Mervyn Peake citations
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Mervyn Laurence Peake est un illustrateur, poète et écrivain anglais. Ami de Dylan Thomas et Graham Greene, il est surtout connu pour sa trilogie de Gormenghast, qui l'a fait comparer à Charles Dickens et J. R. R. Tolkien. Son influence est importante sur la fantasy anglo-saxonne. Wikipedia

✵ 9. juillet 1911 – 17. novembre 1968 • Autres noms Мервін Пік, מרווין פיק

Mervyn Peake: 91 citations0 J'aime

Mervyn Peake: Citations en anglais

“His face wore the resigned expression of one who knew that the only difference between one day and the next lies in the pages of a calendar.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 441)

“Leave the stronger
and the lesser
things to me!
Lest that conger
named Vanessa
who is longer
than a dresser
visits thee.”

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Poem Vanessa

“Once there were islands all a-sprout with palms: and coral reefs and sands as white as milk. What is there now but a vast shambles of the heart? Filth, squalor, and a world of little men.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 114 (p. 1012)

“The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 51, section 5 (p. 667)

“It was not possible for him to visit his library as often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only pleasure—books.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 29 “The Library” (p. 158)

““Then be silent,” said Titus, and in spite of his anger, the heady wine of autocracy tasted sweet upon his tongue—sweet and dangerous—for he was only now learning that he had power over others, not only through the influence of his birthright but through a native authority that was being wielded for the first time—and all this he knew to be dangerous, for as it grew, this bullying would taste ever sweeter and fiercer and the naked cry of freedom would become faint and the Thing who had taught him freedom would become no more than a memory.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 77 (p. 774)

“His days were full of meaningless ceremonies whose sacredness appeared to be in inverse ratio to their comprehensibility or usefulness.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 80 (p. 802)

“He was meaner, more irritable, more impatient for the ultimate power which could only be his through the elimination of all rivals; and if he had ever had any scruples, any love at all for even a monkey, a book, or a sword-hilt, all this, and even this, had been cauterized and drowned away.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 58 (p. 704)

“The summer was heavy with a kind of soft grey-blue weight in the sky—yet not in the sky, for it was as though there were no sky, but only air, an impalpable grey-blue substance, drugged with the weight of its own heat and hue.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 60 “In Preparation for Violence” (p. 323)

“The ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation for the unexpected.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 41 “The Burning” (pp. 248-249)

“There is no point in erecting a structure,” said Muzzlehatch, taking no notice of Titus’s question, “unless someone else pulls it down. There is no value in a rule until it is broken. There is nothing in life unless there is death at the back of it. Death, dear boy, leaning over the edge of the world and grinning like a boneyard.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 14 (p. 826)

“They knew now that they could never accomplish that long carpet-journey with anything like Cutflower’s air, but he reminded them at every footstep, every inclination of the head, that the whole point of life was to be happy.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 34 (p. 570)

“So you thought you’d come back, my wicked one. Where have you been?”
“In hell,” said Titus. “Swigging blood and munching scorpions.”
“That must have been great fun, my darling.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

“Not so,” said Titus, “hell is overrated.”
Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 42 (p. 881)

“I saw all of a sudden
No sign of any ship.”

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Poem O'er seas that have no beaches

““I am a beggar.”
“You are a travesty,” said Titus, “and when you die the earth will breathe again.””

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 16 (p. 829)

“And yet, though his eyes shone with the thrill of his discovery, he suffered at the same time a pang of resentment—a resentment that this alien realm should be able to exist in a world that appeared to have no reference to his home and which seemed, in fact, supremely self-sufficient.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 18 (p. 831)

“This extreme air of abstraction, of empty and bland removedness, was almost terrifying. It was that kind of unconcern that humbled the ardent, the passionate of nature, and made them wonder why they were expending so much energy of body and spirit when every day but led them to the worms. Deadyawn, by temperament or lack of it, achieved unwittingly what wise men crave: equipoise.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 441)

““There’s something else, Mr. Muzzlehatch.”
“I’m sure there is. In fact there is everything else.””

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 47 (p. 893)

“It's not their fault if, in the heat
Of their transactions, I repeat
It's not their fault if vampires meet
And gurgle in their spats.”

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Poem The men in bowler hats are sweet

“Art should be artless, not heartless.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 24 (p. 845)

“Other people’s faults can be fascinating. One’s own are dreary.”

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Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 48 (p. 647)

“Let him play,” whispered Cheeta. “Let him make believe that he’s alive again.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 105 (p. 1000)

“For Peake, the weight of moral standards comes from their being part of a tradition, and any tradition lies outside the individual’s potential and needs. Thus adherence to a morality impedes development of the whole self and denies real maturity.”

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Joseph L. Sanders, “The Passions in Their Clay” Mervyn Peake’s Titus Stories, reprinted in the omnibus edition The Gormenghast Novels published by The Overlook Press, p. 1098

“The host of specifically religious suggestions and images, in a story that until now has been devoid of such concern, suggests very strongly that Peake is here referring to the Christian religion as a debasing influence. Peake’s treatment of Gormenghast’s ritual shows that he dislikes any system of values imposed on the individual from outside, offering him nothing directly relevant for himself and encouraging him in whatever weakness he possesses. So, here, the Lamb can break down but not build; despite his worshipper’s praise, he does not really understand how to keep his creatures alive. Still the Lamb glories in his power. True, in changing men he has destroyed them, denying them freedom to develop for themselves; to the Lamb, however, that is incidental to his own gratification.”

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Joseph L. Sanders, “The Passions in Their Clay” Mervyn Peake’s Titus Stories, reprinted in the omnibus edition The Gormenghast Novels published by The Overlook Press, p. 1093

“Change and growth cannot be halted, time must run on. That is the whole moral of the three books.”

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Colin Greenland, Beowulf to Kafka: Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone, reprinted in the omnibus edition The Gormenghast Novels published by The Overlook Press, p. 1141

“You are the first person who has been able to illustrate the book adequately since Tenniel, though I still argue as I think I argued with you years ago that your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin.”

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Graham Greene, quoted in Bandersnatch, 151, July 2011, p. 8

“Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes.”

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Maeve Gilmore (his widow), Introduction to A Book of Nonsense, p. 10

“Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It (Gormenghast trilogy) is a very, very great work … a classic of our age.”

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Robertson Davies

“His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 42 (p. 881)

“Life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.”

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Mervyn Peake livre Titus Alone

“I like the way you talk, young man,” said Grass, “but I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 24 (p. 841)

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