monumental fugue of volumes

[cimorene]

The library appeared to spread outwards from him as from a core. His dejection infected the air about him and diffused its illness upon every side. All things in the long room absorbed his melancholia. The shadowing galleries brooded with slow anguish; the books receding into the deep corners, tier upon tier, seemed each a separate tragic note in a monumental fugue of volumes.

—Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Comments

[buddleia]

Mervyn Peake summons me like an annoying moth. I got red in the face once arguing with someone over his prose. They said it was too much.

They were right. But I don’t care.

[cimorene]

Saying it's 'too much' is kind of begging the question, isn't it? Because he obviously does it on purpose, so it just becomes a question of how entertaining you find it. Kind of like goth aesthetic. And I love it.

[buddleia]

Yes! The golden mossy woods you can leap through and the dead tree sticking out of the side of the castle and the pillars that are painted deep red every year and the houses of villagers stuck on the walls and the schoolboys taking semi-suicidal leaps through windows and the raft in the rain and the illustrations -

Oh help I need to reread everything.