Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Things I'm Stoked About

1.

Mervyn Peake:

"A ritual, more compelling than ever man devised, is fighting anchored darkness. A ritual of the blood; of the jumping blood. These quicks of sentience owe nothing to his forbears, but to those feckless hosts, a trillion deep, of the globe's childhood. -- The gift of the bright blood. Of blood that laughs when the tenets mutter 'Weep.' Of blood that mourns when the sere laws croak 'Rejoice!' O little revolution in great shades!"

And, also Peake:

"If ever a man was destined to fill in the gap of his own absence with his own ghost it is he. For excommunication is a kind of death."

Also Peake, but just a fragment here:

"the talons of adventure, the antlers of romance"


2.

John Berryman: "Come & diminish me, & map my way."


3.

Homer:

"There was a world . . . Or was it all a dream?"

3 comments:

  1. Re "Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, which he apparently went mad trying to finish" -- Parkinson's Disease is not a form of madness!

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  2. Oh. I didn't know it was Parkinson's--just thought it was general instability (I'd probably get a little mad if I were writing such a series as Gormenghast). My source for this information was my father, who is wise but surely not all-knowing. Correction duly noted!

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  3. I'm stoked about the antlers line, too.

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