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Angels and Insects
In these two “astonishing” novellas ( The New Yorker ), the Booker Prize-winning author of Possession returns to the landscape of Victorian England, where science and spiritualism are popular manias, and domestic decorum coexists with brutality and perversion.
"At once quirky and deep, brimming with generosity, imagination, and intelligence." — The New Yorker
"delicate and confidently ironic.... Byatt perfectly blends laughter and sympathy [with] extraordinary sensuality" — San Francisco Examiner
"At once quirky and deep, brimming with generosity, imagination, and intelligence." — The New Yorker
"delicate and confidently ironic.... Byatt perfectly blends laughter and sympathy [with] extraordinary sensuality" — San Francisco Examiner
352 pages, Paperback
First published October 19, 1992
About the author
A.S. Byatt
166 books2,616 followersA.S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is internationally known for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize winner Possession, The Biographer’s Tale and the quartet, The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, and her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, Elementals and her most recent book Little Black Book of Stories. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction, A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999.
BYATT, Dame Antonia (Susan), (Dame Antonia Duffy), DBE 1999 (CBE 1990); FRSL 1983; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2003 , writer; born 24 Aug. 1936;
Daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor
Byatt has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, Margaret Drabble, over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other.
Married
1st, 1959, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt (Sir I. C. R. Byatt) marriage dissolved. 1969; one daughter (one son deceased)
2nd, 1969, Peter John Duffy; two daughters.
Education
Sheffield High School; The Mount School, York; Newnham College, Cambridge (BA Hons; Hon. Fellow 1999); Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA; Somerville College, Oxford.
Academic Honours:
Hon. Fellow, London Inst., 2000; Fellow UCL, 2004
Hon. DLitt: Bradford, 1987; DUniv York, 1991; Durham, 1991; Nottingham, 1992; Liverpool, 1993; Portsmouth, 1994; London, 1995; Sheffield, 2000; Kent 2004; Hon. LittD Cambridge, 1999
Prizes
The PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Of Fiction prize, 1986 for STILL LIFE
The Booker Prize, 1990, for POSSESSION
Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, 1990 for POSSESSION
The Eurasian section of Best Book in Commonwealth Prize, 1991 for POSSESSION
Premio Malaparte, Capri, 1995;
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, California, 1998 for THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE''S EYE
Shakespeare Prize, Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, 2002;
Publications:
The Shadow of the Sun, 1964;
Degrees of Freedom, 1965 (reprinted as Degrees of Freedom: the early novels of Iris Murdoch, 1994);
The Game, 1967;
Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1970 (reprinted as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1989);
Iris Murdoch 1976
The Virgin in the Garden, 1978;
GEORGE ELIOT Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings , 1979 (editor);
Still Life, 1985
Sugar and Other Stories, 1987;
George Eliot: selected essays, 1989 (editor)
Possession: a romance, 1990
Robert Browning''s Dramatic Monologues, 1990 (editor);
Passions of the Mind, (essays), 1991;
Angels and Insects (novellas),1992
The Matisse Stories (short stories),1993;
The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye: five fairy stories, 1994
Imagining Characters, 1995 (joint editor);
New Writing 4, 1995 (joint editor);
Babel Tower, 1996;
New Writing 6, 1997 (joint editor);
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 1998 (editor);
Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (short stories), 1998;
The Biographer''s Tale, 2000;
On Histories and Stories (essays), 2000;
Portraits in Fiction, 2001;
The Bird Hand Book, 2001 (Photographs by Victor Schrager Text By AS Byatt);
A Whistling Woman, 2002
Little
BYATT, Dame Antonia (Susan), (Dame Antonia Duffy), DBE 1999 (CBE 1990); FRSL 1983; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 2003 , writer; born 24 Aug. 1936;
Daughter of His Honour John Frederick Drabble, QC and late Kathleen Marie Bloor
Byatt has famously been engaged in a long-running feud with her novelist sister, Margaret Drabble, over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels. The pair seldom see each other and each does not read the books of the other.
Married
1st, 1959, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt (Sir I. C. R. Byatt) marriage dissolved. 1969; one daughter (one son deceased)
2nd, 1969, Peter John Duffy; two daughters.
Education
Sheffield High School; The Mount School, York; Newnham College, Cambridge (BA Hons; Hon. Fellow 1999); Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, USA; Somerville College, Oxford.
Academic Honours:
Hon. Fellow, London Inst., 2000; Fellow UCL, 2004
Hon. DLitt: Bradford, 1987; DUniv York, 1991; Durham, 1991; Nottingham, 1992; Liverpool, 1993; Portsmouth, 1994; London, 1995; Sheffield, 2000; Kent 2004; Hon. LittD Cambridge, 1999
Prizes
The PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Of Fiction prize, 1986 for STILL LIFE
The Booker Prize, 1990, for POSSESSION
Irish Times/Aer Lingus International Fiction Prize, 1990 for POSSESSION
The Eurasian section of Best Book in Commonwealth Prize, 1991 for POSSESSION
Premio Malaparte, Capri, 1995;
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, California, 1998 for THE DJINN IN THE NIGHTINGALE''S EYE
Shakespeare Prize, Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, 2002;
Publications:
The Shadow of the Sun, 1964;
Degrees of Freedom, 1965 (reprinted as Degrees of Freedom: the early novels of Iris Murdoch, 1994);
The Game, 1967;
Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1970 (reprinted as Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their Time, 1989);
Iris Murdoch 1976
The Virgin in the Garden, 1978;
GEORGE ELIOT Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings , 1979 (editor);
Still Life, 1985
Sugar and Other Stories, 1987;
George Eliot: selected essays, 1989 (editor)
Possession: a romance, 1990
Robert Browning''s Dramatic Monologues, 1990 (editor);
Passions of the Mind, (essays), 1991;
Angels and Insects (novellas),1992
The Matisse Stories (short stories),1993;
The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye: five fairy stories, 1994
Imagining Characters, 1995 (joint editor);
New Writing 4, 1995 (joint editor);
Babel Tower, 1996;
New Writing 6, 1997 (joint editor);
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 1998 (editor);
Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (short stories), 1998;
The Biographer''s Tale, 2000;
On Histories and Stories (essays), 2000;
Portraits in Fiction, 2001;
The Bird Hand Book, 2001 (Photographs by Victor Schrager Text By AS Byatt);
A Whistling Woman, 2002
Little
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 407 reviews
September 22, 2013
A S Byatt goes back again to the Victorian era she writes about so well and has put two novellas together. “Morpho Eugenia” and “The Conjugial Angel”. Both are well written and as always Byatt makes excellent use of poetry; especially Tennyson’s In Memoriam in the second novella.
Morpho Eugenia (the Latin name for a South American moth) is about William Adamson and Amazonian explorer who has returned and is consulting with Lord Alabaster, a cleric who is also obsessed with moths, butterflies, insects and is a generally obsessive collector. Adamson agrees to catalogue his collection and becomes entangled with his family and marries one of the daughters. This is a suitably gothic tale and is layered with symbolism. Adamson himself becomes one of the specimens. There is intrigue and secrecy and Byatt plays with the surname alabaster, using the whiteness of the skin of Adamson’s wife to symbolize purity. She then plays with the idea of the “purity” and decay and degeneracy underneath. This is also set around the time that Darwinian ideas and the debate about evolution are taking place and the tensions around these ideas also underlay the novella. There are fairly lengthy descriptions of the social life of ants which are gruesome and fascinating at the same time. Matty Crompton is an interesting character and she plays the part of the intellectual foil to Adamson very well. It is a satisfying and intellectually stimulating gothic tale.
The Conjugial Angel takes a look at the Victorian obsession with séances and the next world. There is a tenuous link between the two stories in the form of the sea captain. The main focus of the tale is Emily Jesse (formerly Emily Tennyson), Alfred Tennyson’s sister. The séances revolve around (amongst others) Arthur Hallam, the subject of Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam. Hallam was a close friend of Tennyson’s who died at the age of 22; he was also engaged to Emily Tennyson. The novella takes place many years after Hallam’s death and after the writing of In Memoriam. Byatt examines the persistence of love, memory and the way the living hold onto and re-interpret the dead. It is also about the guilt of those who carry on living. There is a bleakness about the séances and Byatt throws in some Swedenborgian theology just to spice things up. There are some masterly touches which provide symbolism and humour; the pet raven and the farting dog! The use of the poem is excellent and Byatt provides a master class in the meanings behind the poem.
Two very good novellas providing a snapshot of the Victorian period and some of its eccentricities and hidden depths. The strong characters in these tales are the women; the men are mostly weak, led (though amiable), absent, opinionated or villainous. The women have the inner strength and usually see the way forward. Byatt writes beautifully and if you like Victorian tales this is for you.
Morpho Eugenia (the Latin name for a South American moth) is about William Adamson and Amazonian explorer who has returned and is consulting with Lord Alabaster, a cleric who is also obsessed with moths, butterflies, insects and is a generally obsessive collector. Adamson agrees to catalogue his collection and becomes entangled with his family and marries one of the daughters. This is a suitably gothic tale and is layered with symbolism. Adamson himself becomes one of the specimens. There is intrigue and secrecy and Byatt plays with the surname alabaster, using the whiteness of the skin of Adamson’s wife to symbolize purity. She then plays with the idea of the “purity” and decay and degeneracy underneath. This is also set around the time that Darwinian ideas and the debate about evolution are taking place and the tensions around these ideas also underlay the novella. There are fairly lengthy descriptions of the social life of ants which are gruesome and fascinating at the same time. Matty Crompton is an interesting character and she plays the part of the intellectual foil to Adamson very well. It is a satisfying and intellectually stimulating gothic tale.
The Conjugial Angel takes a look at the Victorian obsession with séances and the next world. There is a tenuous link between the two stories in the form of the sea captain. The main focus of the tale is Emily Jesse (formerly Emily Tennyson), Alfred Tennyson’s sister. The séances revolve around (amongst others) Arthur Hallam, the subject of Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam. Hallam was a close friend of Tennyson’s who died at the age of 22; he was also engaged to Emily Tennyson. The novella takes place many years after Hallam’s death and after the writing of In Memoriam. Byatt examines the persistence of love, memory and the way the living hold onto and re-interpret the dead. It is also about the guilt of those who carry on living. There is a bleakness about the séances and Byatt throws in some Swedenborgian theology just to spice things up. There are some masterly touches which provide symbolism and humour; the pet raven and the farting dog! The use of the poem is excellent and Byatt provides a master class in the meanings behind the poem.
Two very good novellas providing a snapshot of the Victorian period and some of its eccentricities and hidden depths. The strong characters in these tales are the women; the men are mostly weak, led (though amiable), absent, opinionated or villainous. The women have the inner strength and usually see the way forward. Byatt writes beautifully and if you like Victorian tales this is for you.
June 7, 2023
Reread
*
'My name', she said, 'is Matilda. Up here at night there is no Matty. Only Matilda. Look at Me.'
The above is dialogue from the book's first novella, Morpho Eugenia, and eerily echoes a recent read of mine, which eerily echoed another novel I read not too long ago. While an overall theme of Morpho Eugenia is the dichotomy between the male protagonist's present life with a Victorian English family and his past experiences in the Amazon, Matty/Matilda is revealed as a patient, reckoning force. Though I fully remembered the ending from my prior read, I was still surprised by part of it. Despite some self-indulgent sections, knowing full well that's what you get with Byatt, I once again found this novella a multi-layered, fascinating work.
*
Mrs. Papagay ... wondered whether other people told themselves stories in this way in their heads, whether everyone made up everyone else, living and dead, at every turn, whether this she knew about Mrs Hearnshaw could be called knowledge or lies, or both...
Before starting the second novella, The Conjugial Angel, I was already swarmed by 19th-century women--real, fictional, even hybrids. With this work, I can now add two more--one fictional and the other a hybrid. As interesting and erudite as Byatt's Swedenborgian and Tennysonian riffs were, I preferred being in the heads of the women. Adding to the 'minor' theme of the unseen woman of the first novella, a 'minor' theme here is resistance to the Victorian age's angel-in-the-house mentality, a resistance that perhaps leads to Emily's willful eccentricity, perhaps also to a bit of The Yellow Wallpaper but at least not to The Madwoman in the Attic.
*
After reading Byatt back-to-back (along with my recent read of The Children's Book), it struck me that despite her very dark themes, these stories end on uplifting notes, endings that may be 'fantasies' (especially for the time) but are not fantastical.
*
'My name', she said, 'is Matilda. Up here at night there is no Matty. Only Matilda. Look at Me.'
The above is dialogue from the book's first novella, Morpho Eugenia, and eerily echoes a recent read of mine, which eerily echoed another novel I read not too long ago. While an overall theme of Morpho Eugenia is the dichotomy between the male protagonist's present life with a Victorian English family and his past experiences in the Amazon, Matty/Matilda is revealed as a patient, reckoning force. Though I fully remembered the ending from my prior read, I was still surprised by part of it. Despite some self-indulgent sections, knowing full well that's what you get with Byatt, I once again found this novella a multi-layered, fascinating work.
*
Mrs. Papagay ... wondered whether other people told themselves stories in this way in their heads, whether everyone made up everyone else, living and dead, at every turn, whether this she knew about Mrs Hearnshaw could be called knowledge or lies, or both...
Before starting the second novella, The Conjugial Angel, I was already swarmed by 19th-century women--real, fictional, even hybrids. With this work, I can now add two more--one fictional and the other a hybrid. As interesting and erudite as Byatt's Swedenborgian and Tennysonian riffs were, I preferred being in the heads of the women. Adding to the 'minor' theme of the unseen woman of the first novella, a 'minor' theme here is resistance to the Victorian age's angel-in-the-house mentality, a resistance that perhaps leads to Emily's willful eccentricity, perhaps also to a bit of The Yellow Wallpaper but at least not to The Madwoman in the Attic.
*
After reading Byatt back-to-back (along with my recent read of The Children's Book), it struck me that despite her very dark themes, these stories end on uplifting notes, endings that may be 'fantasies' (especially for the time) but are not fantastical.
September 3, 2023
3,5
Morpho Eugenia
Роман о викторианцах, написанный нашей современницей - порождает вопрос: почему был нужен уход в прошлое? Что это - переосмысление прошлого или ностальгия по ушедшим славным временам? Ведь это не исторический роман, не биографический, это в чистом виде выдумка. Он написан в традиционной для викторианской эпохи линейной форме, н�� отличается от викторианских романов отсутствием викторианского ханжества и стыдливости в интимной сфере. Критика называет его пост-модернистским, но в чем это проявляется и так ли это важно?
Роман не отличается ничем особенным, разве что мне понравились экскурсы в энтомологию, в особенности поведения коллективных насекомых. Здесь пытливый ум, нашедший связь с постмодернизмом, найдет связи и аналогии с человеческим обществом. Внешний вид обманчив? Да, ну и что же? Мне показалось ни о чем.
Ангел супружества.
Спиритизм был повальным увлечением в течение десятилетий - всю вторую половину девятнадцатого века вплоть до Первой мировой войны. Большую популярность набрали сочинения шведского спирита Сведенборга. С помощью духов люди пытались узнать прошлое, настоящее и будущее. Спиритизм не был духовным поиском, напротив, скорее вечерним развлечением.
Имя великого английского поэта Теннисона мне было известно, но с его поэтическим наследием не удавалось познакомиться. Так что цитируемые в романе строки позволили прикоснуться к нему.
Без знания его творчества читателя может удивить, что в роман о спиритизме вплетена биографическая линия этого стихотворца, бывшего любимым поэтом королевы Виктории и назначенным ею лауреатом (для тех, кто не знает, эта почетная должность придворного поэта предполагает создание памятных стихов на важные события монаршей семьи, ее дают пожизненно, и Теннисон носил это звание более сорока лет). Его творчество как нельзя более точно выражало мировоззрение консервативной викторианской эпохи.
Нежные чувства к Артуру Галламу испытывали брат и сестра Альфред и Эмили Теннисоны.
"... он был великолепен, чист и добродетелен, его ждало великое будущее министра или философа, поэта или принца." - так описывает Галлама Байетт. Но он умер от апоплексического удара в молодом возрасте.
Герои обсуждают, дурно ли поступила Эмили, вызывая духа Галлама, с кем она была помолвлена, будучи миссис Джесси?
Мистер Хок приводит такие доводы: "Сведенборг, как вы знаете, учит, что истинная супружеская любовь приходит к человеку лишь однажды и у нашей души, может быть лишь один супруг, единственная половина, которая ей идеально подходит. Ангел соединяет половинки в целое, и так рождается супружеская любовь. Ибо небесное Супружество (а Небо и есть Супружество, Супружество Богочеловека и в Богочеловеке) сочетает истину с добром, сочувствие с волей, мысль с нежностью, так как истина, сочувствие и мысль считаются мужскими началами, а добро, воля и нежность — женскими." Как Вы понимаете, эта идея и является стержнем романа, и ее выразителем является и другая героиня миссис Папагай.
Этот роман получше Morpho Eugenia.
Morpho Eugenia
Роман о викторианцах, написанный нашей современницей - порождает вопрос: почему был нужен уход в прошлое? Что это - переосмысление прошлого или ностальгия по ушедшим славным временам? Ведь это не исторический роман, не биографический, это в чистом виде выдумка. Он написан в традиционной для викторианской эпохи линейной форме, н�� отличается от викторианских романов отсутствием викторианского ханжества и стыдливости в интимной сфере. Критика называет его пост-модернистским, но в чем это проявляется и так ли это важно?
Роман не отличается ничем особенным, разве что мне понравились экскурсы в энтомологию, в особенности поведения коллективных насекомых. Здесь пытливый ум, нашедший связь с постмодернизмом, найдет связи и аналогии с человеческим обществом. Внешний вид обманчив? Да, ну и что же? Мне показалось ни о чем.
Ангел супружества.
Спиритизм был повальным увлечением в течение десятилетий - всю вторую половину девятнадцатого века вплоть до Первой мировой войны. Большую популярность набрали сочинения шведского спирита Сведенборга. С помощью духов люди пытались узнать прошлое, настоящее и будущее. Спиритизм не был духовным поиском, напротив, скорее вечерним развлечением.
Имя великого английского поэта Теннисона мне было известно, но с его поэтическим наследием не удавалось познакомиться. Так что цитируемые в романе строки позволили прикоснуться к нему.
Без знания его творчества читателя может удивить, что в роман о спиритизме вплетена биографическая линия этого стихотворца, бывшего любимым поэтом королевы Виктории и назначенным ею лауреатом (для тех, кто не знает, эта почетная должность придворного поэта предполагает создание памятных стихов на важные события монаршей семьи, ее дают пожизненно, и Теннисон носил это звание более сорока лет). Его творчество как нельзя более точно выражало мировоззрение консервативной викторианской эпохи.
Нежные чувства к Артуру Галламу испытывали брат и сестра Альфред и Эмили Теннисоны.
"... он был великолепен, чист и добродетелен, его ждало великое будущее министра или философа, поэта или принца." - так описывает Галлама Байетт. Но он умер от апоплексического удара в молодом возрасте.
Герои обсуждают, дурно ли поступила Эмили, вызывая духа Галлама, с кем она была помолвлена, будучи миссис Джесси?
Мистер Хок приводит такие доводы: "Сведенборг, как вы знаете, учит, что истинная супружеская любовь приходит к человеку лишь однажды и у нашей души, может быть лишь один супруг, единственная половина, которая ей идеально подходит. Ангел соединяет половинки в целое, и так рождается супружеская любовь. Ибо небесное Супружество (а Небо и есть Супружество, Супружество Богочеловека и в Богочеловеке) сочетает истину с добром, сочувствие с волей, мысль с нежностью, так как истина, сочувствие и мысль считаются мужскими началами, а добро, воля и нежность — женскими." Как Вы понимаете, эта идея и является стержнем романа, и ее выразителем является и другая героиня миссис Папагай.
Этот роман получше Morpho Eugenia.
May 4, 2016
As a fourth read from her, this helps confirm Byatt as among my favorite authors. All complex, rich, and mesmerizing. This pair of novellas was published together in 1992, soon after Booker Prize winner “Possession.” The blurb on the cover did a good job hooking me (and mystifying me with semi-spoilers in distorted compression):
The shipwrecked naturalist who is the protagonist of “Morpho Eugenia” is rescued by a family whose clandestine passions come to seem as inscrutable as the behavior of insects. In “The Conjugial Angel,” a circle of fictional mediums finds itself haunted by the ghost of a very real historical personage.
The naturalist, one William Adamson, has lost most of his specimens and notes from his ten years in the jungles of South America and his prospects for a lucrative career based on the work are slim. One of his wealthy customers for rare butterflies and the like takes him in and gives him work organizing his collection. Harald Alabaster also tasks him to serve as a sounding board for his ideas for a treatise that can reconcile God with Darwinian evolution, which at this point in the 1860s is a hot topic. Fascinating discussions, but to William the efforts of Alabaster don’t inspire him:
‘But you do not feel your own sense of wonder corresponds to something beyond yourself’, William?
‘I do indeed. But I also ask myself, what has this sense of wonder to do with my moral sense? For the Creation we so admire does not appear to have a Creator who cares for his creatures. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as Mr Tennyson put it. The Amazon jungle does indeed arouse a sense of wonder at its abundance and luxuriance. But there is a spirit there—a terrible spirit of mindless striving or apathetic inertia—a kind of vegetable greed and vast decay—which makes a mindless natural force much easier to believe in.’
He may be a rational scientist, but he succumbs like a fool to love at first sight with one of Alabaster’s daughters, Eugenia. Happy days come for him at winning her agreement to marriage and persuading her father to accede despite his low birth. But there is something missing in Eugenia, who passively goes along with being a baby machine. This is one of so many analogies with the social insects that were his focus in his field work and a major topic of the discussions with his father-in-law. Being a useless drone to his queen is something he resists. He comes to appreciate studying the ants and bees on the estate with a female tutor for the Alabaster children, Mattie, who is a refreshing, though androgynous, character who strives to surmount gender and class barriers to the playground of knowledge. In teaching the household’s children about the ways of ants and bees, they find a path to write an accessible educational book. I loved the fantasy tale she pens from the inspiration.
Byatt’s presentation of the ferment of Victorian thinking about the world and the place of humans in it is wonderfully done. It goes far beyond assailing creationist arguments. In winding up this ensemble cast of characters with all the sublime Romantic thinking and poetry and the new scientific knowledge of the biological roots of human nature Byatt gets to play the Watchmaker god who walks away. It felt playful on her part to let her characters linger on thinking about nature and nuture, instinct and predestination, that presaged modern formulations and debates on sociobiology from the likes of Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, and Richard Dawkins. William’s fascination with the craft in ant slavery and the analogies between individual ant workers and cells in a superorganism makes a warm spot in my heart. Mileage from this may vary among other readers.
Some of my pleasure is biased from the allure ant behavior had for me in childhood, which shaped my choice later to become a biologist. But I think others out there might feel the brilliance of how her heroes in their quest for knowledge faces down the almost Gothic horror of all the ways of parasitism and dog eat dog brutality in nature. Getting the reader to see the proper privileged society through the images and metaphors of insect life was marvelous. Its not hard to empathize with Alabaster’s reluctance to relinquish the divine sublime of human art and esthetics. Here he dwells on his altered responses to a beautiful painting of the Annunciation to Mary by angels with colored wings echoed by butterflies:
And now all this it as it were erased, and there is a black backcloth on an empty stage, and I see a chimpanzee, with puzzled eyes and a hanging brow and great ugly teeth, clutching its hairy offspring to its wrinkled breast—and is this love made flesh?
…No frog, no hound even, could have a vision of the Angel of Annunciation. Where does it all come from?
The second novella makes a wonderful juxtaposition with the first in that the fad of spiritualism and séances is another form of resistance of Romanticism to the advances of science. Mrs. Papagay, whose husband disappeared at sea, is a medium gifted in automatic writing from the minds of the dead while her otherworldly partner Sophie has the second sight to see ghosts and through windows it seems to angels and alien life forms of alternate universes. His sister Emily, now married to a Captain Jesse, wants to use the séances to communicate with her first beloved, her brother’s best friend Arthur Hallam, who died before their wedding. The Tennyson of nature being “red in tooth in claw” in “Morpho Eugenia” becomes in “The Conjugial Angel” a core presence for bravely holding to the immortal qualities of love, beauty, and the soul. Readings of his poems are used to set the mood for the séances, and the ghosts summoned into presence make use of his poetry to communicate. Especially Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”, which was a response to his 17 years of grief over the death of his beloved friend and fellow poet, Arthur.
Mrs. Papagay is endearing, both pragmatic and nurturing, as well as strong enough to see through the manipulators and users in her circle. She recognizes the entertainment value of the parlor tricks often employed in séance productions, but she can’t help believing in the reality of Sophie’s visions. I loved how she handles the lecherous lay minister, Mr. Hawke, who is always pontificating on Swedenborg’s views about the afterlife and witnessing of the permanent fusion in heavenly angels between male and female souls as a sexual apotheosis of human love:
'Swedenborg teaches us, as you know, that conjugial love comes to us all but once, that our souls have one mate, one perfect other half, whom we should seek ceaselessly. …Swedenborg was the first religious founder to give the expression of sexual delight the central place in heaven that in holds in many of our hearts on earth—to divine, and to constate, that earthly love and Heavenly Love, are truly One, at their highest. This is a noble, a daunting understanding, of our nature and our one true duty do you not think?'
‘Better to marry than burn,’ said Mrs Papagay reflectively, quoting the gloomy admonition of the misogynist St. Paul, but thinking of her own state of mind and body. Mr Hawke made her aware of her own discreet burning at her side.
…
Mr.Hawke, Mrs Papagay thought would theorise if a huge red Cherub with a fiery sword were advancing on him to burn him to the bone; he would explain the circumstances, whilst the stars fell out of the sky into the sea like ripe figs from a shaken fig-tree.
The séances conjure up some surprising presences and have significant impacts on the participants’ lives. I loved the way Tennyson’s overblown sentimentality gets deflated through the tale. Emily in particular comes to realize how her much her brother usurped her own grief, effectively making himself the widow to Arthur’s death in his epic poem:
It was, she knew and said often, the greatest poem of her time. And yet, she thought in her bursts of private savagery, it aimed a burning dart at her very heart, it strove to annihilate her, and she felt the pain of it, and could not speak of that pain to a soul.
Byatt is a charmer in her story telling, great on fruitful beginnings, surprising but apt in her endings, and masterly in her characters’ development and diversions in the body of her tales. We can feel the warmth of compassion for the ones trying to solve life’s great problems and a lively amusement in her fools and snobs.
The shipwrecked naturalist who is the protagonist of “Morpho Eugenia” is rescued by a family whose clandestine passions come to seem as inscrutable as the behavior of insects. In “The Conjugial Angel,” a circle of fictional mediums finds itself haunted by the ghost of a very real historical personage.
The naturalist, one William Adamson, has lost most of his specimens and notes from his ten years in the jungles of South America and his prospects for a lucrative career based on the work are slim. One of his wealthy customers for rare butterflies and the like takes him in and gives him work organizing his collection. Harald Alabaster also tasks him to serve as a sounding board for his ideas for a treatise that can reconcile God with Darwinian evolution, which at this point in the 1860s is a hot topic. Fascinating discussions, but to William the efforts of Alabaster don’t inspire him:
‘But you do not feel your own sense of wonder corresponds to something beyond yourself’, William?
‘I do indeed. But I also ask myself, what has this sense of wonder to do with my moral sense? For the Creation we so admire does not appear to have a Creator who cares for his creatures. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as Mr Tennyson put it. The Amazon jungle does indeed arouse a sense of wonder at its abundance and luxuriance. But there is a spirit there—a terrible spirit of mindless striving or apathetic inertia—a kind of vegetable greed and vast decay—which makes a mindless natural force much easier to believe in.’
He may be a rational scientist, but he succumbs like a fool to love at first sight with one of Alabaster’s daughters, Eugenia. Happy days come for him at winning her agreement to marriage and persuading her father to accede despite his low birth. But there is something missing in Eugenia, who passively goes along with being a baby machine. This is one of so many analogies with the social insects that were his focus in his field work and a major topic of the discussions with his father-in-law. Being a useless drone to his queen is something he resists. He comes to appreciate studying the ants and bees on the estate with a female tutor for the Alabaster children, Mattie, who is a refreshing, though androgynous, character who strives to surmount gender and class barriers to the playground of knowledge. In teaching the household’s children about the ways of ants and bees, they find a path to write an accessible educational book. I loved the fantasy tale she pens from the inspiration.
Byatt’s presentation of the ferment of Victorian thinking about the world and the place of humans in it is wonderfully done. It goes far beyond assailing creationist arguments. In winding up this ensemble cast of characters with all the sublime Romantic thinking and poetry and the new scientific knowledge of the biological roots of human nature Byatt gets to play the Watchmaker god who walks away. It felt playful on her part to let her characters linger on thinking about nature and nuture, instinct and predestination, that presaged modern formulations and debates on sociobiology from the likes of Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, and Richard Dawkins. William’s fascination with the craft in ant slavery and the analogies between individual ant workers and cells in a superorganism makes a warm spot in my heart. Mileage from this may vary among other readers.
Some of my pleasure is biased from the allure ant behavior had for me in childhood, which shaped my choice later to become a biologist. But I think others out there might feel the brilliance of how her heroes in their quest for knowledge faces down the almost Gothic horror of all the ways of parasitism and dog eat dog brutality in nature. Getting the reader to see the proper privileged society through the images and metaphors of insect life was marvelous. Its not hard to empathize with Alabaster’s reluctance to relinquish the divine sublime of human art and esthetics. Here he dwells on his altered responses to a beautiful painting of the Annunciation to Mary by angels with colored wings echoed by butterflies:
And now all this it as it were erased, and there is a black backcloth on an empty stage, and I see a chimpanzee, with puzzled eyes and a hanging brow and great ugly teeth, clutching its hairy offspring to its wrinkled breast—and is this love made flesh?
…No frog, no hound even, could have a vision of the Angel of Annunciation. Where does it all come from?
The second novella makes a wonderful juxtaposition with the first in that the fad of spiritualism and séances is another form of resistance of Romanticism to the advances of science. Mrs. Papagay, whose husband disappeared at sea, is a medium gifted in automatic writing from the minds of the dead while her otherworldly partner Sophie has the second sight to see ghosts and through windows it seems to angels and alien life forms of alternate universes. His sister Emily, now married to a Captain Jesse, wants to use the séances to communicate with her first beloved, her brother’s best friend Arthur Hallam, who died before their wedding. The Tennyson of nature being “red in tooth in claw” in “Morpho Eugenia” becomes in “The Conjugial Angel” a core presence for bravely holding to the immortal qualities of love, beauty, and the soul. Readings of his poems are used to set the mood for the séances, and the ghosts summoned into presence make use of his poetry to communicate. Especially Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”, which was a response to his 17 years of grief over the death of his beloved friend and fellow poet, Arthur.
Mrs. Papagay is endearing, both pragmatic and nurturing, as well as strong enough to see through the manipulators and users in her circle. She recognizes the entertainment value of the parlor tricks often employed in séance productions, but she can’t help believing in the reality of Sophie’s visions. I loved how she handles the lecherous lay minister, Mr. Hawke, who is always pontificating on Swedenborg’s views about the afterlife and witnessing of the permanent fusion in heavenly angels between male and female souls as a sexual apotheosis of human love:
'Swedenborg teaches us, as you know, that conjugial love comes to us all but once, that our souls have one mate, one perfect other half, whom we should seek ceaselessly. …Swedenborg was the first religious founder to give the expression of sexual delight the central place in heaven that in holds in many of our hearts on earth—to divine, and to constate, that earthly love and Heavenly Love, are truly One, at their highest. This is a noble, a daunting understanding, of our nature and our one true duty do you not think?'
‘Better to marry than burn,’ said Mrs Papagay reflectively, quoting the gloomy admonition of the misogynist St. Paul, but thinking of her own state of mind and body. Mr Hawke made her aware of her own discreet burning at her side.
…
Mr.Hawke, Mrs Papagay thought would theorise if a huge red Cherub with a fiery sword were advancing on him to burn him to the bone; he would explain the circumstances, whilst the stars fell out of the sky into the sea like ripe figs from a shaken fig-tree.
The séances conjure up some surprising presences and have significant impacts on the participants’ lives. I loved the way Tennyson’s overblown sentimentality gets deflated through the tale. Emily in particular comes to realize how her much her brother usurped her own grief, effectively making himself the widow to Arthur’s death in his epic poem:
It was, she knew and said often, the greatest poem of her time. And yet, she thought in her bursts of private savagery, it aimed a burning dart at her very heart, it strove to annihilate her, and she felt the pain of it, and could not speak of that pain to a soul.
Byatt is a charmer in her story telling, great on fruitful beginnings, surprising but apt in her endings, and masterly in her characters’ development and diversions in the body of her tales. We can feel the warmth of compassion for the ones trying to solve life’s great problems and a lively amusement in her fools and snobs.
November 8, 2021
Dos relatos victorianos llenos de elementos mágicos y encantadores: desde manuales de entomología, pasando por la poesía de Tennyson hasta sesiones de espiritismo. Todo ello aderezado con un lenguaje barroco y cautivador. Estaba convencida de que me tenía que gustar, pero no, en mis manos esta bella obra rozó el abandono… Es como un puzzle hecho de piezas maravillosas pero que no encajan bien, no pude ver el dibujo completo.
Dicho esto, entiendo que a mucha gente le entusiasme, ya que es una obra original y llena de belleza.
El primer relato, Morpho Eugenia, es el que más me ha gustado. El protagonista es un joven naturalista, que ha pasado diez años en la Amazonia; es inevitable oír ecos de las expediciones de Darwin y la pasión victoriana por la clasificación de los seres vivos. Superviviente de un naufragio, es acogido por un adinerado clérigo que le encomienda poner orden en el gabinete de curiosidades que atesora en su mansión. Allí conocerá a su hija mayor Eugenia, de una belleza singular. Pero la familia esconde oscuros secretos. Como se ve, el comienzo es arrebatador pero el desarrollo no me ha conquistado.
El lenguaje es tan bello y elaborado, tan plagado de referencias, que en algunos momentos la lectura resulta extenuante.
En general, se ha de reconocer a la autora una gran imaginación y capacidad para incorporar información de todo tipo a un relato gótico y otro de fantasmas, buscando una renovación de dos géneros clásicos victorianos
Dicho esto, entiendo que a mucha gente le entusiasme, ya que es una obra original y llena de belleza.
El primer relato, Morpho Eugenia, es el que más me ha gustado. El protagonista es un joven naturalista, que ha pasado diez años en la Amazonia; es inevitable oír ecos de las expediciones de Darwin y la pasión victoriana por la clasificación de los seres vivos. Superviviente de un naufragio, es acogido por un adinerado clérigo que le encomienda poner orden en el gabinete de curiosidades que atesora en su mansión. Allí conocerá a su hija mayor Eugenia, de una belleza singular. Pero la familia esconde oscuros secretos. Como se ve, el comienzo es arrebatador pero el desarrollo no me ha conquistado.
El lenguaje es tan bello y elaborado, tan plagado de referencias, que en algunos momentos la lectura resulta extenuante.
En general, se ha de reconocer a la autora una gran imaginación y capacidad para incorporar información de todo tipo a un relato gótico y otro de fantasmas, buscando una renovación de dos géneros clásicos victorianos
May 23, 2013
Angels and Insects is comprised of two novellas. Morpho Eugenia is the first of such and within it, the hero states, "You may argue anything at all by analogy, Sir, and so consequently nothing." This deft piece had me cheering for Matty Crompton, a real badass, and pondering these lengthy explorations into entomology as a reflection for Victorian (or our own) folly. As noted, I saw the film almost 20 years ago and was prepared for the development which lists the plot akimbo. Such didn't leave the plotting any less beautiful. The Conjugal Angel is the second novella and it concerns a séance a few years after the events of the first section. There is but a thin thread linking the pair of narratives. While the first novella appears ripe and well-paced, the second appear inchoate, a stillborn effort which would one day be realized as The Children's Book
October 6, 2019
Abbandonato
Antonia S. Byatt è una delle migliori autrici contemporanee che si cimenta a scrivere romanzi ambientati in epoca vittoriana, chi la legge senza sapere nulla della sua età anagrafica potrebbe, con buona approssimazione, affiancarla ad una delle Bronte o ad Austen.
E la Byatt scrive magnificamente, devo proprio dirlo, con una ricchezza espressiva rara, nonostante, dei due racconti che compongono questo libro ho letto solo il primo che effettivamente è molto bello, ma faticosissimo da portare a termine perché sull’invenzione narrativa che è felicissima prende il sopravvento in maniera esasperante la parte di entomologia, parte funzionale alla storia ma che diventa quasi un trattato dentro il racconto sulla vita di alcuni insetti sociali - formiche e api - e sulla loro affinità con la specie umana. Tutto molto interessante se solo fosse somministrato in giusta dose, se mi stessi preparando ad un esame di agraria, non certamente quando mi sto dedicando alla lettura di un romanzo.
La fatica di lettura, unita ad un periodo difficile in cui per motivi vari non riesco a trovare la giusta concentrazione, non mi hanno fatto provare né il desiderio né soprattutto il dovere di procedere anche con il secondo racconto, per questo due stelle, ma a malincuore perché il suo romanzo più famoso Possessione fu per me di una bellezza e originalità notevole.
Antonia S. Byatt è una delle migliori autrici contemporanee che si cimenta a scrivere romanzi ambientati in epoca vittoriana, chi la legge senza sapere nulla della sua età anagrafica potrebbe, con buona approssimazione, affiancarla ad una delle Bronte o ad Austen.
E la Byatt scrive magnificamente, devo proprio dirlo, con una ricchezza espressiva rara, nonostante, dei due racconti che compongono questo libro ho letto solo il primo che effettivamente è molto bello, ma faticosissimo da portare a termine perché sull’invenzione narrativa che è felicissima prende il sopravvento in maniera esasperante la parte di entomologia, parte funzionale alla storia ma che diventa quasi un trattato dentro il racconto sulla vita di alcuni insetti sociali - formiche e api - e sulla loro affinità con la specie umana. Tutto molto interessante se solo fosse somministrato in giusta dose, se mi stessi preparando ad un esame di agraria, non certamente quando mi sto dedicando alla lettura di un romanzo.
La fatica di lettura, unita ad un periodo difficile in cui per motivi vari non riesco a trovare la giusta concentrazione, non mi hanno fatto provare né il desiderio né soprattutto il dovere di procedere anche con il secondo racconto, per questo due stelle, ma a malincuore perché il suo romanzo più famoso Possessione fu per me di una bellezza e originalità notevole.
December 1, 2023
Podéis escuchar una revisión a esta reseña en el programa dedicado a A.S. Byatt y su obra Ángeles e Insectos: literatura de genero victoriana escrita por mujeres: https://go.ivoox.com/rf/120367074
Recientemente tuvimos que decir adiós a A.S. Byatt, una autora británica muy bien reconocida en su momento pero que, a día de hoy, parece haber quedado completamente olvidada. Su novela Posesión se convirtió en una de mis obras favoritas del año pasado, una historia bellísima que aún retengo en mi recuerdo después de tantísimas lecturas que le siguieron. Pero este fue mi primer encuentro con la autora. En ese entonces no sabía nada de ella, ni de su fama ni de que iba a encontrarme en sus páginas. Solo necesite leer la premisa de Morpho Eugenia, la primera de las dos novelas cortas que conforman este díptico, para darme cuenta de que tenía que hacerme con este libro: una historia ambientada en la época victoriana y protagonizada por un naturalista. Es como si hubieran escrito la historia a mi medida, con todos mis elementos favoritos.
En Morpho Eugenia seguimos a William Adamson, un proyecto de naturalista truncado que pierde todo su trabajo científico, años de recogida de datos y ejemplares en la selva amazónica, en un naufragio de regreso a casa. Sin un duro y con sus esperanzas de medrar en las esferas intelectuales, se ve obligado a trabajar como conservador de la colección de Sir Alabaster, aristócrata ocioso y naturalista aficionado pero disoluto, identificando, clasificando e inventariando años de coleccionismo anárquico. Lo que al principio se muestra como un parco consuelo pronto parece mejorar cuando William conoce a la hija de su patrón, la hermosa Eugenia, de la que se enamora y con la que se casará. En su noche de bodas William conocerá la gracia de Dios y descubrirá un extraño comportamiento en su mujer que sacude la horizontalidad de su vida conyugal. Frustrado en lo laboral y lo sexual, Matty, la institutriz de los hijos de Sir Alabaster, se nos revela como una inesperada compañera naturalista para William. Juntos comenzaran una investigación sobre la vida de las hormigas que terminará en la escritura conjunta de un libro y mucho, mucho más.
Así, Morpho Eugenia es un homenaje a esa tradición literaria previa a la época victoriana y cultivada con tanto éxito por Ann Radcliffe o Emily Bronte, a saber, la novela gótica, en la que los secretos oscuros y las pasiones desaforadas son los elementos protagonistas. Pero también tenemos un homenaje a esa literatura científica que nació junto con El origen de las especies.
El ángel conyugal es diametralmente opuesta a la primera historia. En esta, la protagonista inicia una carrera como médium junto a su amiga con la esperanza de poder contactar con su marido, capitán del barco que naufragó junto a todas las pertenencias de William Adamson, y el marido de su amiga. Una historia mucho más poética con una trama menos evidente y convencional, en la que se explora esa moda victoriana que fue el espiritismo, mezcla de misticismo cristiano y charlatanería, que prometía la comunicación con los seres queridos que se encontraban al otro lado. Así mismo, esta historia se aborda dentro del marco del cuento de fantasmas; eso sí, respetando de este solo la atmosfera, pues aquí en ningún momento se nos representa al espectro como un ente maligno. De hecho, quizá no haya siquiera fantasma alguno. O al menos esa es la esperanza de nuestras protagonistas.
Aquí Byatt homenajea a la ghost story, un género muy popular entre el vulgo en la época victoriana y cultivado con muchísimo éxito por escritoras de la talla de Mary Shelley, Margaret Oliphant o Mary E. Braddon. Esta última, además, obteniendo mayores dividendos que algunos de sus compañeros de pluma tan reconocidos como Dickens, Hardy o Wilkie Collins.
Recientemente tuvimos que decir adiós a A.S. Byatt, una autora británica muy bien reconocida en su momento pero que, a día de hoy, parece haber quedado completamente olvidada. Su novela Posesión se convirtió en una de mis obras favoritas del año pasado, una historia bellísima que aún retengo en mi recuerdo después de tantísimas lecturas que le siguieron. Pero este fue mi primer encuentro con la autora. En ese entonces no sabía nada de ella, ni de su fama ni de que iba a encontrarme en sus páginas. Solo necesite leer la premisa de Morpho Eugenia, la primera de las dos novelas cortas que conforman este díptico, para darme cuenta de que tenía que hacerme con este libro: una historia ambientada en la época victoriana y protagonizada por un naturalista. Es como si hubieran escrito la historia a mi medida, con todos mis elementos favoritos.
En Morpho Eugenia seguimos a William Adamson, un proyecto de naturalista truncado que pierde todo su trabajo científico, años de recogida de datos y ejemplares en la selva amazónica, en un naufragio de regreso a casa. Sin un duro y con sus esperanzas de medrar en las esferas intelectuales, se ve obligado a trabajar como conservador de la colección de Sir Alabaster, aristócrata ocioso y naturalista aficionado pero disoluto, identificando, clasificando e inventariando años de coleccionismo anárquico. Lo que al principio se muestra como un parco consuelo pronto parece mejorar cuando William conoce a la hija de su patrón, la hermosa Eugenia, de la que se enamora y con la que se casará. En su noche de bodas William conocerá la gracia de Dios y descubrirá un extraño comportamiento en su mujer que sacude la horizontalidad de su vida conyugal. Frustrado en lo laboral y lo sexual, Matty, la institutriz de los hijos de Sir Alabaster, se nos revela como una inesperada compañera naturalista para William. Juntos comenzaran una investigación sobre la vida de las hormigas que terminará en la escritura conjunta de un libro y mucho, mucho más.
Así, Morpho Eugenia es un homenaje a esa tradición literaria previa a la época victoriana y cultivada con tanto éxito por Ann Radcliffe o Emily Bronte, a saber, la novela gótica, en la que los secretos oscuros y las pasiones desaforadas son los elementos protagonistas. Pero también tenemos un homenaje a esa literatura científica que nació junto con El origen de las especies.
El ángel conyugal es diametralmente opuesta a la primera historia. En esta, la protagonista inicia una carrera como médium junto a su amiga con la esperanza de poder contactar con su marido, capitán del barco que naufragó junto a todas las pertenencias de William Adamson, y el marido de su amiga. Una historia mucho más poética con una trama menos evidente y convencional, en la que se explora esa moda victoriana que fue el espiritismo, mezcla de misticismo cristiano y charlatanería, que prometía la comunicación con los seres queridos que se encontraban al otro lado. Así mismo, esta historia se aborda dentro del marco del cuento de fantasmas; eso sí, respetando de este solo la atmosfera, pues aquí en ningún momento se nos representa al espectro como un ente maligno. De hecho, quizá no haya siquiera fantasma alguno. O al menos esa es la esperanza de nuestras protagonistas.
Aquí Byatt homenajea a la ghost story, un género muy popular entre el vulgo en la época victoriana y cultivado con muchísimo éxito por escritoras de la talla de Mary Shelley, Margaret Oliphant o Mary E. Braddon. Esta última, además, obteniendo mayores dividendos que algunos de sus compañeros de pluma tan reconocidos como Dickens, Hardy o Wilkie Collins.
October 16, 2011
Hmmm. I'm really torn about this book. On the one hand, the writing was excellent. On the other, it was very bizarre. Lots of insect imagery and themes in the first story, Morpho Eugenia. I felt it was…too much, however.
Although the writing itself was exquisite, I just think I don’t like A.S. Byatt’s style very well. She has a way of telling stories that I find to be very off-putting. She’ll start the story - getting the narrative ball rolling and making me like all of the characters - and then she’ll stop the story, interjecting a thousand different, unrelated poems and fairy tale fables. In Morpho Eugenia’s case, she stopped the story countless times to give the reader very dry, tehcnical narrations on ant behavior. While germane to the story, I felt like I was reading a textbook. Towards the end of the book, the main storyline drops almost completely, becoming a rather dull collection of made-up fables and ant behavior texts, without very much attention to the main characters. It made the end events seem like a surprise, since the character development had all but ground to a halt in the middle of story, leaving little time for the organic character development needed to make the ending believable.
I attempted the second story, but couldn’t get into it at all. Something about Tennyson? Dead lovers? Usually, I’d be all over that, but again - Byatt’s attempts to interject a bunch of faintly related material into the narrative left me cold. Ultimate rating: C (2.5 stars)
Although the writing itself was exquisite, I just think I don’t like A.S. Byatt’s style very well. She has a way of telling stories that I find to be very off-putting. She’ll start the story - getting the narrative ball rolling and making me like all of the characters - and then she’ll stop the story, interjecting a thousand different, unrelated poems and fairy tale fables. In Morpho Eugenia’s case, she stopped the story countless times to give the reader very dry, tehcnical narrations on ant behavior. While germane to the story, I felt like I was reading a textbook. Towards the end of the book, the main storyline drops almost completely, becoming a rather dull collection of made-up fables and ant behavior texts, without very much attention to the main characters. It made the end events seem like a surprise, since the character development had all but ground to a halt in the middle of story, leaving little time for the organic character development needed to make the ending believable.
I attempted the second story, but couldn’t get into it at all. Something about Tennyson? Dead lovers? Usually, I’d be all over that, but again - Byatt’s attempts to interject a bunch of faintly related material into the narrative left me cold. Ultimate rating: C (2.5 stars)
August 12, 2009
I quickly skimmed the first page of the other reader reviews of this book and discovered that my opinion in comparing the two novellas that comprise it is opposite of most readers. It seems most readers (from the top page, at least) prefer the first novella, "Morpho Eugenia" (the "Insects" section) to "The Conjugal Angel" (the "Angels" section).
For me, "Morpho Eugenia" was a little disappointing. I don't always need to be surprised by what I read, but the characters in this novella were a bit too derivative, the family secret incredibly obvious... well, actually, the whole plot and most of the characters were either obvious or one-dimensional. While I am utterly in awe of Byatt's ability to replicate Victorian prose debates about science and religion, I have to admit that, unlike her equally brilliant (but also beautiful and highly readable) faux Victorian poetry and fairy tales, I did not want to read her faux-Victorian debates. Ultimately things felt too simplistic; the story just didn't hang together for me.
So why the four stars? Well, part of it has to do with "The Conjugal Angel," which I'll get to in a minute. But part is that, despite my problems with the plot of "Morpho Eugenia," I have to admit that much of the imagery of the story has stuck with me. Especially the parts where human and insect sex and reproduction are compared. Ew, but also very haunting.
"The Conjugal Angel" I thought was completely brilliant. This could be my own personal bias in favor of stories about spiritualism, but in any case, I really loved it. It was different from any story I've recently read about spiritualists, in that it takes the idea seriously. To make it that much better, one of the main characters is Alfred Tennyson's sister... so there's lots of poetry and interpretation to boot, plus a beautifully imagined inner life of several historical figures. This novella, to me, approaches the achievements of Possession more nearly than the first; it is a gorgeous meditation on grief and love, the burdens of the past and how we idolize the dead, and how what is unseen to others can strangle us. Plus, lots of commentary on poetry and wordplay, and I love getting lost in Byatt's twisty sentence structure.
For me, "Morpho Eugenia" was a little disappointing. I don't always need to be surprised by what I read, but the characters in this novella were a bit too derivative, the family secret incredibly obvious... well, actually, the whole plot and most of the characters were either obvious or one-dimensional. While I am utterly in awe of Byatt's ability to replicate Victorian prose debates about science and religion, I have to admit that, unlike her equally brilliant (but also beautiful and highly readable) faux Victorian poetry and fairy tales, I did not want to read her faux-Victorian debates. Ultimately things felt too simplistic; the story just didn't hang together for me.
So why the four stars? Well, part of it has to do with "The Conjugal Angel," which I'll get to in a minute. But part is that, despite my problems with the plot of "Morpho Eugenia," I have to admit that much of the imagery of the story has stuck with me. Especially the parts where human and insect sex and reproduction are compared. Ew, but also very haunting.
"The Conjugal Angel" I thought was completely brilliant. This could be my own personal bias in favor of stories about spiritualism, but in any case, I really loved it. It was different from any story I've recently read about spiritualists, in that it takes the idea seriously. To make it that much better, one of the main characters is Alfred Tennyson's sister... so there's lots of poetry and interpretation to boot, plus a beautifully imagined inner life of several historical figures. This novella, to me, approaches the achievements of Possession more nearly than the first; it is a gorgeous meditation on grief and love, the burdens of the past and how we idolize the dead, and how what is unseen to others can strangle us. Plus, lots of commentary on poetry and wordplay, and I love getting lost in Byatt's twisty sentence structure.
July 24, 2014
A.S. Byatt, with Angels & Insects, has created a rich and complex book comprised of two medium-length novellas set in the mid-1860s and 1870s, both of which address themes important to the people of the Victorian Era. The first novella, Morpho Eugenia focuses on the relationships between a family, its friends, servants, and the natural world around them in the English countryside. The tale pivots around the study of society and nature, and then there's the tension and struggle between theology and science that resonates throughout; all of which funnels to a shocking climax involving the relationships between the story's central characters. Once started, it was hard to stop reading. I have to say that not only was the plot amazing, but the prose was just exquisitely beautiful. Byatt cements her reputation, in my opinion, as a superb storyteller with Morpho Eugenia.
The second novella, The Conjugial Angel is a more complicated, but lushly presented, story of the impact of 'Loss' upon a small group of characters brought together around a seance table. The Victorian poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the relationships between Tennyson, his sister Emily, and a young poet, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died many years before the story begins, all figure prominently. Elements associated with the supernatural, a tinge of gothic horror, and the theology of Swedenborg all swirl together in this wonderful tale. Be warned though, one needs to read The Conjugial Angel slowly and thoughtfully; like a slice of pecan pie, it is rich and deserves to be savored and enjoyed slowly.
Fans of A.S. Byatt, or Victoriana in general, will not be disappointed one jot with either of these two novellas. I know that I will be back for a visit again sometime soon.
The second novella, The Conjugial Angel is a more complicated, but lushly presented, story of the impact of 'Loss' upon a small group of characters brought together around a seance table. The Victorian poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the relationships between Tennyson, his sister Emily, and a young poet, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died many years before the story begins, all figure prominently. Elements associated with the supernatural, a tinge of gothic horror, and the theology of Swedenborg all swirl together in this wonderful tale. Be warned though, one needs to read The Conjugial Angel slowly and thoughtfully; like a slice of pecan pie, it is rich and deserves to be savored and enjoyed slowly.
Fans of A.S. Byatt, or Victoriana in general, will not be disappointed one jot with either of these two novellas. I know that I will be back for a visit again sometime soon.
February 9, 2020
I picked up Angels & Insects mainly for its second novella, which is about spiritualism and a seance, and as such interests me greatly. All I knew about the first novella was that it had something to do with insects and the Victorian era, and I'd give it a shot.
Well, that first novella blew me out of the freaking water. 5/5 stars for sure. The twists! The prose! The unadulterated yearning! The talk about insects, which I thought would be somewhat boring, rendered incredibly interesting! That ending! I am in such awe of the way A.S. Byatt wove sentences together. It's a novella I'm going to reread at some point and dissect so I can learn the art of writing from her, of that I am sure.
As for the second novella: 4/5. It was quite slow, and I do admit I knew incredibly little about Tennyson. The story still worked for me, because A.S. Byatt is a wonder with language, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had I known more about the historical backgroud. Still, I adored most of it, especially the parts where Sophy goes into a trance.
Lovely, lovely, lovely! I've discovered another author whose work I want to savour, that's for sure.
Well, that first novella blew me out of the freaking water. 5/5 stars for sure. The twists! The prose! The unadulterated yearning! The talk about insects, which I thought would be somewhat boring, rendered incredibly interesting! That ending! I am in such awe of the way A.S. Byatt wove sentences together. It's a novella I'm going to reread at some point and dissect so I can learn the art of writing from her, of that I am sure.
As for the second novella: 4/5. It was quite slow, and I do admit I knew incredibly little about Tennyson. The story still worked for me, because A.S. Byatt is a wonder with language, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had I known more about the historical backgroud. Still, I adored most of it, especially the parts where Sophy goes into a trance.
Lovely, lovely, lovely! I've discovered another author whose work I want to savour, that's for sure.
April 24, 2012
It took me a long, long time to read this. It was dense, and had characters that seemed flat and lifeless due to being secondary to the message the author was exploring. I get that the Insects were a metaphor for mankind, but exploring that took too long and just wasn't enough to hold my interests for an entire story.
This is two stories in one, the first I pushed through and read all of, the second I started and got lost from the very first sentence. They have wings. They're doing seances (my least favourite part of Possession, her earlier novel). I just had no idea what was meant to be happening and couldn't find it in me to care.
This is two stories in one, the first I pushed through and read all of, the second I started and got lost from the very first sentence. They have wings. They're doing seances (my least favourite part of Possession, her earlier novel). I just had no idea what was meant to be happening and couldn't find it in me to care.
November 24, 2012
Entomologia e vita , e digressioni filosofiche sulla immortalità dell' anima e sulla poesia con tanto di sedute spiritiche... Patapam!
In effetti potrei limitare il mio punto di vista s questo romanzo a queste due singole righe, ma vorrei andare un pochino più a fondo ...
Come improvvisamente si decide di abbandonare le due noiosissime ore di fisica e di darsi all' entomologia: ma non verrebbe anche a voi la voglia di farlo , quando vedete che il vostro professore invece di spiegare legge le scontatissime, elementari e aridissime ,slide alla lavagna ,che fra l' altro ,avete già e potete anche studiarvi da soli?? Così lo ammetto ho compiuto il mio piccolo atto sovversivo dopo un ' ora di sofferenze, testa ciondoloni e buoni propositi di essere attenta e paziente.. Ho preso il mio bel libro e mi sono dedicata a Morpho Eugenia (Tale il nome di questo primo racconto).. E così i buoni propositi per quella giornata se ne sono andati in gloria e non ho più staccato il naso dal libro fino alla fine, sentendomi poi maledettamente soddisfatta e maledettamente in colpa... Poi mi sono precipitata fuori (piccola precisazione ero ubicata in mezzo alle campagne)E nei poco tempo che mi separava dal arrivo del pullman studiando attentamente le povere formiche che mi passavano intorno con un ' interesse morboso... Tanto da inquietare la gente intorno a me ; e se prima dell' entomologia non me ne importava un fico secco, adesso, penso proprio, ci guarderò con più attenzione...
Ma bando alle ciance lasciando perdere le mie solite divagazioni ; Morpho Eugenia è un piccolo gioiello... Racconto, saggio, storia nel racconto, e chi più ne ha ne metta... Ma sopratutto è un caleidoscopio sulla cultura Vittoriana, e suoi lati più nascosti e privati, senza escludere quelli ehhhmmm diciamo non proprio "morali" ,per l' epoca eh, perché la mia moralità lascia alquanto a desiderare ...
Come invece si contino le pagine mancanti alla fine cercando di afferrarne disperatamente il capo, di non sbadigliare e di capirci qualcosa: Questo è stato l' angelo coniugale uno strazio insomma, ma non fa niente perché Morpho Eugenia mi aveva già ripagato altamente di tutto :D
Di cosa parla L' angelo Coniugale beh ..Puff un soffio di Fumo ...
A parte questo delle sedute spiritiche organizzate da Emily Tennyson (sì proprio lei ,la sorella del famoso poeta) del suo scompagnamento di bizzarri personaggi, e animali, e delle conseguenze a cui questo voler a tutti i costi inseguire i morti può portare ...
Anche questo racconto è un caleidoscopio della vita vittoria e contiene una miriade di informazioni (inizio a pensare la Byatt sia l' enciclopedia Vittoriana vivente )sopratutto di ordine letterario e filosofico, molto molto interessanti o molto molto barbose a seconda di come ci si disponga
P.S. Un elogio particolare va alla copertina della mia edizione ,che non è quella della foto, bensì, quella che mi ha fatto scoprire il meraviglioso dipinto : Sense of Sight di Annie Louisa Swynnerton.
Precisamente questo :
http://s3.amazonaws.com/magnoliasoft....
In effetti potrei limitare il mio punto di vista s questo romanzo a queste due singole righe, ma vorrei andare un pochino più a fondo ...
Come improvvisamente si decide di abbandonare le due noiosissime ore di fisica e di darsi all' entomologia: ma non verrebbe anche a voi la voglia di farlo , quando vedete che il vostro professore invece di spiegare legge le scontatissime, elementari e aridissime ,slide alla lavagna ,che fra l' altro ,avete già e potete anche studiarvi da soli?? Così lo ammetto ho compiuto il mio piccolo atto sovversivo dopo un ' ora di sofferenze, testa ciondoloni e buoni propositi di essere attenta e paziente.. Ho preso il mio bel libro e mi sono dedicata a Morpho Eugenia (Tale il nome di questo primo racconto).. E così i buoni propositi per quella giornata se ne sono andati in gloria e non ho più staccato il naso dal libro fino alla fine, sentendomi poi maledettamente soddisfatta e maledettamente in colpa... Poi mi sono precipitata fuori (piccola precisazione ero ubicata in mezzo alle campagne)E nei poco tempo che mi separava dal arrivo del pullman studiando attentamente le povere formiche che mi passavano intorno con un ' interesse morboso... Tanto da inquietare la gente intorno a me ; e se prima dell' entomologia non me ne importava un fico secco, adesso, penso proprio, ci guarderò con più attenzione...
Ma bando alle ciance lasciando perdere le mie solite divagazioni ; Morpho Eugenia è un piccolo gioiello... Racconto, saggio, storia nel racconto, e chi più ne ha ne metta... Ma sopratutto è un caleidoscopio sulla cultura Vittoriana, e suoi lati più nascosti e privati, senza escludere quelli ehhhmmm diciamo non proprio "morali" ,per l' epoca eh, perché la mia moralità lascia alquanto a desiderare ...
Come invece si contino le pagine mancanti alla fine cercando di afferrarne disperatamente il capo, di non sbadigliare e di capirci qualcosa: Questo è stato l' angelo coniugale uno strazio insomma, ma non fa niente perché Morpho Eugenia mi aveva già ripagato altamente di tutto :D
Di cosa parla L' angelo Coniugale beh ..Puff un soffio di Fumo ...
A parte questo delle sedute spiritiche organizzate da Emily Tennyson (sì proprio lei ,la sorella del famoso poeta) del suo scompagnamento di bizzarri personaggi, e animali, e delle conseguenze a cui questo voler a tutti i costi inseguire i morti può portare ...
Anche questo racconto è un caleidoscopio della vita vittoria e contiene una miriade di informazioni (inizio a pensare la Byatt sia l' enciclopedia Vittoriana vivente )sopratutto di ordine letterario e filosofico, molto molto interessanti o molto molto barbose a seconda di come ci si disponga
P.S. Un elogio particolare va alla copertina della mia edizione ,che non è quella della foto, bensì, quella che mi ha fatto scoprire il meraviglioso dipinto : Sense of Sight di Annie Louisa Swynnerton.
Precisamente questo :
http://s3.amazonaws.com/magnoliasoft....
June 6, 2013
There are very few authors in my mind that even come close to having the command of language Byatt has and, rarer still, she is an author that credits her reader with as much intelligence as she herself possesses.
That being said, "Angels and Insects" just didn't deliver for me. It's wonderfully written (of course) but it didn't quite enrapture me the way Byatt's other novels and short stories, in particular, have.
There are two novellas within the book which explore, in turn, the Victorian fascination with the rather conflicting ideas of science and spiritualism.
Full review here
That being said, "Angels and Insects" just didn't deliver for me. It's wonderfully written (of course) but it didn't quite enrapture me the way Byatt's other novels and short stories, in particular, have.
There are two novellas within the book which explore, in turn, the Victorian fascination with the rather conflicting ideas of science and spiritualism.
Full review here
July 17, 2022
"Sabía del fuego sin fruto en torno al cual volaban sin quemarse las alas, sin consumirse"
Dama Antonia es una escritora difícil, dicen, de novelas densas y henchidas de juegos de planos de realidad y literarios, en los que da vida a antiguos poemas y cartas, a eternos anhelos y temores, y temblores que hace arder ante nuestros asombrados ojos: es Maravillosa.
Sí que estoy de acuerdo en que el segundo de estos relatos, El ángel conyugal, se hace un tanto escarpado, sobre todo en esa prolongada ensoñación de Tennyson, auténtico inspirador de la historia vía su In memoriam A.H.H., pero es arrumbado al final de este tour de force de espiritismo, de lucha entre lo carnal y lo divino.
Mucho mayor interés me ofrece el primero, Morpho eugenia: un cuento de princesas y hadas en la época de la Evolución, con un estudio de entomología entretenido en extremo (y sí, podemos esperar "modelos de sociedad" de primer orden), que se deshilvana como una fábula entre los prados señoriales (bien cuidados por la servidumbre) y las indómitas selvas del Amazonas, con una Cenicienta, Matilda, que triunfa por su talento, que se apresta a cruzar el ancho océano, llena de ilusión y esperanza.
Historias pues elaboradas e intrincadas, con pasmosa riqueza de matices y significados. Una pervivencia de lo mejor de los prerrafaelitas, con William Morris y sus utopías siempre presente. Una escritura compleja, trabajada con tesón (con esas comparaciones y metáforas audaces y deslumbrantes) pero que nunca llega a ser molesta. Cada libro que leo de A. S. Byatt es una sorpresa renovada, un goce seguro, una Belleza.
"Y entonces algo perfecto y bellamente formado se dejaba ver y te cortaba la respiración."
"En aquel entonces, allí todo tenía dos caras: era verdadero y querido, cercano y actual, y a la vez relucía mágicamente y despedía un vago perfume frío a mundo perdido, a huerto de rey, al jardín de Harum-al-Raschid."
"Respiran aire salado y esperanza, y su sangre fluye cargada de ilusión de futuro; y éste es un buen lugar para dejarlos, en la cresta de la ola, entre los setos y los campos verdes y ordenados y la masa de selva serpenteante y tenaz que se extiende por la costa amazónica"
"Me gustaría afirmar que nuestra capacidad humana para amar la belleza de todas estas cosas (para amar la simetría, y la gloriosa claridad, y la intrincada excelencia de las formas de las hojas, y los cristales, y las escamas de las serpientes y las alas de las mariposas) indica en nosotros algo desinteresado y espiritual. ¿Un hombre que admira una mariposa es más que una bestia bruta, William? Desde luego es más que la propia mariposa."
"Se sentó a su lado en el banco, y su presencia lo inquietó. Estaba dentro de la atmósfera, o la luz, o la fragancia que ella desprendía, como un barco se ve arrastrado por un remolino, como una abeja cae en el lazo del perfume procedente del cuello de una flor."
"No se podía convertir a un hombre en un poema, ni al cantante ni a la canción, ni a la garganta trémula ni al rígido cadáver."
"Los nombres, mire usted, son una forma de entretejer el mundo relacionando unas criaturas con otras, y una especie de metamorfosis, podría decirse, derivada de una metáfora, que es una figura retórica para que una idea se impregne de otra."
Dama Antonia es una escritora difícil, dicen, de novelas densas y henchidas de juegos de planos de realidad y literarios, en los que da vida a antiguos poemas y cartas, a eternos anhelos y temores, y temblores que hace arder ante nuestros asombrados ojos: es Maravillosa.
Sí que estoy de acuerdo en que el segundo de estos relatos, El ángel conyugal, se hace un tanto escarpado, sobre todo en esa prolongada ensoñación de Tennyson, auténtico inspirador de la historia vía su In memoriam A.H.H., pero es arrumbado al final de este tour de force de espiritismo, de lucha entre lo carnal y lo divino.
Mucho mayor interés me ofrece el primero, Morpho eugenia: un cuento de princesas y hadas en la época de la Evolución, con un estudio de entomología entretenido en extremo (y sí, podemos esperar "modelos de sociedad" de primer orden), que se deshilvana como una fábula entre los prados señoriales (bien cuidados por la servidumbre) y las indómitas selvas del Amazonas, con una Cenicienta, Matilda, que triunfa por su talento, que se apresta a cruzar el ancho océano, llena de ilusión y esperanza.
Historias pues elaboradas e intrincadas, con pasmosa riqueza de matices y significados. Una pervivencia de lo mejor de los prerrafaelitas, con William Morris y sus utopías siempre presente. Una escritura compleja, trabajada con tesón (con esas comparaciones y metáforas audaces y deslumbrantes) pero que nunca llega a ser molesta. Cada libro que leo de A. S. Byatt es una sorpresa renovada, un goce seguro, una Belleza.
"Y entonces algo perfecto y bellamente formado se dejaba ver y te cortaba la respiración."
"En aquel entonces, allí todo tenía dos caras: era verdadero y querido, cercano y actual, y a la vez relucía mágicamente y despedía un vago perfume frío a mundo perdido, a huerto de rey, al jardín de Harum-al-Raschid."
"Respiran aire salado y esperanza, y su sangre fluye cargada de ilusión de futuro; y éste es un buen lugar para dejarlos, en la cresta de la ola, entre los setos y los campos verdes y ordenados y la masa de selva serpenteante y tenaz que se extiende por la costa amazónica"
"Me gustaría afirmar que nuestra capacidad humana para amar la belleza de todas estas cosas (para amar la simetría, y la gloriosa claridad, y la intrincada excelencia de las formas de las hojas, y los cristales, y las escamas de las serpientes y las alas de las mariposas) indica en nosotros algo desinteresado y espiritual. ¿Un hombre que admira una mariposa es más que una bestia bruta, William? Desde luego es más que la propia mariposa."
"Se sentó a su lado en el banco, y su presencia lo inquietó. Estaba dentro de la atmósfera, o la luz, o la fragancia que ella desprendía, como un barco se ve arrastrado por un remolino, como una abeja cae en el lazo del perfume procedente del cuello de una flor."
"No se podía convertir a un hombre en un poema, ni al cantante ni a la canción, ni a la garganta trémula ni al rígido cadáver."
"Los nombres, mire usted, son una forma de entretejer el mundo relacionando unas criaturas con otras, y una especie de metamorfosis, podría decirse, derivada de una metáfora, que es una figura retórica para que una idea se impregne de otra."
July 29, 2008
This has been my favorite book forever. Well, since I was 17. I won't go back and reread it because I'm afraid I won't like it as much. I prefer to keep it the way it is in my mind: sacred, frickin amazing book.
Uh ... bugs, ant-farms, incest, shipwrecks, spiritual groups, love and all that fun stuff?
KICKED ASS.
Uh ... bugs, ant-farms, incest, shipwrecks, spiritual groups, love and all that fun stuff?
KICKED ASS.
December 10, 2021
From the start of the first of these two novellas, “Morpho Eugenia,” I knew I was in the hands of a master. Yes, there’s a fabulous story here – fabulous in the sense of being fable-like but also in the sense of being very good – but Byatt wins me over with her tone and style right away.
I’ve heard that Possession is one of the great novels of the last few decades, and now I’m all the more drawn to read it. (This is my first Byatt.) I suspect it has a lot in common with this as well.
William begins (and, SPOILER:, ends) as a naturalist. He’s drawn to studying the riddles of the natural world. While a part of him longs for English gardens in the springtime, another more robust part wants nothing more than to explore the Amazon and its never-ending wonders. Byatt is wonderful at sharing the contagion of that science; she gives us a thinker who’s trying to understand the world through the lens that thinkers like Darwin are just opening up.
As part of that, she gives a sense of the rich web of emotion, intellect, and sexual naivete that seems a hallmark of the Victorian era. These people take their ideas passionately, as vehicles for other passions they cannot articulate in full. In Byatt’s generous imagining, though, they aren’t settling for something less – they aren’t repressed so much as redirected in their passion. It’s so well done that it makes me think of Chekhov.
At the same time as William feels such scientific passion, though, he finds himself with golden handcuffs. Eugenia Alabaster appears to be all he could ever want in a woman. She is beautiful, and she admires his work (even as she can’t quite understand it). She even shares a name with one of the butterflies he has studied in the Amazon. With all his specimens lost in a shipwreck, though, he is stuck as a houseguest of her wealthy family.
Then, in a twist beyond his imagining, he discovers that Eugenia will marry him and that her father – whose ideas of faith conflict with his scientific perspective – blesses the prospect. It seems perfect except for the fact that it means he will have to put off his adventures.
[MAJOR SPOILER:] We gradually become aware that the reason Eugenia is willing to marry him, and the reason her first fiancé killed himself, is that she is enmeshed in an incestuous relationship with her brother. It’s ugly and unseemly, and it provides the excuse for him to make his escape, but it ultimately aligns with the great themes of the book.
In other words, the foreshadowed twist at the end suggests that William still has worlds to discover. Eugenia in all her beauty is not quite the adventure he imagined. He is capable of love, but it’s a love that he can’t separate from his need for scientific inquiry. When we see him at the end, at the prow of a ship headed back to the Amazon with his new love by his side, it seems a triumph of his belief. I make it sound corny, and it has moments of being over the top, but it is ultimately a fable. The young man nearly loses himself in sight of the glitter. Then he learns where the substance lies.
The second novella, “The Conjugial Angel,” would be flat to me, certainly by comparison to “Morpha Eugenia” but also for its general slowness, except that it stands in conversation with some of the powerful work of Alfred Tennyson. Here, we see members of his family trying – through spiritualism that most of them recognize as lying somewhere between performance and grief therapy – the ghost of Arthur Hallam, Tennyson’s dear friend and the fiancé of his sister.
I don’t think I’d have enjoyed this one at all if not for the fact that it conjures some of Tennyson’s best work. Look, I pledged my allegiance all the way back in college to team Robert Browning. I took Browning to have more fun with history and to possess the much better sense of humor. But, and here we go back to Byatt’s genius at making the Victorians accessible, there is an enduring beauty in Tennyson if you can just get rid of the starch.
I know of “In Memoriam,” the poem he wrote in memory of Hallam, better than I know it. (You likely do, too: “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is just a part of it.) It’s nearly book-length, and I’ve just never gotten to the whole it.
In drawing-room fashion, though, Byatt does take some of the starch out of Tennyson’s accomplishment. This is a story about trying to keep living when some of what you thought the best of tomorrow never gets to live beyond yesterday.
I won’t pretend this isn’t slow or that I drifted off during some of the minor exchanges. Nor do I think it rises to the overall excellence of “Morpho Eugenia” – a story so powerfully written that I have it on a list of novellas I’d consider teaching to first-year students. Instead, it seems a useful experiment in conversing with intellects of a time almost out of reach to us. And that’s something worth doing.
Five stars for the first novella. More like 3.5 for the second.
I’ve heard that Possession is one of the great novels of the last few decades, and now I’m all the more drawn to read it. (This is my first Byatt.) I suspect it has a lot in common with this as well.
William begins (and, SPOILER:, ends) as a naturalist. He’s drawn to studying the riddles of the natural world. While a part of him longs for English gardens in the springtime, another more robust part wants nothing more than to explore the Amazon and its never-ending wonders. Byatt is wonderful at sharing the contagion of that science; she gives us a thinker who’s trying to understand the world through the lens that thinkers like Darwin are just opening up.
As part of that, she gives a sense of the rich web of emotion, intellect, and sexual naivete that seems a hallmark of the Victorian era. These people take their ideas passionately, as vehicles for other passions they cannot articulate in full. In Byatt’s generous imagining, though, they aren’t settling for something less – they aren’t repressed so much as redirected in their passion. It’s so well done that it makes me think of Chekhov.
At the same time as William feels such scientific passion, though, he finds himself with golden handcuffs. Eugenia Alabaster appears to be all he could ever want in a woman. She is beautiful, and she admires his work (even as she can’t quite understand it). She even shares a name with one of the butterflies he has studied in the Amazon. With all his specimens lost in a shipwreck, though, he is stuck as a houseguest of her wealthy family.
Then, in a twist beyond his imagining, he discovers that Eugenia will marry him and that her father – whose ideas of faith conflict with his scientific perspective – blesses the prospect. It seems perfect except for the fact that it means he will have to put off his adventures.
[MAJOR SPOILER:] We gradually become aware that the reason Eugenia is willing to marry him, and the reason her first fiancé killed himself, is that she is enmeshed in an incestuous relationship with her brother. It’s ugly and unseemly, and it provides the excuse for him to make his escape, but it ultimately aligns with the great themes of the book.
In other words, the foreshadowed twist at the end suggests that William still has worlds to discover. Eugenia in all her beauty is not quite the adventure he imagined. He is capable of love, but it’s a love that he can’t separate from his need for scientific inquiry. When we see him at the end, at the prow of a ship headed back to the Amazon with his new love by his side, it seems a triumph of his belief. I make it sound corny, and it has moments of being over the top, but it is ultimately a fable. The young man nearly loses himself in sight of the glitter. Then he learns where the substance lies.
The second novella, “The Conjugial Angel,” would be flat to me, certainly by comparison to “Morpha Eugenia” but also for its general slowness, except that it stands in conversation with some of the powerful work of Alfred Tennyson. Here, we see members of his family trying – through spiritualism that most of them recognize as lying somewhere between performance and grief therapy – the ghost of Arthur Hallam, Tennyson’s dear friend and the fiancé of his sister.
I don’t think I’d have enjoyed this one at all if not for the fact that it conjures some of Tennyson’s best work. Look, I pledged my allegiance all the way back in college to team Robert Browning. I took Browning to have more fun with history and to possess the much better sense of humor. But, and here we go back to Byatt’s genius at making the Victorians accessible, there is an enduring beauty in Tennyson if you can just get rid of the starch.
I know of “In Memoriam,” the poem he wrote in memory of Hallam, better than I know it. (You likely do, too: “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is just a part of it.) It’s nearly book-length, and I’ve just never gotten to the whole it.
In drawing-room fashion, though, Byatt does take some of the starch out of Tennyson’s accomplishment. This is a story about trying to keep living when some of what you thought the best of tomorrow never gets to live beyond yesterday.
I won’t pretend this isn’t slow or that I drifted off during some of the minor exchanges. Nor do I think it rises to the overall excellence of “Morpho Eugenia” – a story so powerfully written that I have it on a list of novellas I’d consider teaching to first-year students. Instead, it seems a useful experiment in conversing with intellects of a time almost out of reach to us. And that’s something worth doing.
Five stars for the first novella. More like 3.5 for the second.
November 11, 2016
Well. This is it. My first review written since the Electoral College decided the will of the people didn't mean shit. Am I scared? Yes. Am I angry? Yes. Will this interfere with my reading? Rate-wise, probably. Make-up wise, however, I've been practicing my avoidance of white male authored lit for so long that I can't make as much of a dramatic shift in reading habits as I could have a year or two ago. I could start dedicating successive reads to authors whose people are going to have even bigger targets pasted on their backs in the coming years if those Elector types decide to roll with it and over the people that Dump and Penis have professed a hatred for. Between the two, there's a lot to choose from: black people, women of color, women, people of color, muslims, LGBTQIA+, emphasis on trans people, poor people, Latinx, and those are the only ones I can think of in terms of what speeches I've read the transcripts of, so you better throw Jewish people and populations of countries that don't have a lot of white people within their borders. Compared to a lot people I know, A.S. Byatt is better off, but the fact that she writes about Victorian times doesn't mean she wants to return to them.
I have memories of being so swept away by Possession that I spent literal hours transcribing the reams of poetry peppering a supposed novel of prose. This time, whether due to the lack of modern day looking back to Victorian day structure in this bifocal piece, or my own enhanced analytical abilities when it comes to the Gothic novel, I admired from more of a distance. There's also the matter that, where once I glanced over the peripheral gleams of worlds beyond England and their merry whites, I now take significant notice of whenever "bronze" or "gold" relating to the matter of skin are thrown around, every moment in which the wealth which riots of the page is delicately traced back to the blood and guts and gouging of an empire in which the sun never sets. The fact that I didn't sink the rating down much for this rather glib coverage of 99% of existence was probably aesthetic more than anything, as how exactly do you quantify a white person covering the experiences of those who are not white in a way that both seriously acknowledges yet leaves the main spotlight to be filled by those who, on a hereditary level, actually have the right to knowing what they're talking about? In a word, you don't, but you keep an eye out for the stuff that looks good and listen to the experts telling you what's good, and eventually you'll come to a world of writing where it's human beings out there, not your goddamn fucking metaphors that convince cohorts they can elect an orange ball of genocide and make it all better by making it all go away.
Anyway. If you know anything about anything going down in the US, you know people are going to be watched and tracked and hunted down a lot more these days. Same goes for the Internet. Considering the things I've put up here for public perusal, I can't promise that I won't take some or all of it down one of these days, depending on how much the public puts its activism where its mouth is. Reading and writing are all fine and well, but we don't remember Les Misérables for the barricades. We remember the barricades because all that is worth living for depends on them.
I have memories of being so swept away by Possession that I spent literal hours transcribing the reams of poetry peppering a supposed novel of prose. This time, whether due to the lack of modern day looking back to Victorian day structure in this bifocal piece, or my own enhanced analytical abilities when it comes to the Gothic novel, I admired from more of a distance. There's also the matter that, where once I glanced over the peripheral gleams of worlds beyond England and their merry whites, I now take significant notice of whenever "bronze" or "gold" relating to the matter of skin are thrown around, every moment in which the wealth which riots of the page is delicately traced back to the blood and guts and gouging of an empire in which the sun never sets. The fact that I didn't sink the rating down much for this rather glib coverage of 99% of existence was probably aesthetic more than anything, as how exactly do you quantify a white person covering the experiences of those who are not white in a way that both seriously acknowledges yet leaves the main spotlight to be filled by those who, on a hereditary level, actually have the right to knowing what they're talking about? In a word, you don't, but you keep an eye out for the stuff that looks good and listen to the experts telling you what's good, and eventually you'll come to a world of writing where it's human beings out there, not your goddamn fucking metaphors that convince cohorts they can elect an orange ball of genocide and make it all better by making it all go away.
Anyway. If you know anything about anything going down in the US, you know people are going to be watched and tracked and hunted down a lot more these days. Same goes for the Internet. Considering the things I've put up here for public perusal, I can't promise that I won't take some or all of it down one of these days, depending on how much the public puts its activism where its mouth is. Reading and writing are all fine and well, but we don't remember Les Misérables for the barricades. We remember the barricades because all that is worth living for depends on them.
You are accompanied through life, Emily Jesse occasionally understood, not only by the beloved and the accusing departed, but by your own ghost too, also accusing, also unappeased.
February 19, 2015
This is a beautifully written book. The first story concerns a man who, shipwrecked, finds a new home with a collector of specimens from such places as the Amazon; the man becomes entangled in the family, inevitably uncovering some dirty secrets, all the while trying to find his purpose. There's some philosophical musing, and several long digressions on ants, as well as extensive excerpts from contemporary literature, religious works etc. I would have preferred fewer excerpts and more original text, true of both novellas, because I genuinely enjoyed A.S. Byatt's writing. Characters had that really human quality of being both likeable and irritating, at times repulsive, at times delightful. I did suspect the twist (I believe there is meant to be a bit of a shocking reveal) from almost the beginning!
The second story is about a group of people interested in communicating with the dead; a woman who has lost five children, a woman whose betrothed died while he was traveling, whose new husband also attends - and is a source of social discomfort, as she was expected to live and die in mourning, and a lusty itinerant preacher. There is one medium who specializes in automatic writing and desperately misses the embrace of her husband, presumed drowned, and one medium who seems to exist almost entirely in the realm of spirits. The story focuses on Alfred Lord Tennyson and his family, as his brother was the dead fiancee, and so there is much quoting... But the passages about the spirits, the delicate examinations of everyone's reasons and beliefs and despair and love and hopelessness, so gentle and incisive, meandering and precise.
The second story is about a group of people interested in communicating with the dead; a woman who has lost five children, a woman whose betrothed died while he was traveling, whose new husband also attends - and is a source of social discomfort, as she was expected to live and die in mourning, and a lusty itinerant preacher. There is one medium who specializes in automatic writing and desperately misses the embrace of her husband, presumed drowned, and one medium who seems to exist almost entirely in the realm of spirits. The story focuses on Alfred Lord Tennyson and his family, as his brother was the dead fiancee, and so there is much quoting... But the passages about the spirits, the delicate examinations of everyone's reasons and beliefs and despair and love and hopelessness, so gentle and incisive, meandering and precise.
May 6, 2019
Premessa necessaria: Antonia, quanto la Amo!
Detto ciò.
Questo volume è composto di due storie lunghe: Morpho Eugenia e L'angelo del focolare.
Ritengo che il punto forte, per entrambe, non sia la trama quanto la capacità della Byatt di intrecciare gli elementi tra loro in modo coerente ed affascinante.
In Morpho Eugenia ciò che ho amato di più è tutto il sapere naturalistico che la Byatt mette in ogni pagina. Il fascino delle prime osservazioni sul regno naturale e il dibattito che ne viene fuori.
L'angelo del focolare inizia in un modo un po' macchinoso (forse non è il termine giusto ma al momento è quello che mi viene) ma dopo qualche pagina la scrittura della Byatt si apre e diventa musicalità pura e quasi non mi è più importato nulla della storia che raccontava (ammetto che avrebbe potuto raccontarla meglio) ma semplicemente mi incantava il ritmo che mi ha catturata così tanto che volevo non finisse mai. E poi il fascino dei versi di Tennyson e sapere che l'ispirazione della storia deriva da un momento di vita reale del poeta. Le ultime pagine della storia si perdono di nuovo un po', come le prime. Ma il finale mi ha lasciato un sorriso sulle labbra ed una bella sensazione dentro.
Quattro stelle e mezzo. Ma arrotondo in eccesso. Perchè la amo.
Detto ciò.
Questo volume è composto di due storie lunghe: Morpho Eugenia e L'angelo del focolare.
Ritengo che il punto forte, per entrambe, non sia la trama quanto la capacità della Byatt di intrecciare gli elementi tra loro in modo coerente ed affascinante.
In Morpho Eugenia ciò che ho amato di più è tutto il sapere naturalistico che la Byatt mette in ogni pagina. Il fascino delle prime osservazioni sul regno naturale e il dibattito che ne viene fuori.
L'angelo del focolare inizia in un modo un po' macchinoso (forse non è il termine giusto ma al momento è quello che mi viene) ma dopo qualche pagina la scrittura della Byatt si apre e diventa musicalità pura e quasi non mi è più importato nulla della storia che raccontava (ammetto che avrebbe potuto raccontarla meglio) ma semplicemente mi incantava il ritmo che mi ha catturata così tanto che volevo non finisse mai. E poi il fascino dei versi di Tennyson e sapere che l'ispirazione della storia deriva da un momento di vita reale del poeta. Le ultime pagine della storia si perdono di nuovo un po', come le prime. Ma il finale mi ha lasciato un sorriso sulle labbra ed una bella sensazione dentro.
Quattro stelle e mezzo. Ma arrotondo in eccesso. Perchè la amo.
April 29, 2013
Life does get busy sometimes...
But in the midst of it all to curl up with a book like Angels and Insects is a pure delight. I must confess that A.S. Byatt is a favorite of mine, and I came in these novellas expecting a lot, of sensuousness in words, of depth in insight and mystery in story telling. I got more - in fact, about possibly everything, death, life, love and betrayal, and the afterlife, and so much more. Which all made me pause in awe, what a fine mind this lady has...
The first novella tells the story of a man's obsession for the woman he loves, holding her in the highest regard, only to find out that she is the worst of liars (having engaged in incest) and he has to leave, without telling anyone. "For who wouldn't be hurt by such knowledge."
The second, well, so many angels, people coming back from the dead, and that insatiable desire and wish to have just a part of them back. What is it with all those early poets? Tennyson, Keats, etc. She makes it all look too real. One would barely think they are reading fiction.
Beautiful book. Give me A.S. Byatt anytime.
But in the midst of it all to curl up with a book like Angels and Insects is a pure delight. I must confess that A.S. Byatt is a favorite of mine, and I came in these novellas expecting a lot, of sensuousness in words, of depth in insight and mystery in story telling. I got more - in fact, about possibly everything, death, life, love and betrayal, and the afterlife, and so much more. Which all made me pause in awe, what a fine mind this lady has...
The first novella tells the story of a man's obsession for the woman he loves, holding her in the highest regard, only to find out that she is the worst of liars (having engaged in incest) and he has to leave, without telling anyone. "For who wouldn't be hurt by such knowledge."
The second, well, so many angels, people coming back from the dead, and that insatiable desire and wish to have just a part of them back. What is it with all those early poets? Tennyson, Keats, etc. She makes it all look too real. One would barely think they are reading fiction.
Beautiful book. Give me A.S. Byatt anytime.
Read
August 4, 2013These are two novellas in one volume. The first one Morpho Eugenia, was made into an esthetically stunning I thought Angels and Insects movie in 1995. I was really fond of the movie when it came out but haven't seen it since. The book was a nice review of it, plus. Really nicely written, clever novel of ideas, very skillfully woven to be satisfying at both intellectual and emotional levels.
On the other hand, I couldn't get into the second novella at all. Like the first one, it's also set in Victorian times, but this one deals with spiritual seances and the life of Alfred Lord Tennyson and his sister Emily. A big fan of Byatt that I am, I tried to make progress with it a few times but in the end I just skimmed it. Maybe some other time I'll actually read it.
On the other hand, I couldn't get into the second novella at all. Like the first one, it's also set in Victorian times, but this one deals with spiritual seances and the life of Alfred Lord Tennyson and his sister Emily. A big fan of Byatt that I am, I tried to make progress with it a few times but in the end I just skimmed it. Maybe some other time I'll actually read it.
January 1, 2010
I read the first half, Morpho Eugenia, and found it predictable and pretentious. The author digresses into lengthy descriptions of insect life and inserts pseudo fairy tales, which are extremely symbolic but don't forward the plot at all. In the end it seems these passages were shoehorned into the story, which would have kept movement and flow had they been taken out. Some of the prose is gorgeous, and the characters are convincingly Victorian, but I couldn't bring myself to read the second half.
December 17, 2011
Very impressed. Byatt has clearly sold her soul to the devil. That said, it must be conceded that these stories are not for the impatient. Not everyone is going to be charmed by endless descriptions of ant activity, Tennyson's poetry, Swedenborgian theology, and a somewhat unremarkable fable "written" by one of the characters, but everything comes together so neatly, you finally have to stand up and applaud. Best of all, both stories conclude with happy, dare I say exuberant, endings. This writing that makes you want to thank those nuns who drilled you on your ABCs
November 11, 2021
Ángels and Insects are two separate novellas set in the Victorian period.
Morpho Eugenia is full of symbolism and would give fodder for a literature class to dismantle each piece and look at it much like the insects collected and the main protagonist, himself trapped as a pinned down insect. But the heart of the story seemed banal and a bit vulgar.
The second story, about seances, had moments of great insight in Mrs Papagay’s thoughts:
“wondered whether other people told themselves stories in this way in their heads, whether everyone made up everyone else, living and dead, at every turn, whether this she knew about Mrs Hearnshaw could be called knowledge or lies, or both”
And also in Tennyson’s wondering regarding his feelings for his dead friend:
“He had had all sorts of worries and wicked thoughts about his poem. Perhaps he was using it to keep alive a memory and a love it would have been stronger and more manly to let lie. Perhaps he was in some wrong way using his beloved to subserve his own gain, his own fame, or more subtly, making something fantastically beautiful out of the horror of Arthur’s dissolution, which it would have been wiser, more honest, to stare at in dumb and truthful uncomprehending pain, until its hurtful brightness either faded like a fire eaten away, or caused him to drop his own eyes. You could not make a man into a poem, neither the singer nor the sung, neither the rippling throat nor the still corpse.”
Despite the clear insights and transcendent musings, the inserted poetry and long monologues felt a bit long and onanistic
I appreciate Byatt but, as “Possession” was virtuosic this felt a bit like a dinner where every dish is a soufflé.
Morpho Eugenia is full of symbolism and would give fodder for a literature class to dismantle each piece and look at it much like the insects collected and the main protagonist, himself trapped as a pinned down insect. But the heart of the story seemed banal and a bit vulgar.
The second story, about seances, had moments of great insight in Mrs Papagay’s thoughts:
“wondered whether other people told themselves stories in this way in their heads, whether everyone made up everyone else, living and dead, at every turn, whether this she knew about Mrs Hearnshaw could be called knowledge or lies, or both”
And also in Tennyson’s wondering regarding his feelings for his dead friend:
“He had had all sorts of worries and wicked thoughts about his poem. Perhaps he was using it to keep alive a memory and a love it would have been stronger and more manly to let lie. Perhaps he was in some wrong way using his beloved to subserve his own gain, his own fame, or more subtly, making something fantastically beautiful out of the horror of Arthur’s dissolution, which it would have been wiser, more honest, to stare at in dumb and truthful uncomprehending pain, until its hurtful brightness either faded like a fire eaten away, or caused him to drop his own eyes. You could not make a man into a poem, neither the singer nor the sung, neither the rippling throat nor the still corpse.”
Despite the clear insights and transcendent musings, the inserted poetry and long monologues felt a bit long and onanistic
I appreciate Byatt but, as “Possession” was virtuosic this felt a bit like a dinner where every dish is a soufflé.
September 26, 2013
Angels and Insects - A.S. Byatt
(Morpho Eugenia and The Conjugial Angel)
This is really two books in one, joined only by the most tenuous of
connections.
The first, Morpho Eugenia, is the story that the 1995 movie 'Angels &
Insects' tells. The film follows the plot of the book faithfully, which
definitely influenced my reading of the book. A shipwrecked naturalist,
William Adamson, is befriended by a wealthy Victorian gentleman, who
invites him to stay at his estate. The naturalist falls in
lust-at-first-sight with one of the gentleman's daughters, Eugenia, and,
to his surprise, is given permission to marry her. They wed and have lots
of children, but in a rather-obvious literary device, Eugenia has no
personality whatsoever. However, another woman, a children's tutor, Matty,
who collaborates with the Adamson on a book about ants, is just brimming
with personality, although he seems oblivious to it. However, when a
Shocking Truth is revealed, things quickly turn out the way the reader saw
that they should have long ago.
The Conjugial Angel, to me, was not as significant a piece. Although it
has some interesting themes and characters, it's rather lacking in plot.
It has to do with mediums in Victorian England, and has lots of
fascinatingly well-researched detail regarding their place in that
society. It's also about the poetry of Tennyson, and about grief and
mourning. It's only tertiarily about Mrs. Papagay, a woman whose lusty
husband, whom she very much loved, has been lost at sea, and how she turns
to being a medium to both make a living and to seek answers for herself.
It's too bad, because Mrs. Papagay is a great character, and I felt that a
more conventional novel structure would have showcased her story
wonderfully.
(Morpho Eugenia and The Conjugial Angel)
This is really two books in one, joined only by the most tenuous of
connections.
The first, Morpho Eugenia, is the story that the 1995 movie 'Angels &
Insects' tells. The film follows the plot of the book faithfully, which
definitely influenced my reading of the book. A shipwrecked naturalist,
William Adamson, is befriended by a wealthy Victorian gentleman, who
invites him to stay at his estate. The naturalist falls in
lust-at-first-sight with one of the gentleman's daughters, Eugenia, and,
to his surprise, is given permission to marry her. They wed and have lots
of children, but in a rather-obvious literary device, Eugenia has no
personality whatsoever. However, another woman, a children's tutor, Matty,
who collaborates with the Adamson on a book about ants, is just brimming
with personality, although he seems oblivious to it. However, when a
Shocking Truth is revealed, things quickly turn out the way the reader saw
that they should have long ago.
The Conjugial Angel, to me, was not as significant a piece. Although it
has some interesting themes and characters, it's rather lacking in plot.
It has to do with mediums in Victorian England, and has lots of
fascinatingly well-researched detail regarding their place in that
society. It's also about the poetry of Tennyson, and about grief and
mourning. It's only tertiarily about Mrs. Papagay, a woman whose lusty
husband, whom she very much loved, has been lost at sea, and how she turns
to being a medium to both make a living and to seek answers for herself.
It's too bad, because Mrs. Papagay is a great character, and I felt that a
more conventional novel structure would have showcased her story
wonderfully.
Currently reading
November 12, 2024REREADING 2025
One of my favorite books by Byatt. I really love, love this collection of two novellas, one about a house filled with secrets and how ants work, the second about Tennyson's best friend, the power of grief, and ghosts.
Both are Gothic in a sense and I read them this time for that Gothic feel, looking to see how Byatt took some truths about history and people and turned them upside down.
I think my favorite is the second one which is called The Conjugal Angel. The emotional intensity of it is some of Byatt's best writing. There is a lot also about the struggles between faith and science. But that is but one of the themes in both these stories.
If you have never read Byatt, I highly recommend these two stories as a place to begin and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND them to YA readers and writers.
Beautifully written, almost perfection.
One of my favorite books by Byatt. I really love, love this collection of two novellas, one about a house filled with secrets and how ants work, the second about Tennyson's best friend, the power of grief, and ghosts.
Both are Gothic in a sense and I read them this time for that Gothic feel, looking to see how Byatt took some truths about history and people and turned them upside down.
I think my favorite is the second one which is called The Conjugal Angel. The emotional intensity of it is some of Byatt's best writing. There is a lot also about the struggles between faith and science. But that is but one of the themes in both these stories.
If you have never read Byatt, I highly recommend these two stories as a place to begin and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND them to YA readers and writers.
Beautifully written, almost perfection.
May 30, 2009
Must be completely honest - I've read "Angels & Insects" halfway - just can't get through "The Conjugal Angel" it's just brutally weird. My eyes read the words but my brain goes "Aggh! Can't compute - the names, the plot, the details, aggh- they just don't work!" I do love the first story - the characters of William and Amy and Matty come through clear as a bell. Just rip the book in half, place the first half on your must-read-again shelf and the last on the maybe-on-a-long-weekend-and-there-is-nothing-else-to-read shelf...
But there's always something else to read, isn't there?
But there's always something else to read, isn't there?
September 16, 2012
Wierd. I loved Byatt's "Possesion". Since then I've tried a few of her other books and have decided that she's more interested in displaying her intellectual prowess than actually writing a story of any depth. "Insects" is a depressingly lengthy discussion of ants, with an obvious comparison to human society...gee, that's a new one...shellacked with a dull and predictable storyline. This book contains two novellas. The second one, "Angels", started as inanely so I gave up and went to have a chat with my sheep. Way better use of my time.
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