Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

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Durrell was an extensive travel writer who has lived in several Greek and Italian islands, and also wrote books about them. His most famous and critically acclaimed work is the Alexandria quartet which I'm planning to read for Egypt. He was born in Jalandhar, British India, but didn't stay here for long. Israel's posture in its conflict with the Palestinians calls to mind a book I just finished re-reading: Bitter Lemons, by Lawrence Durell. Durell is best known as the author of the Alexandria Quartet, a series of sensuous, dream-like books about life just before World War II in that coastal Egyptian city. But he also wrote a number of books that can be found in the "Travel" section of your favorite bookstore, as well as a body of poetry. Without this armed struggled against the British, Cyprus would have gained her independence probably 10-20 years later during the rise of decolonisation in Africa. But we were impatient and as a Greek proverb says Whoever rushes stumbles and we did. and we are still in the ditch. Durrel had been five years in Serbia and really wasn’t sure if he wanted to live in the Mediterranean anymore. He couldn’t afford to live in Athens so the next best thing after that was Cyprus. Decision made he makes his way to Venice to get the boat there. Falling into conversation with a man there, he questions why Durrell wants to go there at all: ‘It is not much of a place’, the man says, ‘Arid and without water. The people drink to excess.’ To Durrell, it sounded perfect. I love reading memoirs and books on travelling, not because of “I learn new stuff about new places” nonsense, but because they help me to understand the stand of the writer; since those kind of books reveal how their writers perceive people and the world around them more readily and personally than say, a novel they design. So, when I got The Bitter Lemons of Cyprus out of a Kindle deal (I was planning to read the infamous Alexandria Quartet for a while and thought it would be nice to get the feel of Durrell’s writing beforehand), I was curious, to say the least. But then the grinding started.

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell | Waterstones

During his stay, Durrell worked first as an English teacher at the Pancyprian Gymnasium, where several of his female students reportedly fell in love with him: We still speak Greek which is less unchanged than your English that mutated in a French sounding language after 1066. We were indolent but thanks to EOKA we became known (the only good thing the organisation did.) And no matter how many masters will pass we will stay alive because Greekness is as old as the world This is not a political book, but simply a somewhat impressionistic study of the moods and atmospheres of Cyprus during the troubled years 1953-56 He settles into a dilapidated villa, and with his poet’s eye for beauty – and passable Greek – vividly captures the moods and atmospheres of island life in a changing world. Whether collecting folklore or wild flowers, describing the brewing revolution or eccentric local characters, Durrell is a magician with words: and the result is not only a classic travel memoir, but an intimate portrait of a community lost forever.

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And as we walked across the carpets of flowers their slender stalks snapped and pulled around our boots as if they wished to pull us down into the Underworld from which they had sprung, nourished by the tears and wounds of the immortals." He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation . . . Eschewing politics, it says more about them than all our leading articles . . . In describing a political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty.' Kingsley Martin, New Statesman

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell – review, 30/11 Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell – review, 30/11

The reportage on the civil unrest contrasts sharply with the lyrical passages about the island's beauty and long history, and this brings the book to a poignant conclusion as Durrell prepares to leave the island and a way of life he so clearly loves. Costas Montis a renowned Cypriot poet wrote a book as an answer to Durrell's Bitter Lemons called Closed Doors: An Answer To Bitter Lemons By Lawrence Durrell What is travel writing? Consider a book in which the narrative and characters pivot around a single tree, rooted to the centre of a lonely cliff-top village on an island almost forgotten to the world. The tree is more than a totem or a metaphor: rather it is a geocosmic force around which the entire Earth rotates. Younger villagers feel it’s centrifugal effects, spinning them out to sea to be caught up in strong currents and carried off to other lands. The old have learnt to get close to the centre of the force, where all is stillness, willingly embracing the inertia beneath its shady branches. The most successful in the art of doing very little have enjoyed its peace for so long that their olive-coloured wrinkled skins are indistinguishable from its roots and its branches. It is then the ‘Tree of Idleness’ around which the book pivots.and for almost three years we see the people of Cyprus and the struggle through his eyes. The descriptions of nature are beautiful, but his views on Cypriots a bit biased. He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation . . . Eschewing politics, it says more about them than all our leading articles . . . In describing a political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty.’ Kingsley Martin, New Statesman