Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Pleasures of a Painterly, Baroque Nightmare Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (1946) is unique. Dense, hermetic, epic, grotesque, and beautiful, it stands alone in the landscape of literature, like the labyrinthine, “umbrageous,” vast, and craggy crumbling castle Gormenghast, in which the Groan family of earls and their servants live, ruled by iron tradition and obscure ritual. The novel begins with the birth of Titus, the unsmiling son of Sepulchrave, the 76th Earl, and with the escape of the amoral and ambitious kitchen boy Steerpike. These events initiate “that most unforgivable of all heresies,” change. Peake writes the stifled life of the decaying castle and its grotesque inhabitants with humor and empathy. And with intense detail, so that it might be difficult for some readers to enter Peake’s world of painterly descriptions and bizarre metaphors. But the persevering reader drawn more to the strange pleasures of a poet-painter’s skewed imagination than to the familiar excitements and moral clarity of Tolkienesque fantasy will discover a strange world unforgettable characters, events, and images. Some of my favorites are: a room full of white cats; a field of flagstones framed by clouds; a poem read out of a window by a wedge-headed poet; a gift ruby red “like a lump of anger”; a room tangled by painted roots; a library refuge of row upon row of priceless—and flammable—books; a sinister equestrian statue; a funeral featuring a headless human skeleton, a calf’s skull, and a blue ribbon; a one-legged, foul-mouthed dwarf walking back and forth over the dishes of a ceremonial breakfast; a deadly duel featuring a two-handed cleaver, a sword, and a room full of spider webs; a pair of voluminous purple dresses floating on a lake; a serious baby making “a tiny, drunken totter” on a sandy beach… The novel depicts the effect on the castle and its denizens of the unexpected birth of a male heir to the Groan line. The main point of view characters are Rottcodd, the ancient Curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings who whiles away his life there, dusting the statues and sleeping in his hammock, introducing and closing the novel; Sepulchrave, the melancholy Earl who lives for ritual and books without realizing that they prevent him from connecting with his children; Gertrude, Sepulchrave’s massive and phlegmatic wife, who ignores her daughter, son, and husband gives all her care to her beloved wild birds and white cats (gathered around her like sea foam around a lighthouse); Fuchsia, Titus’ elder sister, black-haired, red-dressed, full-lipped, strong, vulnerable, imaginative, passionate, full of angry and tender love; Cora and Clarice, Sepulchrave’s expressionless violent-purple clad mirror image twin sisters, who, after suffering a stroke in unison that left their left sides paralyzed, are stunningly stupid, vain, resentful, and power lusting; Flay, the stick-like, taciturn personal servant of Lord Sepulchrave, given to sudden bursts of violence when his or his master’s dignity is insulted; Titus’ Nannie (Slagg), doll-like, desiccated, tremulous, self-pitying, childish, simple, senile, loving; Dr. Prunesquallor, the family doctor, a fop with refined hobbies and a high-pitched hyena laugh; Irma, his repressed, bony spinster sister with perfect white skin and a doomed desire to be a lady; Swelter, the fat, gargantuan Chef who lords it over his debased kitchen boys and men and plots to butcher Flay. AND the prime mover of the plot, Steerpike, the agile, amoral, conscienceless, ambitious, manipulating, clever, cold, and almost deformed youth who, escaping from Swelter’s kitchen early on, spends the rest of the novel (literally and figuratively) climbing up through the castle’s inner workings and insinuating himself into its heart, a noxious, new, alien thing. A summary of characters with hints of the plot fails to convey the most wonderful thing about the book, Peake’s style, which bristles with imaginative conceits and extended metaphors. So much rewards rereading. I first read the trilogy in the Ballantine paperback editions in junior high, then re-read them in graduate school, then listened to the audiobooks ten years ago, and each time I fell under Peake’s spell. In a sense his work is not fantasy because nothing fantastic (in the usual sense of the word) happens: no magic, no supernatural phenomena, etc. On the other hand, because almost nothing in the novel is just like we’d find it in the real world, being exaggerated and more grotesque or more lovely or more ugly or more silly or more philosophical and so on, the castle and its rituals and its denizens become fantastic, something that can only exist in the imagination of a kooky and imaginative painter poet like Peake. A funhouse mirror warping the everyday world into something larger, darker, brighter, lovelier, uglier, funnier, and more tragic than our real world and lives in it can be. On the other hand again, because everything in the novel reveals so much human nature, it is the best kind of fantasy. Simon Vance reads the audiobook with perfect clarity, rhythm, and feeling. I often found myself rewinding to enjoy again his enthusiastic reading of Peake’s rich language and eccentric characters. Although his Fuchsia is too much simper and not enough passion, his other characters are great, especially his Flay (terse gravel), Swelter (flabby unction), Steerpike (cold working class), Nannie Slagg (wrinkled querulousness), Dr. Prunesquallor (trilling “Ha-ha-ha-ha!”), and the twin sisters (vain and venomous monotones). The themes of Titus Groan remain relevant: the conflicts between imagination and ambition, emotion and calculation, and new and old; the detrimental effect on human minds and relationships of tradition, ritual, and class; the pain and wonder of artistic creation; and the difficult but vital need to find our own special place where we can be fulfilled. The last paragraphs of the novel give an indication of its strange pleasures: The castle was breathing, and far below the Hall of the Bright Carvings all that was Gornmengast revolved. After the emptiness, it was like tumult through him, though he had heard no sound. And yet by now there would be doors flung open. There would be echoes in the passageways and quick lights flickering along the walls. Through honeycombs of stone would now be wandering the passions in their clay. There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment. And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself shall cry for insurrection. For tomorrow is also a day, and Titus has entered his stronghold. View all my reviews
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