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Lawrence DURRELL

Carte postale autographe inédite signée de Lawrence Durrell à son amante française : "avec votre petit trou en carte de visite tu arriveras au bout du monde j'en suis sur"

s.d. (été 1967), 14,6x10,1cm, une feuille.

[summer 1967] | 14.6 x 10.1 cm | one postcard

Unpublished signed postcard sent by Lawrence Durrell from Corfu to his young French lover Janine Brun, nicknamed «Buttons». 15 lines in multi-colored felt-tip pen signed L.D.On the verso, there is a photograph of his beloved Corfu, home to Durrell during his youth from 1935 to 1941, and inspiration for he Black Book, 1938.«Buttons darling, with your little slit as a calling card you'll make it to the ends of the earth, I have no doubt - You'll take the jackpot, a woman intact with no tact. Much love. LD.»Durrell wrote this charming and mischievous card from Corfu, which he was rediscovering in 1969 after long years of absence. With his brother and his wife, who were sharing the same hotel, they had come to watch the filming of his brother's book he Garden of the Gods, based on the Durrell family's famous stay on the island in the 1930s. He begins and ends on a humorous note: «Oh Buttons, you're so funny! I have your photo on a shelf next to another man, I'm moved both for him and for me.» The young lady insisted on her independence and freedom, as Durrell bitterly remarks a few lines later: «I miss you a bit but I have now learned my lesson - so be it.» Not having been able to make her into a stable and loving partner, he contented himself with the pleasures of the flesh they shared in the heat of the South or in hotel rooms in Paris.
Lawrence Durrell & Henry Miller's french love affairsAfter a number of years spent in Greece, Egypt and Rhodes, the traveler and writer Lawrence Durrell was forced to flee Cyprus in the wake of the popular uprisings that would lead to independence from the UK. With only the shirt on his back and a typewriter but endowed with the success of his novels Bitter Lemons of Cyprus and Justine, in 1956 he arrived in France and established himself in a village in the Languedoc, Sommières.In the «maison Tartès», his big house surrounded by trees, he wrote the second part of his major work, his monumental Avignon Quintet, devoted himself to painting and received his famous friends, including Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, the London-based published Alan G. Thomas, and his two daughters, Pénélope and Sappho.Under the Mediterranean sun, in the 1960's, he met the young and vivacious «Jany» (Janine Brun). From Montpellier, in her mid-30s and of a ravishing beauty, she worked for the Antiquities Department at the Sorbonne in Paris.Her nickname was «Buttons» in memory of their first meeting, at which she wore a dress covered in buttons. Durrell introduced «Jani» to his great friend Henry Miller, who also fell under the charm of «[her] beauty and [her] eternal youth. »he three of them spent memorable evenings in Paris together, of which we have the precious autograph remnants on a restaurant menu dated July 15, 1969: Miller and Durrell compete to be the most spirited, writing two elegies in French to France and the young lady's beauty «For the beautiful Jani from Montpellier and the sky! If you are almost an angel you are also a girl of the earth, the good earth of the Midi the kingdom of the Marquis de Sade, of Gille de Rais - and of Pagnol [...].» exclaims Henry Miller, to which Durrell replies at the bottom of the page: «Henri has good taste. It is undeniable. And I, I have been lucky enough to share his wonderful days with Buttons in Paris. Unforgettable Dazzling Days [in English].»In Sommières and in Paris, Jani brightened up Durrell's solitary days, and was described in his biography by Ian McNiven: «She was almost thirty but she looked much younger, with a girl's small-breasted figure, as dark-haired as Claude Kiefer was blonde, and not languorous but tremendously energetic» (Lawrence Durrell: A Biography, p. 591).heir relationship lasted until the late 1970s, Jani/Buttons appearing occasionally in Durrell's work (an in particular in the poem «Vaumort», Collected Poems: 1931-1974) and in the writer's famous correspondence with Henry Miller: «that little demon Buttons [...] turned up for a New Year TRINC and stayed the night with me finally, in my eternal little Room 13 at the Royal,» (letter from Durrell to Miller, 6 January 1979).She also received letters and postcards from the two writers, as well as original works of art signed by Lawrence Durrell himself under his artist's pseudonym Oscar Epfs. Alongside his work as a writer, the author of The Alexandria Quartet was, in fact, a keen painter and organised several exhibitions of his works under his pseudonym. According to Serge Fauchereau, «It is thanks to his friend Henry Miller that he took up painting.» From the 1960s onwards, as a self-taught artist, he produced extremely colourful and «exhilarating fantasies» (Jean Lacarrière). Lawrence DURRELLUnpublished autograph postcard signed by Lawrence Durrell to his French lover: «with your little slit as a calling card you'll make it to the ends of the earth, I have no doubt.»

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