Peake's Progress

An extraordinary collection of poems, plays, short stories and drawings, displaying something of Peake's extraordinary range, and also exposing recurring themes, especially islands, isolation, and the longing for security. There is even a story he wrote when he was 11, though it has the very un-PC title, "The White Chief of the Umzibooboo Kaffirs"! It also has Peake's own introduction to a collection of his pictures.

Darkstones to Gormenghast

I had already read Boy in Darkness, a Titus novella (my review HERE) and seen some of the pictures, but most of the other material was new to me, including other short works that have prototypical Gormenghast aspects. In one of these, The House of Darkstones, Lord Groan has the violet eyes that end show more up being so typical of Titus. He was also "taller than there was any need to be" and meets Mr Stewflower on, of course, an island.

Glassblowers

Peake was mesmerised watching the unspoken choreography of glassblowers, the graceful grotesqueness of cathode-ray tube production. He sketched, painted, and wrote prose, and a famous poem.

Peake's painting of glassblowers at work

The factory:
“Darkness, brickwork; hall after mammoth hall, pseudo archaic, absurd, begrimed, impressive, sinister; a setting for some film of gloomy passion… In this huge womb, fires roar.”

On sand:
“Far from the full-wailing strands, it has become the burning mother of transparency. Sand… It has found it purpose. And from its huge transmutation lucence breaks.”

Poetry

One often hears how being a war artist at the liberation of Belsen affected Peake, but some of his wartime poetry set in the London blitz is very powerful too.

There is a horrifically vivid poem, The Consumptive of Belsen (there are several versions, of varying length) and associated pictures. He explicitly wrestles with the guilt of not only observing but recording:

“Is this my traffic? For my schooled eye to see
The ghost of a great painting, line and hue,
In this doomed girl of tallow?”
Also:
“a huddled boy whose eyes had died...
his eyes like broken glass –
the shattered panes of a deserted house."

Peake's picture of a consumptive at Belsen

Chinese Influence

This book also reminds one of the lasting influence of his Chinese childhood - even down to the way he held a pencil like a Chinese calligraphy brush. See my reviews of his biographies for more details, especially Winnington’s Vast Alchemies, which I reviewed HERE.

Nonsense

Then, in total contrast to the war poems, there are nonsense poems (slightly reminiscent of Lear, Carroll and Belloc, complete with nonsense illustrations), and, as if to emphasise the fact he was an artist as well as a writer, some poems about great artists. See my separate review of A Book of Nonsense HERE .

All My Peake Reviews

All my Peake/Gormenghast reviews (including biographies/memoirs and books about his art) are on a shelf,
HERE. show less

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy ranks among the most haunting works of twentieth-century literature, yet it was just one facet of his wide-ranging creativity. Peake's Progress includes sketches for the Titus books, short stories, love poetry, nonsense poetry, 'The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb', a satirical drama, and a radio version of his novel Mr. Pye. Caricatures, far darker drawings, stage designs and marvelous illustrations for Treasure Island and The Hunting of the Snark reveal his equal talent for the visual arts. Peake was a true original, by turn witty, whimsical, nostalgic, grotesque, savage and disquieting.

Only read a few pieces in this compendium of Peake- but Boy in Darkness is one and it is great! A little side story of the Gormenghast universe.

Fantasy, Peake