Friday, August 14, 2020

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

Titus Groan: A host of eerie eccentrics | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and  Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

Drear ritual turned its wheel. The ferment of the heart, within these walls, was mocked by every length of sleeping shadow. The passions, no greater than candle flames, flickered in Time's yawn, for Gormenghast, huge and adumbrate, out-crumbles all.

I've been meaning to re-read Mervyn Peake's neo-Gothic classic Titus Groan for a long time. My memory is that I was bored by it the first time I read it, but that the sequel--Gormenghast--made me think more kindly on it. For whatever reason, it seems to me that our cultural landscape keeps getting more and more inundated with fantasy narratives, but Peake's weird, baroque novels still haven't gotten the second look they should.

One funny thing I realized about the first two books in the series is that their names really ought to be switched. Titus Groan extends from the birth of the title character till he's invested with power after his father's death, at about one year old. The most he ever does in the novel is cry and forebodingly drop a ceremonial stone into a lake. In Gormenghast he comes into his own, battling the ambitious Steerpike for control of the castle, but it's Titus Groan that's really about the castle itself: a hulking, city-sized place, much of which is closed off or completely falling apart.

The first thirty pages of Titus Groan show more ingenuity and creativity, I think, than eighteen hours of The Witcher or whatever. There's a room full of nothing but white cats, a tower of murderous owls, and a room that holds only the roots of en enormous tree that extends laterally out of the side of the castle; this room is the haunt of the power-hungry identical twins Cora and Clarice. The lord of Gormenghast, Sepulchrave, the Earl of Groan, lives his days miserably, following the regimen laid out by the master of ritual, Sourdust. The rituals are scrupulously followed because they are the Groans' ancient power, but they are nonsensical, comprising tasks like climbing the stairs in the Tower of Flints three times and leaving three successive cups of wine in a windowsill. The tedium of ritual mirrors the castle's crumbling facade; it too exists only for itself without purpose and without attention, and those who live in it turn a blind eye to the way time strips the castle of its grandeur. Meanwhile, the head gardener polishes all the apples in the orchard.

For all the bigness of the castle--I think only a deep-pocketed studio like HBO could really do it justice, if anyone ever tried--life in it seems cramped and circumscribed. When the novel opens, all the servants in the castle are in revelry over the birth of Titus, but for long stretches it seems as if no one lives in the castle but a half dozen major characters, each of whom is entirely turned inward. For Lord Sepulchrave, it's his books; for his wife the Countess, her birds and cats; for their daughter Fuchsia, the musty and crowded attic where she goes to be alone. Even when they talk to each other, these characters hardly seem to hear each other.

But despite this narrow view, I came to read it the second time as a novel with interesting things to say about class. Titus Groan opens in the "Hall of Bright Carvings," a room full of beautiful wooden statues created by the Dwellers, who live in shanty-like huts outside the castle walls. The Dwellers spend all year carving these statues to be judged by the Earl, who chooses three to remain in the Hall, and the rest are burned. But no one ever visits the Hall; its curator lives basically in happy isolation. Like the rest of the castle's rituals, the ritual of the Bright Carvings goes on meaninglessly because it is so old, and yet the carvers devote their lifetimes to it. The castle relies on the immiseration of thousands, and yet it provides no meaning or comfort for Sepulchrave or anyone else.

It's in this context that Steerpike, the ambitious kitchen boy, appears. Steerpike, disgusted at the idea of working for the corpulent and cruel cook, Swelter, insinuates himself into court, seducing Fuchsia and manipulating the twins into burning down the Gormenghast library so he can "save" everyone. At the end of the novel, Steerpike has become the apprentice to the master of ritual, though a class upstart like he is can only master ritual in order to destroy it. There's some indication (affirmed in Gormenghast, I'm sure) that Titus is a foil to Steerpike, as the young earl who drops the ceremonial stone in the water, indicating that he's come to shake up the ossified state of things at Gormenghast. Without reading the next novel again--which I will, eventually--it's interesting to me that these two characters are set up to be so similar, but it's Titus with his noble blood whose distruption is formulated as heroism, and the upstart Steerpike who is made the villain.

I see again why I had trouble with the novel the first time around. Unlike Game of Thrones, a franchise where things really happen, Titus Groan is ponderous and slow. Peake makes great use of the setting--I have remembered for years the awful scene of Sepulchrave climbing into the Tower of Flints to let himself be devoured by owls--but the action itself is slow, focused on the minute movement of eyes, feet, lips, hands. And the language itself is as overwrought as the 19th century Gothic novels by which it's inspired. It's luscious and campy, but perhaps not for the impatient. George R. R. Martin fans might find it a little too glacial for their tastes (even as they're entering the second decade of waiting for the next installation) but to me, its rewards are much finer.

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