Angels & Insects

My first novel by A.S. Byatt. I don't dare to recommend it. They are quite singular stories particularly: "Angel Conyugal", with everything related to spiritualism and the afterlife. What catches my attention the most in this story is the poet Alfred Tennyson and everything that lies behind his poem "In Memoriam" in honor of his deceased friend Arthur H Hallam.

The way Byatt weaves together the elements of the supernatural and the literary world is both fascinating and somewhat disconcerting. The exploration of grief and the search for meaning in the face of loss are themes that are deeply explored in this novel.

I will let some time pass before returning to this special novelist. There is so much to unpack and思考 in her work that it requires a certain amount of mental and emotional space to fully appreciate.

As a fourth read from her, this firmly cements Byatt as one of my favorite authors. Her works are all complex, rich, and utterly mesmerizing. This pair of novellas was published together in 1992, shortly after the Booker Prize-winning “Possession.” The blurb on the cover did an excellent job of captivating me (and also left me a bit mystified with its semi-spoilers presented in a distorted and compressed way):

The shipwrecked naturalist who is the protagonist of “Morpho Eugenia” is rescued by a family whose clandestine passions 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, 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 this work are slim. One of his wealthy customers for rare butterflies and such 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 in the 1860s is a highly debated topic. The discussions are fascinating, but to William, Alabaster's efforts 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 when he wins her agreement to marriage and persuades her father to accede despite his low birth. However, there is something lacking in Eugenia, who passively goes along with being a baby machine. This is one of 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. Resisting being a useless drone to his queen, 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 striving 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 adored 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 superb. It goes far beyond simply attacking creationist arguments. In concluding 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 seems playful on her part to let her characters dwell on thinking about nature and nurture, instinct and predestination, which 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 holds a special place in my heart. The impact of this may vary among other readers.

Some of my pleasure is biased due to the allure ant behavior had for me in childhood, which influenced my later choice to become a biologist. But I believe others out there might also sense the brilliance of how her heroes, in their quest for knowledge, face 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 truly remarkable. It's not difficult 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, it seems, through windows 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, and 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 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 charming storyteller, excellent at creating fruitful beginnings, surprising yet apt in her endings, and masterful in the development and diversions of her characters within the body of her tales. We can feel the warmth of compassion for those trying to solve life's great problems and a lively amusement in her fools and snobs.

I just couldn't finish it. In fact, I barely started it before I stopped.

It was a task that seemed insurmountable to me at that time.

I was a teenager when I picked it up though, so it might just have been over my head.

Maybe I wasn't ready for the complexity and difficulty it entailed.

Looking back now, I wonder if I could have given it a better try if I had more experience and maturity.

But then again, it's all in the past.

Perhaps there are other opportunities waiting for me in the future to prove myself and show that I can overcome challenges that once seemed impossible.

For now, I'll just have to let go of this unfinished business and focus on moving forward.

3.90/5
This is yet another remarkable book by Byatt set in the Victorian era. When conversing with others about the author, I've realized that people either despise her books or hold them in great affection. And I, for one, am in the latter camp. Even though this particular work may not be as outstanding as The Children's Book or Possession, I still derived a great deal of enjoyment from it. Byatt's books are incredibly rich - which is why, at times, they can seem a bit "dense". They are filled to the brim with information, descriptions, as well as poems, extracts from books, and fairy stories. This makes it extremely easy for me, at least, to immerse myself in the world she envisions.
I had a greater preference for "Morpho Eugenia" over "The Conjugal Angel" (although I now have a strong urge to read more Tennyson). Perhaps this is due to its main character, who is utterly captivated by insects yet completely oblivious to what is happening around him, or perhaps it's because of all the fascinating information provided about insects. I never would have suspected that ants and bees could be so interesting.
In any case, it appears that I can never truly grow tired of Byatt. Her knowledge of the Victorian era and the way she weaves it into her characters is truly astonishing. The book doesn't merely provide an abundance of facts about that period; it constructs highly realistic characters who might have actually lived during that time.

Morpho Eugenia is truly an astonishing work of literary artistry.

It initially presents as a captivating romance and family drama, yet upon reflection, it transcends into another realm. Byatt weaves extensive passages of scientific and ethical dialogues that seem to be quotations from the Victorian era.

These dialogues are centered around Victorian concerns but are used by Byatt to construct a highly contemporary post-modern discourse on the limitations of analogy and anthropocentrism.

Moreover, they serve a triple purpose as a front in the relationship between William and the Alabaster family.

I struggle to think of another book that can manage to use such a clever and intricate structure and imagery to make an intelligent argument that is self-evident from the work itself without being explicitly stated, while still remaining an enjoyable and beautiful character-based fiction.

It truly has the whole package.

It even delves into the world of entomologists practicing real science and science education, presented realistically and with a responsible level of accuracy.

The Conjugial Angel, on the other hand, is still a good book, but it pales in comparison.

I had a rather difficult time keeping track of the relationships between the characters.

I was certain that two of them were siblings until it was hinted that they were in a gay relationship, which seemed implausible mainly because I didn't expect Byatt to use that device twice in one book.

I only realized three-quarters of the way through that one of the characters was supposed to be the real-life poet Alfred Tennyson.

The novella heavily relies on quotes from the Tennyson poem whose creation it is meant to dramatize, which almost lost me.

One reviewer even suggested that the entire novella was written as an excuse for Byatt to share her favorite parts of the Tennyson poem and gain a renewed appreciation from modern audiences.

I believe this does Byatt a disservice as she is clearly far too intelligent not to bring significant value on her own.

I loved many of the characters and vignettes, but it doesn't cohere or amount to anything in the same way that Morpho Eugenia does.

Facets of Victorianism are presented from a modern-day point of view in this remarkable work.

The book is composed of two novellas set in the mid-19th century. They are loosely connected through the minor character of Captain Papagay. In the first novella, Morpho Eugenia, he is the captain of the ship that ultimately carries William, the scientist, and Matilda, his faithful assistant, to the Amazon. This is away from William's shattered marriage to Eugenia. It is a gothic tale filled with love, carnal lust, and determinism. There are numerous parallels between the insect world studied by William Adamson and the society he inhabits. The atmosphere created in this novella vividly calls to mind various Victorian art forms. The woven textures, patterns, and colors are reminiscent of William Morris interiors and Pre-Raphaelite paintings. It also brings to mind some of Robert Browning's poetry.

In contrast, the second novella, The Conjugial Angel, is actually about a work of art. It revolves around Alfred Tennyson's famous elegiac poem In Memoriam, in which he memorialized his dead friend and onetime bridegroom of his sister Emily, Arthur Henry Hallam. This novella is a ghost story and a study in Swedenborgian philosophy, with topics ranging from life after death to different meanings of undying love. This truly showcases A. S. Byatt at her absolute best.

A. S. Byatt is truly a master of language. It seems that she couldn't write a bad sentence even if she deliberately tried, and these two novellas in "Angels and Insects" once again prove this fact. Her command over language is simply astonishing. Reading her works is like being swept into past worlds, which is an experience I truly love.

I must admit that I enjoyed "Morpho Eugenia" to a much greater extent than "The Conjugial Angel". I found myself rather invested in the dramatic unfolding of events in "Morpho Eugenia".

However, there is a slight drawback. At times, the poems and original stories that the characters themselves write tend to get in the way of fully enjoying the main story. They serve as somewhat unwelcome interruptions that take me out of the flow of reading. This is the reason why I am not rating "Angels and Insects" any higher. It's a pity because otherwise, Byatt's writing is so captivating and engaging.

Overall, despite this minor flaw, "Angels and Insects" is still a remarkable collection of novellas that showcases Byatt's extraordinary talent as a writer.

I have to admit that I truly loved the book “Insects”. It was a captivating read that held my attention from start to finish. The author’s writing style was simply amazing. It was so wonderfully descriptive that it felt as if I could actually see the scenes and characters unfolding right before my eyes.

However, when it came to “Angels”, for some reason, I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. Maybe it was the storyline or the way the characters were developed. But despite that, I still have to give credit to the author for her ability to create a story that was full of emotion and depth.

The topic of both books was fascinating, and the characters were well-developed. They had their own unique personalities and motives, which made them interesting to follow. Overall, while “Insects” was a definite favorite, “Angels” still had its own charm and appeal.