Prospero's Cell / Пещера Просперо
Lawrence Durrell / Лоренс Даррелл
Год выпуска: 2000 г. (1-е издание - 1945 г.)
Категория: мемуары
Издатель: Faber and Faber
Язык: Английский
Формат: DOC
Качество: Распознанный текст без ошибок (OCR)
Кол-во страниц: 93 + 8 иллюстраций
ISBN: 978-0-571-20165-5
Описание: "This book was composed in Alexandria after the fall of Greece and my own escape into Egypt via Crete. A mixture of piety and overwhelming nostalgia motivated me to set down what I knew about the island which had for several years been my home, and which in those dark winters of 1941-2 seemed a place I would never see again in this life. One felt this about the whole of Europe at that time, so overwhelming were the victories of the German armies and so feeble the response of the socialist-torn democracies. And even if we succeeded in beating Hider after a fifteen-year war... what then? Europe had had it, and with Europe Greece as well. As for this brilliant little speck of an island in the Ionian, what future could one predict for it? It was then the daily target of the Italian airforce.
I set about trying to memorize its beauties before they faded from my mind and ceased to spur the poems I was then writing. In Alexandria a hospitable Greek business man made me free of an excellent library of reference books and I used his books, not so much as crutches, but as provocations to memory, correcting myself by this precious information so that the book would not only be a poetic evocation but also a sort of guide to the place.
Its reception in mid war was a surprising and enjoyable thing for through it I discovered many other people who adored Corfu as much as I had. And its continuing success down the years has always touched me like a sort of confirmation that my dreams of being a writer when I was young were worth holding on to. Prospero makes me feel the effort and the trouble were worth while."
Lawrence Durrell
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"One of Lawrence Durrell's best books – indeed, in its gem-like miniature quality, among the best books ever written." – Freya Stark
"This charming idyll depicts the country life and cosmopolitan society of Corfu in the years immediately before the war... The matter of it is as sound as the story is delightful." – Sir John Myers,
Sunday Times
"Corfu, that Ionian island whose idyllic yet blood-stained history goes back the best part of a thousand years, could not have found a fitter chronicler than Mr Durrell. For he is a poet, with all a poet's sensibility, and a humanist to boot, with a keen eye for character and a scholar's reverence for antiquity." –
Daily Telegraph
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Дневниковые записи Лоренса Даррелла о годах, проведенных на греческом острове Корфу (Керкира) незадолго до Второй мировой войны.
