Piranesi by Susanna ClarkeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Some notes: I bought the ebook $10 and Audible $7. I could not go shopping for the first edition because some of the book stores are closed? Listened and read some last night. the way Clarke uses the month by number instead of the name. But there were Journal titles with November and June. This alters reality. The year is given by specific events such as the year the Albertross came. On earth, we don't have names for years except for the Chinese Zodiacs. This seems to make the narrative an earthbound person but a slightly altered perception.
'The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. ... Therefore, the albatross can be both an omen of good or bad luck, as well as a metaphor for a burden to be carried as penance."
So this signals a psychological change in the narrator. The Other calls him Piranesi but he says it's not his name. This suggests that the narrator has an alter ego. The Other sometimes acts as the narrator's psychologist.
This year could have easily been named the year the Covid19 virus came. One critic mentioned that Clarke's Piranesi is so very timely. We are sequestered yet we are yearning to explore. Clarke's Piranesi's allows us to do this a little bit. It's a guide to our own psyche. Clarke puts up symbolisms, ancient icons, and myths that echo within the vast hall.
We see the statues make an appearance in Clarke's novel 'Strange and Norrel' 16 years ago. Norrel performed the only trick in the book was to make the statues in the cathedral speak bring back ghostly accusations and pleadings.
'I dreamt of him once; he was standing in a snowy forest and speaking to a female child.' This is a reference to Narnia. The epigram from C.S. Lewis also is the frontispiece and the cover is a figure similar to Tumus. Of course, statues are a result of the wicked queen turning her enemies to stone, even the lion got turned. The statues are paralysis, could possibly be a psychological one as experienced by the narrator. In the end, the lion is turned back to flesh. The Medusa also turns flesh into stone.
The statue with the beehive. Bee has appeared in 'The Magician' novel by Lev Grossman. What was hinted at in Piranesi is a full-fledged tribute to Narnia in 'The Magician'. As a child, Tumus seems innocent enough. But in the Greek characterization, Pan is a sexual and seductive God that plays with nymphs. Of course, these are just mere guides after we enter through the doorway, wardrobe, and fall into another world that is largely in our heads. The medium here is the book. The journal as a record. The house itself is an expanding world. We are given measurements in meters. It takes the narrator 3 hours to reach a certain hall. It is mentioned that the Hall is created for giants. The statues are larger than human size. If we scale it back, the idea of the house as expansion and is magical is in the novel by John Crowley 'Little, Big'. The house itself is the key, the entry point. The house is magic and so is the Hall.
I can't remember how Piranesi showed up on my radar. But the first enticement is that it had to do with architecture. It reminded me of 'Little, Big'. But here was this reference to Piranesi. I also thought of Bolle and his large structures. Piranesi is classical and Boullée is more modern. Bolle created a monument to Newton. The first hint of this expansion is in Norrell's library. When I read this some years ago, I immediately drew some parallels to 'Little, Big'. Norrell left his visitors baffled at the vastness of the library that is bigger than the modest house could contain and also managed to remember very little of what the library contained. I remember reading it as one of my favorite parts of the book. Frankly, when it got to the warfare it was less interesting. Maybe it was my interest in architecture and books. The magic is an expansion of spacial relations. I'm a little disappointed when I read review yearning for the sequel or prequel to Norrel and Strange. People complained because it lacks certain malicious warfare. But to me, Piranesi is a continuation of this theme of spacial expansion and our own mind's capacity for spatial renderings, our yearning to reach far with telescopes and drive on interstates highways. Clarke takes just two elements (statue and spacial expansion0 from Norrel and Strange 16 years later to create Piranesi. When we were studying, Piranesi and Boullee, were presented as paper architects. They fantasized about the possibility of architecture. Their architecture was for the mind to inhabit. The profession also derides architects that didn't build physical buildings. But as you can see Piranesi inspired other creatives and novelists to that it further to link it back to magical practices. In some case, Calvino and now Clarke has something to teach the architects. Sure we were given books to read such as 'Invisible Cities' and Heidegger's 'Being and Time'. Yes, we were encouraged to imagine. The cross-breeding of discipline enriched the work. I guess my point is, Clarke mixed genera in Norrel and Strange by rendering it with Victorian romance languages that read like Wuthering Heights to the fantasy story which contained magic. Here we see a similar cross-breeding of architecture, art, and myths. It could easily be written by Piranesi himself if he attempted a novel.
The Other is about to perform ceremonial magic to bring the answer to the secret knowledge. Here we see magik as practical as a modern-day revival of it similar to the Golden Dawn tradition instead of the fantasy kind. Clarke doesn't dwell on this. It's a hint of modern-day era magical practices. The Pan god suggests Paganism.
The element of water is pervasive. There is this element of a Protean dream within the space that is destructive and shifting but the narrator tries to record.
This vast complex that the character traverses in reminds me of Calvino's Invisible Cities. Perhaps there are other similar structural organisms of this microcosm. There is a stratified layer. At the bottom is the element of water. Also, the pentagram has five directions for the earth, water, fire, air, and spirit. The Drowned Hall is in water and The cloud chamber in air.
Mentions of the commonplace method of record-keeping and journaling.
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