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 Possession, in a sampling of its varieties, is the theme of Possession: possession defined somehow as the compulsion to make someone, something completely one's own. The lover needs to possess the beloved. The researcher needs to possess knowledge. The collector needs to possess physical objects. Poets need to possess the essence--what Gerard Manly Hopkins called the inscape--of their subject.
by Jack Goodstein
The film adaptation of A. S. Byatt's Possession, victim of its esoteric subject matter, is unlikely to be making a timely appearance in local theatres in Western Pennsylvania despite boasting Gwyneth Paltrow as the lovely Christabel LaMotte. Those of us anxious to see what the filmmakers have done with the Booker Prize winner will have to content ourselves with the reviews and wait. And while waiting, a rereading of Byatt's rich and compelling 1990 romance seems like a good way to pass the time.
"There are readings--of the same text--that are dutiful," Byatt says late in the novel when the hero sits down to reread a poem,
readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, which snatch for personal meanings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There are--believe it-- impersonal readings--where the mind's eye sees the lines move onwards and the mind's ear hears them sing and sing.
Now and then there are readings that make the hairs on the neck. . . stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark--readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known, it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge.
It is not that second readings are a kind of deja vu, but that knowing in advance how the journey ends allows the reader to follow the signs and road markers that lead to that end. If on a first reading the story, the plot is the central interest for the reader, a second reading, once one is in on the plot--knows who the murderer is, so to speak--there needs to be some other equally pleasurable interest, if not more so, for the reader. A second reading liberates the reader from the tyranny of plot. What happens, the story, is no longer enough. The great novels, great literature in general, reward second readings with recognition of what might have gone unnoticed the first time, but new and significant insights into what is happening based on the new foreknowledge of what will happen.
The more "packed with ore" the novel, the richer and more satisfying the interests and insights. Possession is packed tightly with ore.
Possession's complementary love stories of the two twentieth century academics and the nineteenth century poets they are studying intertwine in counterpoint, each illuminating the other as well as the social values of their particular eras. And while love and passion may be difficult bedfellows in either age, the problems they raise for their victims are quite of another sort.
Maud Bailey and Roland Mitchell, the twentieth century scholars, are isolated and intimidated by the images they feel compelled to live up to. Maud feels compelled to hide her beauty, binding her golden hair in scarves lest her feminist contemporaries think her flaunting her plumage merely to attract a man. Successful in her career, she worries that a relationship will make her own interests and desires subservient to the male needs. Roland is haunted by his failure to make his way either in academia or the world. He can't find a teaching position. He feels that his research is dull. He is indebted to his unhappy girl friend who works as an office temp for home and the bread of daily life. Even when their research draws them together and they feel some sort of electric connection their view of what the world expects from them keeps them acting completely on their desires.
Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Ash, the nineteenth century poets, are even more tightly laced in by the manners and mores of Victorian England. Christabel aches to be taken seriously in an age where a woman needs to call herself Ellis Bell or George Eliot to be heard with any real respect. Her desire to live independently with her friend Beatrice is a conscious act of rebellion, illustrative of her strength of mind and character. Her brief, but pregnant affair with Ash, is, for a woman of her time, nothing less than an act of subversion. Ash is bound by conventions of honor and duty and what it means to be a gentleman. Though he can act the cad by cheating on his wife, there is a sense--a sense that proves correct--that such an act must have extenuating cause. In the end it is the more tightly bound Victorians who break further from their chains than the seemingly more free moderns.
This ironic contrast between the two ages is a kind of leit motif that runs through the book. The Victorians, despite the limitations of their age, are generalists pursuing many branches of knowledge. Ash and La Motte are as intrigued by natural science as they are by their poetry. The moderns--with so much knowledge available to them--are specialists, concerned with little more than their own little piece of the pie. Dr. Beatrice Nest, who has devoted her life to the journal of Ellen Ash, wife of the poet, is perhaps the exemplar of the modern spirit.
The Victorians focus on art. They are poets, creators. The moderns focus on criticism and critical theory. They are feminists and semioticians. The Victorians pursue their interests with the enthusiasm of the amateur; the moderns are professionals. New discoveries in science and new ideas have created questions and doubts for the nineteenth century intellectual. In the twentieth century new thought has created assured certainty, even if that certainty is only that nothing is certain. If a Lyell's work put so much of what was previously believed in question, modern literary theory is nothing if not sure of itself. It is against the background of these contrasting intellectual zeitgeists that the romances unfold.
The stories of the two pairs of lovers curl round one another as the researchers slowly discover new bits and pieces of information about the poets and about themselves. Byatt uses an eclectic mix of styles and genres to lend critical mass to what else might be sappy romance. Letters, journals, poems, essays in literary criticism and biographical studies are interspersed throughout the narrative. Byatt, a scholar herself, has the different voices to a tee, whether it be a feminist critique of Chistabel's poetry or a nineteenth century medium describing an aborted seance.
Her samples--long and short--of the work of the poets are truly bravura performances. Ash seems clearly modeled on Robert Browning. His biographer has called him "The Great Ventriloquist."; Like Browning, he speaks "in so many voices, not my own." The dramatic monologue is the form most often associated with him, although like Browning, he has written some unsuccessful plays and a long epic like poem. Moreover, the themes and subjects of the poems are the themes and subjects of Browning's poetry: the raising of the dead and the afterlife, truth in art, spiritualism and human fallibility. He writes in the voice of historical characters little known and long forgotten: for him, Swammerdam, for Browning, Galuppi.
LaMotte, perhaps somewhat less clearly, seems based on Christina Rossetti. Her poems are ironic lyrics reminiscent of "After Death" and fairy narratives related in subject if not in style to a poem like "Goblin Market." Like Rossetti, her body of work is small and for the most part neglected by the male establishment. She has the poet's eye for detail and an ear for the music of the language. Moreover, the poems of both poets are not mere parodies, they are authentic attempts to recapture these Victorian voices.
Possession, in a sampling of its varieties, is the theme of Possession: possession defined somehow as the compulsion to make someone, something completely one's own. The lover needs to possess the beloved. The researcher needs to possess knowledge. The collector needs to possess physical objects. Poets need to possess the essence--what Gerard Manly Hopkins called the inscape--of their subject. There is in this obsession with possessing a danger, however, and that is that we may ourselves become possessed, lose our humanity in thrall to our passion. In the end Possession highlights the need to get beyond the obsession to a somewhat less demanding happiness.
One wonders if they'll manage to get all this into a movie. One can only hope.
For more information about Possession visit: Possession: A Romance
About the Reviewer: Jack Goodstein is a professor emeritus at California University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught English for more than thirty years. His work has appeared in scholarly journals such as Critique, Theatre Journal and College English and in literary magazines such as The Maine Review, The Small Pond Magazine of Literature and The Jewish Digest. In 1990 at age 51, he tried his hand at acting, and while he has always loved the theatre from the audience, discovered an unexpected addiction to the stage as a performer. Since then he has appeared in more than sixty plays throughout Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania. He has also done film and commercial work. This ultimately led to his attempts at writing for the stage. His one act, Pinochle was given a staged reading at the ATHE conference in Toronto in July of 1999 and was published by the University of Charleston Press. In April 2000, his one act, Poker, was produced by the Pulse Ensemble Theatre in Manhattan as part of their OPAL series. Bride of the Father(2000) and Creative Daydreaming (2001) were produced by the Gallery Players of Park Slope in Brooklyn. Other one acts have had readings or been staged at Far Off Broadway and Northern LightsTheatre in Canada, and New York University and the Cafe Sha Sha in New York. Another of his pieces is on line at <A HREF="http://www.dhj5.homestead.com/Issue5pg19.html" "target="_blank">http://www.dhj5.homestead.com/Issue5pg19.html
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