"The politics of love, the intrigues of desire, good and evil, virtue and caprice, love and murder, moved obscurely in the dark corners of Alexandria's streets and squares, brothels and drawing rooms--moved like a great congress of eels in the slime of plot and counter-plot."
Is love a game of strategies to acquire their heart's desire? Are opposing forces battling it out to prove that good triumphs over evil, or vice versa? Are the "dark corners of Alexandria" a camouflage making one indistinguishable from the other? Do they finally succumb to the slippery whirlpool of selfishness? Only incurable cynics would follow that belief.
This magazine cover illustration by artist Vincent Van Gogh shows in the first and second panels how the beautiful flowers and kimono form a veil of chastity concealing the true intentions of the courtesan, while the preliminary sketch on the right reveals the artifice of the subject of the portrait.
Balthazar, by Lawrence Durrell, published by E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc. in 1958, page 22.
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