When I was about Steerpike\u2019s age, I clambered up a ladder of ivy and through an attic window into Gormenghast. The climb was entirely motivated by a fellow student (who has gone on to become one of Canada\u2019s prominent<\/a> voices<\/a> in poetry); he would occasionally, and with authority, thrust books under my nose and say,
\n\u201cRead this!\u201d
\n\u201cBut what is it ?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cRead it. You\u2019ll find out,\u201d he replied. And added cryptically, \u201cMaybe.\u201d
\nThus, I owe Mervyn Peake a life-long fascination with windy towers and walls of crumbling stone. I owe him the Gothic yearning for extravagant perpendiculars, an infatuation with horizons, an undeniable tenderness for the grotesque. Curiously enough, I only discovered Peake\u2019s illustrations much later. His texts stoked such a raging fire of imagination that I missed the connection between the exquisite portraits on the covers and the author. Enamoured of the author, I overlooked the artist. Since then I have read nearly everything available by and about Mervyn Peake and sought out his extraordinary images wherever I can, my penance for being born too late to meet the man.
\nWhere is Gormenghast ? When is Gormenghast? What is it ? And, more importantly, how can I get there ? When setting out on a journey, a step in any direction will do. So I enrolled in a college in France, since there was little likelihood Gormenghast would be nestled in the Rockies or tucked away in the outskirts of Vancouver, Chicago or San Francisco. It was obvious enough that the stone for Gormenghast must have been cut from some cyclopean European quarry, so I came to the Old World in 1976, intending to stay a year. The search is taking longer than expected. But then, grails are like that.
\nI truly believe that those illustrators who owe a debt to Mervyn Peake are legion. Likely far more than any of us realize. Few other modern authors have opened up such a kingdom to wander in. Few authors have painted in such a vivid landscape, and fewer still have created a genre that they alone occupy. Peake paints in words \u2013 emotions applied with a palette knife, characters detailed with the finest brush, atmosphere like a watercolour wash. There are no words that are right to describe Peake\u2019s words; only images will do. But when brush is applied to paper, when colours are chosen, architectures sketched out, Peake\u2019s world recedes into mist and shadow, into the realm of the possible and the imagined. Suddenly, any attempt at pigment on paper falls short. There\u2019s nothing for it, then; it requires sketches done in situ, deep in some windswept and ragged landscape of the mind. Whatever it is I am drawing, Mervyn Peake is there to urge me on.
\nIn the end, Mervyn Peake\u2019s world is the invitation and the destination. Wantonly encouraging my bent for beauty askew, elegant decay and lines gone awry, and confirming, with every precious glimpse of Gormenghast, whether by chance or design, that the right path has been chosen.
\nGormenghast is a state of mind, an angle of view, a passion for atmosphere and light. Gormenghast is random pages in a sketchbook, odd photographs with an unusual view, a trick of the light or a flaw in the lens. Gormenghast is perspectives that turn out to be suddenly mundane from the wrong angle or when shared in the wrong company or sought out.
\nLuck affords brief glimpses of Gormenghast here and there \u2013 pine forests and
\nruins in the Vosges, towers in Tuscany and decaying mansions in the Piedmont or in
\nPoland, roofscapes and attics in Le Puy-en-Velay, cemeteries in Paris or Prague.
\nPerhaps one day, I will have found it all, like the pieces of some vast puzzle
\nwithout corners or edges. Then I will be standing on that spot where Titus stands at
\nthe end of Titus Alone, but it will be to set up an easel, not to turn and stride away.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Peake-cover-port.jpg\" "\\"Peake-cover-port\\"")
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n