Piranesi: Who Are You? 

by Natasha Witmer

If you have read Piranesi, then perhaps you have also scrambled to find book reviews and people to ask about it’s meaning. You ought to read the book before you read this, because, spoilers. Because Piranesi should be read for the first time with no expectations or suspicions. Because of “the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight.”  

So, you’ve read Piranesi. If you’ve also read Susanna Clarke’s popular book Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell that may have added to your initial surprise on reading Piranesi. Clarke’s larger work features two non-gentleman magicians who act out their uncertain friendship rivalry in the rich language and dry humor of Austen and Dickens surrounded by an English landscape and the political tension of the Napoleonic wars. She works out her plot in a world that is familiar to many avid readers, allowing her to introduce strange and magical elements that recreate a familiar world into one of delight and intrigue.  

Piranesi lands you, well, nowhere. All you get is Piranesi and Piranesi’s mind. Each journal entry is obscurely labeled something like, “Entry for the First Day of the Fifth Month in the Year the Albatross came to the South-Western Halls.” Piranesi’s words are familiar ones and they all refer to things that we recognize, yet they do little to help us understand this strange new world. Clever of Clarke to do that to us; we are prepared to be sympathetic when Piranesi also encounters unsettling information about his world. But first we spend a good third of the book (it’s not a very long one) following Piranesi around in this strange world that appears to be entirely House. The lowest Halls are filled with ocean Tides and the highest are studded with Clouds. You can, obviously, see stars out the window. But the House is what is.  

Piranesi is simultaneously simple and intelligent. He operates without much contextual knowledge about himself, but the lack of knowledge about his origin does not bother him. His journals are careful records of the world of the House and his thoughts. The detailed description, carefully cataloging, and his self-created calendar indicate a trained, scientific mind. Piranesi appears to be the noble savage; with an inexplicable amount of nobility. 

Eventually you meet the one other living person in this world whom Piranesi calls the Other. Piranesi has named the Other according to his place in Piranesi’s world and the Other has named Piranesi according to his place in the Other’s world. Piranesi is a clever reference to Giovanni Battista Piranesi, an “Italian Classical archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric “prisons’.” (If you look up the Wikipedia page I just referenced a suggested link redirects you to the page for the novel Piranesi by Susanna Clarke indicating that searches for Piranesi have likely increased since the book’s publication.) Piranesi is a prisoner, both physically and psychologically; an oblivious captive.  

  The first resource I tapped after I read Piranesi was a podcast by Alzabo Soup. In this podcast Philip Armstrong and Andrew Metroth point out that as a portal fantasy this other world is rather dark. Portal fantasy popularly sends its characters to another world where they are forced to grow, facing some challenge that ultimately sends them back to their world with improved characters. However, as Piranesi discovers how he came to be in this other world and the motives and characters of the people who brought him here, we realize that visitors find the House to be hostile; erasing their memories and bringing madness upon them. Thirteen skeletons, whom Piranessi calls “the people of the alcove,” bear grim testimony. This portal world does not seem to want visitors or at least not as they are upon arrival. The person who had known himself as Mathew Sorensen survives only by transforming so entirely into Piranesi that he has no memory of his former life, or even his former name.  

Piranesi’s ritual dedication to the House and the skeletons of the Dead and the Statues and his reverent and loving references to his duties toward all of them are surprisingly compelling. His world is filled with the sort of things that could easily have been depicted with a taste of horror, but, seen through Piranesi’s eyes, we suspend judgement and find Beauty in the skeleton of the Biscuit-Box man and the Drowned Halls, and the statue of the Dog-Fox teaching two Squirrels and two Satyrs. Sorensen’s ability to metamorphosize into a person of religious dedication to the world around him and his awareness of the sacred keep him alive. A propensity for making food out of seaweed is not unhelpful. 

Piranesi discovers, through his journals, that much of his memory has been erased. When the dangerous Raphael confronts him with the question, “Are you Mathew Rose Sorensen?” Piranesi is understandably shaken to be tipped into the realization that he had been someone else. What is so intriguing, though, is that Piranesi does not return to his former identity; he thinks of Sorensen as only a part of himself, smaller and carried within. Furthermore, once he leaves the House and returns to our world, he recognizes himself as neither Piranesi nor Sorensen, but a third and new person who can now recognize the House in either world. This is a story of synergistic transformation. Mathew Rose Sorensen is a journalist of no mean ability and insight. Yet, he deconstructs this reality to become Piranesi, the simple, the unaware, the unknowing. From his state of simplicity in the House he becomes something altogether different from Sorensen. Ultimately, he resurges into a third consciousness who is both Sorenson and Piranesi and more than both.  

What does it all mean, you ask? Like Clarke’s other work Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Piranesi lacks a single, clear interpretation. Is it symbolic? Religious? Psychological? Literary? Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles writes, “Perhaps Clarke’s cleverest move in this infinitely clever novel is the way she critiques our obliterating efforts to extract deeper meaning and greater value from everything in our world.” Within Piranesi Clarke exposes just such a determined search for knowledge, mainly in the character of the Other, who is in the House only to search for this Great and Secret Knowledge. The Other believes that this Knowledge will give him power over others and over death. Piranesi, on one of his pilgrimages throughout the Halls to gather data for the Other, comes to a realization. He writes: 

 “I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a riddle to be unraveled, a text to be interpreted, and that if we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery. The sight of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.” (Piranesi 60). 

When I began the book, I wanted to link the capitalized Virtues to Plato’s Forms. Then I wanted the House as a metaphor for the Psyche. Or possibly the Infrastructure of Religion. A story that would provide a Key to the Nature of Reality. Something suitable to the compelling nature of Clarke’s writing.  

However, Piranesi himself distrusts such a venture. Realizing it is profitless to search for the Great and Secret Knowledge, Piranesi decides that he and the Other should simply gather data and follow any path that it would suggest to them. The Other is wrong about the Great and Secret Knowledge. The Other hoped that this Knowledge would give him the ability to communicate with nature the way one person communicates with another. This is precisely what Piranesi was already in possession of and what he has decided to continue doing. He attends to the House because it is Enough in and of itseslf.  

When Piranesi returns to our world, he sees people that he recognizes from statues in the House. The statues reveal aspects about the people that are not obvious in our world. In this way Piranesi’s two worlds enlarge each other. A broken man in our world is depicted as a statue of a king in the House. Through the eyes of Piranesi, I see my world differently. And I no longer feel the need to “figure out” Piranesi. Reading Piranesi is a goodness in itself. “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.” 

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Natasha burrows through books, art, and music and is sometimes inspired to return thanks by her own small contribution.

 

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Works Cited 

Charles, Ron. “Susanna Clarke’s infinitely clever ‘Piranesi’ is enough to make you appreciate life in quarantine” Washington Post. September 8, 2020 at 12:23 p.m. ED 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books /susanna-clarkes-infinitely-clever-piranesi-is-enough-to-make-you-appreciate-life-in-quarantine/2020/09/08/09836026-f123-11ea-999c-67ff7bf6a9d2_story.html 

Clarke, Susanna. Piranesi. 2020 Bloomsbury Publishing. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.   

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Artwork: Albert Bierstadt 1830-1902 Sunlight and Shadow