GORMENGHAST
| Peake
was a writer, illustrator - he illustrated 'Alice in Wonderland' - and sculptor. His style is poetic and long. The best description I could give of his style: he paints and sculpts with words. A good example is found right in the beginning of the first book. Flay, first servant of the Earl, brings the news of a new born Lord to Rottcodd, a hermit who has withdrawn in the Hall of Bright Carvings and whose job it is to keep the carvings clear of dust: "Gripping his feather duster in his right hand, Rottcodd began to advance down the bright avenue, his feet giving rise at each step to little clouds of dust. When he had at last reached the door the handle had ceased to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his right eye at the keyhole, and controlling the oscillation of his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only a different colour to his own iron marble but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door. This third eye which was going through the same performance as the one belonging to Rottcodd, belonged to Flay, the taciturn servant of Sepulchrave, Earl of Gormenghast." When Peake died in 1968 he was 57 years old. The Gormenghast Trilogy is his biggest piece of work. The trilogy consists of three novels: 'Titus Groan' (1946), 'Gormenghast' (1950) and 'Titus Alone' (1959). Gormenghast is the name of the immens and vast crumbling castle, somewhere between mountains and close to a lake. It's being described in the first paragraph of 'Titus Groan': "Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbor until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets of a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted the chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken en lofty turrets, and enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow." The castle is inhabited by all sorts of strange, weird characters, who are a little humorous as well. It reminds me of Dickens' characters. There is, for instance, Lady Gertrude, wife of Sepulchrave, the 76th Earl of Groan. She is huge, and in her hair are bird's nests, in which birds brood. She is very fond of her enormous amount of white cats, who follow her around through the castle like a massive and alive white carpet. There's Fuchsia, daughter of Sepulchrave and Gertrude, a hysterical and unpredictable teenager, who fills up her need of love in the cold and loveless environment of the castle with almost strangling her nanny with her hugs. And there are many more. The ancient rituals within the castle are bizarre. An example of this: every day Sourdust, the librarian and keeper of rituals, has breakfast with Sepulchrave to go through all the rituals that have to be performed that day: "The left hand pages were headed with the date and in the first of the three books this was followed by a list of activities to be performed hour by hour during the day by his lordship. The exact times; the garments to be worn for each occasion and the symbolic gestures to be used. Diagrams facing the left hand page gave particulars of the routes by which his lordship should approach the various scenes of operation. The diagrams were hand tinted. The
second tome was full of blank pages and was entirely symbolic, while |