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The Beguiling of Merlin
by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1872-1877)
"Gorgeously written…dazzling…a tour de force." (NY Times Book Review)
"Brilliant…. Both a mystery and a love story…. A feat of human ingenuity." (Diane Johnson, the New York Review of Books)
"One of the best books of the year." (New York Times Book Review.)
"A masterpiece of word play and adventure." (Los Angeles Times Book Review)
Winner of England's Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. (Vintage International)
"The most dazzling novel of the year." (USA Today)
What a book! This is a novel for every taste… an altogether magical performance." (Washington Post Book World)
Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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Welcome, everyone! I'm looking forward to reading and talking about this book with others here. It will be the first book I've read by this author. Maybe at the end we can spend a little time talking about the film too, although I've read that it is substantially different from the book.
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"The book was thick and black and covered with dust. Its boards were bowed and creaking; it had been maltreated in its own time...."
And here begins a literary adventure on two parallels, a story which is almost indefinable: a mystery, a literary adventure, a Wodehousian collection of wit and dazzling writing, what's not to like?
Apparently you are either taken with it and the spell it weaves or you aren't, let's discuss it, either way, love it or hate it, do join us here, in June. Marcie and I will need all the help we can get. It will be a fun ride if nothing else.
I think that's a great idea to compare the movie, Marcie! I didn't even know there was one, until yesterday.
Come join us!
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Well! Here we are - Possession! So grateful that this discussion will be underway. I read it around 1992, I think, and have been planning to re-read it on my own - but so much better in company ! I still have my old hardcover edition and last week I luckily found a nice paperback in our local thrift shop. This means I will have something to mark up. I rarely do that to a hardcover book - library lady habits don't die.
I found a link to the movie! I had no idea that there had been a film - just missed it entirely. Perhaps our library system will have a copy.
http://movies.about.com/library/weekly/aapossessionreview.htm
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Joan! Welcome, welcome! I agree with you, it's so much fun to talk about a book in company, I'm looking forward to it. I have a feeling we'll all get something completely different out of it, and I know I'll benefit from hearing everybody's perspectives. (I need them already). hahaha What fun! It's just the thing for June. It's almost like holding quicksilver in your hand.
So far I can't imagine how they could make a movie out of this but it will be interesting to see.
Welcome, All!
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Well I'll just have to keep you company during 'Possession' - I read it when it first appeared, loved the book and have wanted to reread it ever since - presumably this is my chance.
I haven't got a copy but I know paperbacks are readily available in our stores though as it's a fairly large novel I'd prefer the hardback - maybe a 2ndhand dealer will have a good clean copy.
I never mark up a book - I hate to see any scribbled notes on the actual pages - this goes back to my childhood when I was obliged to use my older brothers' textbooks at school which all had the evidence of several geniuses at work on them. A new unsullied book was a rare treasure for me. These days I insert a paper slip and write on that.
I saw the film and was disappointed but then I was so wrapped in the novel that no film could have done it justice.
Have you noticed that there are many, many books about books being written these days.
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Oh Gum, EXCELLENT! Welcome welcome! And you've read it too and want to reread it, what more can anybody ask about a book?
It's my first time for it and I'm so taken with all the dazzling references, I mean Proserpina, that alone. I attended a lecture in...I think it was 2005 from somebody from Berkeley I think it was on the age of that myth, it's actually one of the oldest myths in existence and in many strange and remote cultures. He even had stick men drawn by some pre...whatever. ...Obviously I must find the handouts he gave (like I'm going to find anything in this house, please), but maybe together we can see why it's introduced, I don't think (or so far anyway) this is a slapdash careless kind of book written for no reason.
And yes on the books about books lately, the Zafon comes to mind. This, so far, is delicious, to me. I'm not one of those readers who has to have it all spelled out in the first paragraph, like Mr. Rogers I like to take my time, but is is worth it? Only our readers will decide, based on how it speaks to them.
Marking in books, what a topic! I always used to tell Latin students never write in your book and carry on something awful about it in face to face classes. I guess this tradition comes from Caesar who, in talking about the Druids says that they prefer to memorize their laws for two reasons, one of which is that they think it causes a weakening of the mind to have to read what's written down rather than memorize it.
We were always taught there is a disconnect to the brain when trying to translate, when the eye travels to the note from the text, it produces a crutch which paralyzes in the end. I really do think in Latin that's the case. In fact, I've gotten very superstitious about it, I hate to even put a date in a Latin text which of course causes me no end of grief in assigning work but hey! :)
But at the end of my last face to face class for the year in March, one of my students, who was in the field of psychology, told me that they now feel that making notes in a book actually produces a personal connection TO that book, so who knows? I'm all for personal connections between books and people.
I mark mine up when I read for a book club discussion because invariably if I don't, I can never find again what I wanted to ask about. I should adopt your slip of paper method! (But I'd lose the slips). hahaaa
Welcome! This will be so fun.
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JoanR: "I found a link to the movie! I had no idea that there had been a film - just missed it entirely. Perhaps our library system will have a copy."
Just F.Y.I. I was checking on Netflix and they have Possession and it can either be rented or watched online in case anyone would like to do that.
As for me, I'm going to read the book first and then do the film.
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Welcome, Allie! That's a good point, which will each person want to do first, read the book or see the movie? If you see the movie the characters will inform the book, I know Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons forever will be Brideshead Revisited to me. Some movies themselves are art, which I guess is the whole idea.
The BOOK is so.....delicious and lush, and rich, and imaginative, I ...just don't know how they could film it, I guess we'll find out. Thank you for the Netflix info, they'll have a run on it with us! hahahaa
I hope! hahaaa
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I'll wait until I've re-read the book before I see the film. I like to imagine the characters for myself rather than having the actors populating the story in my imagination; sometimes, too, the author's story may be altered here and there to fit a time limit or to fit the filmmakers idea of what would be "popular".
I enjoy seeing films from books but don't think that a film can replace a book.
Has anyone here seen Bright Star - the film about Keats?
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I haven't. Is it good?
Remember, everybody, this is just a PROPOSED discussion and should it not get a quorum of readers we'll have to pull it, so nobody buy any books yet!
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Don't you dare pull it, ginny. I've already bought my copy. Like JoanR, I got lucky at my local thrift store, after seeing it proposed for discussion. It didn't take more than a few pages to convince me it's a great read. I'm sure with you and Marcie to lead the discussion there will be lots of participation.
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Jonathan!!! YAY! Well this is a super group, I must say, assembling here, books in hand, exciting! I am so glad to see you!
YAY! Welcome!
I think you are right about a great read, how long it's been since I've had one, maybe this one will break the spell. I love the description in the heading of a book for every taste, for all seasons you might say. I'm ready for a dazzling masterpiece, you hear about her it seems, every day, but I've never read anything of hers.
I am trying not to read it so far ahead of time but am not succeeding, but this group is dazzling already what more can you want?
Welcome, Everybody!
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some books may be highly praised but if there is no story then i can't last. Just as in film reviews the reviewers may be using tools I don't possess. Literary analysis is a complete puzzle to me. This book sounds like one I'd like to read but I can't promise to stick it out. If it doesn't grab me I'm gone. So count me as 0.5.
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hahah Welcome Jackie, I hope you stick around, are you 0 for 5 or 1/2? Either way we'd love to hear your opinions, the good, the bad and maybe the ugly too. :)
Welcome!
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I did say that I wouldn't watch the movie until after I'd re-read the book. However, in a weak moment, I guiltily borrowed the movie from the library and started to watch it. BUT it stuck about 15 minutes into the story!!!!!!!!!!! I suppose that was some sort of grim justice served upon me for going back on my word! At least I got a good tour of the British Museum and Library - it's been too long since I've been there. I saw enough of the characters to think that I will like the movie whenever I get to see it. Grumble, grumble.
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You mention a quorum. How many does it take to make a quorum?? It seems to me that a lot of people have expressed an interest in this book. Do you need a quorum for all book discussions (Troublesome Young Men, for example)? Does the leader decide on a quorum, and how are the leaders chosen? Just curious.
Sally
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Joan, hahhaaa, that was an omen from the book telling you not to watch first, but now you tempt me with the British Library which I love, it's in there? The new one or the old one?
Sally, welcome, I hope you're considering joining us. Yes we need a quorum so that people won't all buy books and then be left high and dry when things happen as things do and the Discussion Leader, faced with talking to him or herself, has to pull it. You have no worry over Troublesome, it's definitely going forward. The number of the quorum is up to the Discussion Leaders leading it, but we hope to attract as many opinions, voices and people as we can.
Whether or not they ruined the Netflix movie hahahaaa
In the past Discussion Leaders were SeniorNet volunteers on the SeniorNet website. This site was lucky enough to get what we think are the best book discussion leaders in the world, and certainly some of the most experienced, to move here when SN failed. We have not added any since the site started but it's early days yet, it's barely a year old. Who knows?
All our readers are like gold to us.
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Ginny: If we readers are like gold there's no doubt that you leaders are like diamonds mounted in platinum.
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Gosh, aren't you kind, right back at you, now you HAVE to stay! hahaaa
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Me and my big mouth!
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:) It'll be the literary experience to remember!
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OK - I have the book ;D
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Yo! Sally bought the book too!! Looks to me as if we have some determined readers here who are in for an incredible experience. I woke up thinking, oh read on, (I had started it back a few months ago and thought oh we must discuss this how CAN we not?), read the first two chapters and see if you can shut up about the incredible experience, people don't know what a magic Pandora's box this really is.
Welcome, Sally!!! What a magical carpet we're about to go on, can't wait to hear the reactions, starting June 1.
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I am fairly new to this site and have been most impressed with the leaders. They manage to rein us in and keep us on track, all the while holding our interests! I know I had a copy of this book, but can't find it. My library doesn't have it, so I will have to order another one. I really prefer having my own copy anyway. I haven't read it, but after reading your or (ya'll's) discussion, I am anxious to get started.
Sally
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Sally! Welcome, I am so glad you have decided to join us, I love your comments in the other discussions. This will be "one for the Books." Hooray!
Any discussion with two Sallys in it has got to be good.
Everyone is welcome, and I hope everyone will give us the benefit of their perspectives. We have some folks here who bring in some of the most fabulous background material you can imagine, it's going to be a rich feast.
We all come from such diverse backgrounds and experiences it should be a blast. Sometimes our book discussions are better than the book, but if the book itself shines you've got an experience to treasure. I hope that's what will happen here!
Welcome, Everybody!
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I was in the last discussion Seniornet did of Possession, and it was a great discussion! Were any of you in it? At first I thought I didn't want to discuss it again: why couldn't we do a different Byatt book. But I don't want to miss the fun.
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I had to make an emergency run to the bookstore today, and picked up my copy while there. I'm definitely in, but won't start thinking about it yet. I'll be immersed in British politics for a month first; then a break, since I won't be in the Tyler discussion, and that will give me plenty of time to get in the mood. I've only read one Byatt (present from JoanK) but liked it very much.
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Oh my goodness, two! Two! Two twins in one! YES Joan K AND PatH? Well how can you beat that, our own Doubly Fabulous Duo!
Joan, yes it's true "we" as the Books & Lit did discuss this before on SeniorNet, in 1999, but most of the people here did not have that pleasure, and what's interesting to me is the books we have redone as discussions have been really incredible. And different. I wonder why that is.
And this is a good tradition, because we redid her sister's book, The Seven Sisters, by Margaret Drabble. And I led that one both times, hated it the first time, just hated it, OH, but the second time around.....(I still think she's never been to Cumae but that's beside the point). So it's fitting to give the other sister perhaps another look. And because our discussions are living things, and most of the people this time are different, the discussion will be different, who knows where it may go.
I am so glad you are not going to pass up the fun!
And PatH!!! I am so glad to see you, as well, will never forget you in the Iliad nor Joan, we really REALLY need to do the Aeneid, but it's not the Iliad by any stretch of the imagination so I dunno, keep putting it off, we've had no end of requests for it. I loved that Iliad.
So THIS is just fabulous! I am so glad I looked in. Now you all must promise to be sure when the discussion starts to summon your courage and say your piece, as we really do want to know what you think. Each of you.
Welcome, Everybody!
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Ginny, discussing the Iliad with you was a truly memorable and important experience for me. I won't ever forget it. I'm up for the Aeneid anytime you think it would work, even though it has dull patches and isn't the Iliad.
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Well bless your heart, right back at you, but you're right about the Aeneid. The Iliad was a surprise to me, it was GOOD, powerful and much more interesting to me than the Odyssey, which I had previously thought was the apex of interesting and innovative story telling, and like all our discussions it really was the group that carried it. Such fun.
When I went to Greece a couple of years ago there was this potter in this strange little Greek town, who had to compete with all the big deal expensive potters, who had done tons of kraters of all sizes and I wanted one of Achilles playing chess with Agamemnon, so I bought it, paid for it and months passed and nothing happened but here it now sits on my desk. I should have gotten the one with Sarpedon on the back but I'm not sure he offered that combination.
And that's one good thing about our book discussions here, you may go INTO the discussion with no knowledge at all of the subtexts or references (if you had asked me who Sarpedon was prior to our reading the Iliad, I am sure I'd have had no idea) and thus it enriches your life so much in so many ways. Our book discussions ADD to your personal reading experience.
Welcome, Everybody!!
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I will always remember that Iliad discussion: one of many great ones we had here on Seniornet.
I was reminded of the Iliad the other day. My favorite scene of the whole book is the one where Vulcan was making a shield for Achilles, and describes it. I was in a museum with many Greek artifacts (the Getty mansion) and there was a fragment of a Greek shield with the many scenes on it. I burst into tears.
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I know the feeling. It's amazing, isn't it, sometimes to see these things in a museum? I was totally unprepared, having always run and I mean run past the Greek stuff at the Met or any museum, in order to try to see the Roman stuff before I caved in, but when we did the Iliad I stopped at the Greek. It's almost unimaginable, isn't it, actually ran out of film, treasure upon treasure, any fragment of which I'd have been thrilled to ever dig up, there they all, are any one of which would be enough for a lifetime.
For some reason the hoplite helmets really got to me, what a strange thing, but when i went to Greece I bought a small SMALL replica of one, about 3 inches tall, and of course managed to break it in the intervening years, fell off the desk, and it's some kind of iron metal, too, very heavy, broke anyway.
Some things stick with you and some don't, reading is different for everybody, but it sure enriches your understanding. And isn't it amazing, the most amazing thing of my old age is realizing how little I actually know of what all is out there TO know.
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I have decided to join you folks in this discussion even though I had never heard of the book or the author. Somehow I missed this one. I went on line to Amazon and ordered the book for $1. 59! I also looked it up on Netflix and added it to my list.
In Amazon they had a book that went along with Possession which explains the book and gives you a literary and historical perspective. I didn't order that one ($12.95). Undoubtedly I'll learn it all from you whizzes who are joining in this discussion.
I feel like Ginny. The more I read the more I realize I don't know. So much to learn, so little time.
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Jude, that's wonderful news that you'll be joining our reading group and that you found the book at such a great price. I too look forward to a good opportunity to learn from the others here.
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Jude, I agree with Marcie, welcome, welcome!
You said: In Amazon they had a book that went along with Possession which explains the book and gives you a literary and historical perspective. I didn't order that one ($12.95).
Good heavens, do they really? Wow! Any of you who have this book please for heaven's sake don't hold back what you've read! I like a discussion were we have every fact at our disposal. The fact that this book has a commentary like an ancient book to me is just mind blowing. Many of the ancient authors have commentary, but it's the reader to whom the ancient speaks, and the background just makes it that much richer in understanding, and in forming your own opinions of what the book is about. How we argued on Brideshead Revisitetd!!! What a discussion, the bottom line being What is it About? Despite all the commentary in the world, we did not agree, but the background was rich.
If any of you have this book, DO chime in at every opportunity!
I'm going to look that up. When we did Remains of the Day we were fortunate to have the author of a critique, study guide on it, Dr. Allen, I think, to answer our questions on the background and it was wonderful. Some people spend their entire lives going DEEP into arcane subjects just like the characters in the book, it never hurts to talk to them.
What a rich experience this will be!
So glad to see you again, Jude!
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Yes, would like to discuss Aeneid. Gathering dust on my bookshelf ::)
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We do have a LOT of requests for it. If we DID do it we'd have to make it a magnum opus and drag it out over months and months and parts of it really drag maybe we could figure out together how to deal with that. It's the only one of the big three (Odyssey Iliad and Aeneid) we have not done.
It might be a good thing.
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Months and months would be OK. Think of the Raj! And The Story of Civilization!
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That IS true, a good point.
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The Beguiling of Merlin
by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1872-1877)
"Gorgeously written…dazzling…a tour de force." (NY Times Book Review)
"Brilliant…. Both a mystery and a love story…. A feat of human ingenuity." (Diane Johnson, the New York Review of Books)
"One of the best books of the year." (New York Times Book Review.)
"A masterpiece of word play and adventure." (Los Angeles Times Book Review)
Winner of England's Booker Prize and the literary sensation of the year, Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. (Vintage International)
"The most dazzling novel of the year." (USA Today)
What a book! This is a novel for every taste… an altogether magical performance." (Washington Post Book World)
Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
Interview with
A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
Schedule of Discussion:
June 1-6 Chapters 1-5 (102 pages)
June 7-13 Chapters 6-11 (126pp)
June 14-20 Chapters 12-17 (102pp)
June 21-27 Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Well I missed Iliad & Odyssey so would be glad of a chance to do Aeneid.
Picked up a copy of Possession during the week. My bookseller (a chain of 72 across the nation) had his 2010 Booklovers Best Top 101 List promotion going - 3 for price of 2. Possession was there at No 89. Lots of others on the list which we've read here - will post more details in the Library.
I'm salivating at the thought of starting to read Possession
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It's had too many accolades to be bad, and even if it were a hands down stinker, which those here who have read it can attest it's not, we can find something in every book worth talking about. I have a feeling this one's for the Books! hahaha
Wow 2010 Booklovers Best Top 101 List, Possession is 89 in Australia!
Another vote for The Aeneid!
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Today is rather wintry and rainy.
To improve the day I Googled Possession +Byatt. I went to the first entry (there are many,many) and read the synopsis of the book. And then......Eureka! What a find. At the end of the article was a link to a site called BBC World Book Club which gives you a 25 minute radio interview with a long list of authors. I listened to the one with Byatt and enjoyed it immensely.
She sounds like a fascinating person. I think it's a great introduction to the book and to the author.
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Whooo, fabulous! Thank you so much. We'll definitely put that in the heading asap!
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Yes! Here is it with a host more, there's Chinua Achebe of Things Fall Apart, I just bought that, and there is AS Byatt on Possassion:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/133_wbc_archive_new/page2.shtml
Scroll down and hear the interview!
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Just received notice that my book is in the mail.
Sally
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Oh, good! Mine is sitting here on top of the computer staring reproachfully at me, like OPEN ME! But I like to wait until a lot closer so it will be a fresh experience. I keep thinking about Brideshead Revisited, how could so many people carefully read a book over a month and longer and disagree about something as simple as what it was about? Even when the author's own words were quoted.
How? That's one of our book discussions! Nothing like it.
Sometimes authors intend one thing and something else completely comes out and sometimes not. Love it.
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Well, of course, it's like that. I think it's because we all bring to our reading our own experiences and knowledge and ignorance - and then words mean different things to different readers... it's fascinating! I opened my copy and read just a little and was immediately reminded that it's not a book for an idle read - I've put it aside again until closer to the time but can't wait to be involved with the ... story
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I'm halfway through it. What a story. Putting it down leaves me feeling dispossessed and lonely.
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Well those are two exciting posts.
I love this one: I think it's because we all bring to our reading our own experiences and knowledge and ignorance - and then words mean different things to different readers... it's fascinating! That's so true, isn't it?
One word may hit all somebody's buttons and experiences, reminds me of that old Vaudeville joke, when the guy heard "Martha," he went nuts, do any of you remember it? MARTHA? Slowly I turned...step by step...
There's a Classics Radio station on Sirius which I get in my car. I just found it, it's right next to the Book station, and they are playing some of the old things I remember which nobody else seems to, like the song "you'll never get rid of the bump bump bump," no matter how hard you try." They just played that one Friday in the car, I nearly drove off the road. I knew I didn't imagine that song.
Jonathan, I've been looking for a book like that, hopefully at the end when you have to put it down it won't be the same effect.
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Dispossessed and lonely
How perfectly apt.
I know that feeling but not every book has that effect - the good ones sometimes do but the great ones always leave one feeling somewhat bereft when one lays it down for the last time. Sometimes I need a little time before another writer can fully claim me.
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My book arrived today-600+ pages. Looks like a serious undertaking.
I am going to an Orthopede tomorrow who will let me know if I need an operation on my knee. If I do need the operation I imagine that 'Possession" will accompany me during the recovery. Rather read it while being mobile but the body does wear itself out as we age.
After reading "Still Alice' (about a Harvard Prof. who gets early onset Alzheimers) all maladies seem bearable as long as you have a functioning brain and are able to communicate with peers and loved ones.
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Jude, yeow, good luck with that!! I have a friend who just had the total knee replacement and she's done wonderfully well, just what she'd hoped for, and she can now walk on the beach, something she has not been able to do in years, but she did do the therapy, a lot of people don't want to. I agree with you on the Alzheimer's.
You are so right, Gum! That's how i felt after finishing Zafon's first, so I'm half afraid to start the second, has anybody here gotten to it? Supposedly it's a continuation of the first, but the first and I went down a long path, I'm not sure I want to read it again.
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Judy, the key to successful knee surgery is doing the physical therapy. If it's painful, try to make them time the pain meds to kick in just as your therapy starts. And take advantage of all the PT your insurance allows. I haven't had a knee (yet, I'm sure it's coming) but I have a nice shiny metal hip, and the PT was crucial in my recovery. Nothing after the surgery--recovery, PT, etc--was as painful as the hip had been before surgery.
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JudeS, how did that work out? I didn't know you had a shiny hip, Pat, we've got a lot of bionic readers here, setting off alarms in airports all over the world! Golly as I recall you move faster than I do!
Well, Sir, we've got ourselves a book here, don't we? I'm also glad to see Olle from Sweden coming in as it appears one of the references is to a Norwegian or Swedish work?
I thought to self, there are 555 pages, hadn't you better start reading it, it's the first of May! (I like to read whatever we talk about right before, even if it's the 5th reading so it's fresh). Even tho the book is not that big and not that heavy, it looks smaller than 555 pages, a lot smaller, to me, but it's not small in terms of what it's saying. And how it's saying it.
We've always said we could discuss a telephone book in our book discussions and emerge with a valuable enriching experience. This is not a telephone book, but 50 pages in I find myself turning mentally to each of you to ask what it IS? I really do. I keep sensing something which I almost dare not say, so I can't wait for June 1 and see how far off base I am. hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I think there's enough in the first 50 pages alone to discuss for a month, so we'll, I guess, out of necessity, have to pick and choose what WE think is of the greatest interest or importance as we don't have an Iliad's time to embark on a journey thru time with it.
Everyone is welcome to join us here, if you dare tackle it. hahaa. Oh why not? It's different. This is not an ordinary book, but we've got extraordinary readers here who can handle anything!
THIS is one book which will benefit (ME anyway) from a group discussion, and I hope you won't be shy with your opinions, no matter what they are.
This is going to be FUN! :)
Everyone is welcome, we begin June 1.
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I agree, Ginny, that I too will benefit greatly from a group discussion of this book. I'm still puzzling over the introductory poems!
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I'm holding off touching the book until closer to June 1, but I'm eager to go.
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I was in the last Seniornet discussion of the book, and it was a great discussion. I'm moving the ends of May, so may be a bit late getting started, but i'm in.
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Oh wonderful, JoanK, just the thing, to sit down after all that moving with a great discussion and a complicated (you and me both, Marcie) book TO discuss.
Marcie's done a tentative schedule of discussing Chapters 1-5 (the first 102 pages) the first week, I'll put it in the heading now, and that seems doable I hope, tho I actually can't figure out any of it hahahaa...actually I can't WAIT to see what YOU think on this one. I have some irreverent ideas which I am sure are not what's wanted!
But bring ALL your ideas good bad or ugly and we'll hash it out! To ME there's a big surprise in the first 50 pages, not to mention 100, but I may be alone, we'll find out.
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PUH-lease!!! You're all scaring me!
But I did read 3-4 reviews of the book so it may be worth all the tension. I haven't discussed a book much since 'Cranford'.
But I'm staying in and trying and I'll be 'listening' A LOT!! The reviews truly look 'brill!'
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Great your opinions are most welcome!! We'll need all hands on deck for this one, sure enough! :)
Come one, come all!
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Will be discussing this book again with a group locally in August so hopefully will be better informed. This looks like a complicated one if you include the poetry, etc.
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Oh wow, I'd like to sit in on that one, will you report back here maybe in the Library what they thought and where they differed? Too bad we can't get them in here and have a dual sort of discussion.
Complicated is a good word. :)
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I'll tell you one thing, when I look at this innocuous looking book fairly smallish for all of it's 555 pages, looks like nothing unusual, but now that I've read the first 100 pages, it seems to me to sit there glowing or pulsating, it's no ordinary book by any means. I'm looking forward (I have my machete ready) to hacking thru to the truth with you all!~
But the "truth" may be as many different opinions as we have here. I hope that's the case, it would be fitting such a book.
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I've only read 50 pages or so and it's already glowing and pulsating on my coffee table. ::)
I read this book the year it came out and have wanted to re-read it ever since - so now I've started - but already in the first 50 pages there are parts I don't remember reading before.... so it's going to be a whole new experience for me.
Now, just where did I put my machete? ;D
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The book seems so straightforward to me. The ending, the whole drift of the book, is just as foretold in the pieces of poetry at the beginning. Ginny, we don't need a machete to get at the truth in this one. Then again, machete as metaphor goes right to the heart of the book.
With a proper sense of humility I will grant that I may play the fool in this one. Again. You know, the guy who rushes in where angels fear to tread.
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(rereading) '...it's going to be a whole new experience for me.'
Gumtree, is it something like that, that gives the book literary merit. I enjoyed reading what you said on the subject in the Library.
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It's straightforward? It's straightforward in accordance with the poems?
Fools rush in? What do you call the person who rushes confidently behind the fool then? That's me, you lead I'll follow, I'm seeing something not straightforward, hints, HINTS.
This is going to be FUN!!!! We'll all rush right in and say our piece. Gum, I'm with you, I've now read the first 50 pages twice (don't ask, I had to test my Theory #1008) and...what...is this a magic book or something, every time something different.
It's a BOOK, I can say that. :)
Everyone is welcome!
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I've started reading Possession in real earnest - can't help myself really. What a delight it is - I hate to put it aside for any reason. I'm just reading it - stopping here and there to make a note or insert a marker - but in the main just letting the words flow by me - I'll have to go back and diligently reread the assigned sections once we start but - it's delicious!
And you're right Ginny - No question about it - this is a BOOK.
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And for my own part I'm very pleased to have read the first 5 chapters which we'll begin discussing on June 1 and to find I'm enjoying the book, I think the just read it theory works better for me instead of stopping (because it does jolt you to a stop). Rather enjoying the story now. I had to get over a couple of stumbling blocks of my own, and I will be interested to see what you all made of them, it, and a lot of other things.
Finally a book with some meat in it. :)
Allusions, illusions, and a good story line. Finally. This may be the book which drags me back into fiction.
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'Finally a book with some meat in it.'
And so well-sauced, too. And many a good bone with its tasty marrow. I've read it right through to its brilliant ending. After that quiet beginning in the BML. I'm convinced it's a true story. Even after putting it down, and this book, it seems to me, one never really puts it down, well let's hear those dreams that come with the restless sleep crowded with those possessing spirits.
And then there is the humor, the fine British humour. For some reason this book reminds me of Stella Gibbon's style in something like her COLD COMFORT FARM. Lots of fine irony and parody. Perhaps it's the same the whole world over, whether it's down on the farm or in the frenzied halls of academe.
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Yes, this one has, just as they said, something for everybody, I can't wait to begin.
On our opening day a week from tomorrow, we'll have a gigantic heading with all sorts of questions, any ONE of which we hope will spark your thoughts or be something you'd care to comment on. But if YOUR particular idea or interest is not there, please bring it up asap and we'll add it right on also.
The topics for your consideration are numbered but they are not a test (this is not a test!) just grab one that suits or suggest your own and hold on! We don't seek consensus (how could anybody agree on this thing), so just favor us with your ideas and opinons or background and let it go!
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Kindle edition is eight dollars. I just ordered the free sample to see if I like the writing etc. At least I know that I can get it so as to join the group. I blow it up six times and use my reading glasses and a very bright light. btw my eyes make it hard to edit so I sometimes just don't bother. Apologies in advance.
Claire
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I hope that you'll decide to join us, winsummm. I think you'll enjoy the book.
The author said in an interview that she knows that readers sometimes skip parts of a book (at least on first reading). There are an exciting couple of mysteries in the book, embedded among the long correspondences, poems and stories.
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And Claire with your love of ART, you will be an incredible resource, IF you can hack the first 50 or so pages. So glad to see you.
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Good morning, all!
Book was ordered this morning! I'm excited to be on board another great discussion!
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Hey, welcome, Mippy! What a round table this will be!! Everybody must bring whatever knowledge and insights they have to the table, and not be shy about it, we'll need every hand on deck! I am sure I have missed half the allusions here, hopefully they will ring a bell with one of our informed readers.
The trick is to get through the 5th chapter.
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well. I guess not for me.
but. . . I just noticed the new Greg Mortensen book STONES INTO SCHOOLS is available on kindle. I loved three cups of tea. this is a sequel. maybe in the future
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I have read Possession at least twice. It is a fascinating book. I don't have time to reread it but I may look in to see what you make of it.
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We'd love to have your thoughts, jeh. I hope you'll post when you look in.
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The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. everyone is welcome to join in.
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The Return of Proserpina
Frederic, Lord Leighton, 1888-1891
Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
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Schedule of Discussion:
June 1-6 Chapters 1-5 (102 pages)
June 7-13 Chapters 6-11 (126pp)
June 14-20 Chapters 12-17 (102pp)
June 21-27 Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Week I: June 1-6: Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
1. John Mullan, writing in the Guardian on Possession, refers to Possession as a "zest for 'pastiche.'"
Pastiche is:
A French word for a parody or literary imitation. Perhaps for humorous or satirical purposes, perhaps as a mere literary exercise or jeu d'espirit, perhaps in all seriousness, a writer imitates the style or technique of some recognized writer or work...(http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/pastiche.html.
pas.tiche n [F, fr. It pasticcio] (1878) 1: a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work; also: such stylistic imitation 2: a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works: potpourri b: hodgepodge -- pas.ti.cheur n
Would you agree our first section here fits this description? Why or why not?
2. What are some of the meanings or purposes served by the first two poems by Hawthorne and Robert Browning that preface the book?
3. In all the swirl of the first five chapters, what ONE thing struck you the most and why?
4.. What did you like most about the first 5 chapters? What did you most dislike?
5. What are your initial impressions of each of the characters that have been introduced?
6. Do you see any significance in the names of the characters?
7. The book is full of literary and classical allusions. The vocabulary alone is staggering. What are:
----- Ragnarok (62)
----- Habitat anglepoise (19)
-----girning (66)
-----glaucous basin (63)
-----fin de siecle bindweed (86)
-----Gadarene swine (60)
-----blind mouldiwarp (52)
8. What parallels do you see between the main characters and the authors they study?
9. There are three female characters of myth and legend referred to over and over in these beginning pages. What part does each one play in the story, what are their backgrounds? Why are they introduced?
---- Proserpina
-----The Sibyl of Cumae ("I crave to die.")
-----Melusina
10. "Well," she said, "the dates fit. You would make u p a whole story. On no real evidence. It would change all sorts of things."----what is the significance of this remark? What might it also pertain to?
11. Do you see a difference in the style of the poems of Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte?
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Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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Sorry Claire, maybe next time.
Jeh! An English teacher, something we sorely need here, I do hope, even tho you don't plan to reread it you'll chime in. You read it twice! You did that because you loved it or because you wanted to see if you missed any of the....allusions or?
I will confess that my first thought upon seeing it was I wish we had Deems, (for those of you who did not know Deems, she was a Professor of English at the US Naval Academy and one of our Books Discussion Leaders here until her sudden and untimely death this past February) still with us. However, lacking her perspectives, we've got our readers from all over the world, (this discussion is another International one), and Deems would be the first to say not too much gets past us: we have been doing this since 1996. Will Byatt be the one mountain we can't climb?
We're about to find out. I know since Jeh is here she won't let us (me) rave too far off base. Because, I have to tell you, I'm WAY out there on this one. WAY WAY way out there.
In 1996 we would operate like a book club in your living room. We'd all nominate a book for the next read, and if your particular choice did not win, you'd gamely read on through, grumbling, perhaps, but with a good spirit, whatever was chosen, and hope for the next time. We'd keep repeating the mantra that you get something out of every book and every discussion no matter what it is and that we could discuss the telephone book if we needed to.
Here we are, literally hundreds (is it 500, 600) of books discussed later, some of them seeming less than a telephone book, we've got ourselves a challenge, and one not particularly flattering to the world of literary theory, is it?
But MEANWHILE in 1996 you'd get to read something that probably you'd never have even looked it by yourself or thought of. This, to me, is one of those books, so the tradition holds, even after all these years.
And some of those books made for the most memorable experiences in discussing a book, ever!
So welcome, All! You are welcome whether not you managed to make a bit of sense out of it, and on June 1 you'll find an extremely long (we hope pretty and informative as well) heading filled with questions to spark your comments on the first 5 chapters. You may have read the book 30 times, we'll confine our comments the first week to the first 5 chapters...and anybody who has read them knows you could talk on them one month and not scratch the surface.....OR you can fling out on a tangent of your own and we hope you do.
Everyone is welcome, the more the merrier!
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I will be playing catchup. Still plowing thorugh Wolf Hall; gotta see that nasty Anne get her comeuppance. I really love it but can't wait to get started on Possession. I, too, read it long ago. I discovered my hard copy while going throug my books looking for discards for the library sale. Not marked up; and I scarcely remember anything except loving it, as soon as Anne Boleyn and Thomas More get what is coming to them, I 'll get started. My week at Cape
Cod is coming up with no internet access except the library's wifi, probably a good thing to keep me concentrated.
It's great to see so many readers interested.
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I have read all your posts and I dare say I am intrigued and most excited to read this book with all of you. I listened to the interview and loved the voice of A. S. Byatt, she sure did seem to have a bit of fun writing this book. I most loved how she said the anticipation makes it more interesting. Indeed the anticipation to read and discuss this book has me on the edge of my seat. I have never read Byatt before, so once again, I will be getting introduced to yet a new author through SeniorLearn. Ginny, you and I have shared a few books together, and so I truly can't wait to begin this one. I did click the amazon button below and ordered the book for a grand total of $4.00 including the shipping. WOW! Can't beat that price. Sadly, it may take a week or so to receive it, so I may see if my library has it so I may begin with all of you. If not I will follow along and enjoy all your posts. Hope you all have a happy Memorial Day and let us not forget to take a moment out of our festivities to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers (men and women) who have so bravely given their lives, to give us our freedom to live in this great country, the United States of America. No matter what country you may live in, we can all agree a life given, to protect our country, is worth honoring.
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Welcome, Bellamarie, we are very glad to have you here, this is a great group and I also can't wait to begin. I essentially want to see what you all have to SAY!
Welcome!
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'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought-
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe….
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll,
That's exactly how I felt when I read the first 50 pages!!
We have some pretty incredible weather here, have lost the phone lines and are not sure how long the power will be on, so this is for tomorrow, a bit early, but to get us off to a great start in the morning.
The topics in the heading are there to hopefully spark interest, as said above, but you can talk on anything in the first 5 chapters and we hope you do. What struck YOU?
Welcome!
I'll tell you what my experience was and I hope you'll all share yours with this book.
I guess I've been pouring over too many ancient texts lately where you have to carefully note and study every ending and nuance, and carefully look at words, I was dazzled by this thing, could not understand where she was going, and kept looking for what was under what I was reading or trying to make sense of something.
Several things brought me up short, so I'll answer Question #3 (3. In all the swirl of the first five chapters, what ONE thing struck you the most and why?
) first.
Two things: The names! I kept stopping at the names.
Roland, the Chanson de Roland then, we're having?
Blackadder. I mean really.
Cropper, so close to Crapper. But it was this innocuous passage which finally did the deed:
Mortimer Cropper's graduate students were made to transcribe passages-usually from Randolph Henry Ash-transcribe again their own transcriptions, type them up, and then scan them for errors with a severe editorial eye. There was never an error-free text, Cropper said. He kept up this humbling exercise, even in the days of effortless photocopying.
Hogwash.
The entire thing, or one major aspect of the thing, in my opinion, is an elaborate joke. Maybe "joke" is too strong a word? It's an elaborate framework poking fun. In the passage above, she is poking fun at textual inaccuracy in transcription, which Cropper's method is ironically doomed to produce. She (the author) is making fun of literary scholars here. And if we didn't catch that, we'd surely have caught this one from the heading:
10. "Well," she said, "the dates fit. You would make up a whole story. On no real evidence. It would change all sorts of things."
We have here, as part of the creative bomb she's exploded, a joke (can't think of a better word), a satire? on academia and specifically the English Lit people, in my opinion, (and she should know, she's taught English Lit at college, and in my opinion is skewering it here) but what's YOURS?
The floor is now open for your thoughts! I can't wait to hear them!! What's meant by the constant references to Proserpina and the other classical allusions? What did YOU see coming out of the mist?
We don't seek consensus, let's discuss!
Welcome, Everybody!
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Good morning, everyone! I'm not very confident in analysis of literature, but love to look up links, so here're a few, staying away from wiki-links, as Ginny has suggested in Latin:
on Ragnarok (pages 12 & 162) from the link on this book's annotations:
www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss/mesher/annotations/possession (http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss/mesher/annotations/possession)
In Norse mythology, the final battle between the gods, the Aesir led by their warrior-king Odin, and the forces of evil. Although the gods will be destroyed in the battle, their deaths will lead to rebirth in the form of a new golden age civilization. In the novel, Ash has written a poem by that title.
on Proserpina:
http://www.roman-colosseum.info/roman-gods/myths-about-the-roman-goddess-proserpina.htm (http://www.roman-colosseum.info/roman-gods/myths-about-the-roman-goddess-proserpina.htm)
on Hercules/Herakles from the site on annotationsl:
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss/mesher/annotations/possession/fr-annot.html
(http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss/mesher/annotations/possession/fr-annot.html)
Herakles: (Heracles, Hercules) Mythic Greek hero, the son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcemene. In retribution for killing his two sons and the two sons of his nephew Iolaus in a fit of madness imposed upon him by the goddess Hera, Heracles was ordered by the Oracle at Delphi to go and perform twelve labors for King Eurystheus of Tiryns. In return for performing these labors, Heracles would be purged of his blood-guilt for the murders and made immortal. The eleventh labor imposed upon him by Eurystheus was to fetch the apples of the Hesperides. After an adventurous journey, Heracles discovered the grove, killed the guardian serpent Ladon, and returned to Eurystheus with the fruit. However, in an alternative telling, Heracles traveled to the rim of the world where he found the titan Atlas holding the vault of the sky upon his shoulders. Heracles convinced Atlas to retrieve the apples for him while he temporarily supported the sky upon his own shoulders. Upon returning with the fruit, however, Atlas refused to resume the sky-burden. Heracles then begged Atlas to hold the sky, just for a moment, so that he could place a pad upon his own head to lessen the pain caused by the sky's weight. Of course, as soon as the titan reshouldered the sky Heracles left him.
This tale may be the source for Ash's use of the word "tricksy" in describing Heracles.
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Good morning!! What a great book for discussion!!!
I'll be back later but I wanted to put in this bit of information on the Gadarene swine in answer to part 0f question #7:
"The Gadarene Swine
In all exorcisms except one, Jesus simply expelled the demons. But at Gadara (or Gerasa or Gergesa), Jesus sent the demons into a herd of pigs. Matthew 8.30-32 (cf. Mark 5.11-13 and Luke 8.32-33) wrote:
And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.
Jesus performed this miracle in pagan territory, the Decapolis.
There are passages from Greek and Latin literature in which petitioners beg the gods to transfer an evil from one place to another, or from one person to another. It's almost as if the amount of evil in the world is constant, and evil cannot be destroyed but can only change location."
Rather tough on the poor innocent swine, I think!
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Just checking in. And I feel like I'm in deep water amongst all these scholars and poets. But I'll tag along for the story line. And there's always Val for company. We're promised a romance, a la the latitude allowed by Hawthorne's definition (wherever the heart may lead one) but surely it won't be Roland and Val. They've reached a dead end in their relationship,by the looks of it. Still, I like her point of view.
'I made an amazing discovery today,' he told her.
'I'm sorry, Val, I'm sorry to bore you. It does look interesting.'
'If you think what I do is so unimportant....'
And each time he's greeted with a variation of 'You do what turns you on.' And speaks flippantly of Roland's work environment as the Ashram. Then again, what a dinner she serves him: grillled marinated lamb, ratatouille and hot Greek bread. Compare that to the gooseberry jam and the cucumber sandwiches offered by Ellen Ash and Christobel respectively.
By an amazing coincidence last night, a local TV channel ran the movie POSSESSION. Very enjoyable. The book and the movie complement each other. The movie is both more and less than the book. The characters are just as I imagine them. But Val is missing. Alas.
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We're UNDERWAY!! YAHOO! I hope I haven't scared everybody off.
I haven't seen the movie, I must get it on Netflix. It's less and more? Wow. No Val?
Jonathan, I did NOT notice that she spoke flippantly, maybe she's just a good cook. I hope that intentions are not judged by cooking, he'd have a hard time here. hahahaa
So for you the plot line about the promised romance is the thing that stands out...or the hope of the romance, I need to go back and read that Hawthorne again. Val seems...to feel unappreciated, I wonder is she justified?
There are so many things happening and so many plot lines it's really hard for me to tie them all together. Thing is very complicated.
It's hard to know where to jump in. What did you all think of the fairy stories? Are THEY symbolic or allegorical or why are they there at all?
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Mippy, thank you for the on information on Hercules and Ragnarok:
(pages 12 & 162) from the link on this book's annotations:
www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss/mesher/annotations/possession
In Norse mythology, the final battle between the gods, the Aesir led by their warrior-king Odin, and the forces of evil. Although the gods will be destroyed in the battle, their deaths will lead to rebirth in the form of a new golden age civilization. In the novel, Ash has written a poem by that title.
See now this is the part where I lack a winnow. Is this important? Ash wrote a poem by that title, do we assume this is important to the plot?
I feel like one of those people on Hoarders, should we keep this? Should we throw this out? Who will light the way here (I couldn't resist with the golden apples and all).
But why are these two things HERE, any idea, anybody?
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And here's Joan with the Gaderene swine! Thank you for that.
There are passages from Greek and Latin literature in which petitioners beg the gods to transfer an evil from one place to another, or from one person to another. It's almost as if the amount of evil in the world is constant, and evil cannot be destroyed but can only change location."
Wow. So we have evil as a recurrent thread? I wonder how many recurrent threads there are.
The Gaderene swine reference is on page 60, in reference to the Grimm tale of the hedgehog (is that true?) And hey, was Frankenstein really the "product of Mary Shelley's labour pains and horror of birth?"
Apparently Christabel (among other things a poem by Coleridge) wrote a fable about a hedgehog which became a swineherd who "multiplies its pigs on forest acorns--and ends up with a lot of triumphant slaughter and roast pork and crackling. Hard for modern children to stomach who grieve for the Gaderene swine. Christabel makes it into a force of nature. It likes winning, against the odds."
Well? And this means for the plot that?
Oh my goodness, I just looked up Christabel on (gasp!) wikipedia, take a look at this: (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cc/ChristabelbedPC.jpg/220px-ChristabelbedPC.jpg)
Christabel on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christabel_%28poem%29
Check it out:
The old Bard and the youth at length arrive, and therefore she can no longer personate the character of Geraldine, the daughter of Lord Roland de Vaux, but changes her appearance to that of the accepted, though absent, lover of Christabel. Now ensues a courtship most distressing to Christabel, who feels--she knows not why--great disgust for her once favored knight.
My goodness now there's a reference for you.
This kind of thing, all these references, just blow my mind.
Let me go back to my original first question, now removed from the heading and ask:
What, in your opinion, is this book ABOUT? I ask because I truly don't know.
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hahaha, I love this, I'm so confused I even got belle mere and bella marie confused, you both posted one after the other!
Welcome bellemere also, I did not mean to miss you.
What a super group assembled here, NOW tell us what you think!!
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What a great way to start the discussion of this book that combines so many genres and subplots. I'm excited by everyone's thoughts and eager to learn from each of you.
In re-reading the poems by Hawthorne and Robert Browning that preface the book I'm struck by the outright statements that we're going to be lied to. I'm thinking (hoping?) that the lies are likely ones of differences in perspective (or absence of perspective), rather that outright lies. From the Robert Browning poem:
"Each states the law and fact and face o' the thing
Just as he'd have them, finds what he thinks fit,
Is blind to what missuits him, just records
What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest."
Are all of the characters going to mislead and/or be misled in some ways?
Right from the first, there is also a mystery--a book and critical notes and letters that were lost are found. Missing pieces need to be pieced together. Things that were unseen will be seen.
I'm fully intrigued and enthusiastic to go on this quest.
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Duh! I have trudged through page 102. I got tired of looking up people and references that my poor addled brain no longer remembers. So far, the book seems like a bunch of intellectual "gobbledy gook" to me. Maybe this is not the book for me at this particular stage in my life. My brain feels very "addle-pated"!! However, that being said, & since so many of you are taken with this book, I will stoically continue on for a while. Am I the only dim-witted reader in this discussion group????
Sally
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Vocabulary:
girning - Scottish - to complain in a whining voice
fin de ciecle bindweed -end of the century bindweed -- I know the bindweed in my garden is almost impossible to get rid of because of its very deep roots.
habitat anglepoise -- I read William Stegner's Angle of Repose this winter. In nature the natural angle the flour takes when a bowl of flour is poured on a table. In Stegner's novel, the natural angle a life takes -- settles into.
From Catherine Burgass' Reader's guide to Possession -- believes Ash's poetry based on Robert Browning and some Tennyson; Christabel's based on Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti
Epigram at beginning of Ch 1, fruit stolen - letters stolen by "tricksy hero"
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Sally: I got tired of looking up people and references that my poor addled brain no longer remembers. So far, the book seems like a bunch of intellectual "gobbledy gook" to me. Maybe this is not the book for me at this particular stage in my life. My brain feels very "addle-pated"!! However, that being said, & since so many of you are taken with this book, I will stoically continue on for a while. Am I the only dim-witted reader in this discussion group?
No. Move over, let's put a Dim Witted Bench over here in the corner? We can sit here till the light of illumination falls. You are absolutely right, billions of references, and intellectual gobbledy gook, to what end, I wonder. I wonder, personally, if this exuberance of reference is itself a parody of literary criticism, that is....too too. OR could they all support the plot? OR has she cobbled every reference known to man on every subject, say evil, and looked up every myth and legend and thrown them in too?
You've got to have something to focus on when you read a book, to relate to. We've got a mystery as Marcie says, a hint of possible romance as Jonathan says, and a quest. Roland is going on a quest. I guess I better look up the Chanson de Roland again.
I love some bits of the book. For instance the visit to Sir George's house. Starting on page 83.."They drove in convoy behind the great house." That whole thing was good. Good characters. Are there any other good characters whom we can relate to? If so, who are they, and why?
I absolutely love that segment and they find a treasure. Too pat? After all these years?
Then there's the parallel romances? Randolph Ash (made up author) and Christabel (made up author, whose name may be synonymous with ...well what IS she known for in literature) who writes fabulous fairy tales. But most of the Grimm tales were not for children, were they? They were little, what, allegories?
Are hers? Are his poems?
And then there's the modern romance paralleling the story with Roland and...Val? Maud? Leonora? And the curious sudden interjection of seeing the Baileys through different eyes.
Marcie what a stunning point, I had skipped over the Hawthorne and Browning introductions: in re-reading the poems by Hawthorne and Robert Browning that preface the book I'm struck by the outright statements that we're going to be lied to. I'm thinking (hoping?) that the lies are likely ones of differences in perspective (or absence of perspective), rather that outright lies.
We're going to be lied to. And we're already seeing the differences in perspective on page 84 for starters. But the question of the Reliable Narrator always comes up.
Who IS the narrator here? Whose perspective do we have? Who, I wonder, might be not telling the truth or seeing things as they really are, what a super point!
If any group of readers can crack this case, despite the blizzard of distractions and diversions...are all these illusions and allusions that Sally has worn out the dictionary looking up (along with the rest of us) simply that? Allusions?
Oh we'll get to the bottom of this one, you betcha. We may not agree at the end but we'll get there.
What did you think of Roland's taking the letters from the library?
Penny (or even a sovereign) for your thoughts. :)
Are they like furbelows (whatever those are) just stuck on there, or are they important to the plot?
She did not HAVE to put all that in, did she? But she did. In this she's a lot like her sister Margaret Drabble, do those of you who have read Drabble agree or disagree? Lots and lots of references.
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Sally!! (Kidsal) we were posting together. Thank you for looking up all those references and/ or explaining them. So the made up authors Ash and LaMotte are based on Robert Browning and some Tennyson; Christabel's based on Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. Thank you for that.
Why not just use them? Why make up an author?
What do you make of this, Kidsal?
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After reading the posts my head is in a whirl - who knows where to start with this book. I'll just begin with what I liked best about the first five chapters - What's not to like -I liked almost everything but above all the sheer fun of it ...
All those allusions that rang bells in my mind - Some I know about, some have been half forgotten and some I never knew - but what fun to rediscover them again and try to puzzle out what meaning, if any, they have in relation to the story - or is Byatt just playing around or showing off.
The plot lines beginning and going off in all directions - One just settles down in one storyline and suddenly there's eg. this fairy story The Glass Coffin or a verse of poetry thrust at us and apparently blocking the development - well, maybe not.
The multiple narrators with their different voices and the resulting multiple points of view -
The naming of the characters - Ginny has cited Roland - what about Fergus which means manly strength and we're told he's a successful? ladies man - and then there's Maud - Tennyson's Maud has an unnamed lover - is that significant and indeed does Maud Bailey have one. The name Cropper made me think of 'come a cropper' meaning to have a fall - or to come to a sticky end though I see Ginny gives it different connotations.
I think the book is fun - I think it's a send-up of literary academe and maybe by extension other disciplines as well. I'm not going to agonise over what I don't understand just yet. There's another 400 pages for all to be revealed.
Frankenstein, the product of Mary Shelley's labour pains and horror of birth
Mary Shelley had several children most of whom died as infants. When writing Frankenstein she had given birth to a premature child which subsequently died. Percy took fright at the sight of the child and absconded to have an affair with Mary's half sister. So perhaps it was Percy who had the horror of birth and Byatt is simply being inventive - twisting known facts or 'lying' to us. On the other hand, Mary Shelley's mother Mary Wollstonecraft, she of the radical views, died soon after her daughter, Mary was born and Mary herself nearly died after a miscarriage - so it is certainly possible for her to have had fears of the horrors that awaited a pregnant lady in the 19th century. Some of those fears and horrors are still with us today.
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Browning and Dickinson (two lovers) are used as the poems of another two lovers -- the background for the poems of Ash and Christabel -- another set of poets as lovers.
Watched the movie last night -- makes more sense of the book for me --straightens out the characters. Netflix
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I see a metaphor in 'Cropper'. Here's a guy reaping the rich harvest of Ash memorabilia. Locks of hair, toothpicks, watches, not to mention anything and everything ever written by his hero R. H. Ash. He is the authority on Ash correspondence. He has written an Ash biography: The Great Ventriloquist, I believe it is. Ash gave a voice to people 'at the edge'. Lazaras, of biblical fame, for example, who never was given a chance to tell his story. Then the neighbor of Bunyan's Pilgrim. And a third I can't remember. Was it the Sybil? No, that one he would have left to Christabel. If she ever gets finished with Melusine.
That these two poets should meet!!! One interested in Norse mythology. The other in Grimm fairy tales. It was love at first sight, judging by the scraps of paper discoverd by Roland in the Vico book. What a surprise. Roland had been looking for the sources of Ash's things on Proserpine.
It could be imaginary looking for a true narrator in POSSESSION. We are, thanks to the author, finding evidence in primary sources, the letters, journals, poems and paintings, (Glover's) scattered throughout the book. Her paintings have disappeared, but the woodcuts are hers, I believe.
We're embarking on a paper trail, par excellence!
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'what about Fergus which means manly strength and we're told he's a successful? ladies man'
Good question, gum.
There is indeed a romance of sorts between him and Maud. This one is on the edge. Maud freezes the blood in my veins, Fergus tells Roland. I hate him, Maud tells Roland. Professional interests bring these people together, it seems.
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There's another angle to Cropper - if one comes a cropper, he falls off his horse! It's come to mean suffering a misfortune. Let's wish that on Cropper, shall we?
And how about Maud living in Tennyson Tower? She with the long blonde tresses tied up in a kerchief! Will she let them down for our Roland?
Then too there is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Browning. Our Roland does come to the tower.
Just swimming in allusions but that's so much fun - have to be careful not to lose sight of the story. When I read it years ago, I just zipped through it for the story which is a good one, not bothering to peek behind the words. Now I have the luxury of looking past the foliage into a marvelous world of myth and poetry.
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I'm so excited, I ordered the book from Amazon and it said it has shipped but it could be as long as June 22nd, so I callled my local library and ALAS! I have book in hand. Mind you I can't wait to get the one I purchased because I am a highlighter and side bar junkie, but at least I can now begin reading and putting in my two cents worth. So be back soon.
Ginny, yes I am bellamarie ("beautiful marie" as my Italian father noted when he named me). You will do just fine keeping bellemere and me straight, if not we shall help you. So I'm off to begin the mystery and love story, be back shortly. Til then...........Ciao!
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Golly I knew this group would be a big help in understanding this thing. How glad I am to read your posts!!
Gum, these seem to hit the nail on the head:
but what fun to rediscover them again and try to puzzle out what meaning, if any, they have in relation to the story - or is Byatt just playing around or showing off.
I'm beginning to wonder, and as you say, we don't have to decide now, but IF all this stuff is somehow meaningful, she's really pulled it off.
But meaningful to whom?
Look at Joan R with Childe Roland. I spent a good part of today trying to fit the Chanson de Roland (1100's) which I was forced to read in French in school INTO this story (much like what a couple of the characters suggest one do in literary theory actually) and coming up short. Does not seem to fit. I'll look up Childe Roland (why do I always think Childe Harold?)
And then Gum said One just settles down in one storyline and suddenly there's eg. this fairy story The Glass Coffin or a verse of poetry thrust at us and apparently blocking the development - well, maybe not.
Once again nailed it.
Those of you reading for the plot, what IS the plot? The mystery of...what is mysterious about Ash and LaMotte? Whether or not they actually were an item, which would be a bombshell in the academic world?
What is the plot?
so it is certainly possible for her to have had fears of the horrors that awaited a pregnant lady in the 19th century. It sure is, that was fascinating on Mary Shelley, but is there no documented proof and thus we're doing the inventing thing, ourselves, in topic 10?
Is Byatt FORCING us to do this type of spurious analysis? I mean the constant references to pomegranates alone!
The plot lines beginning and going off in all directions - One just settles down in one storyline and suddenly there's eg. this fairy story The Glass Coffin or a verse of poetry thrust at us and apparently blocking the development - well, maybe not.
Don't you wonder? What did you make of the Glass Coffin, Everybody? Can you figure out why it's in there?
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Joan with the Maud in Tennyson Tower and Childe Roland whom I had completely forgotten! hahaha Good ones!
Just swimming in allusions but that's so much fun - have to be careful not to lose sight of the story. When I read it years ago, I just zipped through it for the story which is a good one, not bothering to peek behind the words. Now I have the luxury of looking past the foliage into a marvelous world of myth and poetry.
What IS the story so far? I'm stuck in the allusions, and how they may or may not even pertain to what we're reading and what of the poems variously by Ash and LaMotte and the fairy stories?
We have Roland as the protagonist, do we all agree on that? And he's on a quest. And in the progress of this quest he seems to meet several interesting women, and the quest is to...and the mystery is that.....Marcie says there are possible missing letters...There's a subplot about Ash who like Roland (is this true?) was married, and another one with Fergus as Jonathan points out, so that's three couples.
I don't want to get tricked again, having obsessed and harped on that stupid golden Christmas tree of Margaret Drabbles which, I found upon discussing it the second time, that it had no bearing on anything! hahahaa
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Kidsal I've ordered the movie from Netflix but am determined to figure this out myself, but I'm not averse to YOUR casting some light on it here based on the movie? hahahaa Almost got the wrong one, there are two Possessions.
I was just about to ask if anybody had any manual for this book, what else does Catherine Burgass' Reader's guide to Possession say? Who is she?
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Jonathan, what an intriguing premise: It could be imaginary looking for a true narrator in POSSESSION. We are, thanks to the author, finding evidence in primary sources, the letters, journals, poems and paintings, (Glover's) scattered throughout the book. Her paintings have disappeared, but the woodcuts are hers, I believe.
We're embarking on a paper trail, par excellence!
Gosh!! Stunning! And a blizzard of possible red herrings?
Now on this one:
He is the authority on Ash correspondence. He has written an Ash biography: The Great Ventriloquist, I believe it is. Ash gave a voice to people 'at the edge'. Lazaras, of biblical fame, for example, who never was given a chance to tell his story.
Lazarus? OH boy, I see I have to reread parts of this. I thought his story WAS coming back to life, but I'll reread both of them again. That of course would parallel Proserpina, wouldn't it?
Not too sure about the Sibyl not having a voice, she had one till she made the wrong choice. That may be true of a lot of people tho.
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Maybe we should ask, which, of the 1000000000 allusions made in this book so far is the one YOU think is the most meaningful? The real one? The one not the lie or the diversion? The one which is the true prize?
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I have seen the movie and was disappointed. It seemed to be a vehicle for Gwynneth Paltrow and although I like her work, I think the character of Roland was weakened too much. He is definitely the protagonist. The investigation into the letter and what he finds out about Ash is his project although others are certainly interested and greedy for academic glory. Roland is constantly underestimated which is a shame as he is a sound scholar and kind man, but then I like kind men.
Gum, I don`t think that it is a send up of academic life; only a send up of politics in the academic world. Don`t forget that Byatt is a professor and academic herself--- still is in fact
Ginny, I reread Possession because I enjoyed the story so much. I haven`t got around to investigating the allusions too thoroughly -- maybe when I retire. One thing I did find really fascinating was/is how convincing Byatt is in creating the fictitious poets Ash and Lamotte and samples of their works. She almost had me convinced that I was ignorant of a whole school of Victorian literature which I have studied in the distant past at the post graduate level. In other words she almost had me fooled.
At first I thought all of you were getting too deeply into the names but upon thought I think there is a link between Browning`s "Childe Rowland" and Byatt`s Roland who is rather quixotic in a very twentieth century (as I recall, and my memory is not accurate about dates, this was a Booker winner in the 90s) feminist way. And I would definitely make the association of Cropper with "crapper". I won`t say anything about Fergus at this stage, it would be a spoiler, but what about Val the student with a perfectly good degree and inquiring mind that doesn`t quite make it in the academic world?
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Catherine Burgass, author of the Reader's Guide, is a lecturer in 20th Century literature at the University of Liverpool. She is the author of Challenging Theory, and is currently working on a study of domesticity in contemporary fiction. This guide is one of a series of reader's guides. www.continuumbooks.com
A few notes I took -- remembering I am not well versed in literature. Possession -- 1) possessive love - contrary impulse > self preservation; 2) superficial possession of things; (3) supernatural possession by ghosts; (4) intellectual possession.
Themes: 1) Love and romance - Roland/Val:Maude/Fergus; Ash/LaMotte
2) Biography, relationship between literary subject and biographer. Hunters: Cropper, Fergus, Leonora and Sympathizers: Roland, Maud, Nest????
3) Victorian/Modern Biography
4) Problem of Knowledge -- unable to get to truth
5) Parallel plots - uses flashback, parallel scenes, linking imagery.
6) Ventriloquism - Possession about ventriloquism - love for dead, pressence of voices, ghosts or spirits. Speaking through characters or narrator. Pastiche - medly of styles or work in style of well known author.
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Poems - read by character or at head of chapters. They are clues to state of mind or events. Example: Garden of Proserpina, Chapter 1. Fruit stolen by Heracles the "tricksy hero" is Roland stealing letter.
Misinterpretation - "Spilt Milk"
Ch 7: Men's martyrdom <> private decay of women's lives. Beatrice/Ash
"How to read the novel: Byatt is playing intellectual games in a novel stuffed with literary allusion. Maud is connected with Tennyson's Maud - example repeated quotation "icily, regular, splendidly null. Ch 15: Christabel mentions George Herbert, 17 Century Metaphysical poet and quotes in the original from Goethe's Faust. Ash responds by quoting two lines from "The Coy Mistress" without citing the author or title. All of this has reference to the couple's situation. Faust in Goethe's play is tempted by the devil with sensual pleasures, and at risk of losing his soul he cries out "Stay, thou art so fair." "To His Coy Mistress" is a Carpe Diem poem, a genre in which the poetic speaker atempts to persuade his mistress to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh today rather than worrying about tomorrow.George Herbert wrote on the struggle between earthly delight and heavenly love (The Agonie)
This is way above my understanding -- and this is just the simple stuff she discusses.
Just me -- I love the way she uses color - greens, golds, etc.
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Ginny and others wrote about: just swimming in allusions
Sally says the author is playing intellectual games with the readers.
Am I drowning in allusions -- life guard needed --as I keep stopping at the literary allusions? and totally, completely forgetting about the progression of the novel?
I still haven't caught up, am finding that going back using the readers guide is fun, but I've lost track of what is going on, if anything is going on, in the lives of the so-called characters.
help ... help ... help ... please
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Pity the poor characters in this book. What we see as fascinating allusions, myth and legend, is their bread and butter. Do they not have lives of their own?
'What did you make of the Glass Coffin, Everybody? Can you figure out why it's in there?'
This is one of Christabel's revealing tales given to Roland to read by Maud when they put their heads together over the problem presented by the stolen letters.
What an interesting idea: Roland as a quixotic character. It seems to me he is very level-headed. It is his good fortune to have found the tip of an iceberg.
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I'm with those of you who, the first time reading the book, skipped some of the longer poems and stories so that I could follow the main plot involving the mystery of the letters to find out what happened between Ash and LaMotte. A second reading, and the thoughts of each of you, is helping me to focus on the extended and deeper meanings.
Jonathan, I agree that Roland is presented as a level-headed person... and someone who avoids controversy. That's why his taking the original letters from the library seems so brash. I don't think it's anything he would have dreamed of doing but his "possession" by the life and words of Ash, whom he has studied so long, has made it seem almost natural for him to possess his actual handwritten letters, at least for a time.
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Gosh what interesting points of view!
Thank you Kidsal, I can truly say that of all the billions of allusions floating by like fireflies Ventriloquism never entered my mind. I appreciate your copying that here. But HO! See below!
Literary criticism is strange. One expert may see it one way and another may see it another. In the heading a ...colleague? of Byatt's led a month long book discussion (or commented 4 times) on this book, marcie found the link, it's in the heading but I would not read it unless I didn't mind spoilers.
hahaha From what Mippy says a spoiler would be helpful. I'm with you: but I've lost track of what is going on, if anything is going on, in the lives of the so-called characters.
How would you answer Mippy? The ONLY way you can see your way clear here is to skip. Just skip. If she throws in Proserpina and Melusina, you have to bite your tongue and your tendency not to want to MISS a trick and skip the entire thing, there you can see the plot. Then you can come back and figure them all out.
And what of Val, Jeh asks? What indeed? (I had to laugh at your: One thing I did find really fascinating was/is how convincing Byatt is in creating the fictitious poets Ash and Lamotte and samples of their works. She almost had me convinced that I was ignorant of a whole school of Victorian literature which I have studied in the distant past at the post graduate level. In other words she almost had me fooled.
She HAD me fooled on Ash. I stumbled on a poem by "him" in reference to some classical myth and thought I'd found a gold mine, oh BOY who IS he, this is....er.....
How do YOU all feel when the author is tricksey in this way? Tricking even the reader?
In this she and her sister are alike, aren't they? I wonder if all authors trick their readers, I would say it irritates me but maybe they all do?
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Let's focus on the characters, do they seem real? Which ONE of them seems most realistic, so far everybody seems to find Roland steady (tho he steals important letters), what of the others? Leonora kind of came and went, didn't she? Fade in, Fade out.
Which character so far is the least well drawn or memorable or believable for that matter?
Kidsal likes the use of color, and there's a lot of color in this, have you noticed? The blue and gold sky of a Turner painting, lots of color. Does it symbolize anything?
I LOVED the visit to Seal Court, "a turret, a battlement, white in the gloom."
Yes, paralleling (of course) some of the poems and fairy tales here's a real castle, just loved that section and hope, (desperately hope) that the rest of the book (which I have not read, only our section here so I don't get confused) will follow that trail. Or will there be another cornucopia of ... Hercules? What has HERCULES got to do with anything? Tricksy? Tricksy with the stealing of the letters? She may as well have put in Tricky Dick, that's an allusion too.
Sir George Bailey says, "Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying." I'm beginning to think he's right.
And when they find the letters, Dolly's secret, the light from Sir George's torch shines briefly on Lord Leighton's Perserpone, which is in our heading as well.
Why?
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Now the finding of these letters, we learn on page 100, is of prime importance.
Maude says "I have seen enough already to know that my work on Christabel must be seriously altered in the light of what you have in these letters---"
And Roland says, "Oh yes... it might change the whole line of my thought."
What is Maud's thought? After looking an hour tonight I found Roland's, see below.
And at the end of chapter 5 we have Sir George wanting more advice and the two scholars, Maud and Roland, hoping to keep these letters away from Cropper and Blackadder. I can't look at that without laughing.
In addition then to Roland and Maude who are on this quest we have Val, and in trying to look up if Val is actually married to Roland (I found she is just living with him, does that seem accurate?), but in finding out about Val who constantly bitterly (why?) refers to her self as "menial," ("my menial keyhole observations," ..."my menial vantage point...") Guess what I found?
Ventriloquism! Val wrote a paper, "Male Ventriloquism: The Women of Randolph Henry Ash."
So the question: but what about Val the student with a perfectly good degree and inquiring mind that doesnt quite make it in the academic world? is really to the point.
Why does she not?
It seems that Roland feels that Ash "neither liked nor understood women, that his female speaker were constructs of his own fear and aggression, that even the poem cycle Ask to Embla was the work not of love but of narcissism, the poet addressing his Anima." Page 16.
So if Roland feels that way, and he thinks he's stumbled upon love letters to Christabel LaMotte, who I have a feeling is supposed to represent...well what does she represent? Then it would change his opinion but is he writing ON Ash's personal life?
Do those of you who HAVE been able to follow the plot know and can you direct us TO what each scholar here is working on, theme wise in the way of a paper or book or?
Oh and I did look up woof as in Ariachne's Broken Woof, a poem by Christabel LaMotte which Roland was reading on the way out on the train.
Woof here does not mean a dog bark. Woof apparently means:
Main Entry: 1woof
Pronunciation: \ˈwu̇f, ˈwüf\
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of Middle English oof, from Old English ōwef, from ō- (from on) + wefan to weave — more at weave
Date: before 12th century
1 a : weft 1a b : woven fabric; also : the texture of such a fabric
So this is Arachne's which is spelled strangely (and I'm afraid to look THAT one up) broken weaving.
But listen, none of this makes any sense? We all know the myth I am sure of Arachne, we know spiders are Arachnida, so what does that have to do with anything in the plot?
It's really really hard, when confronted with titles right above the Broken Woof poem (which is pretty but doesn't explain the brokenness, why it was broken or what it means), but when you've got an entire paragraph on the top of page 43 with titles like: "White Gloves: Blanche Glover: Occluded Lesbian Sexuality in LaMotte," and "Melusina, Builder of Cities: A Subversive Female Cosmogony," to take a lot seriously here. We've all seen similar titles or worse. I've seen worse, what I'm after is what's going on. Mippy's question. :)
Let's make an outline of the characters like Agatha Christie used to do in her books and the plot?
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And while we're getting up a list of characters and plot, a road map (we need one), in answer to Jeh's question: but what about Val the student with a perfectly good degree and inquiring mind that doesn't quite make it in the academic world?, one thing that has irritated me about English lit is that it's subjective.
(I wrote this the other day and took it out but it seems to me this book is veering IN this direction, it really does). You can take one English professor in one course and get total raves for your ability to analyze literature, and be told " you should have majored in English," etc., and in the next course you can't seem to do anything right. Your brilliant analyses are not appreciated, at all, even if you can prove them. So you end up majoring in the professor perhaps not the subject, has anybody else experienced having turned in a paper at any level or grade, having worked over your composition like Val did and being disappointed with the result?
There's a lot of disappointment, actually, in this book.
What's the difference? Archibald MacLeish said a "poem should not mean, but be." How is that possible? Is that true also of a novel? I find myself wondering why Byatt wrote this at all. When I think that way the romance of the quest of not only 2, but other people who have devoted their studies to, as Sir George puts it "other chap's versification," seems kind of fun. Then you add all the other allusions, which are almost like being in somebody's mind who is well read and well educated in literature's, but the mind has gone amok. Sort of stream of consciousness of the author, because I don't see it coming from Roland or am I wrong?
Isn't it the author who is also in the book throwing out all this blizzard of allusions?
Cast of Characters: a beginning (if it's good enough for Agatha Christie, it's good enough for me, what or who have I left out? )
Dramatis Personae:
Roland Mitchell, PhD: expert in Randolph Ash
Val (does she have a last name?) lives with Roland, works in the city, resists pressure to "specialize" in one type of job or another. Seems bitter. I don't see that she got a degree, did she?
Maud Bailey, PhD, Lincoln University professor, has a lot of Christabel's unpublished papers, runs a Women's Resource Centre in Lincoln.
Leonora Stern, Tallahassee, PhD, knows all there is known about Christabel along with Maud.
Fergus Wolff (at the door?) PhD, tells the story of Melusina and its connection with Christabel's poem/ interpretation of the same name.
The new feminists "see Melusina in her bath as a symbol of self-sufficient female sexuality needing no poor males."
Supporting Cast:
Mortimer Cropper, PhD: working on "The Complete Correspondence of Randolph Henry Ash."
James Blackadder, PhD: trained in literature by Leaves who "showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it." (32) Wrote his thesis on Randolph Henry Ash's poems.
Randolph Henry Ash: fictional poet
Christabel La Motte: fictional poet
Billions of allusions to everything but the kitchen sink.
Plot:
Roland, looking for sources for Ash's Garden of Proserpina, finds some letters in an old book in the London Library (supposedly however all the letters were returned to Christabel, these are apparently drafts). Lots of gold in this segment, the linking of Proserpina, Aeneas and Hercules.
The letters suggest a possible relationship between Ash and Christabel LaMotte, a minor poet, hitherto unknown.
This sets Roland on a quest to see if there are more letters from those who might know, Leonora Stern and Maud Bailey. This takes them to Seal Court, the Bailey seat where they find because of a verse on a doll, a hidden cache of letters. but Sir George insists he have somebody advise him on them. Thus endeth Chapter 5.
Who have I left out?
That's a lot of emphasis on Ash and not much on La Motte.
Here's a thought for today, and I've heard this said before, what do you think of it:
(Page 33): There were times when Blackadder allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life, that was to say his conscious thinking life, in this task, that all his thoughts would have been another man's thoughts, all his work another man's work."
Wow! The end of his working life would be the end of his thinking life and all his thoughts would have been another man's and all his work another man's.
What is this saying about those who pursue literary criticism? Wow!
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WOW! I have not even got nearly as far as some of you have in reading and I come in here and see all the posts are as mumbled and jumbled as the first few chapters of this book. I decided for the first time in discussing a book with Seniorlearn, I was not going to go delving into the unknown and confuse myself like I have in the past. Ginny's point in mentioning obsessing over the Christmas tree for an example. I still giggle now when I think of how you truly were convinced that old tree had meaning. We do know how to lead each other down the paths of imagination, sometimes only to find out the author was being much more simple than we were willing to admit. But oh what fun we have!
Sally..."gobbledy gook" indeed! Geez, just say what you mean and forgetaboutit already right? Loved you choice of words! lol
Ginny..Move over, because I need a seat on the dim witted bench if I'm expected to go researching the fairytales, and made up authors that paralel to the real life ones in this book.
Gumtree...I think every author plays around and shows off to a point, that's the fun of writing. I agree the plot does have us twisting and turning, but I am trying my best to stay focused on the title "Possesion A Romance".
Kidsal...I may take you up on watching the movie to help me sort out these characters if I can't sooner or later keep them straight. Colors indeed, don't we find that to be true in most books? Ch. 15 OH MY, I'm barely through chapter 3.
Ginny...Red Herrings, lolol well I suppose if we want some we can find them.
Jeh...I was so happy to see you mention Val. I have kept my focus on her from the beginning.
Marcie...Hmmm....so Roland stealing the letters is out of his character but due to his obsession with Ash, he can't control himself? Now that is interesting. Can an honest, trustworthy person break the cardinal law of stealing, and it be out of their character? I'm pondering that, because when he stole the letters and made copies of them I was furious. He knows the importance of them, yet he feels entitled to possess them for his own selfish reasons. His competitive nature to outdo Cropper's collection seems a bit bizarre to me.
I personally felt the reference to the forbidden garden where Roland and Val live seemed Byatt was analogizing to the Garden of Eden. The forbidden fruit, Mrs. Irving enticing them as Satan enticed Adam and Eve. They like Adam and Eve were tempted and failed the test. Val is interesting to me because she seems to see Roland's obsession and she makes a few comments off handedly to let him know she doesn't much give a hell a beans about his obsession. It's interesting how she drops a little clue, when Roland questions whether Ash had a tryst. This is as far as I've gotten so I shall stop and go continue to read through ch. 5. Much like Marcie, I intend to pass over the poems and not delve too deeply into them, since this is my first time reading Byatt I'm all about staying with the mystery and romance. In her interview I personally did not get a feeling she was using trickery in the novel, more entertainment, and yes, showing off. lol
Wow! Ginny thanks so much for that cast of characters. I may copy, paste and print that and place it in my book to help me. You are the best!!!
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Jonathan asked about the "glass coffin" I think. Perhaps it refers to the sleeping maiden who can only be awakened by love's true kiss - like Snow White in her glass coffin. Maud's bathroom is glassy with a shower curtain like a waterfall which brings up Melusina.
Melusina keeps coming up and her legend is important in this story. She was a water nymph who begged to assume human form to marry a human lover. She was given this but had to revert to her original shape one day a week. If seen thus by her husband, the deal was off. She would lock herself in a room with a bath but one day her husband spied on her and saw her true form at which she turned into a dragon and flew away. There are a lot of pictures of her in her bath - usually showing her with 2 tails. By prying into her secret, the husband is supposed to be representing male control over female power.
This is probably important later when we meet Cristabel. Such fun, this is!!
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Roland Mitchell: state of somnolence, sick juddering wakefulness, worry about Val, pg 11; Graduate of Prince Albert College, London and PhD from same at 29.
Thought of himself as a latecomer. Grew up in a depressed Lancashire cotton town. Father: County official, Mother: disappointed English grad, disappointed in herself, his father and in himself. She drank. Kept changing Roland’s schooling. A’s at A level. Saw himself as a failure and vaguely responsible for this. Essentially unemployed, part-time tutoring, dogsbodying for Blackadder, and restaurant dishwashing. Compact, clearcut, precise features, soft black hair, thoughtful dark brown eyes. Paid little attention to what people thought of him. Women liked him. Val called him Mole? Met her when 18 years old. Pg 14
Dissertation: “History, Historians and Poetry? A Study of the Presentation of Historical “Evidence” in the Poems of Randolph Henry Ash.” Page 11
Roland’s index cards – one set of grassy green, the other tomato-red. Page 6
“Oxford Selected Ash” – book Roland carried page 10.
Val- lived in a basement room called a garden flat with Roland. Not allowed to enter the garden. Quarreled seldom with Roland – usually about Val’s reserve, refusal to advance opinions. The more success Roland had the less she said. Wrote her required essay “Male Ventriloquism: The Women of Randolph Henry Ash.” Examiners had thought wrongly that Roland had done the work. Pg 16 Was from Croydon, mother divorced, drinker. Father in Merchant Navy – hadn’t seen him since five. Pg 16 Val left Roland, he was glad, then she came back, took course in shorthand-typing.
Became the breadwinner. Academic typing at home, various temp jobs during the day. Called her work ”menial.” Two Vals – one sat silent at home in old jeans the other made up for day job. Not constructed to be attractive. She didn’t like Fergus.
Fergus Wolff – Roland’s rival in Blackadder’s Ash Factory. Pg 17 Got job Roland had applied for. Roland afraid Fergus might think him resentful., pg 18 Tall, brassy hair cut long on top and short at the back. Bright blue eyes, white teeth. Pleasant enough in general. Roland liked Fergus because Fergus seemed to like him. Pg 37 Writing a deconstructive account of Balzac’s “Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu.”
Expert on Christabel LaMotte because of an affair he had with Maud., pg 39
Professor Blackadder – writing “Complete Works of Ash.” Discouraged and liked to discourage others, stringent scholar. Blackadder’s Ash Factory, operated from British Museum on a small grant from Newsome Foundation in Albuquerque, charitable trust. pg 11,13.
A Scot, pg 13 Thought British writings should stay in Britain and be studied by British. Thought Cropper trying to worm his way into confidence and goodwill of owners of manuscripts lodged within, but not owned by, the British Library, pg 13.
54 years old, Downing College, Cambridge. Saw examples of Ash’s ventriloquism – became an expert on Ash. PhD “Conscious Argument and Unconscious Bias: A Source of Tension in the Dramatic Poems of Randolph Henry Ash.” Pg 32
Thought often of how a man becomes his job., pg 33. Blackadder allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life in this task, that all his thoughts would have been another man’s thoughts, all his work another man’s work. But he did find Ash fascinating. It was a pleasant subordination, if he was a subordinate., pg 33
Mortimer Cropper – Stant Collection – working on “Complete Correspondence of Randolph Henry Ash,” page 4 Trustee of Newsome Foundation, pg 13
Paola – Blackadder’s clerical assistant. Long colorless hair, huge glasses.
Dr. Beatrice Nest – “Helpmeets” was her book – doesn’t go down well with today’s feminists. Studying Ellen Ash. Feminists believe Ash suppressed Ellen’s writing. Beatrice spent 25 years wanting to show how self-denying and supporting Ellen was. Found that no one cared – they wanted proof that Ellen was raging with rebellion, pain, and untapped talent.
Dr Maud Bailey – Women’s Resource Center, Lincoln, London University. Had an affair with Fergus. Pg 39 Expert on Christabel LaMotte. Wrote essay – see below.
Most untouchable woman, trustworthy.pg 55
Taller than Roland. Roland thought of her as green and white. Had a Green Beattle car. Green towels, green sheets, white divan. pg 63 Lived at top of Tennyson Towers. Pg 45
Contents of Christabel’s desk sent to one of her cousins May Bailey upon her death. Maude is great-great-grandaughter of May and great-great-great-great niece of Christabel. Pg 46
Sir George Bailey - Seal Court, Croysant le Wold. Not willing to let anyone look for info on Christabel., pg 47
Joan Bailey - wheelchair incident, pg 81-83 Lives at Seal Court.
Professor Leonora Stern - Tallahassee – Expert on Christabel LaMotte. Pg 39
Sir George Bailey threatened her with a gun, pg 47
Past:
Randolph Henry Ash – body vanished? Pg 24
Ellen Ash – gave many of Ash’s poems to British Museum, pg 13 Childless, pg 30
Mr. Isidore LaMotte - Born 1801. Cambridge. Mythographer. Wrote ”Mythologies indigenes de la Bretagne et de la Grande Bretagne” and ”Mythologies francaises.” Scholarly comendium of folklore and legends., pg 33 Parents Jean-Baptiste and Emilie LaMotte. Married Miss Arabel Gumpert. Two daughters: Sophie, 1830, wife of Sir George Bailey of Seal Close, Croysant le Wold; Christabel, 1825, never married. Lived with young woman friend, Blanche Glover.
Christabel Madeleine LaMotte – . 1825 Never married. Had house in Richmond in Surrey shared with woman friend Miss Blanche Glover. Pg 41. She is undertaking a grand Fairy Topic. Tapping spirits, pg 29 Wrote religious poems “Last Things” and children’s stories “Tales Told in November”. Page 36 Wrote “The Fairy Melusina.” Pg 38 Tragedy and romance and symbolism rampant all over it, a kind of dream-world full of strange beasts and hidden meanings and a really weird sexuality or sensuality. Wrote insect poems, pg 43 Wrote “Glass Coffin” pg 52
Birdlike. Pale crimped hair, generic Victorian lady, pg 44
Reputation rests on restrained and delicate lyrics, products of a fine sensibility, a somewhat somber temperament, and a troubled but steadfast Christian faith., pg 42
Lived with Sophie for rest of life after Blanche drowned. Pg 42
Feminists saw her as distraught and enraged.
Blanche Glover – Lived with Christabel LaMotte, artistic ambitions. Oil paintings, wood carvings. Drowned in Thames in 1861, pg 42 Wrote a diary – pg 46 “A Journal of Our Home-Life, In Our House in Richmond.” Pg 49 Wrote about Robinson breakfast – read aloud a little of the Faerie Queene. Irritated that Cristabel is spending so much time on letter writing, pg 52 Letters kept from her – I am not a blind mouldiwarp. Not her governess. A prowler? Where is our frankness of intercourse? This Peeping Tom – I know nothing, I never have known very much, but I fear for her. The Wolf is gone from the door. Then the diary ends abruptly. Pg 54 No evidence to connect the Prowler with Ash. Leonora Stern thinks Prowler is Mr Thomas Hearst of Richmond who played the oboe with the ladies. Blanche was jealous. Pg 55
Crabb Robinson, ?? and Ash met at breakfast at his house. Kept a Diary –had hoped to be a writer but deciding he lacked the ability he kept a diary of interviews he had with famous authors. Recorded breakfast party where Ash and LaMotte met. They had questioned LaMotte about the tapping spirits – she declined to express an opinion. Pg 29
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'Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students: he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and sumultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis's comments on them, and burned them. He devised an essay style of Spartan brevity, equivocations and impenetrability. His fate was decided by a seminar on dating. The Cambridge room was crowded, the floor dull, the chair-arms perched on. The lean and agile don, in his open-necked shirt, stood on the window-sill and tugged at the casement to let in fresh air, cold Cambridge light. The dating handout contained a troubadour lyric, a piece of dramatist Jacobean verse, some satirical couplets, a blank verse meditation on volcanic mud and a love sonnet. Blackadder, schooled by his grandfather, saw immediately that all these poems were by Randolph Henry Ash, examples of his ventriloquisms, if his unwieldy range. He himself had two choices: to state his knowledge, or to allow the seminar to proceed, with Leavis enticing unfortunate undergraduates into making wrong identifications, and then proceeding to demonstrate his own analytic brilliance in distinguishing fake from authenticity, Victorian alientation from the voice of true feeling. Blackadder chose silence, and Ash was duly found wanting. Blackadder felt that he had somehow betrayed Randolph Henry Ash, though he might more justly have been thought to have betrayed himself, his grandfather, or possibly Dr Leavis....' p32
It was this passage that fooled me, like jeh, into thinking that Byatt's poets were real. I rushed of to consult my Oxford Companion to English literature. Nothing on Ash and LaMotte. I have a catalogue of the British Portrait Gallery. No portraits neither. With the little number Byatt does on Leavis, I wonder if she was his student. It's a very instructional paragraph. Along with the good advice from Mr Sludge in Browning's monolgue, I think it's a good key to the labyrinth into which the author has taken us.
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Jonathan, that's a great paragraph to describe the fictional Blackadder and the effects of his experience studying under F.R. Leavis. Byatt studied under F.R. Leavis at Cambridge. The following is from an interview with Byatt (http://cercles.com/interviews/byatt.html). It mentions FR Leavis and also talks about using an omniscient narrator, which I think is very relevant to POSSESSION. In the interview, Byatt also mentions the authority of writers. I think that some of the gobbledygook Byatt has some of the characters say about the current state of literary criticism, highlights her feelings and thoughts about extremes of literary theory "whereas now a perfectly legitimate attempt to question the authority of the text has skidded into a feeling that the text has no authority and its author doesn't understand anything."
FROM THE INTERVIEW
"N & JF: You are not afraid of using an omniscient narrator.
ASB: Some of my best teaching experiences were with Middlemarch and also with Dostoevsky, who uses a completely different omniscient narrator to George Eliot's, because he plays with it as though it's a wonderful orchestra. Sometimes his omniscient narrator is inside people's heads and sometimes it is above, uttering judgements about the nature of the universe. The novel I'm obsessed with at the moment is Dostoevsky's The Demons or The Possessed, however we translate it, where the narrator sometimes is just the gossip from the town, which is very much what George Eliot does.
I get angry with critics who say that George Eliot was using the God's eye view because she was very dignified and thought she was God. She didn't. It was just that she wanted to say whatever she knew in whatever was the best style to say it in. And she orchestrated the styles.
I used to ask students to look at the times she uses the first person plural: "we all feel this." She does this to make a statement about a universal human trait. Sometimes she says, "You may think..." and she is actually addressing somebody she's not sure she agrees with. Sometimes she says, "He thought," and sometimes she almost suggests that she doesn't quite know what somebody thought, but that it was a bit like this. She can do all those things, because she's got a flexible instrument. If you choose a first person narrative you've thrown away every single one of those opportunities; but you may have an intensity that she doesn't have.
JN & JF: The term omniscient narrator seems almost pejorative now.
ASB: Yes, this has become a malady of our times. I was a student at Cambridge under Dr. Leavis, who was very proud of himself and sure that he was right and everybody else was wrong; but he was also sure that the writers were more right than he was; whereas now a perfectly legitimate attempt to question the authority of the text has skidded into a feeling that the text has no authority and its author doesn't understand anything. In which case you may as well give up studying literature and study Acts of Parliament, which are just as interesting.
I remember Richard Hoggart saying once, "I could write you an absolutely brilliant essay on the London phone book, but the one I'd write on Dostoevsky would be better." And that's because Dostoevsky is more interesting. Good authors have authority and I respect them."
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Thanks, Ginny and Kidsal for starting those good descriptions of the cast of characters. I am feeling sympathetic to Roland, although it doesn't seem that he and Val have a constructive relationship. Roland's quiet, meek (mole-ish) style doesn't bring out the best in Val and she seems to suck the spirit out of Roland. Val seems to have been beaten down in her academic experience (and her family life growing up). Her faculty committee think that Roland is responsible for her dissertation (even though Roland doesn't agree with what Val wrote about Ash.) I've read that academia's harshness to women is one of Byatt's themes, throughout many of her books.
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The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. everyone is welcome to join in.
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Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
Characters and Plot (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/readerguides/possession/possession_characters.html) by our Readers
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Schedule of Discussion:
June 7-13 Chapters 6-11 (126pp)
June 14-20 Chapters 12-17 (102pp)
June 21-27 Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Week II: June 7-13:
1. (Chapter 6) What are your impressions of Mortimer Cropper? How would you characterize his studies of/relationship with Randolph Ash?
2. (Chapter 7) What are your impressions of Beatrice Nest and her work related to the journals of Ellen Ash?
3. (Chapter 7) What does Roland discover in the journals of Ellen Ash?
4. (Chapter 8 ) What do we learn about Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte from their first exchange of letters?
5. (Chapter 8 ) What are some things you noticed about Roland and Maude early on in their quest to read the letters? Do you see parallels between the two pairs?
6. (Chapter 9) What do you make of LaMotte's story "The Threshold"?
7. (Chapter 10) What are your thoughts about the events and the imagery in the correspondence and poems in this chapter?
8. (Chapter 11) What are some of the themes and imagery that made an impression on you in Ash's poem "Swammerdam"? Do you see anything of LaMotte's influence there? Ash said she was his muse and influenced the poem, can you point out to her presence or influence?
9. Why does LaMotte capitalize every other word in her letters and not her poetry or fairy tales?
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Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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These last two posts have been especially helpful to me in getting who is real and who is not straight, and I agree, Jonathan: Along with the good advice from Mr Sludge in Browning's monolgue, I think it's a good key to the labyrinth into which the author has taken us.
Labyrinth, I really like that image.That's what it is, all right, with many twists and turns, one has no idea what's waiting around the corner.
Marcie that omniscient narrator explains a lot here. I kept wondering whose thoughts we see, that's a brilliant addition to our discussion, thank you. Seems so clear when she sets it out.
I thought this was also telling in Jonathan's bit: The dating handout contained a troubadour lyric, a piece of dramatist Jacobean verse, some satirical couplets, a blank verse meditation on volcanic mud and a love sonnet. Blackadder, schooled by his grandfather, saw immediately that all these poems were by Randolph Henry Ash, examples of his ventriloquisms, of his unwieldy range.
He recognized it right away, a blank verse meditation on volcanic mud...what a hoot. This thing is a hoot.
I can't however, get a feel for Ash. Can any of you?
Thank you Kidsal for that super addenda to the cast. I'm going to combine both of them and we can put a list of the characters in the heading. Until Marcie's post I did not realize Leavis was real. I knew Blackadder wasn't. I've added Leavis to our list of characters also.
So in this book so far, is there only the one real person? Leavis?
Marcie says "I am feeling sympathetic to Roland," ok here before we have to go on can you say which of the characters YOU feel most connected to and why?
I can't get any feel at all for Christabel. She of the white fairy tales, the glass coffins, purity set apart waiting for the handsome prince.
But I do see now, once we winnow out the characters and some of the plot how simple it really is, and it makes a lot more sense. Does it for you?
BECAUSE of Blackadder and all the rest of these guys have staked their very reputations and lives, and all the thought they possess UPON Randolph Henry Ash's being ....what?
Joan R, this, I thought, was fabulous: By prying into her secret, the husband is supposed to be representing male control over female power.
This is probably important later when we meet Cristabel. Such fun, this is!!
We haven't met Christabel yet, have we? Thank you for the Melusina legend. I am getting the white maiden in the tower feeling from her and so IF she were found to be having a love entanglement with Ash, then all the feminist theory would be out the window too.
So these letters really do have power over the people who are so determined to make the writings of these two fictional Victorian writers mean something that possibly they don't, at all. And if you stake your reputation on a blank verse on volcanic mud and you have come to the conclusion that Ash "neither liked nor understood women, that his female speaker were constructs of his own fear and aggression, that even the poem cycle Ask to Embla was the work not of love but of narcissism, the poet addressing his Anima." Page 16. What will you do when it's found in private, in secret, that the reverse was true?
I believe we've got it.
Bellamarie, hahaha on the golden Christmas tree, that's a case in point: I can say that and enjoy being wrong but a distinguished scholar who has based his entire life on the "golden Christmas tree" theory can't: disgrace, and embarrassment would follow. One time when NOT being a professional helps, tho we do need all the insights we can get from them before WE decide which one is right. :)
This is also a good point: I'm pondering that, because when he stole the letters and made copies of them I was furious. He knows the importance of them, yet he feels entitled to possess them for his own selfish reasons. His competitive nature to outdo Cropper's collection seems a bit bizarre to me. Also in the case of Sir George, the emphasis seems to be on who's got these letters and we can see why now: it's like a Wall Street Broker having put everything he has into..what do they call those short bids? Selling short? And he's about to lose them. Roland also never returned the originals, did he?
Are they, the London Library, that lax with these documents?
Marcie feels sympathetic to Roland. How do the rest of you feel about him? The characters in the first 5 chapters to me are not fleshed out, he, however, has the most character insights of all, but none of the rest are, they are like...I don't want to say caricatures but they move across the stage here occupying a purpose, and they have JUST enough background and emotions not to be stick figures. Val is a good example. Just enough bitterness and sharpness to be interesting, but we don't know how she feels about anything positive.
How , I wonder, are we going to find out anything about Christabel? And Ash? Only thru the letters ourselves? Or their works? Do we have enough of Ash in the first 5 chapters to tell anything? I'm sure if we don't that's by design.
So these letters are going to be VERY important? Or are we to guess, based on the images of female whatever in her locked tower glass coffin works? What an intriguing book this is once you get past all the extra stuff. The blizzard of....are they red herrings then?
So which character stands out the most for you at this point? Any?
NOW I'm going back, here in the last days of this first section and pick UP what all these references to Proserpina are. Somewhere here it says she's the same thing as Ceres, she was not. Why is Ash writing about Proserpina? What does she symbolize? OR is this more volcanic mud musings?
Does anybody happen to know anything about Victorian writing? What period it might have been? What characterizes it? Is this book in the style of Victorian prose?
What a wonderful discussion you're making of it!
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The glass coffin is right out of a fairy tale, isn't it? What is it doing in here? I keep mixing up Ash's writing with stories of real authors, and guess I'm not alone in that.
Victorian period authors and essayists! There's a topic I can jump into, although it was an eon ago when I was in college (Wheaton, MA, not IL) and took a wonderful course which compared poets, essayists and scientists of the so-called Victorian period.
Having been trained to be a scientist, I loved the Voyage of the Beagle and other works by Darwin more than I liked the poets. But the prof. did open up to me the world in which Darwin and Russell lived, the poets they would have read and loved, and the essays they would have pored over. Perhaps that insight would help here, trying to think like a researcher in earlier times, someone who does not have instant access to the internet and all the old literature on line, which we now take for granted!
I can appreciate the enjoyment of finding tidbits and letters and diaries if you are a researcher looking for insight into someone like Ash. But me? I could never do it. I took so few literature courses in the old days, so that I'm playing catch up here in SeniorLearn.
Then I had no interest in poetry, which is odd since I love opera and music. I have little empathy with the researchers in this book, either, but I have curiosity. I hope to learn a lot!
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F.R Leavis : It's interesting that Byatt studied under F.R. Leavis and that she cites George Eliot's Middlemarch in the interview as it was Leavis whose re-evaluation of George Eliot's novels brought her work to critical attention again after many years in the wilderness. In his book The Great Tradition he contends that there are:
...four truly great English novelists - Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad ...and that a common tradition links the finest work of each.
The book gives a detailed critical analysis of those books which best exemplify their author's genius - in Eliot's case Romola, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. He appears to have admired her 'life enhancing moral seriousness'.
Leavis seems to have been a controversial figure in academic circles though nothing of that appears in the Cambridge Guide to Literature in English which (in part) has this to say about him.
In the early 1930s he wrote a series of cultural manifestos -Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture (1933) - For Continuity (1933) and Culture and Environment (with Denys Thompson, 1933) which propose the study of English literature as a base from which to rally the discriminating educated minority against the threats to cultural continuity posed by the processes of industrialism, especially by the cinema, advertising and the spread of 'mass' culture. These arguments formed the basis of the critical campaign undertaken by 'Scrutiny' which Leavis guided as co-editor from 1932 to 1953. His New Bearings in English Poetry1932 began a thorough revision of the English literary tradition, championing Gerald Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, Pound and Yeats as the creators of a modernist tradition...
Leavis refused to define the theoretical basis of his judgements, though it can be inferred from numerous asides. Historically considered, he belongs to the tradition of Arnold, Ruskin and other writers on 'the condition of England'. The almost religious seriousness which he introduced to criticism inspired a generation of followers (Leavisites) with a sense of vocation in teaching a subject deemed central to civilisation. His reevaluation, not just of the canon of English literature, but of the status of criticism, established him as the most important English speaking critic of his time
I daresay there are some among us today who still deplore the 'threats to cultural continuity posed by the effects of industrialism, especially cinema, advertising and the spread of mass culture'. There is of course a downside to all that but without the toys of industrialism and mass culture we surely wouldn't be here enjoying this discussion in cyberspace.
The Great Tradition has this blurb on the dust jacket -
This book contains great criticism, some of the greatest of our time, and it tells more truth about the novel than we are accustomed to hear
Gerard Hopkins (Time and Tide) -
and although it is a very long time since I opened it I can still say that some of it makes good sense and his critical appraisal of Middlemarch, and by extension of Eliot herself, is still worth reading today.
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I think you've brought up some important points, Mippy. Darwin for one in the age of Victorian literature and The glass coffin is right out of a fairy tale, isn't it? What is it doing in here? I keep mixing up Ash's writing with stories of real authors, and guess I'm not alone in that.
I just reread the first 5 chapters, armed this time with what we've said here and it's amazing the difference it makes.
You still have all the allusions but they fall into place and did you notice that in chapter 5 how the allusions were virtually silent? It's almost like they are gibbering ghosts or something but they are all silent, pretty much, except for Lord Leighton's Proserpina which is in the heading. Which Sir George illuminates with a torch when the letters are found.
Clearly then this myth of Proserpina (called Persephone by the Greeks) is important. Interestingly enough, Tennyson, referenced here many times in the text, also wrote a poem on Proserpina.
I heard a fascinating talk at the U of PA in 2006 on this myth and a comparison with it to that of Inanna, a Sumerian myth which also contains a woman going down into Hell and her return or freeing back to the world of the living. It dates from 5300-4100 BCE, the Ubaid period.
So it's a very old story and concept. Homer wrote it down about 700 BC, it's a charming tale of Demeter (Ceres) goddess of the harvest and her daughter Persephone whom Pluto, god of the underworld, snatched away and took her to be the Queen of the Underworld.
While Demeter searched for her daughter she planted no crops, she aided no flowers to grow (the seasons) and so everything died. Finally the people prevailed upon Zeus, the king of the gods, to restore Persephone, but Pluto (Hades) had tricked her into eating the seeds (some say 6, 4,3, etc., depending on the culture) of the pomegranate (that's why the references to it here) and that's the number of months she had to stay in the underworld.
Lord Leighton's golden painting in the heading shows her return.
Return from the dead is a powerful metaphor of the ancient world. The Inanna myth, I found on (gasp) wilipedia so it may not be worth a hill of beans, but for interpretation they say: Since Inanna embodies the traits of independence, self-determination and strength in an otherwise patriarchal Sumerian pantheon, she has become the subject of feminist theory.[18]
That fits in, too.
What's NOT particularly explained, at least to me, is how this quite all fits in. Randolph Henry Ash has written a poem called The Garden of Proserpina, but I don't know what that refers to and we don't have enough of it to tell anything. The jury at least here, must be still out... I can't figure out the connection, at this point, do any of you have any insights here?
What's also not particularly clear to me is the poems themselves. Do you think the book or so far would have been just as good if not better if the poems of Ash and LaMotte had been removed?
The Glass Coffin, to me, is marvelously written, I loved it. It occupies almost all of Chapter 4 so you can't throw it away easily. It's Sleeping Beauty, and a fair knight rescuing the fair damsel princess, In the form of a tailor. It's got lots of Kidsal's color, lots of gold, green, it's got allusions to Vergil's Aeneid and Aeneas and the golden bough lighting the way into the prison (Hell in Vergil's case) but of course Aeneas had the Sibyl of Cumae to instruct him in the use of the golden bough. And some may want to put a religious interpretation on both of these stories.
So the princess in the glass coffin is rescued, Aeneas finds his way back from Hell and Proserpina is freed from Hell also.
Why would Christabel write fairy stories about a princess who is released from a prison brought on by a black magician who is saved, not by her own cunning but by a hero? Isn't it interesting that in the story when he could have claimed as his prize a bride, the little tailor thought nothing of the sort and was content while the restored brother and the ..is she unnamed...princess...happily hunted thru the woods, the tailor being content to sew brilliant clothes.
I like that story and I'm glad it's in there. What it may MEAN about Christabel I am not sure. "Victorian alienation from the voice of true feeling? " (page 32) Coleridge's Christabel http://www.eliteskills.com/c/4702 has Christabel using a key to save Geraldine and lock her up in a tower for safety: Geraldine glows white by the way.
The lovely lady, Christabel,
Whom her father loves so well,
What makes her in the wood so late,
A furlong from the castle gate ?
She had dreams all yesternight
Of her own betrothéd knight ;
And she in the midnight wood will pray
For the weal of her lover that's far away.
So that Christabel, called by one reviewer the perfect Victorian lady (who precedes LaMotte's as Tennyson lived and LaMotte did not) also was waiting for a knight. But she took matters in her own hands. It's hard for me to tell if this is, in fact, about homosexuality because of the time in which it was written. Certainly looks like it but Coleridge never finished it, so who knows? It's got Roland and a snake in it, too. Still I think if you mention "Christabel," these are the images which pop out at you, however uninformed they may be.
One thing that DID strike me in the first 5 chapters is the repeated knell almost as if a warning, that "It may be a wild goose chase. It's almost nothing really.' (page 44).
"All that ponderous obfuscation." (page 48)
"The whole thing is a wild goose chase." (page 54)
I also liked the parallels, Lady Bailey tells Sir George, "she has "been rescued by a knight." (page 84).
I like the humor, Lady Bailey has "the brown coins of age" on her face (page 82).
And I like 5 ending with some tension: who is going to get the letters, and shouldn't we be rooting for the museums etc., who will pay Sir George enough to keep up his home rather than these academics? It's a perfect place to stop. Marcie did the schedule and I like the way she divided it.
Do YOU think that the poems of Ash add, detract or have no effect on the book so far? How about the writings of LaMotte, specifically (all done by Byatt of course) The Glass Coffin, do THEY add to, detract from or make no difference to the book so far?
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'...the writings of LaMotte...do they add to, detract from or make no differenc to the book so far?'
Byatt as the author wants us to consider them in getting to know Christabel, doesn't she? In the link provided by Marcie, to the interview with Byatt, we read about her publisher wanting to remove some or all of these extraneous compositions from the book. And it would seem that initially many readers skim or ignore them. In the same interview Byatt talks admiringly of Dostoyevsky 'orchestrating his omniscient narrator(s) Why couldn't we see POSSESSION as a symphony of sorts? Obviously many instruments.
Also this from the interview: 'JN & JF: Do you see Possession as a Rubicon in your career as a writer?
ASB: I see it as a comedy, although it makes people cry.'
Anyone crying at this point must be mired in the sea 'vulcanic mud'.
Ginny, speaking no doubt for many of us, asks:
I can't get any feel at all for Christabel
How, I wonder are we going to find out anything about Christabel?
So there is only the one real person? Leavis?
No, there is another real person. It's the diarist and party giver, Crabb Robinson. At least my Oxford Companion has this:
Robinson, Henry Crabb (1775-1867) after spending some years in a solicitors office in London, travelled in Germany, where he met Goethe and Schiller....He was afterwards a barrister. He was acquainted with many notable people of his day and was one of the founders of the Athenaeum Club and of University College, London. Part of his famous diary and correspondence throwing light on many literary characters, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt was published in 1869.
Crabb tell us something about Christabel at the breakfast, on page 29:
All appealed to Miss LaMotte on the question of the rapping spirits; she declined to express an opinion, answering only with a Mona Lisa smile.
A good way to think of her as we read along. She gets it beautifully in the movie.
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I have a stack pass to a library that should have the Robinson diary. I'll check it out. June, 1858. It shouldn't be too difficult to confirm Christabel's presence at the party.
I'm not convinced that Roland is guitly of theft in removing the two loose papers from the Vico book. I would consider them found treasures. I would have no qualms in taking possession of same. It's the name of the game.
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Jonathon...
I'm not convinced that Roland is guilty of theft in removing the two loose papers from the Vico book. I would consider them found treasures. I would have no qualms in taking possession of same. It's the name of the game.
Oh heavens, I am shocked by this remark. These do not belong to him, they belong to the archives of the library, and taking them would be breaking the law indeed. This may be a game to Roland, Cropper and Blackadder, but it most certainly does not give any of them the right to take what is not theirs.
I was a bit surprised that Cropper had not gotten to the Vico and found the letters way before Roland. As Blackadder stated, he was sure Cropper already would have. At this point Byatt sort of breaks the trust and validity with me as a reader. I'm thinking NO WAY someone as obsessed and wealthy as Cropper would have overlooked Ash's Vico so accessable as it was for Roland to view.
My most interesting character so far is Val. She may not say alot, and we are led to believe she may suffer from some sort of depression or mental illness, but what she does say has stuck with me. I haven't trusted in Roland, Blackadder or Cropper for some reason. From their actions I have wondered why Byatt did not title this book "Obsession" rather than Possession. Isn't there a fine line between being possessed and being obsessed? Kind of like that saying, love/hate relationship. Even though Byatt drops us lines of Roland being concerned for Val, I sense he does not truly love her and has taken advantage of her by allowing her to work while he dabbles in his fantasy, as she put it, "You have this thing about a dead man, who had a thing about dead people." Then this statement has me really thinking, "Oh its all very interesting, my menial keyhole observations, make no mistake. Just it doesn't make sense and leaves me nowhere, only where does that leave you, Old Mole?"
Val knows so much more than anyone is giving her credit for. The mention of child abuse in the photos on her boss's desk, and other sexual connotations, seems to find their way into many of the books, yet never comes to mean much in the end. Red herrings??? Possibly. Roland sees his obsession not only as a game as Jonathon put it, but its a race to see who can own the right to Ash. What about the fact Ash's body vanished? That in and of itself is a mystery no one seems to be exploring. All this about Ash's mistress, yet no mention of him vanishing. Hmmm.. I'm off to finish chapter 5.
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Roland indicates that he took the two letters spontaneously and doesn't intend to keep them. I think he wants to peruse them in private and he does feel closer to Ash by being able to see these very personal thoughts in his own handwriting. He doesn't have a monetary profit motive though I do think he wants to be the first to find out if the letter was actually sent and if there was a response. I wouldn't want him to suffer any legal ramifications. I think he is somewhat possessed by Ash and protective of him/his work and reputation.
Val is interesting. She is a different person at home and at work. She dresses very differently in each location. I don't see her as victim of Roland. She does seem to rely on him emotionally, or think she does. I think that, whatever their relationship was in the beginning, they are no longer a good match for each other. I have sympathy for both of them.
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Use of color to define character:
On visit to Mrs Wapshott:
Mortimer Cropper: BLACK rubber torch, black box, black silk dressing-gown, black silk pyjamas, mole-black velvet slippers, onyx signet ring, black Mercedes
Daisy Wapshott's bath – Grayish violet tiled floor, purple and pink tiles, pink soap, dusky pink pottery, lavender bath mat. Pink angora sweater
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From Wiki:
Phalanstery: A phalanstère was a type of building designed for a utopian community and developed in the early 1800s by Charles Fourier. Based on the idea of a phalanx, this self-contained community ideally consisted of 1,620 people working together for mutual benefit. Though Fourier was able to publish several journals in Paris, among them La Phalanstère, he created no phalanstères in Europe due to a lack of financial support. Several so-called colonies were founded in the United States of America by Albert Brisbane and Horace Greeley.
Fourier believed that the traditional house was a place of exile and oppression towards women. He believed gender roles could progress by shaping them within community, as they were in Kibbutzim, more than by pursuits of sexual freedom or other Simonian concepts
The Planchette (Ouija board) was an instument designed for the purpose of communicating with spirits.
It was made of a thin heart shaped piece of wood, that was mounted on two small wheel castors and carrying a pencil pointing downwards.
The hand is placed on the wood and the spirit uses the pencil to write, operating through the psychic force of the medium.
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Gum! We were posting together and I never would have seen that great post except that for rereading all your great posts daily! I like to go back thru the discussion for a second (or third ) time, I often pick up lots of things I missed which are important, and so well expressed.
That's so interesting about Leavis. Can we conclude from that he was a brilliant analyst but not as a teacher? I keep thinking of Helene Hanff of 84 Charing Cross Road, whose admiration of "Q" (Quiller Couch) led her into such raptures over literature that I bought a book of his lectures. Another Cambridge professor, strangely missing so far in this great list of professors at Cambridge. Perhaps he was of a different genre.
I still don't know much about Victorian literature!
(In looking up Quiller Couch's name which I had forgotten, I find there are several signed editions of Helen Hanff's work available at reasonable prices, too).
At any rate, Leavis is certainly skewered here by Byatt, perhaps she experienced the dread English Lit syndrome where her work was not appreciated. Not particularly my idea of a teacher, where you inspire the student with your own brilliance while simultaneous robbing him of the same.
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Jonathan! Thank you for the Crabb, I did not realize he was real!! I am very interested in what you find on Crabb with your library pass, this is most exciting! Talk about life imitating art!
I have a stack pass to a library that should have the Robinson diary. I'll check it out. June, 1858. It shouldn't be too difficult to confirm Christabel's presence at the party.
Since Christabel did not exist, it will be surprising to see her at the party. I am interested, however, at who WAS!
BellaMare, what a super point: At this point Byatt sort of breaks the trust and validity with me as a reader. I'm thinking NO WAY someone as obsessed and wealthy as Cropper would have overlooked Ash's Vico so accessable as it was for Roland to view.
I agree with you, as we read into the next section we will see how obsessed Cropper IS concering Ash, there's no way he would have missed it. I think.
Loved this! From their actions I have wondered why Byatt did not title this book "Obsession" rather than Possession. Isn't there a fine line between being possessed and being obsessed?
What a fabulous point! What IS the line? Marcie says that she thinks Roland is possessed by Ash and actually we're about to see the use of the word for the first time in just a couple of pages, but I also wonder at the difference. If you're possessed do you lose all your ability to make that choice whereas if you're obsessed it's still your choice?
Kidsal, thank you for the definitions of Phalanstery especially. I never heard of it. But I have tried the Ouija board a time or two, is there anybody here who has not? Silly thing but a lot of people don't think so.
On the colors, I think she is using them to say something. White seems virginal, pure, anybody in white is pure or something else possibly. Gold seems the color of…what? WHAT? Golden apples, Leighton's Proserpina, etc., etc., etc. You've got gold and white and brilliance and then you have dark and half dark, the way she described that bathroom with the grey and pink made me uneasy.
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We've explained Melusina and Proserpina but there's one more who hasn't played a big direct part in this: The Cumaean Sibyl.
The Cumaean Sibyl shown here in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling (http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/Cumaeansibylsistinechapel.jpg) has several myths about her.
The Sibyls prophesied in an ecstatic state, and were believed to be possessed by a god, usually Apollo, who spoke through them (ventriloquism?) Male ventriloquism?
The Sibyl of Cumae was called that because of her location at Cumae, on the coast of Italy. She was one of the prophetesses of the Greek and Roman world and the most famous, whom Vergil represented as being visited by Aeneas. She assisted his descent into Hell by providing the golden bough for Proserpina to light his way.
Her cave still exists: here is the approach to it: (http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/Cumaeapproach34.jpg) and the interior: (http://seniorlearn.org/latin/aeneas/Cumaesybil%27scaveinterior3.jpg)
The prophesies, which were often ambiguous, were said to have been inscribed on palm leaves.
According to legend she offered nine volumes of oracles to the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, at a high price. When he refused to buy she burned three volumes and offered the remainder at the same price. When he again refused she burned three more and finally sold the last three to him at the original price.
These prophesies definitely existed in Rome and were consulted thru the ages. They were kept in a chest in a stone vault under the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter. In 496 BC they were consulted during a famine, etc. The last known consultation was in 363 AD and was still in existence when the temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill where they were then housed, was destroyed early in the 5th century A.D. Because of Christian interpolations in the Sibylline oracles, the Sibyls came to be thought of equal to Old Testament prophets, and frequently figure with them in Christian literature and art. (That's why there are so many of them in the Sistine Chapel ceiling).
A famous story about the Cumaean Sibyl is that once Apollo said he would grant her anything she wished if she would take him as a lover. She asked to live as many years as there were gains of sand in a pile of sweepings, and these numbered a thousand, but she failed to ask for continued youth. She then hung, in a bottle or basket and when children asked her want she wanted, she used to replay, "I want to die." As late as the 2nd century AD a jar was shown at Cumae to travelers said to contain her bones.
Her presence here is somewhat of a mystery to me, unless it's the male ventriloquism/golden bough/ Proserpina link/ kitchen sink syndrome. As noted, she helped Aeneas light his way into the underworld with the famous golden bough, which Aeneas needed to give to Proserpine before he could enter the Underworld. This seems to have been an invention of Vergil's for his Aeneid. Sir James Frazer then took up the interpretation, and developed his great work by the same name on the evolution of religious beliefs and institutions (The Golden Bough…1890-1915).
(Oxford Companion to Classical Literature).
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Ginny -
It is surprising that Byatt doesn't reference Quiller Couch somewhere - his time at Cambridge would have been before Leavis, so he was too early for Blackadder and of course too late for Ash/LaMotte to know anything about him - but he did write tales about the supernatural and he rewrote or I should say retold some of the old fairytales like Beauty and the Beast etc. so there's really no reason Byatt couldn't have worked him into the fabric of the novel along with all the others.
I'm wondering if we both have the same Q essays - I have two volumes The Art of Reading and the companion The Art of Writing. I've had them many long years but was inspired to reread them after reading the Hanff book. Now tonight I've found them on the shelf again - thanks to you :D
Here's one of his jottings that I've always liked: Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but an Art, to be practised.
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Since Christabel did not exist, it will be surprising to see her at the party. I am interested, however, at who WAS!
What would we find in the Crabb Robinson diaries? They were published; but in all likelihood would be found only in rare book collections. Byatt, the scholar certainly accessed them, and found material to give her novel a fine twist. If the text is corrupted in its transition to her novel she should be held accountable.
What really happened at that breakfast party (p29) at which Christabel and Ash met for the first time? What drew them together? The seance? Robinson says Christabel came 'to speak to her dear Father.' But he's dead. Of course! Robinson writes about the tapping spirits! Can we look for more of the same farther along in the book?
There was talk of Mrs Stowe's claim to have conversed with the spirit of Charlotte Bronte. And the spiritual manifestations about which Lady Byron wrote to me with great feeling./b]
Would anyone care to guess at the identity of Mrs Stowe? Could it have been Harriet Beecher Stowe? It seem to me she spent considerable time in England in these years.
More later. I also enjoyed your interest in Val, bellamarie. She's taken herself out of this scholarly loop after working so hard on her ASH paper. And now Ash is a greater presence in the rooms she shares with Roland than she herself. But it seems she will always remain his first love. He's very caring, isn't he?
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I have been intrigued to know what the Vico book was in which Roland found the drafts of the two letters - even to know if Vico really existed - he did!
Wikipedia (sorry Ginny) tells us:
Giovanni Battista Vico 1668-1744 Italian philosopher, rhetorician, historian and jurist. His magnum opus is titled Principi di Scienza Nuova
The work is explicitly presented as a 'Science of Reasoning' and includes a dialectic between axioms and reasonings linking and clarifying the axioms
Vico is often claimed to have inaugurated modern philosophy of history.
Relying on a complex etymology, Vico argues that civilisation develops in a recurring cycle of three ages: the divine, the heroic and the human. Each age exhibits distinct political and social features and can be characterised by master tropes or figures of language. The giganti of the divine age rely on metaphor to compare and thus comprehend human and natural phenomena. In the heroic age, metonymy and synecdoche support the development of feudal or monarchic institutions embodied by idealised figures. The final age is characterised by popular democracy or reflection via irony: in this epoch, the rise of rationality leads to barbarism of reflection, and civilisation descends once more into the poetic era. Taken together, the recurring cycle of three ages - common to every nation - constitutes for Vico a storia ideale eterna or ideal eternal history.
Vico's work was poorly received during his own life but has since inspired a cadre of famous thinkers and artists including: Benedetti Croce, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Bertrand Russell, Samuel Beckett, Isaiah Berlin, Giovanni Gentile, Erich Auerbach, Jose Faur, Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Julius Evola, Edward Said, Marshall McLuham etc.
Easy to see why our friend the poet, Ash would have a copy of that book on his desk and why clever clogs Byatt has referenced Vico - she really does keep us on our toes and makes us work to get the most out of this complex book. Love it.
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Hello, everyone. We can still continue talking about the first five chapters but we're also moving on to Chapter's 6 through 11 this week. We've put up some questions in the heading at the top of this page but welcome any and all thoughts as Roland and Maude finally get the chance to start reading Ash and LaMotte's letters.
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WHAT? Vico lived? Gum, that's amazing. Vico Vico Vico, said with such authority throughout the beginning, "his Vico," turning out to be a real person. And I found (I don't trust clever clogs Byatt one inch) in a book by The Poetry of History: the contribution of literature and literary ..by Emery Edward Neff - 1947 - Literary Criticism, the passage on page 6 or some of it about the golden chains by Vico. That much is Vico.
I have a feeling that sources, even the real ones are being twisted. I don't know why I feel that way but I do so I am on the watch now, thank you Gum for that, we'll add it to our list of characters.
Clever clogs? hahahahaha She may be TOO clever for us.
Why, one wonders, could she not have taken extant poets, she seems well enough read, and taken their own works and found in them enough reference to interpret for her own use? Certainly it would fit her mantra of you can make up anything you like, you can apply any analysis to anything and make it your own. Why did she not?
Why invent two Victorian poets?
It could simply have been that she did not want to appear wrong in analysis of extant poets so she made up her own. I still can't tell the poetry of the two apart other than the different styles of versification, to me they are the same voice in different forms. In the poetry.
But in the fairy stories, LaMotte takes on a voice of her own. Or Byatt, whoever it is, it's different.
As Marcie says we're moving on but we're dragging the chapters 1-5 with us as foundation baggage and I've got a lot more to say on them, but first, on these chapters 6-11 (and wasn't that a long dreary haul?)
Plot at last. A developing romance. Going back to the first questions (what did you most dislike so far) I hated the italics. To me italics are ...just not for reading an entire chapter in and what's happened here in the plot? Reading italics, which to me are an aside for SUCH a long time is...irritating. Almost as irritating as her sprinkling of small Latin phrases (why? Are we out of allusions and need to still appear erudite?) Oh dear, sorry. Bad reader. But really. I know Eco does this too, but translate, translate translate, don't show off. There's a tiny element here (these are not well known Latin phrases everybody should know they are just school boy attempts to throw in Latin), of.....I sense something else here.
It amazed me that in my last couple of posts made how I went on about Coleridge and then finally turned to chapter 6 and behold Coleridge, she's LEADING us on, if you can see it? Perhaps she has possessed us?
If so it's quite unwilling on my part. :)
Now we have a new plot at last the plot shines thru, some of it a mystery as well.
Who stole the letters and why?
And it appears there was a definite romance and maybe more here, and both are the others Muses.
I'll be dashed if I can see ANYTHING whatsoever of LaMotte in Swammerdam, another chapter in and of itself. I think maybe Ash should have kept his day job, what did you make of that buzzard?
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But first: Gum says that Q: did write tales about the supernatural and he rewrote or I should say retold some of the old fairytales like Beauty and the Beast etc. so there's really no reason Byatt couldn't have worked him into the fabric of the novel along with all the others.
But she didn't. Perhaps she did not want to imitate Hanff or felt she was going closer to the source, wouldn't you love to have heard Q's opinion of this?
Now tonight I've found them on the shelf again I wish I could find mine, they are lost in this giant house of books. I have two volumes as well tho.
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Jonathan: Byatt, the scholar certainly accessed them, and found material to give her novel a fine twist. If the text is corrupted in its transition to her novel she should be held accountable.
I have a feeling there has been a lot changed from original sources, a LOT. I am not taking anything she says at this point, anything, at face value. The book is full of lies. If the poems at the beginning did not tell us so, the book IS.
Roland lifts the letters. Oh he intends to put them back, he does not intend to keep them, but we know what the road to hell is paved with, and the fact is he snuck (is that a word?) them away.
"How could you deliberately mislead me so?" (page 208) on the dog.
"What else have you so mischievously misrepresented to me?" (page 208) on Bethany House.
Ash had had his own ideas but the truth turned out to be something different.
I have a feeling those two quotes, how could you deliberately mislead me so and what else have you mischievously misrepresented to me, are going to be an epitaph for the readers of this book. There are too many references to lies and dishonest behavior, poste restante, sneaking about for whatever reason, hidden this or that. I think something else is hidden here but am not sure what it is, but IF it is, it will fit in with the rest.
But he's dead. Of course! Robinson writes about the tapping spirits! Can we look for more of the same farther along in the book?
I don't know but let's do. Was that medium a real one? I bet she was. I want to look up some of these references now I have slogged thru the plot. With only a few allusions, another to Pluto and Persephone, more to Psyche, not sure what we can make of that one, wonderful paintings and art work on Psyche, Byrne-Jones for one, but can't put it here, British Museum etc.
And now Ash is a greater presence in the rooms she shares with Roland than she herself. But it seems she will always remain his first love. He's very caring, isn't he?
Who is very caring? Ash or Roland? They seem to be following an identical track here. I don't see Roland caring about anything but Ash, and perhaps his own ascent as a scholar, you're very perceptive there, our Jonathan.
This Muse business is interesting. I just watched Valentino The Last Emperor and he has a Muse, too, a princess from somewhere, a pretty girl, but he himself is in a long standing relationship with Gian Carlo Giametti I believe the name is, a very handsome business partner. So your Muse can inspire you apparently without being in love with that person.
I hate that I'm reminded here of Governor Sanford and his soul mate. Do you think that Ash's soul mate (while he loves his wife) is LaMotte? He seems to think so. But there's one slip there, one tiny slip in his letter, where it seems it's really all about him, did you catch it?
Roland may have been right about him after all despite all the romance here.
Why is Christabel capitalizing every other word?
I'm going to spend some time looking up an authoritative explanation (not wikipedia) of the characteristics of Victorian literature. And some of these characters to see how many were real. Even IF they were real that does not mean they wrote things which fit here.
For the first time I want to finish the book to see how this all comes out. We've got two parallel plots, Ash and his wife Ellen and his soul mate Christabel.
Roland and his live in Val and Maude? or would we want to say Ash and Lamotte, Roland being possessed.
The word "possessed" seems to have first occurred in this second bit, unless you see it earlier, on page 144 on the bottom, concerning Roland and Ash.
I'll put the entire paragraph here:
At first Roland worked with the kind of concentrated curiosity with which he read anything at all by Randolph Ash. This curiosity was a kind of predictive familiarity; he knew the workings of the other man's mind, he had read what he had read, he was possessed of his characteristic habits of syntax and stress.
So here the word possessed in this connotation seems to mean he owned or understood and "had down" his ways of writing.
But in the case of Mortimer Cropper, it appears he truly WAS possessed, by Ash himself, to the point of buying anything he had touched or owned. A peculiar obsession, his, or did you think so? Have you known anybody to be so over the top about an enthusiasm or is this normal?
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Not to hog the discussion but am finding a lot of things:
Characteristics of Victorian Literature:
http://www.waycross.edu/faculty/selby/2120/viclit.html
The Victorian Age
1837-1901
• This was a period of ferment and doubts and conflicts characterized by what Matthew Arnold called “the dialogue of the mind with itself.” To the English intellect, traditional forms of Christianity no longer held water. Most writers began as fervent Judeo-Christians, lost the faith of childhood, and ever after sought to regain that faith. Very often these writers drew on the Bible; their phraseology reflects Biblical formulaism. They tried to speak to their audiences in modes the audiences would understand. A lot of the poetry was versified didacticism.
• The major philosophy was that of utilitarianism, with such proponents as James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. The School of Utilitarianism divided the useful from the beautiful; a great many Victorian writers thought literature should be useful. All the Victorian philosophers had similar educational backgrounds: Greek & Latin classics, humanities, writing imitations of the classic forms. There was a big difference in what was useful and what was beautiful in literature. The School of Utilitarianism looked at the past, then looked at the present and decided that anything not useful was worthless; they suffered emotional repression; they contrasted the primitive with the civilized and argued for the civilized.
• The Victorian era saw the western world move from an agricultural rural lifestyle to an industrial urban lifestyle. The printed page became the most important cultural medium in the world. Reading was both a mode of instruction and a means of entertainment. Poetry, however, was often regarded as a rather suspect frivolous form (Tennyson tried to turn poetry into an art form). A good deal of Victorian literature attempts to regain a lost Eden.
• One common bond among Victorian writers was the preservation of the privacy of their private lives (by adopting pseudonyms, masking, and role-playing). The 1890s saw an attempt at breaking down or merging artistic genres; Victorians loved paintings which told stories.
• The ability to read Middle English and Old English had died out in the Victorian era and people like Tennyson founded societies to study this literature. There was a great deal of interest in things medieval, in travel, and in archaeology.
• The Victorians knew how to jerk tears and they loved it. Audiences preferred melodrama to good straight drama.
• Many Victorians were noveau riche—they came from humble origins but amassed great wealth, not always legitimately. Education reforms, voting reforms, and prison reforms took place during this era.
• Multiplicity and extreme variety of style and belief are the principal characteristics of the period. The theme of alienation assumed prominence perhaps because of the bestowing on the poet of the role of prophet, paying excessive tribute to his power for social good, which led to the problem of communication, the split between the poet and his audience. Utilitarian philosophy tended either to ignore poetry altogether or to deplore it as a species of fiction that impeded rational perception.
• Another significant reflection of the status of the Victorian poet is the tension that every major poet expresses between devotion to individual sensibility and commitment to the social and moral needs of the age, the autonomy of poetry vs. public duty.
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Ginny ~ Excellent link, but the last paragraph is questionable, to me:
Another significant reflection of the status of the Victorian poet is the tension that every major poet expresses between devotion to individual sensibility and commitment to the social and moral needs of the age, the autonomy of poetry vs. public duty.
Wordsworth, one of the major poets, for example, wrote an amazing quantity of poetry which did not fit the above statement. Some of his poetry is almost like lyrics to a song, and some is like a letter to a lover. This is getting toward my objections to literary analysis, when an author states "every major poet" does this or that ... do you think it's true?
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from ginny: But in the case of Mortimer Cropper, it appears he truly was possessed by Ash....
Wonderful posts, ginny. Lots to think about there. I think we all share some of your criticisms regarding Byatt's unique storytelling methods. Isn't she a juggler with all those balls in the air? And she's just as good a ventriloquist as Ash ever was. There is no use in thinking her dishonest with lots of scholarly failings, guilty of mischievous representation and filling her book with lies. Many books as Burns the poet said, are full of lies from cover to cover. and besides, Byatt has covered her ass very nicely with the Hawthorne and Browning quotations. 'Romance' covers a lot of ground coming into the19c. And we get fair warning with 'How many lies did it REQUIRE to make the portly truth you here present us wih?'
How marvellous to see possession turning into obsession. Cropper is not the only one possessed. Roland and Blackadder share his enthusiasm. But each, it seems to me, is possessed in a different way. Roland as a devotee (Val has him in the ASHRAM. The stolen notes are relics). Blackadder is the dedicated scholar. Cropper, of course, is the compulsive collector.
again from ginny: that sprinkling of small latin phrases...are we out of allusions and need to still appear erudite?
Isn't Byatt just reproducing a stylistic form of writing so common until not that long ago? Latin was a significant part of the scholars baggage, and was used and apprecitated by the cognescenti. I think even yet lawyers cannot practice without their Latin phrases.
Let's keep in mind the question posed by Mr Sludge:
'How did you contrive to grasp the thread which led you through this labyrinth?'
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I just checked the catalogue of a library I have access to - and guess what - they have the Crabbe Robinson Diary:
Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabbe Robinson - 3 vols - 2nd edition - Macmillan 1869
they also have:
The Diary of Henry Crabbe Robinson: an abridgement - Oxford U. P. 1967
Henry Crabbe Robinson on Books and their Writers - Dent 1967
The London Theatre 1811-1866 by Henry Crabbe Robinson - Society for Theatre Research 1966
Judging from those publication dates there was obviously some interest in him during the 1960s.
I'll go look at them just as soon as I can and see if I can find the now famous breakfast. Though seriously, I am intrigued to see them.
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And I just googled for the Crabbe Robinson Diary and there are copies available for sale - reprints as late as 2009.
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CHAPTER 8: Ash’s letter to Christabel: “….poets don’t want homes – do they? -- they are not creatures of hearths and firedogs, but of heaths and ranging hounds.”
“…friendship is rare, more idiosyncratic, more individual and in every way more durable than this Love.”
“…poems are not for the young lady, the young lady is for the Poems.”
Christabel to Ash: “An Egg is my answer. What is the Riddle?” “…how I sing in my gold cage.----. Shattering an egg is unworthy of you.”
Is Ash telling her that she is his muse but there is no future for them. She is telling him that she is expecting their child but he is not to interfere.
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LOL Oh Ginny, just seeing the Sybyl of Cumean once again tickles me. Seems she pops up in so many of our books for discussion. Why do you suppose that is?
Okay, I admit I am dallying along and have not yet finished ch. 5, but..if I am understanding Maude and Blanche, then I am to deduce that Christabel and Blanche had a love for each other, so does our dear Christabel fancy flirting with men, even though she is lesbian? Guess my answers will come or a least reveal themselves in the chapters to follow.
Ginny...Who is very caring? Ash or Roland? They seem to be following an identical track here. I don't see Roland caring about anything but Ash, and perhaps his own ascent as a scholar, you're very perceptive there, our Jonathan.
Well, I in no way see Roland so caring. I may be a bit hard on him but...even though Byatt drops us a few lines of his concern, I don't see him "in love" with Val, so as far as she being his first love, I am not so sure. He seems like having the company of someone, and yes does not mind letting Val pay his way, while he goes off and enjoys his little game of sleuth with Blackadder and Cropper, but actually love Val I'm not seeing it.
So, Maud was not the least bit impressed at learning Roland stole those letters either. I don't know if I believe he intended to put them back. He is competeing with Cropper to possess whatever is of meaning where Ash is concerned so there is no way he would want to let go of these letters. Although, I must say I'm still not believin Cropper would have not known about them. Let us not forget Fergus, lurking about the library where Blackadder and Roland are discussing Ash and the finds. Coincidence he be there at the same place and time? Maude was not comfortable mentioning Fergus when she did so, and she sure does not seem to like Ash even being considered important in Blanche's diary or at the breakfast. Why is this I wonder?
Okay off to finish ch 5 and on to 6 - 11.
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Chapter 8 – “Despite the snow, despite the falling snow” Roland in his bedroom at the Bailey’s tries to remember where, when heard and the importance of this verse? From Chapter 2, the poem that Val recited by Robert Graves: “She tells her love while half asleep, in the dark hours, with half-words whisepered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep and puts out grass and flowers despite the snow, despite the falling snow.”
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Just to follow up on my earlier post, regarding poetry in this period:
The poets Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats, to give only a few examples, were not only known as poets of the Victorian age but as artists and poets of Romanticism.
This was a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspirations and the primacy of the individual. To augment this information, the music composers in this movement included Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt, while the artists included William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, and Delacroix.
extracted from: New Oxford American Dictionary.
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Kidsal!
What a bomb! I wondered if I were reading the same book, totally missed this one, what do you all think?
Christabel to Ash: “An Egg is my answer. What is the Riddle?” “…how I sing in my gold cage.----. Shattering an egg is unworthy of you.”
Is Ash telling her that she is his muse but there is no future for them. She is telling him that she is expecting their child but he is not to interfere.
I didn't understand that one at all, tucked away in the millions of italicized words, is that what you all made of it? When I read your post the first thing that came to my mind was Wind Egg, an expression I first saw in EF Benson (an Edwardian).
This is getting interesting!
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Bellamarie, I don't know why the Sibyls keep cropping up in our discussions, maybe the authors are stuck on them, but it's good to know what one can about them, possibly. (Especially the Sistine Chapel and 9 books bit). It's believed Michelangelo used male models for his Sibyls and the one of Cumae looks like a stevedore, but hey, that was in her pre cage or jar appearance.
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Mippy I don't know on the last paragraph, that was a source on Victorian LIterature not from Wikipedia, which looked good to me. Is Coleridge of that genre? Then I think the Ancient Mariner fits that mold, but I totally know almost nothing of Wordsworth except what was read in English Lit Survey classes, loved the daffodils, have forgotten most of the rest. What a thing, to quote Possession is our English Education (or to paraphrase). :)
Anybody who does know, please stand forth.
I am still puzzled over the capital letters in correspondence, went thru 9 pages of google and can find no authoritative source,just people saying shall we go all Victorian and capitalize every word? Then why not do it all the time in your writings? Why only in your letters?
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On the various Diaries of Crabb, I will be fascinated to hear (and nobody rip out a page hahaha) what they say. I bet they are exceedingly dusty and not taken out, and worn. They probably have not seen the light of a reader till 1990 when Byatt won the Booker or 1991.
I've got an interview here from her, and it's quite recent, about a year old: she mentions Eco, too:
This explains a lot about her style, the question is as always for the READER, we've got the intent, did she pull it off? From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/04/as-byatt-possession-book-club
o AS Byatt
o The Guardian, Saturday 4 July 2009
Possession was, for me, a fortunate book to have written, though at first it appeared to be the opposite. It was written during two summers when I had just given up the teaching appointment I had held for 11 years, at University College London, and it turned out to be the only one of my novels which was not interrupted by other problems, projects, illnesses and responsibilities.
I had been thinking about such a novel for at least 15 years, and it had changed a great deal in my head during that time. Unlike anything else I have written, it began with the title. I was sitting in the old round reading room in the British Museum, watching the great Coleridge scholar Kathleen Coburn pacing round and round the circular catalogue, and I realised that she had dedicated all her life to this dead man. And then I thought "Does he possess her, or does she possess him?" And then I thought there could be a novel, "Possession", about the relations between the living and the dead. It would be a kind of daemonic tale of haunting.
I then realised that there was a blunt economic sense to the word. Who "possesses" the manuscripts of dead writers? I turned this over in my mind, and quite a long time later I realised that "possession" also applied to sexual relationships. At that time I was working on the wonderful letters of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and I had the idea of two pairs of lovers, one modern, one high Victorian, possessing each other in all these senses.
My original plan had been to write a kind of experimental novel, a ghostly palimpsest of literary, theoretical and intrusively biographical texts, behind which the lovers and poets could be glimpsed, but not seen clearly. What changed everything was my reading of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, with its parodic medieval detective story. My husband's friends in the City were all engrossed in this book, and interested in all the medieval theology it contained. The secret, I saw, was that if you tell a strong story, you can include anything else you need to include. So I started inventing a detective story like those I read in my childhood.
I discovered that detective stories have to be constructed backwards - the plot has to be invented to reach a denouement that is already worked out. Things have to be hidden in order to be found at strategic moments. In psychological novels, the characters make the plot as their feelings become clear. The rigour of this new form was a liberation. I found myself parodying scenes from Dorothy L Sayers and Georgette Heyer.
The "idea" of the novel was that poems have more life than poets, and poems and poets are more lively than literary theorists or biographers living their lives at second hand. I always feel a kind of shock when I turn back to a poet's work after reading things written about him/her. Formally my novel needed the presence of real poems. I don't write poetry. Robertson Davies had written a novel about an opera, and had used the poems of Thomas Lovell Beddoes as a phantom libretto. My editor at the time was that very good (underrated) poet, DJ Enright. I told him I was thinking of using Ezra Pound's early "Victorian" verses. "Nonsense," said Denis. "You will write them yourself."
So I went home and wrote a Victorian poem about a spider. I found the poems came easily; they were written as they were needed in the shape of the novel, as part of the run of words - I see a novel as a piece of knitting, all one continuous thread.
People ask me about my "research", implying that this is a chore, and not the delight of discovering things one didn't know. But in my case I was, and had always been, already possessed by the poems of Tennyson and Browning. I read them as a small child - my mother was a Browning specialist. Their rhythms sing in my head, and indeed crop up oddly in passages of my novels where they are not needed.
When the book was finished, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic were troubled and dubious. They begged me to cut out the poetry, to cut down the Victorian writing. "You have ruined a nice intrigue with these excrescences," said the only American publisher brave enough to take it. I wept in the early mornings. Then it won the Irish Times Aer Lingus prize, and the Booker prize, and to everyone's astonishment - including my own - became a bestseller. People write theses on my imagined poets. It is translated into more than 30 languages. I owe a great deal to Umberto Eco.
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That explains a great deal I think. I haven't read Eco, but wasn't he also in the habit of sprinkling Latin phrases throughout?
Jonathan, again from ginny: that sprinkling of small latin phrases...are we out of allusions and need to still appear erudite?
Isn't Byatt just reproducing a stylistic form of writing so common until not that long ago? Latin was a significant part of the scholars baggage, and was used and apprecitated by the cognescenti. I think even yet lawyers cannot practice without their Latin phrases
There used to be a time when people studied the classics so that when references appeared in books they would understand them. I guess there was a time when Latin was also sprinkled (along with Greek) into the texts of authors and was as you say "appreciated by the cognoscenti." And perhaps this is what she is angling for. But I guess I want to say I am surprised and a tad disappointed in this particular sprinkling, perhaps her muse is underground eating pomegranates, it's 4th grade schoolboy Latin, not what you'd expect. The pantheon of Latin quotes from the literature which might have fit are totally missing, this looks to me like "oh let's insert 2-3 Latin words in school boy Latin for that phrase and look smart." After you read them you are not enlightened nor do you feel smart.
I haven't 'read Eco but the result here is kind of painful to look at, to me. And I repeat, especially if you're making up 90 percent of your erudite Latin, do translate it, don't sprinkle without translating, you may as well make up Sanskrit.
My opinion of which I seem to be over fond this morning. :)
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Roland as a devotee (Val has him in the ASHRAM. The stolen notes are relics). Blackadder is the dedicated scholar. Cropper, of course, is the compulsive collector.
Let's look at some of the fine items in the heading, the first about Cropper.
Do you watch a program on TV called The Finders is it? On the History Channel? These people go about buying junk and reseling it but they are enthusiasts of things, old cars, etc., and they meet other "collectors," or "hoarders," who are like enthusiasts.
I like this topic in the heading:
1. (Chapter 6) What are your impressions of Mortimer Cropper? How would you characterize his studies of/relationship with Randolph Ash?
My impression is of a man who has stumbled on something on which he can hang his hat, fame, reputation and honor, his whole being and who then becomes obsessed with the object (Ash) and whose entire life then becomes a fixation to possess everything about Ash there is, his collection his Stant collection. He wears Ash's watch was it? Anything Ash had he wants. This, to me, is a tad bizarre. Tho why it should be I don't know.
Are any of you collectors? If so what do you collect?
I have, myself, made trips to Rye England and toured the home of EF Benson and on one hilarious and memorable pilgrimage, made a trip to see his grave which involved the entire town in relay, an extraordinary experience. There are two EF Benson Societies at war with each other, or there used to be, and very serious about plodding out in all weather to visit the grave.
This summer I am going to retrace Caesar's voyage across the English Channel for his Invasion of Britain, and walk the beaches where he landed, so it's not totally certifiable to do these things. I hope.
But I think Cropper, by his total immersion (he admits himself all his thoughts are another man's thoughts and when he retires his thoughts will, too), has sublimated his entire life to Ash and this type of possession is dangerous: to Cropper and may make him desperate. I've only read thru Chapter 11, but I can certainly see the desperation borne of his own need peeking out.
But don't we all need hobbies? Interests? How odd is Cropper's obsession/ possession of Ash to you? Good question.
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Kidsal thank you for the Robert Graves, it would be Robert Graves, wouldn't it, Robert Graves: “She tells her love while half asleep, in the dark hours, with half-words whisepered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep and puts out grass and flowers despite the snow, despite the falling snow
I've also found a couple of interesting things. I hope they are interesting:
Jan Swammerdam real person: (1637-1680)
Jan Swammerdam, a 17th century Dutch microscopist, made major discoveries in medicine and anatomy. Above all, he made a decisive contribution to the development of biology and a materialist understanding of nature.
His greatest contribution to biology was his understanding of insect development and his demonstration that the same organism persists through its various stages. Using meticulous dissections and careful experimentation, he showed the errors of spontaneous generation and laid the basis of the modern understanding of development.
His science was profoundly marked by his mystical and emotional response to nature, which sometimes entered into contradiction with his avowed “experimental philosophy” and even led him to abandon science for a period. It has also been argued that this led him to put forward the idea of “preformationism".
Insects again.
One reference in the book was driving me NUTS till I looked it up and behold another bit of arcane knowledge.
Ariachne. The Myth was of Arachne not Ariachne. Drove me nuts. Guess who it is?
Shakespeare! We should have known.
Check it out:
Ariachne's Broken Woof
Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida:
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth,
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne's broken woof to enter. (V.ii.146-51)
In Shakespeare and the Question of Theory By Patricia A. Parker, and Geoffrey H. Hartman, the point is made that:
By what devious detours of the imagination does this apocryphal "Ariachne" find her way into the texture of Troilus and Cressida? How subtle is "a point as subtle as Ariachen's broken woof?" What are we to make of this pointed figure, sharp enough to penetrate the impenetrable, yet obstructed by breakage and division how Ariadne, who provided Theseus with the clue of the thread to guide him out of the Cretan maze, came to be enmeshed in Arachne's web, whether by a printer's carelessness or an author's slip of the pen or daring of the imagination, is probably beyond conclusive recovery. "Ariachne" may be an "original," a felicitous neologism spun spider-fashion out of the creator's own gut; or she may be no more than the accidental issue of a typesetter's clumsy fingers. In either even she is a new creation who also carries incontestable traces of prior origins.
That quote, taken from the book above, totally sums up, to me, what's happening here. "...a felicitous neologism spun spider-fashion out of the creator's own gut; or she may be no more than the accidental issue of a typesetter's clumsy fingers. In either even she is a new creation who also carries incontestable traces of prior origins."
Yes, devious detours of the imagination, a felicitous neologism spun spider- fashion out of the creator's own gut, a typesetters clumsy fingers, or a new creation.
Is it ENOUGH to sprinkle your book for Victorian effect with enough snowflakes of reference to bury a tractor?
And what, if you've gotten there at all, DO you make of Swammerdam? Where is LaMotte's influence? If we could solve THAT one we could know how Ash sees her? I think perhaps Ash is more patriarchial than we'd like to think. Something in one of his letters to her, sort of a put down, I'll go find it, what do you think? What DID Roland discover in the Journals of Ellen Ash, I must have read chapter 7 too quickly, I don't even remember Ellen Ash, back to the Merlin's book to see if the answer will rise like an 8 ball.
What's on your mind today? Is the Egg a baby? Or an Edwardian Wind Egg?
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Thank you Ginny, I loved reading the interview. So now I am more convinced that choosing to read Possession as the mystery/romance as it is intended to be was a good choice on my part. I wanted a light read for the opening of summer, yet of course this book club rarely chooses "light" reads, so I told myself, okay I can overlook the gooblely gook and focus on the mystery/romance. I love looking at the actions of people and their interactions with other characters. I generally like to try to NOT focus on the main characters, because I sense the ones introduced early on then fade away for awhile tend to have more meaning than we realize. I like how Byatt stayed true to herself and kept the poems in, even though I have not spent much time reading them. And yes, good for Byatt, she is showing off her knowledge, imagine growing up with Tennyson and Browning as a child. I grew up with no books whatsoever in my home, and no visits to the library. It is through SeniorLearn that I have been introduced to the classical authors and poets and the Victorian style. Alas! I am so grateful to have stumbled onto SeniorNet years ago.
So, now I am going to sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of this novel as it was meant to be, a mystery romance with some mythology and poetry peppered in for seasoning.
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Umberto Eco as an influence on this book? Interesting and unexpected. I've read almost all of his novels, and the Name of the Rose was well worth reading twice. Yes, he puts in Latin phrases, but when writing about monks, it's right in context.
I find most of Eco much easier to understand than this puzzle, and I'm still slogging through, trying to ignore the plethora of italics and attempting to catch up.
That sure was a goofy scene about sharing the bathroom when they were snowed in, and Roland peaking through the bathroom keyhole. The last appears to be a parody of the Melusina myth, doesn't it? What does the reader get out of that?
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Cribbing Crabb, hahaha. Isn't this beginning to seem like a road to xanadu?
Chapter 6. Mutatis mutandis. This Cropper sounds like a bit of a Pickwickian to me. An expatriate Dickens character, with his 'gleaming white house fronting the mesa' in the American southwest. Everblest House. What a contrast to that other Ashman's home, the cat-pissy place in Putney.
What an interesting road to riches with his great-grandmother Priscilla's Regenerative Powders, allowing him to pursue his collecting mania at full throttle.
Ginny, I think you're right. With Chapter 6 we seem to be out of the woods. At least to the point where we can begin to enjoy the trees. The story. Without the fog of literary smoke and mirrors. One of us suggested that we leave the endless references and allusions as a retirement project. A good idea. But what of those of us who are five, ten, fifteen years into our retirement? Let's take the cash and let the credit go?
Here he is. Cropper. Copying letters surreptitiously at three in the morning in Mrs Wapshott's bathroom, perched on the toilet seat, with his photographic equipment on his knees:
His face in the mirror was fine and precise, his silver hair most exquisitely and severely cut, his half-glasses gold-rimmed, his mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt.
Cropper knows all there is to know about Randolph Ash. If only he knew as much about himself. He has made several attempts at autobiography; but it always leads to, and ends with the letter from Ash to Cropper's very own great-grandmother. And what a letter. Written when Ash was an old man. What strong feelings Ash has about attempts at communicating with the dead. How indignant he becomes at the thought of Coleridge
...of this bright spirit, having made his painful way out of our weary and oppressive earthly life, being constrained to heave mahogany tables, or float partially embodied, through firelit drawing rooms...
And what can we make of this from Ash:
I have known a good soul and a clear mind, quite unhinged by such meddling, and to no good end, indeed to a bad one.
And this foreboding information:
I do have deep-rooted convictions - and a certain amount of apposite experience of my own, which precludes my receiving your communications - your SPIRIT communication - with any great interest or pleasure. I must ask you to send no more such writings.
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CHAPTER 8: Ash’s letter to Christabel: “….poets don’t want homes – do they? -- they are not creatures of hearths and firedogs, but of heaths and ranging hounds.”
“…friendship is rare, more idiosyncratic, more individual and in every way more durable than this Love.”
“…poems are not for the young lady, the young lady is for the Poems.”
Christabel to Ash: “An Egg is my answer. What is the Riddle?” “…how I sing in my gold cage.----. Shattering an egg is unworthy of you.”
Is Ash telling her that she is his muse but there is no future for them. She is telling him that she is expecting their child but he is not to interfere.
I don't think that Ash and LaMotte had gone away together yet when they wrote those letters so Christabel isn't pregnant yet.
I think Ash is wooing LaMotte in that letter. She keeps her distance from him by writing letters about her need for her own private space while still expressing her deep interest in him.
He says in the letter that he appreciates her "intelligence, your marvellous quick wit-- so that I may write to you as I write when I am alone.... so that in me which has never addressed any private creature, feels at home with you. I say "at home"--what extraordinary folly--when you take pleasure in making me feel ... least of all at home, but always on edge, always apprehensive of failure, always certain that I cannot appreciate your next striking thought or glancing shaft of wit. But poets don't want homes--do they--they are not creatures of hearths and firedogs, but of heaths and ranging hounds.”
He says that he feels at home with her as he does with no other person but then self-mocks his own choice of words. He doesn't know his place with her. He feels their growing passion but isn't sure if it's only one-sided on his part. She is keeping him on his toes but he admits that is what poets do. He is making the case that poets don't want to create the comforts of home in their poems; they want to take people outside of themselves, into the greater world. He wants to take Christabel into the greater world.
In her egg metaphor, I think that Christabel is creating a fairy-tale-like story. She is saying that she finds life, creativitiy and happiness within the egg/enclosure of her life. "I am my own riddle. Oh, Sir, you must not kindly seek to ameliorate or steal away my solitude. It is a thing we women are taught to dread--oh the terrible tower, oh the thickets round it--no companiable Nest--but a donjon.....within it's confines we are free in a way you, who have freedom to range the world, do not need to imagine. I do not advise imagining it--but do me the justice of believing--not imputing mendacious protestation--my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have."
In LaMotte's era, women had few choices and couldn't live out in the world as men (at least men of some wealth) could. She had made choices to be as free as she could be within those restraints. Ash is threatening that, not through any malicious intent.
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Jonathan, yes the chapter (6) on Cropper does have Dickensian descriptions of the characters. I laughed out loud finding Cropper on the seat of the loo, stealthily making copies of Ash's letters. I loved the poem that Byatt wrote for Ash that prefaces this chapter. Byatt says in the audio interview that is linked in the heading at the top of this page that she wrote all of the poems and stories specifically for this book and for the specific chapters, to augment the story/characters/plot.
Jonathan, Ash does have strong feelings against mediums. It seems that "spiritualism" and mediums were quite prevalent in Victorian times.
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So, chapter 6 has given us an insight as to what has driven Cropper's obsession with Ash. I daresay with no disrespect intended, I found myself dozing off through this chapter. One thing I found interesting was this remark from Cropper, "Ash's poetry, for Victorian poetry is knowledgeable about sexual mores and indeed about sensuality. There is no record of any early peccadillo on Randolph's part, let alone any later one-he was always, as far as we can tell, the preux chevalier."
Well hold that thought my dear Cropper, because me thinks you are about to be "invalidated."
How weird is this? Cropper.....pg. 124 drew out those other photographs of which he had a large and varied collection- as far as it was possible to vary in flesh or tone or angle or close detail, so essentially simple and activity, a preoccupation. He had his own ways of sublimation."
Hmmmm... what are in those photos he is preoccupied with and submits to? I find him a very strange character.
In chapter 7 I am finding where Byatt is paralleling Val, Roland, Ellen and Randolph. pg. 128 Ellen says, "I can never say enough in praise of Randolph's unvarying goodness and forbearance with my feebleness and inadequacies. I could never write as well as Randolph, but then no one can or could, and so it was perhaps not worth considering as an objection of doing something.
This is much like when we learned Val tried writing and Roland made her feel inadequate and so she stopped.
Ellen was a bit of a recluse and when Roland asks Val what has happened to them she replies, "Too much confinement, too little money, too much anxiety, and too young. You want to get rid of me." Then the creepy part when he decides to have sex with Val because he wants a more pleasant evening, he has no desire for her, so he envisions the portrait of Ellen Ash in order to make love to Val.
Ellen and Val must realize that Randolph and Roland are staying with them more out of obligation rather than for true love. Randolph is described to want to possess Ellen, yet he is unfaithful to her through his desires for Christabel in this letter writing. Interesting how Randolph says to Christabel, "I should add that my poems do not, I think, spring from the Lyric Impulse-but from something restless and myriad-minded and partial and observing and analytic and curious, my dear, which is more like the mind of the prose master Balzac, whom, being a Frenchwoman, and blessedly less hedged about with virtuous prohibitions than English female gentility, you know and understand." Just how far does Randolph go in those letters? Then we have Roland who is obsessed with Ash, to the point he neglects Val. Is Roland acquiring feelings for Maud? I am only up to chapter 8 so I can't tell, but when he kept glancing at her while she read the letters and wanted to sit "heads together" it made me wonder.
Okay enough for now, must go finish chapter 8 and beyond. I do like how Byatt has finally cleared the way to the story.
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bellamarie, I agree that Cropper is a creepy fellow. I'm assuming he's indulging in some pornographic photos.
I don't have the negative response that it sounds like you have toward Roland and Randolph. I think that the women contribute about equally to the dysfunction in the relationships between Roland and Val and between Randolph and Ellen. At the end of the scene you quote, it says that "They comforted each other." I have the impression that Roland does care for Val and vice-versa but that neither is in love with one another any longer. There does seem to be something flickering between Roland and Maud, but very tentative-- both value their solitude.
I have the impression that Randolph does love Ellen... but he is becoming in love with Christabel too. Neither wants to hurt the other people in their lives (primarily Ellen and Blanche) but there is a powerful attraction between them.
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Week III: Flora, Fauna, and Melusina
Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
Characters and Plot (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/readerguides/possession/possession_characters.html) by our Readers
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Schedule of Discussion:
June 14-20 Chapters 12-17 (102pp)
June 21-27 Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Week III: June 14-20: WHAT a section! All our questions answered and more mysteries posed. What did you make of it?
1. "Dearest Ellen," (page 277 among others). We have Ash's letters to his wife. "It would require quite horrible self- control and dupliicity." (page 235). What do you make of Randolph Ash's loving letters to his wife at home while he is passing with his second wife in Whitby? Which one do you feel is the more innocent, Ash or Christabel?
2. "I have done wrong in her regard. I have behaved less than well....I should have... " (page 252). Do you agree with Ellen Ash's assessment of her treatment of Bertha? Why or why not?
3. Blanche Glover comes to see Ellen, what is the result? How does that compare to Fergus going to see Val?
4. This section contains some of the most beautiful writing of the book. Which passages struck you as especially fine?
5. "But Melusina sounds often as though he wrote it. To me. Not the subject matter. The style." (page 288). Can you tell a difference in Ash's poetry and Melusina? The entire Chapter 16 is an excerpt from Melusina. What did you see in it? Why did Ellen get so upset when she read it in the previous section?
6. "A clean empty bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked." (page 290). What do you make of this dual dream of Roland and Maude?
7. Why do you think Blanche killed herself?
8. "He would teach her she was not his possession" (page 304). What does this mean?
9. "If he loved her face, which was not kind, it was because it was clear and quick and sharp....a disdain masking itself as calm." (page 302). Why does Ash see Christabel in this way?
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Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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Olle!! THERE you are! I've been wondering where you were and wondering idly to myself if you're reading this in Swedish or English and now we know:
But it isn't easy for a foreigner to understand the older poems in English.
Well I hate to tell you this but it isn't easy for anybody to understand the "older" (which aren't), poems in English, either.
I can't imagine what a translator would make of this ....er...creative flurry of imagination and reference, HAS it been translated? I can't imagine trying to read it in another language, the language it's IN is difficult enough: kudos to you for even trying.
I got up this morning thinking (I like to reflect on what's been said here for a while) do you realize that almost all of our reactions here to date have been of the "struggle to translate" variety, struggle to even understand what she's even SAYING here?
I mean normally don't you discuss motivation or find something that you can relate to and talk about or larger issues, societal issues, what DO we normally discuss?
Here what do we relate to? Possession? Having a hobby or obsession which overwhelms? Dysfunctional marriages? What? Are any of the characters to date so well fleshed out that we can say we actually can relate to any of them? I don't think Val's occasional sniping about her limited menial whatever is enough. Roland seems the most likely candidate, I guess, do we relate to him?
How about Christabel? Ephemeral and ...what?
What is Byatt saying? The poems, the letters, obviously are clues. Too darn bad they are floating in a miasma of...Victorian imagination.
I'm thinking the whole thing is a fairy tale. Just a lark. I liked Olle's Da Vinci Code reference, and I'm wondering if the characters can carry the premise of the excitement of the chase. I understand why the premise of the book, having read the interview I put in yesterday from Marcie's link in the heading, she's recreating the Victorian style, they were interested in everything. Profuse writers. Furbelows, nearly fell over when I saw THAT word in the text, having used it. Good word to describe the entire book. Obfuscations.
If you have to reread a book to even understand what it's saying then it's deliberate, one has to ask why it's written in this way and what if anything it means.
I believe the poems and the prose all contain clues to the plot. Unfortunately the poems seem indecipherable, in and of themselves.
Mippy what a point about peeping thru the keyhole, a parallel to the Melusina poem!!!! Well done, I missed that all, being obsessed myself with the colors of the bathroom for some reason. So in that case the poem came first in the book and so did the interpretation of the incident so what do we get from that? Christabel is a monster with a tail in her bath?
And Cropper and his "photos," we've already had Val talking about another set of photos found at the office, I think it was.
Even tho this is a flight of imaginative fantasy full of real and imagined legends and allusions to critical works which don't exist, I do think the incidents and poems reference the plot.
I'm going to work on #6 in the heading, back in a sec....
Welcome, Olle, please explain this to us! hahaha
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Ginny posted ~ (is) Christabel is a monster with a tail in her bath?
Nope, don't think so.
Perhaps we as readers are bouncing off a reference to the Victorian conflict about good women and bad women, do you think? Good women or ladies, more correctly, are the ones desired as wives, and they are supposed to be a pure as driven snow (ah ha snow reference) and by implication, those ladies don't enjoy sex. The bad women are who the men cavort with when they want a romp in bed.
So the woman who is pure might (in the bath = bed) transmutate into a bad woman,
having the tail of a mermaid only figuratively, meaning having an underside or bad side, which is hidden from view. Only by peaking through a figurative keyhole does a man find out.
Who knows? just guessing.
Regarding the capitalization in the letters, I think lots of Victorians wrote that way, but cannot find a source. I think even the great Darwin had a lot of unnecessary capitalized words in his essays and letters. There was less standardized English usage in that century.
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BellaMarie: We are so proud that you are at last able to read and discuss books with us here!
Is this light? What a question! It may just be exactly that, in a different way from which we've known "light."
Jonathan:
Cropper knows all there is to know about Randolph Ash. If only he knew as much about himself. He has made several attempts at autobiography; but it always leads to, and ends with the letter from Ash to Cropper's very own great-grandmother. And what a letter. Written when Ash was an old man. What strong feelings Ash has about attempts at communicating with the dead. How indignant he becomes at the thought of Coleridge
...of this bright spirit, having made his painful way out of our weary and oppressive earthly life, being constrained to heave mahogany tables, or float partially embodied, through firelit drawing rooms...
I have not read that much Victorian prose, has anybody here? I know from EF Benson's prose however that ghosts (he wrote several volumes about ghosts) spirits, mediums, gurus (that memorable sequence of the fake guru in the Mapp and Lucia series) were hot in Edwardian times.
But why should they not be? In 2010 it's vampires, the undead. With the Romans it was ghost stories told around the dinner table. I like Ash here for the first time, being worried about poor Coleridge being condemned to float about the medium table like a parlor trick. Obviously HE didn't want to be a parlor trick, took himself seriously, did Randolph Henry.
Kidsal and Marcie, what an interesting discussion on the egg. I would never have made an interpretation of either, I just threw up my hands when I came to it ( another obscure reference, now we're doing chickens where we were doing insects) and moved on! hhahaa
I have completely skipped Dr. Mesmer, I can't see what he has added so far anyway to the plot.
Mippy, I can't get any kind of feel for Christabel, she's in her self imposed tower too well.
I'm not sure on who has stolen her letters, would that be Blanche? So Blanche is jealous?
On the capitalization, why in her letters and not in her prose or poetry?
I am sure there's no answer but I wanted to know.
I think I have caught Byatt up, I THINK she has used a phrase IN the "old" sections which was not in use in that time but would you believe I've lost the book (again...is that subliminal) and will have to find it along with Ash's somehow seeming to say that it's all about HIM even their romance, she's somehow a projection of his. I may have read that wrong, it's near the end of this section.
Is everybody madly reading to catch up?
I love all of your ideas about the romances and parallels. I just wish any of them were real enough to get into. Strangely enough I found the Cropper chapter the least doze offable. hahahaaa Bella, we're completely different on that one. Perhaps she'll bring out each character so we can actually see them beyond the gauze. The quote you've given is quite interesting, BellaMarie and your question just how far did Ash go in those letters?
What do you all think is the attraction of Ash to Christabel? Really?
Marcie's introduction of the word solitude is quite interesting. I have to wonder what Christabel's solitude, which she seems quite protective of and desirous to keep (we've explained how it was unusual for a woman to have that position) makes me wonder the source of her income, it can't be from poetry or writings, as she's relatively unknown? Inheritance? Did I miss that?
I wish she had put an outline of the plot first hjahahaa.
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Ginny...."Is everybody madly reading to catch up?"
Yes, indeed I do feel like I am trying to constantly catch up. I think I have finally read enough to be caught up, just to realize I'm not! I take notes to remember points I want to make and where I found them for future reference, and that slows me down. As my dear Italian Nonna would say when she was frustrated, Momma Mia! Ok back to read some more.
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Bellamarie I dozed off myself, in chapter six. And had a wonderful dream. I found myself at the Fontaine de Vauluse, where Petrarch had lived in solitude for sixteen years, contemplating his ideal love for Laure de Sade Along came Ash with his love Ellen, for whom he had waited almost as long. Then in Ash's footsteps came Mortimer Cropper, alone. He does not appear to have had a true love, although he wrote a daily letter to his mother on his travels.
We are then treated to several pages from Cropper's biography of Ash, telling us what he knows to be the facts of Ash's life. There's nothing to indicate the curious extra-marital events in Ash's life. And we realize why Roland was so excited to find those stray notes in the Vico book.
But just look at these interesting observations about poets and their loves which proccupy Cropper's mind:
Ash always maintained, unlike many of his contemporaries, notably Professor Gabriele Rossetti, father of the poet, that Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, along with Fiametta, Selvaggia, and other objects of Platonic courtly affection, were real live women, chaste but loved in the flesh, before their deaths, and not allegories of the politics of Itlaly, or the government of the Church, or even of their creator's souls. Petrarch saw Laure de Sade in Avignon in 1327 and fell immediately in love with her, and loved her steadily, despite her fidelity to Hugo de Sade. Ash wrote indignantly to Ruskin that it was a misunderstanding of the poetic imagination and of the nature of love to suppose that it could be abstracted into allegory, could not in verity spring from "the human warmth of an individual embodied soul in all its purity and mortal." His own poetry, he added, began and ended with "such incarnate truths, such unrepeated unique lives."
This abstract is just chockablock with information vital to the plot. Just so, the wideawake reader must admit to himself. How wonderful that the realization came while I was dreaming. What a literary thriller this is turning out to be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Cropper had published his biography -THE GREAT VENTRILOQUIST - in 1969, taking his title from one of Ash's teasing monologues of self-revelation or self-parody. Before doing so he had undertaken all Ash's major journeys, visiting Venice, Naples, the Alps, the Black Forest and the Breton coast.
Some curious places in their. I wonder if Byatt got it right from the text she was using. Nothing about the Yorkshire Moors. Isn't it interesting what authors do with texts.
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Olle, I am glad you are joining us. It may be that your struggle with the English language in this book will spur you to insights that those of us who are native English speakers will miss. I look forward to your thoughts.
Jonathan, in your dreaming state I think you have hit on something very important. I hope you'll share more of your dreams! Thanks very much for pointing our attention to the following excerpt from the Cropper chapter:
"Ash always maintained, unlike many of his contemporaries, notably Professor Gabriele Rossetti, father of the poet, that Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, along with Fiametta, Selvaggia, and other objects of Platonic courtly affection, were real live women, chaste but loved in the flesh, before their deaths, and not allegories of the politics of Italy, or the government of the Church, or even of their creator's souls. Petrarch saw Laure de Sade in Avignon in 1327 and fell immediately in love with her, and loved her steadily, despite her fidelity to Hugo de Sade. Ash wrote indignantly to Ruskin that it was a misunderstanding of the poetic imagination and of the nature of love to suppose that it could be abstracted into allegory, could not in verity spring from "the human warmth of an individual embodied soul in all its purity and mortal." His own poetry, he added, began and ended with "such incarnate truths, such unrepeated unique lives."
I too am wondering if the following thoughts of Ash shed light on how he thought about his love for LaMotte and what it might say about their relationship (later in the book). "Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice were ... real live women, chaste but loved in the flesh" and that "it was a misunderstanding of the poetic imagination and of the nature of love to suppose that it could be abstracted into allegory, could not in verity spring from "the human warmth of an individual embodied soul in all its purity and mortal." His own poetry, he added, began and ended with "such incarnate truths, such unrepeated unique lives."
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Ginny, I agree that there are many, many themes and metaphors running through this book. I think that one of the main ones is the position of women in society. In LaMotte's time, women had to mostly live through men and were subservient and beholding to a father, brother or husband, financially and socially. Most women were not given the educational and cultural opportunities that men had. Many who were writers even chose a male alias in order to find a publisher and readership.
I'm sure that a woman in those days who had a strong spirit, intelligence, passion, sensitivity and talent would have to struggle a lot to create some form of independence for herself within the boundaries imposed by society. It's still true in some cultures today.
I think that Ash was attracted to that kind of woman in LaMotte and saw her as a fellow poet, extremely sensitive to language and eager to create and recreate life and worlds in her poetry.
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Mippy, you made a reference to Victorian ideas of good and bad women. I was also thinking about Ginny's question about the characters and motivations in the book. So far, I don't find any characters that are bad guys, which you often find in a "quest" book. Cropper is probably the closest for me. He seems to have a number of negative traits...he's seen by his competitors as crassly commercial in how he bulldozes his way to getting every artifact related to Ash. Some of his practices (making copies of documents and probably some of his deals to acquire items) are definitely shady. However, he seems to have a genuine appreciation for many of the items he collects. He comes alive in their presence. I don't think he's entirely despicable. In Ash's poem, The Great Collector, which prefaces Chapter 6, Ash says of the collector, upon finding something he was looking for:
"And then his soul was satisfied, and then
He tasted honey, then in those dead lights
Alive again, he knew his life, and gave
His gold, to gaze and gaze..."
I'm wondering of you other readers, is there any character that, as we know him or her so far, that you dislike?
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What a good question! I think, speaking personally, that none of the characters so far is strongly portrayed enough for me TO like or dislike them.
Our knowledge of them is sketchy. On the one hand the omniscient narrator has told us of Cropper but of Ash all we have is the occasional comment and so far his own overwrought Victorian hysterical prose, dancing all round in a smoke cloud (no wonder the Victorians had such active passionate lives under all that propriety, their letters practically STEAM before even they meet). I'm not surprised that LaMotte said that there was shyness or awkwardness when they first met. hahaha
BUT the "Love" in the letters came later, but it did come. So he was having a love affair. I'm not sure why this would be a surprise as he was a married man, so was obviously attracted to things not always of the mind.
The internet is a lot like this correspondence, actually, in some ways. people say and do things on the internet they might feel quite shy about in person. The difference in the written word versus the spoken word.
Very few people write letters today like they did in Ash's day, in his case I think it's OK.
So I don't have any feelings for any of them. Do you all? They are not living characters, to me, they are not strongly drawn enough to engage with. I'm trying to think what there IS to engage with.
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What is the main feeling YOU all get from this book so far?
I have a feeling that people are afraid to say what they think for fear it will somehow be wrong. Here's this THING as bloated as a...what? I lack the metaphors. An explosion of images, a mayfly, and one struggles to find whatever path may be thru this enchanted paper forest.
What is there to cling on to? The search for letters and the truth. Hansel trying to find the crumbs.
Somebody somewhere will know what it means, we reason. I'll wait for that somebody to come along, we reason because even tho I'm reading English I am not sure what she's saying other than the bare bones plot with all this versifying and fairy stories. The READER must be the final judge, and hopefully together we can say what it seems to be saying or not.
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We hope to ignore the poems? The entire 11th chapter IS a poem. At least it's not in italics.
I reread Swammerdam the poem again. I reread again the real Swammerdam's biography. They are different. Swammerdam the real was a physician, who wrote and did important things. He did fall out with his father. He was a microbiologist. Many papers written.
Ash's poem, which is full of eggs, just absolutely FULL of eggs, yolks and egg references (is that the Christabel influence?) (or perhaps her insect poems?) has him destitute eating maggot ridden bread. He actually died of malaria at 43 I think.
Ash's poem with the eggs dares to suggest (does it) that , well you tell me:
I ask myself, did Galileo know
Fear, when he saw the gleaming globes in space,
Like unto mine, whose lens revealed to me---
Not the chill glory of Heaven's Infinite--
But all the swarming, all the seething motes
The basilisks, the armoured cockatrice,
We cannot see, but are in their degrees
Why not? to their own apprehension--
I dare not speak it--why not microcosms
As much as Man, poor man, whose ruffled pride
Carnot abide the Infinite's questioning
From smallest as from greatest?
Ok what exactly here is he saying? Is he saying that an insect (reminds me of that documentary about insects taking over the world) and their little microcosm are as important as Man?
?
Oh and look at this: cockatrice ( ) n. Mythology A serpent hatched from a cock's egg and having the power to kill by its glance.
The whole book is full of cockatrice references and behold the above.
And then the poem ends desunt cetera normally translated "the rest is missing." Literally "the other things are not here, are lacking."
The poem apparently is either incomplete or left to the reader's imagination.
Kind of like the book so far, so much up in the air.
On the style: BellaMarie and Jonathan: I daresay with no disrespect intended, I found myself dozing off through this chapter. Me too, absolutely cannot concentrate, read the same lines over and over again, why?
Marcie seems to have the romance down and understand the characters, particularly LaMotte in her isolation. I still wonder what sustains the household? What financial means allows her to write; even in Victorian times women needed a source of income. ESPECIALLY in Victorian times. Must have been a legacy from her father?
The Threshold (chapter 9): Question in the heading: What did you make of it? A super question. Again no italics. The Childe. What are the Childe legends we need to compare it with? Childe Roland? Childe Harold?
We have three choices, gold, silver and dull armor. What do they symbolize?
The Childe seems to be on a quest to bring his father the Herb of Rest to end "as only that might, his long agony." So he rejects the gold and silver ladies for this darker herb, it really looks to ME like drugs? But apparently this is a dangerous course as even the horse "called out in alarm," and the Childe started down the dark and hard to navigate path with the flowers blowing "dust" at him (opium powder?) into a perpetual unchanging light.
So!
What do you all see in this?
I really am beginning to see the entire book as a farce, a lark, whatever bottle floats to the surface, whatever memory or connection something suggests, heck bring it on. The author is a creative person, steeped in literary background, just write a poem about it or a fairy tale. When you view it like that it's like a funhouse, what's exciting and creative around the next corner, in fact it would make a good fun house ride, a Literary Fun House, but I am beginning to think as I did initially , it's a giant joke making fun of a lot of things, most particularly those who deal with, teach, and write literary criticism. Maybe throw in Victorian excess for seasoning.
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Ash and Lamotte lived during the time of Darwin and the emergence of the theory of evolution. Darwin published Voyage of the Beagle in 1839 and The Origin of Species in 1859. Many people were amateur botanists and zoologists, walking around the countryside and seaside, collecting specimens. They debated ideas of science and reason versus the supernatural. The educated Victorian mind was eclectic.
Byatt says in an interview: ""For the Victorians, everything was part of one thing: science, religion, philosophy, economics, politics, women, fiction, poetry. They didn't compartmentalize -- they thought BIG. Ruskin went out and learned geology and archaeology, then the history of painting, then mythology, and then he thought out, and he thought out. Now, if you get a literary theorist, they only talk to other literary theorists about literary theory. Nothing causes them to look out!"
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/13/specials/byatt-possessed.html
I think that explains the scope of genres and topics that Byatt includes in the book and also your idea, Ginny, that much of the book is ironic. In the same interview, Byatt is claimed to have said that much of the top-heavy allusion is meant to be humorous.
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Marcie I appreciate that background on the age of Darwin and the enthusiasm for things botanical in the Victorian age. The way you put that almost makes me want to live then too but golly what we have now with the flick of the internet! I also am glad to hear that the over the top allusions are intended in a fun way. They are fun, the fairy stories are fun, and a lot of people think like this. Word association. If we had to write down everything that flashed thru our minds when we saw a certain sign we'd amaze ourselves (not to mention those who saw the list. hahaha)
Mippy that was an interesting point on good women/ bad women and the mindset of the day. I also liked your explanation of looking thru the keyhole, what a strange thing the whole mermaid idea is. This is supposedly about feminism, do you see that in this piece yet?
I guess Christabel and Maude could pass for feminists, or could they? What do you all think? What WAS a Victorian feminist?
Jonathan, you're as enigmatic as this piece is :). What did you mean by this? I wonder if Byatt got it right from the text she was using. Nothing about the Yorkshire Moors. Isn't it interesting what authors do with texts.
Do you think Ash had a parallel in real life? It kind of makes you wonder, some of this.
What outstanding questions remain to us as readers of the plot? I've got some.
I have some questions about our hero Roland. For instance Sir George and his wife obviously are seriously in need of money. They are living in that giant house Seal Court with not the money to run it and she's in a wheelchair and they have almost no fire, etc, they are cold. Yet here are the letters, the treasure as Christabel says her solitude, her actual private being, and Roland KNOWS that should Cropper or Blackadder get them Sir George would get money yet he doesn't mention that perhaps somebody might want to buy them. Neither does Maude. In fact had it not been for Maude, Roland, who apparently wasn't 'keen on sharing the contents, would never have seen them at all. He'd never have been in Seal Court at all. Like Sir George says, she's family and all.
Here's our hero (and heroine) themselves possessed by this quest and possessing the letters to the point that their sense of what? Decency? Keeps them from saying a museum or XXX would love to have these and pay for them. Sir George thought nothing of Christabel's verse or her and it would make their lives a lot easier. I don't see Roland moving in any way in this direction, will he later on?
In this he's like his Randolph Ash.
And the Lady of Shalott is referenced here also, by Christabel. I wonder why she would choose that image, it's not the positive slant she's put on it: "Think of me if you will as the Lady of Shalott---with a Narrower Wisdom--who chooses not the Gulp of outside Air and the chilly river-journey deathwards---but who chooses to watch diligently the bright colours of her Web--to ply on industrious shuttle-- to make--something--to close the Shutters and the Peephole too---
You will say, you are no threat to That.....I know in my Intrinsic Self---the Threat is there." (page 205).
I love the Lady of Shalott. I have wanted for us to read it here forever.
The Lady is in a tower and can only see the world thru a mirror, she can't look directly on it, and one day a knight, Sir Lancelot, riding to Camelot, has a beam of light glance off his armor and she sees it and deliberately turns to look and that's her doom. Her choice to join the world is her doom. But look how parallel the plots are, especially about the weaving:
1852 Edition by Tennyson:
(http://home.clara.net/heureka/art/lady-of-shalott01.jpg)
(Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse's hangs in the Tate in London).
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And then she turns and looks directly at life instead of through the mirror (of her art? her writing? her weaving?)
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.
And that's the end of her. And that's what Christabel keeps trying to tell Ash. But HE won't listen. What's his attraction here? He was initially attracted because he thought she "understood" him. He asks her directly, "could the Lady of Shalott have written Melusina in her barred and moated Tower?"
She's telling him it will destroy her if she leaves her own self built "tower" but he perseveres, a little mocking there on his part too. Then they meet, and now Christabel has changed. She says on page 218 (after he makes some lame bit of Governor Sanford stuff about discussing his wife, I mean...really)....she says "I was sufficient unto my self---and now I range---busily seeking with continual change. I might be less discontented if my daily Life were happy.....it is not good....then we would be free together---whereas now----caged?"
So she was IN her own Tower but unlike the Lady she was free, now she's not.
They agree to meet at the church at the end of 10 (11 is the poem Swammerdam) and she says she is angry. At whom? What did you make of that?
Don't you want to scream at her: go back! Go back into the tower where you were happy, this way is death.
I sure do.
What is Cleopatra's "hopping?" by the way?
And I think I have caught Byatt with the use of the word "shape shifting," when was that coined (she said eagerly?) I am hoping it's later than Victorian, it's on page 208. I'm not talking about the concept of metamorphosis, I'm talking about the term.
A sovereign for your thoughts! :)
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DRAT! Just missed it. I was so SURE I had her:
Websters:
Main Entry: shape–shift·er
Pronunciation: \?sha-p-?shif-t?r\
Function: noun
Date: 1887
: one that seems able to change form or identity at will; especially : a mythical figure that can assume different forms (as of animals)
The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. ...
DRAT!!
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Momma Mia, what a book! What is Byatt up to in this strange novel? It deserves a metaphor and Ginnyis searching for one. Your 'lark' is a good one I think. But isn't the whole book an investigation of and search for metaphor. As Marciepoints out, 'there are many themes and metaphors running through this book'. It's a preoccupation for these scholars. They even have international conferences on 'the metaphor'. Maud and Fergus are working on their papers.
Marcie, that's a good quote from the Byatt interview:
Now, (in Byatt's words) if you get a literary theorist, they only talk to other literary theorists about literary theory. Nothing causes them to look out.
Look out of what? Of course. Their very own Ivory Tower. There is real life out there, and Byatt gets a lot of it into her story, in many small ways. Ash is a very down to earth man. So much so that he even writes that indignant letter to Ruskin, taking him to task for misunderstanding the poetic imagination. Almost like asking Ruskin, you don't believe everything you read, do you? And adds that his own (Ash's) poetry begins and ends with 'incarnate truths'. Sooner or later, we should get to a living proof of his passion.
Perhaps the book is a search for the real Christabel. Like Ollesays. The book is both complex and simple. Perhaps it's what each of us makes of it.
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What interesting points, Ginny and Jonathan. I think we all can make a lot of this book as we share our different viewpoints.
Some disjointed thoughts:
The Lady of Shalot offers a lot of imagery in her tower. The tower metaphor keeps reappearing throughout the book.
Ginny, I think that Christabel is angry with Blanche for intercepting and keeping (or destroying) the letters from Ash. That seems to be what pushes her to meet with him.
You also asked a while back how Christabel and Blanche afford to live. In the beginning of Chapter 4, we learn from the book that Roland is reading on the train that Christabel lived with her parents until 1853 when a small independence was left to her by a maiden aunt.
I think that some of the feminist views of Leonora and Maud about Christabel are meant (by Byatt) to be over the top. They are partly the result of erroneous or incomplete information about Christabel that doesn't account for her relationship with Ash. Another major theme of the book seems to be about how "truths" are conveyed by biography/nonfiction and how fiction might provide greater insight into "truth," as Jonathan's recent post might also convey.
Ginny, it sounds like you don't approve of the Ash character. Does everyone think he's a selfish opportunist? (not that you said that, Ginny)
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Several of you have brought up some of the bathroom scenes. There is a pretty funny review of Possession at http://www.pa2rick.com/bathroom/possession.html about how the main theme of Possession is really about bathrooms.
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AH!! A "small independence." That's handy, and something most Victorian women did not have.
Oh Jonathan!~ The Ivory Tower! Who else is known for being in an Ivory Tower?
Just caught that!
What a delicious romp this thing is, allusions and parallels all over the place but HEY we can interpret them any way we'd like.
Byatt may well have intended, she may have thought she did this or that, it's what the reader reaps (hey I can mix metaphors too) that matters, unless she wrote this for a cockatrice. Often what the author intended and thought he or she was producing turns out quite differently.
Marcie, moi? Did I say Ash was a "a selfish opportunist?" Self serving? me?
She's done a good job obfuscating both of her parallel male characters I think. But that's what I think, perhaps our South Carolina example is too recent, what do YOU all think?
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Marcie ~ Total laugh! About bathrooms indeed.
I sure missed the detail about Maud and the dragon on the kimono, which does reinforce that she's a counterpart of Melusina.
Feminism? It's clear to me that when any woman locks herself in a bath or jumps into a pool and turns into a fish or mermaid, she's in charge of her world, she's doing whatever she wants to do, to disport or to frolic as she chooses, and she becomes the essence or the forebear of a feminist.
After all did the women in the 60s burn their bras to give something for men to oogle at? Of course not! They wanted to dump the whole concept of uncomfortable undergarments. And during the Victorian age, they sure were, with tight laced bodices and so-called stomachers. Yuck.
:P
Here's a link for even more of Lady of Shalott:
http://www.mythicalrealm.com/legends/shalott.html (http://www.mythicalrealm.com/legends/shalott.html)
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I must say this book is beginning to frustrate me to no end. I feel Byatt has way overdone it with too many paths to concentrate on. The entire chapter of the letters is so over the top I feel like I am a minnow swimming in an ocean with sharks here. She does not allow us to really connect with any one character. I am trying to keep track of Val, Ellen, Christabel and Maude, but just as I begin to feel a bit of connection and insight I am distracted with more and more poems and characters that I feel like throwing my hands up. Jonathon, for lack of better words I had to giggle when you used my frustrated Nonna's expression, "Momma Mia!" LOL I have vowed not to give up on this book. You all are making some good points and I am so impressed how you are able to pull these proveribial rabbits out of a hat. LOL
Ch. 9 the whole Childe with the 3 beautiful ladies carrying caskets and he having to choose was I guess a metaphor for having to make choices in life and having to live with them, and it seems he chose the one his father hoped for him, rather than the one he was tempted to choose for himself. Don't we all find somewhere in our life we too must make a choice and instead of doing what we want, we do what is expected of us. Is that what this is all about...?
I don't see any of the females as damsels in distress, nor do I see them weak. There are many inferences that the female characters are lesbian and reclusive, but they do indeed find ways of being productive and freeing in their own right. I do like Maude even though she has her own secrets I sense. I like how Byatt allowed us to see the caring side of Roland when he helped Joan Bailey in her wheelchair. That was a truly compassionate, unselfish act, considering Maud did not seem to make any attempt to be concerned or inclined to help. Roland is beginning to score some points with me in this chapter.
The bathroom keyhole with Roland and Maud seemed very innocent to me, and Byatt seemed to choose to use this perfect timing to bring in the comparison of Melusina. What surprised me was Roland thinking Maud failed to see the "romance" in the bathroom. Byatt does seem to have a thing with bathrooms. tee hee...
I see so many happily ever after moments throughout the pages and poems of this book. Byatt seems to be struggling with should they or shouldn't they be happy. I thought the Freud quote was interesting, pg. 63 "Whenever she thought of Fergus Wolf, this battlefield was what she saw......Freud was right, Maud thought, vigorously rubbing her white legs, desire lies on the other side of repugnance."
Okay, I need to go finish all those complicated letters between Ash and Cristabel. So the recluse has agreed to come out and meet with him. hmmm....where dare I say will this lead us? Be back shortly til then.......Ciao!
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Mippy, I agree with you that the role of women and the challenges of how they see themselves and how society sees them, is intrinsic to this book, even the feminist extremes embodied in Leonora.
Good for you, bellamarie, and for all of us who are sticking with this book. There are so many allusions and layers in the book that it's going to take all of us to try to figure them out. We're each going to be attracted to something different so I'm grateful to each of you who is posting your thoughts.
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This book is helping me to a better understanding of feminism, both when Byatt was writing, and the epoch of the historical characters, when women began to look for a voice and a self and a place of their own.
Isn't that hilarious, following the bathroom thread through the book. It certainly gives the book some coherence, or whatever it was that my English teacher said was necessary in a novel to make a jumble of disparate themes hang together.
I'm working on the letters. What do I have? Another two days?
bellamaria, Stay with it. You would be ever so sorry to miss out on the tears and smiles at the end. And some might even enjoy a roar of laughter.
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Jonathan, yes we have through Sunday to talk about the letters between Ash and LaMotte in Chapter 10 before we move on to the next section starting on Monday (chapters 12-17). I am re-reading those letters too.
Of course, next week we can still continue to talk about anything in the first part of the book too.
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Okay I am finished with the letters and have to tell you all that I enjoyed the relationship Christbel and Ash formed, BUT.......the innocence was obviously going to turn into romance. He states he does not want to take her freedom away from her by making things complicated as being more than just poetic friends, YET....indeed that is exactly what he does. She realizes this tryst has NO happily every after. She points out her reputation as an author/poet is at risk to go any further with the letter writing and relationship, yet he pursues her. She does not say exactly who is telling her this is all wrong and needs to put an end to the letter writing and someone goes as far as intercepting the letters. Is this person a jealous lover, or is this person watching out for her? I found this very telling, pg. 216 "I have a wife, and I love her. Not as I love you.....There are good reasons_ I cannot discuss them, but they are good, if not adequately good_why my love for you need not hurt her. pg. 217 "To discuss this any further would be the most certain way to betray her."
Okay, so is their marriage a marriage in name only? Is dear Ellen a lesbian and so they have no intimate relationship so it would not matter to Ellen if he found sex with someone else? But...if this is the case, then how can he say it would not hurt Ellen? He is proclaiming a true love to Christable, not just a tryst or roll in the hay. (Okay of course poets would not use those words, I am being a bit facetious here.) I abhor infidelity, not to mention the risks Christabel is taking in ruining her reputation. I am not liking Ash here. Now I can see how he and Roland are similar. They want what they want, and they want someone in the waiting. I am not releasing Christabel of all responsibility here. She knows what the ramifications are for her, yet she proceeds. Ekkk....I think I can see the handwriting on the wall, or shall I say in keeping with the theme of the book, a true epic of lost love. Romeo and Juliet? Forbidden love? So is their love what Alfred Lord Tennyson speaks of here, "Tis better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all."
I'm in it til the end especially since I have been tempted with tears and laughter. I did find the letter bittersweet when Christabel wrote to end it, although she caved in to his pursuit. must go ponder some more on these letters. I'm so excited I caught up with the reading.
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The Swammardam poem - a will? - leaving his wordly goods plus a description of the formation of life? Only reason for this poem is to expand on Ash's desire to disect creatures? Was Christabel happy about him taking time away from her to study the flora and fauna?
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Bellamarie, I am so excited you caught up, too, and I hate to tell you this but you must now move on. Why?
Because Everything is Explained in Chapter 12.
Followed by Everything Else Being Explained in Chapter 13.
Once you read 12 and 13, you'll see how clear it becomes.
Okay, so is their marriage a marriage in name only?
I don't think so, having read 12 and 13. I could barely read both, 12 for laughing at Leonora Stern, really laughed out loud, her literary criticism, in bed, trying to go to sleep, and 13 could barely read it out of contempt for our good fellow Ash.
Not only is everything explained Byatt herself asks questions. THESE are the questions we SHOULD have had initially. One has to ask why. WHY are we now, 300 pages into the thing, finally understanding the plot?
I have my own ideas and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on them on Monday.
Meanwhile we have two days. Jonathan is looking back over the letters. She's FORCING us to do exactly what the characters are doing, she's FORCING us to make speculation and try to figure out on the basis of NO evidence, just these writings, what happened. She's brilliant in that. Once I got over the anger at the manipulation. WE are recreating in our own way, a parallel quest.
Pity the poor editor. I think he or she should have prevailed, actually, but we'll leave that to YOUR own assessment at the end. IF you were the editor, would you have left it this way or rearranged the book chapters. Would this rearrangement have spoiled the suspense?
I believe I actually hate Ash, what a reaction, huh? A fictional character, yet. What do YOU think of him?
In the two days left I want for my own research part, hahaha, to look back at Ellen Ash, several questions Marcie has in the heading about her.
Tell me about migraines? Are they brought on by stress? What causes them?
Sally, you are so brave to take on Swammerdam, I honestly don't see a thing in it, but it's apparently pivotal, what does your book say if it does on the importance of this poem? Eggs, beginnings and ends?
Ash's "profound" thoughts on man's place in the universe? One wonders why all the fuss about this minor (bad) poet, why so many people have spent their entire lives studying him. Gives the entire pursuit of literature a bad name. hahahaa Maybe that's intended.
I love your questions and can't answer one! hahahaa But THIS one I think we all need to talk about on Monday. This is ONE book which segmenting hampers the reader, stopping at different segments, but whey you read it, it's Byatt herself who has done this, arranged these passages like this and deliberately (and she as much as says so) planted red herrings. Just, Everybody, if you have not, read 12 and 13, there you will find Byatt challenging us to see who the "I" is in the narration and a lot of other disgusting things.
She's done this deliberately. Are you impressed?
Sally Was Christabel happy about him taking time away from her to study the flora and fauna?
DID he actually study the flora and fauna? He says he did. He leaves out (chapter 13) any mention of Christabel. Cropper says he did. Everybody says he did, and what gruesome detail, but did he?
I agree with Bellamarie that just when I think I have some tenuous handle on a character, more smoke screens and diversions ensue but I saw this plainly enough in 12, (again getting ahead but we need to know this): page 239) a minor character Beatrice Nest (those names!) says:
"I do have a theory. It's far fetched, I think."
"I think she wrote it to baffle. Yes. To baffle."
Yes she, Byatt, apparently did, and she's enjoying herself, the issue is, is the reader?
I'm going to have another look at Ellen now that she's revealed in 12 and 13, before we have to leave 1-11. It's like an onion, peeling back, layer by layer, sort of like his dissection of animals without the cruelty, and what's revealed in nature and what's revealed here about man and specifically the Ash Man, are two completely different things in the light of what truth there is in this.
It's fascinating, but frustrating, I think. How do you find it? I feel a kind of anger, fool me once type of thing. I don't think the joke is on the reader, tho, do you?
That's a great question in the heading, (chapter 7) What does Roland discover in the journals of Ellen Ash? I don't know, but armed with 12 and 13 I'm going to read Chapter 7 again.
Two days left before we hit the truth square on or a lot more of it than we have, what are your parting thoughts on 1-11?
Swammerdam a will? I'm not reading it again, have read it three times and if there is meaning there it eludes me, I like your idea, Sally, it's better than mine.
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3. (Chapter 7) What does Roland discover in the journals of Ellen Ash?
Beatrice Nest first thinks of Ellen Ash, when she tries to picture her, wife of the great man (Beatrice is in "love" with RHA), thinks her "dull," "vague adjectival enthusiasm...sweetness, blanket dutiful pleasure..." And then she notices references by Ellen to her own "feebleness and inadequacies," and finally "long days of prostration in darkened rooms."
Long days of prostration?
Nest writes Helpmeets about the wives of great genius.
Roland goes to visit Nest, who produces a note from her card catalog that says "it appears she read The Fairy Melusina, in 1872." So Ellen has read Christabel. She liked it at first but then became all upset. She sees something in it, I'm trying to pay attention to the dates (having read 12 and 13), the date must be significant.
Ellen now wishes she had been a poet or a poem herself. She has spent years of prostration with migraines in dark rooms and says if she had not facilitated the great man at least she did not prevent him. She looks at her sisters who are happy but worn down grandmothers and wonders at her new energy in life. What gives her this new energy? She says HE would say it's never too late.
"But he shan't see this, and I will find a way--- to be a very little more--- there now I'm crying, as that girl might have cried. Enough."
What girl? Melusina? Christabel? So she was not content, in age, to simply be the...accessory to the great man, in fact it gave her headaches apparently which took her to her bed for long periods of time. I once knew a woman whose husband was a teacher and who was overbearing. Every summer when he was home from school every day she'd lose her voice. I'm not kidding.
She would lose her voice the entire summer. She did not take to her bed like a Victorian or die for love like a Romantic, but she would lose her voice. Medical science was baffled. When school started, so did her voice.
Like Beatrice Nest (page 127) Ellen also now (why now in 1872?) hoped to make a "Contribution" of her own. Find her own voice.
Is that the answer or is there another one? What do you all see revealed about Ellen by Roland in Chapter 7?
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Caught in Christabel's web. Oh, the tangled webs we mortals weave. Governor Sanford felt he should set the record straight, by telling about his affair. Now his ex, Jenny, has published her story. The reference to this romance is very apt, Ginny. I liked the part which had the governor hiking the Appalachian Trail. Ash, too, led Ellen to believe he was communing with nature on the coast, when in reality he was...that's ahead, I don't want to anticipate.
Why is Beatrice Nest sitting on Ellen's journal? Is she hatching something? She's been editing away for 25 years. She found herself in love with Randolph Ash. Now, reading Ellen's journal, she finds what it was lke being married to him. Her sympathy is all with Ellen, so now she has become protective. Not inclined to see the journal published. Perhaps to prevent the feminists from getting hold of it and then holding Ellen up to scorn.
The letters certainly make Christabel look like a seductrice. Ash is easily led astray. Did you all enjoy that little quip about Keat's famous poetic truth:
Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty.
Ash says Keats was just quibbling. Isn't it fun to be the fly on the wall, when poets are comparing notes?
In the same letter (page 185) just a few lines earlier, Ash writes:
Do you know - the only life I am sure of is the life of the imagination
Christabel pleads uncertainty, and draws Ash out...or in, depending on how one looks at it.
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Jonathon..."Caught in Christabel's web......The letters certainly make Christabel look like a seductrice. Ash is easily led astray."
Now this is very interesting, coming from a man's perspective, BUT coming from a woman's perspective, I actually saw Ash as the pursuer. She has written to say she must decease the letter writing and he goes into a whole spill of why she should not. He convinces her to continue and to meet him in the park. Not that I care for either of them at this point. They both are throwing caution to the wind and not caring who can or will be hurt through their irresponsible behavior. As far as being caught in a web, I think they both are poisonous spiders, spinning webs for each other.
Oh Ginny, shame on you for tempting us with chapters 12 & 13. I am going to go read them instantly. I never cared for Roland or Ash much and so now what you are expressing tells me I probably will not change my feelings at least for Ash. Why indeed should so many people put their lives on hold on two people. I agree, I will leave Swammerdam for others to figure out. I personally feel like Byatt has NO real intent for the poems, other than showcasing, and red herrings. Yes, again I agree, first time shame on you, second time shame on ME. I am not revisiting Swammerdam. As my little five year old granddaughter Hayden would do, I am crossed armed, stomping my foot, lip out and going hmphhhhh......I will NOT take any more of my time with that lengthy poem. Off to see what the fuss in all about in ch. 12 & 13....LOL
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WOW, what a great discussion. We certainly are having different reactions to the book and characters. You've all backed up your responses with good insights from the book.
I personally don't think that Byatt is jerking us readers around. If she left out all of the poems and stories it would have given us a more-or-less direct romantic mystery or mysterious romance. I feel that, Ginny, you are right when you say that, with the embedded poems and stories, she is enticing us to become part of Roland and Maude's (and everyone else's) quest to discover what happened between Ash and LaMotte and it's effect on their loved ones. We are hearing from LaMotte and Ash themselves and their imagery and thoughts are giving us insight into their times and their own feelings. Those documents also add layers to the work, much as the intellectual and cultural spirit of the Victorians was alive with both classical imagery and the speculations of newly developing sciences.
I think that all of the characters have flaws and make mistakes but I am in sympathy with both Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte.
I think that Ellen would probably be diagnosed as suffering from "hysteria"--a very prevalent diagnosis in those times. One physician in the 1800s cataloged 75 pages of possible symptoms of hysteria. Those included insomnia, headaches, fainting, lack of sexual passion, etc. Since Wikipedia says that a physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria, I don't think that it's necessary to think that Randolph was at fault. She married late and may have been afraid of intimacy, since women were supposed to be chaste, unaware and uneducated in "worldly" matters.
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From Catherine Burgass’ Reader’s Guide
Ash describes his marine specimens confined in yellow pudding bowls and later to his “regimen of dissection and magnification”. This research, though carried out for its own sake, relates to the debate between the emerging evolutionary theory (Darwinism) and Christian doctrine, and informs his poetry in terms of theme and imagery.
Swammerdam is the poetic monologue of a 17th century dutch microscopist who muses on the relation between nature and God. Ash writes to Ellen: “ I divagate without discipline – my mind runs all over”, but Ash is an “amateur” in the best sense, and for him art and science are mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive. The 20th century critics, on the other hand are confined to a narrow specialization within a secondary discipline which inhibits their creative impulses and leads them to misread the primary object of study. Those who are unable to look outwards or to pay attention to the text without the narrowing lens of literary theory are presented as singularly incapable of perceiving things as they are.
The poem paraphrased: The dutch microscopist says: Bend nearer, Brother …I fear I trouble you. I thank you now that you have set with me – here in this bare white cell. I shall be hatched tonight into what clear and empty space of quiet, she best knows the holy anchoress of Germany who charged you with my care and speaks to God.
I have not much to leave. Once I had much. Well-nigh 3000 winged or creeping things. I leave my manuscripts and pens to my sole friend Thevenot. He should have had my microscopes and screw. But these are gone, to buy the bread and milk . I must die in debt. He is my friend and will forgive me. Then write to Antoinette de Bourignon who spoke to me of God’s infinite love. I turn my face to the bare wall and leave this world of things for the no-thing she showed me.
Now sign it, Swammerdam, and write the date, March 1680 and then write my age his 43rd year.
My father had a pothecary shop. He had ambitions for me – lawyer, physician. But I had other leanings. It seemed to me that true anatomy began not in the human heart and hands but in the simpler tissues, primal forms of tiny things that crept or coiled or flew. Life is One I thought and rational anatomy begins at the foot of the ladder on the rung nearest the fertile heat of Mother Earth.
I sought to know the origins of life. Did not God lend me the skill to magnify living particles until I saw successive plans and links of dizzying order and complexity? I saw a new world in this world of ours – a world of miracle, a world of truth. Monstrous and swarming with unguessed-at life.
The more were revealed to me the more I pressed my hunt to find the One – Prima Materia. I found her law in the successive forms. I first discerned the pattern of growth from egg to simple grub, from grub encased, shrinking in part, in other putting forth new organs in its sleep, until it stir, split and disgorge the tattered silk, which fast trembles and stiffens and then takes the air. It was these eyes first saw the Ovaries and drew them. I discerned the law of metamorphosis and wrote it down to show indifferent men.
My father cast me bankrupt into the street. When by want driven to sell my library of slides, my demonstrations and experiments, I found no buyer, nor no man of science, philosopher or doctor who would take my images and give them hope to last. So I came to penury and beg for sops of bread and milk and scraps of meat.
Galileo with his optic tube a century ago displaced this earth from apprehension’s center and made out the planets’ swimming circles and the Sun and beyond that motion of infinite space in which our spinning world is but a speck in a kind of star-broth, rightly seen. They would have burned him for saying so save they submitted him to doctors of the Church who deal in other truths and mysteries.
It was one step to displace man from the center of the sum of things. But quite another step to strike at God who made us as we are – making our wonderful intellects, our tireless quest to know , but also made our finitude within His Mystery. I ask myself did Galileo know fear when he saw the gleaming globes in space, like mine whose lens revealed to me not the chill glory of Heaven’s Infinite but all the swarming seething motes. I dare not speak it – why not microcosms as much as man whose ruffled pride cannot abide the Infinite’s questioning from smallest as from greatest?
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Ginny--"ollie, ollie, oxen freeeeee"! I haven't heard that in a looong time! It brought back memories and sent me on a quest to see where it originated. That is the problem with "Possession" for me at this particular time. I can't seem to skip over these quests and get on with the story. My obsession for rooting out references, babysitting my 9 yr old grandson and preparing for a family reunion this week-end has put me woefully behind in reading this book. All of this has convinced me that this book is not for me at this particular time. I am sorry to leave this discussion, but I think I just need simple "beach" books for now. Someting easy to pick up and easy to put down. I will save "Possession" for cold winter days when I am housebound.
Sally
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hahaa Sally, well with all that going on it's no wonder, good to see you here! If you figure it out in the winter come tell us in the Library, I am sure we'll still be arguing over the elements somewhere. hahahaa
Thank you Sally (Kidsal) for that parsing of the Sawmmerdam and explanation. For a minute there I almost thought I was reading more Byatt, that's some explanation! This is a good point: Those who are unable to look outwards or to pay attention to the text without the narrowing lens of literary theory are presented as singularly incapable of perceiving things as they are.
"Pay attention to the text," hahahaha that might be an epitaph for the hapless reader here.
I also liked the idea that Ash is an "amateur" in the best sense. Makes you think about the meaning of the word. I think he's an amateur in the worst sense, but will wait till Monday.
How do we see our Ash at this point?
It's just that line there at the bottom why not microcosms as much as man whose ruffled pride cannot abide the Infinite’s questioning from smallest as from greatest? and the recurrent theme spoken by the noble Ash (have now finished through 17 for tomorrow) which makes me dislike him so much, in the light of what's coming. Brotherhood of living things my foot.
Marcie you feel in sympathy for Ash, can you say why at this point?
Jonathan, you are a hoot: I liked the part which had the governor hiking the Appalachian Trail. Ash, too, led Ellen to believe he was communing with nature on the coast, when in reality he was...that's ahead, I don't want to anticipate.
I'm beginning to wonder how much communing he actually did, period. Can't wait till tomorrow.
Oh my goodness, Marcie!~ Ellen as "hysteric?" Wow! No wonder the feminist movement took hold.
I'm telling you, those corsets they wore, the squeezing of the waist into such tiny proportions, it's no wonder they kept swooning, I am sure anybody would. What would we call Ellen today, I wonder?
Jonathan you see CHRISTABEL as the seductress? Why? Because she tried to shut herself off?
Bellamarie, As far as being caught in a web, I think they both are poisonous spiders, spinning webs for each other.
How are you all seeing Christabel as having any purpose or intent in this so far? I don't see any approach by her at all. I guess she did not have to answer his letters, in that she's also culpable?
She can't win.
I think we're going to really enjoy the section, hahaha, starting tomorrow.
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Could not wait till tomorrow, had to start tonight, what a section what a section, WHAT a section, what do you think about the heading now? And Ash? And Ellen?
What in fact do you think now?!?
Wow!
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Ginny...."I'm telling you, those corsets they wore, the squeezing of the waist into such tiny proportions, it's no wonder they kept swooning, I am sure anybody would. What would we call Ellen today, I wonder?"
Talk about hysteria, when I read this I laughed hysterically. Ginny you are a hoot!! What I would call Ellen or any other woman strung up in them type of confining confounded garments today.....INSANE!!! I was getting dressed to go out to lunch with my sister today and it was quite warm out so I chose a tank dress and told her I'm all about comfort, I am done with the proper dress code that confines me. She and I both laughed and said after 50 it don't matter. Why in God's name did they wear them type of clothes that strung you up and pushed your bosoms practically up to your neck? LOLOL All for vanity. Ugggg
I have to go to bed since I do in home day care, and Sally you ain't got nothing on me, I got 4 grandkids ages 2, 5, 7, 8, and 14 with a 1 and 3 yr. old to watch five days a week and plan a birthday, Father's day and graduation party all in the next week or so along with deciding our vacation after I have the annual 4th of July backyard swim/cookout, so we can be packed up and on the road to our five hour drive to Harbor Springs Mich. Phew...I'm exhausted just talking about it. But I gotta say, this book is worth the read and I'm not waiting til I am at the beach in my chair or a winter read, to finish it. I have to know NOW what Byatt is up to. LOLOL Okay, all kidding aside, I still am totally perplexed after reading chapter 12. Nothing revealing, but I will finish 13 tomorrow, or should I say today now that it is early morning. Be back after some sleep and sanity when all the kids are down for quiet/nap time. Ciao and good night.....
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Oh but this morning all is clear, right? Maybe we need to read on thru 17. This section came like a slap in the face to me, and it all SEEMS clear but perhaps I'm wrong? What do you all think?
Bella, loved that post, how busy you are!!
This is a heck of a section.
I think I would like to start with Ash, for my part. How do you all feel about him now, having read thru 17?
Any change? Did this section reinforce or destroy your previous image of him?
Here's what I personally don't like about him:
1. Page 310:
"You are in love with all the human race, Randolph Ash."
"With you. [Christabel]. And by extension all creatures who remotely resemble you. Which is, all creatures, for we are all part of some divine organism I do believe, that breathes its own breath and lives a little here, and dies a little there, but is eternal."
2. Page 270:
"Anti -vivisection propaganda was wide-spread and vehement, and Randolph was aware of it, as he was aware of the charges of cruelty that might be leveled at his enthusiastic operations with scalpel and microscope. He had the squeamishness and the resolution of his poet-nature: he did various precise experiments to prove that writings which might be thought to be responses to pain in various primitive organisms in fact took place after death... He concluded that primitive organisms felt nothing we would call pain, and that hissing and shrinking were mere automatic responses. He might have continued had he not come to this conclusion, as he was willing to concede that knowledge and science laid "austere claims" on men.
He made a particular study of the reproductive system of his chosen life-forms."
That, to me, is sick. So we're all one giant microcosm in the universe, are we, we're all one? All Creatures Great and Small? Was it Albert Schweitzer who would not step on an ant?
There seems to be a huge gap between the Narcissistic Ash's grandiose sayings and his actions, to wit:
"Dearest Ellen...."
I see him as a narcissist, a hypocrite, and and a liar for starters, can we excuse this because of his great poetic genius?
But how do you see him? Caught up somehow in his...er...how do you see him?
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And I have to say also on the subject of who wrote Melusina, which is, I guess, supposed to be something of a bombshell, that I have never seen but one voice in any of the poems or the book, have you? Can you see a difference in style? This seems a pivotal element of the plot, but what do YOU see?
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Whitby! From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitby
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The jet is quite pretty, isn't it? And apparently favored by Queen Victoria as mourning jewelry.
Many interesting fossils have been found in the Whitby area including entire skeletons of pterodactyls. Whitby is known for its well preserved ammonite fossils, which can be found on the seashore or purchased from stalls or shops in the town.
One unusual feature of Whitby is the Dracula Museum. Part of Bram Stoker's famous novel was set in Whitby, describing Dracula's arrival in Britain.
See the fantastic connections to writers and literature, I guess somebody should add Byatt's book, huh?
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Do you all remember the song: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.
Shall we add, baffled, like Maud and Beatrice, over Ellen's journal? Don't we have enough with what's in the text? According to Maud, as an expert in these things, literary criticism should take into account what is not said! Can't put anything over on her. Cropper's bio of Ash isn't helpful. She thinks it's more about Cropper than Ash. And Leonora's paper on Christabel just got a shrug out of Roland.
Don't we all agree with bellamarie?
I have to know NOW what Byatt is up to?LOL
And now such disturbing questions from ginny. This fellow Ash. What's he up to? Always searching for answers. Finding them in the lives of others. Like the marooned sailor. Lazarus. The guy who took his wife's skeleton,bedecked with jewels, with him wherever he went. This guy Salamander, or whatever his name was' Is Christabel just another case study? Is he just seeking knowledge, like Faust or Freud? We shouldn't condemn him out of hand. Let's recall what was said about him early on:
Ash had been interested in everything. Arab astronomy and African transport systems, andgels and oak trees, hydraulics and the guillotine (ugh) druids, and the grande armee, catharists and printer's devils, ectoplasm and solar mythology, the last meals of frozen mastodons and the true nature of manna.
Suspicions? Sure Is Ash the father of Bertha's child?
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Ash? Bertha? I hadn't even thought of that, Jonathan, but of course it must be true since the Bertha "story" is not accidentally in this book - everything has its purpose.
I love reading a book and then coming unexpectedly upon a place where I have been - Whitby!A memorable place visited years ago, walking up the steep hill and then climbing a multitude of steps to the top of the cliff. The jet jewelry was in all the little shop windows. The town echoed of Dracula.
And then to find out later that Maud and Roland in London went to eat at Oodles - our favorite cheap place. I'm getting a very personal relationship with this book, I guess!
Liking Ash less and less as we go on. He's taking terrible advantage of our Cristabel, deceiving his doting (and I do mean DOTING!) wife, torturing small creatures in his quasi-scientific quest for "knowledge" instead of sticking to his pen and paper. No, I think at this point that I can't stand him! And how about poor Blanche, Cristabel's companion, driven to suicide? She and Cristabel were leading a good and artistically productive life in their little cottage, untroubled by the world until Ash burst upon the scene.
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The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. everyone is welcome to join in.
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Week III: Flora, Fauna, and Melusina
Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
Characters and Plot (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/readerguides/possession/possession_characters.html) by our Readers
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Schedule of Discussion:
June 14-20 Chapters 12-17 (102pp)
June 21-27 Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Week III: June 14-20: WHAT a section! All our questions answered and more mysteries posed. What did you make of it?
1. "Dearest Ellen," (page 277 among others). We have Ash's letters to his wife. "It would require quite horrible self- control and dupliicity." (page 235). What do you make of Randolph Ash's loving letters to his wife at home while he is passing with his second wife in Whitby? Which one do you feel is the more innocent, Ash or Christabel?
2. "I have done wrong in her regard. I have behaved less than well....I should have... " (page 252). Do you agree with Ellen Ash's assessment of her treatment of Bertha? Why or why not?
3. Blanche Glover comes to see Ellen, what is the result? How does that compare to Fergus going to see Val?
4. This section contains some of the most beautiful writing of the book. Which passages struck you as especially fine?
5. "But Melusina sounds often as though he wrote it. To me. Not the subject matter. The style." (page 288). Can you tell a difference in Ash's poetry and Melusina? The entire Chapter 16 is an excerpt from Melusina. What did you see in it? Why did Ellen get so upset when she read it in the previous section?
6. "A clean empty bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked." (page 290). What do you make of this dual dream of Roland and Maude?
7. Why do you think Blanche killed herself?
8. "He would teach her she was not his possession" (page 304). What does this mean?
9. "If he loved her face, which was not kind, it was because it was clear and quick and sharp....a disdain masking itself as calm." (page 302). Why does Ash see Christabel in this way?
10. From Catherine Burgass' Reader's Guide to Possession: "Could the reader of Possession be made to feel inferior to its author?" (submitted by Kidsal). What a question! What do you think?
11. Can you tell the difference in LaMotte and Ash?
The exercise here presented, in identifying the poetic "voice" of Ash from LaMotte, has proven to be extremely instructive. I found "La Motte" to have two stylistic patterns which identify "her" immediately. It's when these are absent that it becomes more difficult, take a stab at these, who wrote them?
A.
"This rock was covered with a vivid pelt
Of emerald mosses, maiden hairs and mints
Drabbling dark crowns and sharply-scented stems
Amongst the water's peaks and freshenings."
B.
"From which descends a glossy cone
A mirror-spire that mocks its own.
Between these two the mackerel sails
As did the swallow in the vales
Of summer air , and he too sees"
C.
"Beating the lambent bath to diamond-fine
Refracting lines of spray, a dancing veil
Of heavier water on the breathless air."
D.
"Or never-melted mountains of green ice
Or hot dark secret places in the steam
Of equatorial forests, where the sun
Strikes far above the canopy, where men"
If we can see the difference, we will be able to see what Ellen saw in Melusina that made her so upset. I see it now. It's the same voice, to me, but the STYLE is different.
Most of the time LaMotte rhymes. It's very difficult to find parts where she does not. And her verse is sing-song, it's a particular rhythmic pattern, iambs, it's iambic pentameter for the most part and the rhythm is very strong.
She also uses lots of dashes ------ big ones, especially as her work goes on. Many revisions of Melusina, huh? We should be able to tell them apart, can we?
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Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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ohmygosh! I am very caught up in your reactions to Ash. Ash, the father of Bertha's child! Some of you do think poorly of him. I believe that it's insects and hydras that he is dissecting; not small animals. As for his interest in the reproduction of the water creatures, "When food is plentiful, many hydras reproduce asexually by producing buds in the body wall, which grow to be miniature adults and simply break away when they are mature." (wikepedia). Many people at that time were amateur zoologists and very much concerned with the origins of life. I think that Byatt was showing Ash to be passionately interested in all of LIFE.
This is, I think what draws Christabel to him. As you quote, Ginny. She says "You are in love with all the human race, Randolph Ash." She loves him for it. I don't believe Byatt is presenting this as a negative trait.
And he loves the passion and life in Christabel. Again, your quote, Ginny:
"With you. [Christabel]. And by extension all creatures who remotely resemble you. Which is, all creatures, for we are all part of some divine organism I do believe, that breathes its own breath and lives a little here, and dies a little there, but is eternal."
We do need to remember that Byatt has cautioned us that this is a romance and not either a novel or biography. She quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne in the very beginning. "The former [romance]--while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart--has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writers own choosing or creation... The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us."
The story of Ash and LaMotte might be almost a fairy tale. LaMotte says on the train ride with Ash that their being together is for her a "necessity." She has planned for their being together and is committed to it. She has thought things out, even more than he it appears sometimes. I really don't think that she is a victim.
Events seem to be set in motion for both of them that are bigger than themselves. I think that Byatt is trying to convey "truths of the human heart."
I don't think that Byatt has meant to create unsympathetic characters in Ash and LaMotte. I am with you, Jonathan: "We shouldn't condemn him [Ash] out of hand."
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More from Catherine Burgass:
There are so many illusions in this book. In the final paragraph of Chapter 15 Christabel mentions George Herbert, the 17th century Metaphysical poet and quotes in the original from Goethe’s Faust. Ash responds by quoting two lines from Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” without citing author or title. All of these have reference to the couple’s situation. Faust in Goethe’s play is tempted by the devil with sensual pleasures, and at risk of losing his soul if he cries out: “Stay, thou art so fair.” “To His coy Mistress” is a Carpe Diem poem, a genre in which the poetic speaker attempts to persuade his mistress to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh today rather than worrying about tomorrow. George Herbert wrote on the struggle between earthly delight and heavenly love (“The Agonie”)
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From Burgass:
Chapter 13: Roland and Maud: “They paced well together, though they didn’t notice that both were energetic striders. They eat a huge meal of vegetable soup, plaice with shrimps and profiteroles served by a large “Viking woman.”
Chapter 14: Boggle Hole: They walked down through flowering lanes. The high hedges were thick with dog-roses…..
Chapter 15: Ash and Christabel: also served a huge meal of soup, fish, meat and pudding by another Viking descendent. When they go out walking they notice the compatible rhythm of their step. They have visited Boggle Hole: They had come across summer meadows and down narrow lanes between tall hedges thick with dog-roses…
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Golly, more parallels than I spotted, thank you Kidsal!
I also found this, have been reading Reader's Guides for this book and finding very little, but I did find this:
Poems that will enrich your understanding of Possession Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover," "Caliban Upon Setebos," "Bishop Blougram's Apology," "Mr. Sludge, the 'Medium'," "Andrea del Sarto," and "Fra Lippo Lippi"; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Christabel"; Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress," "The Garden"; Petrarch, Rime Sparse; Christina Rossetti, Poetical Works; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Merlin and Vivien" from Idylls of the King, In Memoriam, "Maud," "Mariana," "The Lady of Shallott"; W.B. Yeats, The Rose.
Well, this is exciting, so good to see you, Joan, move over on that bench, we have definitely two sides here today, YAY. The best discussions we've ever had have contained truly opposite points of view and we definitely are opposed on the character of Ash.
Where do you stand, Kidsal (and thank you for that great analysis, that's a great reference), are you in sympathy with Ash or where do you stand at this point? Mippy? Bellamarie? Everyone?
We've got two opposing sides, the pro Ashers (shall we say Ashettes hahahaa Jonathan and Marcie) and the put him in the trash can (Ash Can) bench consisting of Joan and Ginny.
hhhaa Jonathan, condemned out of hand? Rush to Judgment? Well I can't see a lot to praise in him at this point. You can't help (and unlike those more prone to Ash, I haven't read the entire book) forming opinions as you read, all readers do, but at this point, so far, so far as Joan says, people are being hurt.
I don't think Christabel is a victim and Ash the mustache twisting villain, either, Marcie, but this man of Love for All Creatures Great and Small, this saintly genius who is interested in everything is so interested to the point that he's hurting a lot of people and things. And that's the point at which his extreme Narcissism (if Byatt throws that in one more time I am going to scream) really gets pointed, as it seems to apply to quite a few people in this text.
He loves all creatures, and nature, just everything. Ok that's positive. To the point that he causes those whom and which he loves or is interested in, harm. What does that make him, then? Someone to be admired?
We know Ellen knew, the faithful wife at home, because Blanche Glover came and told her. We know she became extremely upset at the reading of a section of Melusina. This doesn't matter? She doesn't matter because....she takes to her bed and laudanum because of him? Isn't that pretty strong stuff? My sympathy is with her.
Blanche kills herself, I guess over Christabel, so I guess that's her burden not his, but he's the one who made the first approach and even as he looks on his new "wife," he sees negative things. He's no saint. No Lancelot.
Jeepers the more I read here, Beatrice Nest not admitted to the rooms the male faculty was, the more I read the more I feel sympathy for the poor Victorian women.
Now don't think for a moment our hero doesn't notice dissembling in others, oh no worries about a rush to judgment with the great poet, even (or maybe especially) of those he loves, note what he says of his love, Christabel (just to qualify which love hahahaa) Bold is mine:
He saw, or thought he saw, how those qualities had been disguised or overlaid by more conventional casts of expression--an assumed modesty, an expedient patience, a disdain masking itself as calm. At her worst--oh he saw her clearly, despite her possession of him--at her worst she would look down and sideways and smile demurely, and this smile would come near a mechanical simper, for it was an untruth, it was a convention, it was her brief constricted acknowledgment of the world's expectations. (page 302).
So he has NO trouble in telling when others pretend or wear the mask or are untrue. And nobody knows faults like one who is practiced in them himself.:)
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Joan, you've BEEN to Whitby? Did you recognize it from the description? And the same restaurant! Now you have a mental picture we don't, but the writing really is glorious in some of these chapters, and beautiful. It's right on the Yorkshire coast, what were you doing in that remote area? Looks fabulous, to me.
I don't think that he's the father of Bertha's child, despite her red face and refusal to talk but I do admit it entered my mind because of her strange behavior. Do you all feel that Ellen did wrong by her? I'm confused about that part of the book.
We've all done science experiments. On dead life forms. His, I think, go beyond that. Was it Gandhi who said a man is known by how he treats the lower animals? I'm sure he didn't mean sea anemones or protoplasms. Or did he?
Marcie, "I believe that it's insects and hydras that he is dissecting; not small animals," I don't know why I can't stop thinking about Hitler pulling wings off flies, this bit in the book was truly awful, to me.
But even if this gruesome bit had been left out, he's still cheating on his wife, can we allow that? Or not? He IS duplicitous and he's not the only one here. He's not caught up in a vortex all helpless, he's very calculating. That's not admirable, is it?
I just love the way everything is twisted when he's involved. Vivisection is "propaganda." He writes his "Dearest Ellen," and neglects as somebody said, to say wish you were here, or take her with him, or say the woman whom I have suggested travel AS my wife sends her greetings, or anything else.
And way at the bottom after he's lectured her on interminable flora and fauna and his own important thoughts, he remembers to ask, " Now let me know how you are--- your health, your household doings your reading---" (277). You dull thing, you.
I liked this, Marcie: The story of Ash and LaMotte might be almost a fairy tale.
That's really good. Good point on the Romance aspect, too, I think that Byatt is trying to convey "truths of the human heart."
What truths of the human heart do we see in their brief Romance? Possession? He seems remarkably self possessed, to me.
Events seem to be set in motion for both of them that are bigger than themselves.
This is a great statement, who set them in motion? Do you see, do any of you see any culpability at all in any of these characters?
Jonathan, According to Maud, as an expert in these things, literary criticism should take into account what is not said!
I honestly think THAT is the whole point of the book, and what it does to the truth. The Truth seems to be a silent character here, flitting about thru the moors and the dusty rooms, elusive, snatched at by Cropper and Roland and Maude and Beatrice, and, yes, let's add baffled. :)
The Reader's Guide quoted above also had a question on the names and their significance including Sir George Bailey! I can't think why, can any of you?
Can you all tell Ash's poetic style from Christabel's? It seems to be an important point in the book. Want to have a fun sort of challenge? We can put in 4 passages and then honestly try, ourselves, to see if we can say "who" supposedly wrote them. Want to try? No fair looking them up!
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I have not read past ch 16, but I have to tell you I am so darn frustrated I could scream!!! I am exhausted with Byatt's cat and mouse game. So...we pretty much KNOW what we expected, that Christable and Ash went together, he very possibly had a hand in Melusina, she threw caution to the wind and left with him after all the warnings from Blanch. Wow I was shocked to read Blanch showed up at Ellen's door. Wooo wooo talk about hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But what did she deliver to dear Ellen? The copy of Swammerdam or the missing letters or both?
Yes, as soon as I read Bertha was pregnant and could not tell who the father was, I suspected it could be Ash. Afterall, I have not held a high opinion of him early on and suspecting Ellen's inadequacies has to do with lack of sexual satisfaction for Ash, he would have to be turning to someone, and why not the hired help? So...I began to ask myself, WHO is going to end up being the son/daughter of Bertha and possibly Ash? Now there is a mystery in and of itself.
Why as a reader have I not felt any intimacy between any of these characters? I feel each one of them have been self serving. Romance has escaped me so far. Even the menions of Roland where Maud is concerned seems so contrite. It seems so out of his character that I'm not believing it. I feel Byatt spend too much time with the poems and letters that she was not able to make me feel the least bit connected and caring for any one particular character. We are half way through the book and there is no rooting for a couple, no sympathy for any character because each one deliberately seems to have their own agenda and so betrayal is obvious. Val even seems to be getting exactly what she wants, a relationship with very littel commitment but a place to come to and a partner for sex if and when either decides to.
Gosh, I really am disappointed in the lack of emotional connections in this book. The poems for me are not even romantic, so the title is Possession A Romance. Hmmm...where's the romance? I don't even feel sorry for Blanch because she and Christabel had to be missing something to give up life and stay cooped up in their house they way they did.
Joan R. "He's taking terrible advantage of our Cristabel"
Interesting how you see her as the victim, I see her as the black widow spider. Neither of them have shown much character, care or concern for anyone but their self. I don't see any damsels in distress in this book. They talk about women's movement, but their actions are contradictory to women being strong. Maud is so wishy washy with her relationship with Fergus and Lenora. My favorite character up to this point is Mrs. Joan Bailey. Now she has strength and conviction.
Okay enough of my ranting.....I am going to read ch 17 and hope to find, pie in my eye! LOL
Ginny thank you for the pictures, they were the highlight of my day, where this book is concerned. I'm still keeping my eye on Fergus, he seems the one fading in and out and very concerned about what they may find, more so than Cropper.
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Just one more thought before I forget..., as far as Ash and his interest in dissecting there is one theme that seems continuous .....He is interested in proving, LIFE EVERLASTING. He wants in some way to see his death as life continued. pg. 272 "It is my belief that at this point in time Randolph had reached what we crudely call a "mid-life crisis," as had his century. He, the great psychologist, the great poetic student of individual lives and identities, saw that before him was nothing but decline and decay, that his individual being would not be extended by progeny, that men burst like bubbles. He turned away, like many, from individual sympathies with dying or dead men to universal sympathies with Life, Nature and the Universe. It was a kind of Romanticism reborn_germmated, so to speak, from the old stock of Romanticism_but intertwined with the new mechanic analysis and the new optimism not about the individual soul, but about the eternal divine harmony of the universe. Like Tennyson, As saw that Nature was red in tooth and claw. He responded by taking an interest in the life_continuing functions of the digestive functions of all forms, from the amoeba to the whale."
Throughout all of chapter 14 there are constant mentions of life everlasting. pg. 273 Cropper quoted Moby Dick, "Still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
Ash did NOT want to believe life ended. He was determined to find a truth to believe he would never truly die and that would be the end of him. His "ID" had to prove everlasting life.
pg. 278 "If there is a subject that is my own, my dear Ellen, as a writer I mean, it is the persistant shape_shifting life of things long_dead but not vanished."
pg. 279 Ash writes to Ellen, "All these new sights and discoveries, my dear, as you may imagine, have started off shoots of poetry in every direction. (I say shoots in Vaughn's sense, "Bright shoots of everlastingness," where the word means simultaneously brightness of scintillation and flights of arrows, and growth of seeds of light_ I wish you would despatch to me my Silex scintillans, for I have been thinking much about his poetry and that stony metaphor since I have been working on rocks here..."
pg. 271 "His friend Michelet was at this time working on La Mer, which appeared in 1860. In it the historian also tried to find in the sea the possibility of an eternal life, which would overcome death. He describes his experiences in showing to a great chemist and subsequently to a great physiologist a beaker of what he called, "the mucus of the sea...this whitish, vicious element." What is most easily discerned, in the case of the seawater mucus, is that it is simultaneously an end and a beginning. It is a product of the innumerable residue of death, who would yield them to life?"
So my amature analysis of Ash is he feared dying, death. He wanted and needed to believe there is no absolute end to life. His ego wanted to cheat death. He wanted to be bigger than life and death. What I found interesting is this particular statement, pg. 277 "They valued themselves. Once, they knew God valued them. Then they began to think there was no God, only blind forces. So they valued themselves, they loved themselves, and attended to their natures_" "At some point in history their self_value changed into_what worries you. A horrible over_simplification. It leaves out guilt, for a start. Now or then."
They did not want to be accountable for their self serving life, so it was easy to believe there was no God, but then at some point they began to worry about "what if" they would be accountable one day. I suspect Christabel and/or Ash, in the end, will committ suicide, and drown in the "sea of life."
NOT Vanished!
The romance is not that of man and woman, it is of "oneself", or even more so of life and death. Food for thought....Ciao!
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I feel that both Christabel and Ash took advantage of each other. Did they really love each other -- I don't think so. Like Roland and Maud -- they used each other.
What was the point of the story of Patience? Poor Ellen with the house being cleaned and Patience's children tearing through it and breaking pieces of the chandelier. And did we really need the story of Bertha? Was it to show how helpless Ellen was when faced with challenges?
Well Google brings up George Bailey from "Its A Wonderful Life."
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Oh good points, Kidsal and Bellamarie. What WAS the point of Bertha and Patience? What good questions and points! I agree with both of you.
I have not read to the end, will all be revealed or will we still be sloughing thru the swamps of allusion. Just loved both of your posts.
Maybe to show...Patience is worn down, their dear Mama had 15 children, Ellen has none...er....Bertha has a child...er.... I don't know why Patience is in there. Like Bellamarie I really don't have any connection to any of these characters, why do we all like Joan Bailey? I agree she's the most likable of the bunch.
Somewhere in that huge list of poems is the answer to George Bailey's name being significant, but Possession the book is not.....do I want to say worth further research? Is it worth taking hours to read each poem, to somewhat emulate the scholars here excitedly and search for the Grail. (What IS the Grail in this book?) And why does one feel frustrated that the name George Bailey (good one Kidsal on It's a Wonderful Life, the Best Known Movie I Never Have Seen all the way thru) does not ring a bell?
Bella, this must be a "Romance" in the Victorian literary style. Not as we think of it, I loved your post. I must look up Romance as she means it and Hawthorne's definition, if that's what's being followed, in Marcie's post, then there's nothing that we recognize as "romance" in it.
I did not catch, in the blizzard of allusions, or references, the everlasting life thing AT ALL, my goodness, good for you, but I did see the questioning of God and that possibly was brought on by Darwin, one of the few dates in the thing as Marcie pointed out was the introduction of his theory.
Maybe this is why the reviewers say "something for everybody?" You grab on and there literally IS something for everybody.
I still don't know why Ellen berates herself over Bertha. Was it normal in her day for pregnant servants to stay on and work? I don't think so but am not sure what the problem is here. Today of course it would be different, I am confused...I thought at first she might have shown more compassion but then I recalled Upstairs Downstairs and a similar situation in Edwardian times. And they were less caring, or what actually happens in the "home" for unwed mothers? I need to read that again.
And since I can't tell Byatt from Ash from Christabel in poetry I'm going to put 4 selections in here, (if I myself can even figure out who wrote what, I better steer shy of Melusina, huh)? and we can have fun trying to identify who said what.
I want to agree with Bellamarie that I feel no connection to the characters. I really liked Sally's thought that they were using each other, and Roland, Maude and Val, too.
There seem a lot of "users" in this thing, when you think about it? You might make the case for several others, too, in various levels.
Fergus reminds me of the Kenneth Branaugh character in Harry Potter, am I the only one? So like. :) hahaha
What a shame this book puts people off, what a great discussion you're making of it, all sorts of things I never saw. I do think a little judicious editing would have really helped it.
I wonder, what do you think?
What percentage of readers really study the poems carefully? Look up all the references? Have read all the poetry bibliography above?
What percentage of readers give up and never get TO the plot of the book?
What percentage of readers are made to feel like Professor was it Leavis made his students feel?
What percentage of readers think that because of all these references, which ARE impressive, that the book must somehow then have merit because of them?
Which character is the best fleshed out, would you say, at this point?
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Ok look at this (of course this is Wikipedia, so who knows how accurate IT is) but it fits in nicely with Marcie's Ash and Christabel as fairy tale:
Romance as literary genre: from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_(genre) bolding mine:
Many medieval romances recount the marvellous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who, abiding chivalry's strict codes of honour and demeanour, goes on a quest, and fights and defeats monsters and giants, thereby winning favour with a lady.[8] The story of the medieval romance focuses not upon love and sentiment, but upon adventure....
The first romances heavily drew on the legends and fairy tales to supply their characters with marvelous powers. The tale of Sir Launfal features a fairy bride from folklore, and Sir Orfeo's wife is kidnapped by the fairy king, and Sir Orfeo frees her from there. These marvelous abilities subside with the development of the genre; fairy women such as Morgan le Fay become enchantresses, and knights lose magical abilities.[9] Romancers wrote many of their stories in three, thematic cycles: (i) the Arthurian (the lives and deeds of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table); (ii) the Carolingian (the lives and deeds of Charlemagne, and Roland, his principal paladin); and, (iii) the Alexandrian (the life and deeds of Alexander the Great)...
Actually that entire article is fascinating. So it appears (if Wikipedia is to be believed) that there are certain elements needed for a literary Romance, and it's interesting what they are. I'll see if I can find a more authorativie source but that's pretty interesting.
The last few lines of the Browning poem, seen then in conjunction with the Hawthorne certainly rings true too,
"How did you contrive to grasp
The threat which led you though this labyrinth?
How build such solid fabric out of air?
How on so slight foundation found this tale,
Biography, narrative? or in other words,
'How many lies did it require to make
The portly truth you here present us with?'"
We had talked about the possibility of lies previously. I think the portly Truth is the Grail here, very elusive and possibly...unanswered, I bet, at the end, but what IS it?
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In Burgass' discussion questions: Could the reader of Possession be made to feel inferior to its author? ;D ;D ;D :-[ ::) >:( :-\
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Here's an excellent non-Wiki link about many of the romantic poets:
http://www.poetseers.org/the_romantics/ (http://www.poetseers.org/the_romantics/)
Ash is annoying. Not actually evil. And I do not fault him for cutting up little sea animals, since I was a TA for years in college and grad school where we did just that, in order to teach invertebrate biology. I find the references to Darwin do help to date the events, as mentioned.
May I say his attitude toward women is weird, but perhaps not uncommon. Since I just plain hate almost any guy who cheats on his wife, I guess I hate his behavior.
So count me in: Ash Can :(
I keep falling asleep reading this ... do I recall others said so, too? The plot is too contrived, IMHO, so I'm not commenting too often. I would not be finishing this novel if it were not for the interesting comments everyone has posted here.
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Along the lines of what you found, Ginny, about Chivalrous romance, I just found an article that tries to explain how Byatt questions a dominant Victorian construction--female sexuality-- in Possession, a Romance. The article is at http://www.postcolonialweb.org/uk/byatt/farrell4.html
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Ginny..........Romance as literary genre: from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_(genre) bolding mine:
Quote
Many medieval romances recount the marvellous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ability, who, abiding chivalry's strict codes of honour and demeanour, goes on a quest, and fights and defeats monsters and giants, thereby winning favour with a lady.[8] The story of the medieval romance focuses not upon love and sentiment, but upon adventure....
BINGO!!!!!! Now I know why I could not associate with any couple's romance in this book. It's because like I saw last night, there is NO real romance between the characters, there is a romance of adventure. For Ash he is the dragon going to slay death! He was not interested in Christabel so much so in a romantic, she's so beautiful way, but he was interested in her mind. He could see she was more intelligent than the average woman for her time. She likewise was attracted to his mind. All of their lettering writing was the two of them showing off and impressing each other and being impressed with each other.
I think Patience's visit was nothing more than to show Ellen and her as siblings and how Ellen didn't really tolerate children very well. So its best she had none of her own. Bertha is still a possibility of an heir of Ash's to show life continuing. Who knows, I am grappling with this. lol
I think the lies are red herrings, but ultimately, in the end each person has to personally realize their mortality, and they have to struggle with, "is there a God," will "I" have to be accountable to some being in the end, will it matter how I lived my life and how I treated others? I feel all the sexual innuendos were also red herrings. Nothing seemed to matter, there has been no passionate love relationships between any of the characters. Blanch committing suicide because she lost Christabel to Ash was a bit over the top for me.
Roland solved the mystery of whether Christabel was with Ash when he saw the light on the cave and then Maud compared it to the beginning of Melusina, but more so he solved the mystery of Ash's obsession of life continuing. This is where my Epiphany appears!
When I think about the "Possesion" title, now through my own perspective, I think Ash wanted to possess "life", he could not accept an end of man. As Cropper stated, "He, the great psychologist, the great poetic student of individual lives and identities, saw that before him was nothing but decline and decay, that his individual being would not be extended by progeny, that men burst like bubbles. Imagine someone with an ego as big as Ash's to have to believe that is all there is to life and then NOTHING! He can accept vanishing rather than death.
If you go back and read the prelude it all makes sense..."When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter from of compostion is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former_while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from he truth of the human heart_has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation...The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us."
_Nathaniel Hawthorne Preface to The House of the Seven Gables
This is outright telling us that the author has the discretion to call this Novel a Romance even though it is not in the sense of humans loving humans. So the truths lie in the author's creation.
The lies in the book are the allusions Byatt has so craftily used. I must say, she is a brilliant author. I never thought for one minute I would finish this book or even consider trying to figure out her tangled balls of yarn. Now, on to chapter 17. I can't imagine what the finals chapters have in store for us or where they will lead us, but an adventure is for certain. Still keeping my eye on Fergus...tee hee Ciao!
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Such a good discussion going on - sorry not to be posting... things went a trifle pear shaped in my life - but it's all looking up again now.
The posts are wonderful - I see we have two camps on Ash. He can go in the Ash can for mine. I have no doubt that he is the culprit in regard to Bertha's condition and that Ellen knows he is responsible (perhaps there have been other servants placed in the same position by him). Ellen has to handle the situation as best she can but she wants Randolph there to discuss it with - and probably make the decision as to Bertha's immediate future... on June 12th Ellen writes:
What should I, in Christian charity do for her? I do not want to trouble Randolph's work with these matters, and yet I am not empowered to do much for Bertha without his assent...
Patience says the servant classes are naturally ungrateful, lacking education. At times like this - when they must be encountered and judged and enquired into - I am led to wonder why they do not rather feel hatred. That hatred is what some do feel I am convinced. And I do not see how a true Christian can find a world of master and man to be 'natural'...
If Randolph were here I could discuss this with him. Perhaps it is as well he is not - it belongs to my sphere of influence and responsibility.
For Bertha perhaps it was a world of 'master and woman' - and if Ash had been there what would or could he have done for Bertha - if indeed he is the father would his action then be tempered by his fear of mortality expressed in the writings- 'that men burst like bubbles' etc and perhaps his natural desire for an heir.
Eventually Ellen consults Herbert Baulk who told her of 'an institution that makes very handsome provision for women in her position to be brought to bed and if at all possible re-established in a useful trade... I was bold enough to engage myself - that is, my dearest Randolph - to contribute to her keep until her lying-in, if that might aid in securing a bed for her
This would have been a very generous offer by Ellen and made on Randolph's behalf. I'm positive Ellen knows who the father is.
Was it Beatrice Nest who said in effect that Ellen's writings were a smokescreen designed to cover the truth - can't find the passage.
I think Patience is there simply as a contrast to Ellen - one overworked and worn down by the demands of family and the other headachy and hysterical from too little to do.
As for our dedicated Ash and LaMotte scholars - I can't find any connection to any of them - they are all self seeking and using each other and whomever may cross their paths in their 'quest' - which really amounts to getting the better of the others being the first to uncover the Ash or LaMotte holy grail.
It is a strange novel - Byatt said: 'I see it as comedy, although it makes people cry' - well there's plenty of comedy -eg. think of the bathroom scenes - and maybe it does make people cry - if only with frustration at trying to make head and tail of the mock Victorian poetry and writing style. I love the allusions (when I get them) and like checking some of the others out - but there are just so many of them that it makes one wonder how other cultures view it -it's been translated into 30 languages - though some countries have a long history of dealing with quests and fairy stories in their literature - so they could be ahead of me there but they'd still need a degree in English Lit as well.
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Welcome Gumtree, its great to see you post. So you and I are thinking alike, nothing new there my friend across the continent.
I read a few interviews today that Byatt gave and I feel Patience is the contrast as you say, but also she is Margaret Drabble her younger sister. They have this love/hate relationship that their Mother seems to have created, but now that they are both established writers seem to try to temper it with friendship. I think Byatt put her in as a sentiment to Margaret.
I dare say on my last two posts I was confused and thought I had read up to ch 17. Well, pie in my face indeed after reading the sweet romance of Ash and Christabel in Yorkshire. She a virgin, well I would have thought as much since her only companion up to Ash was Blanche, if indeed it was romantic with Blanche as we have been led to believe. It is bittersweet, because Ash and Christabel both know it will come to an end. Poor Christabel lying there in tears knowing it has been her first real true love and sexual encounter, only to know it will not last. Well, as sorry as I feel for her those are the consequences and she herself said there will be regrets. The Fairy Melusine Poem (ch 16) sure describes their affair in my opinion. She is struggling with the judgements of the Lord. She says, "Forever banished from the hope of Heaven." Ash seems not to be the least bit concerned about judgement.
I like the inference to Alfred Lord Tennyson's quote "It's better to have loved and lost, tis to have never loved at all." on pg. 309 "And every day we shall have less. And then none." "Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?"
After reading the interviews I can see the moral fibers Byatt has woven into some of the characters keeping true to her own beliefs. Yes, Ellen struggled with wanting to do the Christian thing where Bertha was concerned, but knew she MUST get rid of her because of he implications and shame. Like I said before, I think Ash probably used the hired help for his sexual pleasures, since Ellen speaks of her inadequacies where sex in concerned. Wouldn't it be a hoot if Fergus ended up being a descendant of Ash! Wooo wooo now there would be a paradox and comedy Byatt would have accomplished. Okay I am going to stop, I do like getting a bit carried away with this complex novel. But, Fergus is back on the scene and hell bent on finding out what Maud and Roland have uncovered. Ohhh ....I can't wait to begin ch. 18! Our poor Joan Bailey seems to be ill, I do hope Maud and Roland get a chance to speak with her before or if she dies. I sense she holds some keys to our Pandora's box. What say you???
Here is the link to one of the articles of an interview. It is not a spoiler so enjoy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/as-byatt-the-dame-who-dared-to-criticise--the-world-of-harry-potter-586608.html
AS Byatt: The dame who dared to criticise the world of Harry Potter
By Hermione Eyre
Saturday, 12 July 2003
I especially like this statement....we can all agree!
"Fans of AS Byatt's fiction can be divided into two groups: those who cannot understand her novels and those who lie." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
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"Fans of AS Byatt's fiction can be divided into two groups: those who cannot understand her novels and those who lie." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
LOL. that's a good one, bellamarie.
I think that there is evidence in the book that Ash loved Ellen. He also loved Christabel. Both in different ways. I don't think there is any evidence that he engaged in sex with Bertha or other servants, and none that Ellen thought that of him. Ellen writes in her journal in Chapter 12: "We have been so happy in our life together, even our separations contribute to the trust and deep affection that is between us." (Ellen hasn't been told yet by Blanche of the letters between her husband and Christabel and maybe even of their going on a trip together.)
Whatever you think of Ash's brief liaison with Christabel, he is not portrayed in the book as a womanizer or a casual philanderer.
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Of course Ash loved his wife Ellen. We've been given evidence that they have enjoyed many years of a happy life together. Of course she has lived for years in the shadow of an illustrious poet. Writing from Yorkshire about his field trip is an authentic bit of sharing. Only a devoted husband could write his wife about a dirtied shirt and that he would have it laundered before he gets home.
As for the supposed affair between Ash and Christabel, I get the impression that they regarded each other with suspicion. Or, without trust at the very least. Chapter 15 is a very dubious chapter. Everything depends on the credibility of the narrator. No sources are cited.
I've run out of time. Ciao.
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"Fans of AS Byatt's fiction can be divided into two groups: those who cannot understand her novels and those who lie." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
hhahaaa, well that's heartening. hahahaaa, thank you Bellamarie.
Also I loved this one from Sally and have put it in the heading as number 10:
Could the reader of Possession be made to feel inferior to its author?
I would really like to know everybody's reaction to that one! We could talk on that a week, what do you say? Can somebody make you feel inferior? DO you feel inferior?
Gum!!!! There you are, so good to see you! Ash Can seems to be popular today but will we have to eat ashes? Jonathan, what a point you've made: who IS the narrator there and can we trust him/ her?
If you consider the letters proof, there's not a lot of proof anywhere, really.
I don't trust anything in the book at this point.
Thank you Marcie and Bellamarie and Mippy for those excellent links, much to explore. On a side page of one of them I found another page of links and one was to the BBC, who always do things splendidly. I hoped it was a filmed lecture as so many are there, but it's not, but it's in print: Romantic Poets: Introduction: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/intro.shtml
Peter Ackroyd, writer, historian and presenter of The Romantics, explains how Romantic poetry brought about a revolution in ideas in the early 19th century that changed the face of the world today.
Bella, what sort of Pandora's box do you think Joan Bailey may have the key to?
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I love all the disparate reactions here and how we all see the same characters differently!!!
Mippy,
I keep falling asleep reading this ... do I recall others said so, too? Yes I'm afraid so, I find my eyes crossing and get irritated with myself. I still think a bit of judicious editing would have helped.
Gum, This would have been a very generous offer by Ellen and made on Randolph's behalf. That's why I can't understand why she is second guessing her decision and worrying so over it. Do they take the babies away? What's with this Herbert Baulk anyway, everywhere you turn there he is suddenly.
At this point one really does not want another peripheral character to try to understand.
Gum, It is a strange novel - Byatt said: 'I see it as comedy, although it makes people cry' - well there's plenty of comedy -eg. think of the bathroom scenes - and maybe it does make people cry - if only with frustration at trying to make head and tail of the mock Victorian poetry and writing style.
Hahaha, laughed out loud at that one. It's very funny, to me.
So far I agree. I hope it doesn't get sad on top of everything else but I am afraid it may.
As for our dedicated Ash and LaMotte scholars - I can't find any connection to any of them - they are all self seeking and using each other and whomever may cross their paths in their 'quest'
I agree, ALL of them except Beatrice. Can we exclude her do you think or not?
Bella: .... Byatt gave and I feel Patience is the contrast as you say, but also she is Margaret Drabble her younger sister.
Really!! Drabble would be more suited to Ellen from what I've seen of her, the NY Times did a big piece on her, her furniture is covered in ...was it really plastic... against the grandchildren. More Ellen, perhaps they are reversed. I have heard they did not get on. Drabble was accused of copying Byatt's style in The Seven Sisters, another extremely annoying book, where she toyed with the reader as a cat with a mouse. I appreciated it the second time around because I wasn't as angry at her.
She says, "Forever banished from the hope of Heaven." Ash seems not to be the least bit concerned about judgement.
Why do you suppose that is? He's given up? He thinks he's beyond religion?
Marcie, "We have been so happy in our life together, even our separations contribute to the trust and deep affection that is between us."
Golly, that IS sad, she's got no end of migraines, poor thing, she's always in bed when he's there, is this some of her coverup writings or does she really think that? I guess if she did, not having apparently much confidence (she misses his reading to her, but is not even sure she can read on without him tho she'd like to), then the visit from Blanche and her finally seeing it in Melusina (where, Bella?) would be devastating. I hope she makes it through the book.
Or do we all think HER innocent?
I wonder who we are going to cry over, ever since Gum put that in, I can't stop wondering. Is it she? She's a sad character, to me. I feel sorry for her.
What IF none of the characters are what we think, tho?
I must be improving, I actually just removed a take on the name Randolph which was satirical, but I leave that to your imaginations. hahaha Now IF I were Byatt, I'd know some old Norse legend about Sir Randophe of Elk or something and I'd refer to it. Lacking that, I'll get up 4 passages for tomorrow and we can try our hand, I bet you all can tell them apart. I can't, but I have a feeling you can. Let's give it a good shot!
Meanwhile what is your true opinion of Question 10? From Catherine Burgass' Reader's Guide to Possession: "Could the reader of Possession be made to feel inferior to its author?" (submitted by Kidsal). What a question! What do you think?
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Kidsal, I have to tell you when I first read that incredible question 10, I thought it applied to the writer of that Reader's Guide. hahahaa It took me a minute to realize she meant Byatt. hahaa, sort of a legacy from Leavis?
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I don't think there is any doubt that Ash loved Ellen or Christabel in his selfish way. But...we don't know the secret Ash could not share with Christabel where he said, it would not harm Ellen, and he could not betray her. Hmmm...interesting, he can't be open and honest with Christabel, because he can't betray probably what is a medical condition of his wife.....But...he can betray his wife and go off and have an affair with Christabel. The fact each of them acted upon their desires, leaves me with NO sympathy for either.
Marcie, "Ash's brief liaison" Up through ch 17 there is no indication it was indeed a brief liaison. How many months did he betray Ellen through the letter writing and the imagination and thoughts of Christabel before they even met in the park? Betrayal can be of mind and/or body. I sense Ellen suffers from a mental disorder and is in denial when writing in her journal. Blanche brought her something, and intstead of her being upset, she goes on about having the house spic and span for when Ash comes home, while Blanche goes off and committs suicide. Whether the book does or does not portray Ash as a womanizer, or casual philanderer, really does not do much for his character as far as I am concerned, because we do know he is an adulterer. Unless they have an open marriage arrangement, which we have had no indication of such at this point. This sort of reminds me of so many politicians and famous men, who think they are entitled to pursue other women regardless of being married. Look at JFK, Jackie was known to spend endless hours in bed due to the anxiety and emotional stress she dealt with, while John looked like this wonderful, doting father and husband, all the while committing adultery. These type of men are prone to think they are bigger than life and cheat in life and in death, as I see Ash doing. He can not accept there is nothing after death, because he does not believe in God or the afterlife in a heavenly sense. He needs and wants proof scientifically life will go on in some form other than spiritually. This is where I do feel sad for Christabel, because she is a Christian and is struggling with knowing she will have to face the choices she is making. Like she said in her poem, "Forever banished from the hope of Heaven." She said, "She had to carry her own burden," and what a burden it is for her.
I am in the group of Ash can, and it would take alot for me to take him out of that can and turn my feelings around about him. Christabel tried to stop the letter writing, a honorable man would have respected her wishes, especially since he was married. Although if he had any honor he would not have been doing this in the first place, because he admits from the start at the breakfast he had to possess Christabel. I blame them both, I am just saying, HE could have at that point stopped pursuing her.
I can't wait to see what Blanche gave Ellen. As for whether Bertha's baby is Ash's, that still remains to be seen. There has to be a reason Byatt wrote it, a red herring, possibly, but I don't feel it is. I'm sensing the baby has a connection in this, and someone is going to get a shock when they find out. Gosh can I wait until the week end to continue reading?
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OMG!!!! Ginny we were posting at the same time. I read your post and just about fell out of my chair laughing. My husband came into the room and had to see what all the laughter was about. NOW...Byatt has us seeing the comedy.
Yes, Margaret was the more perfect one of the two. In one of the interviews, Byatt even expresses her feeling less important etc. BUT....out of humor she may have decided to cast Margaret as Patience. Whichever, my point was I think she wanted to bring in the sisterly connection. We would not have known it to be of much importance had we not known the relationship between the two sisters. I have five sisters and oh what competition we still have with each other, even though we have much love for each other. I have three grand dauthters and boy is there a huge amount of competition between them. Oh shucks, I am getting a bit off the topic. LOLOL I truly enjoyed your post Ginny, and will have to go back and reread it a few times when I'm looking for humor. And yes, I agree we sure don't need one more character to throw in the batch at this point. This recipe is doomed already! LOLOL
For some reason I feel Joan Bailey holds the key to the Pandora's box, e.g., all the answers to be revealed. Hold on Joan.....Maud and Roland are on there way home. George, you take good care of our favorite character.
"Could the reader of Possession be made to feel inferior to its author?"
Oh heavens NO! I barely know Victorian style writing from Modern and did not feel inferior. Frustrated, yes! I sensed from the very beginning Byatt was showing off, and in her interview she admits to it. She did not intend to be superior in her writing, she intended it to be a romance, of Victorian age, so she could use all her poems and such, because as she stated, she was frustrated with the 60's and wanted to go back to a time this book would be appreciated, yet bring it into the modern day, with a bit of comedy thrown in. I sorta missed the comedy up to your last post Ginny. Ciao...
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Whatever the cause of her condition, it sounds like Ellen wouldn't let Randolph come near her on their wedding night or ever. It also sounds like he has always been very considerate of her about that.
Perhaps his telling Christabel that Ellen would not be harmed by his and Christabel's physical relationship has to do with his thinking that Christabel would not be taking Ellen's place since Ellen doesn't have a physical relationship with him. I'm just trying to interpret what he may have meant.
There isn't evidence that his love for Ellen diminished as he loved Christabel but he may have come to know and regret (or not; we don't know one way or the other) that their involvement caused others to be hurt. The fact that he and some others of his time did not hold religious beliefs would not have caused them to be any less caring.
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Dear Ginny,
Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Freeee. . . . . . . was a funny (at first confusing) metaphor.
And it took me some minute to recognize the rhythm and the feeling from long gone childhoods innocent games.
But there is a relevance there: I am free to search for something hidden in this great novel and myself.
I have found out that I am not educated or cultivated enough to play in the same league as you lot.
Nevertheless, it is very stimulating to read your comments and realize that they very often are identical with mine.
I think that Ms. Byatt is playing with us. I'm sure that she has had great fun writing this tall tale, showing off her brilliant handling of the poets from the time. Imitating their style and making great pastiches, full of love and admiration.
But of course trying to give a look into the academic world and show us that in the end we are all looking and striving for something. It's in the human nature to have a dream of some sort and here you have all kind of desires: fame, glory, to get hold of the Holy Grail, possession and over all love and nearness. The big loser is Ellen Ash. Devoted wife, poor lover.
The other week the Swedish TV had an investigation of how women with the disease "vestibulitis" are mistreated. When it comes to the unfortunate Mrs. Ellen Ash it suddenly struck me that she might have been suffering from that. I have never heard about that disease before. Have you? A woman suffering of this, is incapable to make physical love without great pain and the pain can be more or less constant. Am I happy to be a man?
Ginny dearest. I really am sorry to let you down. You are (for me) the Wonder woman. Reading, editing and commenting everything we are thinking. That's an amazing job. And you also make me (us) feel equal. I certainly hope that this is not the last word from you and I promise you that I'll find you and mail you again.
With love and affection
Ollie, Ollie
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What interesting thoughts, Olle. You are in the "same boat" with all of us. Please don't feel that your reading of the book is any less than ours whose first language is English. We are having difficulty too. I am amazed at your skill with the English language.
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I have been reading Peter Hopkirks marvelous books about 19th century India, China, Russia, Pakistan, etc. I was trying to explain these books to several of the people I have lunch with. None of them had heard of the Silk Road. I couldn't believe it -- why had they never heard of it and why did I know of it? Know I am reading this book and realize how little I know of literature. I had heard the names of most of the authors and had read some of them but couldn't recall much about them. My smugness about being the great know-it-all has taken a beating reading this book.
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Feeling inferior? let's see ??? Nope, guess not!
I think the reasons Blanche killed herself are explained in the letter she left.
As in other mental illnesses, it was apparently a cry for attention and love.
As a reader, this ploy was annoying to me, but many authors use it:
kill off a character whenever you don't know what to do with her otherwise.
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Ollie Ollie, you are such a HOOT! I can't imagine trying to read this in another language, it's bad enough in English. Great point on the television show, so you and Marcie both see Ellen perhaps as not participating physically or happily physically in the marriage. Interesting.
I am so glad to see you here, now come right on back again and give your Swedish opinion. Gumtree, in Australia, has just asked what people in other countries reading in translation think of this and HERE you are, how do you like her compared to her sister?
Bella I got up thinking I should not have made that comparison between sisters based on one NY Times article. I think I'll reread a bio of both before I assign the characters in the book to them. I am heartened to hear of the results of your own reading of Byatt's interviews however, (because they support my supposition) hahaaa.
Sally, the Silk Road? Loved this: My smugness about being the great know-it-all has taken a beating reading this book.
Love it, so you're thinking Burgass is right. Mippy and Bella say no way, but admit to feeling frustrated over Byatt.
For my part, I admire learning and it seems that Byatt has a lot of it, but the presentation is maddening, so no I don't feel inferior (pearls before swine syndrome I guess), for what's truly there in learning I am in admiration, for the way it's presented, like her sister, I am in frustration and fury half the time.
I got up thinking how much I am enjoying this book discussion (and not the book). I believe this is the first time (seems like it) I have not read the book several times before discussing in parts. This time I really wanted the feeling of being one giant brain together, reacting, as a reader will, to the twists and turns.
I don't know what's coming and have but will not watch the film adaptation till we're though. Let's discuss, at the end, those who have or can get the film, for a day or so any differences we see in the film treatment?
I got up thinking about EVIDENCE, it's all over your posts.
I don't think there is any evidence that he engaged in sex with Bertha or other servants, and none that Ellen thought that of him.
Chapter 15 is a very dubious chapter. Everything depends on the credibility of the narrator. No sources are cited.
We've been given evidence that they have enjoyed many years of a happy life together.
Whatever the cause of her condition, it sounds like Ellen wouldn't let Randolph come near her on their wedding night or ever.
There isn't evidence that his love for Ellen diminished as he loved Christabel
I think you've hit on the very subject and subtext, the main theme of the book, expressed quite early on, on page 56. The author is too clever not to have summed up the entire thing in the initial chapters, but cryptically, bafflingly.
"Well," she said, "the dates fit. You could make up a whole story. On no real evidence. It would change all sorts of things, LaMotte scholarship. Even ideas about Melusina. That Fairy Topic. It's iintriguing."
That's the theme of the book, in my opinion. Evidence, or more importantly, the lack of it.
It's a satire on literary criticism and those who practice it. Marcie mentioned Ash and Christabel are like a Fairy Tale. Isn't the entire book? It's one big Fairy Tale with the cardboard characters all runnning about, it's Wonderland, 'twas brillig, and nothing is what it seems. All of the seekers, the literary scholars, I believe, not having read a word past 17 will be found to have manufactured "evidence," some of them deliberately, some of them earnestly, some of them whatever, all of them will look foolish and wrong. It's a satire. Intended to be funny. ON literary scholarship. We'll see no more evidence than what's on these pages, who is the author of any of them?
I got up thinking of Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay. Are you familiar with it? It's a satire in the form of drawings and text on modern archaeology, parodying both (but not both by name only by combination and allusion), Heinrich Schliemann and Howard Carter, two very different archaeologists and the discovery of Tut's Tomb, or in this case the Toot 'n Come On Motel in the year 4022 A.D.. It's absolutely hilarious.
This is, in my opinion, a prose version of the same thing. We will find no hard evidence and any conclusions we are now drawing are based on what she's seeded here like the bread crumbs for Hansel and Gretel. Too bad half of them are missing, but that's no mistake. I think you're all picking up on it indirectly, but that's what I think today, tomorrow may be different. Love it.
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Mippy what an intreresting supposition, that Byatt didn't know what to do with Blanche's character so she had her kill herself, get rid of the character? What do you all think? Why is Blanche in here? Why Bertha?
The exercise here presented, in identifying the poetic "voice" of Ash from LaMotte, has proven to be extremely instructive. I found "La Motte" to have two stylistic patterns which identify "her" immediately. It's when these are absent that it becomes more difficult, take a stab at these, who wrote them?
A.
"This rock was covered with a vivid pelt
Of emerald mosses, maiden hairs and mints
Drabbling dark crowns and sharply-scented stems
Amongst the water's peaks and freshenings."
B.
"From which descends a glossy cone
A mirror-spire that mocks its own.
Bewteen these two the mackerel sails
As did the swallow in the vales
Of summer air , and he too sees"
C.
"Beating the lambent bath to diamond-fine
Refracting lines of spray, a dancing veil
Of heavier water on the breathless air."
D.
"Or never-melted mountains of green ice
Or hot dark secret places in the steam
Of equatorial forests, where the sun
Strikes far above the canopy, where men"
If we can see the difference, we will be able to see what Ellen saw in Melusina that made her so upset. I see it now. It's the same voice, to me, but the STYLE is different.
Most of the time LaMotte rhymes. It's very difficult to find parts where she does not. And her verse is sing-song, it's a particular rhythmic pattern, iambs, it's iambic pentameter for the most part and the rhythm is very strong.
She also uses lots of dashes ------ big ones, especially as her work goes on. Many revisions of Melusina, huh? We should be able to tell them apart, can we?
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PS: Anybody know whose shells those are in the heading? Whose "Cabinet of Curiosities?"
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I'm beginning to look at the book as a 'cabinet of curiosities.' There must be something in it for everyone, no matter what the interest. It certainly has taken me back to the Yorkshire moors and beaches. Such eloquent things are said about it, even the strong winds are made to sing and dance and to liberate ones mind, but kept me from getting out of the car at times. But it can be breath takingly beautiful. I'm with these people in spirit.
Ginny, that's a wonderful exercise, attempting to distinguish between her and his lines. Beyond the stylistic differences, it's easy to see what drew them together. Something fateful about this strange liason.
With some of the literary pieces, as well as the journals and letters, I'm inclined to let Maud look for the meanings. I trust her judgement. But even she feels overwhelmed at times and exclaims, after several days of looking for clues along with Roland:
I just want to look at something, with interest, and without layers of meaning. Something new.
And off they go, she and Roland, to Boggle Hole. They have spent several days looking and finding words and things that will prove that Christabel was there with Ash. Strange words, brooches, etc. But on this day the two of them just wander, and do some beach combing.
A peculiarity of that beach is the proliferation of large rounded stones...shiny black, sulphurous yellow, a kind of old potato blend of greenish waxy, sandy white or shot with a kind of rosy quartz. p292
Fast forward to page 312. Or, more correctly, go back in time. And we find Ash and Christabel on the same beach:
On that shore can be found round stones of many kinds of rocks black basalt, various coloured granites, sandstones and quartz. She was delighted by these, she filled the picnic basket with a heavy nest of them..."I shall take them home," she said, and use them to prop doors and weigh down sheets of my huge poem, huge at least in mass of paper.
Doorstops and paperweights! I had to shudder when I suddenly remembered having read about round stones once before...on page 235.
"What happened to Blanche?"
"She drowned herself. She jumped from the bridge, at Putney - with her clothes wetted and her pockets full of big round stones
Blanche is crucial to the plot and her death must have consequences for Christabel before too long. Blanche had found a life with Christabel and could not live without her.
My favorite allusion. Christabel and Ash being served dinner by Mrs Cammish, a tall woman with the heavy-browed frown of the Northmen in the Bayeux Tapestry.
http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/
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I'm beginning to look at the book as a 'cabinet of curiosities.'
Hahha, and so it is. Great parallels! So MANY! I am so glad you liked the exercise and found it useful.
Bayeux Tapestry! I absolutely love that thing. One of the highlights of one of my trips was seeing the original, in the new museum: they do it perfectly. You are in these long long lines and then you finally get to it but on the way you walk past and they explain every panel. IF you take the time, most people are in a total hurry. Now that I know what it IS and how much I could have understood I'd like to do it again. I was relying on the audio which did not actually explain all.
I'm glad to hear that even more will be revealed about Blanche and the plot, can't wait to read it. On the texts everybody is silent, is that because you, like me, can't tell them apart without the rhyming?
Because they are all Byatt's voice?
I think that's the case and I notice as she goes on how much more sing song LaMotte becomes, how much shorter and how many dashes and how many rhymes.
I had quite a time finding prose selections and I copied them and the page number and who said it, wrote the answers and covered them up.
Here's what I think, not remembering one answer and why:
A.
"This rock was covered with a vivid pelt
Of emerald mosses, maiden hairs and mints
Drabbling dark crowns and sharply-scented stems
Amongst the water's peaks and freshenings."
There's no da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH which is iambic pentameter and what LaMotte uses.
I'd say this is Ash. Remember I don't remember who did what, so that's my thought this morning. Drabbling dark crowns: in meter of poetry written like DRAB bling dark CROWNS | uu|
no u| u| u| u| where u means an unstressed syllable and | shows a stress.
B.
"From which descends a glossy cone
A mirror-spire that mocks its own.
Between these two the mackerel sails
As did the swallow in the vales
Of summer air , and he too sees"
This one rhymes, and it's da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH, this is LaMotte.
C.
"Beating the lambent bath to diamond-fine
Refracting lines of spray, a dancing veil
Of heavier water on the breathless air."
lambent bath to diamond fire...BEATING THE ....|uu
hmm I'd say Ash there's no da DAH
D.
"Or never-melted mountains of green ice
Or hot dark secret places in the steam
Of equatorial forests, where the sun
Strikes far above the canopy, where men"
This one's got a rhythm when you read it, but it does not rhyme. It's possible I cut off a rhyme, notice that the last sentence is not finished. But there's no rhyme. It's possible this is Ash but there's a rhythm in the words, it's not da DAH but it's a rhythm, I'll say LaMotte.
Or maybe an Ash influenced (written) LaMotte? That's what I meant when I said Ellen saw him in Melusina. I could be wrong. I probably am. What do you all see?
I'm with Maude, TELL us already what YOU mean, this is not rocket science. hahahaa (Don't you HATE it when somebody says that?)
Love it.
What are YOUR thoughts today?
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...where men dream/scheme/preen? LaMotte
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Ginny/Mippy, "Byatt didn't know what to do with Blanche's character so she had her kill herself, get rid of the character? What do you all think? Why is Blanche in here? Why Bertha?
I don't think Byatt would not know what to do with a character and then just kill them off. I think she has a reason for each character in the book and it will become clear as we read on. Blanche was to show that Christabel had a relationship with another woman, and I feel because of her betrayal and going off with Ash was more than Blanche could handle emotionally. I think Christabel is going to have to carry that burden once she returns and learns of the suicide. That in and of its self may be what ends Ash and Christabel's relationship. Christabel has numerous times made it known she believes in God and entering heaven is a concern of hers. Having this affair with Ash is going to seem small sin, to knowing Blanche killed herself because of Christabel's actions. I am NOT holding Christabel responsible for Blance's suicide, but I sense Christabel will hold herself responsible. (Jonathon seems you and I are agreeing once again, I am shocked! LOLOL)
I still feel Bertha's child may turn out to be one of these modern day characters, a descendant of Ash. Because Ash is obsessed about life continuing it would tie in to that theme.
Sorry I have been absent, my day care was rather overwhelming these past two days. I look forward to the next three days of quiet and calm so I can read the next chapters. I really can't wait and am beginning tonight. Ginny I did notice that Christabel does like to rhyme her poems, and I do see that she tells a story of her own life in her poems. Ash has a tendency to rattle on and on and on in his poems so I haven't cared to read them much. Be back to check in later, til then .....Ciao
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Wow,. I missed two of them and now that I look I can definitely see why!
A. Page 320
"This rock was covered with a vivid pelt
Of emerald mosses, maiden hairs and mints
Drabbling dark crowns and sharply-scented stems
Amongst the water's peaks and freshenings."
There's no da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH which is iambic pentameter and what LaMotte uses.
I'd say this is Ash.
That was right, no da DAH da DAH da DAH
B. Page 149
"From which descends a glossy cone
A mirror-spire that mocks its own.
Between these two the mackerel sails
As did the swallow in the vales
Of summer air , and he too sees"
This one rhymes, and it's da DAH da DAH da DAH da DAH, this is LaMotte.
This one is right.
The next two are wrong:
C. Page 135:
"Beating the lambent bath to diamond-fine
Refracting lines of spray, a dancing veil
Of heavier water on the breathless air."
lambent bath to diamond fire...BEATING THE ....|uu
hmm I'd say Ash there's no da DAH
This is interesting. Here Roland is reading "Melusina," it was one of the few non rhyming excerpts from Melusina I could find. The meter is all over the place here. It doesn't say, does it, what edition of Melusina this is (weren't there 8?) and it's POSSIBLE this excerpt actually WAS written by Ash but it doesn't say so and again this one is listed as being Melusina by LaMotte!!
Oh wait! WAIT! Here it comes after Ellen's Journal listing of having "laid down Melusina having come trembling to the end."
Oh my goodness, my goodness, THIS is why you can't read the book too fast, here it is! THIS IS the passage, she recognizes Ash when supposedly LaMotte has written it. Holy smoke! Talk about stumbling innocently on the very thing, wow!!
WOW!!
D. Page 223 I totally missed this one:
"Or never-melted mountains of green ice
Or hot dark secret places in the steam
Of equatorial forests, where the sun
Strikes far above the canopy, where men"
THIS is Ash! Supposedly. In Swammerdam. And I do see now it's not strictly iambs, lots of different meter.
This is why I can't tell Byatt from Ash from La Motte. I truly think it's all one voice using or trying to use different forms and meter. But of course it does not rhyme, it's not in little couplets, there are no dashes and the rhythm (iambic pentameter is normal speech I think) is not as strict as anything else, but what a great exercise.
I was wrong on this one, it's supposed to be Ash. I love stuff like this. What fun!
Sally, no the next line is:
And other creatures never see her light.
No rhyme so that's why I left it out, Ash does not rhyme.
LOVE it!
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Bella,
I am NOT holding Christabel responsible for Blanche's suicide, but I sense Christabel will hold herself responsible
I sort of have a problem with where the guilt needs to be placed in the case of suicide. Poor Blanche. As Mippy says her reason's in her letter. Who was it who filled their pockets with rocks and drowned, another very famous author? Virginia Woolf? We just read about it in another book discussion, I can't recall.
Other than Mary Wollstonecraft. (who was she?) She left a note saying she could not pay her debts (page 236), that's Christabel's fault if they had an understanding (how long WAS this trip Christabel and Ash went on, anyway?) and she was a "superfluous person of no utility," (page 236 for the suicide note).
She died in June of 1860. We need to try to keep what few dates are here separate.
Just because the two women were living together I don't think we can assume a homosexual relationship. They were like creative minds, one had a small inheritance and supported the household. Perhaps they formed a friendship, attachment. Hard to figure why Christabel just left Blanche to the debts unless of course this was a long loong LONG trip.
So what guilt would we say Christabel actually has here? The coroner thinks Blanche was of unsound mind at the time, women tending to be hysterical. ("being known for strong and irrational alterations of temperament.")
A lot of suicides or so I've read, produce a lot of anger in those left behind and sometimes it's kind of a "I told you so" type of thing, now you'll be sorry." I don't know anything about suicide personally, thank God, (and thus far we know almost nothing about their home life) but if Christabel left Blanche with no income or penny to her name alone with no word or provision then perhaps the guilt is a bit more than imagined, what do you all think?
How culpable is Christobel at this point do you think (knowing only what we know so far) in the suicide of Blanche? What alternatives would Blanche have actually had?
Christabel is beginning to look kind of as Ash described her physically.
__________________________
Bellamarie, I totally missed this: and I do see that she tells a story of her own life in her poems.. Good one!
__________________________
Ok we've got a few days before we move on to the next section and I imagine you all frantically reading to (1) catch up or (2) find out what happened. I'm moving on tonight myself, but till then, what is meant here?
6. "A clean empty bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked." (page 290). What do you make of this dual dream of Roland and Maude?
So Roland and Maude BOTH dream of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room where nothing is asked or to be asked. Hmm, that's pretty strange, what a strange image and imagine the coincidence: BOTH of them dream of this. I can say I never have, what does this mean?
Possession and the various meanings of the word is a theme running thru the book and here it comes out again as Ash speaks of Christabel.
How many different meanings does "possession" HAVE anyway and what does this mean?
8. "He would teach her she was not his possession" (page 304). What does this mean?
He's going to teach HER? He's so totally full of himself it makes you want to barf.
What are your own reactions on these or any other subject today?
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Oh our tricksey author. This is the kind of thing that drives me wild. Just wild.
Mary Wollstonecraft did not drown by throwing self off a bridge with stones in her pocket. No stones. She weighed herself down by getting her clothes wet first and walking back and forth. She was rescued and did not die.
She was devastated by losing her friend to marriage. The friend's husband took the friend, always in precarious health, off to Europe fpr a cure, and the friend died but Mary Wollstonecraft found employment as a governess and went on, writing etc. She died in childbirth or rather of septicemia.
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And yes, it was Virginia Woolf who committed suicide with rocks in her pockets:
On 28 March 1941, Woolf committed suicide. She put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, then walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself. Woolf's skeletonised body was not found until 18 April 1941. Wikipedia which may be as factual as our Trickesy Byatt.
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The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. everyone is welcome to join in.
(http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/possession/insectvictorian.jpg)
Week IV: "These Revenants" (page 420)
Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
Characters and Plot : First Five Chapters (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/readerguides/possession/possession_characters.html) by our Readers
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Possessionline2.jpg)
Schedule of Discussion:
June 21-27 Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Possessionline2.jpg)
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/For.jpg)
Week IV: June 21-27 Chapters 18-23: Eternity and Revenants
1. "To whom it may concern:" (pages 332ff) What do you think of Blanche now that you've read her will/ suicide note? Are you more in sympathy with her than you were? How can you reconcile this note with her visit to Ellen Ash? What, realistically, were her options? Do you think she will attain the immortality she seeks?
2. "Do you not hear the little thing, dancing?" (page 392). What happened in the story told by Gode about the miller's daughter and the sailor? What do you think the "blood on the straw" signifies? (Page 388) Why do you think this story is included here?
3. Now we find out what happened to Christabel, or do we? Where did she disappear to when she left Sabine and her father? What do you think happened to the baby and why?
4. "I have seen Mrs. Lees Crowned with Stars, a true Persephone, a light in Darkness.....I have, it seems, the power of Scrying..." (page 419. "And then I would ask you, if you are wise, why those who come from, from that world--those visitants, those Revenants, those Loved Ones--why are they all so Singly and Singularly Cheerful in their mode of address?" (Page 420).
The theme of the desire for immortality is brought forcefully home again in the seance sequences attended by Ash and Christabel. The entire section resounds with "revenants" and Proserpine, (returned from the dead).
"Where is the child?" Tell me what they have done with the child?" page 429). How does Ash's testimony of his "Gaza Exploit" (page 425ff) differ from that of Mrs. Lees? Whom or what do you think Christabel is looking for? Why would Ash seem so vehement in his reactions?
5. "Of course what we hope for and at the same time fear, is some major discovery that will confirm, or disprove, or change at the least, a lifetime's work.' (page 417). "...he had a vivid imagination....his major asset in his craft." (page 415).
Now that the game's afoot and all the academics are getting involved in the chase, too, sometimes in parallel pairs, we find out more about them, sometimes surprisingly so. It's turning into the Keystone Kops. Which one surprised you the most? Which if any of them seem motivated for the right reasons? Who are you rooting for?
6. So much mention of color in this section, do any of the colors seem to symbolize anything? Why does Christabel wear green boots? What can be the significance of "white," first in the bed dreams and now in Christabel's face?
7.
a... What is a "box bed" in Brittany, mentioned in Sabine's Journal?
b.... Leonora Stern's husband had been a "happily meticulous New Critic, and had totally failed to survive Leonora and the cut-throat ideological battles of structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction and feminism" (page 337). What does this mean?
8.. How does Christabel make Sabine "live a lie? "(page 403)
9. "A heavy Breath
One two and three---
And then the lapsed
Eternity." (page 412).
To what does this poem of Christabel LaMotte refer? How many instances are there in this chapter of death mentioned? Are they pointed foreshadowing do you think, or could they be red herrings?
10. Who is "Geraldine" in Mummy Possest? (page439)? What does the constant repetition of the word "widdershins" remind you of? What is the meaning and relevance of the title Mummy Possest?
(http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Possessionline2.jpg)
Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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It's funny, isn't it, how sometimes our discussions become interconnected! Mary Wollstonecraft died shortly (probably from septicemia) after giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of "Frankenstein" which is the subject of another discussion here.
"Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason." a quote from Wikipedia -, not always a bad source!!
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I was thinking the same thing, JoanR, about our upcoming discussion of Frankentein.
The book says that Blanche learned from the failed drowning attempt of Mary Wollstonecraft. "She obviously noted that Wollstonecraft found it hard to sink, because of her clothes floating." (p 235). So Blanche filled her pockets with big round stones.
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There's very real tragedy as well as sadness in this unusual book, isn't there? Blanche's suicide does bring one up short with its reminder that it wasn't just about editing and researching the lives of the dead poets. Christabel had rescued Blanche from a miserable life, how tragic that now the stones she brought back as souvenirs, caused the death of her friend.
Too, too depresssing. Let's look for some humor. How about Blackadder 'composing a footnote', at the beginning of Chapter 17, as part of his editing the works of Ash. Reading what he has written and then changing his mind and erasing, etc. Funny isn't it. Just the same, there are curious things mentioned in the footnote, having to do with Ash's interest in spiritual seances.
Ash could never have been the father of Bertha's child. I believe Chapter 15 proves that. A careful reading of this unusual tryst convinces me that both Christabel and Randolph were virgins going into unknown territory. Randolph's marriage with Ellen had never been consummated. Now with Christabel he is very hesitant. Both already thinking of regrets. Are you afraid, she asks him. Well, no. He offers her the chance to change her mind. She declines. Insists it has become a necessity. That impresses Ash, and shortly later he can tell her:
I have an idea for a poem about necessity. As you said on the train. So seldom in a life do we feel that what we do is necessary in that sense - gripped by necessity - I suppose death must be like that. If it is given to us to know its approach, we must know we are now complete - do you see, my dear - without further awkward choices, or the possibility of lazy denial. Like balls rolling down a smooth slope.
You may turn back at any point, if - he tells her.
I have said. I cannot.
Always the poet. To go further than Wordsworth, in the search for new subject matter (p301) I believe he deserves a better fate than the ash can. Christabel, despite her fairy telling, felt a greater need. Now we would say she felt her biological clock ticking.
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Curious how Val keeps showing up. Serves almost like a reality check, doesn't she? And here in Chapter 17, she has something to say about footnotes:
Honestly, (she tells Fergus Wolff) I've lost interest in all his footnotes and things and all those dead letters from dead people about missing trains and supporting Copyright Bills and all that stuff. Who wants to spend their life in the British Museum basement? It smells as bad as Mrs Jarvis's flat up there, full of cat piss. Who wants to spend their life reading old menus in cat piss?
and she admits:
I wasn't being all that nice to him.
I don't make him happy.
Will Roland remain true to her? Will he ever find a job?
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Ginny, you are so good with rhyme and meter. I am awed by your detailed analysis and your hypothesis that Ellen recognized her husband's writing style in Christabel's poem.
Jonathan, I am with you in your sympathetic reading of Ash and Lamotte and their belief in the "necessity" of their closer bonds.... you quote Ash..."as necessary as death."
The character of Val does pull us out of the ivory towers. I do think she provides some humor in the way that she
dresses and acts at home and then makes up so very differently for work. The descriptions of Blackadder are often humorous. I enjoyed the following: "His scholarly method, furthermore, is primarily one of negation. Much of his time was spent wondering whether or not to erase things. He usually did."
We have lots to look forward to in the next sections.
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haha, well I'm impressed, too, having scored 50 % on my own challenge, and may score 0 on what she really saw. I am looking forward, too, to the next section.
Val IS a strange character in here. I am not sure what to make of her. Or why SHE like Bertha and Blanche, is here. If she feels so devalued by Roland, since it appears they are not married, why does she stay, then? Is this a character with "masochist" on her billboard walking occasionally across the stage?
I've begun to think of this as a huge play.
I've reread the Ellen bit where she first encounters Blanche, who writes for an audience. Boy that poor woman has headaches. She seems to have one before Blanche even comes, dismisses her at first as just another fan writing her to get to Him, but note the headaches which ensue here as well. Good descriptions, I've never had migraines but have heard this extreme sense of smell, is typical, and the lights. She says on page 250 that Blanche does not seem overly hysterical and takes to her bed at the same time. "The headache introduces one to a curious twilight deathly world in which life and death seem no great matter."
So the headaches seem to provide her with a sort of nirvana, an escape, a place she can go willingly or unwillingly when the stress gets to be too much.
Then she takes laudanum from the doctor which was common I think and a type of cocaine, am I right?
She says "No writer has written well enough of the Bliss of sleep." Of course of you discount Shakespeare, and I think Coleridge, tho she says the opposite, did as well. Is all this passage, then, Ellen obscuring the truth which we've been told to look out for, and is that a clue to it?
Sherlock Holmes is needed here. But she's right about the Bliss of sleep, and most of us know about one wakeful night at this point in our lives.
"the bliss of relaxing one's grip of the world and warmly and motionlessly moving into another. Folded in by curtains, closed in by the warmth of blankets, without weight it seems----"
We can see what headaches do for her.
Blanche comes, and.. "That matter is now I hope quite at an end and wholly cleared up."
(251).
"A poet is not a Divine being."
So poets have faults she's drifting away with drugs and headaches, and here comes Herbert Baulk again! An admirer? What's he doing there night and day? Another parallel, I guess this time with Val and Fergus?
Bertha leaves, Ellen is "suspended almost as Snow White lay maybe, in the glass casket, alive but out of the weather, breathing but motionless." She feels she needs to be "quick and lively" tho when he gets back.
And the E word appears in Blanche's cryptic letter to Ellen, whose own letters or journal has fallen maddeningly silent: Evidence.
"You did wrong to keep my Evidence." writes Blanche as Roland and Maude read. And as Bella says, what is it?
Whatever it is, it's physical, not hearsay, it's something which can be "kept," and Ellen, already beset with doubt about how she handled Bertha, now has this accusation of wrong to deal with, too, when the bearer of that accusation has brought splitting headache bringing news. Poor thing.
What could it BE which would prove Ash and Christabel together?
I think today it must be a letter from Christabel saying she's going away, with Ash, what else could it be? Or maybe some personal affect of Ash.
On 257, forget the meter, Roland and Maude think they have stumbled on what Ellen saw: the Hob. Ash wrote his wife about a Hob, and Christabel wrote a tale about one. Maybe it's the HOB!
And water fountains. And their eureka moment comes on page 258 with our heart's ASH growing pale.
So they are "possessed" ("I feel quite taken over by this") by the quest, the search as "literary detectives" for the truth.
It's a nice literary mystery and at the end of 17 Fergus has managed to get the other two external principal players Blackadder and Cropper, in on it, now it's a race.
My question is how long were they gone and did Christabel leave any word she was leaving, what did she tell Blanche?
What last thoughts on anything up to this section do any of you have today before we move on?
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As we're leaving this section, those are Rembrandt's shells in the heading from his workshop in Amsterdam.
Sally I keep reading your post about Ash and death. I wonder if all authors hope to obtain immortality in their writings. Some do! And some don't. An interesting point.
Oh and Coleridge didn't write about the Bliss of Sleep?
Part V
"Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,
That slid into my soul.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Maybe it's not blissful enough? Like Cropper I had to memorize huge swaths of poems, this was one of them, or the greater part of it.
Such a shame nobody memorizes any more.Quick, without looking, what can you recite? Half the time our memory remembers one thing and it turns out another, that's so fun. You have no idea how many people have INSISTED to me over the years that Caesar's Gallic Wars begins Omnis Gallia. hahaha
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Randolph had planned to go on an excursion with his friend Tugwell who is now too busy to go. Since there is no other information about what he said to Ellen about the trip, we're left to believe that she thinks that Randolph is going alone, without Tugwell.
In the letters at the end of Chapter 10 Randolph speaks of "a week or two" alone together with Christabel. He also writes, "I do not wish to do irreparable damage to your life. I have so much rational understanding left to me, as to beg you--against my own desires, my own hope, my own true love--to think before and after. If by any kind of ingenuity it may be done satisfactorily so that you may afterward live as you wish--well then--if it may--this is not a matter for writing. I shall be at the Church at noon tomorrow. I send my love now and always."
There is a letter from Christabel:
"It is done. BY FIAT. I spoke Thunder--and said--so it shall be--and there will be no questions now--or ever--and to this absolute Proposition I have--like all Tyrants--meek acquiescence.
No more Harm can be done by this than has already been done-- not by your will--though a little by mine--for I was (and am) angry."
Christabel was furious with Blanche for intercepting a number of Randolph's letters and (Blanche told Christabel) destroying them. She has decreed something to Blanche (that she is going away for a short while?) and lets her know that no questions are to be raised.
As to what Blanche then told Ellen and what "evidence" she showed her, we don't know. In Chapter 12 Roland says "I think the only certain thing is that Blanche told Ellen something. Showed her the stolen letters, probably? I want to think Blanche did this because Christabel had gone to Yorkshire with Ash. It fits in beautifully. But it isn't proof."
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Ellen suffers from migraines and doesn't want physical intimacy with Randolph. I don't think we can blame her for these conditions but I don't think we can blame Randolph for them either.
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What an interesting topic, Marcie: blame. I don't think we can blame Ash for them either, but I don't think he's blameless in other areas.
What an eye opener this next section starting tomorrow is! I couldn't resist, had to know, and read the rest of the book too. Now I return to this section more puzzled than ever hahahaa.
What would you all say is the #1 question of our new section tomorrow?
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A box-bed is a bed having the form of a large box with wooden roof, sides, and ends, opening in front with two sliding panels or shutters; often used in cottages in Scotland: sometimes also applied to a bed arranged so as to fold up into a box. WIKI
Have seen pictures of beds set into a wall with doors or shutters. Usually think of cold climates for this type of bed.
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Box -Beds : Where did I read recently that boxbeds were used in areas where predatory animals such as wolves were about. The mother would place her babes or little ones to sleep in a boxbed and shut them in then go about her work knowing they were safe - but definitely for cold climates - please don't tell me that I read it in Possession
In Wuthering Heights isn't the bed that Lockwood slept in -Cathy's old bed - I thought that was a box bed but that may be wrong.
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Thank you Sally and Gum. (oh yeah we've got the box bed going here in Possession). I seem to have some vague remembrance of seeing something about one but isn't it interesting at the lack of photos, and writings, etc., on the internet about them? But safe from wolves, yes and predators. As safe perhaps as a glass coffin.
I've always loved those beds with curtains all around but for some reason they remind me of coffins, I guess a box bed would do/ be the same effect? Very dark and claustrophobic and hot unless as you say it was a cold climate. I seem to remember, however, having seen one, somewhere, somehow.
This section is something else! Lots of action and interesting characters (some of them surprised me) and movement. I could not wait and finished the book to find out once and for all what was going on. So now I return to THIS section in a greater state of perplexity than I was.
What is she doing here and why?
Sally that book on Possession is somewhat viewable on the internet in the Look Inside feature on Amazon, it's quite interesting. I wish I had it. What does she say about color here in these chapters specifically? Her take on the meaning? I can't get over the greens. Christabel has green feet, her feet (apparently always) are shod in green. (Surely that was not a normal Victorian thing?), and in one point reference is made to a snake or serpent tail or perhaps a Melusina type being. GREEN footwear in Victorian times?
She's Melusina, is she? I guess I need to reread that legend. Or no, maybe her own poem which apparently changed 8 times.
Green and white. Her face is white. What do these colors mean because at the end they seem to change? White beds. You'd think green was the color of spring. Could this be in keeping with the Proserpina legend? Where does Merlin come in if he does?
Is this the Superbowl of Fairy Tales in itself?
This is the kind of book that you wish you had a Guide through the Forest for. :) In other words, a book that SOMEBODY (and you know it won't be you because you don't care enough to pursue the billion and one references and allusions) has done an authoritative study on, or has an opinion of... OR some expert has given their "authoritative" opinion. And we know by now, I hope, what Byatt thinks of them: made up and probably wrong.
I'm struck this morning by the behavior of Christabel while expecting. What do you make of it? Seems to want to deny the very presence OF the baby. I think here she and Ellen, to me, seem to have a lot in common.
How do you explain her behavior?
Do you think people in the future will study Byatt (it appears they already are!) like these scholars study Ash?
I think the biggest theme in this section is immortality, they've all got the bug, it appears, in various forms. Ash, Blanche with her pitiful will wanting to be appreciated by later art lovers and as a person..."here I am a superfluous creature. There I shall know and be known." She even brings in the "darkling light," paraphrasing Biblical sayings. Sometimes I think Byatt's obvious retention of a wide reading background somewhat sometimes overburdens her prose. Then there's Mrs. Lees and Christabel. Cropper with his Stant collection and fear of all his contributions, his reputation, his immortality, being proved wrong, and Ellen, who turns out...but that's next week.
But at least here the plot seems to rise to the surface and the poetry and fairy tales and allusions are clinging on determinedly, for dear life, just as plentiful, but pushed back, somewhat.
There's a lot to discuss here, if you're caught up, what do you think?
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Behold! The Breton Box Bed: http://www.oldandinteresting.com/breton-box-beds.aspx
(http://www.oldandinteresting.com/images/finistereboxbed.jpg)
(http://www.oldandinteresting.com/images/bretonlitclos.jpg)
Interesting!
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Looking up the symbolism of colors in literature: green - fertility; white - not only virginal but also clinical and cold -
BURGASS: There is a metaphorical cold. Maud has been associated with whiteness (chastity, untouchability) and an emotional lack of warmth. She is - like Christabel - a "chilly mortal." Red and white imagery is prevalent in fairy tales such as Snow White. In fairy tale stories the frozen ice princess would be warmed up by the prince, although in Byatt's fairy tale "Cold" an ice princess is liberated only by living in her proper element. The final scene of Roland and Maud has touches of the fairy tale.
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About box beds: I remember reading as a child a series of books about "Life Long Ago" (or some such title) in which box beds were described as necessary to keep out the cold drafts in homes heated only by fireplaces which would have had the fires either "banked" or gone out during the night. They were also used in small Dutch homes - either for reasons of tidiness or warmth. Just think, you wouldn't have to make up your bed - just close the doors!
You mention "green", Ginny. It does come up a lot but it's a color with all sorts of legendary and mystical overtones. Think of the Green Knight, little green men, the song "Greensleeves", fairy rings on the green etc. It's the color of life and sustenance!
I'm up to chapter 20, so the fate of the baby has not yet been divulged . Christabel seems to be amazingly stoic, if not actually cold, about it - in everything else so far she exhibits emotion, warmth, even passion - here it's almost as if she is trying to ignore the baby's existence.
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More on the subject of box-beds, quoted from a book by Pierre-Jakez Helias: The Horse Of Pride, Life in a Breton Village. Pub 1975.
The peasant civilizations that were shattered have left material proof of their existence - fields of ruins upon which antique dealers, second-hand dealers, cobblers and collectors of all types have swooped down. The whole of Brittany has become a huge repository of "curios,"...there are so many cupboards, box-beds, standing clocks, cradles, spinning wheels, settles and horse collars - indeed, almost everything made by hand that's usable, even in unexpected ways. And if they happen to be useless, they can serve as ornaments, like the wagon wheels embedded in garden gates and which turn instead of roll. A stable lantern sits enthroned in a drawing room next to a cartwheel made into a table lamp....Before sitting down on a worm-eaten charabanc seat, you can put your umbrella into a churn in the hallway and recomb your hair if you open the doors of a box-bed facade glued to the wall and which dresses up a mirror. Ah! Those box-beds, what a blessing!
I have seen some that have been transformed into coat racks, into bookcases, into sideboards or living-room bars, and into cabinets containing a phonograph, a radio, and a television set I even found one that had been turned into a lavatory to the great satisfaction, if not the great comfort, of those who use it. Another one serves as a dressing in a tailor's shop. Yet another conceals a screen for showing home movies. And the one that received the greatest tribute is today the frame for a well-known masterpiece worth millions.
I expect to read that Cropper, after using one as a concealing dark room, is taking it home with him. Just another way of holding him up to ridicule. The narrator is not always without predjudice about him.
What I find extremely interesting is that Byatt takes Christabel 'home' to Brittany to have her baby. Of far greater interest than the sticks of furniture are the myths and legends in which Christabel was cradled. And the dark night stories. Brittany, the meeting place of the real and the unreal. But that's wrong. It's the place where different worlds and times mesh. I find this section melodramatic.
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Green - I'm put in mind of the legends of the Green Man which is essentially a rural tradition celebrating the coming of the growing season -He's usually dressed in lush green foliage and gets ceremonially put to death at May time in order to bring about regeneration.
I've seen references which indicate that the Green Knight in Gawain may refer to the Green Man as the God that dies and is reborn.
So does the green in Christabel's attire symbolise regeneration and thus fit well with Ash's desire for some kind of immortality? But then what does green symbolise in relation to Maud who wears it frequently?
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From the seance sequences attended by Ash and Christabel. "Where is the child? Tell me what they have done with the child?
That's from question 4. This makes for a very dramatic scene in the movie version of POSSESSION. But I'm almost certaing that Ash glares at Christabel across the table and demands, What have YOU done with the child?
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Somewhere we were told that colors also serve as a language. The problem of white has come up repeatedly. White, it seems to me, is the most puzzling metaphor in the book. Blank page? Clean slate? Fresh beginning? No footnotes?
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Another green symbol: Epiphany
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This from BURGASS: Can anyone explain this?
A postmodern novelist has a problem with endings, as the narrator tells us (obliquely): “Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable.” Byatt also provides two endings, both of them happy in their way. She finds a compromise between coherence and closure and the postmodern game.
The beginning of the end of the novel is marked by Roland’s discovery of his poetic voice in Chapter 26. This chapter is headed by a long extract from Ash’s The Garden of Proserpina, which describes an edenic age of language when there was no distinction between words and things. “They made names and poetry/ The things were what they named and made them” This is truly a mythic age for a poststructuralist, for whom the orthodox theory of language admits only an arbitrary relation between a word and the thing in the world it describes. There is also a disquisition over several pages on the nature of writing and reading, the power of words. Roland is a literary critic, who does not simply dissect, but admires. As we have seen, this secondary and sometimes subvervient position, can dampen any primary creative impulse and Roland is also potentially inhibited by the dead-end of structuralist thought: “He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself.” But Roland’s reading of Ash proves to be inspirational “What had happened to him was that the ways in which it could be said had become more interesting than the idea that it could not.” The discovery of the poetic voice is crucial in respect to the central theme, possession. Unlike Blackadder, whose creative impulses have been long since stifled, Roland acquires, through some mystical process, a poetic voice. This is not a secondary critical voice, not even derivative of Randolph Henry Ash: Roland “began to think of words, words came from some well in him… He could hear, or feel, or even almost see, the patterns made by a voice he didn’t yet know, but which was his own.” When Roland finally goes public about his initial theft of Ash’s letter to the assembled party at Beatrice Nest’s house, it is described by the narrator as “the moment of dispossession, or perhaps the word was exorcism,” but he can let go because he now owns his poetic voice.
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Oh my heavens Ginny, I leave for a couple of days and you have gone on without me...lolol Wow! I just don't know where to begin with all your comments, questions and ideas in your last few posts. I almost felt like Byatt was posting here....tee hee, you do seem to be trying to trick us as you suspect Byatt of doing. Although, I must tell you that I don't see trickery as you do. I see Byatt meshing Ash and Christabel together. She for some reason wants us to think Ash either wrote or had some kind of input into Christabel's writings. Why would she do this?
Now, as for Blanche and Christabel's relationship, I am thinking possibly it was not of a sexual nature because on pg. 333 in Blanche's suicide letter she states under reason #3. "Third, failure of ideals. I have tried, initially with Miss LaMotte, and also alone in this little house, to live according to certain beliefs about the possibility, for independent single women, of living useful and fully human lives, in each others company, and without recourse to help from the outside world, or men. We believed it was possible to live frugally, charitably, philosophically, artistically, and in harmony with each other and Nature. Regrettably, it was not. Either the world was too fiercely inimical (unfriendly) to our experiment (which I believe it was) or we ourselves were insufficiently resourceful and strong minded (which I believe was also so, in both cases, and from time to time). It is to be hoped that our first heady days of economic independence, and the work we leave behind us, may induce other stronger spirits to take up the task and try the experiment and not fail. Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men or other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utter failure.
The two of them were women libbers, they wanted to prove that women can survive and succeed in this world without the income or relationship with the male. But, as she states, they both failed, which leads me to believe that Christabel gave into the emotional need for Ash, and Blanche was not able to survive economically without Christabel being there with her.
Good question Ginny, about just how long did Christabel leave Blanche on her own with no income or communication between them. Christabel had to have known Blanche could not survive without her. How could she leave and not provide for Blanche? Here is where Byatt has not convinced me of the entire charitable character of Christabel. She runs off with a married man, and she leaves her dearest friend behind with no means of support.
I find it a bit odd Blanche did not leave all her belongings to Christabel. Instead she left her the jet brooch of the two hands clasped in Friendship which Christabel had given to her, and the two paintings which she states, pg. 334 "Of these large works, two are the property of Miss Lamott. These are "Christabel before Sir Leoline" and Merlin and Vivien." She hopes they will help her to recall the happy times.[/i] Okay Ginny...I implore you to find such paintings and post, should they actually exist. lol
Ginny..."He would teach her she was not his possession" (page 304). What does this mean?
When I read that I surmised he wanted her to continue to feel free and independent. He did not want to cage her spirit, the thing he loved about her. She worried in being with him he would possess her and she would lose herself in him. I did not see it as him being arrogant, or full of himself, on the contrary, I saw him wanting to never allow her to be captured, possessed or feel weak, for loving him.
Okay up to this point I am just a tad bit upset with this book. It is full of contradictions where the characters are concerned. Byatt called it a comedy....I hardly have found much humor in it whatsoever. Its a bit of doom and gloom with confusion, and calamity peppered in. If it were a recipe, I'm not finding it palatable. I shall as my mother used to say to me when she put something new in front of me and I would wince, "You won't know if you like it until you try it." Well, I've tried 18 chapters so far, and am wincing and waiting for it to convince me its someting I would try again, or recommend on the menu to a friend.
Ginny, I do feel Ash, Byatt and Lamotte are all three in one. She has very artistically intertwined the styles, and themes and eliminated just enough so we don't see it, but I have had this feeling early on. They are three of one mind. Now how is that, for shall we use your word, a "tricksey" author. LOL
Be back in a bit...Ciao
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Egads... I was writing my post, I hit "post" and saw all of the ones before mine. Oh dear, I am at a loss, I am only up to ch. 19, so by all your posts I have learned a baby is on board, box beds, Ginny has finished the entire book and Kidsal is mentioning ch 26 is "the beginning of the end of the novel" and, " A postmodern novelist has a problem with endings, as the narrator tells us (obliquely): “Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable.” Byatt also provides two endings, both of them happy in their way. She finds a compromise between coherence and closure and the postmodern game. And Jonathon recalls in the movie, I'm almost certaing that Ash glares at Christabel across the table and demands, What have YOU done with the child?
For some reason I feel like I have just been told there really is NO Santa, after all the anticipation of waiting in line to give him my Christmas list.
So, I suppose if we are going to continue discussing chapters ahead I had better either get busy and read up to at least ch. 23, or like most of you, finish the book. Gads...where will I find the time, I thought I had two weeks left. Okay, I am off to see how far I can read this afternoon. Luckily, my last day care child leaves in ten minutes and I have no plans for the evening. Phew..NO moss grows under your feet. lolol
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#10. Geraldine in "Mummy Possest" is the medium in training at the seance.
Sorry I got ahead of myself referencing Chapter 26.
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Wow!~ What a fabulous burst of responses! Welcome back, Bellamarie! I'm proud of everybody here because THIS section is really an Alice in Wonderland journey.
I've been thinking about your posts all night but am having connectivity problems, or rather the satellite is. Maybe I should say I am, with all the repetition and swirling echoes and parallels.
Geraldine: medium in training!! Good one Kidsal! Why did I miss that? She's also, I just found by reading most of yesterday, in the Melusina different legends. These books of analysis are unbelievable. The literary experts are in danger of making themselves intro what Byatt is poking fun at.
Sally what does that passage from Burgass mean? W hat do the rest of you think? I got up thinking that if a writer needs somebody TO interpret for the reader then that writer is not clear. Why is the writer not clear is the question? Why?
My question for this section, having read to the end, is why? WHY?
I've printed that selection out, Sally and will ponder it further (so far pondering has done absolutely nothing), it may simply be a case of "pearls before swine," at first glance it seems to mean nothing. hahhaaa But Miss Piggy will persist!
I found another one by the Look Inside method (which you can do a screen shot of if it's in hieroglyphics as most of them seem to be), and found that Coleridge has Geraldine too, in his poem Christabel. Writing in "Melusine the serpent goddess in A. D. Byatt's Possession and in mythology, the author says " Coleridge describes Geraldine as a deathly woman in his unfinished poem "Christabel." Christabel was to have been the enchantress victim of Geraldine as Byatt has Coleridge in relation to MaMotte: Christabel "is a beautiful name and will I trust not to be a name of ill omen." Byatt gives the name Geraldine to the pupil of Mrs,. Lee's in Ash's poem "mummy Possest," where she is undergoing training in artfulness or deception in the spiritual dimension. This is the reverse world of women,"Where power flows upwards, as in the glass ball// Where left is right, and clocks go widdernshins,/ And women sit enthroned and wear robes." (410)
er...WHAT is the "reverse world of women?" Mummy Possest?" LaMotte? Melusina?
Is Melusina actually (in LaMotte's poetry) supposed to be a female empowerment type of thing? What do you make of this comment on Possessed?
When you can't understand the explanatory comments you begin to realize that it's true, nobody actually understands the WHY and the WHEREFORE of a lot of this book, some lie and some just pick a thread and go with it. Here's a female power thread, what does it apply to?
Blanche says we tried but we failed.
(Anybody except me who did not see that Possest was actually Possessed? What does that title mean? Looks a lot like posse in Latin, I was even mispronouncing it! I must add that title and its possible meaning to the questions).
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Jonathan, you are totally right, she's returned to her Breton roots, never particularly defined, to have a go at the innumerable legends and tales of Brittany. Good place to add them, like a 20 course dessert after a heavy meal.
Why are these tales here? What do they mean? More parallels, two bloods on straw, seems like somebody should have cried: hold! Enough!
Jonathan, melodramatic? I looked that up to be sure of the meaning:
Main Entry: melo·dra·ma
Pronunciation: \ˈme-lə-ˌdrä-mə, -ˌdra-\
Function: noun
Etymology: modification of French mélodrame, from Greek melos song + French drame drama, from Late Latin drama
Date: 1802
1 a : a work (as a movie or play) characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization b : the genre of dramatic literature constituted by such works
2 : something resembling a melodrama especially in having a sensational or theatrical quality
It's definitely a shift, and the end is more melodramatic by this definition than this part, and if I guess we were ever to see the character of Christabel, we'd see it now, but we don't? I don't. What do you all make of her strange behavior here? Pretending she's not pregnant? Two other women have to figure out she's the one letting out her dresses? Huh?
Where did she go for those two days? Where is the baby? Do you like her more or less than you did? She certainly seems to be in control here. Has your opinion changed about her now? Poor victim or?
So the movie, which I hope we can discuss for a day or two after the book, I have not viewed it yet, has Ash accusing Christabel, what have YOU done with the baby?
But in the book we don't really know IF that is Christabel who fainted at all. IF she is there at all?/ Why did she faint? We have to find it thru letters again, allusions. WHY can't the author say who it was?
How, has anybody reflected on this, does Ash know there WAS a baby in the first place?
More in a bit, have read and so enjoyed everything you've said, colors coming up, what a rich discussion you've made of it!
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I love the stuff on the bed. When we look back on this and ask ourselves what we have learned, that's one thing I can put in the plus column, thank you all.
Joan R and Kidsal, great stuff on the green color. I forgot about the Green heroes, there was also Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. So we have gold green and white here.
Sally I agree with Burgass (now I can understand that one) that Christabel seems cold here and Joan: Christabel seems to be amazingly stoic, if not actually cold, about it - in everything else so far she exhibits emotion, warmth, even passion - here it's almost as if she is trying to ignore the baby's existence.
Yes. Why, do you think? What's our reaction here, how can you deny the baby? Queen of Denial here or something else?
Oh good points, Jonathan: Somewhere we were told that colors also serve as a language. The problem of white has come up repeatedly. White, it seems to me, is the most puzzling metaphor in the book. Blank page? Clean slate? Fresh beginning? No footnotes?
Good point, white as metaphor, I wondered what that no footnotes meant and then when you get to the end, footnotes everywhere, all spurious.
I don't think, Bella, we'll find any paintings of Blanche's, but I am now wondering about the cover painting, the Beguiling of Merlin. She never really worked him in, did she, or, for that matter, Dr. Mesmer.
So many unravelled ends and languages. The language of colors the language of metaphor the language of allusion to Mythology, it's a regular Tower of Babel, isn't it?
Bella, Byatt also provides two endings, both of them happy in their way. She finds a compromise between coherence and closure and the postmodern game
What? I read to the end and don't see but one? sigh. When we get there, let's remember this and discuss it!
I see Byatt meshing Ash and Christabel together. She for some reason wants us to think Ash either wrote or had some kind of input into Christabel's writings. Why would she do this?
Good question, where do you see them woven together?
Can anyone decipher Burgass on Possession, quoted by Sally belopw? Let me go see what's said about David Byrne Jones and his painting of Merlin and...who?
A blizzard of questions and theories this morning, what struck YOU about this passage? Why is Ash so angry at the seance? What's the story by Gode about? Why is it here?
I find myself more in sympathy with Blanche than Chrisabel here who even resents the dog eating for Pete's sake. She says she should have left him behind. With whom?
Marcie indicates that Ash says he and Christabel were only together two weeks, kind of makes Blanche look odd. As Bella says, contradictions about characters. Why did she go to Ellen? Two weeks? She can't last two weeks? Her suicide note/ will seems so coherent, but nothing else about her is.
Just found yet another source on color for tonight!
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Ok here's (http://seniorlearn.org/latin/graphics/Graphics/Possessionheading.jpg) the Beguilng of Merlin, but it's not Vivian, explanation by Wikipedia:
The Beguiling of Merlin is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones which was created between 1872 and 1877.
The painting depicts a scene from Arthurian legend, the infatuation of Merlin with the Lady of the Lake, Nimue. Merlin is shown trapped, helpless in a hawthorn bush as Nimue reads from a book of spells.[1]
The work was commissioned from Burne-Jones by Frederick Richards Leyland, a Liverpool ship-owner and art-collector,[2] in the late 1860s. After a false start blamed on "poor materials" Burne-Jones began work on the painting proper in 1873, finishing the body of the work by the end of 1874; although the painting was not first exhibited until 1877 at the opening exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in London.[1]
Burne-Jones used Maria Zambaco, who was probably his mistress from 1866 to 1872, for the model for the head of Nimue.[1]
The painting was purchased by Lord Leverhulme in 1918 and remains in the Lady Lever Art Gallery to the present day.[1]
The painting features on the cover of the novel Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt.
I would have said that the King Arthur is ONE set of legends she did not cover? Or did she?
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your question: what happened to the baby was on point.
This kind of plot devise is why I'm having trouble reading this book.
The baby of Christobel is undefined, even less defined (in the reading so far) than Dog Tray.
I hate that. I cannot stand book where babies are killed. I'm so discouraged about this.
Could the baby be alive, somewhere? The nuns have no idea. The priest is quite yucky, as described. So did she drown the baby or leave it out in the woods. Hate, just hate, it. >:(
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Good points, Mippy. COULD the baby be alive somewhere? The reader is left to conjecture but how MANY references to infant death there are in this passage, the foreshadowing is heavy, isn't it? And yet....
Oh good heavens, look at this, from Wikipedia (because they are first) it IS Vivian after all in the painting, check this out:
In the Lancelot-Grail and later accounts Merlin's eventual downfall came from his lusting after a huntress named Niviane (or Nymue, Nimue, Niniane, Nyneue, or Viviane in some versions of the legend), who was the daughter of the king of Northumberland. In the Suite du Merlin [8], for example, Niviane is about to depart from Arthur's court, but, with some encouragement from Merlin, Arthur asks her to stay in his castle with the queen. During her stay, Merlin falls in love with her and desires her. Niviane, frightened that Merlin might take advantage of her with his spells, swears that she will never love him unless he swears to teach her all of his magic. Merlin consents, unaware that throughout the course of her lessons, Niviane will use Merlin's own powers against him, forcing him to do her bidding.[8]
When Niviane finally goes back to her country, Merlin escorts her. However, along the way, Merlin receives a vision that Arthur is in need of assistance against the schemes of Morgan le Fay. Niviane and Merlin rush back to Arthur's castle, but have to stop for the night in a stone chamber, once inhabited by two lovers. Merlin relates that when the lovers died, they were placed in a magic tomb within a room in the chamber. That night, while Merlin is asleep, Niviane, still disgusted with Merlin's desire for her, as well as his demon heritage, casts a spell over him and places him in the magic tomb so that he can never escape, thus causing his death.
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And this excerpt is from a Reader's Guide from Continuum Contemporary:
Connections proliferate through the various narrative strands of the novel. One significant example is the green, white, and gold imagery associated with Crhistabel, the Princess in the glass coffin, Melusine, and Maude....
Maud's physical description and haughty behavior cast her undeniably in teh fairy tale princess mold....Unlike Melusine, this fairy tale provide direction to Roland (as well as the reader), if he chooses to take it, on how to win Maud. It places him more firmly in the role of hero by providing a closer literary tole model in the little tailor. The analogies already present in the tale suggest that Roland, if he continues to exercise resourcefulness and tact, is assured of his happy ending. The tale may also predict the conclusion of Christabel and Ash's relationship. Ash from the first proves a more importunate suitor than Roland..., Later Ash observes her, as Roland has observed Maud: "lashes...silver, but thick enough to be visibly present. The face not kind. There was no kindness in the face. it was cut clean but not fine--strong boned rather." Melusine is a milky luminous white and green clad fairy:
She wore a shift of whitest silk, that stirred
With her song's breathing, and a girdle green
As emerald or wettest meadow-grass.
Her living hair was brighter than chill gold..."
I had not noticed those parallels but who could miss the constant green and gold.
So what are we to make of all this? This guide also makes the statement "The reader is already quipped to make further connections."
The reader may BE equipped and encouraged by the million and one references, but ARE the conclusions the reader comes to accurate? Should we then see Christabel as Melusina, then? She's Melusina, the feminine triumphant? I guess it depends on your definition of triumphant.
It's good to see what the experts see in it, I love an enlightened mind. The question is what the normal or astute reader sees in it, and that's where we are.
What DO you see in all these parallels? Anything recognizable? Or is it simply an explosion of metaphor and simile, allusion. legends, and myth, parallels and references which got out of hand?
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Quote from Ginny: 'What DO you see in all these parallels? Anything recognizable? Or is it simply an explosion of metaphor and simile, allusion. legends, and myth, parallels and references which got out of hand?'
Right. What a literary riot! And romantic in the full sense. With a harlequin flavor thrown in. What a happy maze this book has turned out to be. A surprise around every corner. Madcaps and mediums everywhere. Not to mention metaphors. Even church steeples are made to serve. And meanings everywhere. Even the characters are wearied by them. Maud wants to take a break from them. And Sabine also complains of them. Is it so surprising that Maud and Roland take on the characteristics of the literary heroes they are pursuing with might and main?
Right on, in an earlier post, Ginny: 'The literary experts are in danger of making themselves into what Byatt is poking fun at.'
Not that she isn't serious about a lot of things. The lives of her characters are full of human drama. The reader gets a fairly comprehensive picture of 19c concerns: the impact of scientific discoveries, especially the work of the geologist Leyell, whose work Ash is trying to emulate in an amateurish manner, as were a host of others who were destroying the seashore life. Trying to discover the source of life in the ocean. Throwing Christian theology into confusion. Looking to spiritualism for evidence of life beyond the here and now. The awakening female mind, long kept silent in a patriarchal world. What a strange consciousnens is brought into being. Femisist speculations couched in Lacanian riddles. 423. Along come the new literary critics a century later.
Left in Leonora's wake is poor Nathaniel Stern, her first husband:
...an assistant professor at Princeton who had been a happily meticulous New Critic, and had totally failed to survive Leonora and the cut-thoat ideological battles of structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction and feminism....
Isn't it strange that Cropper should have used every opportunity to include the letter from Randolph Ash to his great-grandmother Priscilla in his publications, having to do with Ash's views about communicating with the dead. A real Victorian occupation. Only now with these new revelations of an Ash/LaMotte conection does Cropper discover in his collection that Christabel also wrote a letter to Priscilla on the same subject. Things are beginning to come together.
And the author is caving in, it seems. Going in for coherence and closure after all, to keep her readers happy. And she does it all in such a grand and hokey, old-fashioned style. What a happy ending!
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#9. The poem " A heavy Breath/one two and three--/and then the lapsed/eternity." Believe the poem refers to birth.???
Lots of death in that chapter: lying dead in a cave; death of Sabine; death of miner's daughter; Druids writing a form of death; death of Sabine's mother; Godes story of wolves and death; the Black Month/Night tales.
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Why didn't Christabel go to her mother who was still alive? Said "she is not a spiritual woman."
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On Netflix Possession is available to watch online.
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Jonathan what a beautiful post! Right. What a literary riot! And romantic in the full sense. With a harlequin flavor thrown in. What a happy maze this book has turned out to be. A surprise around every corner. Madcaps and mediums everywhere. Not to mention metaphors. Even church steeples are made to serve. And meanings everywhere. Even the characters are wearied by them. Maud wants to take a break from them. And Sabine also complains of them. Is it so surprising that Maud and Roland take on the characteristics of the literary heroes they are pursuing with might and main?
I also liked your next paragraph on what she is serious about, but I can't quote you over and over. :)
I got up thinking I now see the humor, Bella, and I like Jonathan's positive spin on this so much. I've been thinking about this section for 2 days. I think I've got it.
I got up thinking BRETON legends? On top of everything else? And something about footnotes that Jonathan said way back there, and suddenly I see it.
Here's what I see, what do you see?
What IF you set out to write a fantasy fairy tale spoofing literary criticism, specifically literary critics, academics and scholars, the constructionists and New Critics (Sally I understand Burgass now, too, be right back with that one). To have fun with it and in the process of writing a mystery about two researchers (literary critics, academics and scholars) put in enough real legends, false legends, mythology, literary references, folk tales, to choke a horse and somehow try (and you notice it's very contrived, the parallels, the colors: for one awful minute I thought she was going to start another parallel with Blackadder too), to mock yourself as Jonathan shows Maude tired of trying to find meaning, to tie them all together with constant references to color, symbolism, allusion, and pretty much the kitchen sink.
In the last section which I recommend everybody read ahead now, we suddenly see footnotes to very famous people and works. What's odd about them? The comedy rips wide open about as obvious as it's possible to get, slapstick at the end, tho in this section the auto accident certainly counts.
When you see the end, you have to come back HERE, this is the worst and most difficult section. You have to come back HERE and say WHY?
Why have you done this? Look at Mippy all upset here. WHY are you leading us down this path?
It will depend on the reader's reaction as to whether or not Byatt has carried this romp off. As late as yesterday I truly believed she was having the reader on.
I don't think so today, I think it's exactly what I first thought, one giant, fun, creative joke. You can't CARE about Christabel, she won't let you, she's the Ice Princess in the Tower, even preggers. The characters, the major ones, are cardboard.
Sally says what of her mother? What, indeed? WHAT mother? There's a mother? Where has she been? Super question, Sally. What indeed. But let's have another Breton legend.
Then Sally says: #9. The poem " A heavy Breath/one two and three--/and then the lapsed/eternity." Believe the poem refers to birth
Lots of death in that chapter: lying dead in a cave; death of Sabine; death of miner's daughter; Druids writing a form of death; death of Sabine's mother; Godes story of wolves and death; the Black Month/Night tales.
SO right you are. Death in a million forms. More blood on the straw, is that birth or death?
I thought this: " A heavy Breath/one two and three--/and then the lapsed/eternity." meant death. To me this meant three breaths and then the baby died?
and then the lapsed........ so something stopped....and then
eternity.
A heavy Breath
one two and three
and then the lapsed
eternity.
Looks like death, to me.
But I don't know what it means. Nobody knows but Byatt. The constructionalists can do what they'd like with it, she's the only one who really knows what she intended.
Plot wise it certainly looks as if Christabel was pregnant one day and not the next. Nobody seems to know what happened to the baby. She appears to be attending seances (WITH ASH?) to find out. But is that why she's there? That sure is how it looks, doesn't it? how does ASH know there was a baby? Is that explained ANYWHERE? How does ASH turn out at that particular seance?
I don't think it's the baby she wants to communicate with beyond the grave. Well having read the end, I know it's not. Ash apparently doesn't tho.
'Twas brillig.
Turns out also Miss Ellen and Miss Christabel have a lot in common.
I now think as I did initially it's a giant send off, a riot of creativity, poems, legends, tales, parallel plots and mysteries centering on literary scholars and criticism, almost like, but not quite, a "TAKE THAT! See if you can figure this one out...." it IS intended as comedy. She was right.
The thing we need to decide and we will in the last days, is did she carry it off.
I'm sure those who have not read beyond 23 don't see anything funny, you'll need to read on. Then you'll want to come back because here is where her plan begins to unravel, it's the Breton stuff that does it, and the proof is in the pudding in the last chapters, hidden in plain sight on the bottom of the pages. A brilliant division of the book for discussion, Marcie, my hat's off to you.
Colors? Forget the colors, they are a smoke screen, they mean anything and everything and change at the end again. The language of....you pick it, it's here. Don't forget the gold, the golden apples of the Sibyl, a passport from the Underworld and death.
The reader says to himself, oh...er... yes I've heard of ....whatever legend, or the reader looks up Proserpine or Merlin or whoever and says oh, my, she's learned, so all this other stuff also is terribly meaningful too, I must be a knucklehead, I don't see XXX or YYYY.
The reader is intimidated and probably somewhat irritated. IF the reader got this far. I bet this book holds the record for people dropping it. How proud I am of YOU who did not, and you're out there, you're just not posting.
We feel, well this expert (Burgass) or that one (there are tons of them), know what this means, their interpretation is correct (and how glad I am I'm not in one of THEIR classes, talk about Leavis), but I NEED them to understand.
No, you don't. It's a joke. It's just a big joke. Look up if you like the 101 tales of Melusina and then you'll know something you did not when it started and enjoy some of the great writing and creativity, but don't take it seriously because, in my opinion, it's not.
Sally, back with poststructuralism in a second.
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Sally, On Netflix Possession is available to watch online.
I've got the movie from Netflix right here in front of me. Let's take a minute at the end of the discussion to discuss what the moviemakers made of this mess and how it might have altered one's perception of the book to have seen IT first?
So those of you talking about the character of Ash, we'll want to talk about him, too, on his deathbed. A lot to come here.
I was truly afraid there for a minute she was going to make Blackadder the most compelling character. Any time you read a book and the author is always present, and you don't have any sort of suspension of disbelief, for whatever reason, to me, it's not the best writing, but we'll decide that at the end, too. You can rate it, yourselves.
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Was looking in Amazon for her latest novel, the Children's Book. This is from Publisher's Weekly: The novel's moments of magic and humanity, malignant as they may be, are too often interrupted by information dumps that show off Byatt's extensive research. Buried somewhere in here is a fine novel. (Oct.) ;D ;D
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The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. everyone is welcome to join in.
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Week V: Metaphors and Endings
Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
Characters and Plot : First Five Chapters (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/readerguides/possession/possession_characters.html) by our Readers
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Schedule of Discussion:
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Week V: June 28-30 Chapters 124- End: Metaphors and Endings
1. Chapter 24: What are some of the metaphors in this chapter that impressed you? What are Roland's primary thoughts and feelings at this time?
2. Chapter 25: What do we learn from Ellen Ash's journal? What do we learn directly from her thoughts to which the scholars don't have access?
3. Chapter 26: What transformations take place in Roland? What are some of the garden metaphors in this chapter?
4. Chapter 27: "We are driven by endings as by hunger. We must know...." (from the poem in the beginning of the chapter). "'All's well that ends well,' said Euan. This feels like the ending of a Shakespearean comedy--who's that chappie that comes down on a swing at the end of As You Like It?" What does the poem in the beginning of the chapter tells us. What about the reference to Shakespeare?
5. Chapter 28: What do you think of the grave robbing scene?
"Maud said,'We need the end of the story.' 'There is no guarantee that that is what we shall find,' said Blackadder. 'But we must look,' said Maud." How do you see the end of the story? What happens with Maud and Roland? Are there parallels with Christabel and Randolph?
6. Postscript: "There are things that happen that leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been." What do you think of the events we, the readers, see in the postscript?
7. What are your thoughts about the book? Did the last chapters and postscript change your mind about how any of the characters were portrayed? How did the postscript change the "ending" of the book for you?
8. If you've seen the film adaptation, what are your thoughts about it? Many of the characters were combined or left out. Did the film seem faithful to the "spirit" of the book?
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Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
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"Information dumps."
hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, great one, Sally! Looks like she did it again, this new one's been widely panned.
When I first started this book I was blown away because I thought it was real. I thought Ash was real, I thought, like some Latin translation, you'd work at it and in the end, FINALLY, you'd find the pot of gold. But this is like some dog Latin I've seen, you might work like a dog but at the end there's nothing but information dump and a fine novel somewhere underneath. hahahaa Love it.
I can see why it won the Booker. They were afraid not to give it, truly, they thought it must be a work of great genius, which it may be, but they thought they would look like pearls before swine if they let it go by.
Information dump! hahahah Love it!
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And don't you see, your own opinion is right? No matter what it is. There's nobody in this thing who can tell you no, it's not that way.
"Something for everybody." Indeed.
Who is the "Mummy" in "Mummy Possest?"
Up until the other day I thought it was an Egyptian. hahahaa
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Leonors Stern's husband was a New Critic.
This way of looking at literature is the way I was (and I think most of us were) taught: from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism
New Criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that developed in the 1920s-30s and peaked in the 1940s-50s. The movement is named after John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism. New Critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider the reader's response, author's intention, or historical and cultural contexts. New Critics perform a close reading of the text, and believe the structure and meaning of the text should not be examined separately. New Critics especially appreciate the use of literary devices in a text. The New Criticism has sometimes been called an objective approach to literature.....
The notion of ambiguity is an important concept within New Criticism; several prominent New Critics have been enamored above all else with the way that a text can display multiple simultaneous meanings.
It's a way of making sense out of literature by analyzing it. So is structuralism.
This from BURGASS: Can anyone explain this?
A postmodern novelist has a problem with endings, as the narrator tells us (obliquely): “Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable.” Byatt also provides two endings, both of them happy in their way. She finds a compromise between coherence and closure and the postmodern game.
The beginning of the end of the novel is marked by Roland’s discovery of his poetic voice in Chapter 26. This chapter is headed by a long extract from Ash’s The Garden of Proserpina, which describes an edenic age of language when there was no distinction between words and things. “They made names and poetry/ The things were what they named and made them” This is truly a mythic age for a poststructuralist, for whom the orthodox theory of language admits only an arbitrary relation between a word and the thing in the world it describes. There is also a disquisition over several pages on the nature of writing and reading, the power of words. Roland is a literary critic, who does not simply dissect, but admires. As we have seen, this secondary and sometimes subvervient position, can dampen any primary creative impulse and Roland is also potentially inhibited by the dead-end of structuralist thought: “He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself.” But Roland’s reading of Ash proves to be inspirational “What had happened to him was that the ways in which it could be said had become more interesting than the idea that it could not.” The discovery of the poetic voice is crucial in respect to the central theme, possession. Unlike Blackadder, whose creative impulses have been long since stifled, Roland acquires, through some mystical process, a poetic voice. This is not a secondary critical voice, not even derivative of Randolph Henry Ash: Roland “began to think of words, words came from some well in him… He could hear, or feel, or even almost see, the patterns made by a voice he didn’t yet know, but which was his own.” When Roland finally goes public about his initial theft of Ash’s letter to the assembled party at Beatrice Nest’s house, it is described by the narrator as “the moment of dispossession, or perhaps the word was exorcism,” but he can let go because he now owns his poetic voice.
Ok first off "edenic" means:
edenic
Main Entry: Eden
Pronunciation: \ˈē-dən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin, from Hebrew ʽĒdhen
Date: before 12th century
1 : paradise 2
2 : the garden where according to the account in Genesis Adam and Eve first lived
3 : a place of pristine or abundant natural beauty
This sentence, then:The Garden of Proserpina, which describes an edenic age of language when there was no distinction between words and things. does not make any sense, does it to you? A snake is a snake is a snake. An apple is an apple is an apple. Can anybody translate THIS bit?
But it appears here that in order to try to understand this you need some background in structuralism or post structuralism. They appear to be a philosophy which can be applied to language and literature.
I had never heard the term until once in a book discussion a new person said, oh I didn't realize we were going to be de-constructuralists here.
I didn't know what they were saying.
They appeared to be saying this: from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism (I know, I know but the edu stuff is impossible to read):
The author's intended meaning, such as it is (for the author's identity as a stable "self" with a single, discernible "intent" is also a fictional construct), is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Post-structuralism rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text.
To step outside of literary theory, this position is generalizable to any situation where a subject perceives a sign. Meaning (or the signified, in Saussure's scheme, which is as heavily presumed upon in post-structuralism as in structuralism) is constructed by an individual from a signifier. This is why the signified is said to 'slide' under the signifier, and explains the talk about the "primacy of the signifier."
Yes, well.
So for the construcurtalist the author's meaning is secondary to what the reader perceives. To the post structuralist every reader creates a new experience.
So Burgass says, not quite as clearly, to make her point about Roland, that through his approach to literature, his feeling rather than analyzing, he's able to find his creativity: This is truly a mythic age for a poststructuralist, for whom the orthodox theory of language admits only an arbitrary relation between a word and the thing in the world it describes.
This is not a secondary critical voice, not even derivative of Randolph Henry Ash: Roland “began to think of words, words came from some well in him… He could hear, or feel, or even almost see, the patterns made by a voice he didn’t yet know, but which was his own.” When Roland finally goes public about his initial theft of Ash’s letter to the assembled party at Beatrice Nest’s house, it is described by the narrator as “the moment of dispossession, or perhaps the word was exorcism,” but he can let go because he now owns his poetic voice. .
She is referring of course to the end of the book and what she describes as TWO conclusions. So she's talking about " She finds a compromise between coherence and closure and the postmodern game." which I'd love to see, coherence and closure, and the beginning of the end of the novel being Roland's development of his own creative flow.
We said at the beginning he was the protagonist of the book. We want to watch for the climax of the book. To me he's not well drawn enough to have a climax, and if it's that he develops his own voice…well….. I'll need to reread the end, it appears. We need to watch the MAIN plot carefully.
That's what I got out of this, what did you?
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'Information dump'. Don't knock it. POSSESSION could serve as a crash course for someone embarking on a carreer in literary studies. For the rest of us it's a splendid short-cut to learning. And the posts to this discussion are proof of that.
So much to puzzle over. As for example, Ginny'squestion:
Who is the "Mummy", in "Mummy Possest"?
Who of us did not immediately think of Egyptian mummies? What a train of thought that led to. And on page 424 we find Prof Blackadder giving it some thougt while perusing THE SHADOWY PORTAL, Mrs Lees' autobiographical reminiscences. She's the medium at the seances. After a series of other associations, Blackadder, we are told:
...had reread Mummy Possest, which he had always thought anomalous in its hostility to its female protagonist and by extension to women in general. He asked himself now if this hitherto unexplained burst of bitterness was connected to the poet's feelings about Christabel LaMotte. Or, of course, his wife.
Of course? There have been a few 'of courses' along the way, but this one is puzzling.
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Jonathan, surely the presence of an affair might carry with it, if a particularly vitriolic bit of writing which seemed to be prejudiced toward women surfaced, surely the possibility of all not being perfect at home might rear its head.
Cropper is speculating like he has most of Ash's life and works, inventing things or possibilities (or so I think) which is his stock in trade and hoping he's not wrong by this new evidence.
Sally has sent me the Burgass! Thank you Sally, I'll return it when we're through, can't wait to see HER take on it. Am going to a conference in Winston Salem tomorrow but will be here on laptop and hope to see lots of new comments, don't let this book defeat you!
Jonathan, I love your positive thoughts, I personally don't trust anything she says, but I do like the references to things like Melusina, which I had never heard of. I actually HAVE learned a great deal from this book, but unfortunately most of it has been my having to sigh and look it up. Still, they do say you remember best what you had to research for yourself instead of just being told something.
I still think she overshot her wad here, less is more sometimes. We were told (another old myth?) that the human brain can only assimiliate 7 new pieces of information before it stops, and of course here she's got 45937 in one paragraph.
And of course there are the footnotes in the next section, I hope nobody is taking them verbatim.
Does anybody know if the sailor and the miller's daughter is real or Byatt? I don't know any Breton myths.
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Ginny ~ you see a fine novel here. I do not, having finished the book. Too difficult for me
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I just finished the book!! What an ending! What a book! I enjoyed being sent chasing down allusions ( and illusions!) and didn't mind being made to look up unfamiliar words - and there were indeed a slew of them. I've always been fond of myths and legends and they were here a-plenty. Cropper came a-cropper and that was a good thing - loved what happened to his car! Ho Ho! Leonora was one of my favorite characters - larger than life - and wouldn't she be good for Blackadder if she could stay around longer! All the loose ends in the story were tied up so neatly at the end - complicated though it was. Even Roland, whom I was thinking of as a pretty weak character ( OK - a wimp) showed signs of a promising future.
I don't dare say much specifically since it may be that not everyone has finished the book but this has been a terrific discussion and I have learned a lot from it. Thank you all and thank you, Ginny!
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Joan,I agree. It's a dazzling ending to a most complex novel. Can we allow her to get away with it? Do we really get closure? Or will we be left with nagging doubts, to lose sleep over?
Take the Postscript, with its meadow full of hay, and all the summer flowers in abundance...and a child, swinging on a gate...humming to herself and making a daisy chain
Along comes the man, tall, bearded, his face in shadow under a wide-brimmed hat with an ash-plant in his hand...
and she asked him if could make daisy chains.
He can and does. And gets a lock of hair finely plaited,which he wound in a fine coil, and put into the back of his watch.
Long before this man pictured the child in his poem Mummy Possessed: the small son of the grieving Countess of Caregrove, who has come to Hella Lees seance, hoping to make contact with her lost child.
His small voice has been heard in broken sounds- / He makes, he says, perpetual daisy-chains / in wondrous meadows
What did Ash intend with his Mummy Possest?. Had Christabel deceived him into thinking the child was dead. With hindsight it becomes evident that she had everything carefully planned wit regard to the birth of her child.
Blackadder concluded that Mummy Possest was an 'unexplained burst of bitterness. I feel there was just as much anguish as bitterness in it. Just as there is anguish in Christabel's baby poems - The page of scraps of poems. Sent by Ariane Le Minier to Maud Bailey.411-413
My subject is Spilt Milk. Howe'er I wipe and wipe / Howe'er I frantic - scour / The ghost of my spilled mild / Makes my Air sour.
I found myself thinking of Lady MacDuff unable to wash the blood from her hands. And wondering if our two lovers will also be haunted forever by the consequences of their affair?
Hasn't it seemed like a ghost story at times?
Mummy Possest is a creepy poem. Mrs Lees is training an apprentice. Some of the seance are special effects, but the serve such a useful service. The object is to something to enforce Lady Claregrove's beliefs that her young son lives. Mrs Lees tells Geraldine:
Her (Lady C's) will to Faith's a good, and our small tricks / Our genial deceptions, strenthen that, / And so are good too, in their harmless way. / Here is a lock of hair - the housemaid's hair - As golden as her son's, and just as fine - Which at some aptest moment you let fall . you understand me - in her lap - or on her clutching fingers - that will do such good - / will give such happiness...
At another point, Mrs Lees says to her apprentice:
I hope you may remember who you are / And what you were, a pretty parlour maid / Whose mistress did not like her pretiness / or soulful stare at the young man o' the house/b]
Mrs Lees speaks the words, but it is Ash who wrote them.
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Was it Bertha?
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Kaum zu glauben, aber sie erzählt so schön. That's my reply, Ginny, to the difficulties and credibility problems of Byatt's style. Loosely translated the lyrical observation from a German song would be: hard to believe, but she spins it out so well.
She allowed herself a lot of poetic license, perhaps. No, that's not correct. Everything is so well documented. There are seventy or so items she pulls out of her dress-up box, and I can't point to any which doesn't some how add to the picture we get of researching the lives of people who have passed away but left a paper trail.
The story of the sailor and the miller's daughter, pages 386 to 392 ...is it real? Or Byatt?
We'll never know, unless we can imagine ourselves in the bleak great hall at the Manoir de Kenemet, with the logs burning in the great chimney - flaring and fitful.Listening to one of Gode's stories.
JBut when she tells, she will raise her hands, or throw back her head, or shake her shawl, and the long tattered shadows race across the ceiling into the dark of the unseen half of the room, or huge faces with gaping mouths and monstrous noses and chins - our own, transfigured by the flames into witches and spectres. And Gode's telling is a play with all these things, with the firelight and the gesturing shadows and the streamers of light and dark - she brings all their movements together as I imagine the leader of an orchestra may.
Just for once, let's allow the storyteller to 'play with all these things.' There's a lot of shoptalk in the novel, and the author must feel she's fooling nobody. She tells it so well.
How humorous to read about Leonora and Blackadder preparing for their five minutes on television. Leonora, who Maud has told us, is the expert in achieving intimacy within a minute. Now that's not British.
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Oh my heavens! I just finished the end of the book and I am crying like a baby. I would like to apologize for my days of absence, but life does go on in the Reinhart home, and so it was a bit hectic to settle down for a few hours to read. I finally had a day to do nothing and spent it reading. I must say when my husband and I were out for dinner he asked about the book and I told him it was the most frustrating book I have ever read and was throughly fed up with it, mind you I was only up to chapter 23. LOLOL Now I still feel the book was extremely frustrating but I must say I am thrilled with the POSTSCRIPT 1868! I will say NO more until we have be given the green light all has finished the book.
Ginny, it was not me who said the book had two endings, I was quoting another post. I do not feel there was two endings.
My heart went out to Ash at the seance where he screams, what happened to the baby. So he knew there was a baby. How could she deny him of knowing? At the seance I got the impression the baby lived rather than died because the shirt's sleeves filled. I never cared much for Christabel's character, but I was furious to know she did not tell Ash of the baby. She has lived her entire life self serving. Not that I care any more or less for Ash. They are a perfect match. As for all the poetry, I have to admit I think Byatt put way too much of it in the book. I agree with the editors who wanted some of it taken out. I seriously almost gave up on finishing the book, but I kept hearing Jonathon's promise of laughter and tears. Tears indeed!
I shall return once I have had a chance to digest this and read more of all your prior posts I have missed the past few days. Until then.....Ciao!
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Jonathan, many thanks for your thoughtful and thought-provoking posts. I'm re-reading the sections you mention so that I can comment on your thoughts.
Bellamarie, thanks for letting us know you've finished the book and that you were moved by the ending. The book does in a sense have "two" endings....not two alternative endings--- but it ends and then there is a sort of postscript where we learn about a special meeting between Ash and someone else.
We are not scheduled to complete the book until this week--our last few days-- but I know that some of us are holding back until everyone has read the whole book. Has anyone not finished the book yet? We don't want to spoil it for you.
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Marcie, Yes, you are correct in the fact it does end and then we have the postscript, which I feel gives us a new light and some closure. I still have a few quesions for A.S. Byatt, but will hold off til we can discuss other topics. I thought when the other post said two endings, it meant we could look at it and see two different ways the end would be.
I like Lenora and thought she may be a good match for Blackadder if he could handle such a large woman, and I don't mean stature. LOL Lenora was our humor, so colorful!
Now how coincidental shall we think it to be our Val should meet Euan and he know Toby and they all end up talking about the "Love Letters?" A bit of "Six Degrees" I might think. Hmmm...I see Byatt trying to bring this all to a happily ever after ending here. Val has moved out, and moved on with Euan and is now happy. Seems our Roland is a bit still confused as to what he wants and doesn't want.
pg. 456 "Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearance of the world, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into the coherent plot. Roland was troubled by the idea that the oppostite might be true."
Is Roland afraid of committment and love? With Val he did not have to give much of either. Maud is a complicated woman, someone who would required so much more of him, if he were to be in her life. He seems to struggle as to whether he is worthy of Maud and if he could fit into her world. pg. 459 "He thought of the Princess on her glass hill, of Maud's faintly contemptuous look at their first meeting. In the real world- that was, for one should not privilege one world above another, in the social world to which they must both return from these white nights and sunny days_ there was little real connection between them. Maud was a beautiful woman such as he had no claim to possess. She had a secure job and an international reputation. Moreover, in some dark and outdated English social system of class, which he did not believe in, but felt obscurely working and gripping him, Maud was County, and he was urban lower-middle class, in some places more, in some places less acceptable than Maud, but in almost all incompatible."
Aren't most romance novels, poems and love story's theme this? Romeo and Juliet, and more modern day Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts the low class street hooker trying to fit into Richard Gere's high class wealthy, social life. So will Roland have his happily ever after like Val seems to?
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Was it Bertha?
Aha! Jonathan - that's exactly what I think - Bertha resurfaces at the seance.
and the lines: I hope you may remember who you are/and what you were, a pretty parlour maid/ whose mistress did not like her prettiness/ or soulful stare at the young man o' the house.
and wasn't Ash the man o' the house with 'young' being perhaps poetic license.
I still fancy Ash as the father of Bertha's child and the notion that Ellen knew about it and tried to do her best for Bertha on Ash's behalf and in his absence.
The Postscript with ' the child swinging on the gate' and the man that comes along was a sweet and pretty way to tie things up but in it's own way disturbing in that no one had told the child to beware of strangers and not to speak to strange men - even in that time and that place. I think it would have been more natural for her to run to the house to tell adults that the man was there rather than asking him to make a daisy chain and then allowing him to cut a lock of her hair - what would her mother and aunt think about that when they found out about it - as inevitably they would.
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Joan R...
All the loose ends in the story were tied up so neatly at the end - complicated though it was. Even Roland, whom I was thinking of as a pretty weak character ( OK - a wimp) showed signs of a promising future.
I can't say I am at all pleased with the neatly tied up ending. I have plenty of questions for Byatt. I was thrilled with the postscript, BUT and I do say BUT.....I am not at all happy with the tidy ribbons. Trickster indeed, throughout the book, yet predictable which was a huge disappointment for me.
Better said by Cropper, pg. 421 "I do not think you should allow yourself to be taken in by these ghouls and goblins who play with our most sacred fears and hopes, in the desire, often enough simply to enliven the humdrum with a frisson, or to compose, conduct and orchestrate as it were the vulnerable passions of the bereaved and the desperate. I do not deny that the human and inhuman things are maybe made manifest at such times_tricksy little goblins may walk and tap and tremble inkwells_men and women in the dark may hallucinate, as is well known in the case of the sick and wonded. We have all, my dear friend, an infinite capacity to be deceived by desire, to hear what we long to hear, to see what we incessantly form to our own eye or ear as gone and lost_this is a near universal human feeling__easy to play upon, as it is most highly__strung and unstable."
For me, this "Is" Byatt's admission, and a bit of pie in your eye to the readers. Gotcha!!
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I think "pie in the eye" is directed at over-zealous and self-important followers of the new schools of literary criticism - post-modern, etc., etc. - not at the reader to whom she has presented a huge jack-horner pie of lovers, eccentrics, legends, descriptions of interesting places, tragedy and comedy. Plenty to wallow in! And at the end, the right Jacks have the right Jills!
I plan to read her newest book - more fairy stories in it, I suspect. And it does have a lovely cover!!
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Gumtree, I to think Ash was the father of Bertha's child. What a hoot that Bertha could have been revealing at the seance TWO of Ash's children being born. If the seance was to give us the impression that a baby died, maybe it was Bertha's baby. Now that's something to ponder. As for the entire Postscript, I LOVED it! I loved Ash knew of his daughter and took the time to go meet her. I loved the entire repoir between Ash and Mai. I loved this especially, "Tell your aunt, "he said," that you met a poet, who was looking for the Belle Dame Sans Merci, and who met you instead, and who sends her his compliments, and will not disturb her, and is on his way to fresh woods and pastures anew."
Talk about "pie in the eye", our dear Byatt was trying to let us believe Ash gave Christabel her just due, by wanting the child to convey, he not only knew of his daughter, but... he plans to go on to new pastures.
If only Byatt would have ended it with Mai having told her. But.... then again, how cold she, there would have been no use for the buried letters, for the entire last chapters to play out and oh what fun that was, in tying up all the loose ends with ribbons, shovels, graveyards, storms and Lenora. lol
So....Christable thought she had denied Ash all these years of knowing he had a daughter, and Ellen thought she had denied Ash of knowing on his death bed, and the trick is......he knew all along, yet Mai did not give the message, so.. he too was tricked into thinking the message got to Christable.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!'[/b]
Sir Walter Scott
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If only Byatt would have ended it with Mai having told her. But.... then again, how cold she, there would have been no use for the buried letters, for the entire last chapters to play out and oh what fun that was, in tying up all the loose ends with ribbons, shovels, graveyards, storms and Lenora. lol
And what a hoot that sequence was - I found it hilarious - but Byatt didn't tie up all the loose ends though - the grave was left open when they all scuttled back to the hotel. Desecrating a grave is a serious offence so there would be ramifications there for Blackadder and Co once the storm abated. The tree that fell across the grave was a nice touch.
Byatt has obviously used the Great Storm of 1987 when the elements combined to produce hurricane force winds which struck the south of England uprooting dozens of trees etc - in fact six of the seven oaks which give Sevenoaks its name were uprooted during that storm as well as historic trees in Kew Gardens and Hyde Park. Many lives were lost during the storm both in England and in France which was also battered by the storm. The storm was a once in several hundred years event. No wonder everyone downed tools and fled for shelter.
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Gumtree, Wow! The storm of 1987, how perceptive of you to figure that out. I agree with you, I did not feel Byatt tied up all the loose ends, I should have in my prior post said "attempted to tie up all the loose ends." I am left with many questions. Not that it makes a difference for me to know or not.
What became of Fergus?
Why were we led to believe in the very beginning that Ash had vanished. pg. 24 "Roland had never been much interested in Randolph Henry Ash's vanished body; he did not spend time visiting his house in Russell Street, or sitting where he had sat, on stone garden seats; that was Cropper's style."
What became of Bertha, and her child.
Why did Ellen shrink in the corner on their wedding night, and not be able to haves sex with her husband?
What became of our dear Joan Bailey, other than Roland wanted to make sure she got her wheelchair.
Why was Roland and Maud mad at each other in the end, yet fall into the bed and make love? (That for me was so predictable and simple, after such a frustrating book. )
Why didn't Ellen throw an ASH TRAY at ASH when he confessed his love for Christable? lol
I'm sure there are more, but for now I will leave it to the rest of you.
Sabine was my favorite character of the entire book. She could see through Christable. I LOVED her being so truthful, and not accepting and falling all over Christabel. I Loved how she got Dog Tray to warm up to her to spite Christabel. lol She was a breath of fresh air, now I could see Sabine as a real leader for women's rights. This was one of my favorite paragraphs of the whole book. Sabine is challenging her father's opinion of Dahud, pg. 379 "Why should desire and senses be so terrifying in women? Who is this author, to say that these are the fears of man, by which he means the whole human race? He makes us witches, outcasts, sorcieres, monsters...."
Also she shows how Christabel realizes Sabine is intuitive and intelligent. pg. 379 "I will copy out some of Christabel's phrases which particularly pleased me. I should in all honesty copy out also those criticisms she made of what was banal or overdone or clumsy__but these are engraved on my mind.
Some comments of Christabel LaMotte on Dahud La Bonne Sorciere by Sabine de Kercoz.
"You have found, by instinct or intelligence, a way which is not allegory nor yet faux-naif to give significance and your own form of universality to this terrible tale. Your Dahud is both individual human being and symbolic truth. Other writers may see other truths in this tale (I do.) But you do not pedantically exclude.
All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in different ways. What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there__in this case the angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from the crupper, the engulfment etc etc. And yet to add something of yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal ends. This you have done."
Sabine goes on to say, " I think it must happen to men as well as women, to know that strangers have made a false evaluation of what they may achieve, and to watch a change of tone, a change of language, a pervasive change of respect after their work has been judged to be worthwhile. But how much more for women, who are, as Christabel says, largely thought to be unable to write well, unlikely to try, and something like changelings or monsters when indeed they do succeed, and achieve something."
I can see Byatt feeling this way after being awarded the "Winner of England's Booker Prize." She has finally been validated, she has now proven she can and does write as well as her sister Margaret Drabble, and she now feels her equal, after growing up with a mother who forced them to compete with each other, rather than compliment and help each other believe in themselves, and each other, she has finally come to a time in her life where I remember her saying in an interview, they are now closer.
As Christabel and Sabine found a mutual respect for each other's writing, so did A.S. and Margaret.
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Why were we led to believe in the very beginning that Ash had vanished. pg. 24 "Roland had never been much interested in Randolph Henry Ash's vanished body; he did not spend time visiting his house in Russell Street, or sitting where he had sat, on stone garden seats; that was Cropper's style."
Bellamarie: I think Ash's vanished body simply refers to the fact that Ash is dead - the flesh and blood body is no more - and Roland doesn't go about following in the footsteps Ash took while he was alive.
All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in different ways. What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there__in this case the angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from the crupper, the engulfment etc etc. And yet to add something of yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal ends. This you have done."[/i]
I saw this as the Byatt's raison d'etre for using the fairy tales - telling the old stories in different ways. It is very important for any culture to keep alive the old stories which are the way of passing on the cultural memory - in oral societies the storytellers have the task of memorising and passing on the traditions and stories to the young and training some to take on the role of storyteller. For us it is done by writing, rewriting and retelling the old, timeless tales and it is for each generation to reassess and interpret the meaning and then rewrite the stories for their own time whilst at the same time keeping alive and polishing the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there and yet to add something of the writer which makes all these things seem new and first seen.
As a reason for using the fairytales Byatt is in clear water - but I doubt this can be seen as justification for bewildering the reader with such a plethora of often cryptic tales to be unravelled in order to see the parallels she draws throughout the novel.
I can see Byatt feeling this way after being awarded the "Winner of England's Booker Prize." She has finally been validated, she has now proven she can and does write as well as her sister Margaret Drabble, and she now feels her equal,
- Drabble has been short listed for the Booker but (from memory) I doubt that she has ever won it. so if that is the criterion by which we are to judge these sisters then Byatt is one step ahead. I think they each have their own literary voice and like apples and oranges can't really be compared one with the other - however sibling rivalry is a very potent force in many families.
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Gum has reminded us of something very important:
Quote: "It is very important for any culture to keep alive the old stories which are the way of passing on the cultural memory - in oral societies the storytellers have the task of memorising and passing on the traditions and stories to the young and training some to take on the role of storyteller. For us it is done by writing, rewriting and retelling the old, timeless tales and it is for each generation to reassess and interpret the meaning and then rewrite the stories.."
This also important on a smaller scale : the family stories that the older members of a family tell and re-tell at family gatherings go on down
being re-told to the next generation with additions from each group as they go. This makes for a cohesive family and gives us a place in this world. I hope that this is not dying out!
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The Great Storm of 1987.
Brilliant, Gum. And it's a brilliant use Byatt makes of it, bringing the wrath of heaven down on Cropper's head, for disturbing the peace of Ellen and Randoloph in their country churchyard resting place. I've had the feeling all through the book that the author was out to get him. She permits Cropper to live, hoping, no doubt, as a sadder and wiser man, revising a lifetime's work. And bemoaning his demolished Mercedes. Which he had left parked in the yew tree's shade. I know it was 1 AM, but it would have been in the shade if the sun had been shining.
We've come to the end. Two in fact. But, as for Cropper, so for the whole scholarly crowd we've gotten to know - a new beginning. Page 526:
...these letters have made us all look - in some ways - a little silly, in our summing-up of lives on the evidence we had. None of Ash's post -1859 poems is uncontaminated by this affair - we shall need to reassess everything - the reasons for his animus against the spiritualists is a case in point.
Ash turns spirit himsel. Engaged in his prowling habit? Let's begin with Ash's appearance in the meadow in the postscript, which gives the book its second ending. Along with the first we get the perfect bitter-sweet ending. My guess - this all took place in his head as he lay dying. The wreath of hair must have come from Christabel's head, many years earlier. The passion lasted a lifetime. It's an ending with a lot of misery, beneath the surface.
Chapter 25 is heartbreaking. What a nightmare honeymoon at the Fontaine de Vaucluse so many years ago.
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I love all of your thoughtful posts. They give me new perspectives on the book. Bellamarie, Gumtree and JoanR, I think that the following statement by Byatt is related to the statement you quote: "It is very important for any culture to keep alive the old stories which are the way of passing on the cultural memory..."
In an interview, Byatt said, "I see biography a rather the opposite of writing a novel. You might think that you know a lot more about somebody in a biography than you will ever know about somebody in fiction. But, of course, the opposite is true. And I think that what fascinates me about biography is the way human beings always escape their biographers."
Two key episodes in the book are "hidden" from the scholars who are trying to learn more about Ash and Lamotte. They are told only to the reader when Byatt uses the "omniscient narrator" (rather than letters or poems or other evidence that the scholars find and read). One instance is when Ellen forces herself to recollect her marriage night and the fact that her marriage with Ash, while loving, has never been consumated (yes, a heartbreaking passage, Jonathan). The other instance is the last "postscript" when it's revealed to the reader that Ash did meet his daughter once and forever after carried a strand of her hair in his watch.
We, the readers, know more about the characters than the scholars in the book who are researching their biographies.
The book also has a quite a few threads that are not fully flushed out. Again, it seems that this supports Byatt's view that much of historical fact is hidden from us but that an imaginative novel can provide us with "truth," even when we don't know all of the historical facts.
I think that the narrative of Bertha is one of these incomplete threads. Bertha's plight can also serve to prefigure Christabel's situation in society--an unmarried woman pregnant with a child. A woman in that situation didn't have a lot of choices. I don't think that Ash is the father of Bertha's child. Ash imposing himself on his servant would destroy the seemingly loving and contented relationship that exists between Ash and Ellen at the end of his life and would lessen the passionate affair that he had for a very limited time with Christabel. His passion for Christabel started with a meeting of the minds. I don't believe that the Ash that Byatt has created would impose himself on an uneducated girl in his household.
Jonathan, that's an interesting plot twist that you propose---that the postscript of Ash meeting his daughter is a dream on Ash's deathbed. It's possible, of course, but it seems to me less in keeping with Byatt's storytelling style. The scenes set in the past do have a dream-like quality to them.
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We've put a few questions in the heading if you'd like to consider them. Pick one or two or just bring up anything of interest to you in the last chapters or the whole book. We're in our final few days now. We'll be ending this discussion on Wednesday so that those of you interested in Frankenstein can begin that discussion on Thursday.
I've watched the film, POSSESSION, and enjoyed it. I thought that Jennifer Ehle (Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice) and Jeremy Northam (Mr. Knightly in Emma with Gweneth Paltrow) were very good as Christabel and Randolph. I thought that the adaptation was good even though many characters were left out or changed.
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What fabulous questions in the heading and what wonderful thoughts you've all put here. Pearson, welcome, you can say whatever you'd like at this point. :)
Imagine the frustration of being at a Conference and looking IN and being able to READ but not post, the thing jumped all over the place as if it was truly POSSESSED, because it knew what I was going to say.
I printed out 19 pages of your thoughts, my goodness aren't you sharp, I would never have thought of Bertha (who was it whose body turned up with stones sewn in the pockets) at the seance, couldn't wait to get home and reread that. The flood of 1987? Was that the one which took all the copper beaches out of the Hyde Park in London? They were the most magnificent things I ever saw, now gone.
And biography and truth are apparently most important, at least in Byatt's mind, you've all nailed it. But still some issues and questions remain, for the reader especially.
I fear to try to add anything to what you've said, it was so good. I guess my biggest question is:
HOW did Ash know he had a baby? Who told him?
As for his turning up at the end, yes it was boffo, yes it was WOW, but I don't buy it, the Postscript? How did he find out about the little girl?
Nah, doesn't hold up but is in true sisterly fashion with her sister, mysteries at the end and things tied up which may not be. I like the analogy of him seeing this on his death bed in his dreams, because otherwise there's a LOT kept from us here in this pat ending of the little girl and the stranger.
What of Ellen keeping Christabel's letter from him? So if she did not tell him, and Christabel didn't tell him, (why are all the women in his life so secretive) who did?
I disliked Ellen for that. Did you? Man is dying, put aside for once your own pride and give him the letters.
Sally sent me, as I said, Catherine Burgass's Reader's Guide to Possession. It looks exactly like the one we had for Ishiguro and I wish we had included Burgass in this discussion.
IF you liked this book and admire the dazzling display of learning, you might want to get this book because Burgass is a lecturer on 20th Century literature at the University of Liverpool. It's a short book, you can read it in an evening, and it is told from the standpoint of the literary richness of the book, and there are a lot of things in it one wouldn't suspect. I recommend it for the final touch to the discussion. I'm going to watch the movie tomorrow and hope to comment before Thursday.
Burgass also asks several interesting questions. Here's one:
5. The American publishers originally wanted to cut substantial quantities of the invented Victorian poetry, though in the end the text remained uncut. Byatt has also said in an interview that she wrote the novel with the reader's attention span in mind. . Did you "skip" parts of the novel and, if so, which parts? Did you feel obliged to read the poetry, but feel frustrated that it halted the narrative action? If you read the poetry did you enjoy it as poetry or read it for the light it threw on the rest of the narrative?
My answer: until the end I forced self, thru eyes which seemed to keep closing, to read every word of the poetry to find the answers, which I hoped would be there.
I skipped the poems which begin chapter 26 and 27 in their entirety. What did I miss?
That leads me to the question: can you remember ANY of the poems of Randolph Ash?
Could you restate them?
In fact which poems or stories in this book can you recall? The only one which stuck in my mind is the sailor and the miller's daughter. Since Byatt changed almost every single myth, legend, folk tale and story she relates, even IF this is a Breton legend, it won't be the same, so it's not preserving something....unless you count preserving the notion that stories are important.
The footnotes in Chapter 25 are all spurious. Why are they there, do you think?
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Some points Burgass raises which we need to consider:
1. Possession: "As the title suggests, the novel is about possession, and in line with its complex from dramatizes multiple aspects of this theme, exploring the nature of possessive love and the contrary impulse to self preservation; superficial possession-- of things--and supernatural possession by ghosts, literal and metaphorical; the quest for knowledge (intellectual possession) against the capacity of literary tests to exceed interpretation and of historical events to evade attempts to uncover them. "
I liked this too: "The novel also argues, implicitly, for the superiority of fiction in revealing a kind of truth over criticism, biography, or history, whose access to facts is always only partial."
The whole book is like that. Anyway, she says the major themes are:
1. Love and Romance
2. Biography (the act of researching another person's life and work-- incorporates an analogous double aspect of possession...
3. Victorian/ Modern Biography
4. The Problem of Knowledge (The novel maintains...that even a sympathetic textual scholar is unable to gain full access to the truth, that any interpretation of documentary evidence is provisional).
5. Parallel Plots
6. Ventriloquism: "By serving as a medium for the Victorian voice [Byatt] can make it "live" for the reader in a fictional context in the way that a critical commentary could not."
7. Folk/ Fairy Tales
8. Morals and Endings
I think we've pretty much touched on all of those.
On the "two endings" she says the first is when Blackadder and Maude construct from "their incomplete understanding" an ending which is "far more tragic conclusion than was the case, assuming from Christabel's final letter that Ash never knew of his daughter. The postscript reveals a different ending to the story. So finally both Byatt and the reader have the best of both worlds:Byatt reminds the reader of the provisional nature of historical knowledge by creating imaginative access to a fictional truth."
But here I demur, what fictional truth? HOW does Ash know? Who told him? How can we have a pat ending with no "evidence" at all to support it? May as well have aliens fly down and deliver him in a space ship? hahahaa
She also says and I won't go on and on but if you like or admire this book you really want Burgass:
The poets as well as their poems, are loosely based on "Victorian originals. Ash is modeled most closely on Robert Browning.....Christabel is modeled on Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti."
Now in answer to question 7 in the heading:
What are your thoughts about the book? Did the last chapters and postscript change your mind about how any of the characters were portrayed? How did the postscript change the "ending" of the book for you?
Yes I thought Blackadder and Leonora both took on a different persona, I was half afraid they would waltz off in the sunset like the others. Blackadder became a lot more likable, to me. Cropper was just too over the top, the robbing of the grave, my goodness, that would not be easy to do! The running into his car and the events of the ending make for good Hollywood but they don't hold together, but very dramatic, just fun. I think she had fun with it and apparently did a lot of research to find the "Victorian voice."
Maybe if I read it again I'll see something different. That's not likely to happen. :)
The Postscript left me gasping in disbelief, and it can't work.
But what's YOUR opinion? How do you rate this book?
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Marcie...
"Ash imposing himself on his servant would destroy the seemingly loving and contented relationship that exists between Ash and Ellen at the end of his life and would lessen the passionate affair that he had for a very limited time with Christabel. His passion for Christabel started with a meeting of the minds. I don't believe that the Ash that Byatt has created would impose himself on an uneducated girl in his household. "
With all due respect Marcie, you have seen a better side of Ash than I have throughout the book. He was a very selfish and self serving man. The marriage was a lie. He was an adulterer, regardless, if it were a meeting of the minds in the beginning, and then became a meeting of the bodies. He was a cad! Once he knew he had a daughter why did he just walk away, and leave a message to let Christabel know he is off to new pastures, and knows of Mai? I disliked Ash and Christabel throughout the book, and I resented Byatt insulting "MY" intelligence by wrapping the ending up as a happily ever after, like any other novel.
It would be easy to consider Bertha's child could have been Ash's. I don't see him "imposing himself on her." He lived in a sexless marriage, many marriages even in Biblical times, the husband would sleep with the hired help and slaves to impregnant a woman, when the wife was barren. The marriage seemingly, loving, contended marriage was destroyed when he went off to have an affair with another woman and wrote to his wife as though he were alone.
I resented Byatt concocting a reason for Christabel giving her child away to her sister because she feared Ellen and Ash might take her. BALONEY...where did she come up with that? Afterall, Ash walked away from Mai after meeting her. Poppykosh, he makes her a crown and snips a lock of her hair. So that was good enough for him? No explanation for his deciding to leave his child. I know Byatt wants us to think she is better off with the parents she has been led to be her biological parents and siblings.....but...is that a good enough reason to walk away from your child? Nothing could keep me from my child. But then Ash and Christabel never showed much committment, it was always what suited their needs at the time. Were we suppose to feel sorry for Christabel, the spinster aunt watching her child, who seemed not to like her much? Again, sorry but I couldn't find any sympathy for her. Okay, so back then she would have had to face the shame of an unwed mother. Well, would that have been any worse than her being branded for running off with a married man, and she did consider her actions when she expressed that running off with Ash would ruin any chances of her being successful in her writing?
Romantic and touching as it may seem, after digesting the postscript I am furious! Ash, Ellen and Christabel were all deceitful, and used others for their own selfish desires and wants. I could have had more compassion for Ellen's conditon revealed in chapter 25 if Byatt would have given us a reason for her not being able to have sex. I was reading and waiting for an explanation......nothing! How can I attach my sympathy to the character when I have not been given an explanation that is deserving of my attachment?
I still think the title should have been "Obsession" rather than Possession. They were all obsessed in some self driven way. A romance, I think not. I personally do not see myself reading another book by Byatt. As confusing, frustrated, lengthy and show offy, this one was, I could barely force myself to finish this book. I wanted to throw it across the room and say, Finite! The ending left me, the reader, feeling cheated. For someone as brilliant as Byatt, I expected so much more. Okay, I'm done with my rant.
Gum, when I said Byatt would finally feel equal to her sister, it was from her interview, her words not mine. She speaks of never feeling to measure up to Margaret. The link of the interview is in one of my prior posts. They are both brillant writers. I would rather not rate the book, it won an award so many saw much in it, its just not my cup of tea, as the English say.
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Bellamarie, I think we could consider that both Randolph and Christabel were thinking of the interests of the child and not themselves. I don't think it was her own shame that would have concerned Christabel but the position of her daughter. The girl had been raised thinking that Christabel's sister and husband were her mother and father. I think it would have been more selfish of Randolph to try to claim her then. We don't know whether or not Randolph kept tabs on the girl from afar after that meeting.
There are a lot of details we are not told. It seems more of a fairy tale or allegory than a biography or mystery where we find out who did what. I think reading it with the expectations of the Robert Browning poem at the beginning of the book...."How build such solid fabric out of air? How on so slight a foundation found this tale..."
Some of us have pretty different reactions to this story. It does seem to have raised some strong reactions!
Ginny, thanks for giving us those insights from Burgass.
You mention that the Postscript seems to have no evidence to support his meeting his daughter. In Chapter 25, Ellen finds a letter that Randolph wrote to Christabel but never sent (p. 494 in my paperback edition). He says that he went to her family's home in Kernemet on a hunch she might have gone there (after not hearing from her for some months). He says he found out from her cousin "what all at Kernemet knew" (that she was pregnant). But at the time he wrote that letter (undated) he didn't know what happened to the child.
In the postscript, he tells the child to "Tell your aunt that you met a poet, who was looking for the Belle Dame Sans Merci, and who met you instead..." So it sounds like he traveled to her sister's house in search of Christabel but saw a little girl who looked like Christabel and who told him her name was Maia Thomasine Bailey. He put those clues together.
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Bella, I like your reasoning! :)
Marcie you're such a good close reader: In Chapter 25, Ellen finds a letter that Randolph wrote to Christabel but never sent (p. 494 in my paperback edition). He says that he went to her family's home in Kernemet on a hunch she might have gone there (after not hearing from her for some months). He says he found out from her cousin "what all at Kernemet knew" (that she was pregnant). But at the time he wrote that letter (undated) he didn't know what happened to the child.
I wondered what Kernemet (does that word mean anything?) was doing in the book! And her family suddenly appearing. And her mother for that matter, and here's the entire reason. So does it say (I think it's written in English and supposedly I also read it but apparently I need a translator! Good thing you're in here) haha, does it say how he knew she would be at the seance?
Kenemet, the hidden bread crumb. Can the reader be faulted if his eyes cross? Probably needed to take two months to discuss this thing, would we have had any readers left? I'm in AWR as the Sopranos used to say of our readers here who stuck it to the end, and who can see anything in it: pat yourselves on the back, you're amazing!
I have to say I started a new book while on the trip, finally, by the author of Chocolat, and it's very similar to this one with one major difference: you can follow the plot. You may not know what's going on but your speculations are fun and delicious as opposed to frustrating. The reader does not need a translator and does not have the distinct feeling that the "pearls before swine" metaphor uncomfortably fits. :)
Marcie, I liked your suggestion of an allegory,can you expand on that? What is being symbolized here? I think you're right and she HAS written a modern fairy tale, a Victorian fairy tale and she took great pains to make it authentic sounding, but even Hansel and Gretel has a plot which can be followed.
My own analysis: it got away from her. Left as it is, naturally those not enamored of structuralism in any form love it, (Byatt hates structuralism, apparently), as there are many paths one can go down and much analysis to do, yet apparently she tried to create something which would stand with its own meaning apart from any lit crit, did she succeed? The reader has to decide. Burgass has a huge huge section on this very point.
And this book addresses each of us, perhaps uncomfortably, in our own reading style. I find that I am the much despised (pity the poor) "New Critic:" New Critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider the reader's response, author's intention, or historical and cultural contexts. New Critics perform a close reading of the text, and believe the structure and meaning of the text should not be examined separately. New Critics especially appreciate the use of literary devices in a text. The New Criticism has sometimes been called an objective approach to literature.....
The problem for me with this book IS that I can't separate, either because I'm reading too fast or not trying hard enough, the structure for the trees. So when the reader comes up short and knows he or she IS short, the reader is not happy. One does not read to find out one is a shambling insensate mess. Same with Drabble, she needs to be reread several times (unless you are as good a reader as Marcie).
Don't you just wonder what kind of childhood Drabble and Byatt had? hahaaaa, something VERY weird there happened.
What an experience this book is, was it a good one? To me, any time you are constantly thinking of an author, or she addresses you personally as you read, the book is diminished. I never stopped thinking of Byatt (what is SHE doing, why is SHE doing it) and the structure in the book and to me that's a major break in the willing suspension of disbelief, which I did not have.
What about the rest of you, what a GOOD and valuable discussion, I'm learning a LOT from the discussion and have to say I've learned a lot from the book, too. Not all positive.
What an experience this book is, was it a good one?
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I started out this book trying to take a literary criticism approach, starting with the idea of "pastiche" but really got bogged down . I knew from my English major days that Ash and Christabel were not real. And I never was a fan of flowery Victorian poetry. But I decided to just fasten my seat belt and go on the ride and I truly enjoyed it. Not that I don't appreciate all the insights provided by others; they are great. I especially share the delight in Sabine, the astringent little dose of cynicism about Christabel. My favorite poem was Mumy possest with its echo of Browning monologues;' I went back and read My Last Duchess again and wondered if Ash was partly Robert Browning and Christabel was partly Christina Rosseti.
I always felt that sooner or later Roland and Maud would untangle all their mixed feelings and find each other. All in all, it was a great choice.
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Marcie,
Bellamarie, I think we could consider that both Randolph and Christabel were thinking of the interests of the child and not themselves. I don't think it was her own shame that would have concerned Christabel but the position of her daughter. The girl had been raised thinking that Christabel's sister and husband were her mother and father. I think it would have been more selfish of Randolph to try to claim her then. We don't know whether or not Randolph kept tabs on the girl from afar after that meeting.
Marcie, I think we must agree to disagree, when it comes to our views on Ash and Christabel's choices and actions. I see the two of them living their lives for their own self serving purposes, and I'm not so sure I agree giving Mai to Sophie was in the best interest of the child. Byatt did not sell me on that. You have seen Ash and Christabel in a much nicer light than myself. No, we can not know whether Randolph kept in touch because the book ends, which is how Byatt left it. But...because he said he has gone on to "new pastures," that left me feeling he was letting go of all things past. I think each indvidual will see and feel differently about these characters. Not to say any one person is correct or wrong. A fairy tale indeed!
Ginny, does it surprise me that once again I am in agreement with you...." it got away from her." I felt this exact feeling, that is why I felt she tried to tie the ending up quickly and neatly, which did not hold true to the rest of the book. But then again, she did call it a romance and don't most romance novels end in a happily ever after? I do think Byatt managed to get in every little fairy tale from the Little Mermaid to Hansel and Gretal. Pretty funny, she led us down the crumb path, under the sea, and up the hill, even into a graveyard. Wow weeee..what a hoot, we even experienced the great storm! I have no regrets reading the book, and I am glad I finished it. Sabine, Joan Bailey, and Lenora deserved our attention, as for the rest of the characters for me...not so much. As always it is so much fun discussing any book with this wonderful book club. We don't leave a stone unturned, and manage to always learn new things, and share such neat and exciting views and ideas. I do plan to get the movie and watch it, but not before I take my week vacation to Harbor Springs, Michigan to experience a Thomas Kinkaid city on a hill. I'm taking along a very light read for sitting by the pool there.
Marcie and Ginny, the two of you did a superb job in keeping us on our toes and when we slacked a bit I loved the Ollie, Ollie, oxen free. We can all come out now! LOLOL You are so much fun, thank the both of you for being our moderators. Excellent job ladies.
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Marcie and Ginny ~ You both did a wonderful job with a difficult book. Alas, I did not have the energy to parse it as you and others did. But I did learn a lot about poetry and literature. Thanks to everyone!
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I have learned a lot from this book -- mainly that I need to know more about literary theory. Perhaps the August book about fairy tales will enlighten me. Enjoyed the book after I gained some understanding of where the poetry, etc. fit in.
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Thank you Mippy and Bellamarie! I do think you've all done an amazing job with it this go around at whatever level we feel we've managed to attain, and I also got a lot out of it. I agree, Bellmere , it was (as it turned out) a good choice. Not an easy one but a good one and as Sally says, you can't help learning something.
I watched the movie last night. If you like the book, you would very much, I think, like the movie, it's beautiful: beautiful music, beautiful scenery, it's one of those movies they used to show for Lady's Matinee's, very nice. No poetry, (well, he's shown at the beginning reciting a couple of lines at a lecture) no legends, almost no mystery. Half the characters gone. Fergus has dark hair. Focuses on the characters of Maud and Roland, Ash and Christabel (who looks like Melanie in Gone With the Wind). There is no flood.
It starts by explaining why anybody would care about Ash in the first place, (which was a major issue with me personally: why all the fuss, this is Victorian poetry which was apparently known generally according to Burgass to be less than good): he was Poet Laureate to the Queen, he was having his 100th or something retrospective, his picture in banners over the museums, etc. THEN it makes sense. Along the way they add this or that explanation, the movie makes sense.
Our heading here, the illustration, is beautiful but I was not sure where it came from in the book, I know now: it's in the movie. There is a meadow in the book in the Postscript and a child swinging on a gate and sitting and talking, and eventually running off with her brothers, but in the movie the running thru the meadow is a pivotal scene of the movie, the last scene and they added a twist on the Ellen/ Ash story which is not in the book, but I liked it. I won't give it away. I think if you can get your hands on it you'd enjoy it, having done the work here.
Ash is very sympathetically played; once you've seen Jeremy Northam you can't forget his take on it, and the cast with the exception of Joan Bailey is perfectly cast. The person playing George Bailey is the guy in the Waiting for God series, he's perfect.
Ash asks Christabel three times across the seance table what have you done with the child. She responds you have made a murderer out of me.
That one stumped me, unless she's referring to Blanche. Blanche and she are somewhat portrayed as homosexual, but the Roland character says maybe she was bisexual. Maybe so, it would appear from their take. I didn't get from the book they were having a lesbian relationship. Christabel in the movie is somewhat hateful to Blanche and so is Ellen, dramatized so that Blanche's sewing the rocks is more understandable. I felt sorry for Blanche at Ellen's reception of her, and it's clear what the item was that she should not have kept.
Is the movie better than the book? Those of you who have seen it, what do you say? I don't think so. It's different, and it's understandable but it's a sort of minor movie.
If I had watched the movie first, I would have understood the book much better from the movie perspective. But I would not, I think, have understood the book as it's written any better, but rather overcast with the movie sympathetic Ash, whom I don't see in the book, so it's six of one and a half dozen of the other or as they say in old Pauline's Legends and Stories of the Deep Woods..... There once was a reader who wandered deep into the labyrinth of the dark forest....ooops, that's for another time and discussion. hahahaa
Thank you all for taking this hazardous fairy tale journey with us, I hope you can follow the crumbs back out to the real world. I will take with me the sailor and the miller's daughter as a cautionary tale. I think you've done a yeoman's job with it, and I enjoyed very much reading your perspectives on it which were so much sharper than mine.
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Ginny - a few days ago you asked - can any of you remember any of the poems of Randolph Ash. Could you restate them
It's odd that before this discussion was mooted you put up one of Ash's poems in the Library. As I read it I thought 'I know this' and when I saw that it was by R H Ash - I knew him too - it took a minute for the penny to drop that I knew it from having read Possession. So in that sense at least I can remember. But am I able to restate them ? The jury's out on that.
Then you say the only one which stuck in my mind is the sailor and the miller's daughter - I think that gets right at the heart of the problem with this book - the poems and stories just don't stay in the mind. As reader I had to backtrack constantly to sort out the parallels being drawn instead of being able to just nod wisely and say to myself 'just so' or some such.
I saw the film years ago but haven't watched it again so really can't comment beyond saying that I didn't much care for it when I did see it.
I had just read the book and wanted more of the poetry etc - perhaps to help me to better understand the novel.
I've learned a lot from the discussion and the points of view expressed by everyone but I'm dissatisfied with my own personal reading of the novel - I guess I still have unfinished business with it but I probably won't pursue it any further.
Thanks to all the posters for sharing their thoughts - you sometimes saw things I missed and I'm grateful to you.
I'm full of admiration for both Ginny and Marcie - it can't have been an easy discussion to conduct and yet you came up trumps every single day. Thank you both - your efforts are truly appreciated.
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I do like some of Randolph Ash's poetry and would read more of Ash based on the poems Byatt wrote for him. I think that The Garden of Proserpina is sensuous and mysterious. I like the first poem before Chapter 1.
These things are there. The garden and the tree
The serpent at its root, the fruit of gold
The woman in the shadow of the boughs
The running water and the grassy space.
They are and were there. At the old world's rim,
In the Hesperidean grove, the fruit
Glowed golden on eternal boughs, and there
The dragon Ladon crisped his jewelled crest
Scraped a gold claw and sharped a silver tooth
And dozed and waited through eternity
Until the tricksy hero, Heracles,
Came to his dispossession and the theft.
I like his romantic poem from Ask to Embla in the beginning of Chapter 14
They say that women change. 'tis so, but you
Are ever-constant in your changefulness,
Like that still thread of falling river, one
From source to last embrace in the still pool
Ever-renewed and ever-moving on
From first to last a myriad water-drops
And you--I love you for it--are the force
That moves and holds the form.
For me, Randolph Ash was a symbol of love of knowledge--all knowledge--and passion for LIFE. In the "fairy tale" story of Randolph and Christabel, I think Randolph saw Christabel as a creative, aware, source of LIFE. Christabel was the keeper of mysteries. He wanted to share in, and possess that life force with her. Of course, there would be consequences to the possession of life, as there were in the Eden-like garden.
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I think this discussion was better for our different approaches and responses to the book. I appreciate everyone sharing your struggles and insights. Your thoughts and questions made me a better reader. Thank you!
Like a few of you, I'm going to read more Byatt now (lol, I think some of you are going to run from her). This is the only book of hers I've read so far.
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...an attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. Hawthorne
I feel Byatt succeeded beautifully in her attempt. Obviously POSSESSION is not everybody's cup of tea, and isn't that one of the finest English metaphprs. I found it entertaining and haunting from first to last, charmed by the author's light touch in taking us through such a maze of literary artifacts, including Cropper's spurious footnotes. I always intended to pay more attention to the poems and tales featured in this scholarly journey, but I was always too keen on the narrative. No doubt there are many significant clues and insights in there somewhere.
I'm reminded of being in a small poetry class many years ago. We were given a few dozen lines of graphic images and intense emotions, making no sense at all. Until one of us pointed out that they were the poetry of a newlyborn infant. And it all just came together.
I've enjoyed Ash's poetry, but I'm bowled over by his last words as he lay dying. Those last months. Page 491:
It was one of his bad days. He had moments of clarity, and then he could be seen to wander, his mind wandering - where?
"Odd thing - sleep. You go - all over. Fields. Gardens. Other worlds. You can be - in another state - in sleep."
Ellen: Yes, dear. We don't know much about our lives, really. About what we know."
Randolph: "Summer fields - just in a - twinkling of an eyelid - I saw her. I should have - looked after her. How could I? I could only - hurt her -
What are you doing?"
"Making a bracelet. Out of her our hair."
"In my watch. Her hair. Tell her."
"Tell her what?"
"I forget."
His eyes closed.
That made the Postscript inevitable, and so meaningful.
But my heart goes out to Ellen and her sad memories of the honeymoon at the Fontaine de Vaucluse.
I was impressed at the way the author left all judgments to the reader.
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Jonathan, those are very poignant passages. In my perception you've pointed out some of the essences of the book in your posts. Yes, the author has left all judgments to the reader. Very well said.
I hope you and the other brave participants in this discussion will join us in the FRANKENSTEIN discussion that starts tomorrow. It's a story within a story (and not about the monster of most film adaptations). It shouldn't be as complex as Byatt. http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?board=91.0
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The Book Club Online is the oldest book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone. We offer cordial discussions of one book a month, 24/7 and enjoy the company of readers from all over the world. everyone is welcome to join in.
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Week V: Metaphors and Endings
Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/worldservice/meta/dps/2008/02/080204_as_byatt?size=au&bgc=003399&lang=en-ws&nbram=1&nbwm=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1) Submitted by Jude S.
A Zest for Pastiche (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/possession-as-byatt-book-club) by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one: Satire: (Possible spoilers within). Submitted by Marcie
Characters and Plot : First Five Chapters (http://www.seniorlearn.org/bookclubs/readerguides/possession/possession_characters.html) by our Readers
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Schedule of Discussion:
June 28-30 Chapters 24- end (90pp)
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Week V: June 28-30 Chapters 124- End: Metaphors and Endings
1. Chapter 24: What are some of the metaphors in this chapter that impressed you? What are Roland's primary thoughts and feelings at this time?
2. Chapter 25: What do we learn from Ellen Ash's journal? What do we learn directly from her thoughts to which the scholars don't have access?
3. Chapter 26: What transformations take place in Roland? What are some of the garden metaphors in this chapter?
4. Chapter 27: "We are driven by endings as by hunger. We must know...." (from the poem in the beginning of the chapter). "'All's well that ends well,' said Euan. This feels like the ending of a Shakespearean comedy--who's that chappie that comes down on a swing at the end of As You Like It?" What does the poem in the beginning of the chapter tells us. What about the reference to Shakespeare?
5. Chapter 28: What do you think of the grave robbing scene?
"Maud said,'We need the end of the story.' 'There is no guarantee that that is what we shall find,' said Blackadder. 'But we must look,' said Maud." How do you see the end of the story? What happens with Maud and Roland? Are there parallels with Christabel and Randolph?
6. Postscript: "There are things that happen that leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been." What do you think of the events we, the readers, see in the postscript?
7. What are your thoughts about the book? Did the last chapters and postscript change your mind about how any of the characters were portrayed? How did the postscript change the "ending" of the book for you?
8. If you've seen the film adaptation, what are your thoughts about it? Many of the characters were combined or left out. Did the film seem faithful to the "spirit" of the book?
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Discussion Leaders: ginny (gvinesc@gmail.com) & Marcie (mailto:MarcieI@aol.com <MarcieI@aol.com>)
Jonathon, Thank you for this, "Randolph: "Summer fields - just in a - twinkling of an eyelid - I saw her. I should have - looked after her. How could I? I could only - hurt her -"
Ash is in his final breaths rethinking as to whether he should have taken care of Mai. I totally missed this! For me it makes the ending, bittersweet.
Ginny, Sounds like I would not like the movie version, so I am glad you posted how different it is from the book, NO storm, oh my, that was the fun part of the whole graveyard thievery. Looks like one more thing I check off my list of....... forgetabout it. LOL
You all have been such fun, and I enjoyed you all more than the book! Have a great summer and hope to share another book with you soon. Just NOT Byatt for me. LOL Ciao!
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Gum and Marcie, I'm so impressed that you can recall Ash, but I agree with you Gum: I think that gets right at the heart of the problem with this book - the poems and stories just don't stay in the mind. As reader I had to backtrack constantly to sort out the parallels being drawn instead of being able to just nod wisely and say to myself 'just so' or some such. I agree, to me it was such an amorphous mess that forced rather than invited the reader to try to figure out what was going on, I never had a foothold on anything. And that was deliberate on Byatt's part. I think.
Marcie those were beautiful verses, if to me totally nonsensical. And Jonathan I loved your finding his deathbed thoughts meaningful. I love it when people appreciate anything, your enthusiasm and appreciation make it so much more for all of us, whether or not we share that opinion, just love it.
That is one major reason why reading a book together always makes for a winning situation, we don't agree, but we enjoy (or I do anyway) the opposing viewpoint. I just saw the same thing in a lecture at a Classics Conference on Caesar's battle with the Nervii, where the reaction from the assembled Classicists there, more than 100, ran from avowed admiration and intense examination of his very syllables with breathless delight to an analogy to a Hitler.
I'm in the breathless delight camp where Caesar is concerned, but I understand the negative (I think it's unfounded and somewhat lacking in learning but still I can admit it) and it's like that for me here. I guess in reverse, I'm the swine that the pearls were laid out for. I love that, too. :)
Bella, no I think you would like the movie and I think it would make the book more palatable.
I won't go into my thoughts on Ash on his deathbed. RIP.
Byatt is no Caesar, and to me, if you have to delve, the substance better be worth the struggle. I am so glad for some of you it was. Just love our book discussions here, thank you all so much, you were right Jonathan, we should not have shelved it! It's been a great experience, all around. :)