Sebastian or Ruling Passions

The Avignon Quintet #4

by Lawrence Durrell

With Europe reduced to rubble after the Second World War, Constance must seek knowledge beyond the modern in order to heal her patients—and herself. In Durrell’s fourth installment of the Avignon Quintet, Constance returns to Europe after the end of World War II. A Freudian analyst, she treats the shell-shocked, the battle-fatigued, and other despairing survivors in Geneva. She also treats the traumatized, autistic son of her former lover, Sebastian—a situation that draws her back into the mysterious cult that the sensitive and charismatic Sebastian led in the deserts of Egypt. In Sebastian, Constance’s pursuit of wisdom in the midst of Europe’s blackest night is rendered as a gorgeous and heartbreaking quest for truth in a world full of illusion.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, British Literature, Literature, 20th Century, Novels

202 pages, Hardcover

First published October 24, 1983

About the author

Lawrence George Durrell was a critically hailed and beloved novelist, poet, humorist, and travel writer best known for The Alexandria Quartet novels, which were ranked by the Modern Library as among the greatest works of English literature in the twentieth century. A passionate and dedicated writer from an early age, Durrell’s prolific career also included the groundbreaking Avignon Quintet, whose first novel, Monsieur (1974), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and whose third novel, Constance (1982), was nominated for the Booker Prize. He also penned the celebrated travel memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. Durrell corresponded with author Henry Miller for forty-five years, and Miller influenced much of his early work, including a provocative and controversial novel, The Black Book (1938). Durrell died in France in 1990.

The time Lawrence spent with his family, mother Louisa, siblings Leslie, Margaret Durrell, and Gerald Durrell, on the island of Corfu were the subject of Gerald's memoirs and have been filmed numerous times for TV.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Psychology and psychiatry… Sanity and insanity…

Here among the worm-casts of old theologies they knew for certain that science had abdicated, that the law of entropy ruled. Reality which was once so very “real” now only manifested a “tendency to exist”! All truth had become provisional and subject to scale.

Peace has come as an anticlimax to war and Sebastian reads as an anticlimax to Constance.
Lawrence Durrell writes about consciousness and the unconscious and he remains furtively derisive throughout the book.
Everyone is despondent and lovelorn… The mad repose in asylums… But at times madness breaks free…

With the current of joy and affirmation flowing through his body he contemplated, giving thanks to his creator; he even joined his hands before his breast and shook them in thanksgiving, like a Christian. Then with a sneaking, smiling air of happiness, he took up first one and then the other of the knives and felt its exquisite balance in the palm of his hand; it was as pregnant with futurity as an egg.

Madness is a sanctuary in which one hides from the inimical reality.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avignon Beşlisi ile inişli çıkışlı ilişkimiz ne olacak ben de bilmiyorum, bu satırların ardından son kitaba geçeceğim ama yani dalgalandım da duruldum resmen ya.

Üçüncü kitap Constance müthişti, sonra dördüncü kitap olan Sebastian'ı okudum ve; hayda! Çok enteresan yani, Durrell mi yazmış bunu dedim? Kötü bir kitap diyemem ama Durrell diyince aklıma gelen yüksek standartlar çerçevesinde düşününce aslında kötü de bir kitap bir taraftan. Akıyor, sürüklüyor insanı ama ilk üç kitapta olmayan tuhaf bir sıradanlık ve yavanlık var kendisinde. Yani sanki Durrell kendi metninden sıkılmış gibi bir vaziyet, bir "bitse de gitsek" duygusu; İskenderiye Dörtlüsü'ndeki kusursuzluktan çok uzak. (İskenderiye demişken, oradan tanıdığımız Balthazar, Pursewarden, Melissa ve Capodistria'ya burada birer cümleyle dahi olsa rastlamak pek hoştu.)

Adından mütevellit, çok merak ettiğim Sebastian'la ilişkimizi derinleştireceğini ummuştum bu kitabın ama açıkçası çok bir gelişme kaydedemedik bu anlamda. Üstelik kitabın kahir ekseriyeti Cenevre'de geçiyor, oysaki ben Avignon'dan kopmaya hiç hazır değildim. Ve ayrıca bu kitapta Durrell'in alamet-i farikası olan müthiş atmosferik mekanlar yaratma becerisine dair bir şey de yok. Cenevre'de olduğumuzu unuttuğum anlar bile oldu.

Neyse, resmen laf salatası yapıyorum ama açıkçası ne söyleyebileceğimi bilmiyorum da, ondan. Yer yer elbette çok sevdiğim kısımları oldu kitabın ama işte kopuk, bağlamsız, bir tuhaf. İlk 3 kitapta ilmek ilmek inşa ettiği üst kurmaca unsurlarını güçlendirmeye bile zahmet etmemiş burada, Constance ve Sebastian'ın hikayesini öyle dümdüz anlatmış. Yakıştı mı Durrellciğim sana bu şimdi?

Son kitap Quinx bu işi çözer ve bu beşli görkemli şekilde biter umarım diyerek sözlerimi noktalıyorum. Yine de kitaptan bir cümle eklemeden bitirmeyeyim hadi.

"Deliler 'kendi'lik duygusu taşımayan kişiler olsa gerek: Bütün yatırımı ötekine, nesneye yapıyorlar."

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"... o homem não pode passar sem calamidade, nem pode jamais circunscrever na linguagem a inexprimível amargura da morte e da separação. E o amor, se faz favor. O amor."
(Página 175)


(Max Ernst, A Night of Love, 1927)

[Armin · Rating 3 out of 5]

53 von 100 von daher auf drei Sterne aufgerundet, auch um den Unterschied zu den deutlich schlechteren Vorgängerbänden zu markieren. Die müßigen Schwätzereien zwischen Autor Blanford und seiner Figur Sutcliffe nerven zwar weiterhin, der neu eingeführte psychopathische Mörder, der den ohnehin todgeweihten Affad ohne Auftrag und in der Absicht Constance zu töten, ersticht, gehört zu den Aktivposten des vierten Teils.

[Sammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"To hell with all this verbiage!" - The Prince

The fourth volume of Lawrence Durrell's Avignon Quintet feels surprisingly slim, clocking in just on 200 pages. It also feels far lighter, and occasionally repetitive, as if the 71-year-old Durrell knew he was no longer capable of his early flights of majesty. (At one point, for example, he describes an object as "slightly ovoid, almost egg-shaped", which seems redundant.)

It says something that my review of Sebastian (1983) is only the second on Goodreads (and the first in English). This series is a curio at best, has nothing on his previously Alexandria Quartet and little of the comedy that makes his casual writings so absorbing. Although I thoroughly enjoyed Monsieur , and thought Livia had passages of astounding beauty, the third volume - Constance was a write-off. This one's a step-up in part because it is comparatively focused on the twin lives of Constance and Sebastian, aka Affad. But it rather feels like Durrell has literally lost the plot.

The book details Affad's desire to find the letter informing him of his death, as per the practice of his Gnostic cult, and of Constance's attempts to deal with two patients - a psychopath who will ultimately get his revenge, and Affad's young son who is apparently on the autism spectrum. Neither of those clinical cases come to much, and despite the fact that the shading of Sebastian's character was the only good thing about the previous book, he is here reduced to the status of plot functionary. (The novel bears his name because of his importance to Constance, rather than his own driving of the narrative.)

It's interesting to note in passing that the majority of the French phrases are then translated into English by the relevant character, something you'd never catch 1950s Durrell doing. It feels a little like his editors had sternly impressed upon the old man that, in the 1980s, average readers could no longer be assumed to be bi- or tri-lingual as in days of yore.

The novel is also filled with the most peculiar rants. Naturally, being set in late '45 and early '46, the "Jewish question" is on everyone's mind - especially the Jewish characters - but Durrell's intense debates are so abstract or niche that it's hard to gain purchase. The Gnosticism remains more interesting in theory than execution, and isolating Constance from our broad cast of supporting characters for most of the book renders these chapters with a feeling of passing vignettes - like the author has already promised a quintet, but now he has to get through this annoying filler of a fourth book. The reader feels viscerally cheered when - in the closing reels - all of our regulars book tickets on the same train bound for Avignon.

"Why should man be the only animal who knows better but always fares worse?" - Schwarz

Aside from a touching cameo appearance by a character from Alexandria (in flashback), the novel lacks much of the power that Durrell once had. There are no extended landscape pieces as in the previous volumes, and - aside from a brief fireworks display in Geneva - nowhere for the author to stretch his palette. During an intermittently funny subplot in which Lord Galen is tasked with deciding which pieces of Western literature are "cornerstones" (people are assuring him that every American novel fits the bill, which has driven him to literal madness), the Lord goes on a bitter rant against Joyce's Ulysses. Blanford's response makes it clear we are meant to disagree, but what stood out to me was that Galen's monologue feels distinctly Joycean - but I could no longer tell whether Durrell meant to do this, or whether he was just writing one of his occasional unhinged screeds. The master muted. The meta-fictional elements of the previous novels are also largely tossed to the side, apart from the usual Blanford/Sutcliffe badinage. It's only in the final chapter that Durrell begins to further dismantle our understanding of how the world works; remember that the characters we met in book one turned out to be allegedly fictional. The final pages are intriguing, at least, in that they suggest Quinx will return to this subject matter.

I will need to read a Durrell biography after Quinx, as I'm fascinated to know how much of this sequence was planned in advance, and how much of it evolved as things went on. I can't help feeling disappointed by this sequence, and even if the fifth book is a masterpiece it won't be able to make up for the longueurs of the series. There is plenty of grist here for a scholar, no doubt, but little to entice even a committed Durrellite like me back for a second read.

[Carolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qual o significado da paixão? Qual o significado do amor? E da sexualidade? Através da sua personagem Constance, Durrell leva-nos em exploração destes conceitos no seu quarto livro do Quinteto de Avignon.

A qualidade da escrita mantém-se, desta vez sem a carga erótica associada que marcava o livro anterior. Constance é mais que uma amante: desta vez é também médica e vai tratar o filho autista de Sebastian Affad, que dorme com ela e que a quer engravidar como prova do seu amor total mas, também, da sua indiferença total.

A mistura entre o amor e a indiferença marca todo o tom do livro. Também voltamos aos significados do gnosticismo que haviam sido explorados em Monsieur, e em como todas essas coisas plenas de significado não podem resistir à força do acaso e à paixão da loucura.

Mais um livro exemplar. Ansiosa pelo último da saga!

[Edward Champion · Rating 2 out of 5]

"His fingers received waves of sex like electricity." Yup, that's the sad level that Durrell's sentences are at this point. It's been disheartening to watch Lawrence Durrell lose his writing powers in his autumn years. This book is largely junk. The "exploration of ideas" now involve whether or not ULYSSES is the most anti-Semitic book ever written and predictable "takes" on fertility rites. If you loved The Alexandria Quartet, I would not recommend reading The Avignon Quintet. It's a terribly depressing experience to see a literary master phone it in.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Either Lawrence Durrell strayed from the path a bit, or else I did. This is the first one of these books in this 5-book cycle that feels more like an effort to tidy things up that a compelling narrative to me. Perhaps it was originally meant to end the series

[Hryuh · Rating 3 out of 5]

В 4 книге вообще не осталось тайны, всё слишком явно и прямо. Как будто Дарреллу самому уже надоело это всё писать, но надо было как-то закончить, и вот он быстро по заранее придуманной схеме подмахивал оставшееся. Из тех книг, что прочел и забыл.

[Joe Holtzman]

rather densely and pompously written - but it was different and enjoyable in the end if you stick with it

[Jessica Ruetschlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took three books of tedium to get to something interesting. Not sure if this book really warrants 4 stars or if it’s just the comparison to its predecessors.

[Lynne King]

Another of the five books in the "Avignon Quintet".