| In his 1949 article for Cyril Connelly and Stephen Spender's Horizon, "Studies in Genius: Henry Miller," Lawrence Durrell draws out the notion of the 'unknown' as Henry Miller described it in his June 19, 1936 letter to Michael Fraenkel. As the 'unknown' takes shape, Durrell increasingly emphasizes the reader and the gaps, absences, or ambiguities in a text. What I take up as their shared notion of the 'unknown' relates to the textual gaps and ambiguities that prompt the reader to add to the text, to develop it further than it actually goes. But, as prominent gaps, these same missing materials return attention to themselves and thereby to the reader's reading process. This 'unknown' then prompts a significant revaluation of Durrell's and Miller's works. Reading through their published works to the archives of their manuscripts and correspondences, I use their 'unknown' as a way to survey the commonalities and conflicts between their oeuvres following the most prominent critical approaches Durrell and Miller have received: their ties to specific geographies, their relationship to Modernism, the nature and role of identity in their works, and their depictions of sexualities. With regard to scholarship, the most significant contribution of the notion of the 'unknown' is the connection it sustains between Durrell and Miller, as a common concern both shared, and as an approach that augments the complexity of their works. Moreover, what makes the commonalities between Durrell and Miller so important in this context is that both put the reader back on his or her own resources---they send us away, on all grounds (the Self, character, locale, sexuality). I contrast their works against their contemporaries and correspondents, most significantly T.S. Eliot, George Seferis, and C.P. Cavafy, as well as their relationship to Friedrich Nietzsche's works. |
