|
d4eb9ba
|
Il castello era silenzioso come un mostro impalato.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
83b3b9a
|
It was as though Cutflower was so glad to be alive that he never lived. Every moment was vivid, a coloured thing, a trill or a crackle of words in the air. Who could imagine, while Cutflower was around, that there were such vulgar monsters as death, birth, love, art and pain around the corner? It was too embarrassing to contemplate. If Cutflower knew of them he kept it secret. Over their gaping and sepulchral deeps he skimmed now here, now ..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
1155d80
|
How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could have stopped the occurrence, so suddenly it sprang upon them.
|
|
premeditation
ignorance
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
081e046
|
It was then that the Boy went through his darkest hell of all: the long ache of his body, acute as it was, was yet forgotten or disposed of in some way, for he was filled with a disembodied pain, an illness so penetrating, so horrible, that had he been given the opportunity to die he would have taken it. No normal sensation could find a way through this overpowering nausea of the soul that filled him.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
9a4ed40
|
And then he began to laugh in a peculiar way of his own which was both violent and soundless. His heavy reclining body, draped in its black gown, heaved to and fro. His knees drew themselves up to his chin. His arms dangled over the sides of the chair and were helpless. His head rolled from side to side. It was as though he were in the last stages of strychnine poisoning. But no sound came, nor did his mouth even open. Gradually the spasm g..
|
|
spasm
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
73404af
|
I know she'll hate him. She likes to be the only one, you know. She likes to dream that she's queen and that when the rest are dead there'll be no one who can order her to do anything. She said, dear, that she'd burn down the whole place, burn down Goremenghast when she was ruler and she'd live on her own, and I said she was wicked, and she said that everyone was- everyone and everything except rivers, clouds, and some rabbits. She makes me..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
f7ec530
|
To say that the frozen silence contracted itself into a yet higher globe of ice were to under-rate the exquisite tension and to shroud it in words. The atmosphere had become a physical sensation. As when, before a masterpiece, the acid throat contracts, and words are millstones, so when the supernaturally outlandish happens and a masterpiece is launched through the medium of human gesture, then all human volition is withered at the source a..
|
|
lovers
love
passing-of-time
middle-age
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
19037e2
|
Meanwhile Bellgrove had been savouring love's rare aperitif, the ageless language of the eyes.
|
|
love
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
7c9d449
|
He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the floor.
|
|
romance
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
de800a7
|
His mother stood before him like a monument. He saw her great outline through the blur of his weakness and his passion. She made no movement at all.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
cf1e9b1
|
I do not understand your love,' he said.
|
|
keda
rantel
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
a47970b
|
But his mind saw nothing of all this. His mind was engaged in a warfare of the gods. His mind paced outwards over no-man's-land, over the fields of the slain, paced to the rhythm of the blood's red bugles. To be alone and evil! To be a god at bay. What was more absolute?
|
|
rage
god
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
4868d80
|
I am your boat! I am your crew Your rudder and your mast - Your friend, I am your limpet too And your elastoplast. -
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
6a52ef4
|
Or on retiring to Prunesquallors' he might take down one of the Doctor's many books and read, for these days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from. He imagined himself occasions when the conversation of one from who he foresaw advancement might turn to astro..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
706456a
|
He does not listen for an answer, but yawns, his face opening lewdly upon regions compared with which nudity becomes a milliner's invention.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
dd54d10
|
The laugh of Doctor Prunesquallor was part of his conversation and quite alarming when heard for the first time. It appeared to be out of control as though it were a part of his voice, a top-storey of his vocal range that only came into its own when the doctor laughed. There was something about it of wind whistling through high rafters and there was a good deal of the horse's whinny, with a touch of the curlew. When giving vent to it, the d..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
148ab99
|
My passion, My queen of fire and dread; Divine amalgamation Of swedes and cooper-thread, Unstitch your irritation And kiss me when I'm dead.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
1cbed64
|
It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
a86ac4d
|
The road was wet with rain, black and shiny like oilskin. The reflection of the street lamps wallowed like yellow jelly-fish. A bus was approaching - a bus to Piccadilly, a bus to the never-never land - a bus to death or glory. I found neither. I found something which haunts me still. The great bus swayed as it sped. The black street gleamed. Through the window a hundred faces fluttered by as though the leaves of a dark book were being flic..
|
|
travel
street
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
bfc8825
|
Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other - other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
a229a68
|
Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened her-self she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
8249e25
|
Steerpike was, of course, alive with ideas and projects. These two half-witted women were a gift. That they should be the sisters of Lord Sepulchrave was of tremendous strategic value. They would prove an advance on the Prunesquallors, if not intellectually at any rate socially, and that at the moment was what mattered. And in any case, the lower the mentality of his employers the more scope for his own projects.
|
|
cora-groan
steerpike
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
7ec4ad6
|
The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
c778cba
|
There he was. The infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet. Earth's passions, earth's griefs, earth's incongruous, ridiculous humours - dormant, yet visible in the wry pippin of a face.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
2eb2182
|
I was brooding, boy. Than which there is no richer pastime. It muffles one with rotting plumes. It gives forth sullen music. It is the smell of home.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
f759a56
|
So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks.
|
|
professors
limp
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
24a1da8
|
Hold fast To the law Of the last Cold tome, Where the earth Of the truth Lies thick On the page, And the loam Of faith In the ink Long fled From the drone Of the nib Flows on Through the breath Of the bone Reborn In a dawn Of doom Where blooms The rose For the winds The child For the tomb The thrush For the hush Of song, The corn For the scythe And the thorn In wait For the heart Till the last Of the first Depart, And the least Of the past..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
cf72de9
|
She and her sister were dressed in purple, with gold buckles at their throats by way of brooches, and another gold buckle each at the end of hatpins which they wore through their grey hair in order apparently to match their brooches. Their faces, identical to the point of indecency, were quite expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were waiting for sentience to be injected.
|
|
titus-groan
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
a196e1d
|
His habitual melancholy was changing day by day into something more sinister. There were moments when he would desecrate the crumbling and mournful mask of his face with a smile more horrible than the darkest lineaments of pain. Across the stoniness of his eyes a strange light would pass for a moment, as though the moon were flaring on the gristle, and his lips would open and the gash of his mouth would widen in a dead, climbing curve
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
55a9651
|
Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to retie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened herself she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
351a3c5
|
By the piss of Satan, pug, your sauce is dangerous!
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
621e2ef
|
Then slowly, as his erratic shape approached the next guttering aura he would begin by degrees to become a silhouette, until immediately before the candle he would for a moment appear like an inky scarecrow, a mantis of pitch-black cardboard worked with strings.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
58e00ed
|
I saw a Puffin In the Bay of Baffin Sittin on Nuffin And it was Laffin.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
9d4a405
|
For answer Mr Flay shot his head forward out of his collar and croaked, 'Silence! you kitchen thing. Hold your tongue you greasy fork.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
e2cc82e
|
Rottcodd was unmarried. An aloofness and even a nervousness was apparent on first acquaintance and the ladies held a peculiar horror for him. His, then, was an ideal existence, living alone day and night in a long loft. Yet
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
8891202
|
The castle was round and about them, widespread and as unchartable as a dark day.
|
|
|
mervyn peake |
|
45d55c7
|
That night, I hated father. He smelt of cabbage. There was cigarette ash all over his trousers. His untidy moustache was yellower and viler than ever with nicotine, and he took no notice of me. He simply sat there in his ugly arm-chair, his eyes half closed, brooding on the Lord knows what. I hated him. I hated his moustache. I even hated the smoke that drifted from his mouth and hung in the stale air above his head. And when my mother came..
|
|
bourgeoisie
petulance
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
e40aa1e
|
Let them touch him. For every hair that's hurt I'll stop a heart.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
a826ce3
|
Don't you think so? Don't you think so?' 'I am far beyond thinking, bone of my bone. Far, far beyond thinking, I hand over the reins to you, Irma. Mount and be gone. The world awaits you.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
70c71ca
|
Every blade of the grass was of consequence, and the few scattered stones held an authority that made their solid, separate marks upon the brain - each one with its own unduplicated shape: each rising brightly from the ink of its own spilling.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
276d037
|
Words can be tiresome as a swarm of insects. They can prick and buzz! Words can be no more than a series of farts; or on the other hand they can be adamantine, obdurate, inviolable, stone upon stone.
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
31ec4e7
|
Directly Mr Pye stepped ashore he heard her voice. 'The name is Dredger,' it said. Mr Pye lifted his head again, his thorn-shaped nose veering towards her and the rest of his round face following it, as a ship must follow its bowsprit. His little mouth continued to smile gently but it gave nothing away. As he remained silent, Miss Dredger raised her voice as though to establish the fact of her forthright nature from the outset. 'Mr Pye, I i..
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
8852fbb
|
He could now inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before
|
|
|
Mervyn Peake |
|
3ee7bc7
|
For what is more lovable than failure?
|
|
friendship
love
failure
|
Mervyn Peake |