Most curious. I find myself compelled to reread Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast "trilogy". I remain quite unshakeable in my view that the third lamentable book should never have been written, it is a mere excrescence on an otherwise worthy if pedestrian oeuvre. So I once mused. And yet, and yet...
In revisiting these texts last essayed in my impetuous teenage years, (when I even led myself to be impressed by Herman Hesse, alas) I find an unexpectedly rich textuality and philologic counterpoint that quite enthralls me. It is not just the juxtaposition of the gothic with the bureaucratic, more a grand meta-narrative of primogeniture and its discontents that quite unnerves me. It is fraught, simply fraught with significance and duality at its most raw. The Romanic names, the hierarchic certainties, the downright ignition and combustion of ritual; it leaves me gasping for air.
Eaten by owls indeed; the lunatic Count stands as a moral signpost for semiotic individualism. It is not, of course, Athena herself as symbolised by the owl that devours him as his library burns. It may in fact be the earlier avatar of Kali herself, replete in Indo-European syntax. While Steerpike climbs the chasm of doubt and ambition, mutilated yet certain in his proto-Germanic gutturalism. Ah me, the implications.
I shall withdraw and reread, lest rash exegesis blossom untoward. An evening should suffice.
