by A. S. Byatt
CHRISTABEL LAMOTTE
10
THE CORRESPONDENCE
Dear Miss LaMotte,
I do not know whether to be more encouraged or cast down by your letter. The essential point in it is “if you care to write again,” for by that permission you encourage me more than by your wish not to be seen—which I must respect—you cast me down. And you send a poem, and observe wisely that poems are worth all the cucumber-sandwiches in the world. So they are indeed—and yours most particularly—but you may imagine the perversity of the poetic imagination and its desire to feed on imagined cucumber-sandwiches, which, since they are positively not to be had, it pictures to itself as a form of English manna—oh the perfect green circles—oh the delicate hint of salt—oh the fresh pale butter—oh, above all, the soft white crumbs and golden crust of the new bread—and thus, as in all aspects of life, the indefatigable fancy idealises what could be snapped up and swallowed in a moment’s restrained greed, in sober fact.
But you must know that I am happy to forgo the sandwiches, dreamed or soberly chewed, for your delightful poem—which, as you say, has a note of savagery proper to the habits of true spiders as they have lately been observed. Do you wish to extend your metaphor of entrapment or enticement to Art? I have read other of your poems of Insect Life, and marvelled at the way they combined the brilliance and fragility of those winged things—or creeping—with something too of the biting and snapping and devouring that may be seen under a microscope. It would be a brave poet indeed who would undertake a true description of the Queen Bee—or Wasp—or Ant—as we now know them to be—having for centuries supposed these centres of communal worship and activity to be Male Rulers—I somehow imagine you do not share your Sex’s revulsion at such life-forms—or what I imagine to be a common revulsion—
I have in my head a kind of project of a long poem on insect life of my own. Not lyric, like yours, but a dramatised monologue such as those I have already written on Mesmer or Alexander Selkirk or Neighbour Pliable—I do not know if you know these poems and shall be glad to send them to you if you do not. I find I am at ease with other imagined minds—bringing to life, restoring in some sense to vitality, the whole vanished men of other times, hair, teeth, fingernails, porringer, bench, wineskin, church, temple, synagogue and the incessant weaving labour of the marvellous brain inside the skull—making its patterns, its most particular sense of what it sees and learns and believes. It seems important that these other lives of mine should span many centuries and as many places as my limited imagination can touch. For all I am is a nineteenth-century gentleman plumb in the midst of smoky London—and what is peculiar to him is to know just how much stretches away from his vanishing pin-point of observation—before and around and after—whilst all the time he is what he is, with his whiskered visage and his shelves full of Plato and Feuerbach, St Augustine and John Stuart Mill.
I run on, and have not communicated to you the subject of my insect-poem, which is to be the short and miraculous—and on the whole tragic—life of Swammerdam, who discovered in Holland the optic glass which revealed to us the endless reaches and ceaseless turmoil of the infinitely small just as the great Galileo turned his optic tube on the majestic motions of the planets and beyond them the silent spheres of the infinitely great. Are you acquainted with his story? May I send you my version when I have worked it out? If it comes to good? (As I know it will, for it is so full of tiny particular facts and objects in the observation of which the animation of the human mind inheres—and you will ask—my mind or his?—and I do not know, to tell the truth. He invented marvellous tiny instruments for peering and prying into the essence of insect life, and all made of fine ivory, as less destructive and harmful than harsh metal—Lilliputian needles he made, before Lilliput was thought of—faery needles. And I have merely words—and the dead husks of other men’s words—but I shall bring it off—you need not believe me yet, but you shall see.)
Now—you say I may have an essay on the Everlasting Nay—or on Schleiermacher’s Veil of Illusion or the Milk of Paradise—or what I will. What prodigality—how am I to chuse? I think I will not have the Everlasting Nay, but remain still in hope of eventual cool green circles—to go with the Milk of Paradise and a modicum of Bohea—and I want from you not illusion but truth. So perhaps you will tell me more about your Fairy Project—if it may be spoken of without hurting your thinking—There are times when to speak—or to write—is helpful, and times when it is most nugatory—if you would rather not pursue our conversation I shall understand. But I hope for a letter in answer to all my rambling nonsense—which I hope has given no offence to one I hope to know better.
Yours very truly
R. H. Ash
Dear Mr Ash,
I am ashamed to think that what you may reasonably have taken for coyness—or even churlishness—in myself should have produced such a generous and sparkling mixture of wit and information from you. Thank you. If all persons to whom I refused mere vegetable aliment were so to regale me with intellectual nourishment I should remain obdurate in the matter of sandwiches till all eternity—but most petitioners are content with one denial—And that is truly for the best, for we live so very quietly, we two solitary ladies, and run our little household—we have our sweet daily rhythms which are not disturbed, and our circumscribed little independence—on account of being wholly unremarkable—your delicacy will see how it is—I speak soberly for once—we neither call nor receive callers—we met, you and I, because Crabb Robinson was a friend of my dear father—as whose friend was he not? I did not feel it in my power to refuse a request in that name—and yet I was sorry—for I do not go out into society—the lady protests too much, you will say—but she was moved by your green circular visions of contentment, and did wish, briefly, that it was in her power to give a more satisfactory answer. But it would have been regretted, it would—not only by me, but also by yourself.
I was greatly flattered by your good opinion of my little poem. I am uncertain as to how to answer your question on entrapment or enticement as qualities of Art—of Ariachne’s art they may be—and by extension of merely fragile or glistening female productions—but not surely of your own great works. I was quite shocked that you might suppose I did not know the Poem on Mesmer—or that on Selkirk on his terrible island, face to face with an unrelenting Sun and an apparently unresponsive Creator—or that too on Neighboour Pliable, and his religious versatility or tergiversations. I should have told a small Fib—and said I knew them not—for the grace of receiving them at their Author’s hands—but one must keep truth—in small things as in great—and this was no small thing. You are to know that we have all your volumes, ranged forbiddingly side by side—and that they are often opened and often discussed in this little house as in the great world.
You are to know too—or maybe you are not—how should I say this, to you with whom my acquaintance is so recent—and yet if not to you, to whom—and I have just written, one must keep truth, and this is so central a truth—you are to know then, after all, for I must take my courage in my hands—that your great poem Ragnarök was the occasion of quite the worst crisis in the life of my simple religious faith, that I have ever experienced, or hope to experience. It was not that anywhere in that poem you attacked the Christian religion—which indeed was not made mention of with complete Poetic Propriety—and moreover you speak never, in your poetry, with your own voice, or from your own heart directly. (That you question is clear—the creator of Pliable, of Lazarus, of the heretic Pelagius is as wise as the serpent about all the most subtle and searching questionings and probings of the Grounds of our Belief that in our time have been most persistently and unremittingly explored. You know the “ambages and sinuosities” of the Critical Philosophy, as your Augustine says of your Pelage—for whom I have a weakness, for was he not a Breton, as I in part am, and did he not wish sinful men and women to be nobler and freer than they were?…) I digress wildly from Ragnarök and its pagan Day of Judgm
ent and its pagan interpretation of the mystery of the Resurrection, and the New Heaven and the New Earth. It seemed to me you were saying “Such Tales men tell and have told—they do not differ, save in emphasis, here and there.” Or even “Men tell what they Desire shall be or might be, not what it is divinely, transcendently decreed Must Be and Is.” It seemed to me you made Holy Scripture no more than another Wonder Tale—by dint of such writing, such force of imagining. I confuse myself, I shall not go on, I ask your pardon if what I have said appears incomprehensible to you. I doubted and I admitted Doubts I have had to live with since. Enough of that.
I did not mean to write all this. Can you doubt that I shall be delighted to receive your Swammerdam—if, as you come to the end of it, you should still have an inclination to make a copy and send it here.—I cannot promise intelligent criticism—but you cannot be in need of that—a receptive and a Thoughtful reading you are assured of. I was most interested in what you tell me of his discovery of the microscope—and his ivory needles for examining the minuter Forms of Life. We in this house have done a little work with microscopes and glasses—but We have a very womanly reluctance to take life—you will find no pinned and chloroformed collection Here—only a few upturned Jars housing temporary guests—a large House-spider—and a Moth in chrysalis form—a voracious Worm with many legs which we have been wholly unable to identify and which is Possessed of a Restless Demon—or hatred of Jar-panopticons.
I send two more Poems. They form part of a series on Psyche—in modern form—that poor doubting Girl—who took Heavenly Love for a Serpent.
I have not answered yr question about my Fairy Poem. I am deeply flattered—and no less deeply alarmed—that you remember it so—for I spoke—or affected to speak—idly on the matter, as about something which might be pleasant to Toy with—or pretty to investigate—one of these unoccupied days—
Whereas in verity—I have it in my head to write an epic—or if not an epic, still a Saga or Lay or great mythical Poem—and how can a poor breathless woman with no staying-power and only a Lunar Learning confess such an ambition to the author of the Ragnarök? But I have the most curious certainty that you are to be trusted in this matter—that you will not mock—nor deluge the fairy of the fountain with Cold Water.
Enough. The Poems are enclosed. I have many more on the subject of metamorphosis—one of the problems of our time—and all Times, rightly known. Dear Sir—forgive my excited prolixity—and send, when you may, if you will, your Swammerdam to edify
Your sincere well-wisher
C. LaMotte
[Enclosed] METAMORPHOSIS
Does the ruffled Silken Flyer
Pause to recall how She—began—
Her soft cramped crawling Origins—
Does man
In all his puffed and sparking Glory
Cast back a Thought
To the Speck of Flesh the Story
Began with, from Naught?
But both, in their Creator’s terrible keen sight
Lay curled and known through timeless Day and Night
He Form and Life at once and always—Gave
Is still their Animator and their Grave—
PSYCHE
In ancient Tales—the Creatures—helpful were
To taxed and fearful Humans in despair.
The World was One for those Men, which now is
A dissonant Congeries.
The Nation of the Spinster Ants
Their help to sorrowing Psyche brought
Whom cruel Venus set to sort
The mingled grains and seeds of plants.
They brought their feeling Sympathy
To human Task and Trouble.
They brought their Social Huswifery
To Venus—taunting—Muddle—
They sorted—cleaned—and ordered
What lay in—feckless—Heap
That Psyche—all incapable—
Her tryst—with Love—might keep.
Think not—that Man’s Approval
Anticipated Kiss
Is Guerdon of our Merit
Or Order’s Warrant—Is
The Ants toil for no Master
Sufficient to their Need
The daily commerce of the Nest
The storage of their Seed
They meet—and exchange Messages—
But none to none—bows down
They—like God’s thoughts—speak each to each—
Without—external—crown.
Dear Miss LaMotte,
How generous of you, after all, to write so promptly and so fully. I hope my answer is not too precipitate—I would not for the world harass you importunately—but there was so much of interest in what you said that I should like to set my thoughts down whilst they are fresh and clear. Your poems are delightful and original—if we were face to face I should hazard a guess or two at the deeper reaches of riddling allegory in the Psyche—which I have not the courage or effrontery to set down in black and white. You begin so meekly, with your cast-down princess and useful creatures—and end quite the opposite, with a moral dispensation—from what? is the difficulty—from monarchy—or the Love of Man—or Eros as opposed to Agape—or the malignity of Venus? Is the social affection of the anthill truly a better thing than the love of men and women? Well, you are to be the judge—the poem is yours and a fine one—and there is enough evidence in human history of topless towers set on fire for a passionate whim—or poor souls enslaved by loveless unions imposed by parental will and the dictates of lineage—or friends slaying each other—Eros is a bad and fickle little godhead—and I have quite talked myself round to your way of thinking, Miss LaMotte, without still wholly knowing what that is.
Now I have given your poems the priority which is their due, I must tell you that I have been in some distress to think that my poem had occasioned doubt in you. A secure faith—a true prayerfulness—is a beautiful and a true thing—however we must nowadays construe it—and not to be disturbed by the meanderings and queryings of the finite brain of R. H. Ash or any other puzzled student of our Century. Ragnarök was written in all honesty in the days when I did not myself question Biblical certainties—or the faith handed down by my fathers and theirs before them. It was read differently by some—the lady who was to become my wife was included in these readers—and I was at the time startled and surprised that my Poem should have been construed as any kind of infidelity—for I meant it rather as a reassertion of the Universal Truth of the living presence of Allfather (under whatever Name) and of the hope of Resurrection from whatever whelming disaster in whatever form. When Odin, disguised as the Wanderer, Gangrader, in my Poem, asks the Giant Wafthrudnir what was the word whispered by the Father of the gods in the ear of his dead son, Baldur, on his funeral pyre—the young man I was—most devoutly—meant the word to be—Resurrection. And he, that young poet, who is and is not myself, saw no difficulty in supposing that the dead Norse God of Light might prefigure—or figure—the dead Son of the God Who is the Father of Christendom. But, as you perceived, this is a two-handed engine, a slicing weapon that cuts both ways, this of figuration—to say that the Truth of the Tale is in the meaning, that the Tale but symbolises an eternal verity, is one step on the road to the parity of all tales.… And the existence of the same Truths in all Religions is a great argument both for and against the paramount Truthfulness of One.
Now—I must make confession. I have written and destroyed an earlier answer to your letter in which—not disingenuously—I urged you to hold fast by your faith—not to involve yourself in the “ambages and sinuosities” of the Critical Philosophy—and wrote, what may not be nonsense, that women’s minds, more intuitive and purer and less beset with torsions and stresses than those of mere males—may hold on to truths securely that we men may lose by much questioning, much of that mechanical futility; “A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender it”—this was the wise saying of Sir Thomas Brown
e—and I would not be instrumental in demanding the keys of that city from you in pursuit of a false claim.
But I thought—and I was right in thinking, was I not?—that you would not be best pleased to be exempted from argument by an appeal to your superior Intuition and an abandoning of the field by me?
I do not know why—or how—but I do know wholeheartedly that it is so—so I cannot prevaricate with you, and worse, cannot leave decently undiscussed matters of such import. So you will have remarked—you so sharply intelligent—that I have nowhere in this letter claimed that I now hold the simple or innocent views of the young Poet of Ragnarök. And if I tell you what views I do hold—what will you think of me? Will you continue to communicate your thoughts to me? I do not know—I only know that I am under some compulsion of truthfulness.