Blue Thirst: Tales of Life Abroad

Preface

My first impulse when I received these two transcripts of impromptu lectures I gave in California, was the normal one, namely to sit down and rewrite them, to give the prose some shape. But then, on reflecting, it seemed to me that it would be better to leave them just the way they were, with all the hesitations and fumblings and false starts. They seemed more actual that way; I thought that if I tidied them up I might take all the life out of them. The result is that whatever small changes I have made have been only in the interests of intelligibility; there were defective patches in the transcript, and sometimes in the typing. These I touched up lightly, but careful to keep the colloquial tone, and the hesitations which are inevitable in impromptu lecturing.

The first lecture was given in the marvelous Beckmann Auditorium at Caltech in Pasadena under the general title “A Poet In The Mediterranean.” The second was perpetrated at Claremont College, Pomona. My grateful acknowledgements go to both institutions for permission to reprint.

Lawrence Durrell

Paris, 1975