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Gormenghast
Castle sits in isolation in an unnamed land, surrounded by
the lakes, forests, and mountains to which that omnipresent,
ancient structure lends its name. Ruled by unwavering routine
and ritual for 76 generations, the massive, ramshackle city-castle
remains impervious to change until the day when the seventy-seventh
Earl of Gormenghast is born and an ambitious kitchen boy escapes
the tyranny of his apprenticeship to the Head Chef, beginning
his climb—both literal and figurative—to the top
of Gormenghast's social caste.
Titus
Groan is the first book of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast
trilogy, a lesser-known classic generally attributed as sci-fi
or fantasy. However, it is not so easily pigeonholed, as it
contains no magic or non-human races and is seemingly set
on earth. Other than the fact that it's a fictional place
in a fictional land, the trilogy owes more to the conventions
of Gothic and Romantic fiction than it does to fantasy. Indeed,
there is a Kafkaesque sensibility to it: If in Kafka's The
Castle, for instance, K. had ever managed to traverse
the befuddling bureaucracy of that institution and actually
gained entrance, only to find it populated by deeply eccentric
cartoon characters, it might have looked something like Gormenghast.
Titus
Groan opens to find the generally grim castle in a state
of celebration over the long-awaited birth of the eponymous
Titus, the seventy-seventh Earl of Gormenghast. In the first
two chapters, the cinematic prose sweeps the reader from the
mud shacks that crouch outside the castle walls to a forgotten
gallery high up in the towers of the structure and back down
into the hellacious bowels of the castle where the Great Kitchen
is in a state of drunken revelry as they prepare for the celebrations.
It is
here we meet young Steerpike, a 17-year-old apprentice who
chafes under the dictatorial bullying of the Head Chef, a
man as marbled with sadism as he is with fat. Steerpike discerns
an opportunity in the chaos to sneak away, following the Earl's
personal servant, Flay, into the labyrinthine passageways
of the upper levels. Ingratiating himself to Flay, Steerpike
manages to witness a private moment outside the Countess's
bedchamber, which he leverages to ensure Flay will not send
him back to the kitchen. Worried about his involvement in
upsetting the all-important order of things, Flay locks Steerpike
in an abandoned room to deal with later, but the ever-resourceful
Steerpike manages to escape out the window, embarking on a
grueling climb over the walls and rooftops of the castle that
ends up depositing him most fortuitously into the secret attic
playroom of Fuchsia, the adolescent daughter of the Earl and
Countess of Gormenghast. From here, Steerpike begins to establish
his sway in the castle, patiently laying the foundation of
his influence as he insinuates himself into beneficial social
situations and slowly makes himself indispensable to the inner
circle of the castle elite.
At its
most overarching level, Titus Groan is a story of the
mutability of the sublime: the story of indomitable grandeur
beginning to succumb to the mundane. Just as the ivy that
clings to the castle's walls begins to crumble them, the ambition
of a single citizen begins to erode the seemingly unchangeable
ritual and tradition that govern Gormenghast.
Mervyn
Peake relishes language like few writers do, crafting dense,
complicated prose heavy with intricate and inventive descriptions
of the minutia of the plot, characters, and settings. He lays
his sentences down with such unhurried deliberation that the
very heft of the language creates a sense of the vast and
indomitable architecture of Gormenghast itself. Peake is a
connoisseur of the metaphor and simile, savoring each turn
of phrase as he allows them to slow-simmer in their own juices
to bring out the subtle, dark flavor of his story. His figures
of speech do from time to time derail into the incomprehensible
or absurd and there are times when he lapses into odd linguistic
choices, such as suddenly shifting to present tense for one
particularly intense chapter. However, so sensuously vivid
is Peake's language, and so unique is that world he has created
that the occasional misstep is a small price to pay.
Beyond
the overall stunning language, Peake manages the rare feat
of creating characters that are wholly distinct not only in
the canon of literature, but also from one another. Each of
the dozen or so primary characters is imbued with his or her
own individual mannerisms, manners of speech, and modes of
thought. From Countess Gertrude, a ponderously large and taciturn
woman who has little interest in people but communes with
birds and cats, to Doctor Prunesquallor, the intelligent but
skittish physician who punctuates his erudite speech with
an explosive nervous laugh, these characters occupy their
dark world with a vivid eccentricity that compliments and
animates the dark and moldering castle that dominates their
lives.
Titus
Groan is not a parable, nor an allegory; it does not try
to say something about modern life or the future or past of
humanity. Instead, it is something wholly unconnected with
our reality—it is simply a different world that is no
better or worse than our own. It has its own gravity, a weightiness
as undeniable as that of Gormenghast itself. Titus Groan
is a book as unique as the castle at its center: grand, strange,
and wholly unlike anything you've ever encountered before.
(October,
2008)
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