Abstract:
“ ‘Music is Love in Search of a Word’: Durrell and Lanier-a
Song, a Source, a Letter”
by
H.R. Stoneback
I recognized it at once, years ago, when I first read Durrell's "Conon
in Alexandria." Now after a decade or so of attending Durrell conferences,
inuumerable convesations with Durrellians, and some intermittent if not
comprehensive Durrell research and scholarship, I wonder if Iam the onl
reader who sees the obvious source of the memorable concluding line of
"Conon in Alexandria": "'Music is only love,looking for words.'" The poem,
it will be recalled, is structured around a sequence of quotations;
the only discussion I have heard of the matter has suggested that these
quotations and italicized portions of the poem are intended to be taken
as a record of things spoken or written by friends of the poem's speaker
Now after a decade or so of attending Durrell conferences, innumerable
conversations (often about the poetry) with Durrellians, and some intermittent
if not comprehensive Durrell research and scholarship, I wonder if I am
the only reader who sees the obvious source of the memorable concluding
line of “Conon in Alexandria”: “ ‘Music is only love, looking for
words.” Durrell indeed may have read it in a letter from a friend but the
source is immediately apparent-even somewhat diminished by paraphrase as
it is-to anyone who knows nineteenth-century Southern literature. One of
Sidney Lanier’s most ambitious, most anthologized, and best-known poems,
“The Symphony,” concludes: “Music is Love in search of a word.”
Deus Loci 1(1992): 110-114.
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