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.
I wonder who would have the audacity to peer through rosy lens back to our adolescent years and name our favorite read? I am prepared to confess to Tolkien (JRR) and have even enjoyed his son Christopher's densely annotated revisions of unpublished screeds into my middle age (not Earth, if you pardon my levity)
ReplyDeleteIf this is a confessional, then I admit to James Michener then V.S. Naipaul. I shudder to think of my penance.
ReplyDeleteMargaret Drabble. Graham Green. Kingsley Amis. E.E. Cummings. Gunther Grass. Make of that what you will...
ReplyDeleteJoyce (of course) plus an adolescent infatuation with Miles na Gcopaleen (Flann O'Brien)
ReplyDeleteSemi-interesting, but this rollcall of recollection was not my intention. We must return to Peake, I am even begining to think that there may be a monograph in a detailed textual analysis. Exercise patience and due diligence.
ReplyDeleteI have long been of the view that the third book in the trilogy is written by another hand. The glaring disimilarites are just too suspicious.
ReplyDeletePeake himself is somewhat ambiguous about the authorship of the third volume. He did neither confirm nor deny. I am drawn to follow the arguments of Huti and Draganovic who point to his 'companion' Julian Limpski who was with him at the end. His dowager aunt, Florence de Vitris, was incontinent and blind, so she can be discounted.
ReplyDeleteQuasi-pertinent but obstructive of the actualite. It remains the case that Vol 3 is established as Peake's work, execrable though it is. Trading in fantasms does not signify analytic advancement.
ReplyDeleteCrypto-correct but neo-Peakeist revisionism. You'll be hinting he never wrote Big Boys In Boots next.
ReplyDeletePseudo-inaccurate in the sense that aint nobody gives a damn
ReplyDeletePost-interesting but always tending towards Twattism.
ReplyDeleteI begin to wonder whether we have been infiltrated by schismatic deviationists of extreme fanatical hues. It really does give one the palpitations.
ReplyDeleteNonsense. Not only is the third book redundant but the second book too.
ReplyDelete