The Avignon Quincunx

[Mr Can]

"In the layer beneath the dollies (as in a box of chocolates) were stored all sorts of necrophiliac thoughts and tendencies which lead to an exaggerated dread of graves, corpses, etc. These fears are sublimated into love for statues, waxworks, effigies, all dead objects. The reason for the fascination is the appeal of defencelessness. The corpse cannot defend itself. 'Listen to that,' I cry to the sleeping gypsy. 'The corpse cannot defend itself, nor can the sleeper.'"
Lawrence Durrell - from Monsieur, the first book of 'The Avignon Quintet'.

[Mr Can]

"And this book which I have always had in deep soak, when will it be finished? When I stop breathing? But the idea behind the furtive activity has always been that ideal book - the titanic do-it-yourself kit, le roman appareil. After all, why not a book full of spare parts of other books, of characters left over from other lives, all circulating in each other's bloodstreams - yet all fresh, nothing second-hand, twice chewed, twice breathed. Such a book might ask you if life is worth breathing, if death is worth looming . . . Be ye members of one another. I hear a voice say, 'What disease did the poor fellow get?' 'Death!' 'Death? Why didn't he say so? Death is nothing if one takes it in time.'"
Lawrence Durrell - from Constance, the third book of 'The Avignon Quintet'.

[Mr Can]

'You live in the spare parts of other people's dreams, neologisms among the nightmares which project themselves into your own daymares of violence and panic.'
- from 'The Avignon Quincunx' by Lawrence Durrell ('Constance' 1982)

[Mr Can]

"From the cosmic point of view, to have opinions or preferences at all is to be ill; for by harbouring them one dams up the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a river, bears us down to the ocean of everything's unknowing. Reality is a running noose, one is brought up short with a jerk by death. It would have been wiser to co-operate wih the inevitable and learn to profit by this unhappy state of things - by realising and accommodating death! But we don't, we allow the ego to foul its own nest. Therefore we have insecurity, stress, the midnight-fruit of insomnia, with a whole culture crying itself to sleep. How to repair this state of affairs except through art, through gifts which render to us language manumitted by emotion, poetry twisted into the service of direct insight?"
- from 'The Avignon Quincunx' by Lawrence Durrell ('Constance' 1982)

[Nemonymous]

That's an amazing quote! I hope you don't mind - I've used its opening as a new 'signature'.
des

[Mr Can]

It bore an arrow and an exclamation mark and indicated the pyramid of wax cones upon which he had imprinted the true story of his death, his suicide.
---from 'Sebastian' (the fourth of the 'Avignon Quintet') by Lawrence Durrell

[Spotbowserfido2]

Mr Can, the quotations of Mr. Durrell are certainly the strangest I have experienced since being introduced to the writings of Elizabeth Bowen some months ago. One might posit that they are both "sympathetic organisms," the two writers ships in the night, fully aware of that treacherous iceberg ahead. Perhaps, at the last moment, catastrophe may either be avoided or explained...

[Mr Can]

Quote Originally Posted by Spotbowserfido2

Mr Can, the quotations of Mr. Durrell are certainly the strangest I have experienced since being introduced to the writings of Elizabeth Bowen some months ago.

Thanks, Mr Canine. I really must gnaw on a Bowen, myself.

[Nemonymous]

LOL !
Spot & Mr Can, you may be interested to know there are succulent Bowens described and linked from HERE: ie a choice cutlet from each of her many short stories and from each chapter of all her novels. A massive task recently completed by yours truly.
des

[G. S. Carnivals]

Quote Originally Posted by Mr Can

"In the layer beneath the dollies (as in a box of chocolates) were stored all sorts of necrophiliac thoughts and tendencies which lead to an exaggerated dread of graves, corpses, etc. These fears are sublimated into love for statues, waxworks, effigies, all dead objects. The reason for the fascination is the appeal of defencelessness. The corpse cannot defend itself. 'Listen to that,' I cry to the sleeping gypsy. 'The corpse cannot defend itself, nor can the sleeper.'" Lawrence Durrell - from Monsieur, the first book of 'The Avignon Quintet'.

I must thank you for posting this quotation, Mr Can. Upon further examination and much deeper consideration of Durrell's words, truly Ligottian concerns do emerge. I shiver at the thought of marionettes dangling without movement.

My dictionary states the following about the origin of the word "marionette":
[Fr. for Mariolette, a dim. of Mariole, a little figure of the Virgin Mary.]

In closing, I can state that mooching a meal from my mother has no strings attached, except the heart strings, of course...