Titus Groan

Fülszöveg

titus groan is the first of a magnifi-
cent trilogy of novels about the world
of Gormenghast — a weird kingdom
whose royal inhabitants and their en-
tourage live in a gigantic castle, ancient
beyond memory, built upon a mist-
enshrouded mountain.
On the eighth day of the eighth
month of an unspecified year, a son is
born to the noble House of Groan. He
is named Titus, and his birth assures
the continuance of the timeless rituals
of Gormenghast, inscribed in the Book
of Immemorial Rites.
So morbidly ingrown is the royal
family that they barely acknowledge
the long-awaited birth. Sepulchrave,
the seventy-sixth Earl of Gormen-
ghast, is too steeped in his own melan-
cholic reveries to take notice of the
child. And the unmaternal Lady Ger-
trude devotes herself exclusively to her
birds and snow white cats.
One person in the kingdom is deeply
stirred by the royal birth. His name is
Steerpike, the red-eyed kitchen lad
who burns with an all-consuming am-
bition... Tovább

Fülszöveg

titus groan is the first of a magnifi-
cent trilogy of novels about the world
of Gormenghast — a weird kingdom
whose royal inhabitants and their en-
tourage live in a gigantic castle, ancient
beyond memory, built upon a mist-
enshrouded mountain.
On the eighth day of the eighth
month of an unspecified year, a son is
born to the noble House of Groan. He
is named Titus, and his birth assures
the continuance of the timeless rituals
of Gormenghast, inscribed in the Book
of Immemorial Rites.
So morbidly ingrown is the royal
family that they barely acknowledge
the long-awaited birth. Sepulchrave,
the seventy-sixth Earl of Gormen-
ghast, is too steeped in his own melan-
cholic reveries to take notice of the
child. And the unmaternal Lady Ger-
trude devotes herself exclusively to her
birds and snow white cats.
One person in the kingdom is deeply
stirred by the royal birth. His name is
Steerpike, the red-eyed kitchen lad
who burns with an all-consuming am-
bition to rise to a position of power in
the royal household so that he can
eventually rule the House of Groan.
With both horror and fascination, one
sees Steer pike's monstrous plans take
shape as he plots to upset the castle's
functioning in order to further his own
twisted ends. How well he succeeds is
the substance of gormenghast, the
second novel in Mervyn Peake's great
trilogy.
A powerful work of art, the Gormen'
ghast trilogy may be considered myth,
adult fairy tale or a metaphor of the
human condition. C. S. Lewis has said:
"Mr. Peake created a new category,
the Gormenghastly, and we wonder al-
ready how we did without it and why
no one defined it before." Elisabeth
Bowen has written: "One of those
works of pure, violent, self-sufficient
imagination that are from time to time
thrown up . . . poetry flows through
his volcanic writing; the lyrical and
monstrous are knotted in his scenes, in
the arabesques of his prose.,, Vissza