Complete Nonsense

by Mervyn Peake, G Peter Peter Winnington (Editor), Robert Maslen (Editor)

'Nonsense', wrote Mervyn Peake, 'can take you by the hand and lead you nowhere. It's magic.' Peake (1911-68) is one of the great English nonsense poets, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. His verses lead the reader into places where cause is cut free of effect and language takes on a giddy life of its own. Malicious bowler hats threaten their owners, a cake is chased across an ocean by a rakish knife, aunts become flatfish or live on sphagnum moss. Fully annotated, with a detailed introduction, Complete Nonsense contains all the poems and illustrations from Peake's Book of Nonsense (1972), with forty unpublished poems discovered in manuscripts and thirty from uncollected sources, including all the nonsense verses from his novels. It reprints complete - for the first time and in colour - the words and images from Rhymes without Reason (1944), and Peake's comic masterpiece Figures of Speech (1954). All the poems have been newly edited, often from Peake's manuscripts, by Robert Maslen, editor of Peake's Collected Poems (Carcanet), and Peter Winnington, the leading Peake scholar and biographer. Peake wrote of the rare art that 'glitters with the divine lunacy we call nonsense' Complete Nonsense glitters with Peake's benign and wayward imagination.

Genres: Poetry

378 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2011

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

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would give the poems on their own a four-star rating, but Peake's magnificent illustrations elevate the book to a five-star status.

That's not to denigrate the poems, many of which are favourites and, in isolation, would be five-stars, but some are more curiosities, included because this is complete nonsense.

There are some beautifully coloured illustrations included and these, for me, were alone worth the price of the book. I've also wanted to see Peake's Figures of Speech for a long time, but haven't found a copy I could afford, so it was a bonus to have these humorous visual conundrums included here.

My favourite poems, in no particular order, are Linger With Me Now, Thou Beauty; It Makes a Change; Uncles and Aunts; Squat Ursula; O Here It Is and There It Is... and Little Spider.

Definitely a book I'll be re-reading over and over. What a joy!

[Rabishu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the occasional gem, Peake's nonsense-as-nonsense never rises to the level of Lear or Carroll. However there's a lot of oddly moving material in this collection which threatens to cross over at times into "serious" poetry, and Peake is at his best, I think, when he works in this genre.

I'm not sure, however, about the inclusion of his first draft and incomplete work in this volume. I doubt he'd have wanted it to be seen, and (as one would expect) it is of noticeably lower quality than his finished pieces.

[Jan Kjellin · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Complete Nonsense" might not be complete nonsense, but nonetheless it's nonsensical enough for me.

I have come to understand that, with the exception of the Gormenghast writings, Mervyn Peake was not the author I expected him to be. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing or so... It's just that it sort of baffles me that soemone who could envison such a gothic and fantastical world as the castleworld of Gormenghast didn't really have more to offer.

Ah, well.

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of it is indeed utter nonsense. I found the pairing of poetry and illustrations to work well, and particularly enjoyed the relationship between them when Peake actually made them to work together. I wasn’t a fan of the poetry style overall (not quite Dr. Seuss, but in a similar vein), and was a bigger fan of his illustrations.

The poem I enjoyed the most was

Song of the Castle Poet
(to be declaimed with one foot in the air!)

[Mladen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful!