Travel broadens a person. At least that’s what the old adage maintains, and if we are to judge by the experience Lawrence Durrell renders in Sicilian Carousel, we have to agree. Of course, the adage requires qualification, since the traveler has to have his perceptive powers working at full tilt truly to broaden himself. Certainly not every traveler embarking on journeys hither and yon manages to engage himself in more than merely remarking on scenery and tasting wines and foods. But be assured, Durrell does. Moreover, he is able to re-create his engagement with place so remarkably that we too are enriched by his travel.

At bottom Sicilian Carousel succeeds because once again Durrell wholeheartedly devotes himself to investigating the “spirit of place.” Readers familiar with his The Alexandria Quartet will recognize this reminiscent theme, among others. Readers particularly sensitive to the influences of locale will understand Durrell’s reaction when he says, “In Sicily one sees that the Mediterranean evolved at the same rhythm as man, they both evolved together. One interpreted itself on the other, and out of the interaction Greek culture was first born.” Durrell’s powers of seeing and making us see—the land, the people, the ruins, the aura of place—produce unique effects, so that travel becomes exploration into intellectual currents.

Thus, the consciousness evolved within a place, developed out of the characteristics of geography meshed with human history, generates an enthusiastic response in Durrell. In his The Alexandria Quartet he presented a kaleidoscopic vision of Alexandria through a uniquely complex form, what he called at one point a palimpsest. But unlike the earlier work, Sicilian Carousel reveals no great complexity, for it makes no claims to be more than a travel narrative. However, the simplicity is deceptive, and the depth to which Durrell delves in this small book allows him to unearth an understanding of life central to all of Western culture.

Durrell has been at home in the Mediterranean for some time. Previous books about Cyprus, Corfu, and Rhodes attest to his love for what he has called “that magical and non-existent land—the Mediterranean.” Infected by “islomania,” he claims it is the range of the olive tree which marks this region’s spiritual and physical boundaries. The small bits of land set upon the pristine sea and strung together by their common Greek heritage hold countless memories for him. We are privy to his recollections as he examines Sicily in the light of those past sojourns, those past definitions of what is stimulating and comfortable for the soul (an unfashionable word for a troublesome concept).

Enriching the spiritual dimension of Sicilian Carousel and reinforcing the author’s memories are a series of letters sent by his longtime friend Martine, now dead, but still responsible for his embarking on the current journey. Her urgings have increased his anticipation of what he will find on Sicily. She remarks key locations and often addresses herself to questions the two of them have raised in other places, at other times. Reading her letters periodically throughout the journey, he is prompted to recall those conversations long past. In a letter about Agrigento, Martine cites their discussions concerning the Greekness of Cyprus “which had never been either geographically or demographically part of Greece.” She asserts that language is the key to the Greek identity, what “gave one membership of the Greek intellectual commonwealth—barbarians were not simply people who lived otherwise but people who did not speak Greek.” Martine’s sensitivity to place, her letters reveal, matches Durrell’s. Furthermore, she was an intimate friend, a confidante reminding one of the remarkable women that readers of Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet have already encountered: Justine and Clea, even the forlorn Melissa. The same intense questioning and depth of feeling exuded through her letters is evident in each of those women. The relationship between woman and author is equally significant.

But Martine is a character in absentia despite the vivid presence of her words. Balanced against her intensity are the amusing characters who accompany Durrell on the Carousel. Less deeply explored, they nevertheless present us with a sense of diversity inherent in any randomly selected group. A French aristocrat and his wife recognize Durrell as the famous writer but discretely refrain from broadcasting his identity. They are cultured, reserved, slightly out of place in the hectic scene of a guided package tour by bus. Included also are a shy American dentist and his “saucy” wife, she being his most glamorous patient, the two having eloped. An Anglican Bishop, recently the victim of a nervous breakdown, and his wife, alternately cowed by and highly protective of her husband, seem to be sorting out the pieces of a shattered life. Another French couple Durrell consistently calls “the Microscopes” for they remind him of a very cheap pair of such instruments.

Of the single members of the group, a few stand out. Deeds is of a type dear to Durrell’s heart, a military man, a gentleman used to traveling in modest style as a benefit of his “plum” job. Early, Durrell establishes that he and Deeds “had done everything together, it seemed, except meet.” They had been in Alexandria, even at the same parties. Deeds had known Martine remotely, thought her a bit spoiled (an assessment Durrell admits was once true). Most important, however, is Deeds’s knowledge of Sicily, his favorite island; he has valuable suggestions concerning what deserves attention, has a well-marked guidebook (indeed, a host of guidebooks), and has a certain detachment based on experience of the inconveniences and discomforts of the Carousel. At the outset he suggests to Durrell that their motley group of travelers will come to no great troubles—personalities will mesh satisfactorily.

Another remarkable character, though quite the opposite of Deeds, is Beddoes, in Deeds’s words, a “dreadful feller.” The dentist’s lady at one point refers to him as “a pure desecrator.” He has both a sharp tongue given to sarcasm and a rather shady background. His pipe is filled with obnoxious smelling tobacco, and his manners are equally noisome. He claims to have been a prep school master, “hurled out . . . for behaviour unbecoming to an officer and a hypocrite.” In any case, he seems to be trying to avoid something, and eventually authorities begin to make inquiries, so Beddoes is forced to make good an escape with the help of Mount Etna.

On the other hand, Roberto is the Carousel travelers’ guide, philosopher, and friend. Efficient, he is a catalyst able to unite the dissimilar members by attending to every detail of the tour. Throughout the journey he shepherds his flock from site to site demonstrating his ability to anticipate desires and capacities of the individuals in his charge. It is to his credit that things go as smoothly as they do, with only minor discomforts and a few mishaps, most notably the Bishop’s fall into a hole at one of the ruins.

Durrell is a master at characterization, and his imaginary characters in Sicilian Carousel are wholly believable. Voice patterns, habits, foibles are all consistent evidence of the author’s practiced skill at perceiving and fabricating personalities who interact interestingly. The strong identities presented perhaps lack the depth and intensity of characters in Durrell’s earlier work, but this very shortcoming by comparison may make Sicilian Carousel’s characters more tangible as types one could expect to encounter were he to make a similar journey. Never is there a sense that any of the persons Durrell here describes is too elevated to offer a chair in a hotel diningroom. In dealing with them, Durrell is able to focus on the quite unique experience of coming to know a group of strangers and becoming a part of that group experience even as each maintains his identity. Whether commenting on the skills of Mario the bus driver or observing a budding romance between two of the travelers—a young, blond German girl and a young architecture student—Durrell develops the sense that he has traveled with these people, studied them, and reacted with warmth to their individuality.

He turns the same skill toward his descriptions of the cities the Carousel visits. Seven towns give their names to chapters in the book, but more than seven are visited. Travel between the major cities includes a number of side excursions to historic sites or picturesque villages. Visiting each place creates a special reaction in Durrell. Either from some comment by Martine or from remarks made by Roberto or some other person, Durrell will launch a discussion that will pilot us toward an understanding of some aspect of Sicily. At Syracuse, standing poised between the Roman amphitheater and Greek theater, between two dominant forces in Western history it seems, Durrell assesses their difference: “the blue infinity of sky and the white marble were the keynotes to the Greek imagination; somehow one associates the Roman with the honey-coloured or the dun.” While the Greek theater expresses “a world of congruence and vital intelligence where poets were also mathematicians,” the Roman amphitheater denotes “a massive eloquence which was intended to outlast eternity.” Yet history treats either urge with equal indifference, and at one point Durrell notes that much has been carried away from many ancient sites to be used in more modern constructions: “what was exportable was expendable, what was beautiful had a value worth despoiling.” Still, he finds, what is left makes it possible to imagine without much difficulty the appearance and nature of what went on here.

Ultimately, what has happened to Sicily is that the entire cultural progression of Western civilization has broken in wave after wave on its shores. But rather than compile a history (to use Durrell’s phrase) “in yawn-making detail,” he would “build something more like a companion to landscape than a real history.” He finds, for instance, that the Sikels, early inhabitants of the island, are not so interesting as is imagining the state of the island when they encountered it and their reaction to that state. But to imagine this state, Durrell notes, requires great effort. For modern-day Sicily’s botanical diversity is the result of importations by numerous conquerors, centuries of encroachments from various sources, and the result of a climate varied by altitude and exposure, which means somewhere on the island a new arrival could find a conducive spot. The ecological evolution of the island has its analog in the island’s cultural evolution, for with every historical period and new group of peoples came changes in the face of the land. Thus, a Roman structure would be altered by later peoples; the cathedral in Palermo exhibits the synthesis of Oriental and Norman influences. Throughout the island, the juxtaposition of styles is a stimulus causing Durrell to remark upon the development of a consciousness particular to place, and to remark upon the particular parts of that consciousness.

Upon leaving the caverns of the Paradise Quarry near Syracuse, Durrell is given to consider Martine’s death and a sense of panic she felt within the quarry. This leads him to a point he had previously explored: “a definition of what constitutes the tragic element in people and situations.” He comes to several realizations, but one in particular is striking: “The Greeks had from early on transplanted the Indian notion of Karma to Greece, and in Greek tragedy what assails us is the spectacle of a human being trapped and overgrown by the huge mass of a past Karma over which he has no control.” The hero finds what has always been there and, in so doing, reveals for us the undeniable nature of process.

So, too, the land and its people become the material of change. The modern in Sicily sits astride and beside the ancient. The traveler, in assaying the composition of his travel experience, must sift the various elements that have affected him. He must be sensitive to the delicate strands of a heritage interlocked with amazing complexity, ever creating a new formula of place. When he does this, he cannot help but broaden his understanding of his culture and of himself.