Perspective. That is the key to Lawrence Durell’s The Alexandria Quartet, which The Times called, “One of the great works of English fiction,” and New York Times Book Review hailed as “One of the most important works of our time.” High praise. Durrell was a great writer, his prose outstanding. But what makes Quartet important is not so much the story but how he used different points of view on the same story to demonstrate that what we understand and even experience, while it may be true, is rarely the complete story — if such a thing could ever be achieved.

Briefly, the primary narrator, the Englishman Darley, tells of his life in Alexandria, Egypt before World War II with Justine and her husband Nessim in the first book, Justine. In the second book, Balthazar, his friend Balthazar comes to tell him that he got much of it wrong in the first book. By the third book, Mountolive, we learn that neither had the full picture and the more complete truth was something rather unexpected. The fourth book, Clea, was written in later years by Durrell and is set at a later time than the first three; told from the perspective again of Darley. It serves to sort of wrap things up, if they ever can be.

In Balthazar, the character (a writer and source for British intelligence) Pursewarden writes:

We live lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time — not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.

I would exchange the word “fictions” for “fictions or truths,” (“opinions”?) and I believe personalities, necessarily shaped by perspective, do play a role. Nevertheless, indeed, every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position! While we can accept specific facts as “proven” because they have been shown to be repeatable and not disproven in broad applications, our perspective on a great many other aspects of life will always lack complete information. We simply can not hold it all; would we want to? In Balthazar, Clea writes to Darley:

So Balthazar has been disturbing you with his troublesome new information? I am not sure that I approve. It may be good for you, but surely not for your book or books which must, I suppose, put us all in a very special position regarding reality. I mean as “characters” rather than human beings. No? And why, you ask me, did I never tell you a tithe of the things you know now? One never does, you know, one never does. …. There is nothing I can do to help you now — I mean help your book. You will either have to ignore the data which Balthazar has so wickedly supplied, or to “rework reality” as you put it.

Nor does art provide us with the full picture of reality. Darley’s Justine, even corrected by Balthazar, is not the full reality as Mountolive shows us. The perspectives are infinite. The aspect of perspectives was discussed as the Fifth Philosophical Council of Keeferton considered the Existential Third Man (https://dispatchestk.com/2022/02/01/communique-to-the-public-from-the-fifth-philosophical-council-of-keeferton/; https://dispatchestk.com/2021/07/30/source-material-for-the-fifth-philosophical-council-of-keeferton/). Having access to perspectives outside of our own can be very helpful. We are advised to look at things from another’s point of view. At the same time we are limited in that we can not see things from all perspectives, it is often difficult to get outside of even our own heads. We are limited, but we can do the best we can with what we have. Can we know everything? No. Would we want to? I don’t know.

Are you merely one perspective? A character? Infinitude?