Balthazar

“To understand it is necessary to work backwards, through the great Interlinear which Balthazar has constructed around my manuscript” (50).

This book is less of a sequel to Justine as much as it is a retelling of the events and a reassertion of the characters. Whereas the first book warped characters like Justine, Nessim, Clea, and Melissa to fit the narrator’s emotional perspective, this volume adds layers and provides different histories and motives and desires that still add up to the actions from the first book, but but provide those actions different significance and meaning. These new threads come through the “inter-linear” provided by Balthazar. The “inter-linear” is literally what is between the lines of the show more manuscript, “Justine” that Darly shared with Balthazar for comment. In between the lines, Balthazar adds in the missing details. And at their most arresting moments undo and call into question what both Darly and the readers know.

I still find the principal narrator, Darly, a bit too much. Perhaps a bit less so in this book, however, as his emotional morass isn’t the only bog to wade through. There are some lovely chapters focused on Nessim and his brother Narouz in the desert. Pursewarden has a bit larger presence in this book via quotes and journal entries. Mountolive is more present as well. And as these characters come to life, the complexity of their relationships and various kinds of love they feel (or don’t feel for each other) become clear.

The writing is poetic, evocative of meaning that goes beyond what is said. show less

Durrell is preoccupied with what it means to love someone, how people change over time and, finally, how “truth” depends upon one’s perspective—which, of course, changes over time but and depends on one’s “position” as well. Small matters these! Thus, where Justine—the first of four books—tells a relatively straightforward story about a group of friends and acquaintances, Balthazar is much more a meditation on these questions. Much of Balthazar is taken up with the “Interlinear,” a copy of Durrell’s manuscript (or, more precisely, the character who represents Durrell) of what would become Justine as heavily annotated by Balthazar, another character. The annotations and explanations he added to the manuscript show more substantially revise the narrator’s understanding and interpretation of what happened in Justine and also provides much new information. All of this enormously complicates what we thought we “knew” after reading Justine. New relationships are created where we (and the narrator) had seen nothing (or misunderstood it) before; things we believed were true or accurate are now seen to be far more nuanced, at the very least. Indeed, much of Balthazar illustrates Durrell’s notion that point of view and change are everything. This second volume of the “Alexandria Quartet” is far more meditative, more contemplative. I found the writing occasionally as brilliant as in Justine, but less often so. Still, an extraordinary accomplishment. show less

What is Balthazar? It is certainly impossible to read without first devouring its 'sibling' Justine. The entire concept is that Balthazar - a supporting character from that book - read that book (the narrator Darley's memoirs) and is offering an annotation of them from a different point-of-view.

You could perhaps describe this book as a story about character, not plot, but that would be deceptive: the characters are the plot. The journeys they make, the changes of motivation and destination, the doubts and fears and sudden spasms of fate that occur, the small moments when their minds realise something heretofore unknown... those are what progress these books along.

In some ways, now that I'm accustomed to Durrell's style, I enjoy it show more more. Outwardly, he's pretentious - tossing in some French, Latin, Greek and just expecting you to understand it, making a discreet reference to a classic text or a philosophical doctrine in ways that are beyond mere literary references - but the fact is, he's not. Because, there's no pretense. This is genuinely who Durrell is and how he thinks. While one feels like he wrote this novel exclusively for the educated exiles from England of his era, it has a democratic way of looking at people that fits in with the American novels of earlier in that same century.

I can't wait to read Mountolive and Clea now. The richly drawn characters of the first two books now exist in my memories like real people - loquacious Pombal, perverted and broken Scobie, pathetic Melissa, desperate Narouz, ethereal (yet somehow earthy) Clea, feeble Darley, bitter Pursewarden, rigid Nessim, sly Balthazar, charismatic Mountolive (as yet still reasonably underdeveloped) and of course the endlessly fascinating Justine. It is a testament to Durrell's skill that in two reasonably slim books, he has sketched not only these vast characters but the great and nuanced topography of their city, their Alexandria. Brilliant stuff. show less

With [Balthazar] Lawrence Durrell turns the entire story he told in [Justine] on its head, re-visiting the events of Darley’s life from a new point of view.

Balthazar, an enigmatic and eccentric psychiatrist, is the close friend of all of the interested parties, Darley, [Justine]’s narrator; Justine, Darley’s obsession; Nessim, Justine’s husband; and Melissa, the sad prostitute with whom Darley also has an affair. Balthazar visits Darley, bringing a copy of Darley’s manuscript marked and annotated with information that was hidden from Darley. In reading Balthazar’s marginalia, Darley learns that he was completely wrong about everything that happened to him, principally about Justine’s motivations and feelings for him.

In show more an author’s note, Durrell wrote of his purpose in writing the [Alexandria Quartet] in this way:

“The characters and situations in this novel, the second of a group should be considered a sibling, not a sequel to [Justine]... Three sides of space and one of time constitute the soup-mix recipe of a continuum. The four novels follow this pattern. The three first parts, however, are to be deployed spatially...and are not linked in a serial form. They interlap, interweave, in a purely spatial relation. Time is stayed. The fourth part alone will represent time and be a true sequel...."

With this new installment, everything considered settled by the first novel is in doubt as seen from Balthazar’s perspective; a new angle of view on the same story prism. The complexity infused in Durrell’s narrative makes for an even more intriguing story, and characters that sometimes seemed toneless now ring with contradiction and interest.

Bottom Line: An intriguing and satisfying companion to Durrell’s earlier [Justine]; the same story as seen from a completely different angle; characters with even more flesh on their bones.

4 bones!!!! show less

It would be unrewarding to read this book without first reading 'Justine', the preceding novel of the quartet. This second book introduces the same narrator, revisiting the ground he's already covered thanks to new information that Balthazar provides him. This time he is less caught up in his own perspective, instead exploring what these new facts suggest about what moved through others' minds. Secondary characters come to occupy the foreground, especially Pursewarden and Clea. We meet Nessim's brother and mother, and are introduced to Mountolive whom I'm trusting will figure large in the third volume. Some of the first book's events acquire a new significance, such as Justine's missing child and Pursewarden's suicide, and additional show more events not mentioned before are now worth Darley's relating.

While Balthazar's revelations lend new shading to Darley's understanding of all that he related in the first book, they do not add a new perspective to them for the reader so much as overlay them with additional scenes, content and themes. Durrell drives deeper in the subject of love, far less focused on Justine specifically. It is almost a malevolent force in this work, so easily manipulated yet so easily manipulating, creating victims of both those who love and those who are loved. Or that might just be Darley's unacknowledged bitterness talking. show less

I often make the mistake of drafting my opinions of a work too quickly. Perhaps I should let a book settle with me for a while.

At any rate, my feelings about "Balthazar" are two fold. On the one hand, how it stands on its own; on the other hand, how it lives with the previous volume, "Justine". In the first respect, as I suspected, the work is excellent. The prose, of course, is exceptional. The characters have depth, uniqueness, and their own vision. The attractions and, naturally, the conflicts among them, are developed magnificently. One character's truth is exposed next to another's. The reader needn't chose any as true as they all are, for them. However, if you live for a plot, it too is there but not in an intrusive fashion.

I show more was not as comfortable with how "Balthazar" fits with "Justine". In some way I felt betrayed by the former. Certainly in one sense, "Balthazar" provides us with more perspectives on the same events and personas. For me at least, it felt like a betrayal of the truths and mysteries of "Justine". Now, it feels like I need to determine where truth lies; when actually we already have truth. Truth was expressed in the narrator's stated experience in "Justine". More, for me, isn't needed and it felt (again for me) that it cheapened the power of the experience conveyed already. As this isn't the standard interpretation, I feel that I have yet again revealed more about myself than the book I have read. So be it. show less

The Alexandria quartet is a wonderful short course in the ways in which a writer can play with all the conventions of the narrative art. "Balthazar" was my second encounter with the set, and really showed me that I was going to see a lot of different angles on the same set of incidents and that Durrell was a master of the tale, in the same way that Picasso was a master of the pictorial. Even on rereads, I can happily let myself be swept away by that year in Alexandria. "Balthazar' is the voice of reason applied to the devouring dream of "Justine". Yet it is not a put-down, but a revelation of the context in which Darnley and Justine played out their affair. It is essential to the whole structure of the quartet, and, the first of the show more three steps back one is obliged to give any pictorial masterpiece, and essential to the three steps of return to it. show less