Still Byatt

This week has passed quickly, despite long spells when time seemed to stagnate.  Very tired most days, and what ought to have taken at most a day has often taken three. 

Still reading Babel Tower and still awed and delighted by Byatt’s command of language,of literature, of ideas. Mostly awed by the erudition of her characters – and envious too of the kind of education that spawns the familiarity and depth of understanding and involvement with literature that characterises Frederica: ‘Frederica is an intellectual, driven by curiosity, by a pleasure in coherence, by making connections’ (p. 379).  I wonder how often the term ‘connection’ and cognates is used in this book. (The significance of ‘only connect’ (‘Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die’ (Howard’s End, ch 22)).

Babel Tower is so rich – it’s bulging with huge themes and issues.  It needs to be read again, and probably reread several times.  I can’t seem to hold it all in my head enough to comment on it as a whole.

I’m reading the Byatt's novels in the wrong order, however, so may well end up rereading Babel Tower after I’ve read The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life.