Boy in Darkness

Gormenghast #2.5

by Mervyn Peake, P.J. Lynch (Illustrator)

Titus Groan, in his desire to leave the senseless ritual of Gormenghast, becomes trapped in a desert of grey space. While there is no sign of life, something stirs below the ground. Something alone and alive. Something that smiles very gently to itself as it sits upon its throne, waiting patiently...

A master of the macabre and a traveller through the deeper and darker chasms of the imagination. - The Times

A twentieth century masterpiece from the author of the Gormenghast books, now published in its own right, complete with illustrations.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Short Stories, Classics, Gothic, Novella

115 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books, though the Titus books would be more accurate: the three works that exist were the beginning of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, following his protagonist Titus Groan from cradle to grave, but Peake's untimely death prevented completion of the cycle, which is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.

Peake also wrote poetry and literary nonsense in verse form, short stories for adults and children ("Letters from a Lost Uncle"), stage and radio plays, and Mr Pye, a relatively tightly-structured novel in which God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.

Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Imperial War Museum.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boy in Darkness reads as if Merwyn Peake wrote Adventures of Titus in the Horrorland.
Meeting Titus Groan once again is like meeting an old dear friend…

The ceremonies were over for the day. The Boy was tired out. Ritual, like a senseless chariot, had rolled its wheels – and the natural life of the day was bruised and crushed.

Today is the boy’s birthday… He is fourteen years old… Tutus wishes for changes… He wants new life… He rebels… He runs away… The route of escape is tortuous… At last after crossing an unknown river exhausted he falls asleep…

How long he slept was difficult for him to estimate, but when he woke it was broad daylight, and as he raised himself on one arm he knew that all was ill. This was not the air of his own country. This was foreign air. He looked about and nothing was familiar.

The boy feels he is on the evil grounds… A strange being approaches him…

The black-coated figure leaned back in his tracks, so that there was something pompous about him. But the smile was still spread across his face like a dazzling wound.
“I am Goat,” he said, and the noise of it came thickly from between his shining teeth. “I have come to welcome you, child. Yes… yes… to welcome you…”

And there is also an equally foul antagonist of the Goat…

His jaws were very powerful, and as he crunched the muscles could be seen working between his ears and his jaw; and this was made all the more apparent by the fact that Hyena, in contrast to the Goat, was something of a dandy, shaving himself with a cut-throat razor with great care every five or six hours.

We all wish for something new but things we might find in the great unknown can be hostile and dangerous.

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

'tis the season...

13 TALES OF TERROR: BOOK 10

Boy in Darkness is a short story that takes place between the second and third books of the Gormenghast trilogy. ah, Gormenghast, one of my favorite things! but the horrific atmosphere and the ambiguously allegorical nature of this story make it quite a thing apart. something that is strange and haunting and wonderful. ah, Boy in Darkness, one of my favorite things!

14-year old Titus Groan (although he is known only as "the Boy" in this tale), Earl of Gormenghast, has reached his birthday thoroughly tired and contemptuous of all the meaningless symbolic rituals of his labyrinthine world. staring up at the mildew patterns on his ceiling - his own private vision of an archipelago to be explored - and seeing a fly move freely about, he is inspired to run away. and so he does, away from the castle and into an alien landscape, by way of a turgid river (Styx?) and guided by a pack of evil dogs (the Hounds of Hell?). in this greyishly bleak and blasted place he encounters two man-beasts, the unctuous and dirty Goat and the vicious and violent Hyena. he is taken by them to a dark underworld of mines and looming, forgotten industrial structures, to their diabolic master: a cruel and sadistic beast with the hands of a chubby human babe and the angelic voice of a sweet cherub: the blind and blindingly white Lamb:

"White. White as foam when the moon is full on the sea; white as the white of a child's eye; or the brow of a dead man; white as a sheeted ghost: Oh, white as wool. Bright wool... white wool... in half a million curls... seraphic in its purity and softness... the raiment of the Lamb.

And all about it swam the darkness that shifted to the flicker of the candle flames."

the sightless Lamb can see into a human, see what beastly shape lies within, and so transform them. and then they die, in beast form. the Lamb has devastated his entire world, and so rules over a dead and blighted kingdom. he wants... new toys. fortunately for Titus, the lad has a brain in his head and a chip of granite in his heart, and so proves a capable match for these nightmarish creatures.



here are some things that i love: fairy tales, myths, legends, allegories, parables... stories that live in more than one world, more than one dimension. stories with such ambiguity that they can mean many things and yet still entertain as pure narrative. is Peake offering a savage critique of Christianity in his use of the Lamb? what does it mean that the humans of this world die so painfully when transformed into their beastly inner nature? why have Goat and Hyena survived? and why is the Lamb identified so closely with mines and with dead industrial landscapes? i do not know. but i have my theories!

here is something i love: an idiosyncratic author who knows how to write. who truly loves words, the sound of them, the stringing of them together into strange and evocative sentences that carry levels of meaning. an author with wit and tenderness and ruthlessness and a desire to move beyond the mundane. an author that challenges his reader to a game that he has created. the phrase "gothic comedy of manners" barely describes the Gormenghast novels, just as the word "dreamlike" does not even begin to describe this story. Peake creates worlds within worlds within worlds with his prose.

here is something i love: a thing that raises the hairs, causes tingles and chills, inspires a shapeless sort of dread, that has a sinister and menacing wonder to it. swoon.

here is something i love: Cecily's bookshelf on Mervyn Peake:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

here is something i love: a perhaps minor but nevertheless perfectly conceived and executed little story called Boy in Darkness.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this story in a volume that includes a few others (which I reviewed very briefly HERE). This review is limited to Boy in Darkness:

This 90-page novella resulted in three pages of notes! It is so beautiful and so strange, and not even strange in the same way as the other Gormenghast books.

Plot

The story starts on Titus's fourteenth birthday (part way through the second of the Gormenghast "trilogy"), though all but once, he is referred to as "the Boy". He is a truculent teen, exasperated by the relentless and oppressive rituals that govern his life: "He was in a frame of mind quite savage in its resentment".

Watching a fly, "the Boy became dimly aware of exploration as something more than a word... as something solitary and mutinous... the first flicker of imperative rebellion... against the eternal round of deadly symbolism." (And yet this book is laden with symbolism.)

Naturally, he wants escape.


Peake’s drawing of Titus longing for freedom

So he does escape.
"To be alone in a land where nothing can be recognized, that is what he feared, and that is what he longed for."

So far, so "normal" in Gormenghast terms. But then "the moon slid out of the thick clouds and he saw ahead of him a river", but there is something strangely unsettling about this river, and it's at this point the story takes on a more dream-like, allegorical or even magical feel. He awakes to "foreign air" and "indications... that he was on evil ground".

In the second part, the Boy encounters Goat and Hyena: part-human creatures who want to take him to their menacing master, the Lamb. "You are what [not "who"] we have been waiting for."

Mysterious Mines

The disused mines where these creatures live sound a little like Gormenghast, with their lavish but decayed furnishings, but for all the oppression of the Castle, the mines have more menace: a "well of darkness… a prodigious shaft more like an abyss than anything constructed".


The sycophantic Goat and vain Hyena compete for their master's approval. Their master is in some ways a stereotypical evil genius: he transforms and brainwashes his subjects, has a grand but evil plan that is going awry, and lives in an underground lair - but he is a lamb of the purest white (a strong symbol of purity and sacrifice), with child-like hands, which he uses to perform gross transformations.

Fortunately, the Boy's profound infusion of the liturgy of ritual, coupled with his intelligence, mean he can talk eloquently and persuasively (he even gets Goat and Hyena to make him a palanquin to take him to the Lamb).

The Lamb, now blind, lives in the mines and transmutates humans into a sort of animal hybrid, based on what he thinks they are really like, and somehow sucks out their souls. He has been doing this for more than a hundred years, but all have died except for Goat and Hyena, and he doesn't know why. He has waited ten years for another subject. His plans for the Boy are clear: "His very bones cry out for realignment: his flesh to be reshaped; his heart to be shrivelled, and his soul to feed on fear."

The Lamb's motives are never clear (beyond "his exquisite pleasure to debase" and "a deep and burning hatred of all humans"), but in some respects, he is like the leader of a cult (albeit with very few followers): Goat chants "he is the heart of life and love, and that is true because he tells us so" and both Goat and Hyena are subjugated to the extent they know they are "of a lesser breed and that to serve and obey their master was its own reward".

Some of the descriptions of the Lamb are wonderfully awful and often contradictory:
• "no substance... only the yielding, horrible mollience of endless wool."
• "white as... the brow of a dead man; white as a sheeted ghost... Bright wool... white wool... in half a million curls... seraphic in its purity and softness... the raiment of the Lamb."
• "the hollow where his soul should have been seethed with horrible sickness"
• "white lord of Midnight" whose voice is like "the sound of naked innocence".
• "The Lamb had bared its pearly teeth."
• "his arms like little white doves"
• "quenchless vitality of his evil"


The Lamb reminds me slightly of the much less evil White Lion in Letters from a Lost Uncle, which I reviewed HERE .

The Ending

It may not start with "Once upon a time", but the ending is classic fairy tale - not in the sense of being overtly happy, but in terms of how the ending comes about. When the Lamb dies (leaving no body or blood, but just a mass of dazzling curls), the spell on Goat and Hyena is broken and they turn into very very old men.

It Really IS Titus

Despite Maeve Gilmore (Peake’s widow) saying in her foreword that “The Boy”, though not named, is Titus, he is actually called that once early on, when he looks out of the window of his room. Furthermore, in her memoirs (A World Away, which I reviewed HERE) she explicitly describes it as "Titus outside the Titus books". Apart from that, the descriptions of him and his home leave no doubt (an earl who is “lord of a towered tract”, “at the beck and call of officials” and “remote ceremonies the meaning of which had long been forgotten”, leaving “dust-filled rooms of his seemingly endless home”).

What Does it Mean and How Does it Relate to Gormenghast?

According to the foreword by Peake's widow, it was subtitled "The Dream", though she says "It was written as a story, to be read as a story", but acknowledges the many and varied slants people like to put on it (religious allegory, nightmare etc) and concludes "It is all or none or some of these things to the reader".

Yorke points out (in his biography, My Eyes Mint Gold, which I reviewed HERE) that “the evil is palpable enough, but where is it opposed by virtue? There is a God-shaped void at the centre of the book. The boy is ethically neutral and passive.”

"The Boy", rips off a symbolic necklace (echoes of baby Titus ripping a page of book of ritual), sees night-owls (significant creatures in the main story), and Peake's recurring themes of islands and isolation run strong. More oddly, there is a scene near the end where his tactics are a very close parallel of a specific incident of Steerpike's! Titus promises titles and a gold throne, just as Steerpike promises the twins.

However, it's hardest to ignore the repeated and overpowering inversion of the symbolism of a sacrificial lamb.

Quotes

• "Ritual, like a senseless chariot, had rolled its wheels - and the natural life of the day was bruised and crushed."
• "That ochre-coloured and familiar patch of mildew that stretched across the cancelling like an island.... He knew by heart the tapering peninsular that ended in a narrowing chain of islets like a string of discoloured beads... and he had many a time brought imaginary ships to anchor in hazardous harbours or stood them off when the seas ran high where they rocked in his mind and set new courses for yet other lands." (Islands are a recurring theme in Peake's work)
• "in the tortuous Castle... he had on many an occasion been terrified, not only by the silences and glooms of the night but by a sense of being watched, almost as though the Castle itself or the spirit of the ancient place moved with him as he moved, stopped when he stopped; forever breathing at his shoulder-blades and taking note of every move he made."
• "Towers that a moment ago had been ethereal, and all but floated in the golden air, had now become, through the loss of the sun's late beams, like black and carious teeth."
• Bells "a murmuration, with the clamour of tongues that spread their echoes over the great shell of the Castle like a shawl of metal."
• "The night was heavy with its own darkness."
• "Signs of faded elegance... now breathed a folorn and dismal air" yet "there is a certain grandeur in decay and in stillness which slows the footsteps."
• "It was as though he had been deserted by the outriders of his memory, and an uprush of fear flowed over him like an icy wave."
• "sullen water with bilious moonlight glowering on its back."
• Sinister hounds have yellow eyes: "If a colour can have any moral value, it was incredibly wicked".
• "The sun gave out the kind of light that sucked out every hue... The water under the sun's rays was like grey oil that heaved as though with a voluptuous sickness."
• "Joyless sunlight... A gleam of dull light that had both fear and vengeance in it."
• "Far away beyond the power of search, in the breathless wastes, where time slides on and on through the sickness of the day and the suffocation of the night, there was a land of absolute stillness... the stillness of apprehension and a dire suspense. At the heart of this... where no trees grew and no birds sang, there was a desert of grey space that shone with a metallic light."

Old Review (i.e. succinct)

A curious allegorical story that starts when Titus runs away on his 14th birthday (part way through volume two, Gormenghast). He escapes the confines of the castle and encounters a pack of hounds but the story only turns to horror when, exhausted, he is found by two human-animal hybrids: Goat and Hyena, both determined to get the credit for delivering him to their evil overlord, a blind sheep living in an opulent disused mine who uses sinister powers to mutate people into the creatures they resemble. The character of a clever sheep, who is very white but very evil, wants sacrifices and is referred to as “The Lamb” (echoing Christian terminology) is certainly counter-cultural and, to some, potentially blasphemous. Whether this story is real (inasmuch as anything in Gormenghast is real) or a dream, let alone what it signifies is left to the reader: a bloodless sacrifice of a lamb; a critique of religion, despots, genetic engineering, power and corruption; something Freudian, or what?.

Perhaps the strangest aspect is that this was initially published in a collection of three short stories (others by John Wyndham and William Golding) that won the prestigious Nebula sci-fi prize.

All My Peake Reviews

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

[Fuchsia Groan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desde que tropecé con él por primera vez, hace ya algo más de ocho años, una de las cosas que más me gustan en el mundo es Mervyn Peake. No hablo solo sobre Los libros de Titus, o trilogía de Gormenghast, su obra más importante, hablo, en general, del autor. Me encanta leer sobre su vida y obra, mirar sus dibujos y pinturas. Me fascina como solo lo hacen las cosas que gustan mucho cuando se es pequeño, de manera quizás un poco obsesiva, de esa forma que nunca cansa.

Este relato fue publicado en 1956 en el recopilatorio El paisaje interior, cuando no faltaba ya mucho tiempo para que Titus Solo viese la luz, pero cronológicamente la historia se sitúa al mismo tiempo que Gormenghast y aunque nunca se llega a nombrar el Castillo, desde el principio está claro dónde estamos: Las ceremonias habían terminado ese día. El Niño se sentía extenuado. El Ritual, como una carroza enloquecida, había echado a rodar, y la verdadera vida del día yacía herida y aplastada.

El Niño (Titus) cumple catorce años, y tal y como hemos visto muchas veces en la trilogía principal, sueña con escapar: Ansiaba (lo comprendió de pronto) transformar su furia en acción... escapar de las metas prefijadas, proclamar su libertad, si bien no una libertad total, al menos por un día, desea, cómo no hacerlo, un día de insurrección.

¡Maldito sea el castillo! ¡Malditas sean las Leyes! ¡Maldito sea todo! Y es que, es verdad, puede sentirse la necesidad de contar con las cosas que nos son odiosas, y odiar algo que, por extraña paradoja, nos es amado.

Y así, escapa. A partir de aquí, la sensación de estar en un sueño que siempre nos acompaña cuando nos internamos en Gormenghast, se transforma en pesadilla: Creo que quiero volver a casa. Titus todavía no sabe, porque su madre, Lady Gertrude, todavía no se lo ha dicho, que no hay camino, no hay senda que no te lleve de vuelta a casa. Porque todo vuelve a Gormenghast. Y tanto que sí.

[Traveller · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story 'Boy in Darkness' was so strange and uneven, that I'm not sure what to make of it.

It seems to be some kind of sarcastic religious allegory, but the satire doesn't seem to really fit into any specific recognizable pattern of what exactly it would be satirizing.
The Lamb would certainly seem, by its symbolism alone, to be a metaphor for Jesus Christ, but its attributes definitely don't correlate with that of Christ; if anything, rather with those of the older Judaic religions. (The forerunners of Christianity and source of the Old Testament.)

I kept wanting to put the lamb into the place of the Christian church, and the goat and the hyena into that of its main arms, being all the reformist churches and the Catholic church, but I couldn't quite figure out which would be which--the goat the reformed churches perhaps, and the hyena the Catholic church?

I can see what he did there, saying that religion takes away one's identity and individuality, and turning one into a blind sycophant (only, in this case it is the lamb that is blind?)?

But all those hyperbolic adjectives: "horrible" "evil" and so forth, not to mention the particularly excessive recurrence of the words "dead", "death" "deadly and "deathly"; pushes it rather over the top. Well, the adjectives I just mentioned will give you a good idea of the atmosphere in the story, winkety wink. I might add that it is rather purple in that sense too. Purply deathly prose, ha.

In any case, the comparisons that you need to make to see it as satire seem so incongruent and ill-fitting, that although I spotted a few good ideas there, I finally gave up on the religious metaphor idea and tried to see the story as a pure flight of fantasy.

..but even as a flight of fantasy the whole thing seemed rather...
Let's just say that the three stars are for the fact that it's pretty imaginative and that Peake throws around a few interesting ideas regarding the power of the mind and the power of humans' need for belonging, acceptance and recognition.

The Peake short story "Danse Macabre", that came along with my copy of Boy in Darkness, felt a lot more fun to read. Danse Macabre is something more in the Gothic horror ghost story tradition. It is clothed in the typical Gothic sense of drama, although Peake's sense of humor can be caught twinkling at you through the interstices with this one. I would award the latter story closer to four stars, for its entertainment value, and for being a quite excellent example of Gothic horror.

[Peiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

کتاب تشکیل شده از چند داستان یک داستان نسبتا بلند تر که اکثر حجم کتاب رو تشکیل داده قاعدتا به اسم پسری در تاریکی و چند داستان خیلی کوتاه دیگه. مروین پیک به نظرم اسمش با کتاب تیتوس گرون عجین شده. داستان پسری در تاریکی قصه ی پسرکی چهارده ساله هست که شب تولدش خسته از رسم و رسومات دیرینه ی خانوادگی تصمیم میگیره از قلعه ی محل زندگیش فرار کنه و شبانه این تصمیم رو عملی میکنه و پا به جایی میذاره که دو نیمه حیوان اون رو پیدا میکنن و ادامه ی داستان.... نه خیلی قوی و نه خیلی ضعیف

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

No Spoilers for Gormenghast Series

8.5/10


Introduction


Boy in Darkness is a novella that takes place in between the 2nd Gormenghast book, I would recommend after the second or 3rd book. Though you could honestly read this novella by itself as its quite distant from the main series. It's not like Brandon Sanderson novella Edgedancer (Stormlight Archive 2.5) which is basically an important interlude (for the main series) because none of the things that appear in this novella properly transpires in the main series. What I mean it could have happened, but it will not be brought up. This is a side story that is never referenced again. So yes, you can read this novella isolated, as an introduction to Peake writing though I would never advocate for it. Few reasons why I would not recommend that firstly, getting into Peake writing style is difficult, one of the most beautiful yet difficult prose you will read. Because this is a novella, though the pacing all Peake work is slow, its just Titus Groan( 1st Gormenghast book) just eases you into his writing style a lot more smoothly. As Novella by its nature must pick up the pace. The strangeness is cranked up in this novella compared to the main series it's like an acid trip it does not hold your hands. Apparently, this was supposed to be a children's novel? I do know how the credible that information is, but this is an awful introduction to reading for kids, as a 21-year-old man I was struggling. Yeah, I got into his writing style as the novella progressed just it's not easy. Additionally, the main series narrated entirely by Simon Vance who does a stellar performance, which his performance enhanced the series for me, appreciating the writing style and just understanding Peake tempo a lot better. But yeah, I mean the only advantage I had, is that I knew the protagonist quite literally everything is even ground, as its territory that readers from the main series will not be familiar with except aspects of the beginning.


Thoughts

Well, it is hard to state my thoughts on a novella (without spoiling), but I will try. The dream-like aspects though sometimes hard to visualise is compelling. You got a talking Goat, Hyena and Lamb. Its carries similar themes about rituals and even religion to an extent. Besides Peake brilliant yet difficult prose his dialogue so meticulously crafted it has this rhythm to it. How he describes certain oddities makes it so immersive and just clicks. The few characters that appear their voices are so distinct that you could remove he said, or she and you can identify them with ease. The Goat his formal language, Hyena has his distinctive aggression, and the Lamb has coldness in terms of the precise use of language.

If you do not care Titus in the first two books, I cannot see how you will like him featured here. However, if you enjoy his character first two main entries this will just reinforce your appreciation for him. Without spoiling anything it kind of the Psyche of him, in a more meta sense but then again that could just be my perception of the text because its certain things are ambiguous.


Ending



The Lamb is such a weird, strange yet terrifying character. When Peake described this moment

For the finger of the Lamb appeared to suck at the temple like the sucker of an octopus, and then as the digit traced the profile it left behind it from the hair-line to the chin a track or wake so cold that his brow contracted with pain.
And that was enough, that tracing, to teach the Lamb all that he wished to know.

This is the first indication he not necessarily alive which brings a lot of speculation. Because you know how mammals must have heat, as the anatomy of the body of mammals requires it ( without going to specifics). Plus his positioning indicates something was strange.

This was the only moment: the moment when all must be done before the resurge of evil. The clearing of the air brought with it for one split second the loosening of the adhesions in his legs and a vibrance to his foul left arm so that he sprang forward with no sense of being retarded. In fact the air seemed to open up for him as he sprang, his sword brandished. He brought it down across the skull of the Lamb so that it split the head into two pieces which fell down on either side. There was no blood, nor anything to be seen in the nature of a brain.

The Boy then slashed at the woollen body, and at the arms, but it was the same as it had been with the head, a complete emptiness devoid of bones and organs. The wool lay everywhere in dazzling curls.

The Boy sank to his knees, the relics of the white beast spread about him as though he had been shearing a sheep rather than slaying one.

It brings a lot of questions regarding his existence. Warped geneticist? Evil sorcerer? Product of the Id made flesh? Whatever the Lamb is, he is truly demonic. As the sequel is more sci-fi oriented maybe some sorta experiment, might be somebody own cult but that would not much sense. Magic is such a weird in this world because it does unclear how it exists maybe implied it being used but never explicit. I have a ton of speculation and have no idea what the answer is.


Conclusion

Boy in Darkness is a weird novella, like if an author took drugs and had poetic prose and described every detail possible. It’s kind of nightmare narrative maybe consider it atmospheric fantasy horror. As the reader you must accept the logic in a nightmare is not entirely consistent that’s how to perceive some of the events that have transpired. I think generally not really criticism of the novella, but it took a while for me to adjust to Peake writing style, I can see this being in rereads. If you have read the first 2 or 3 Gormenghast books I would recommend.

Changing this from a 8 to a 8.5/10

[Raghav Bhatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a perfect little story, an acid trip — for the Boy (Titus of the awesome Gormenghast novels) and for us —, a minor revelation in language. "Boy in Darkness" is utterly terrifying and astonishingly mesmerizing. I can only guess at what the Lamb is but It will give me nightmares for sure.

Peake can write. He can f**king write.

[Omar Amat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice adition to the Gormenghast books, his prose shines as always, and there are some truly terrifying moments.

In the previous entries there is an interesting exploration of tradition and its correlation with stagnation, here I think there is a similar analysis but regarding "blindly following leaders"

Is this what happened to S.?

I definitely have to reread the lake ceremony.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story about Titus Groan in Gormenghast, some time before the events in Titus Alone.

It is, apparently, a children's book (novella, really: it's only 115 pages of relatively large-font type, with illustrations) but I'm not sure that most children would get it. I found it really atmospheric and creepy - not something to read as a bedtime story! It's a very worthy addition to the Gormenghast canon.

Given Peake's iconic status as a book illustrator, P.J. Lynch was brave to provide illustrations to the master's work. While it would have been marvellous had Peake left his own artwork for the story, Lynch's illustrations are excellent and well complement the narrative tone. His drawing of the Lamb on page 54 of my edition is a chilling inversion of the Agnus Dei: it gives me goosepimples!

[Marko Vasić · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I haphazardly discovered Titus Groan and Gormenghast, I remained quite astonished after I’ve finished both books. Since that time, Mervyn Peake became my second favourite writer (apart from professor Tolkien who is formidable settled on his dais). Genuine master of artistic sentences and picturesque descriptions, along with deep and comprehensive development of protagonists’ psyche. This novel “Boy In Darkness” is an episode or sequence or mere an illustration or excerpt, tightly bound to The Gormenghast trilogy, and yet quite standalone. The story is somewhat of Titus’ vision or somnambulism, which led him away from the immense Gormenghast castle, over the lake, where he was confronted with quite uncanny encountering in a form of an anthropomorphic Goat. With a dash of delusion, Titus let the Goat to carry him into the subterranean shaft, where dwelt the Goat’s master – the Lamb. And thither Titus became aware that those apparitions were not animals yet former humans. The ancient ones. And the underworld is miraculously depicted in this manner: “Far away beyond the power of search, in the breathless wastes, where time slides on and on through the sickness of day and the suffocation of the night, there was a land of absolute stillness - a stillness of breath indrawn and held in the lungs - the stillness of apprehension and a dire suspense. And at the heart of this land or region, where no trees grew, and no birds sang, there was a desert of grey space that shone with a metallic light. Dropping imperceptibly from the four horizons this wide swathe of terrain, as if drawn in towards a centre, began, hardly noticeably at first, to break into terraces bright and lifeless, and, as the level of the surrounding land subsided, the terraces grew steeper and wider until, just when it appeared that the focus of this wilderness was at hand, the grey terraces ceased and there was spread out to the gaze a field of naked stone.” Astonishing descriptions of the underworld and instantly initiated claustrophobic atmosphere. The entire novel is maybe to be comprehended as a potential allegory, or mere a Titus’ vision within a nightmare. Yet, no clear ambit Peake settled on account of this writing. Nevertheless, the novel is quite peculiar and with recognisable Peake’s hallmark.

[Fletcher Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Which way man of groan. Evil mutant zombies or your birthday with barquentine.

[Gennady Gorin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s something interesting there but maybe Peake is just not my jam
-----------------
on reread in March: I do not particularly enjoy Peake. And I do not think Boy in Darkness is particularly good. But it is weird enough to warrant four stars.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mervyn Peake is always delightful. Though not as involving as the grand, monumental Gormenghast Trilogy, to which this is a short coda, Boy in Darkness is nevertheless full of marvels.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and its cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice, and such was Hyena's.

For Hyena had such raw vitality of the blood, such brutal ebullience, that as he ran over the ferns and grasses, a kind of throbbing went with him. An almost audible thing, in the profound silence of the forest. For there was a sense of silence in spite of the monstrous and idiotic laughter, a silence more deadly than any long-drawn stillness, for every fresh burst was like a knife wound, every silence a new nullity.
[29]

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange novella taking place during the events of Gormenghast, the second novel in the Gormenghast Trilogy. Gormenghast established that young Lord Titus, always resisting the rules and limits imposed on him by his title, likes to escape the castle to explore and be part of the surrounding wilderness. This story takes place during one of those excursions.

Peake's prose is wonderfully weird anyway, but for the most part the first two novels take place in a hyper-gothic, but otherwise grounded, fictional, medieval kingdom. Boy in Darkness introduces the first truly fantastical elements to the world: an evil humanoid Lamb who turns human beings into humanoid animals like itself. I'm curious to move on to the third book and see if it continues to include fantastical elements or if this novella is an anomaly.

[Daniel J Truman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is precisely what every book should be

[Riley Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was some spooky bullsh*t.

[Lachrymarvm_Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

“He could not but realize how much more frightening it would be for him to be alone in the darkness of a district alien to his life, a place remote from the kernel of the Castle where, although he detested many of the inhabitants, he was at least among his own kind. For there can be a need for hateful things, and a hatred for what is, in a strange way, loved. And so a child flees to what it recognizes for recognition’s sake. But to be alone in a land where nothing can be recognized, that is what he feared, and that is what he longed for. For what is exploration without peril?”
- from BOY IN DARKNESS by Mervyn Peake (1956)
--------------------------------------
Well, it took me 7 months, but I finally finished reading the entire Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake. I wanted to wait to review it until I finished them all, and had the fullest sense of this behemoth work of gothic fantasy. But I purchased the 3-in-1 collection published by Tusk/Overlook, and as thoroughly as I enjoyed the added content of that edition, it was missing something very important: the novella ‘Boy In Darkness’.

This standalone edition of ‘Boy In Darkness’ may have cost me more than the paperback edition of all 3 main novels, as it seems to no longer be in print, but it was worth the expense! Here Mervyn Peake has created a truly horrifying fever-dream, a work which could perhaps be enjoyed on its own without any of the Gormenghast context, but which certainly adds to the larger whole by its inclusion. Likewise, if you read the three main novels and have never read ‘Boy In Darkness,’ you aren’t necessarily missing any major plot points… but yet, it’s a layer that adds shades of nuance especially to the final Book 3, ‘Titus Alone’ and as such, I think the truest reading of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast stories cannot be considered complete without ‘Boy In Darkness’.

I should mention that, one fascinating thing about this book is that the main character is simply referred to as the Boy; he is never explicitly called ‘Titus’ and likewise, although his home is described as a Castle, ruled by Ritual, it is never explicitly called ‘Gormenghast.’ I can’t say whether this was an intentional, artistic choice by Peake, or whether it was born of necessity to the fact that this novella originally appeared in a collection with two other, unrelated pieces of fiction by other authors. Certainly in that format, it might have made more sense for this to be read as a stand-alone tale of horror. Fewer people might have read it if it was explicitly introduced as a story that technically takes place somewhere before the end of Book 2 of Gormenghast. But it is so obviously implied that it’s unquestionable – the Boy could be no one else but Titus Groan.

I called this story a fever-dream, and really it could almost be read -as- a dream. Or a nightmare. It begins with the Boy in bed after a long day of Ritual, weary of these tedious traditions. He is about to turn 14 years old. And he is contemplating escape from the Castle that feels more like a prison to him than a home… You could almost imagine that he falls asleep, and that everything that happens in ‘Boy In Darkness’ is his dream… especially considering that, in the end (and later in Book 3), he does not seem to remember any of this. But I don’t think Peake would resort to such a trite gimmick. Rather, I think ‘Boy In Darkness’ is the first view of the even stranger lands that exist away from Gormenghast, and which are explored more thoroughly in ‘Titus Alone’ (Book 3).

So the Boy escapes. He crosses a great river after being pursued by an eerie pack of hounds. Then, ashore in some other land on the far side, he meets gruesome beasts who walk, act, and talk like men, a huge Goat and Hyena. These creatures take the Boy through a wasteland, to a deep vault underground:
--------------------------------------
“…there was spread out to the gaze a field of naked stone. Scattered indiscriminately across this field was what looked like the chimneys of shafts of old metal workings, mine heads, and littered here and there in every direction, girders and chains. And over it all the light shone horribly on metal and stone. And while the mocking sun poured out its beams, and while there was no other movement in the whole vast amphitheater, there was something stirring, something far below the level of the ground. Something that was alone and alive…”

The Goat and the Hyena take the Boy to meet another creature, one who seems to be their leader, a Lamb who they both love, and fear. This blind Lamb seems to possess lore and knowledge which has allowed him to make experiments of humans by transforming them into grotesque shapes of beasts:

“…he had willed them to become while they were yet men, beasts, and beasts while they were yet men. This he could achieve, for he could feel for and comprehend the structure of a head and pronounce at once the animal, the prototype that brooded, as it were, behind or within the human shape.”
--------------------------------------
It’s difficult to show, in short quotes, just how twisted and nightmarish the atmosphere of this story is, and how well-sustained throughout the short novella. I read this book in one long sitting, and indeed I believe that is how short fiction is meant to be consumed (Edgar Allan Poe felt the same way, you know). The book gives a sustained feeling of unease, of dread, of the ominous mystery of the unknown – this in spite of the fact that, in hindsight we know that the Boy must make it out okay, since there is, after all, another novel that takes place after this. If anything, my only real criticism is that we don’t get to see more of this nightmare world, we don’t get a more detailed explanation of how it came to be, and what it seems to imply.

But I want to share something fascinating that I noticed. As I said, ‘Boy In Darkness’ shows Titus at age 14. But go backward a little, and in the middle of Book 2 (Gormenghast), Titus has a big celebration for his 10th birthday. It involves a stunning visual display of what I can only describe as giant armatures or puppet-like creations far larger than people, in the shapes of different animals. We see a Lion, a Wolf, a Horse, and a Lamb, in a “masked drama, played upon stilts as tall as trees…” [ch. 50]. These animals seem random, until you read ‘Boy In Darkness’ and notice they both contain a Lamb… and likewise, a Lion is particularly mentioned in ‘Boy In Darkness,’ too:
--------------------------------------
“What it was that kept the last two underlings alive even the Lamb did not know. Something in their natures or in their organs gave the Goat and the Hyena some sort of physical immunity – something perhaps to do with their general coarseness of soul and fibre. They had outlived a hundred powerful beasts whose metamorphoses had in time destroyed them from within. The Lion, only an age ago, had collapsed in a mockery of power, bending his great head as he did so, the tears welling from the amber eyes, to thread their way down tracts of golden cheek-bone.”

I felt a chill when I read this, and thought back to the birthday celebration in Book 2. Was there a darker significance to that animalistic display? In spite of all the Ritual, religion is notably absent from this series. I began to wonder if these are some forms of lost Deities, to whom the people make obeisance through their celebration without even knowing why? And then later, fastforward to the very first page of Book 3 (Titus Alone) and we find these animals mentioned once again:

“…Through regions thighbone deep in sumptuous dust: through lands as harsh as metal, he made his way. Sometimes his footsteps were inaudible. Sometimes they clanged on stone. Sometimes an eagle watched him from a rock. Sometimes a lamb. Where is he now? Titus the Abdicator? Come out of the shadows, traitor, and stand upon the wild brink of my brain!” [ch. 1, Titus Alone]

and on the same page:

“And all the while the far hyena laughter”

I don't know what to make of these connections. If someone is reading this main “trilogy” without having read BOY IN DARKNESS, it might not even register as anything other than atmosphere. But when I saw those specific animals named, it felt very intentional to me. Perhaps if it was not for the terrible illness that ravaged Mervyn Peake and left him unable to continue writing this series, he would have fleshed out these connections more thoroughly. Perhaps the unwritten Book 4 would have elaborated. We’ll never know. So far I have not seen anyone else make particular mention of this connection, so I wonder what anyone else out there might think? Leave me a comment and tell me what you thought about the Lion and the Lamb, the Hyena and the Goat…
--------------------------------------
follow mother_lachrymarvm on instagram for occult content and more...
https://www.instagram.com/mother_lach...

[Bella (Bella's Wonderworld) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beschreibung

Der junge Titus möchte nichts sehnlicher als der Zeremonie zu seinem 14. Geburtstag zu entkommen, um den damit verbundenen und nicht enden wollenden Ritualen zu entgehen. So begibt es sich, dass der 77. Erbe des Hauses Groan in die Freiheit flieht, die Wälder seines Reiches erkundet und dabei, kaum seinem zeremoniellen Gefängnis entkommen, direkt in den nächsten Albtraum stolpert.

Meine Meinung

Mervyn Peake erzählt in seinem Buch »Der Junge im Dunkeln« eine kurze Geschichte über den berühmten Helden aus seiner Gormenghast Reihe, die sehr stark einer Fabel ähnelt. Betrachtet wird ein Ereignis aus dem Leben des jungen Titus, der den zeremoniellen Ritualen zu seinem anstehenden 14. Geburtstag entkommen möchte und bei seiner traumartigen Flucht in den Wald und die Länder seines Reiches in ein albtraumhaftes Abenteuer schlittert.

Titus begegnet auf seinem Weg einem sprechenden Geißbock und einer Hyäne die beide das Ziel verfolgen den kostbaren Jüngling zu ihrem Gebieter Lamm zu bringen. Da Titus keinen anderen Ausweg aus der verfahrenen Situation erkennen kann folgt er dem kuriosen Duo und gerät in die verhängnisvolle Gefangenschaft des Lamms.

Die poetische Sprache Mervyn Peakes passt hervorragend zu dieser kurzweiligen und abenteuerlichen Geschichte des jungen Titus. Nachdem mir vor acht Jahren die Neuauflage der Gormenghast Reihe im Klett-Cotta Verlag so gut gefallen hatte, habe ich mich natürlich sehr auf diese kleine Zusatzgeschichte gefreut. Ich habe diesen kurzen Ausflug mit Titus sehr genossen, möchte euch allerdings nicht zuviel von der Handlung verraten, es geht aber auf jeden Fall spannend zu und Titus benötigt unbedingt sein schlaues Köpfchen, um Heil aus der Angelegenheit zu kommen.

Für alle, die diese Reihe ebenso kennen und lieben, sei erwähnt, dass man diese Erzählung auf keinen Fall mit den Gormenghast Romanen vergleichen sollte, denn hierbei handelt es sich wie bereits erläutert nur um einen kurzen, traumartigen, Ausschnitt aus dem Leben des jungen Thronerben. Während man in den Romanen tief in das Schlossleben auf Gormenghast eintaucht und die skurrilen Schlossbewohner näher kennen lernt, bleiben diese in »Der Junge im Dunkeln« vollkommen außer Acht. Die Geschichte lässt sich somit als eigenständige Lektüre betrachten, die auch gut von Leserinnen und Lesern ohne Vorkenntnisse aus der Roman-Reihe zur Hand genommen werden kann.

Fazit

Ein fabelhaftes Fantasyabenteuer mit dem Helden aus der Gormenghast-Reihe, dass sich für Fans ebenso sehr wie für Neulinge eignet.

[hvsams · Rating 5 out of 5]

...Say what? I only wanted to advance just a bit in the Gormenghast cycle and was actually a bit disappointed about this book not featuring the hilarious castle inhabitants but then I accidentally read the best book of the year? I'm simply startled by how Mervyn Peake kept his peak writing even after leaving the castle, which I was afraid wasn't going to happen. It's like one of those obscure Soviet hrestomatia anthologies for children you read when you're sick and also you're eleven and you're visiting your grandma and you'll never ever remember what the name of that damn novella was — and frankly, Boy in Darkness is only a tad bit weirder than The Little Black Hen (and both of them are the most dungeon synth books ever period). Or Pinocchio, but it's disfigured werewolf mutants who want to become human or at least be accepted as they are. And they also serve the Erl-King and talk to each other like an old married couple because how can you make Waiting for Godot even more touching? by making the beggars also disfigured mutants duh! How can you make The Wind in the Willows or Uncle Remus' stories look like Joël Pommerat's staging of Pinocchio (I was brought to this when I was 10, and maybe that's since when some of my aesthetic preferences are like this)? And how would it be if Mr Hyena and Mr Goat were Frankenstein monsters with all the moral sense of Mr Poligraf Sharikov?

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A runaway between novels. A small novella that explores a first escape. Or perhaps not the first. I’d have counted his quest in search of The Thing as the first escape. But this time it is a wilful expression of a growing, growling desire to leave behind his tower.

I count this one as almost more Gormenghast than Titus Alone these days. It has grown on me.

Whether or not it is a dream, it is fiercely wrought into realness by Peake's trademark descriptive skill.

I think that when I first discovered this it was unsettling for me because I liked viewing Gormenghast as a mutation of human reality. When I read about animal-human creatures I felt it was out of place... it was a fussy reaction born of a comfort I’d carved out for myself. When I got over my initial apprehension... I fell in love with the added surrealism. It didn’t take as much as it gave.

In places it almost seems to veer into the realm of horror too... quite unsettling.

By the end it is a character sketch in a really exciting way. A sort of shorthand re-introduction to the character before Titus Alone. It is clear that without the characters that represented certainty... he has mutated into a creature quite unlike his initial nature. Influence really does its work to impress into the wax a new shape. And Titus loses a lot of his impreciseness during this story.

The alterations are disappointing from a moral standpoint, but from a reader's perspective they are very promising developments.

[Stephanie Fachiol]

This was bizarre. I liked it, but there's no better adjective. It's creepy and atmospheric and one of the best pieces of horror writing I have read.

Based on the previous Gormenghast books (to which this technically belongs, though it may serve as a stand-alone), it's a fever dream. Based on "Titus Awakes," of which I read a grand total of five chapters before I started this, perhaps it is not. It doesn't much matter how this fits into the overall Gormenghast series because the plot may be self-contained, but the prose and characterization is distinctly belonging to the rest of Titus' saga.

Some of the symbolism is clear (the hellhounds, the river that leads to a dusty and dead plain—Styx and its gatekeepers) whereas others had me scratching my head (is the Lamb some sort of critique of Christianity or a meta-commentary of a wolf in sheep's clothing, using the inversion of a symbol of innocence to add to the horror vibe? I've read thoughtful arguments for both but I'm still not entirely convinced the Lamb is a stand-in for organized religion—if anything, combining the Lamb's alchemical transmutations with the factory depicted in "Titus Alone," I think Peake might be pointing his finger at another mode of thought entirely).

My only real complaint is that the plot resolves very quickly. That's fine, though, because this story lives and dies on his horror ambience.

[Uvrón · Rating 5 out of 5]

I brought this to Gormenghast book club so I could offer it as a loan to a Peake fan (mission successful), but realized I had just enough time to reread it if I speed-read very quickly on the train. This is a silly way to read well-written fiction so a lot rushed past me, but I still loved the vibes of this half-remembered story. The Lamb is such a wonderful villain; the contrast of his quiet bleat and its promise of violence, the innumerable candles lighting endless barren caverns, especially the way his endless mollience is made into a thing of horror are particularly meaningful elements inside a story and a setting where the physical form of a character so often does seem to reflect their inner character. Peake adds the Lamb so he can write about the opposite, a virtuous and pleasing form hiding centuries of malevolence. And thus how he can write an allegory for the Church back into his world, which has so many other stifling pressures of English society but was notably missing that one as a source of actual wielded power. (Wise of him to keep the allegory to a standalone fable and leave Gormenghast to be more wriggly.)

The dogs are great. Were they something else?

I'm being generous with my star ratings lately, but I don't feel like picking this apart. Lamb vibes are immaculate and I'm on a post-book-club Peake high.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely hardback edition. It's a tough task to illustrate Peake's prose, as ultimately he's the best illustrator of his own worlds. The illustrations here (by P.J. Lynch) are wonderful all the same, and maintain the sense of frenzy and claustrophobia present in Peake's own scratchy spider-like scrawls.

This is set in the Gormenghast universe, and centres on the escape of Titus, and subsequent adventures. It is an excellent companion novella to the main trilogy, and would also be a nice introduction to children who might not be a ready to tackle the colossus of the Gormenghast whole. The language is fabulous, Peake relishes bizarre and idiosyncratic adjectives and words, and the resulting text is lavish, rich with the grotesque and clandestine. Peake excels at creating unsettling human/animal hybrids, animistic entities with attributes more commonly seen amongst people. The Hyena for example, shaves his face with a cut throat razor every five to six hours - as he is something of a dandy. The filthy goat stinks of ammonia. These are ominous and threatening presences, a far cry from often twee anthropomorphic animals featuring in children's literature - these are sinister and troubling.

Features an introduction by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore.

[Antonis · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 / 5

Boy in Darkness is a short novella by Mervyn Peake that recounts an adventure of a boy (Titus) as he escapes his home and enters a weird forest that feels as if it's in another dimension.
As expected by such a master of prose, Boy in Darkness does not disappoint. Here are most elements that characterize Mervyn Peake as an author: a bleak atmosphere, a strange setting, amazing characterization and unique characters, incredibly beautiful prose, but most of all, Peake's unmatched perception and inimitable expression. While it can not reach the grandeur and literary acclaim of Peake's masterpiece Gormenghast trilogy, still I'm sure that for what it is, it will satisfy all Peake fans who need something more. Highly recommended (but mostly to Peake fans)!

4 / 5

[Jaina Jacobs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting prose, but I didn't really get the story. It felt completely unrelated to the world or characters of Gormenghast. Possibly feels more of a fit with the more widely explored world of the 3rd and 4th books, which I haven't read? Either way, I would say it is for completists only.
I felt the plotline itself was also a bit played out, but possibly it was more of an original and interesting plot at the time it was published. And certainly I did enjoy the writing itself, particularly in regards to the Lamb.

[Toad Soup · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt like this was on the CUSP of sexiness, but it just didn’t do it for me. With this being said, Peake’s art is so sexy, like I am a SLUT for it. I did quite enjoy this though so I am going to do a further guide into gormenghast

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

only six stories and yet i feel ive seen even more of peake's skill than i have in reading gormenghast so far! obviously the main draw of the collection is boy in darkness since its fairly obvious that its about titus, but i really enjoyed the other stories as well. peake's style is more relaxed in most of them and it was really fun to see that he had such a talented range. well worth picking up, although i wish getting it from my library had been easier since i had to interrupt titus alone to fit this in quickly enough
boy in darkness- wow what a rich story, definitely one to take in and think about, more directly metaphorical or applicable than gormenghast. in a strange way this sort of reminded me of watership down? there were a couple descriptions peake used over and over so a little repetitive but still very good
the weird journey - not as easy to understand as boy in darkness but still interesting. i found the imagery harder to picture which i think added to my puzzlement
i bought a palm tree - incredibly funny and kind of incredible to read peake writing in such a different style! this is so plain compared to his usual but fitting for the plot such as it is and the humor
the connoisseurs - peake is just playing with dialogue here and hes great at it, in some ways i wish this tone came out more in gormenghast
danse macabre - oooh i really liked that one! i thought i knew where it was going but it still managed to surprise me. one of those stories that i think different people will walk away with different interpretations of
same time same place - much like the previous one, fear of the unknown or the strange will deprive you of love!

[Sol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird little horror story. I liked the reverse Island of Dr. Moreau images and some of the situations, but I didn't like it quite as much as the main series (in fact, it can be read without any knowledge of the other books). Its brevity prevents it from having a lot of the charms of the previous books, and its whole emotional tone is completely different. The descriptions are as sumptuous as ever, and I loved the portrait of the villain of the story, the Lamb.

The story can be read as a nightmare of Titus, and the situation of the Lamb a twisted parody of the fate Titus foresees himself. The Lamb is physically powerless, but possesses total power over his worshipful subjects. At the same time, the Lamb is confined to the vast and crumbling structure of the Mines, and has no freedom whatsoever. He can also be seen as a parodic anti-Christ, a Lamb, who rather than loving humanity and saving the souls of his followers, hates them and bestially transforms their bodies.

There are supposedly two versions of this story, one "corrupt", but I can't find any information on which I read and the differences between them, other than that the Boy is explicitly Titus in the non-corrupt version.