Call number
FIC BYA
Collection
Genres
Publication
Grove Press (2012), Edition: unknown, 192 pages
Description
As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life. Then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods -- a book of ancient Norse myths -- and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.
Media reviews
Ragnarök is een sympathiek boek (met een verhelderend nawoord), maar tegelijkertijd is het wat taai, omdat Byatt de mythen meer aandacht geeft dan de belevenissen van het kind. Al die mythische passages krijgen op den duur iets eentonigs, omdat ze worden verteld in plechtstatig, ronkend proza
Show More
waarin clichés en bijvoeglijke naamwoorden niet worden geschuwd.
In dat geval mis je wel iets, want als je dit proza hardop aan jezelf voorleest, blijkt het opeens toch diepte en meeslependheid te bezitten. Geen wonder – die mythen waren bedoeld om te worden voorgedragen, niet om stilletjes in een hoekje te worden gelezen. De lezer die zijn schaamte overwint en zijn stem verheft, wint er een dimensie bij. Show Less
What she has made in this case – thanks to a rare fusion of imagination and intellect, sensual poetry and cerebral prose, youthful joy and elderly wisdom – is an entire world, compressed but energetically alive in all its details. When we have artists like this, who needs gods
User reviews
LibraryThing member janeajones
In her afterword to Ragnarok, Byatt says when she was asked to write a revisioned myth for the Canongate series, "I knew immediately which myth I want to write. It should be Ragnarok, the myth to end all myths, the myth in which all the gods were destroyed."
She uses the figure of a young girl, a
Loki "was amused and dangerous, neither good nor evil. Thor was the classroom bully raised to the scale of growling thunder and whipping rain, Odin was Power, was in power. Ungraspable Loki flamed amazement and pleased himself.... He was the god of endings. He provided resolutions to stories -- if he chose to.... But he was an outsider, with a need for the inordinate." He's clever and curious, he maps the land and the seas down to the minutest details, he is the Faustian agent of disorder.
But Jormungander, the Midgard Serpent, thrown into the sea as a tiny snake and grown to enormous proportion to girdle and enclose the sea, embodies Byatt's theme. The lithe amphibian creature plays in the waves and detects the disguises of her prey prospers in the sea. But her ravenous appetite increases as she grows until: "Nothing saw her coming, for she was too vast for their senses to measure or expect. She was the size of a chain of firepeaks: her face was as large as a forest of kelp, and draped with things that clung to her fronds, skin, bones, shells, lost hooks and shreds of snapped lines. She was heavy, very heavy. She crawled across beds of coral, rosy, green and gold, crushing the creatures, leaving in her wake a surface blanched, chalky, ghostly."
At the end of tale, Byatt's "thin child." reunited with her parents continues to be haunted -- less by the spectre of war than by the ever-shrinking outdoor spaces of her childhood. She learns to live within a domestic peacetime garden, but beyond the garden gate looms the unknown.
She uses the figure of a young girl, a
Show More
"thin child" living during WW II to mediate the myth, which is less of a retelling than perhaps a refocusing. Byatt is most interested in the agents of the apocalypse -- Loki and his children by Angurboda, the old one: Fenrir, the wolf; Jormungander, the snake; and Hel, the goddess, who Thor sets to rule over Helheim, the land of those dead who did not die in battle. While the "thin child" finds an odd kind of comfort in her copy of Asgard and the Gods while her father has been lost in the skies over Africa and her mother has remained in London to aid the war effort, we know the war will not end in Ragnarok, at least not immediately. Byatt's forebodings are for us, who are despoiling the earth and creating our own destruction.Loki "was amused and dangerous, neither good nor evil. Thor was the classroom bully raised to the scale of growling thunder and whipping rain, Odin was Power, was in power. Ungraspable Loki flamed amazement and pleased himself.... He was the god of endings. He provided resolutions to stories -- if he chose to.... But he was an outsider, with a need for the inordinate." He's clever and curious, he maps the land and the seas down to the minutest details, he is the Faustian agent of disorder.
But Jormungander, the Midgard Serpent, thrown into the sea as a tiny snake and grown to enormous proportion to girdle and enclose the sea, embodies Byatt's theme. The lithe amphibian creature plays in the waves and detects the disguises of her prey prospers in the sea. But her ravenous appetite increases as she grows until: "Nothing saw her coming, for she was too vast for their senses to measure or expect. She was the size of a chain of firepeaks: her face was as large as a forest of kelp, and draped with things that clung to her fronds, skin, bones, shells, lost hooks and shreds of snapped lines. She was heavy, very heavy. She crawled across beds of coral, rosy, green and gold, crushing the creatures, leaving in her wake a surface blanched, chalky, ghostly."
At the end of tale, Byatt's "thin child." reunited with her parents continues to be haunted -- less by the spectre of war than by the ever-shrinking outdoor spaces of her childhood. She learns to live within a domestic peacetime garden, but beyond the garden gate looms the unknown.
Show Less
LibraryThing member edwinbcn
Ragnarok. The end of the Gods. by A. S. Byatt is not a retelling. Fragments from medieval literature, such as the Arthurian romances can be retold, as they are composed of epics, and they were originally told. Ragnarok is neither an epic nor a story. It is a word that refers to a believed event in
This lack of narrative seriously hampers Byatt book. To create a sense of a narrative element, Byatt introduces the thin child. The story is that of the thin child, possibly standing for the author, reading Asgard and the Gods in her youth, a youth overshadowed by the Second World War. Throughout the book, “the child” is reading and thinking about her father, whom she believes is missed in action. The association of Ragnarok and the end of the Gods and Nazism / the German war aggression creates a peculiar tension, especially because the book the child reads is originally from Germany, and in the child’s mind these two strands become associated.
A. S. Byatt lists the book, Asgard and the Gods, in the bibliography, as translated and adapted from the work of Dr. W. Wägner (1880). Since its publication, the book was very popular, and went through several editions. The full title of the 1880 and 1884 editions was Asgard and the Gods. The Tales and Traditions of Our Northern Ancestors. In the eighth edition of 1917 the subtitle was further expanded to Asgard and the Gods. The tales and traditions of our Northern ancestors, forming a complete manual of Norse mythology. The expanded subtitle increasingly well described the nature of the work, which is reflected in Byatt book. If anything, Byatt book could be regarded as a retelling of Wägner’s book, which is more like a reference work, a compendium, and almost complete “manual of Norse mythology.”
Ragnarok. The end of the Gods. is a book which can only be read slowly, for two reasons. Firstly, lacking a binding narrative, the book consists of a kaleidoscopic overview of Norse Gods and Goddesses. There is an overwhelming number of them, all with estranging Germanic names, although a few are known and recur. Nonetheless, the encyclopaedic nature of the book is a bit confusing.
Then, too, A. S. Byatt writing style is extremely flowery. I first noticed this extremely rich style in the short story collection Elementals. Stories of Fire and Ice, published in 1998. Beside the use of adjectives, Byatt’s descriptions of the natural world read like a complete flora or fauna, which creates an extremely full, and rich vocabulary, quite overwhelming in its own right. This lexical density makes the work very poetic, but also more difficult to read. Each story or part of the story resembles a richly decorative Art Deco tableau. While beautiful, these elaborate descriptions are also a bit over-worked, and give some passages a tiresome weightiness.
Show More
Norse mythology, and part of a huge pantheon of gods, goddesses and other mythical beings. Modern readers may have the sense that there is a story, because this wealth of material has been used by other writers, especially in the late Nineteenth Century. In its pure form, however, there is no narrative, except for the description of some events, such as "The creation of the world" or "The end of the Gods".This lack of narrative seriously hampers Byatt book. To create a sense of a narrative element, Byatt introduces the thin child. The story is that of the thin child, possibly standing for the author, reading Asgard and the Gods in her youth, a youth overshadowed by the Second World War. Throughout the book, “the child” is reading and thinking about her father, whom she believes is missed in action. The association of Ragnarok and the end of the Gods and Nazism / the German war aggression creates a peculiar tension, especially because the book the child reads is originally from Germany, and in the child’s mind these two strands become associated.
A. S. Byatt lists the book, Asgard and the Gods, in the bibliography, as translated and adapted from the work of Dr. W. Wägner (1880). Since its publication, the book was very popular, and went through several editions. The full title of the 1880 and 1884 editions was Asgard and the Gods. The Tales and Traditions of Our Northern Ancestors. In the eighth edition of 1917 the subtitle was further expanded to Asgard and the Gods. The tales and traditions of our Northern ancestors, forming a complete manual of Norse mythology. The expanded subtitle increasingly well described the nature of the work, which is reflected in Byatt book. If anything, Byatt book could be regarded as a retelling of Wägner’s book, which is more like a reference work, a compendium, and almost complete “manual of Norse mythology.”
Ragnarok. The end of the Gods. is a book which can only be read slowly, for two reasons. Firstly, lacking a binding narrative, the book consists of a kaleidoscopic overview of Norse Gods and Goddesses. There is an overwhelming number of them, all with estranging Germanic names, although a few are known and recur. Nonetheless, the encyclopaedic nature of the book is a bit confusing.
Then, too, A. S. Byatt writing style is extremely flowery. I first noticed this extremely rich style in the short story collection Elementals. Stories of Fire and Ice, published in 1998. Beside the use of adjectives, Byatt’s descriptions of the natural world read like a complete flora or fauna, which creates an extremely full, and rich vocabulary, quite overwhelming in its own right. This lexical density makes the work very poetic, but also more difficult to read. Each story or part of the story resembles a richly decorative Art Deco tableau. While beautiful, these elaborate descriptions are also a bit over-worked, and give some passages a tiresome weightiness.
Show Less
LibraryThing member gbill
A.S. Byatt’s retelling of the Norse myth of the end of the world is an enjoyable read.
The Norse Gods are volatile and unpredictable, like the Greek Gods, and a little like life itself – changeable without warning, sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel. The story explains the origin of the world
The prime mover in this story is Loki, the trickster God, who thrives on chaos and entropy. His mischievous ways earn the wrath of Odin, and in the buildup to the final battle scene, Loki is captured and chained beneath a snake which drips poison endlessly upon him. I love the illustration for this, and as an aside, the form factor for this little book in general.
Ragnarok, the end of the world, comes about from a combination of chaos, the fallibility of the Gods who are all-too-human, and the unleashing of powerful beasts in a final cataclysmic war. Truly an epic tale.
Quotes:
On the Bible (Genesis):
“The thin child found no one in this story with whom to sympathize. Except maybe the snake, which had not asked to be made use of as a tempter.”
On Life, embodied in the Gods:
“The Christian God condemned sinful men, and raised up the ‘good’ dead. The gods of Asgard were punished because they and their world were bad. Not clever enough, and bad. The thin child, thinking of playground cruelty and the Blitz, liked to glance at the idea that gods were bad, that things were bad. That the story had always been there, and the actors had always known it.”
On Death, the cruel nature of death:
“Hermodur bowed to the queen of Hel, and said that he had come to beg for Baldur’s return to Asgard. Gods and men, and all creatures, were helpless with grief, and needed the young god to bring back their liveliness, their power to hope. Most of all, said Hermodur, the goddess Frigg had asked him to beg Hel for Baldur’s return, for she could not live without him. To this, Hel replied that mothers throughout time had learned to live without their sons. Every day young men died and came quietly over her golden bridge. Only in Asgard could they die in battle every day, as a game, and live again to feast in the evening. In the hard world, and in the world of shadows, death was not a game.
But this death, said Hermodur, had diminished the light of the world.
So, said Hel. It is diminished then.”
Lastly, I love the elements described in the making of a magical rope, Gleipnir, crafted by dwarves:
“And the dwarves made a supple skein from unthings. There were six, woven together: the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird. The thing was light as air and smooth as silk, a long, delicate ribbon.”
The Norse Gods are volatile and unpredictable, like the Greek Gods, and a little like life itself – changeable without warning, sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel. The story explains the origin of the world
Show More
and the Gods at the outset, and is full of action from there. An interesting parallel to Odysseus journeying into Hades, one of my favorite chapters in the Odyssey, is when Hermodur travels into Hel to beg for the reverse of the death of Baldur. The prime mover in this story is Loki, the trickster God, who thrives on chaos and entropy. His mischievous ways earn the wrath of Odin, and in the buildup to the final battle scene, Loki is captured and chained beneath a snake which drips poison endlessly upon him. I love the illustration for this, and as an aside, the form factor for this little book in general.
Ragnarok, the end of the world, comes about from a combination of chaos, the fallibility of the Gods who are all-too-human, and the unleashing of powerful beasts in a final cataclysmic war. Truly an epic tale.
Quotes:
On the Bible (Genesis):
“The thin child found no one in this story with whom to sympathize. Except maybe the snake, which had not asked to be made use of as a tempter.”
On Life, embodied in the Gods:
“The Christian God condemned sinful men, and raised up the ‘good’ dead. The gods of Asgard were punished because they and their world were bad. Not clever enough, and bad. The thin child, thinking of playground cruelty and the Blitz, liked to glance at the idea that gods were bad, that things were bad. That the story had always been there, and the actors had always known it.”
On Death, the cruel nature of death:
“Hermodur bowed to the queen of Hel, and said that he had come to beg for Baldur’s return to Asgard. Gods and men, and all creatures, were helpless with grief, and needed the young god to bring back their liveliness, their power to hope. Most of all, said Hermodur, the goddess Frigg had asked him to beg Hel for Baldur’s return, for she could not live without him. To this, Hel replied that mothers throughout time had learned to live without their sons. Every day young men died and came quietly over her golden bridge. Only in Asgard could they die in battle every day, as a game, and live again to feast in the evening. In the hard world, and in the world of shadows, death was not a game.
But this death, said Hermodur, had diminished the light of the world.
So, said Hel. It is diminished then.”
Lastly, I love the elements described in the making of a magical rope, Gleipnir, crafted by dwarves:
“And the dwarves made a supple skein from unthings. There were six, woven together: the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird. The thing was light as air and smooth as silk, a long, delicate ribbon.”
Show Less
LibraryThing member ianjamison
A really amazing little gem of a book. The presentation is superb - lovely paper, a really clear font, rubricated titles, and a number of lovely reproduced illustrations.
I tore through this in the first hour or so of a train journey, as it was irresistible.
It worked, for me, on two levels.
The second level is that of shared experience - it is remarkably resonant with my own experience of encountering myth, particularly those of the Northern tradition, when I was young and establishing my own ideas about the language that we use to express important things.
I tore through this in the first hour or so of a train journey, as it was irresistible.
It worked, for me, on two levels.
Show More
Firstly it is a brilliant, poetical re-telling of some of the most wonderful and powerful myths. Elements of it could quite easily (and probably should) be declaimed in public like a skald, rather than read privately. The second level is that of shared experience - it is remarkably resonant with my own experience of encountering myth, particularly those of the Northern tradition, when I was young and establishing my own ideas about the language that we use to express important things.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Goldengrove
I originally bought this book to read with my book group - for one reason or another I didn't actually read it at the time, but I'm having a bit of Viking moment so I picked it up again.
It is part of the Canongate Myths series, in which well-known writers were invited to reinterpret the great myths
AS Byatt approaches this task inventively, returning to her own childhood as an evacuee, a passionate reader and imaginer, free to roam in 'the ordinary paradise of the English countryside', and free to roam in her own mind too.
The young Byatt discovered the world of the Norse gods through an academic book called 'Asgard and the gods.' As can happen with such children, this became her special book, the one that she read at just the right time for it to have an intense and particular influence on her mind, and she explores this influence and inspiration alongside the retelling of the creation and destruction myths of Norse mythology. This juxtaposition is a brilliant device that enables Byatt to tell the story and explain her own reactions to it at the same time. I enjoyed it enormously.
But this is not all that this book is about. Norse mythology tells of the great final battle of Ragnarok, when all is utterly destroyed and ended. There is no glimmer of hope: the world and the gods began, and they will end. It is a grim vision, but Byatt found it more convincing, in the face of war and horror, than the Christian promise of everlasting life (gentle Jesus, meek and mild proved a particular stumbling block).
All the way through the book there are descriptions of the profusion of life that she encountered as a child - delighting in knowing the names of flowers and birds, walking to school through fields of cowslips - and these, though beautifully evocative, made me sad as I read them because I can see that since my own childhood in the 60s and 70s the natural world has retreated, and even then it was much reduced from the 1940s state described here.
Byatt ends the with an essay on the nature of myth and her reasons for writing Ragnarok. We can see the Fimblewinter - the dreadful, unending winter that precedes Ragnarok - beginning around us as the world is ravaged by our cleverness and greed. 'The Norse gods,' she writes, ' are peculiarly human...They are human because they are limited and stupid...They know Ragnorok is coming but are incapable of imagining any way to fend it off, or change the story. They know how to die gallantly, but not how to make a better world.' Here we are, killing the world - are we able to stop ourselves?
It is part of the Canongate Myths series, in which well-known writers were invited to reinterpret the great myths
Show More
for new readers.AS Byatt approaches this task inventively, returning to her own childhood as an evacuee, a passionate reader and imaginer, free to roam in 'the ordinary paradise of the English countryside', and free to roam in her own mind too.
The young Byatt discovered the world of the Norse gods through an academic book called 'Asgard and the gods.' As can happen with such children, this became her special book, the one that she read at just the right time for it to have an intense and particular influence on her mind, and she explores this influence and inspiration alongside the retelling of the creation and destruction myths of Norse mythology. This juxtaposition is a brilliant device that enables Byatt to tell the story and explain her own reactions to it at the same time. I enjoyed it enormously.
But this is not all that this book is about. Norse mythology tells of the great final battle of Ragnarok, when all is utterly destroyed and ended. There is no glimmer of hope: the world and the gods began, and they will end. It is a grim vision, but Byatt found it more convincing, in the face of war and horror, than the Christian promise of everlasting life (gentle Jesus, meek and mild proved a particular stumbling block).
All the way through the book there are descriptions of the profusion of life that she encountered as a child - delighting in knowing the names of flowers and birds, walking to school through fields of cowslips - and these, though beautifully evocative, made me sad as I read them because I can see that since my own childhood in the 60s and 70s the natural world has retreated, and even then it was much reduced from the 1940s state described here.
Byatt ends the with an essay on the nature of myth and her reasons for writing Ragnarok. We can see the Fimblewinter - the dreadful, unending winter that precedes Ragnarok - beginning around us as the world is ravaged by our cleverness and greed. 'The Norse gods,' she writes, ' are peculiarly human...They are human because they are limited and stupid...They know Ragnorok is coming but are incapable of imagining any way to fend it off, or change the story. They know how to die gallantly, but not how to make a better world.' Here we are, killing the world - are we able to stop ourselves?
Show Less
LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 1* of five (p41)
"...Airmen were the Wild Hunt. They were dangerous. If any hunter dismounted, he crumbled to dust, the child read. It was a good story, a story with meaning, fear and danger were in it, and things out of control."
I have Byatted for the last time. I love the Norse myths, and
I tried. I really tried. I read some of Possession. It was like having an estrogen drip placed directly into my testicles. I tried Angels and Insects and, horrified and repulsed, put it down (as in "down the crapper" down) even before I found out it was about brother/sister incest.
I think her writing is ghastly, I dislike the stories she tells, and I won't be coerced, shamed, convinced, asked, begged, guilt-instilled, or required to pick up any damn thing else this Woman-with-a-capital-W writes in this incarnation.
"...Airmen were the Wild Hunt. They were dangerous. If any hunter dismounted, he crumbled to dust, the child read. It was a good story, a story with meaning, fear and danger were in it, and things out of control."
I have Byatted for the last time. I love the Norse myths, and
Show More
this precious twitzy-twee retelling of them through "the child"'s horrible little beady eyes made me want to Dickens up all over the place.I tried. I really tried. I read some of Possession. It was like having an estrogen drip placed directly into my testicles. I tried Angels and Insects and, horrified and repulsed, put it down (as in "down the crapper" down) even before I found out it was about brother/sister incest.
I think her writing is ghastly, I dislike the stories she tells, and I won't be coerced, shamed, convinced, asked, begged, guilt-instilled, or required to pick up any damn thing else this Woman-with-a-capital-W writes in this incarnation.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
I am so torn on this book.
I desperately wanted to love it. Why? Because A.S. Byatt has a grasp of the English language that I lust for - it's sensuous and beautiful and haunting and every amazing word you can come up with to describe words ... but it's so dang difficult to read.
The tiniest little
Instead, I felt as if I was reading something beautifully written, but very clinical (? I think that's the word I want to use). Instead of feeling like the pages were letting me indulge in chocolate, I felt like maybe I was eating fat-free candy instead. It's hard to describe, because I really, really admire Byatt's writing skills, but I think the storytelling was a bit lacking. However - I also don't know if this was intended to actually BE a storytelling book, or if it was instead a frame for education on the mythology.
Anyways - if you are a fan of Byatt, I'm sure you will love this one. If you have lots of time and enjoy the feeling of rolling beautifully crafted sentences around in your mouth, then do what I did and just enjoy this one for that sensation.
I desperately wanted to love it. Why? Because A.S. Byatt has a grasp of the English language that I lust for - it's sensuous and beautiful and haunting and every amazing word you can come up with to describe words ... but it's so dang difficult to read.
The tiniest little
Show More
thing would distract me as I read this one. I love learning about Norse mythology, so there wasn't a lot new in that respect for me - but the story of this girl in wartime, and her favorite book - I wanted it to drag me into the story and make it come alive for me. But it didn't.Instead, I felt as if I was reading something beautifully written, but very clinical (? I think that's the word I want to use). Instead of feeling like the pages were letting me indulge in chocolate, I felt like maybe I was eating fat-free candy instead. It's hard to describe, because I really, really admire Byatt's writing skills, but I think the storytelling was a bit lacking. However - I also don't know if this was intended to actually BE a storytelling book, or if it was instead a frame for education on the mythology.
Anyways - if you are a fan of Byatt, I'm sure you will love this one. If you have lots of time and enjoy the feeling of rolling beautifully crafted sentences around in your mouth, then do what I did and just enjoy this one for that sensation.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Perednia
When A.S. Byatt was a young child, she spent hours reading about the bloody fate that befell the Norse gods. Since she was reading while WWII was raging, it's no wonder the myth and the war drew sparks off each other in her imagination.
In Ragnarok, part of the Canongate series on myths, Byatt does
Like Loki, the thin child likes to see and learn about things. And like the gods and modern human despoilers, she can be callously destructive:
She gathered great bunches of wild flowers, cowslips full of honey, scabious in blue cushions, dog-roses, and took them home, where they did not live long, which did not concern her, for there were always more springing up in their place. They flourished and faded and died and always came back next spring, and always would, the thin child thought, long after she herself was dead. Maybe most of all she loved the wild poppies, which made the green bank scarlet as blood. She liked to pick a bud that was fat and ready to open, green-lipped and hairy. Then with her fingers she would prise the petal-case apart, and extract the red, crumpled silk -- slightly damp, she thought -- and spread it out in the sunlight. She knew in her heart she should not do this. She was cutting a life short, interrupting a natural unfolding, for the pleasure of satisfied curiosity and the glimpse of the secret, scarlet, creased and frilly flower-fresh. Which wilted almost immediately between finger and thumb. But there were always more, so many more.
In one of the interesting asides, Byatt muses on whether anything the gods could have done could have changed their fate. No matter what they did, however, there is the certainty that things would still turn out this way. This is not a fairy tale where there are heroes who win fair maidens and fair maidens who are rescued, nor is this fiction purportedly under the control of an author (the notion that characters speak to an author is not addressed). This is myth. This is going to end badly.
For a book that is only 171 pages, Byatt densely packs in setting the stage to display the breadth, width and depth of both the world of the gods and the sphere of the thin child, reveals the acts that will culminate in Ragnarok itself -- especially the death of golden god Baldur and Loki's subsequent flight and capture -- and the end of that world as the gods are destroyed.
After the end of the gods, the thin child's wartime ends. Her story is not one of heroic acts and brave deeds, but is instead the very essence of quiet drabness and the realization that there are no great dreams to be dreamt. The thin child, living in what Byatt calls a thin world, has been a framing device to get the reader into wondering how the acts of the gods matter to the way the reader considers the real world outside the covers of a book.
Byatt concludes with thoughts on myths. These include her choices for not including an aftermath of Ragnarok, called Gimle, that is sometimes likened to a Christian second coming, and that she did not build characterizations and motivations for the gods beyond the basics -- they are not full-fledged characters on purpose. These choices well serve Byatt's belief that myths are porous. The way they are told always says something about the teller, and usually about the world of the teller. Perhaps fittingly for a retelling that incorporates WWII, Wagner's Norse gods are wrested away from their Nazi admirer. She compares and contrasts aspects of the story with Christian mythology and anchors the Norse gods with a larger framework of Western civilization.
For a retelling of the Ragnarok myth that spares nothing but which is filled with gorgeous language, Byatt stands with the best who influenced her.
In Ragnarok, part of the Canongate series on myths, Byatt does
Show More
not merge the stories or force their comparison. Nor does what happens to a thin child evacuated to the British countryside, who is certain she will never see her father again, overshadow the mythical world. Instead, Byatt presents two entwined, long setpieces -- one of the evacuated thin child, who is nameless, and the other a retelling of the destruction of the gods with just a touch of meta commentary. She ends with a comparison of the destruction of the gods to the destructive acts of foolish mankind today. Again, Byatt is not forcing a comparison but noting that today, people are trying to destroy the world as surely as the gods' fate was a foregone conclusion. Like Loki, the thin child likes to see and learn about things. And like the gods and modern human despoilers, she can be callously destructive:
She gathered great bunches of wild flowers, cowslips full of honey, scabious in blue cushions, dog-roses, and took them home, where they did not live long, which did not concern her, for there were always more springing up in their place. They flourished and faded and died and always came back next spring, and always would, the thin child thought, long after she herself was dead. Maybe most of all she loved the wild poppies, which made the green bank scarlet as blood. She liked to pick a bud that was fat and ready to open, green-lipped and hairy. Then with her fingers she would prise the petal-case apart, and extract the red, crumpled silk -- slightly damp, she thought -- and spread it out in the sunlight. She knew in her heart she should not do this. She was cutting a life short, interrupting a natural unfolding, for the pleasure of satisfied curiosity and the glimpse of the secret, scarlet, creased and frilly flower-fresh. Which wilted almost immediately between finger and thumb. But there were always more, so many more.
In one of the interesting asides, Byatt muses on whether anything the gods could have done could have changed their fate. No matter what they did, however, there is the certainty that things would still turn out this way. This is not a fairy tale where there are heroes who win fair maidens and fair maidens who are rescued, nor is this fiction purportedly under the control of an author (the notion that characters speak to an author is not addressed). This is myth. This is going to end badly.
For a book that is only 171 pages, Byatt densely packs in setting the stage to display the breadth, width and depth of both the world of the gods and the sphere of the thin child, reveals the acts that will culminate in Ragnarok itself -- especially the death of golden god Baldur and Loki's subsequent flight and capture -- and the end of that world as the gods are destroyed.
After the end of the gods, the thin child's wartime ends. Her story is not one of heroic acts and brave deeds, but is instead the very essence of quiet drabness and the realization that there are no great dreams to be dreamt. The thin child, living in what Byatt calls a thin world, has been a framing device to get the reader into wondering how the acts of the gods matter to the way the reader considers the real world outside the covers of a book.
Byatt concludes with thoughts on myths. These include her choices for not including an aftermath of Ragnarok, called Gimle, that is sometimes likened to a Christian second coming, and that she did not build characterizations and motivations for the gods beyond the basics -- they are not full-fledged characters on purpose. These choices well serve Byatt's belief that myths are porous. The way they are told always says something about the teller, and usually about the world of the teller. Perhaps fittingly for a retelling that incorporates WWII, Wagner's Norse gods are wrested away from their Nazi admirer. She compares and contrasts aspects of the story with Christian mythology and anchors the Norse gods with a larger framework of Western civilization.
For a retelling of the Ragnarok myth that spares nothing but which is filled with gorgeous language, Byatt stands with the best who influenced her.
Show Less
LibraryThing member rmaitzen
My favorite part of this book was Byatt's "Thoughts on Myth" at the end, which seemed to me to say very directly and clearly what was far more muddled in the 'myth' portion of the book. Mind you, she does observe in the main text that "myths cannot be explained and do not explain," so it's probably
Show More
deliberate that there's a certain formlessness to it. Byatt always has a knack for the precise detail, but I was disappointed that a story as potentially chilling as the end of the world never picked up any real emotional momentum. Byatt says she deliberately opted not to follow the model of other writers in the series and "assimilate the myths into the form of novels." Too bad! Show Less
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
A retelling of a myth and a life story, a hybrid between legend ad history, with the settings of merry old England and the War set with human gods and the death of gods and the ends of the earth.
This is quite beautiful. Recommended. I'll have to reread my old mythology books some day.
This is quite beautiful. Recommended. I'll have to reread my old mythology books some day.
LibraryThing member Petroglyph
Byatt, through the eyes of a christianity-raised child encountering Norse myths for the first time, writes a wonderfully evocative tale of enchantment and fascination with a grim and imaginative mythological cycle that she finds more exciting than stories about a milksop Jesus.
With a superb sense
With a superb sense
Show More
of poetic diction Byatt paints the inside of your skull with vicarious allure. Recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member librarianbryan
Five stars for the audio version. I imagine the text would drag a bit.
LibraryThing member tapestry100
This is my second or third time with A.S. Byatt and I think it's clear her writing is just not for me. I tried reading Possession years ago, and it seems that there was something else of hers that I tried reading and just couldn't get into. At least I finished Ragnarök: The End of the Gods.
This
Byatt's writing is beautiful, don't get me wrong. She does have a way with words that is nothing short of lyrical, but I can't get into the flow of her writing. For the right person, I imagine this book would be amazing. Unfortunately, I am not that person.
This
Show More
retelling of the Norse mythology is viewed through the eyes of a young girl (a stand-in for Byatt herself) who has been moved to the countryside during the German Blitz of London in World War II. She is given a book of Norse mythology, and we experience her reactions to reading the Norse myths. I don't know what I was expecting out of this book, but this wasn't it. Perhaps I was looking for a retelling of the myths? A re-imagining? Reading about a girl reading about the myths, regardless of how they make her look at the world around her, just didn't work for me.Byatt's writing is beautiful, don't get me wrong. She does have a way with words that is nothing short of lyrical, but I can't get into the flow of her writing. For the right person, I imagine this book would be amazing. Unfortunately, I am not that person.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
Lovely, beautiful and lyrical - with an afterword that spoils the whole thing. Myths do not require explanations.
LibraryThing member dazzyj
An evocative and verbally rich retelling of Norse myth.
LibraryThing member Sullywriter
A brilliantly imagined retelling of the apocalyptic Norse myth.
LibraryThing member aseikonia
I truly enjoyed this short reconstitution of Ragnorak, or "the end of the gods," a colorful re-telling of Norse myth. The prose is rich and descriptive, bringing the tales to vivid life. Not much plot or character, but gorgeous writing and a fascinating read.
LibraryThing member lauriebrown54
This small book is a retelling of the Armageddon of the Norse myths, Ragnarok, as framed by the mind of the ‘thin child’. This thin child- pretty obviously Byatt herself- has been evacuated with her mother and sister from London to the English countryside. She picks up a book of Norse myth, and
Byatt, curious as most children are (or used to be), presents Loki in a more favorable light than most tellers do. He is the curious one; he wants to know what lives in all the dark corners of the earth and sea. Thor and the other gods are not curious or noble; they seek to torture and destroy Loki’s children simply because they exist. They write their own future destruction.
Inserted into this telling is an ecological warning; that the abundance of plants and creatures that thrived in the English countryside of Byatt’s youth is disappearing. Humans, like the Norse gods, are writing their own doom.
When I picked this book up, I thought it very different from the author’s other works. I didn’t realize it was written for a series of myths retold by famous authors; that explains my feeling that the book was not up to Byatt’s usual many-layered, ornamented style. As a novel, it’s not great; as a myth telling, it is.
Show More
finds herself swept up in it, finding it the perfect reading for how she feels about her own life- she does not expect to see her father come back from the war alive, she is aware that her parents feel as helpless as she does, she finds the Norse gods more fitting than the Christianity that is taught each Sunday. She finds an odd solace in the idea that the end is written already, no matter what the gods do to prevent it. Byatt, curious as most children are (or used to be), presents Loki in a more favorable light than most tellers do. He is the curious one; he wants to know what lives in all the dark corners of the earth and sea. Thor and the other gods are not curious or noble; they seek to torture and destroy Loki’s children simply because they exist. They write their own future destruction.
Inserted into this telling is an ecological warning; that the abundance of plants and creatures that thrived in the English countryside of Byatt’s youth is disappearing. Humans, like the Norse gods, are writing their own doom.
When I picked this book up, I thought it very different from the author’s other works. I didn’t realize it was written for a series of myths retold by famous authors; that explains my feeling that the book was not up to Byatt’s usual many-layered, ornamented style. As a novel, it’s not great; as a myth telling, it is.
Show Less
LibraryThing member imyril
Nutritious, but not very enjoyable. The framing device is ultimately intriguing, but I expect rather more blood, guts and passion in any retelling of the Norse sagas. Instead, rather dry.
LibraryThing member Big_Bang_Gorilla
I made it through about twenty pages of this nonsense. When I realized that I was spending more time writing down words to look up in the dictionary than I was reading, I decided there were less laborious ways to kill time, like digging a hole and filling it back up again. Honestly, it ought to be
Show More
possible to tell a story without enumerating eight or ten different types of seaweed or gastropods in one sentence. Show Less
LibraryThing member hailelib
My library classified this book as a novel and in a way it is. Byatt's book (somewhat autobiographical) features a small girl who, along with her mother, is evacuated to the British countryside during WWII. There she explores the fields and woods and reads and reflects on the books her mother gives
I took my time about reading Ragnarök : the end of the gods but I think it will stick with me a while. Byatt may not become a favorite author (This was my first experience with her style.) but this series from Canongate is one I want to read more of as the books I have seen so far are well done and interesting.
Show More
her, especially the one that recounts the stories of Asgard and the reign and then twilight of the Norse gods. So, we have both the retelling of the myths and way they affect the small girl.I took my time about reading Ragnarök : the end of the gods but I think it will stick with me a while. Byatt may not become a favorite author (This was my first experience with her style.) but this series from Canongate is one I want to read more of as the books I have seen so far are well done and interesting.
Show Less
LibraryThing member suetu
Twilight of the Gods
I have to admit that this slender volume was my introduction to A.S. Byatt, and I was a little intimidated. I know her reputation for challenging, complex, beautiful work. Well, her language was beautiful, but this work was a limited success for me. And if I’m being entirely
Now, my personal knowledge of Norse mythology doesn’t go much beyond naming the major players, but Wikipedia tells me:
“In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (typically spelt Ragnarǫk in the handwritten scripts) is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and reborn gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Ragnarök is an important event in the Norse canon, and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory.”
And Ms. Byatt is diligent in relating the myth faithfully—with one exception. She’s added a framing device to the tale, in the form of a “thin child in wartime,” who is reading the Norse myths. Most readers won’t be surprised by the revelation in the author’s afterword, “Thoughts on Myths,” that “I was writing for my childhood self, and the way I had found the myths and thought about the world when I first read Asgard and the Gods.”
So, I mentioned that Ms. Byatt took the source material seriously, but perhaps a little too serious for my liking. To be honest, much of this felt like I was reading an academic text, or perhaps Genesis. There were A LOT of sequences along the lines of:
“In spring the field was thick with cowslips, and in the hedgerows, in the tangled bank, under the hawthorn hedge and the ash tree, there were pale primroses and violets of many colours, from rich purple to a white touched with mauve. Dandelion, dent-de-lion, lionstooth, her mother told her. Her mother liked words. There were vetches and lady’s bedstraw, forgetmenots and speedwells, foxgloves, viper’s bugloss, cow parsley, deadly nightshade (wreathed in hedges), willowherb and cranesbill, hairy bittercress, docks (good for wounds and stings), celandines, campions and ragged robin. She watched each one, as they came out, in clumps sprinkled across the grass, or singletons hidden in ditches or attached to stones.”
But don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of passages that were far more substantive, beautifully written, and list-free. Parts of the tale were compelling, most notably the story of Jörmungandr the sea serpent. This is epic myth, and you’d better believe these stories have power. What they don’t have is real characters or character development.
I don’t regret reading this book, but ultimately the experience was more intellectual than enjoyable. Furthermore, I don’t feel that I got any kind of representative sample of Ms. Byatt’s work, but that is easily remedied. For now, I’d recommend this volume to readers with a greater interest in mythology than in contemporary literature.
I have to admit that this slender volume was my introduction to A.S. Byatt, and I was a little intimidated. I know her reputation for challenging, complex, beautiful work. Well, her language was beautiful, but this work was a limited success for me. And if I’m being entirely
Show More
honest, my favorite part was the author’s essay at the end of the book. Now, my personal knowledge of Norse mythology doesn’t go much beyond naming the major players, but Wikipedia tells me:
“In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (typically spelt Ragnarǫk in the handwritten scripts) is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and reborn gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Ragnarök is an important event in the Norse canon, and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory.”
And Ms. Byatt is diligent in relating the myth faithfully—with one exception. She’s added a framing device to the tale, in the form of a “thin child in wartime,” who is reading the Norse myths. Most readers won’t be surprised by the revelation in the author’s afterword, “Thoughts on Myths,” that “I was writing for my childhood self, and the way I had found the myths and thought about the world when I first read Asgard and the Gods.”
So, I mentioned that Ms. Byatt took the source material seriously, but perhaps a little too serious for my liking. To be honest, much of this felt like I was reading an academic text, or perhaps Genesis. There were A LOT of sequences along the lines of:
“In spring the field was thick with cowslips, and in the hedgerows, in the tangled bank, under the hawthorn hedge and the ash tree, there were pale primroses and violets of many colours, from rich purple to a white touched with mauve. Dandelion, dent-de-lion, lionstooth, her mother told her. Her mother liked words. There were vetches and lady’s bedstraw, forgetmenots and speedwells, foxgloves, viper’s bugloss, cow parsley, deadly nightshade (wreathed in hedges), willowherb and cranesbill, hairy bittercress, docks (good for wounds and stings), celandines, campions and ragged robin. She watched each one, as they came out, in clumps sprinkled across the grass, or singletons hidden in ditches or attached to stones.”
But don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of passages that were far more substantive, beautifully written, and list-free. Parts of the tale were compelling, most notably the story of Jörmungandr the sea serpent. This is epic myth, and you’d better believe these stories have power. What they don’t have is real characters or character development.
I don’t regret reading this book, but ultimately the experience was more intellectual than enjoyable. Furthermore, I don’t feel that I got any kind of representative sample of Ms. Byatt’s work, but that is easily remedied. For now, I’d recommend this volume to readers with a greater interest in mythology than in contemporary literature.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mykl-s
I like Byatt, see that I gave this myth-explaining, myth-busting book five stars in 2015, but now eight years later, can't much about it.
LibraryThing member .Monkey.
I didn't dislike this book, but somehow it just didn't work out quite right for me. I was a bit intrigued by "the thin girl" and her own story, and Byatt's retelling of the Norse myths wasn't exactly displeasing, and the writing is nice... but I just wasn't feeling this. I actually think I was more
Show More
intrigued by the girl and her experiences and interpretations and musings than I was by the gods. Which is saying quite a bit, really. I don't know, it just didn't do it for me. I'm curious to read more of Byatt and see how a more straight-forward story of hers works out. Show Less
LibraryThing member SChant
I'm a bit ambivalent about this. On the one hand it's just recounting random bits of Norse myth (no bad thing in itself) with the occasional viewpoint of a sceptical little girl in he 2nd World War who's reading them, on the other hand it is beautifully written and does capture the concept of
Show More
patterns in the chaos. All in all I liked it. Show Less
Awards
Globe and Mail Top 100 Book (2011)
Pages
192
ISBN
9780802129925