Customer Reviews

Alexandria: City of Memory

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have read this fascinating book and cannot do better than to offer this review which appeared on January 4th 2005 in The Times Literary Supplement:

'Michael Haag's dazzling new book, Alexandria: City of memory, has two aims, both admirably achieved: to construct a political and social history covering a half century or so - roughly 1915 to 1960 - within the larger period of what he calls "the heyday of cosmopolitan Alexandria"; and to display the resulting version of this cosmopolitan Alexandria to us through the lives and works of some of those who have left written or verbal records. ...

'The written record used by Haag includes Cavafy, of course, as well as E. M. Forster and Lawrence Durrell, all three of whom not only wrote extensively about their Alexandrian experience, but also participated in significant social networks. It might be supposed that this ground has been adequately covered by the multitude of specialized studies that already exist on the individual authors, or by Jane Lagoudis Pinchin's excellent literary study Alexandria Still: Forster, Durrell, and Cavafy (1977). However, much of Haag's material, even when he deals with such major figures, is new, has never been published before, and is thus anecdotal in the original sense of the word. ...

'Haag is at his most brilliant when he deals with Lawrence Durrell, on whom he is now perhaps the world's leading expert. Durrell's reputation rests almost entirely on the Alexandria Quartet (1962), which arose from his experience in Alexandria during the Second World War. Neither of the two full-length biographies of him, however, is in any way adequate to this subject. On one level, Haag's treatment of Alexandria itself during the war provides a parallel to that of Cairo by Artemis Cooper in her splendid Cairo in the War (1989); on another, it answers several questions specifically raised by the Quartet and explains what lay behind its genesis better than anyone else has yet done. The personality of Eve Cohen, the first of Durrell's two beautiful Alexandrian Jewish wives and the obvious inspiration for Justine, is crucial here; and Haag not only interviewed her extensively, but travelled with her back to Alexandria to revisit the sites that figured in her life during the War.'

Alexandria. When I first got this book and leafed through it briefly I decided it was a lovely coffee table book and not much more. I could be forgiven this error of judgment because the photos are really attractive. When I opened it again some while later I realized that my first assessment had been a colossal mistake. The text is extremely well-written and Michael Haag's stunningly knowledgeable exploration of the city's social, cultural and political life between the world wars offers three major centers of gravity dealing with the lives and work of the literary figures Constantine Cavafy, E.M. Forster, and Lawrence Durrell, each of whom had radical connections with Alexandria, and in the configuration of whose esthetic the city played a determining role. In addition there are countless points of secondary reference (people, places, historical figures) enriching the stories of these three giants of twentieth-century literature, especially in their individual and highly peculiar relation to the city and in what each believed the city had done for (and to) him. For Forster Alexandria meant emancipation from his domineering mother and from the corrosive mores of middle-class Britain. It also meant love - with a bus driver who had to be coaxed into bed but was never really good at it. Haag gives some profound insights on Forster's character and on what might be taken as a significant strain of unkindness, perhaps even hypocrisy, in the novelist (see p. 103). Caavafy, impoverished survivor of a once-wealthy family of cotton brokers, viewed his native city as a repository of myths and images and sexual encounters expressing the various realms of meaning he so successfully converted into world-class poetry. (Some of Edmund Keeley's books on Greek poetry go further into all that.) And finally, Lawrence Durrell endowed Alexandria with a quasi-mystical persona that figures prominently and profoundly in his still-important "Quartet."
Intercalated with the stories of these important literati, there are excursuses to history ancient and modern, architecture, politics and diplomacy. There is also a fascinating cast of secondary, mostly bon vivant characters, Alexandrians and expatriates, who give elegant dinner parties and balls (the ones that inspired some of the more riveting moments in Durrell's great opus), engage in shimmering conversations over long boozy lunches, and hop, most of them, into bed with whomever strikes their fancy or whose fancy they strike. Many of these people are also quite talented and creative. Alexandria's foreign communities, later destroyed by what the author correctly calls Nasser's puritanical socialism, were the real heart and soul of the city in the period covered here. There were Greeks, lots of them, and they were very prosperous, reasonably well educated and very socially conscious. The Italians were victims of occupational polarity: they were either high-class architects or lowly construction workers. They were responsible for most of the buildings, some beautiful,some ugly, in the city. There were also assorted Frenchmen, Britons, Jews (who got involved in everything and did everything well), and even (Jasper Brinton most notable among them) some few Americans.
Michael Haag's writing style is strong, vigorous and unmistakably masculine. Yet he manages to convey many scenes and situations of Alexandrian life with striking esthetic refinement and great evocative power, especially as he explores his three major figures' central artistic ideas and literary dispositions and show how they relate to history, political power - and love.
Alexandria was not, of course, the center of the world between the world wars. Nor was it where "big" history was being made during that period. But isn't it marvelous to have a book like this one that tells us so much about the world contained within the city and about the people who contributed to its history?

Michael Haag has taken on a challenge few historians would accept: he has recreated a solid history of a city shrouded in mystery since its inception or formation by Alexander the Great. And while much is known about Alexandria through novels and movies and war ruminations and social epithets and other sources that border on mythology, this amazingly fascinating city has undergone so many changes since Alexander's time, each new set of inhabitants has destroyed the remnants of the previous owners, leaving us with only isolated antiquities and memories as passed on by word of mouth and fleeting letters. The occupations by the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Italians and the Jews have smoldered in a cauldron of secrecy until the present.

Haag takes us by the hand and the head and accompanies us on this myriad excursion of exploration of ALEXANDRIA: CITY OF MEMORY by wisely emphasizing the writings of three of our greatest artists - Constantine Cavafy, Lawrence Durrell (of the famous 'Alexandria Quartet') and E.M. Forster (best known for his novels including 'Howard's End'). It is primarily through the eyes of these exciting writers that Haag has gathered information from their own novels and poems, interviews, letters, and articles about these famous inhabitants of Alexandria who from before World War I through World War II documented the romance of the city as well as the intense social and political life that nurtured the cosmopolitan importance of this amazing place.

Haag is at his best when he is relying on the writings from these three men, documents which reveal the wide range of sexuality so compatible with the city (Cavafy and Forster are each discussed extensively regarding their same sex lifestyles and confidantes, and Durrell is outlined by the several wives and mistresses he had). Weaving these men's lives and influences through the changing governments and attitudes of the city and its populace makes for fascinating reading.

When Haag ventures into the lives of the purely political and commercial giants of the city through the years, the writing becomes less interesting, though equally informative. In the end, while there are many pages of information that merely begin to slow the reader's concentration and interest, ALEXANDRIA: CITY OF MEMORY is a superb book of history and biography of a place that has heretofore eluded scholars. An additional positive aspect is Haag's use of many photographs of the city from all eras. Recommended for the patient but inquisitive reader. Grady Harp, September 05

Of the triumvirate of Alexandrian literary giants of the early twentieth century - Constantine Cavafy, E. M. Forster, and Lawrence Durrell - Cavafy is perhaps the guardian spirit. His poetry provides the capstone to Forster's Alexandria: A History and a Guide, and is present both as invoked persona ("the old poet of the city") and fictionalized character (Balthazar) in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Cavafy's presence also haunts Michael Haag's evocative Alexandria: City of Memory. Though the book focuses on the Alexandria of Forster and Durrell, the photograph of Cavafy's melancholy face seems to stare through every page, and his poem "The City," used as epigraph, imbues the text with nostalgia. The image Haag describes of Cavafy at twilight opening or closing shutters, "adjusting the fall of light on his guests," aptly describes Haag's approach to his material, illuminating the sojourns of Forster and Durrell in this city.

Both Forster and Durrell were cast into Alexandria by wars: Forster came as a Red Cross "searcher" in World War I, interviewing wounded soldiers to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing; Durrell fled the Nazi invasion of Greece. In Alexandria both found the loves that, if not the most inspiring of happiness, nevertheless provided the foundation for some of their greatest writing.

Forster fell in love with a tram conductor, Mohammed al Adl, and their tenuous, fraught relationship is movingly recounted in Forster's long "letter," never sent, and continued after Mohammed's death at twenty-three from consumption. Their relationship, transformed, underlies Forster's acclaimed A Passage to India, informing both Dr. Aziz's friendship with Fielding, and the misunderstandings between Aziz and Adela Quested. Perhaps the most strangely stirring image in Haag's book is the tattered photograph of Mohammed that Forster kept with him to the end of his life, preserved only because he had taped a tram ticket to the reverse side.

The eponymous central character of Durrell's Justine is based on his second wife, the Alexandrian Jew Eve Cohen. They met at a party, where she terrified and entranced Durrell with her voluble eagerness and puckish beauty. Eve was involved with an Austrian Jew who didn't feel he could trust her, and Durrell had recently ended his first marriage, so they initially discussed their difficult love lives. But when Eve left her family, it was to Durrell that she turned; they were soon lovers, and then married. Their relationship, lopsided, passionate, scarred by violence, is evoked in Haag's book through Durrell's letters, the memories of friends, and interviews with Eve Durrell.

A host of minor characters fills out the book, which is assiduously researched, lucidly written, and accompanied by a trove of photographs that bring to life this fleeting, fascinating epoch of Alexandria's history.

An interested reader will acquire sharp insights into the lives of three important authors (I confess--none of whose books I have read) connected to the city founded by Alexander the Great. Perhaps more importantly, one will be given glimpses of the social and political background to a fascinating three or four decades. Cotton, Zionism, Greece's role in the region, Rommel and his desert campaign, the British lion's reach, the rise of Egyptian nationalism, and the worldly inhabitants of a multicultural, usually tolerant, and historically special Mediterranean port city are all here. Michael Haag has written an extremely intelligent book on the end of a particular era.

I quite liked this book. It's an interesting approach to E.M. Forster, C. Cavafy, and Lawrence Durrell and their time in Alexandria. However, as someone complained, based on the title, it would seem that Alexandria would be the focus of the book rather than these writers. The literary biography is fine. If you're looking for a biography of the city, look elsewhere.

I discovered this book quite by accident after purchasing Haag's book "Alexandria Illustrated." I am a long-time Durrell and Cavafy fan and am so pleased to have found a source of information about both that is so interesting and readable. The highlight are the wonderful old photos, none of which I had ever seen before. This text provides an inside look and feel for the lives of these interesting people at a very unique place and time in history. It is not a guidebook; Haag has written numerous other books that are excellent guide books.