As one of this country’s most celebrated literary authors, it almost seems to be the expectation that that A.S. Byatt’s novels will impress. Her latest book however presents a peculiar challenge in that, strictly speaking, it is not a novel. As part of the Canongate series of retold myths, Ragnarok sees Byatt relating the eponymous Norse destruction tale. In which the Gods of Asgard, under the leadership of Odin, march inexorably towards a ruinous confrontation with Loki the Trickster and a multifarious coalition of bestial progeny, Titanesque Giants and primeval prosopopoeia.
While other authors in the series have chosen to ‘novelise’ the form — developing mythical characters and themes towards the complexity typically found in the novel — Byatt, as she freely admits in the afterword, has instead decided to tell the story in its more primitive form. As this could potentially present quite a serious challenge for a writer trying to create something unique and personal, it is interesting then to see how she fared.
The first thing that you notice, if not already familiar with the source material, is just how much of a gift the original Norse mythology is to a talented writer — the story is rich in animism and anthropomorphic metaphor with wolves chasing the sun and the moon across the sky and the sky itself made from the skull of an ice giant, felled by Odin and his brothers. And, like their ancient Grecian forebears, the Gods are wonderfully flawed representations of human traits. It also has quite a pleasing clutter to it, with the Gods co-habiting the universe with primordial giants and other miscellaneous early wisps of deities.
It’s Byatt’s treatment of the fable however that is most striking. Byatt relates the myth via the autobiographical ‘thin child’, whose experiences of wartime Britain are interspersed with her relation of the tale — a strategy that happily lends complexity to the work as a whole, whilst allowing Byatt to retain the essence of the original. In this Byatt is really in her element, with her expert control of voice having the adult, child and fable form a kind of Russian doll. The story of Ragnarok is told with the poetic tone of Sturluson as apprehended by the thin child, a feat that’s handled with remarkable virtuosity. Where the intrusions of the child’s voice into the myth are conspicuous and bold, with asides and misapprehensions, the voice of the adult is subtle and occasional. The restraint of the adult as contrasted with the starkness of the child shows enormous grasp of the differences in sensibility, and allows the myth to be read on different levels.
Conceptually also, the work is impressive. Understanding the role of mythology as abstraction, Byatt is happy to present Ragnarok as something ill defined and irregular. Acknowledging that it is fictive and drawn from many sources, adult and child both are able to accept a constant duality, where events can have both happened and not happened; names are changeable; characters can be the same and distinct; and myth can be both real and make-believe. The words tumble from the page with randomness and spontaneity, evocative of a sedimentary accumulation of human story, and Byatt’s descriptions are things of colour and shapelessness. This free and formless style is wonderfully appropriate to the mythology, which is itself so eclectic and untidy.
It’s funny that Byatt has decided to focus on the demise of the Gods, when Ragnarok is as much about creation as it is destruction. The liveliness of the prose is distinctly at odds with the title, and there is a naturalist’s glee in the lengthy lists of species that populate the book. But then I guess this is just another example of the duality present throughout. Austere scientific names of marine fauna, such as tunicates and polychaete worms, are contrasted with folksy common plant names, as adult and child are contrasted, and creation and destruction. Although in the afterword Byatt distances herself from having written sanctimonious parable, there is a distinct aspect of allegory about it, which relies on the contrast. It’s subtle though. Perhaps more an observation of human nature than a message. There’s almost a cynicism about it — in the way that there is both a lesson to be learned from the Gods and a lesson that can’t be learned. I guess she sees our own destruction as inevitable as that of the Gods.
Byatt herself sums it up best when the child ruminates on the loss of ‘the bright black world’ beyond the gate. All and nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment