Dying Still Lifes in the Works of Lawrence Durrell: Questioning the Visible

Cet article s’intéresse aux différentes formes de natures mourantes dans Le Quatuor d’Alexandrie et Le Quintette d’Avignon de Lawrence Durrell. Partant de la représentation du paysage urbain dans Le Quatuor nous analysons comment la ville se métamorphose en un protagoniste doué de pouvoir et de volonté qui dépossède le sujet humain de son agentivité et le soumet à l’obsédant retour des natures mourantes qui trahissent sa violence mortifère. À travers le jeu des mises en abyme les natures mourantes redéfinissent notre perception de la mort et de la vie et réorientent le regard vers un irreprésentable : celui de la mort mais aussi celui d’un espace-temps fictionnel qui se joue des frontières du livre. Les natures mourantes animales et masculines du Quatuor resurgissent ainsi dans Le Quintette et pour devenir des natures mourantes féminines qui défient la mort et le pouvoir masculin : celui de l’époux, du chasseur, du narrateur. Au-delà de la mise en scène des proies animales et féminines qui jalonnent les textes, les natures mourantes ouvrent un espace transgressif qui remet en question la mimesis et l’hégémonie.This paper explores the various forms of dying still lifes in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet and Avignon Quintet. Starting from the study of the representation of the cityscape in The Quartet we show how the city metamorphoses into an empowered and wilful protagonist who dispossesses human subjects of their own agency and traps them in the obsessive repetition of dying still lifes that betray their own deathly violence. These embedded still lifes reshape our perception of life and death and reorient our gaze towards the irrepresentable: that of death as well as that of a fictional time-space that expands beyond the limits of the book. Thus, the animal and male dying still lifes of The Quartet resurface in The Quintet as feminine still lifes challenging death and male power: that of the spouse, of the hunter, and of the narrator. Beyond the staging of animal and female preys scattered throughout the texts, the dying still lifes open onto a transgressive space that questions mimesis and hegemony

Regulation of heterochromatic RNA decay via heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1)

The central dogma of molecular biology describes the directional flow of biological information from DNA via RNA to protein. Information stored in DNA is copied to an mRNA molecule during the process of transcription. The mRNA is used as a template for translation, in which polypeptides are synthesized. The regulation of this process, which is conserved through all trees of life, has been a central field of study over the last decades. The discovery that RNA not only serves a simple role as a mere copy, but is much more versatile has created a lot of excitement. For example, RNA molecules themselves can act as enzymes. In the ribosome, rRNAs comprise the catalytic core for peptide bond formation. snRNAs form the core of the splicing machinery. tRNAs are the adaptors and thereby the actual readers of the genetic code. Last but not least, in the RNAi pathway, small RNAs serve as guides to target silencing complexes to complementary RNAs. Altogether, these findings placed RNA at the center of eukaryotic genome regulation. On the other hand, DNA in eukaryotic cells does not exist as a mere fibre, but is wrapped around the core histone octamer to form a nucleosome. Nucleosomes are the basic building blocks to form higher order chromatin structures. Besides its architectural role in chromosome segregation, genome stability and recombination, chromatin has also been linked to gene expression. In contrast to the rather gene-rich euchromatin, heterochromatin is a highly condensed and repressive structure, serves as a safe storage place for transposable elements and makes up a large fraction of the genome of higher eukaryotes. Repression or activation in different chromatin contexts involves covalent modifications on the histone proteins. The nature and combination of these modifications create different docking sites for various effector proteins that have either activating or repressing function. Surprisingly, recent studies have suggested that a substantial fraction of the genome, although heterochromatic, is transcribed at least to a certain extent and many of those transcripts do not encode proteins. Moreover, fascinating mechanisms have been discovered, in which the silencing of heterochromatic sequences involves RNA-dependent mechanisms. Altogether this suggests that the regulation of the genomic output in eukaryotes not only occurs at the level of transcription but to a substantial extent via co- or posttranscriptional gene silencing mechanisms (CTGS or PTGS, respectively). The cellular RNA decay machineries therefore have to be equipped with tools to specifically distinguish and degrade certain RNAs. Generally, RNA decay mechanisms recognize aberrant features that are contained in the RNA molecule itself, for example the presence and length of a poly(A) tail at the 3’end. The RNAi pathway is triggered by the presence of short ssRNA molecules that are complementary to a target RNA and thereby lead to degradation. In some cases degradation induces feedback mechanisms back to chromatin resulting in histone modification and/or transcriptional modulation. My work has identified a novel mechanism to regulate RNA decay, which is dependent on the chromatin context from which the RNA has been transcribed. This mechanism is independent of the actual RNA sequence/molecule but involves binding to the heterochromatin protein HP1(Swi6). I found that HP1(Swi6) binding to a heterochromatic transcript fulfils a checkpoint function, which mediates repression on at least two levels. First, HP1(Swi6) prevents translation of heterochromatic RNA by inhibiting association with ribosomes. This ensures repression even in the absence of RNA decay. Second HP1(Swi6) mediates elimination by capturing RNA at the site of transcription and escorting it to the degradation machinery. On a molecular level, this is achieved by RNA binding to the HP1(Swi6) hinge region. This renders the chromodomain structurally incompatible with stable H3K9me association leading to heterochromatin eviction and degradation of the RNA. My data points towards a model in which binding of HP1(Swi6) to a heterochromatic RNA creates a heterochromatin-specific ribonucleoprotein (hsRNP) that is prone to degradation. Importantly, HP1(Swi6) can induce degradation of any RNA of heterochromatic origin, which could be a crucial feature to repress the expression of deleterious sequences and transposons. Last but not least, my work is the first example that demonstrates that RNAs can act as “repellents” for chromatin proteins

Ana Ma Manzanas Calvo, Jesús Benito Sánchez, Hospitality in American Literature and Culture. Spaces, Bodies, Borders

Ana Ma Manzanas Calvo and Jesús Benito Sánchez’s analysis of hospitality in American literature and culture is a seminal study. It does not only offer a rejuvenated and intensely stimulating perspective on American immigrant literature and visual arts in a beautifully written and consistent essay, but it also explores the ethics and praxis of hospitality through a simultaneously comprehensive and analytical approach that foregrounds paramount issues in modern day Humanities. The volume first..

De l’Inde à la Provence : la poésie, ultime ancrage de Lawrence Durrell

Cet article se propose d’étudier le cheminement de l’écriture de Lawrence Durrell à partir du premier récit autobiographique, peu connu, Pied Piper of Lovers (1935), afin de comprendre comment l’expérience de l’Inde natale permet à l’auteur de forger un rapport particulier à l’espace et à l’écriture. Ses publications ultérieures, en particulier sa conférence de 1981 « From the Elephant’s Back » et son essai sur la Provence Caesar’s Vast Ghost (1990), ne cessent en effet de revisiter l’Inde, non plus cette fois comme le lieu d’un ancrage autobiographique mais comme un lieu symbolique d’accès au monde et à la littérature. Le dernier texte de Lawrence Durrell s’éclaire ainsi dès lors que le lecteur saisit, derrière les contours de la Provence, l’ombre de l’Inde qui informe la décomposition de l’espace provençal au profit d’une écriture qui se retranche dans la poésie, dernier exercice d’ascèse littéraire et philosophique d’un écrivain qui se retire du monde.This paper wishes to explore the maturing process of Lawrence Durrell’s art starting from his first and lesser known autobiographical narrative, Pied Piper of Lovers (1935), in order to understand how his experience of his native land, India, enabled him to carve out a specific relationship to space and writing. India never ceases to insist throughout his later publications—namely his 1981 conference “From the Elephant’s Back” and his essay on Provence, Caesar’s Vast Ghost (1990)—but the autobiographical attachment progressively fades away as the land of birth is recast into a symbolic space wherein the writer is reborn to the world and to literature. Durrell’s last opus reveals its hidden meaning to the reader as soon as the latter perceives the shadow of India which underlies the Provencal space and paves the way for its decomposition as the writer withdraws into the poems, his last exercise in literary and philosophic asceticism before withdrawing from life

Du Quatuor d’Alexandrie au Quintette d’Avignon de Lawrence Durrell : le cheminement erratique du « lecteur-cartographe »

D’Alexandrie à Avignon, Lawrence Durrell invite son lecteur à arpenter au sens figuré et au sens premier de “prendre la mesure” un espace géographique qui se transmue progressivement en espace littéraire. Bien qu’aucune carte ne figure dans les romans de Durrell, le Quatuor d’Alexandrie use de renvois précis à des cartes authentiques, telle celle de Forster qui semble a priori destinée à renforcer “l’effet de réel”. Or, la carte aux sources de la fiction oriente subrepticement le regard vers les dessous de la carte, c’est-à-dire vers l’Alexandrie grouillante qui échappe au plan. La carte réelle devient ainsi le prétexte à une extension rhizomatique de l’espace qui se fait progressivement géographie imaginaire. La cartographie, point de départ du rêve, acquiert alors une toute autre réalité, textuelle cette fois. La ville fonctionne donc à la fois comme donnée géographique et comme construction mentale : c’est cet espace qu’habitent les habitants et qui les habite. La carte anthropomorphique plonge alors le lecteur dans une traversée labyrinthique : les coordonnées se croisent et se recoupent, les lignes égarent au lieu de guider. Il n’est alors guère étonnant que l’Alexandrie qui réapparaît dans le Quintette s’écrive sur le mode de la disparition : en effet, si la carte nous y est décrite ce n’est plus cette fois pour nous montrer la ville qui s’y dessine mais son effacement progressif. Dès lors, le Quintette d’Avignon n’aura de cesse de nous faire errer entre les différents modes de (dés)écriture de la carte. Ce désir mortifère d’emprisonner l’espace et par lequel Durrell espère maîtriser le temps se trouve déjoué par une carte rhizomatique, qui sans cesse fuit, se dédouble, empêche toute territorialisation de l’espace fictif. La cartographie durrellienne est alors celle destinée au seul lecteur qui saura reconnaître la nature fondamentalement ambivalente de l’inscription de l’espace littéraire.From Alexandria to Avignon Lawrence Durrell invites his reader to pace, that is both to walk through and to measure, a geographic space that slowly metamorphoses into a literary one. Although no map is included in Durrell’s novels, The Alexandria Quartet does refer the reader to genuine ones, such as Forster’s which initially seems to function as another “real effect”. Yet, the map that underpins the fiction deftly orients the reader’s gaze towards the hidden map, into a mesmerizing Alexandria that defeats cartography. The real map thus serves as a pretext for the rhizomatic expansion of a space that slowly unfurls the geography of the imaginary. The cartography which initially stirs the dream thus appears to belong to another layer of reality—a textual one. The city thus operates as a geographic anchorage and as a mental projection haunting its inhabitants. The anthropomorphic map throws the reader into a labyrinthine crossing through which overlapping spatial coordinates lead him astray. It is then no wonder that Alexandria should resurface in The Avignon Quintet only to disappear: the description of its map does not so much unveil the city as its slow erasure. Henceforth The Avignon Quintet will never cease to make us wander through the various modalities of (un)mapping. This death-driven desire to capture space that betrays Durrell’s desperate hope to master time is perpetually defeated by a rhizomatic map that keeps branching out and thwarts any territorialisation of fictional space. Durrell’s cartography can then only be decoded by the reader who acknowledges the fundamentally ambiguous inscription of literary space

Hackney by Night

David George is a British photographer who has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally. He has been making photographs since 1980 and was awarded an MA (distinction) from The Sir John Cass School of Art, London in 2009. He currently lectures and runs master classes on available light and alternate/archival photography at Universities in the UK. In 2009 he co-founded Uncertain States Project which promotes alternative platforms for contemporary British photography. He lives and..

Richard Pine, Lawrence Durrell’s Endpapers and Inklings 1933-1988. Volumes One and Two

To all those who thought they were done with Lawrence Durrell after having fallen in love reading The Alexandria Quartet, gone hitchhiking on Cyprus with Bitter Lemons tucked in their rucksack, and laughed with The Durrells in Corfu (Christopher Hall, ITV comedy-drama, 2016-2019), Richard Pine proves that they were rash and careless: “it is […] only a beginning” (Prospero’s Cell, Faber, 1962, 17). The two thick volumes of Lawrence Durrell’s Endpapers and Inklings 1933-1988 soon convince the r..

Soybean Meal Can Be Replaced by Faba Beans, Pumpkin Seed Cake, Spirulina or Be Completely Omitted in a Forage-Based Diet for Fattening Bulls to Achieve Comparable Performance, Carcass and Meat Quality

The aim of the study was to investigate the complete substitution of imported soybean meal in beef cattle diets and the consequences on performance, meat, and adipose tissue quality. Thirty growing crossbred Limousin bulls, with an initial bodyweight of 164 ± 13 kg and 4.3 ± 0.3 months of age, were fed a grass/maize-silage based diet with little additional concentrate (0.5:0.3:0.2). Concentrates contained either soybean meal (positive control), faba beans, pumpkin seed cake, or spirulina (Arthrospira platensis), resulting in about 226 g crude protein (CP)/kg concentrate dry matter (DM) and 158 g CP/kg total diet DM. A grain-based concentrate providing just 135 g CP/kg concentrate DM and 139 g CP/total diet DM served as a negative control. Bulls of all groups had comparable average daily gains (1.43 ± 0.1 kg) and feed intakes (6.92 ± 0.37 kg). Carcass and meat quality did not differ among groups. The fatty acid profile of meat lipids was hardly affected. These results indicate that soybean meal can be replaced by any of the tested protein sources without impairing performance or meat quality. Importantly, bulls fed the negative control achieved a fattening and slaughter performance comparable to that of the protein-supplemented groups without affecting meat and adipose tissue quality. Thus, the present findings suggest that feeding crossbred bulls a grass/maize-silage based diet does not require additional protein supplementation

« Paper-thin mirages », de l’illusion des sens au sens de l’illusion dans Le Quatuor d’Alexandrie de Lawrence Durrell

Les critiques ont souvent interrogé la ville du Quatuor d’Alexandrie mais sans pour autant s’intéresser à l’art du mirage que Lawrence Durrell déploie dans son roman. Or l’illusionnisme des multiples “effets de réel” si souvent reproché à Lawrence Durrell parce qu’il conduit à une déformation de la réalité sociale, historique et urbaine de l’Alexandrie cosmopolite des années 30 fonctionne en réalité comme mode d’accès à la connaissance. Alexandrie, espace de projection du rêve de l’écriture, fonctionne comme un outil heuristique qui conduit le lecteur aux sources de la poïesis. La perte du visible devient la condition même de la transmutation opérée par l’art. Dans un même mouvement, le mirage déjoue, déplace et informe la lecture, invitant l’œil à sonder cette dialectique de la saisie et de la dessaisie qui est à la fois source de plaisir esthétique et invitation à un questionnement métaphysique.Critics have repeatedly explored the city of The Alexandria Quartet but none has investigated the art of the mirage that pervades Lawrence Durrell’s novel. Yet, the illusory “reality effects” for which Lawrence Durrell has all too often been blamed, as these usher in a distorted social, historical and urban representation of the cosmopolitan Alexandria of the 1930s, are in fact the very path to knowledge. Alexandria, the projective space of the dream of writing, operates as the heuristic medium leading the reader into the heart of poïesis. The loss of visibility is the prerequisite to the artistic transmutation of the world of appearances. In a single gesture, the mirage eludes, displaces and informs our reading, inviting the reader’s eye to explore the dialectics of visible possession and dispossession that nurtures aesthetic pleasure and spurs a metaphysical enquiry

Prostate Cancer Detection with mpMRI According to PI-RADS v2 Compared with Systematic MRI/TRUS-Fusion Biopsy: A Prospective Study

BACKGROUND: mpMRI assesses prostate lesions through their PI-RADS score. The primary goal of this prospective study was to demonstrate the correlation of PI-RADS v2 score and the volume of a lesion with the presence and clinical significance of prostate cancer (PCa). The secondary goal was to determine the extent of additionally PCa in inconspicuous areas. METHODS: All 157 patients underwent a perineal MRI/TRUS-fusion prostate biopsy. Targeted biopsies as well as a systematic biopsy were performed. The presence of PCa in the probes was specified by the ISUP grading system. RESULTS: In total, 258 lesions were biopsied. Of the PI-RADS 3 lesions, 24% were neoplastic. This was also true for 36.9% of the PI-RADS 4 lesions and for 59.5% of the PI-RADS 5 lesions. Correlation between ISUP grades and lesion volume was significant (p < 0.01). In the non-suspicious mpMRI areas carcinoma was revealed in 19.7% of the patients. CONCLUSIONS: The study shows that the PI-RADS v2 score and the lesion volume correlate with the presence and clinical significance of PCa. However, there are two major points to consider: First, there is a high number of false positive findings. Second, inconspicuous mpMRI areas revealed PCa