ambiguities

quotes from justine by lawrence durrell

"'it is idle to go over all this in a medium as unstable as words. i remember the edges and corners of so many meetings, and i see a sort of composite justine, concealing a ravenous hunger for information, for power through self-knowledge, under a pretence of feeling. sadly i am driven to wonder whether i ever really moved her - or existed simply as a laboratory in which she could work. she learned much from me: to read and reflect. she had achieved neither before. and perhaps what i took to be love was merely a gratitude. among the thousand discarded people, impressions, subjects of study - somewhere i see myself drifting, floating, reaching out arms. strangely enough it was never in the lover that i really met her but in the writer. here we clasped hands - in that amoral world of suspended judgements where curiosity and wonder seem greater than order - the syllogistic order imposed by the mind. this is where one waits in silence, holding one's breath, lest the pane should cloud over. i watched over her like this. i was mad about her.'"

"'yet with her one felt all around the companionship of shadows which invaded life and filled it with a new resonance. feeling so rich in ambiguities could not be resolved by a sudden act of the will. i had at times the impression of a woman whose every kiss was a blow struck on the side of death. when i discovered, for example (what i knew) that she had been repeatedly unfaithful to me, and at times when i had felt myself to be closest to her, i felt nothing very sharp in outline: rather a sinking numbness such as one might feel on leaving a friend in the hospital, to enter a lift and fall six floors in silence, standing beside a uniformed automaton whose breathing one could hear. the silence of my room deafened me. and then, thinking about it, gathering my whole mind about the fact i realized that what she had done bore no relation to myself: it was an attempt to free herself for me: to give me what she knew belonged to me. i cannot say that this sounded any better to my ears than a sophistry. nevertheless my heart seemed to know the truth of this and dictated a tactful silence to me to which she responded with a new warmth, a new ardour, of gratitude added to love.'"

"'i was surprised to find that though i loved her wholly and knew that i should never love anyone else - yet i shrank from the thought that she might return. the two ideas co-existed in my mind without displacing one another. i thought to myself with relief. 'good. i have really loved at last. that is something achieved;' and to this my alter ego added: 'spare me the pangs of love requited with justine'. this enigmatic polarity of feeling was something i found completely unexpected. if this was love then it was a variety of the plant which i have never seen before. ('damn the word', said justine once, 'i would like to spell it backwards as you say the elizabethans did god. call it evol and make it a part of "evolution" or "revolt". never use the word to me.')'"

"for clea too the little book of arnauti upon justine seemed shallow and infected by the desire to explain everything. 'it is our disease', she said, 'to want to contain everything within the frame of reference of a psychology or a philosophy. after all justine cannot be justified or excused. she simply and magnificently is; we have to put up with her, like original sin. but to call her a nymphomaniac or to try and freudanize here, my dear, takes away all her mythical substance - the only thing she really is.'"

"she put one hand out and leaned upon the mantelshelf as she said: 'i want to put an end to all this as soon as possible. i feel as if we've gone too far to go back'. as for me i was consumed by a terrible sort of desirelessness, a luxurious anguish of body and mind which prevented me from saying anything, thinking anything. i could not visualize the act of love with her, for somehow the emotional web we have woven about each other stood between us: an invisible cobweb of loyalties, ideas, hesitations which i had not the courage to brush aside. . . i could not help thinking then as i held her lightly in the crook of an arm how little we own our bodies."