others are just self
“Balthazar” continues the narrative started in the first volume of the Alexandria Quartet, “Justine.” This time, we read of many of the events recounted in “Justine” from another perspective, that of the psychiatrist Balthazar, who unceremoniously disrupts and complicates our understanding of the events in “Justine.” A few years after the events, the narrator, whose name we finally learn is Darley, has moved to an island with the child that Melissa has had with Nessim. Here, Balthazar drops off what he refers to as his “interlinear,” (a literary recounting of previous events from his point of view) that Darley spends much of the novel reading and meditating upon. His account completely undermines Darley’s understanding, telling him that Justine was really in love with the novelist Pursewarden, and just used him as a decoy to cheat on her husband. And we read about Scobie, a mutual friend of almost everyone in the book, including Clea, Justine, Melissa, and Darley, who is killed while in drag, possibly trying to pick up sailor for a trick.
In “Balthazar,” Durrell draws the reader to the meta-fictional aspects of the story in at least two ways. His account completely reconfigures Darley’s understanding of events in the previous volume, telling him that Justine was really in love with the novelist Pursewarden, and just used him as a decoy to cheat on her husband. In this sense, Balthazar’s “interlinear” almost serves to turn the entire narrative into a series of suspect, but all equally likely, Rashomon-like perspectival takes, without any single one being allowed to be account for the entire truth. Durrell also uses Pursewarden as a kind of a novelist-cipher to shed light on the plight of the novelist – or, more broadly, the artist’s – task. This ambiguity, which can at times seem heavy-handed, seems to mirror much of what Durrell is really saying about love, and especially erotic relationships in general: that they are a series of shadows, lies, deceptions, and figments of our own fragile imaginations. As with the first volume, the language is stunning, so just as in the first review, I’d like to end with a bit of what I’m talking about – those wonderful ambiguities and mysteries which so wholly constitute Alexandria and its residents for Durrell:
“I feel I want to sound a note of … affirmation – though not in the specific terms of a philosophy or religion. It should have the curvature of an embrace, the wordlessness of a lover’s code. It should convey some feeling that the world we live in is founded in something too simple to be over-described as cosmic law – but as easy to grasp as, say, an act of tenderness, simple tenderness in the primal relation between animal and plant, rain and soil, seed and trees, man and God. A relationship so delicate that it is all too easily broken by the inquiring mind and conscience in the French sense which of course has its own rights and its own field of deployment. I’d like to think of my work simply as a cradle in which philosophy could rock itself to sleep, thumb in mouth. What do you say to this? After all, this is not simply what we most need in the world, but really what describes the state of pure process in it. Keep silent awhile you feel a comprehension of this act of tenderness – not power or glory: and certainly not Mercy, that vulgarity of the Jewish mind which can only imagine man as crouching under the whip. No, for the sort of tenderness I mean is utterly merciless!” (p. 238).
A fattened, more comprehensive and weezing approach will occur when I finish the Quartet.
While Balthazar's revelations lend new shading to Darley's understanding of all that he related in the first book, they do not add a new perspective to them for the reader so much as overlay them with additional scenes, content and themes. Durrell drives deeper in the subject of love, far less focused on Justine specifically. It is almost a malevolent force in this work, so easily manipulated yet so easily manipulating, creating victims of both those who love and those who are loved. Or that might just be Darley's unacknowledged bitterness talking.
We spend a lot of time with the reminiscences of the narrator, and we learn his name. We find out more about Justine and her various relationships. The major set piece of this book is an intriguing description of Carnaval. There is a murder, and a mystery, all wrapped up in a wide variety of philosophical musings.
This is not a standalone. Justine must be read first for it to make any sense. I appreciate the creativity but it’s not going to be for everyone. The reader will need a great deal of patience with flowery language and a nonlinear storyline. As in Justine, toward the end of the book we find a thin thread of a plot, but there is nothing that feels like a conclusion. It just … ends. I liked this one more than Justine and will continue to read the quartet. I am planning to take my time, since I can only digest these books in small portions. Next up is Mountolive.