"The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, and their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreaths that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up the hidden walls."
Peake, Mervyn. Titus Groan (1946) in The Gormenghast Trilogy. (St. Ives: Clays Ltd, 1994), p140.
(I'm currently wading through the first book in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, Titus Groan. His use of language is impressive; the text is constantly rich and dripping with poetry. It is like a thick, succulent gravy, which means that it has taken me a while to make any significant in-roads into it. If Joseph Conrad had written in this style he'd probably be my favourite author.)
Had Peake written Heart of Darkness, I think the words would have burned the pages they were printed on!
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