Reflections of Cultural Memory in the Island of Disputes: Reading Durrell’s Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

Abstract

The clean reading of Durrell’s Aegean travelogues favors the elaboration of memories of travels, a proper circumstance of getting involved in the cultural milieu of the island of Cyprus. Lawrence Durrell’s travel book Bitter Lemons of Cyprus (1957), which is based on his three-year stay on the island, a sojourn which coincided with the enosis crisis along with value, personal and cultural conflicts shows how representations of cultural and political conflicts are inextricably linked to representation of modern oriental thought. He sees the clashes of tension in living styles of bi-polar society, characters and British politics even though he claims to keep away from British politics. Island’s cultural ideology of ‘melting pot’ has been replaced by bi-culturalism in the recent decades.  The novel is an embodiment of cultural identities in cleavages surviving for recognition which also demonstrates a need for the construction of an egalitarian bi-communal society. The novel is told of in various perspectives of ethnicities that are used as tools for cultural integration, preservation of identity and culture by the images of prominent figures from respective ethnicities. These perspectives formed mainly under Durrell’s orientalist viewpoint fill the novel through the cultural memory construed writer’s sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality on Oriental perspective emerged. Durrell filters his experiences through cultural memory after the return to England. Thus, in this paper cultural memory as Durrell reflects on a tri-partite basis will be analyzed in terms of conflicts, stereotypes, identity crisis, clashes and hopes for negotiations.