Gormenghast
Gormenghast is a 1950 novel by British writer Mervyn Peake, the second in his ‘Gormenghast’ series. The first one is called Titus Groan, which is the name of the protagonist of Gormenghast. Gormenghast is the name of an ancient castle where Titus and his family and his ancestors lived. Titus is the 77th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast Castle. The story goes from when he’s 7 till he’s 17. It’s a coming-of-age story of a boy finding his way between the pride in his heritage and the rebellion against meaningless traditions.
I much prefer Gormenghast to Titus Groan. The Castle was so cold and dark and loveless in the first book, it was unbelievable that the two children would survive. There are a lot more human human relationships in the second book, not necessarily loving, but at least there are finally people inhabiting the place. There are children running around, there are teachers despising each other, there are ridiculous or unhealthy romantic relationships, there’s genuine love expressed in awkward ways, but at least there are people!
The writing is atmospheric. Whether it’s the darkness of the castle or the power of the storm and the flood, you feel the atmosphere of the moment as the characters do. I’ll read you a paragraph about a storm and another paragraph about the world after the storm.
The roaring and hissing of the rain was mounting steadily in volume and the noise of it upon the stones and the earth outside the mouth of the cave made all but the most violent of the thunder-peals inaudible. A hare with its ears laid along its back sat motionless with its eyes fixed upon the fox. The cave was filled with the noise of the elements, and yet there was a kind of silence there, a silence within the noise; the silence of stillness, for nothing moved. – The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (p. 675). Random House. Kindle Edition.
After the storm:
There was no more rain. The washed air was indescribably sweet. A kind of natural peace, almost a thing of the mind, a kind of reverie, descended upon Gormenghast – descended, it seemed, with the sunbeams by day, and the moonbeams after dark. By infinitesimal degrees, moment by golden moment, hour by hour, day by day, and month by month the great floodwaters fell. The extensive roofscapes, the slates and stony uplands, the long and slanting sky-fields, and the sloping altitudes, dried out in the sun. It shone every day, turning the waters, that were once so grey and grim, into a smooth and slumbering expanse over whose blue depths the white clouds floated idly. – The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy (p. 740). Random House. Kindle Edition.
I can imagine that on a cinema screen!
Precious Bane
Precious Bane is a historical romance by Mary Webb. It was published in 1924, so this is its 100th anniversary if you care about that sort of thing. The story is set in rural England during the Napoleonic Wars. It’s about a young woman with ‘hare-shotten lips’ called Prue Sarn.
The story has a Cinderella pattern. Prue fell in love with a man whom she thought herself not worthy of but after all the hardship and heartache, the prince stooped down and chose her. There was a dramatic rescue at the end where she was literally picked up onto a horse like in a Disney fairytale. The countryside setting and the farm labourer crowd have a Thomas Hardy vibe to it. The opening chapter where the protagonist in her old age sits by the fire and the rest of the book is her remembering her past, that set-up reminds me of The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley. The protagonist has a brother and they live next to a river – that reminds me of The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.
I read Precious Bane because of Cold Comfort Farm. There’s a one-line mention of Precious Bane in the introduction to Cold Comfort Farm saying,
Here was a book that was generally described as a ‘wicked parody’ of the rural novels of Mary Webb (Precious Bane, The Golden Arrow), which were immensely popular in Britain between the wars, but had since sunk rightfully into obscurity.
Now I have read it and I put Cold Comfort Farm and Precious Bane side by side, I can appreciate the wicked wit of Cold Comfort Farm even more. For example, if you contrast the closing scenes, where in Precious Bane, the innocent, obedient and helpless Prue Sarn was rescued by her hero and scooped up on a horse, leaving her family home to collapse into the wood; in Cold Comfort Farm, the spirited Flora single-handedly sorted out all the unhappy people on the farm, let the sunshine and breeze into the gloom, and was whisked away by her man in a helicopter, arranged in advance by herself. Precious Bane is not the kind of book I’d usually choose to read, but for the exercise, it was worth it.
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway is about a day in the life of Mrs Dalloway and various characters in London. By the end of the novel, I couldn’t help but notice the importance of windows. A lot of key scenes happen next to a window, or things, people and life are seen through windows. For example, on the first page, one of the first things Clarissa Dalloway did is to open the windows and that “squeak of the hinges” reminded her of Bourton. As she walked in London’s streets, she saw shopkeepers and their jewellery and gloves in the windows, she saw ‘fear no more the heat of the sun’ written on a book page through a shop window. When Mrs Dalloway was in the florist, the perspective shifts to Septimus, and he saw her through the florist’s shop window. Our two protagonists are on the opposite side of a window. The most obvious is the suicide of Septimus, he jumped out of the window. That was the only way of escape. Towards the end, Mrs Dalloway saw the old lady getting ready for bed as her party raged on in the background, they looked at each other, again, through a window.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think each window leads to a different world, a world of the past in one’s memory, a world of possible future, a world of stopping being alive, but curiously, not of despair and death. What do you think?
The Essential Emily Dickinson
I got interested in Emily Dickinson because of the TV series. I loved it! I loved how modern, wacky and full of energy it is. I loved how words and verses came to her and flowed out of her, and how the team achieved that effect on the screen.
I’ve only read most of the poems in this little book once. They are short but so dense and there are so many of them, it takes longer for me to read this little book than a full length novel. I recognised some of them because of the TV series and I had to admit I liked those more because there was a story attached to each poem. I’ve no idea if the writers for the TV made the stories up or if they were based on her personal life and history. That’s beside the point. The point is some of them are beautiful. I don’t pretend I get all of them, or even half of them. But the ones I do – how do you put such simple words together and create those fresh meanings and the spine-tingling effect?
The Poets’ Corner
I listened to The Poets’ Corner by John Lithgow. The poets included are listed in alphabetical order, from Matthew Arnold to William Butler Yeats. I didn’t count how many poets are included in total. Some of them I’m more familiar with than others. I got to know a few spectacular poems and poets for the first time. Bonnie mentioned E. E. Cummings to me before. I heard If Everything Happens That Can’t Be Done by him for the first time – it was one of those rare moments that was utterly delightful.
Another jaw-dropping moment was hearing a Chinese poem from 7 to 8th century translated into English by Ezra Pound in 1915, called The River Merchant’s Wife. It was a revelation. I did translation work and I dearly love Chinese language as well as English. I just didn’t believe translation could do justice to Chinese poems. Nothing to do with the skills and talents of the translators, they are just two very different languages. But my goodness, I’m so convinced now it can be done! Maybe I should set this as my lifelong ambition, to translate Chinese poems into English so you can enjoy them too.
John Clare Selected Poems
John Clare is an English poet from the early 19th Century, known as the “peasant poet”. He was born the son of a farm labourer in 1793, and died in 1864 at age 70. His biographer Jonathan Bate described him as “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.”
I loved the poem called Childhood. It’s about the simple games John Clare used to play with his playmates. It reminds me of my own childhood, busy with nothing but stones and grass and paper for hours with my cousins. It seemed nothing until Clare looked back at it years later and described it in his iconic ways.
A Day of Small Things 