On the meaning of the song 'the hanging garden'

[martino]

About the song 'the hanging garden' Robert Smith says :
"the hanging garden is something like about the purity and hate
of animals f*cking, and i think siamese twins is about the hate
and purity of people f*cking too ..."
What does it mean?
I read from this fanzine:
CURE NEWS N° 9

In the book In the hanging garden, a man sets out with his partner to breed dogs. There are many very strange local people who capture his dogs, other animals and insects and either kill them or maim them and leave them to die hanging in a hidden area of the local countryside known as The Hanging Garden which the main character discovers to his horror. The reason for the cruelty is not given.  The animals cry as they die. His own mistreated sick dogs are seen shaking as they die. The main character is himself captured and ill treated, waking in the dark with an aftertaste in the back of his mouth (hence the Shake Dog Shake reference).
A hint of the song's meaning I read here :
The hanging garden

[Ulrich]

Thank you for posting about the book "The hanging garden", could be an "inspiration" for the song!

Also, thanks for the quotes from the fanzine. Interesting! 

Robert said before, that to understand the lyrics from the album "Pornography", he would have to explain them "line by line" (which he never did, as far as I know).
He kinda echoes this here when he mentions "several layers of (logically) unconnected ideas".

[martino]

Robert said before, that to understand the lyrics from the album "Pornography", he would have to explain them "line by line"

This I did not know. It is understandable that Robert would have to explain the lyrics of the song line by line. I think the title of the song refers to a place in the country where sick dogs and other animals were hung. They were hung alive, tortured and left to die in agony. This place that exists in the novel "the hanging garden" I believe is the garden referred to in the lyrics of the song. It would be interesting to have the explanation of the person who wrote the song (Robert) line by line. The work has already been started here: https://www.cureious.co.uk/the-hanging-garden

[MAtT]

I'd previously read somewhere that The Hanging Garden referred to Muzzlehatch's traveling zoo in the final Gormenghast novel, Titus Alone. But having read the book, the connection isn't obvious (certainly not as obvious as the rest of the influences taken from that series in The Drowning Man and other works), so this makes more sense to me. Good info, thanks 

[martino]

MatT does the song 'the hanging garden' refer to the book 'the hanging garden' or the novel Gormenghast, Titus Alone ? What does 'The Drowning man' have to do with it?
Thanks.

[Circekins]

The Drowning Man is a clear representation of the chapter in the Gormenghast trilogy in which Fuscia is drowned, but it isn't at all obvious which bit of the trilogy Hanging Garden might be linked to (if indeed it is at all!).
I'm looking forward to reading The Hanging Garden book now even tho it sounds rather grim

[MAtT]

Yeah, what Circekins said.

The Gormenghast trilogy is three books by Mervyn Peake and The Drowning Man is about the death of Fuchsia in the middle book, "Gormenghast". And I'd just read somewhere - a long time ago and I can't remember where - that The Hanging Garden was also inspired by the Gormenghast trilogy, this time by the third book "Titus Alone".

But I've read Titus Alone, and although a there's a character called Muzzlehatch who keeps a traveling zoo where he mistreats the animals (if I remember correctly) and I think has their cages hanging from trees, it wasn't immediately obvious the lyrics of The Hanging Garden referred to that - seemed a bit tenuous to me at the time I recall.

So if this book by David Wagoner contains actual lines in the song, then that along with its title makes it the much better explanation for the influence.