Featured photo – British artist and author Nick Bantock.
Mid way through THE PHAROS GATE, purportedly the lost correspondence of Griffin and Sabine, we discover a letter from Maud to Fran in Alexander. Maud tells Fran that she was compelled to “put pen to paper”, (actually a wonderful old smudgy typewriter put to paper), because: –
“…..Pursuit of our other self is not simply a craving for completion but a path to the collective unconscious. Wishing for a soul mate and searching for a shared wisdom.
Griffin recently brought me his cat to look after while he took off in pursuit of his mysterious love, Sabine.
A third individual appeared on the scene, a man called Frolatti who was determined to get hold of the couple’s correspondence and make certain that they did not meet.
Griffin and Sabine believe they have found a symbolic place where they meet – Pharos Gate in Alexandria.”
Twenty five years in the waiting, Nick Bantock reveals the fate of the mysterious lovers, Griffin and Sabine, a saga he created a quarter of a century ago, in the latest, and final (maybe) instalment, (I fervently hope not), THE PHAROS GATE.Between 1991 and 1993, Griffin & Sabine and its sequels, Sabine’s Notebook and The Golden Mean, redefined the art of storytelling by producing an unlikely correspondence between two long distance lovers told through lushly illustrated postcards and removable letters. The trilogy has since doubled, so the THE PHAROS GATE marks the seventh in the series, and though it’s the latest to be published, fits somewhere between the preceding pieces.
The original book carried the truth-in-advertising subtitle, An Extraordinary Correspondence, while THE PHAROS GATE carries the intriguing subtitle, Griffin & Sabine’s Lost Correspondence.
“I remember so much that has not happened.” begins Griffin in his first letter. “Memories haunt me from a time passed that has not come yet.” He then sends a letter to his friend Maud, in Devon, that he has decided to finally rendezvous with Sabine at The Pharos gate in Alexandria, and would she, Maud, mind his mog..
What follows is a sensational criss-cross of correspondence between the two lovers as they journey from their respective abodes.
Griffin plots a course from England through Spain, an evasive route to foil the mysterious and malevolent Frolatti,who poses an elegant and eloquent threat with an emphatic “I shall lay claim to your existence.”
Ethereal, ephemeral, enigmatic in both text narrative and the amazing art and design of the envelopes, postcards and stationery, THE PHAROS GATE is a marvel of tactile and visual pleasure.
With each intimate postcard and letter, Bantock presents discoveries that weave together romance and personal longing, doubts and dangerous forces, myth and mystery. It’s a guided discovery treasure hunt of a book, the detail of the illustrations firing the imagination, the opening of envelopes creating a frisson of intimacy and complicity.
THE PHAROS GATE by Nick Bantock is published by Chronicle Books.
