Category Archives: preambulatory
Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet” in Shreds
Posted on Dec 29, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
“Kill yr idols” said Sonic Youth. Or at least cut ‘em up and reuse them. Here is Durrell’s Justine (first of The Alexandria Quartet) shredded and assembled. Textual montage, a bit of concrete poetry.* Decontextualized to a point—but, of course, I can’t quite shake the wholeness of my memory of the text. Regardless, this stuff is gonna make great packing material for some things to take with me to Alexandria.
* More on concrete poetry. This term was coined in the 50s, but such works pre-date that (Tristan Tzara and dada, for one). Coincidentally, there is an Alexandria connection to such “pattern poems“:
This style of poetry originated in Greek Alexandria during the third and second centuries B.C.E. Some were designed as decoration for religious art-works, including wing-, axe- and altar-shaped poems. Only a handful of examples survive, which are collected together in the Greek Anthology. They include poems by Simias and Theocritus. (wikipedia)
I’ll be looking for some of these texts in the Bibliotheca, no doubt…
Lines of Alexandria
Posted on Dec 21, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
“You don’t have to see the city the way Lawrence Durrell did” (or anyone else, for that matter)
Posted on Dec 16, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
The literary Alexandria is an entry point into the project, as those texts are ultimately representations of the city. The idea of discovering/reading/writing pedestrian histories of the city through conversations and walks, etc. could be a way to counterpoise these literary representations with other perspectives (”counterpoise” may not be exactly right). Originally, I was concerned with accuracy—ie. Durrell’s Alexandria was somehow wrong—but I’m not sure that this should be my worry, whether one depiction of the city is “right” or “wrong.” They all co-exist as projections onto the city; they have meaning and they matter. (And they don’t somehow.) They enter into a cultural feedback loop, commingling with each other to form versions of the city. My concern is to find multiple versions because the ones I have access to at the moment conceal the minor histories that are so important to understanding a place. Besides, dealing with accuracy opens up sketchy terrain with respect to Truth!
A powerful nostalgia seems to envelope the city. My brief correspondence with alexandria42 indicates the power that the past city holds. There is apparently a large diaspora of former Alexandrians that shares strong bonds with not only the city and its cosmopolitanism but also with each other. (I wonder if it was because of the abruptness with which nationalism emerged in Egypt, thus provoking, or forcing, many of the “non-Egyptian” communities to leave Egypt.) In much of the writing I’ve read—the literary Alexandria—there is a strong sense of nostalgia for the city’s past that spans generations. Forster, writing in the early 20th century, mentions this; as does Durrell in the 70s along with others. I wonder if the spectre of the city’s ancient past—buried and apparently vanished with very little empirical traces left—has embedded this sense of nostalgia into the psyche of the place. I’m cobbling all of this together ad hoc… What is also curious about Forster’s guide (well, Alexandria, really) is that all of the great monuments are gone without a trace it seems. This is very different from Rome, where I studied for a year as an undergraduate. The physical space of Rome is incredibly theatrical, the layers of its architectural past all out in the open and compacted together (vertically and horizontally). At night, drunk and young, my classmates and I performed the city among its series of flood-lit historical sets. I felt the sum weight of all this evidence to be as incredibly oppressive and stifling as it was spectacular and romantically inspiring. I am anticipating something much different in Alexandria.
My objective with this preparatory work is decidedly not to get ensnared in the past, but is rather an attempt to work through some of this material in order to arrive at the present Alexandria. I will deal with this present city and its life as I encounter it in just a couple of weeks. Yesterday, NYTimes.com ran an article in the Travel section about Alexandria and ended with a conversation with Mahmoud Khaled at ACAF, an artist who I’ve corresponded with occasionally:
A young generation of Alexandrians, weary of the nostalgia for the city’s European past, is also renewing the city in smaller ways. On a September evening, Mahmoud Khaled, an artist who helps run the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, an exhibition space, talked about the city’s fledgling artists. “It’s still a small scene,” Mr. Khaled said, adding that the library had become a cultural magnet. “We get lots of students.”
As he prepared for a new exhibit of Arab artists, he talked about the popular perception of Alexandria among visitors, which, for many, continues to be shaped by a set of postwar British novels called “The Alexandria Quartet.”
“You don’t have to see the city the way Lawrence Durrell did,” Mr. Khaled said, referring to the books’ author. “We’re really interested in getting them to look at the city in different ways.”
That’s it exactly.
Alexandria, on paper
Posted on Dec 10, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
Assembled satellite views of Alexandria. Some kind of return to Flatland? Intersecting plans: screen over paper sheet over GPS over streets over topos over geology. A particular lay of the land, one way among many to visualize the city. Phase I of a multi-phase iteration. One set of data, perhaps no more or no less significant than any other. What is represented? What is not represented? Always careful not to privilege the map, that totalizing abstraction of “space,” so often devoid of time, of history, of multiplicity, of diverse and contradictory subjectivities. But potentially instrumental, a way to open up (tentative) interpretations of a place. Which is what all this is about now, isn’t it?
Petites Histoires
Posted on Dec 06, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
Also from the Rodenbeck article mentioned in the previous post, the author writes of Cavafy’s accounting of the commonplaces of the city: “So likewise is it the trivial gossip recorded in petites histoires, not the solemn narratives of great historians, that can bring us to an understanding of the pathos of all historical event, no matter how grandiose.” I’m interested in the these tiny histories, in their potential to reveal hidden layers of meaning within the city. And by a couple of semantic turns, I can move from petites histoires to tiny histories to minor histories (cf. Deleuze and Guattari’s “minor literature” and Joan Ockman’s “minor architecture”) to vernacular histories and arrive at pedestrian histories.
Pedestrian histories suggest a multiplicity of stories and perspectives from which to consider a place, from which to consider Alexandria and the people who inhabit it. So too, pedestrian histories depend upon the itinerary and movements between static points of rest. They are performed anew with each subject, and maybe with each singular instance. Although, paths will often be repeated, practiced, refined. Pedestrian histories have a pacing, a slowness, a particular kind of looking. As a frame, pedestrian histories seems to be really useful in how I might approach my time in Alexandria and how I might begin to relate my experiences to such a foreign, unknown place. It’s burgeoning.
Of course, I’m indebted to de Certeau’s spatial stories here (once again) for a modicum of provocation in thinking about pedestrian histories. De Certeau, writing of spatial stories, makes a distinction between “space” and “place” and is particularly concerned with the movement between these two states which comprises stories. (Interestingly, he notes that the public transport in Athens is called “metaphor” in Greek—one takes a metaphor to move through the city.) Space… “a determination through operations which, when they are attributed to a stone, tree, or human being, specify ’spaces’ by the actions of historical subjects (a movement always seems to condition the production of a space and to associate it with a history).” Contrary to this, place is determined by objects which are “dead,” static, fixed.
While his particular space/place segmentation might be a touch esoteric at first read, it does become clearer in analysis of the map vs. tour. De Certeau cites an analysis of the descriptions New Yorkers gave of their apartments which revealed two types: “static” or “mobile.” One is a tableau, the other a movement. And the New Yorkers overwhelmingly favored the latter type of narrative: “you turn right and go into the kitchen” vs. “on the right is the kitchen.” These, then, are “two poles of experience […] the itinerary (a discursive series of operations) and the map (a place projection totalizing observations)…”
Modern scientific discourse eventually split the tour from the map. “The first medieval maps included only the rectilinear marking out of itineraries (performative indications chiefly concerning pilgrimages), along with the stops one was to make (cities which one was to pass through, spend the night in, pray at, etc.) and distances calculated in hours or in days, that is, in terms of the time it would take to cover them on foot.” These early maps suggest to me the pedestrian histories that I’m interested in. I remember this as well, walking and talking in an unfamiliar city, stories and histories spatially unfolding.
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?
Oh, Come to Alexandria!
Posted on Nov 27, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
Some friends who have been to Egypt (studied abroad in Cairo and visited Alexandria) lent me this curious Egyptian pop cassette tape. They actually received it while living in Boston via a mysterious transaction that landed the tape in the record shop of another friend. The cover art (and sound) seems to date the recording from the early 70s perhaps. The tunes are peppy love songs sung in mostly English and occasionally Arabic. Musically, they have lounge-pop feel but are distinctly near-eastern in the instrumentation, melody, and rhythm. The song included here is about Alexandria and might well be titled “Come to Alexandria” after the chorus lyric.
alexandria42’s photos / Tags / alexandria
Posted on Nov 26, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
This image of wrapping paper is titled “Hannaux, Alexandria wrapping paper - memories of shopping with my mother,” and is one of many photos tagged “Alexandria” by woman with the username alexandria42. The stream of photos portrays a fascinating visual history of a family named Cohen, the father of which was an English banker living in Alexandria from the 1930s through the 50s. Alexandria42 apparently attended the prestigious English Girls’ College (EGC) in Alexandria as a young person, and many of her family photos portray this institution.
What is curious about the dozens of photos I’ve viewed is what is absent from the pictures (as is often the case). Seen here is England on the Egyptian Med and rarely does one see anyone who appears to be of Arab descent. (To be fair, the majority of these are obviously family pictures and by no means a representative cross-section of mid-20th century Alexandria.) Undeniably, though, I think the photos as a whole intimate the history of British imperial hegemony as it extended around the globe in general and in Alexandria in particular. The Brits occupied Egypt from 1882 until 1956, and their worldmaking was a formula of cultural interjection and domination that spanned the globe. And other defining historical moments are revealed as well, as in this photo below from 1935.
Such a personal archive of old analogue photographs is quite rare to find online. Thanks to alexandria42 for making them available to the rest of us.
Alexandria, City of (My) Memory
Posted on Nov 24, 2007 in preambulatory | Permalink
Alexandria, Egypt has loomed large in my memory over the last dozen or so years. Its presence has ebbed and flowed in my imagination. In fact, I have never been to Alexandria—physically, anyway. For me, it exists as a remembered placed constructed from the tales of two poets: Lawrence Durrell and Constantine Cavafy.
Primarily a novelist, Durrell was a British expat who at times worked for the British Foreign Office and lived for a few years in Alexandria and Cairo around the time of World War II. He would draw upon this experience when he wrote The Alexandria Quartet (c. 1957-60), a series of four books—Justine, Balthazar, Mount Olive, Clea—which follows a somewhat eccentric cast of characters and their various liaisons and intrigues in the years leading up to World War II. Told from different perspectives throughout the quartet, the books chart the provisional, fluid, and nonlinear character of memory and invoke the city of Alexandria as a kind of datum which organizes memory and connects the experiences of his characters who commiserate in each others’ joys, angsts, sorrows, neuroses, and on and on. Of course, the filter of my own memory now obscures and colors my interpretation of the Quartet, but it’s still quite obvious why these books had such a profound affect on me; particularly with respect to my later research/obsession with memory and architecture. At the time of my first reading, I was 21 or 22 and had yet to shed some of the more romantic notions I had about being an artist-poet. Several factors collided to guarantee my fascination with Durrell’s books (and identification with the narrator of Justine): I was young, poor, brooding and philosophical, a painter trained by the sons of the Abstract Expressionists, tortured in love, and, most significantly, still pining away over a prior year of studying abroad in Rome. And I was utterly dismayed by the rawness of it all. No wonder. I wonder what criticality my distance from these first readings might invite… I imagine Durrell to be incredibly chauvinist and certainly misogynist, a white male literary voice of the highest order. But am I inventing this?
I feel confronted by the dilemma of whether or not to reread The Alexandria Quartet either in advance of or during my visit to Alexandria.
Cavafy is a figure I’m less familiar with, and I came to his poetry via Durrell’s mention and quotation of him in the Quartet. He was born in Alexandria to Greek parents and seems to embody the kind of abundant cosmopolitanism and mingling of Mediterranean cultures that marked the city in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century. I remember Cavafy’s poems (read in translation) as sharp, crisp, and deftly composed in their sparseness. Like the light of the Mediterranean, that piercing clarity. And I can’t help but revisit and interject the poem of Alexandria now:
You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.
—“The City”
My sense is, though, that these poets project a dangerous image of the city of Alexandria. Dangerous to me, that is, because the perspective is so partial, so aestheticized, exoticized. It reaches from out of the past and entangles history. And which past is represented here? That of the iconoclastic Brit? The Greek aesthete? Are these accounts of the city acknowledged by contemporary Alexandrians? If so, how do they interpret them? To what degree to Durrell and Cavafy matter to the everyday life of the city now?
Much of my distrust of these authors comes from my utter ignorance of so much what constitutes the place of Alexandria, Egypt. However, in my search for points of entry into that world, for hermeneutic anchors that might inform my understanding, I am drawn to The Alexandria Quartet and Cavafy’s poems because they are something concrete that connects me to the city. It may be problematic but they offer a place to start.