Oedipus Revised

DARKNESS AND DAY (298 pp.) -- /. Compton-Burnett--Knopf ($3.50).

When the original Oedipus found that he was married to his own mother, he put out his eyes and wandered blindly to his death. Edmund and Bridget Lovat, the principal characters in Ivy Compton-Burnett's new opus, are more modern. They survive the news that they are father & daughter as well as man & wife, and become quite reconciled to the idea. "Such unions do no harm in nature," says Edmund. "Perhaps people are braver than they used to be," says Bridget. "What a change, and in a way an interest for us!'' says Edmund's brother, who finds normal country life a bit dull anyway.

Darkness and Day is modeled pretty much on the same plan as every other Compton-Burnett novel (this is her twelfth). Incest, illegitimacy and the pangs of growing old are merely the convenient props for her main interest: what a variegated cast of characters have to say about life & death and each other.

The servants at Edmund's house quickly pick up the news about Edmund and Bridget and pass it to the servants at a neighboring country house. Servants No. 2 have some lively gossip to offer in exchange. Naturally, the domestic service is not always what it might be, but nobody really cares, because everybody is too deeply engaged in talking. "We seem to be living in a play," protests one respectable young lady. And so they are, with Stage Manager Compton-Burnett keeping comedy always slightly ahead of tragedy, and fashioning surprise endings for some of her characters' more startling dilemmas that could almost be called happy--but for the fact that the solutions often raise dilemmas as startling as the ones they solve. Her highly polished little plays may not be life, but they have the art of turning life inside out and shaking bright provocations out of some dusty seams.

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