Palimpsestic writing and crossing textual boundaries in selected novels by A.S. Byatt

ion, “the radical edge of the palimpsest cuts into a wide range of contemporary issues as it functions as a psychological, historical and social model” (McDonagh, 1987:210). Due to the fact that ancient palimpsests embody “the mystery of the secret, the miracle of resurrection and the thrill of detective discovery” (Dillon, 2007:12), they have continued to fascinate people, both scholars and lay men alike. Eventually as the ancient palimpsest was abstracted it came to represent a contemporary concept which can be applied to various research fields and disciplines. Dillon (2007:2) states that “the palimpsest becomes a figure for interdisciplinarity”. Dillon (2007:4) explores the contemporary concept in her book and describes it as follows: The palimpsest is.an involuted phenomenon where otherwise unrelated texts are involved and entangled, intricately interwoven, interrupting and inhabiting each other [and it has a] complex structure of (textual) relationality. There is a specific connection between the different texts on the surface of the palimpsest. This connection can be described by a “neologistic adjective” derived from the contemporary concept of the palimpsest, namely “palimpsestuous” (Dillon, 2007:11). Dillon (2007:4) explicates: “palimpsestuous does not name something as, or as making, a palimpsest, but describes the type of relationality reified in the palimpsest”. This definition is based on Dillon’s notion of texts that inhabit the surface of the palimpsest and the consequent “relationality” between these texts, i.e. the interaction between the subtexts or 12 intertexts and the main text. Another neologism based on the adjective “palimpsestuous” is the noun “palimpsestuousness” (Dillon, 2007:3) which is the relation that exists between the texts of the palimpsest. This relation is paradoxical in nature because it comprehensively includes both the fact that the different texts are separate entities and that they are inevitably connected because they are literally bound together in one manuscript. Dillon (2007:6) mentions this as she writes about the “simultaneity of intimacy and separation [which] defines both the palimpsestuous and the metaphoric relationship”. An archaeological palimpsest has an older, ancient underlying layer of text and a younger overlying layer of text that bear no obvious relation to each other. According to Dillon (2007:34), the difference between archaeological palimpsests and the contemporary use of the concept is that there is no clear relation or connection between the layers of text of archaeological palimpsests. The abstract layers of the concept of the palimpsest, however, do share some connection. Dillon (2007:3) explains this when she purports that the palimpsest creates a: simultaneous relation of intimacy and separation.preserving as it does the distinctness of its texts, while at the same time allowing for their essential contamination and interdependence. So the concept of the palimpsest both emphasises and erases the boundaries between its texts. Walsh (2000:187) also refers to this paradoxical relationality in his article on Byatt’s Booker Prize winning novel, Possession: “The boundaries between discourse-types are blurred (though not obliterated), while their distinctive features are highlighted. ” Palimpsestuous relationality thus emphasises the boundaries between separate texts while simultaneously also emphasising the likelihood of these textual boundaries being transgressed. Gauthier (2006:69) identifies this notion in Possession by commenting that 13 “these two worlds occupy the same textual space while pointing to the incongruity of such a