Piranesi — A Response
I read to escape. To be transported to another world. Fantastical, historical, or fictional, I judge books by how well they pull me in to an alternative world, convince me of their reality, and hold me in thrall to the beauty, wonder, and pain I find there. With Piranesi, Clarke conjures a world like no other. It is a world in microcosm, bare minimal elements pulled together to form the House, a labyrinth of classical buildings, full of marble statues in every conceivable form, each unique. In many ways a static world, but there is life here too — birds fly freely in the dim, opaquely lit sky, ravens caw and albatross glide, there are fish too, swimming in the depths of the internal ocean that fills the lower floor of the House, pulsating rhthymically with the ominous and powerful Tides. And, mysteriously, there is Piranesi, through whose eyes the World reveals its true nature. Birds become messengers; statues, paragons of virtue; the deadly sea, a source of nourishment and wellbeing. In the words of Piranesi —
“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
In many ways, I found the narrative that forms the rest of the novel somewhat inconsequential. I was struck immediately with how Piranesi experiences this strange other-world. How, with a shift in perspective, each potential source of anxiety and fear became a sign, a warning, or a helping hand. Clarke prods us towards seeing the World as Piranesi does with subtle Capitalisation. A technique perhaps best employed by A.A. Milne in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, the power of the capital letter should not be underestimated. With a single shrewd contortion of form an innocuous chair can transmogrify into a Chair; a thing of note, a thing more than before, a thing worthy of notice, a thing that might do, become, affect.
For Piranesi, many things in the World are ordained with capitals, suggestive to me of veneration, of lifting up, of appreciation and gratitude.
“The Lower Halls are the Domain of the Tides; their Windows — when seen from across a Courtyard — are grey-green with the restless Waters and white with the spatter of Foam… The Upper Halls are, as I have said, the Domain of the Clouds; their Windows are grey-white and misty… The Upper Halls give Fresh Water, which is shed in the Vestibules in the form of Rain and flows in Streams down Walls and Staircases.”
Piranesi knows that without the World, and its abundance, he would cease to be. He is a Child of the House, its caretaker, disciple, and defender.
Eventually, as with all things, comes Change. Piranesi must reluctantly leave the House. However, despite his apparent return to the ‘real’ world, it becomes clear that he retains the worldview instilled in him by his stay in the World of Statues, Vestibules, Halls, and Tides. For Piranesi is still able to distil from objects in this world, the perfect Platonic Forms of themselves which were his co-habitants in The House. In a falling leaf, in the hum of cars, in the silent twinkling of the night sky, Piranesi sees pure, untainted, beauty, and he makes me believe that I could too.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Buy it here.
