LAWRENCE DURRELL, JUSTINE
LAWRENCE DURRELL, JUSTINE

Summary/Abstract: The essay focuses on the configuration of the city of Alexandria as the main character of Lawrence Durrell’s 1957 novel Justine, through the reflection and accumulation of the other characters, happenings, feelings. Some of the issues approached in a minute hermeneutic reading of the novel are: the parallel between Pursewarden’s trilogy and Durrel’s tetralogy in the making, the comparison between Darley the writer and Durrell himself, the insistence on the understanding of Alexandria as a living being with human features, the identification between Darley and Alexandria, the metaphorical significance of the geographical itinerary towards Cabala, the mirroring of the love affair between Darley and Justine with the crude copulation of two locals in a shanty, the similitude between Alexandria and Justine in their contradictory aberrant salient feature, the allegorical analogy of Cohen’s dying daydreaming/death agony with Darley’s hopeless love torment, etc.

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