Lawrence Durrell

Birth: 1912-02-27 , Jalandhar

Death: 1990-11-07 , Sommières

Lawrence George Durrell (1912-1990) was a British novelist, poet, playwright, and diplomat. Born in British India, he spent much of his adult life in the Mediterranean, and his work often reflects these experiences. He is best known for his novel "The Alexandria Quartet", a tetralogy that explores the complexities of human relationships and cultural identity. Durrell was also a prolific poet and wrote travel books, essays, and memoirs. His style is characterized by rich, sensory prose and the exploration of themes such as love, war, memory, and the search for meaning.

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Awards

1986

Cholmondeley Awards

Annual award granted to British poets for works published in the UK, focusing on quality and merit, without specific categories.

Poems List

Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?

“Kiss me. Again. Once more.” Commands to be obeyed when issued by a woman.

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment: only there does its satisfaction lie.

A critic is a lug-worm in the liver of literature.

Our inventions mirror our secret wishes.

Shyness has laws: you can only give yourself, tragically, to those who least understand.

The artist’s work constitutes the only satisfactory relationship he can have with his fellow men since he seeks his real friends among the dead and the unborn.

Life, the raw material, is only lived in potentia until the artist deploys it in his work.

For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life.

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Lawrence Durrell was born in Jalandhar, Punjab, British India. He moved to the United Kingdom with his family in 1920. His literary career began with the publication of poetry, but it was with prose that he gained international recognition. His tetralogy "The Alexandria Quartet", composed of "Justine", "Balthazar", "Mountolive", and "Clea", was published between 1957 and 1960. This set of novels, set in Alexandria, Egypt during the 1930s and 1940s, is celebrated for its exploration of the complexities of love, desire, politics, and identity, with overlapping and contradictory narratives. Durrell also served as a diplomat on various missions, including Greece and Argentina, and taught at universities in the United States. He lived much of his adult life on Greek islands, such as Corfu and Crete, where he wrote many of his works. He died in Sommières, in the south of France.