More on the Literary Alexandria
Posted on Dec 03, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
Previously, I wrote here about my distrust of the representation of Alexandria in the literary works of Cavafy and Durrell. Not that a work of art need convey an “accurate” depiction of a subject. However, in my desire to understand Alexandria in anticipation of traveling there for a project of my own, I am critical of the two primary sources of my conception—my literary memory—of that city: Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet and Cavafy’s poems; especially given Durrell’s status as colonial Brit interloper and Cavafy’s non-Arabness (although he lived most of his life in the city). In other words, I’m searching for multiple lenses through which to make a preliminary assessment of the city.
Really helpful in my critical reevaluation of Durrell’s and Cavafy’s respective Alexandrias is an article by John Rodenbeck called “Alexandria in Cavafy, Durrell, and Tsirkas.”, and it’s a decent comparative introduction to three authors’ (Tsirkas is new to me) treatment of Alexandria. With particular vitriol, Rodenbeck hammers Durrell at every turn: “Durrell’s sense of the city’s history is as haphazard as his politics, linguistics, ethnography or topography, colored by overt ethnic and religious hostilities.” So too, we learn of Durrell’s confessed distaste for the city in particular (”ash-heap of four cultures”) and Egypt in general (”been four years bound here”). Perhaps the reader could excuse all of these inaccuracies as literary license taken in the service of the grand work, but what clutches this critique of Durrell’s representation of Alexandria is just a few contextual words given as part of the opening note of Justine, the first book of the Quartet: “Only the city is real.” This note establishes certain expectations about the verisimilitude of his portrait of Alexandria within the pages of the books, and I rather naively took much of the author’s descriptions for granted in my consumption of it. Yet, something in me wishes to hold on to this literary memory of a misrepresented city that I have never been to. Durrell’s fictional Alexandria has an attractive completeness, a fully formed city by design that can be regarded in the mind, digested.
Cavafy makes out much better in Rodenbeck’s analysis, for the poet captures the dingy ordinariness of the city with apparently little artifice. Appearances are laid bare. I think his poems share something of the starkness that defines the post-WWII Italian neo-realist films. With Cavafy, “the absolutely ordinary mundane physical reality of the city itself is a central and crucial element. […] It is this physical reality—of ordinary furniture, broken-down beds and shabby sofas, windows and doors opened or closed, houses, streets, crowds, ordinary times of night or day—that inhabits and informs” his poetry.
Next in my literary assessment of Alexandria is E. M. Forster’s Alexandria: A History and a Guide which should be in my hands soon. I’m interested too in an article I found that considers Forster’s work from the perspective of his attitude towards tourism. Tourism is another conceptual trajectory I hope to follow briefly in my thinking about my trip because, well, I will be a tourist in Alexandria.
Some lingering questions: Do Alexandrians know Durrell’s writing? Do they know Cavafy’s poems? Do they factor them into their conceptions of the city and its history? (I think, probably not.) So, what are the stories that Alexandrians tell of their city today?