THE IMAGE OF THE WORLD AND THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN: A.S. BYATT’S “ANGELS AND INSECTS” AS AN ARTISTIC WHOLE
Authors:   National Pedagogical Dragomanov University, Annenkova Elena S. 
Published: January 2022

The article attempts to examine the constituents of the prosaic diptych of A.S. Byatt`s novellas “Morpho Eugenia” and “Conjugal Angel” as interrelated and mutually complementary texts, the semantic and aesthetic potential of which is revealed with maximum completeness, provided they are interpreted as a complexly organized artistic whole. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to identify and analyze the complex of structural and semantic components of the novellas, which make it possible to say that “Morpho Eugenia” and “Conjugal Angel” are inseparably linked to each other into an artistic whole of a prosaic diptych and were not published by the writer under a common title by chance. In the article we used such methods as: holistic, historical-literary, historical-cultural, comparative analysis, as well as elements of hermeneutic and gender analysis methods. The study is based on the M. Girshman`s ideas about the artistic whole as a single and internally completed world, which is perceived as a whole, when the “multiplicity of separate existence of these separate parts” is overcome. We also took into account the methodology for analyzing the “complex whole”, which was proposed by V. Tjupa, who understands it as “an aesthetically unified work”, that “semiotically represented by several separate texts”. Byatt herself saw in these novellas “two linked historical novellas”, and analysis makes it possible to make sure that the novellas are dialogically open and complement to each other and are mutually reflected in each other. Both novellas deal with the most important themes for the artistic world of Byatt: love, friendship, creativity and death in their different variations. Both of them are also devoted to the experience of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, with the “trauma” of Darwinism connecting them by means of a strong thread. They are closely related by common problems, expressed through a series of antinomical oppositions: soul and body, life and death, spiritual and material, earthly and heavenly, male and female. “Angels and Insects” embodied Byatt’s the most important idea about the interconnection of everything with everything, about the unity of the material and spiritual and the commonality of the human and natural worlds. This idea became the basis around which Byatt`s author`s plan revolved, giving two novellas a common name: the worlds of people, angels and insects are comparable to each other, they exist according to the complex laws of the universe where material and spiritual always manifest themselves in interaction and interpenetration. The female and male images of the novellas emphasize their connectedness and interrelation. Anthropomorphic metaphors and metaphors of inner vision, insertion constructions and intertextuality that permeate both novellas also make it possible to assert that “Angels and Insects” are an artistic whole. The Victorian code is the most expressive and fundamental diptych feature that unites its two novellas. It manifests itself in everything: in the depicted Victorian era contradictions where spiritualism and positivism, Darwinism and Swedenborgianism coexisted, where rationalists and scientists-naturalists exist side-by-side with romantic idealists and mystics, where the carnal permeated the spiritual, and the spiritual competed with the material; in the depiction of Victorian life, family relationships and the position of women in Victorian society. An important unifying feature of the novellas is philosophical meanings inherent the Victorian era: the “age of materialism” feels the lack of scientific and one-sided explanations of what is happening in the world, so it tries to find answers to disturbing questions in mystical teachings and religious beliefs. In two novellas, with a greater or lesser degree of expression, scientific, religious and theosophical discourses coexist and interact, the modi of the rational and the mystical interrelate, and at the intersection of these discursive fields, spaces of increased semantic intensity arise, generating the key idea of the diptych: scientists and artists in their earthly deeds are likened to the Creator of the Universe in which everything is perfect and harmonious, you just need to be able to see and understand it. As a result of the analysis, it was found that the artistic integrity of the diptych is maintained at the genre-style, compositional-plot, problem-thematic levels, united by a unified author's intention to reinterpret Victorianism as an era in which fundamentally important and relevant for modern British ways of perception and understanding of the world were formed. The holistic image of the Victorian era modeled in the diptych and the correlated with it image of the Victorians are revealed to the reader in all their spiritual and aesthetic complexity and versatility. Thus, the external separateness of two novellas is deceptive: they are indissolubly linked to each other at formal and content levels and form an aesthetic unity, an artistic whole that organically fits into the space of prose of the British authoress.