This gardener, who tends the castle grounds of the monstrous pile of Gormenghast, is driven by something more than the beauty and colour of the flowers he grows, rather by their vital sap or something similar.  He must have tapped into, or been made of, the same ‘force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, that wonderful opening line of a Dylan Thomas poem.

‘Of flowers, he had a knowledge beyond that of a botanist, or the artist, being moved by the growth rather than the fulfilment, the organic surge that found its climax in the gold or the blue rather than in the colours, the patterns or anything visible.’ 

See a triologism growing in the same garden.

See also our bestellar review of this book, with its lavishly illustrated quote-mosaic, packed with fine phrasing and fresh metaphors.  

Source: Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (London: Vintage, 1998), p. 87

Photo credit: Henrique Ferreira at unsplash