Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke

Read in October 2024 for a workplace book club. I really enjoyed it, a lot more than her earlier novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which although it had enjoyable ideas and moments in it, did not feel very cohesive and was probably far too long. I think in the intervening years Susanna Clarke has honed her skills and managed to craft a much more satisfying, shorter novel. Many ideas and themes in her first novel reappear here in Piranesi but to much greater effect (e.g. magic breaking through into the mundane, entering parallel worlds, the reality of symbols, divination (in Strange & Norrell it was tarot cards, here it is observing birds and statues, p. 41–43)).

There was a Risking Enchantment episode about Piranesi. In it they focus greatly on the environmental aspect of the story, that we are meant to steward Creation, rather than dominate it and our fellow man.

I love the quote from The Magician’s Nephew at the very start of the book: “I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need subjects to do it on.”

A Few Other Things it Reminded Me of

• Borges’ The Library of Babel: a world consisting of an infinite building, but whereas Borges’ Library seems pessimistic, maddening, devoid of meaning, Clarke’s House is full of meaning, grace, and goodness.
• The computer game Myst: exploring a mysterious artificial world mostly alone, the few other characters you meet seem to be your friends at first, they ask you to do things for them, and they slowly become more manipulative and desperate that you help them and only them
• Gene Wolfe’s famous quote: “We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.” Although our world created the House, it is implied that the statues it contains are all distillations of ideas and knowledge from our world, as if they had always existed, like Platonic forms.

Questions I Was Left with

• What is the significance of the albatross (or albatross family, p. 26–33)? Since the year is named after the albatross, we see it mentioned on almost every page of the book, and so I was expecting something more to be revealed about it. Perhaps there is some symbolism surrounding it.
• Who was the Fish-Leather Man? He is an incomplete collection of very worn bones, that were once threaded together with fish leather to be displayed in a certain way. My two best guesses I’ve come up with are:
  1. He was the historical Piranesi (1720 – 1778) who came to (and died!) in the House, and his etchings were actually of the House.
  2. He is a set of bones from the Manchester Museum, stolen and brought to the House by Arne-Sayles or one of his followers who was involved in the Marepool III incidident.
• Why didn’t the 192nd Western Hall ever get visited again (the Hall with No Windows and One Door)? It was introduced to the reader as a highly unusual part of the House, and when Piranesi visits (p. 56–61) he has his revelation that he needn’t seek the Great and Secret Knowledge anymore. We know that Ketterley was actually planning to make the journey there at some point. Consequently I kept expecting that the climax of the novel would take place there, but it of course didn’t.

The Religious Sense

• The protagonist has lost his memories of our world, and has been reduced to a kind of blank slate that has been moulded by the House into the character we know from the beginning of the novel. In this fresh state he sees the House as God, and has naturally developed a kind of religion around the House. He prays, “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite,” and variations on this. He sees the House as a beneficient provider and saviour for him. The House is full of meaning. He wants to explore the House, and learn all about it, and its halls and statues, without trying to exploit it as Ketterley is trying to do. He cares for and brings offerings to the dead of the House, and spends time pondering on their unknown lives, and whether anyone will come after him, and whether one of them was intended to be his wife. This all points to this idea of a Religous Sense, that mankind’s natural state is religious. It seeks always a higher power, and meaning beyond itself.
  • His prayer is a little bit reminiscent of Psalm xxv, 8: Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuae, et locum habitationis gloriae tuae, “I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house; and the place where thy glory dwelleth.”

Part 1 - Piranesi

• p. 8–12, the catalogue of people
• p. 8, the Great and Secret Knowledge, its putative benefits
• p. 15, Piranesi’s favourite statue is of Mr. Tumnus; apart from this one, the statues tend to be more symbolic and less a direct reference to something.

Part 2 - The Other

• p. 29–33, the albatross
• p. 58–61, the revelation at the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall, the Hall with No Windows and One Door
  • He believes he has received a revelation to from the House, telling him to give up the search for the Great and Secret Knowledge
  • “The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of itself. It is not the means to an end.”
  • Love: The beloved is valuable because she is the beloved, she is not the means to an end.
  • “Abandoning the search for Knowledge would free us to pursue a new sort of science. We could follow any path that the data suggested to us.”
  • True science, true Knowledge, true Gnosis, is without preconceptions

Part 3 - The Prophet

• p. 88, Arne-Sayles: “[My contemporaries] were all enamoured with the idea of progress and believed that whatever was new must be superior to what was old. As if merit was a funtion of chronology!”
• p. 90, the statues as Platonic forms:
  • Piranesi: “Do the Statues exist because they embody the Ideas and Knowledge that flowed out of the other world into this one?”
  • Arne-Sayles: “… Yes, yes! I think that highly likely! Perhaps in some remote area of the labyrinth, statues of obsolete computers are coming into being as we speak!”
    • Do the statues only flow into the House once they are obsolete in our world? This makes them a bit less like Platonic forms since they are not eternal and they depend on our world for their existence. But see p. 222, where Piranesi claims the statues are perfect and eternal.
• Arne-Sayles refers a few times to the labyrinth being a place where forgotten things go. There are numerous worlds he could have gone to but he was most interested in this place, where the lost powers of our world went, “the [place] into which everything forgotten flows”, the place where “statues of obsolete computers are [now] coming into being”. There is also the interview quote from him at the very beginning of the book: “I am an amnesiologist. I study what has been forgotten.” He also first accesses the place by remembering his childhood. Forgetting and remembering seem to be analogous to the (ongoing) creation of the labyrinth, and the entering and departing from the labyrinth by the people and animals of our world.
  • The head of Marepool III reanimates during the ritual at the Manchester Museum. Is this resurrection analogous to a remembering of things and powers long forgotten?
• Arne-Sayles is the cool, aloof villain, while Ketterley is the screw-up, the incompetent villain

Part 4 - 16

• p. 147–153, Matthew’s Glastonbury notes on Arne-Sayles
  • Contains the Marepool III incident
  • The ancients used to speak with the Powers of this world, there was a dialogue between Man and the World
  • By virtue of this, reality could be persuaded, Nature could be bent to Man’s will
  • “Seas could be parted, men could turn into birds and fly away, or into foxes and hide in dark woods, castles could be made out of clouds.”
  • By the late 70s, Arne-Sayles was no longer so interested in the lost powers the ancients, as he was in where they had good
  • Arne-Sayles first enters the labyrinth: “To my surprise I discovered that the act of remembering was extremely potent… All around me doors into other worlds began appearing but I knew the one I wanted, the one into which everything forgotten flows.”

Part 5 - Valentine Ketterley

• p. 173–183, Matthew’s interview with Valentine Ketterley, 15 November, 2012
  • The labyrinth, as a symbol only, would symbolize cosmic grandeur, “a symbol of mingled glory and the horror of existence. No one gets out alive.”

Part 6 - Wave

• p. 220–2211, Raphael’s interview with Arne-Sayles
  • The sacramentality of reality
    • Raphael: “Why would [Matthew] perform the ritual or do whatever it is? There’s nothing in what he wrote to suggest he believed your theories. Quite the reverse in fact.”
    • Arne-Sayles: “Oh, belief. Why do people always think it’s a question of belief? It’s not. People can ‘believe’ whatever they want. I really couldn’t care less.”
• p. 222, the statues as Platonic forms:
  • Raphael: “Here you can only see a representation of a river or a mountain, but in our world — the other world — you can see the actual river and the actual mountain.”
  • Piranesi: “I do not see why you say I can only see a representation in this World. The word ‘only’ suggests a relationship of inferiority. You make it sound as if the Statue was somehow inferior to the thing itself. I do not see that that is the case at all. I would argue that the Statue is superior to the thing itself, the Statue being perfect, eternal and not subject to decay.”

Part 7 - Matthew Rose Sorensen

• p. 239, “But I, who am not Piranesi — or at least not only him”
  • Reminds me of Thecla-Severian from The Book of the New Sun, the merging of two people becomes a third person who is not quite the one nor the other