Climates Of The Mind

As I see it, or as I want to see it,
the marvels of the visible world are not things in themselves
but revelations to stir the imagination —
to conduct us to amazing climates of the mind,
which climates it is for the artist
to translate into paint or into words.

 — Mervyn Peake

Fellers

If trees gushed blood
When they were felled
By meddling man,
And crimson welled

From every gash
His axe can give,
Would he forbear,
And let them live?

  — Mervyn Peake 'If Trees Gushed Blood'

The Fish Of The Imagination

As I see it, life is an effort to grip,
before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion,
the startling, the ghastly
or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination
before they whip away on the endless current
and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.
— Mervyn Peake

New Enfranchised Noises

We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.
— Mervyn Peake 'Titus Groan'

The Thrusting Of Senses

Each day I live in a glass room
unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses
and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.
 — Mervyn Peake

I Only Sing The Tunes

I cannot give the reasons,
I only sing the tunes:
the sadness of the seasons
the madness of the moons.

I cannot be didactic
or lucid, but I can
be quite obscure and practic-
ally marzipan

In gorgery and gushness
and all that's squishified.
My voice has all the lushness
of what I can't abide

And yet it has a beauty
most proud and terrible
denied to those whose duty
is to be cerebral.

Among the antlered mountains
I make my viscous way
and watch the sepia fountains
throw up their lime-green spray.

 — Mervyn Peake 'I Cannot Give The Reasons'

Gormenghast

The Coasts Of Me

I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;
Maelstrom of passions in that hidden sea
Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;
And in small compass the dark waters cram.
— Mervyn Peake

The Stone Skyfield

The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreathes that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up hidden walls.
— Mervyn Peake 'Titus Groan'