#A.S. Byatt | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

perfectfeelings · 1 month

Quote

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

91 notes · View notes

quotefeeling · 2 months

Quote

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

83 notes · View notes

thehopefulquotes · 1 year

Quote

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

217 notes · View notes

oldshrewsburyian · 8 months

Note

what classic romances do you think measure up to harriet and peter in gaudy night? i’m really craving more satisfying classic romance

Well, kind inquirer, I have a confession. I had read the Wimsey novels multiple times by the age of 16. Over the past 2+ decades, Peter and Harriet have taught me a lot of things, even if I have learned them more slowly and painfully than I would like (Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face...); even if I feel as though I have not salvaged as much as I could from life's various shipwrecks. The point is: no one measures up, not for me. My dear, if you have let me come as far as your work and your life... That said, I can offer some suggestions, presuming that you mean by "classic romance" romance that happens outside the genre parameters of romance novels. I'll start with the most classic and work my way forwards. [Under the cut for length!]

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (for obvious reasons, I imagine. Perhaps the thing I love most in romance is two intense weirdos deciding to love each other intensely and weirdly.)

Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare (I know I said I'd work my way forward, but then I said 'intense weirdos' and remembered my beloved Benedick and Beatrice. Beatrice, an unmarried woman in her uncle's household, interrupts men's political conversation to demand to know whether he's alive because she can't stand not knowing for a minute longer... and that's her opening line! and then they roast each other for 2 hours! I love them so much!)

Persuasion, Jane Austen (Anne is, I would argue, quietly intense, while Frederick is obviously so; he's also weird enough for both of them (affectionate.) I adore them, I support them, I wish them many decades of shocking society with how they look at each other across rooms. And dinner tables. And pianos. And dancing squares.)

Artists in Crime/Death in a White Tie, Ngaio Marsh (this is the Alleyn/Troy duology the way that Strong Poison/Have His Carcase/Gaudy Night is the Peter/Harriet trilogy. I adore Troy, an anxious and compassionate artist with gnc tendencies, and Alleyn fascinates me. Intense weirdos again. Alleyn successfully pretends to be normal most of the time, with everyone except about 3 people. Occasionally he decides to stop, or just does because he's very tired and fed up, and then everyone in the room gets very freaked out very quickly. I love him.)

The Case of William Smith, Patricia Wentworth (bonus detective round! Wentworth is not in the Sayers-Marsh class, and this novel has some tropes I don't like, but I love the gentleness of the central romance so much that I still reread it.)

Possession, A.S. Byatt (Victorian poets, the scholars who study them, the life of the mind and the life of the heart. This is absolutely a novel with Gaudy Night in its lineage.)

The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles (I hesitated before adding this to the list, but it's a novel of ideas that is also about love and sex and identity and Englishness with a very vivid setting, so it might fit the bill?)

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje ('I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant, who imagines or remembers a meeting when the other had passed by innocently...')

Charlotte Gray, Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong is the greater novel, but this one might be the one I prefer. I love Charlotte and her quest to find herself that is also a journey toward love! and vocation! and the images for the lovers in this book are indelible)

Bonus round of books I looked at on my shelf and decided were about so many things that the romance might not be central enough: The Children's Book, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Remains of the Day, The Portrait of a Lady, War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited.

Bonus bonus round, not a book: Random Harvest. Yes it is a book, but in the novel, the romance which truly is emotionally anchoring (I would argue) is much more peripheral than it is in the film, which was, like the Wimsey novels, formative for me. Also, look at them:

I have not been normal about the way he looks at her for *checks notes* 25 years. And I hope you find some things to enjoy here!

#long post #book recommendations #romance #two fiddlers both musicians #charlotte brontë #jane austen #sebastian faulks #ngaio marsh #a.s. byatt #john fowles #michael ondaatje #patricia wentworth #random harvest

110 notes · View notes

strykerlancer · 1 month

Text

“Did we not—did you not flame, and I catch fire?”

— A.S. Byatt, “Possession.”

#A.S. Byatt #Possession #words #literature #poetry #quotes #lit

34 notes · View notes

thoughtkick · 1 year

Quote

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

299 notes · View notes

surqrised · 11 months

Quote

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

104 notes · View notes

autolenaphilia · 5 months

Text

Rip A.S. Byatt, one way to remember her is to read her excellent takedown of Harry potter, Harry Potter and the Childish Adult

it clarified for me why Harry Potter doesn't work as a fantasy, it lacks a sense of mystery to its world and magic. Instead magic is a tool, with mechanical rules, which drains it of almost all significance. In the climax, Harry literally takes down Voldemort by having a better understanding of the rules of magic. It's very boring.

At the time Byatt was dismissed as a snob who hates fantasy, but she praises a lot of children's fantasy writers like Ursula Le Guin and Susan Cooper, and has nothing but praise for "the great Terry Pratchett, whose wit is metaphysical, who creates an energetic and lively secondary world, who has a multifarious genius for strong parody as opposed to derivative manipulation of past motifs, who deals with death with startling originality. Who writes amazing sentences."

Some choice quotes:

"Auden and Tolkien wrote about the skills of inventing ''secondary worlds.'' Ms. Rowling's world is a secondary secondary world, made up of intelligently patchworked derivative motifs from all sorts of children's literature -- from the jolly hockey-sticks school story to Roald Dahl, from ''Star Wars'' to Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper....."

"Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip. Its values, and everything in it, are, as Gatsby said of his own world when the light had gone out of his dream, ''only personal"....'

But in the case of the great children's writers of the recent past, there was a compensating seriousness. There was -- and is -- a real sense of mystery, powerful forces, dangerous creatures in dark forests. Susan Cooper's teenage wizard discovers his magic powers and discovers simultaneously that he is in a cosmic battle between good and evil forces. Every bush and cloud glitters with secret significance. Alan Garner peoples real landscapes with malign, inhuman elvish beings that hunt humans.

Reading writers like these, we feel we are being put back in touch with earlier parts of our culture, when supernatural and inhuman creatures -- from whom we thought we learned our sense of good and evil -- inhabited a world we did not feel we controlled. If we regress, we regress to a lost sense of significance we mourn for. Ursula K. Le Guin's wizards inhabit an anthropologically coherent world where magic really does act as a force. Ms. Rowling's magic wood has nothing in common with these lost worlds. It is small, and on the school grounds, and dangerous only because she says it is.

In this regard, it is magic for our time. Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had."

#a.s. byatt #jowling kowling

29 notes · View notes

madam-hussein · 5 months

Text

Εμμονή

Πολυαγαπημένε Κύριε

Ορκίζομαι, δεν ξέρω γιατί είμαι τόσο λυπημένη. Ή μάλλον ξέρω – είναι επειδή με βγάλατε από τον εαυτό μου και με επιστρέψατε μετά – μικρή και αδύναμη – μονάχα υγρά μάτια – χέρια που αγγίχτηκαν – και χείλη – κι ακόμα είμαι – ένα επιτακτικά παρόν – θραύσμα γυναίκας – που λιμοκτονεί – που δεν έχει στ' αλήθεια αυτό που ποθεί – κι όμως ποθεί παράφορα – α, είναι οδυνηρό.

#A.S. Byatt

20 notes · View notes

the-forest-library · 5 months

Text

The writer and critic AS Byatt, who explored family, myth and narrative in a career spanning six decades, has died aged 87. Her publisher Chatto & Windus confirmed that she died peacefully at home surrounded by close family.

Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, who wrote under the name AS Byatt, authored complex and critically acclaimed novels, including the Booker prize-winning Possession and her examination of artistic creation, The Children’s Book. Over her career, she won a swathe of literary awards, from the Booker to a Chevalier of France’s Order of Arts and Letters.

“We mourn her loss but it’s a comfort to know that her penetrating works will dazzle, shine and refract in the minds of readers for generations to come,” said her publisher Clara Farmer.

#oh no #a. s. byatt #possession #as byatt #a.s. byatt #antonia susan duffy #women authors

29 notes · View notes

perfectquote · 2 years

Quote

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

154 notes · View notes

katenepveu · 5 months

Text

There are readings—of the same text—that are dutiful, 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, the non-existent pelt, 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.

--A.S. Byatt, Possession

#a.s. byatt #possession #yes I reblogged a version of this earlier but it didn't have the italics #mine-ish

16 notes · View notes

bangbangwhoa · 1 year

Text

books I’ve read in 2022 📖 no. 137

Possession: a Romance by A.S. Byatt

“I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”

#books #2022 reads #possession #a.s. byatt #booklr #lit edit

62 notes · View notes

fuoridalcloro · 2 years

Text

“Siamo definiti dalle linee che decidiamo di attraversare o di accettare come confine”.

Antonia Susan Byatt - Possessione

#a.s. byatt #possessione #quote

116 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 11 months

Photo

I don't have a photo credit for this photo. I got it from a friend of a friend's fb and I don't remember where. If you have a clue, let me know. But it's a great photo. * * * * * "I see whole bevies of shooting stars—like gold arrows before my darkening eyes—but before the black—and burning—I have a small light space to say—oh what? I cannot let you burn me up. I cannot." A.S. Byatt, Possession

[alive on all channels]

#A.S. Byatt #Possession #green eclipse #quotes #Alive On All Channels

17 notes · View notes

stanleyscubrick · 1 year

Text

the djinn in the nightingale’s eye

#the djinn in the nightingale’s eye #a.s. byatt #literature #fairy tale #fairy tales #cottagecore #light academia #dark academia #studyspo #studyblr #booklr #spilled ink #writing #if you like fairy tales i recommend this aaahhhh #esp this story goes more into philosophy i would say?#existentialism?#not sure if there’s a better term for it #but i love the conversations about life and bodies

10 notes · View notes