Possession

by A.S. Byatt

“I’ve been reading his poems. Ask to Embla. They’re good. He wasn’t talking to himself. He was talking to her—Embla—Christabel or— Most love poetry is only talking to itself. I like those poems.” “I’m glad you like something about him.” “I’ve been trying to imagine him. Them. They must have been—in an extreme state. I was thinking last night—about what you said about our generation and sex. We see it everywhere. As you say. We are very knowing. We know all sorts of other things, too—about how there isn’t a unitary ego—how we’re made up of conflicting, interacting systems of things—and I suppose we believe that? We know we are driven by desire, but we can’t see it as they did, can we? We never say the word Love, do we—we know it’s a suspect ideological construct—especially Romantic Love—so we have to make a real effort of imagination to know what it felt like to be them, here, believing in these things—Love—themselves—that what they did mattered—” “I know. You know what Christabel says. ‘Outside our small safe place flies Mystery.’ I feel we’ve done away with that too—And desire, that we look into so carefully—I think all the looking-into has some very odd effects on the desire.” “I think that, too.”