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Justine
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Justine by Durrell December BOTM
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1) The narrator says that “we are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it” (p. 41). How does the city affect the personalities of the characters in Justine? To what extent does it justify their behavior?
2) Why does Justine refuse responsibility for her relationship with the narrator, saying that “we are not strong or evil enough to exercise choice. All this is part of an experiment arranged by something else, the city perhaps, or another part of ourselves” (p. 27)?
3) What does the narrator mean when he describes Justine as a “true child of Alexandria” (p. 27)?
4) Why does Justine claim that her relationships with other men lead her closer to her husband, Nessim?
5) How accountable are Justine and the narrator for the fates of Nessim and Melissa?
6) What does Balthazar mean when he says that Justine and the narrator are “natural traitors” and that they “are dead and live this life as a sort of limbo” (p. 86)?
7) Clea says of Justine that “like all amoral people she verges on the Goddess” (p. 77). Why does Justine’s amorality make her godlike?
8) Why does the narrator go in Melissa’s place to see Cohen when he is dying? Why is he so affected by Cohen’s illness and death?
9) Is Capodistria’s death planned by Nessim? Why doesn’t the death of Capodistria give Justine the relief that it should or that others believe it will?
10) Why does Melissa ask that the narrator not be told when she is dying?
11) What relationship do the “Consequential Data” at the end of the novel—fragments, observations, poems—have to the preceding parts of the novel? Why does Durrell include them?
12) Why does the narrator describe Alexandrians as trying to “reconcile two extremes of habit and behaviour… extreme sensuality and intellectual asceticism” (p. 98)?
1. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city with Arabic, Levantine and European influences. In Justine the city is described in loving detail from the beautiful mansion of Nessim to his seaside retreat, from seedy brothels in labyrinthine alleys to stifling attic apartments. Both the buildings and the weather affect the characters. The humidity produces lethargy, the hot winds excite sexuality, the sea breeze on the Corniche calms the spirit.2. Justine is a free spirit not concerned with convention. She has had numerous lovers, a child who died, without her revealing who the father was, and blithe unconcern for normal proprieties. She is given to pontificate about philosophy or religion without leaving room for argument by her audience. In this case she is absolving herself of responsibility for the ramifications of the affair, which affects her husband, Nessim, and the narrator's lover, Melissa, as well as the couple in question.
3. Alexandria is portrayed as decadent, mysterious and cosmopolitan, much like Justine herself, whose background is murky and influences uncertain.
4. Justine is fond of Nessim, but not enough to spare him the hurt of her flagrant affair with the narrator. She says she loves her husband but her actions belie this, and her justification that affairs help her intimacy with her husband is pure rationalisation!
5. The affair between Justine and the narrator causes Nessim to seek out Melissa and they have an affair of their own which results in Melissa bearing a child to Nessim despite being very ill and subsequently dying.
6. Justine and the narrator are able to ignore feelings of guilt.
7. Justine is amoral, that is she ignores normal expressions of guilt and responsibility. which is what Clea means, I suppose. A Goddess is removed from normal human responses.
8. Melissa is ill herself and cannot bear to witness Cohen's suffering. The narrator goes instead and is unexpectedly moved by Cohen's terminal condition. He is confronted by the reality of death which he has avoided contemplating in the case of Melissa.
9. Whether Nessim planned Capodistria's murder or whether it was an accident is not explained, but Capodistria's eyepatch suddenly becomes a huge hint that he was Justine's rapist. Justine flees without explaining why, so we are unsure whether his death is a release or a burden.
10. Melissa is aware of the narrator's indifference to her illness and therefore does not want to place him under an obligation to her. When he thinks of her at all, the narrator only remarks how she never reproached him for his unfaithfulness.
11. Unfortunately I listened to an old cassette tape that I have owned for years and these were not included.
12. I think the narrator is projecting his own struggles with sensuality and intellectual asceticism, and using the refrain of Alexandria the city itself, as a strong influence on its inhabitants, to articulate this,
Mod
1) I love Pip's answer. I felt that more than any of the people the city of Alexandria with all her contradictions was the main character of the novel.
2)She is a free spirit her justification is saying she is not strong enough to accept the burden of guilt but if the affair is outside of their control there is no guilt so lets not think about it.
3) Complicated, full of contradictions, free and beautiful.
4) Because she is always comparing him with them and seeing he loves her more.
5) No more so than anyone is responsible for how anyone else decides to behave.
6) The affair is a natural conclusion and they are dead because they didn't fight it?
7) Because she doesn't care she is indifferent and removed like a Goddess.
8) I thought it was because of the child and that he finally felt responsibility and wanted to do something to make up for events.
9) This is unclear.
10) Because she doesn't want him to feel obliged to see her, perhaps also a hint of vanity illness is not kind to the looks so preserve his memory of her as she was.
11) I my copy I assume this are the work points. To me they read like a series of crib cards for Durrell to keep straight in his mind who is motivated by what, how they think and feel and how poetry can be used to express emotion.
2)She is a free spirit her justification is saying she is not strong enough to accept the burden of guilt but if the affair is outside of their control there is no guilt so lets not think about it.
3) Complicated, full of contradictions, free and beautiful.
4) Because she is always comparing him with them and seeing he loves her more.
5) No more so than anyone is responsible for how anyone else decides to behave.
6) The affair is a natural conclusion and they are dead because they didn't fight it?
7) Because she doesn't care she is indifferent and removed like a Goddess.
8) I thought it was because of the child and that he finally felt responsibility and wanted to do something to make up for events.
9) This is unclear.
10) Because she doesn't want him to feel obliged to see her, perhaps also a hint of vanity illness is not kind to the looks so preserve his memory of her as she was.
11) I my copy I assume this are the work points. To me they read like a series of crib cards for Durrell to keep straight in his mind who is motivated by what, how they think and feel and how poetry can be used to express emotion.
Mod
So I feel very indifferent to this book, I didn't hate it but I didn't find it very interesting either. I will endeavour to give some of my thoughts on the questions, but not a lot about this book stuck with me. I didn't mind the experimental style of writing and the way the narrative was very fluid and jumped time and place often with no rhyme or reason. But I did mind the fact that nothing very interesting was happening and I found non of the characters interesting. The plot, for what it was, didn't engage me as a reader and ultimately didn't lead anywhere. I am aware that this is part of a quartet of novels, but only this first one is on the 1001 list and on the back of it I won't be exploring the others. 1 & 3) I really didn't see the city as being a character in the novel the way a lot of other readers seem to have. It just seems to have completely passed me by.
2) I think she was just trying to absolve herself of any guilt, but it might have also had something to do with her beliefs. They don't dive too deep into her meetings with Baltazaar but maybe she believes in fate and that none of us has much control over our actions.
4) No idea, maybe because his mistrust of her causes him to spy on her all the time. He has eyes on her all the time.
5)Their actions lead to the unhappiness of their partners, but what those partners choose to do with that unhappiness is their own affair (no pun intended).
6) They are traitors to the natural order of things, Justine especially seems to hold herself aloof from everyone else and the pain she causes to Nessim and Melissa. She lives in a sort of limbo with no interest in the past (she appears to have changed her name and left a previous husband) and no hopes for the future.
7) I agree with Pip's answer on this one.
8) I'm not sure why he went to see him, but I thought he might have been struck by how much Cohen seemed to care for Melissa even in the death, whereas our narrator causes her nothing but pain.
9) It appears to have been planned but it isn't specifically laid out in the novel. Justine never sought vengeance against Capodistria, always refusing to utter his name. To me, her actions seemed more driven over the loss of her child and there would be no relief to that pain.
10) She knows the narrator does not care for her, why would she want him around?
11) I listened to an audiobook version and this part wasn't included.
Finally getting to the questions for this one. There was some really compelling and beautiful prose in there, but I didn’t connect to or deeply feel for any of characters. I gave it 3 stars. 1) The city is like Justine in having ambiguous origin and history, amoral, intriguing, full of life. Her character, like already mentioned here, seems to be a personified stand-in for the city itself. I would broadly agree that people are shaped by the place they come from either from being a part of the culture of the place, or forming themselves as a resistance to it.
2) I got the impression from the book that she is someone who wears her irresponsibility and lack of guilt as a badge of honor and an inherent part of her persona. It seems like a deflection oh “oh nothing we do is really our faults because it just the atmosphere, or our temptations we couldn’t possibly control”. This was an aspect of the book that didn’t really gel with me.
3) Pretty much what I said for question 1.
4) It seems like other men –or at least having affairs with them- excites her more than Nessim does. It seems like she can more easily enjoy the affection she gets from him if her passion is being sated elsewhere. The ultimate let down of these affairs also puts his devotion in perspective.
5) I agree with Ginny on this one. Their affair made their partners unhappy but people are ultimately responsible for what they do with their unhappiness.
6) Well, they both seems to easily let people down, sneak around on them, and waft through life without committing seriously to causes, their lives, or the people in them. The don’t value themselves as alive and substantial, so by their warped logic anything they do to others can’t be either.
7) I think people can often find apathetic charisma intriguing and intimidating-and yes propelling those people to a sort of perceived godliness. It seems to come from the idea that these people are ‘above’ in that they aren’t weighed down but their guilt, conventional morality, etc. Or, it’s as if they know something that others don’t about how little things matter so they transcends the regular and mortal. I understand this angle, but personally I often find there’s nothing less impressive than apathy and amorality- more like someone is lacking than transcendent. Another reason I didn’t fully gel with the book.
8) I like both Book and Pip’s answers to this one.
9) I felt like this was implied. One of the odd things about this book, in my opinion, is how Justine describes her sexual assault- and also more so how the narrator contemplates it. I don’t have the exact words but I seem to remember something along the lines of “she wasn’t really traumatized by this, she pulled this story out to draw pitying men to her, she was always secretly comparing men to him” like….what? Overall the book was okay but it did have a few passages that were very “it’s obvious a man with no clue wrote this’.
10) Agree with others here: she knew of his ultimate indifference, didn’t want to force the obligation, etc.
11) Was not in the audiobook I listened to.
12) I like what Pip said for this one. Also, it makes sense as a historical analogy. We have it as the city where Cleopatra ‘seduces’ more than one ‘great man’ of Rome (using quotes here because I imagine these events were a lot more politically motivated and less ‘beguiled by sexy lady’ motivated than it is romanticized as). But also, the city of the library of Alexandria, and great philosophers. The origin of the city itself is draped in romanticism as Alexander the Great allegedly built the city because ‘Homer told him to in a dream vision”.
I read this many years ago and enjoyed it. I also went on to read the second book in the series. I would like to eventually re-read it someday and read the remaining two books, just not at this time...
Lawrence Durrell was born in Darjeeling, India, in 1912 to an English father and an Irish-English mother. At the age of eleven, he was sent to England to be formally educated, and remained there until the early 1930s when he went to Paris to start a career as a writer. There Durrell met the American writer Henry Miller, who became his mentor; he and Miller remained friends for the next forty-five years. In 1935, Durrell moved to the Greek island of Corfu, and his first novel of note, The Black Book, was published in 1938. During World War II, Durrell served as a press attaché to the British embassies in Cairo and Alexandria. After the war, he held a number of diplomatic and teaching jobs in Rhodes, Belgrade, Athens, and Cyprus. He eventually settled in Sommiéres, in the south of France.
Durrell was married four times. Three of the marriages ended in divorce, and his third wife died of cancer. One of his two daughters committed suicide several years before his own death in 1990. Her mother was Eve Cohen, Durrell’s second wife and the model for the character Justine.
Durrell’s most celebrated work is The Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960), comprised of the novels Justine, Balthazar,Mountolive, and Clea. He produced two other cycles of novels, The Revolt of Aphrodite (1968-1970) and The Avignon Quintet(1974-1985), neither of which achieved the critical or commercial success of The Alexandria Quartet. He also published numerous volumes of poetry, much of which appears in Collected Poems, 1931-1974 (1980), and a memoir about living in Cyprus, Bitter Lemons (1957).