{"id":8304,"date":"2017-03-20T11:09:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T18:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=8304"},"modified":"2017-03-21T11:12:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T18:12:21","slug":"the-alexandria-quartet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2017\/03\/20\/the-alexandria-quartet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alexandria Quartet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\/the-life-and-death-of-the-library-of-alexandria\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>from Literary Hub<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<h1>THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA<\/h1>\n<p><em>ONE OF THE GREAT CENTERS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, EVER<\/em><\/p>\n<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\/author\/james-crawford\/\" target=\"_blank\">James\u00a0Crawford<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/16411-presscdn-0-65.pagely.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/library-of-alexandria-about-1240x762.jpg\" width=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In 1960, four novels by the well-known English writer Lawrence Durrell were brought together in one volume and published as\u00a0<em>The<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><em>Alexandria Quartet<\/em>. Described by its author as \u201can investigation of modern love,\u201d it was set in the Egyptian city of Alexandria before and during the Second World War, and was largely based on Durrell\u2019s own experiences during his time there as a press attach\u00e9. The\u00a0<em>Quartet<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em>traced the personal lives of a number of key characters\u2014seemingly based on real individuals, including Durrell\u2019s second wife\u2014from different, competing perspectives. He later claimed, however, that, out of all of the people portrayed and incidents featured, \u201conly the city is real.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alexandria was the true hero of the book: an exotic, darkly seductive and sensuous city, fragrant of \u201coffal and drying mud, of carnations and jasmine, of animal sweat and clover.\u201d Durrell painted a picture of a cosmopolitan, Greco-Arab outpost, where East met West in a delicious collision of hotels, hashish caf\u00e9s, colonial villas and squalid slums, all set between the blankness of the desert and the blue of the Mediterranean. Yet Durrell\u2019s Alexandria was far from a product of the 20th century alone. Instead he called it a \u201ccapital of memory,\u201d a place that still held on to the \u201cechoes of an extraordinary history.\u201d It was a remnant and a shadow of a much greater city, one born out of a dream two-and-a-half thousand years old.<\/p>\n<p>In 331 BC, according to the Greek historian Plutarch, after successfully conquering Egypt, Alexander the Great received a vision in his sleep. A \u201cgrey-haired man of venerable appearance,\u201d told him of \u201can island in the much-dashing sea in front of Egypt: Pharos is what men call it.\u201d Alexander believed that this visitation was the Greek poet Homer, communicating from beyond the grave. When he travelled to view Pharos, he declared it to be the perfect spot for a city: a city that would bear his name, and that would become a new capital of the ancient world.<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\/the-life-and-death-of-the-library-of-alexandria\/\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at Literary Hub<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Literary Hub THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA ONE OF THE GREAT CENTERS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, EVER By\u00a0James\u00a0Crawford In 1960, four novels by the well-known English writer Lawrence Durrell were brought together in one volume and published as\u00a0The\u00a0Alexandria Quartet. Described by its author as \u201can investigation of modern love,\u201d it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}