Obsessively in Love with Language Itself
In one of his letters to Christabel LaMotte, Randolph Henry Ash explains his view of the difference between poets and novelists. He writes:
"What makes me a Poet, and not a novelist—is to do with the singing of the Language itself. For the difference between poets and novelists is this—that the former write for the life of the language—and the latter write for the betterment of the world." (8.23)
That's R. H. Ash's opinion, anyway, and the opinion of lots of nineteenth-century people, though of course it's not a universal truth. After all, we've got to admit that it's a little hard to agree with Ash wholeheartedly while holding Possession in our hands, since A. S. Byatt is obviously just as much in love with "the singing of the Language itself" as her nineteenth-century poet is. Just look at the kinds of sentences that Byatt writes:
He was excited by the ferocious vitality and darting breadth of reference of the work, and secretly, personally, he was rather pleased that all this had been achieved out of so peaceable, so unruffled a private existence. (1.22)
Or this:
I was most distressed to hear that you were ill. I cannot think that this mild Spring weather—or my letters, so full of goodwill, however else intrusive—could affect you so uncomfortably—and so am reduced to suspecting the oratory of your inspired Quaker—whose telluric conditions of magnetic inertia, whose observation of Induration—I enjoy quite as much as you could have hoped. (10.74)
Byatt wields a pen like John Boyega wields a light saber—awesomely, that is. Who uses adjectives like "ferocious" to describe vitality, or "darting" to describe breadth, or "unruffled" to describe privacy? Who conjures up the outdated language of the nineteenth century and peppers a novel with words like "telluric" and "induration"?
A. S. Byatt, that's who.