Reading Gormenghast again. I finished Titus Groan last year, but I did so while I was in surgery which coloured the memory a bit, and I finally picked up the second book. Today on the train I reached chapter 13.
In this chapter, an elderly professor has a long and one-sided argument with an incredulous young man. The Professor does not believe in the cold, the heat, pain, or for that matter the young man's face. He insists that pain in the world of the living is not real, an illusory Simulacrum of real pain, which can only be experienced after death, and would be such a wondrous experience that you would burn yourself to feel it.
The young man angrily asks what if it would hurt if his beard was lit on fire? What if the young man were to light his beard on fire right here right now?
The Elderly man grins and replies, "What if you did?"
The young man immediately proceeds to light the Professor's beard on fire.
It takes the Old man three days recovering from his burns to wake up, at which point he remembers what happened, and immediately dies of shock.
Three other Professors, previously introduced as being followers and disciples of the Old Man, weep by his deathbed, and bow to his memory. After they finish bowing, however, one of them mentions that - since the old man's dead now and can't judge him - he must confess that when he fell down the stairs three weeks ago it did actually hurt a lot, and pretending that pain wasn't real real actually made it a lot worse.
With that, the spell is broken. Now that he's dead (He is dead, isn't he?), the source of their cowardice and repression is gone (He is, don't worry.) and revantations flow from their mouths. They leave the small bedroom. They pass from corridor to corridor, room to room, until finally they burst out of Gormenghast into the sunshine, running across the lush fields hand in shining hand.
