Peacock & Vine by A.S. Byatt: A Book Review

Daulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, Ingri and Edgar Parin Daulaire, Doubleday & Company, 1962

“Persephone ate a pomegranate and look what happened to her.” As a child, I always looked at pomegranates with trepidation after reading in Daulaire’s Book of Greek Myths how Persephone chanced to eat several pomegranate seeds following her abduction by Hades, god of the underworld. Thanks to consuming the fruit’s small, blood-red kernels, Persephone was doomed to become queen of the dead and to spend winters in her captor’s cold, shadowy kingdom for eternity. As I grew older, no amount of advertising could make me believe that the pom was wonderful.

Peacock & Vine by A.S. Byatt, Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.

My assessment of the fruit, and the tree that bears it, began to change when I read British novelist A.S. Byatt’s enchanting book, Peacock & Vine. In this gem of a text, Byatt shares her reflections on the textile designer, William Morris, and the fashion designer, Mariano Fortuny. “Aquamarine light” versus “yellow green light” is the first distinction that Byatt, draws between these two remarkable artists. When Byatt first experienced the blue green cast of Fortuny’s Venice and the wonders of his work at Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, her mind summoned the chartreuse hues of Morris’ English countryside and the marvels of his craftsmanship at Kelmscott Manor. To understand Fortuny, Byatt drew on her familiarity with Morris. Born and raised in England, Byatt knew the work of the legendary English designer well. As she reflected on the two men, Byatt looked for areas of common ground. In that terrain, she discovered and plumbed their shared affinity for a certain fruit: the pomegranate.

Fruit (also known as Pomegranate) wallpaper, William Morris, 1864

Known for his decorative wallpapers and textiles, Morris insisted that patterns have “unmistakeable suggestions of gardens and fields, and strange trees, boughs and tendrils…” He was committed to capturing both the energy and the contours of plant life in his designs. In that spirit, Morris’ several pomegranate wallpaper designs portray the upward thrust of the pomegranate tree’s branches, the way its leaves turn toward sunlight, and how its fruit bursts with ripeness to reveal jewel-like kernels. Morris’ patterns were both nature studies and expressions of vibrancy.

 Whereas Morris approached the pomegranate as a naturalist, it’s unclear whether Fortuny looked at the fruit as an art historian or simply an admirer of traditional designs. Certainly, he would have been aware that the pomegranate, variously symbolizing life, death, fertility and abundance, appeared in Greek and Roman mythology as well as Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious traditions. As a motif, the fruit is present in belief systems and material culture, from fabrics to friezes, from around the world. Fortuny embraced the pomegranate throughout his work, often printing it in metallic pigments across diaphanous gowns. In what Byatt suggests was perhaps Fortuny’s most sublime pomegranate iteration, he rendered the fruit in gold across the bodice of a ruby red Delphos gown, endowing the wearer of the garment with near universal symbolic power.

 I look at the pomegranate more warmly now that A.S. Byatt has opened my eyes to how Morris and Fortuny saw the fruit: as a source of vitality, a symbol of complex human experience, and an object of transcendent beauty.