Cecily’s Reviews > Mervyn Peake: My Eyes Mint Gold - A Life > Status Update

For fans - of his art as much as his writing. There was little that was new to me, but it was well-written, beautifully and generously illustrated, and will be used to update many of my other Peake reviews.

'Art is really sex in another guise.' Mervyn Peake.
'Art is more than history - it is a living, breathing, self-contained and permanent state of beauty.' MP
'Beauty plus pity - that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.' Nabakov
(It's more about art and illustration than writing, so far, as expected for this stage of his life.)

Thanking his mother-in-law for 'the wondrous socks... they make me feel very sprightly and spring-like, and I am leaping about most frolicsome-like and giving little whimsical crys [sic] of delight which do not suit my inner aspect, but which satisfy my feeling.'
Mrs Gilmore kept him in socks for the rest of her life. p84

The paper and binding are unexceptional, but in every other respect, this book is a thing of profound beauty: the words, the many illustrations, and excerpts of poetry.