Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness (The Avignon Quintet, I)

Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness (The Avignon Quintet, I), Lawrence Durrell, Barcelona, Ed. Versal, 1986 (1974)
This is a disturbing history, within another history, with an endless tale where the reader needs to make interpretations to consider. All this, obviously, can hinder their intelligibility and divert attention. Eco inherent in other novels in the series, with Sylvie, Akkad, Livia …, to Avignon, Alexandria and the Mediterranean World in the background of the second book I read of the quintet. The last chapter, built with the intention of closing the story or at least create the last lines of interpretation, provides the nakedness of a fiction of Durrell writer’s alter-ego’s? -, Cited in The Blanford fiction within the fiction writer as Bloshford Rob Sutcliffe, referring to several links to other novels in the series.
It is often said that Durrell wanted the five books could be read independently and in no particular order, there is absolutely no correlation defined, either by himself or by critics. However, it is obvious that the reader finds the common ground, latent characters, stories dams. This is the game of the author: realize it is really a lie. This is the basis of literature, the novel as a genre, and Monsieur is no stranger to this, where here it is a novel in which several characters intersect living some time in a Templar castle home in Provence, in Verfeuille. An interaction marked by emotional ties of consanguinity and the brothers Bruce and Pia, married in turn to Sylvie and Rob Sutcliffe, respectively. Similarly, the character gains strength to kill himself and marks the evolution of the story, Piers, Sylvie’s brother, deeply marked by the Gnostic sect that has its center operations with the guide and becomes Akkad (p.. 142) – Macabru oasis in Alexandria: “He was a worshiper of the God of the Templars. He believed in the usurper of the throne, the Prince of Darkness.” (p. 31).

A few explicit references to the title are several qualifications later (p. 221).
The novel is rich in perspectives and narrative voices, of all kinds: it now focuses on the medical history of Bruce, now in the writer Sutcliffe, now in the Templars doctorate Toby Goddard … All this to be a history on human nature reflections and interrelationships of it with the forces of nature: “What dies is actually the collective image of the past, all temporal selves that have been present, in a row together now in a moment of perfect attendance, arrest as clear as crystal, which could last forever if you so wished. “(p. 17).
One of the most suggestive is that of Sutcliffe. So, before hearing his own voice in “Venetian Documents” in the third chapter, we know its degradation, aggravated by the flight of his wife, Pia, with her lover, black woman also pre-Trash-suicide, with the rugged description of its decision not to wash and enjoy origins crusts and other body fluids (p. 18). After leaving written notes, we find another pattern of reflection: “Identity is the delicate suggestion of consistency with which we dress. It is both illusory and very real and very necessary for happiness, if happiness is really necessary. “(p. 89-90).

In his notebooks we read sentences like the following:
* Today death is a limbo peopled by living. (p. 221)
* A critic is a worm in the liver of the literature. (p. 260)
* Noted with displeasure that the suicide was really too painful, and abandoned the idea for some time. Then, like a fruit blue, melancholy began to grow again. (p. 258)
Another interesting character is his wife, Pia, who kept for many years of marriage a secret box that obscures the husband. There are dolls and other stuff of childhood, when he discovers, the balance is upset: “I had desecrated the inner reality of his distant childhood.” (P. 224). Thus, it shows peculiar behavior as “never could spend all night in bed with a man, had to get up and go to another bed after making love.” (P. 225).

Trash with her lover, with whom she travels through the same places where he had been with her husband, there is suggestive descriptions like this: “The body of Trash smells like a wedding cake.” (P. 237).
In short, Durrell gives us a new chapter in his later work, his will to those who have wanted to meet again after The Alexandria Quartet, in a story that every character is hidden in. The multiplicity of perspectives and thoughts, as a whole, responds to an author’s personal debate that ended his emotional and intellectual baggage. This is the merit and talent of the writer and his work, and we are the witnesses and heirs of their hobby.