"Piranesi"

[fiefoe]

Susanna Clarke's earlier "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell", thick and meaty as it was, didn't prepare me for this one, which is as slim and limpid as an allegory.

• To the right is placed the skull and to the left is a biscuit box containing all the small bones – finger bones, toe bones, vertebrae etc. The biscuit box is red.
• The Sixteenth Person And You. Who are You? Who is it that I am writing for? Are You a traveller who has cheated Tides and crossed Broken Floors and Derelict Stairs to reach these Halls?
• Yet, at the same time, I can see that it is in the nature of men to prefer one thing to another, to find one thing more meaningful than another.
• As I crossed the Eleventh Western Hall, the Wind knocked me from one Paving Stone to another as if I were a chess piece on a board. (I made some highly original moves!)
• Still it continued, straight towards me, and the strangest thought came to me: perhaps the albatross and I were destined to merge and the two of us would become another order of being entirely: an Angel!
• In the Air he was a miraculous being – a Heavenly Being – but on the Stones of the Pavement he was mortal and subject to the same embarrassments and clumsiness as other mortals.
• This was no insignificant amount and I knew that I might be colder because I had given it away. But what is a few days of feeling cold compared to a new albatross in the World?
• They contain giant Statues of Men with curly Heads and Beards that strain and struggle out of the confines of the Walls, extending their Upper Bodies over the Dark Waters. There is one in particular who leans out so far that his broad, muscular Back forms an almost horizontal platform half a metre or so above the level of the Water, making an excellent place from which to fish.
• They covered the Walls so thickly and were twisted into such tortuous forms that it was like walking under the dripping branches of a great forest of Arms and Bodies.
• the birds were all aflight. They circled and spiralled, creating a whirling dance. They filled the Vestibule like a column of smoke, which grew darker and denser in places and the next moment lighter and airier.
• In the Forty-Fifth Vestibule I saw a Staircase that had become one vast bed of mussels. One of the Statues that lined the Wall of the Staircase was all but engulfed in a blue-black carapace of mussels with only half a staring Face and one white, out-flung Arm left free.
• I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever 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.
• the labyrinth plays tricks on the mind. It makes people forget things. If you’re not careful it can unpick your entire personality.’
• The Shadows between the two Statues were producing a sort of optical illusion. I could almost imagine that they extended backwards a long way and that I was in fact gazing into a corridor leading to a distant point where there was a patch of misty light. This patch of light contained other lights that seemed to flicker and move. It was from there that both the draught and the scent seemed to emanate.
• This is what I call a Distributary World – it was created by ideas flowing out of another world.
• ‘Do the Statues exist because they embody the Ideas and Knowledge that flowed out of the other World into this one?’
• Perhaps he was even some dizzyingly high number like the Seventy-Fifth Person!
• ‘Quite. And then there’s the whole question of your dignity as a human being. You would be in this degraded, mad condition. It would be very humiliating for you. I can’t imagine that you would want to go on like that, would you?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I do not think that I would.’ ‘Well,’ he said and took a deep breath. ‘In those circumstances, if I find you are mad, then I think it’s best if I kill you. For both our sakes.’ ‘Oh!’ I said. This was rather unexpected.
• saw that there were earlier entries for other subjects. These were as strange as the entry for Stanley Ovenden. As I focussed on them, I experienced the same reluctance to register what my eyes saw.
• During dinner Arne-Sayles talked about the other world (a place where architecture and oceans were muddled together) and how it was possible to get there.
• The Other was right after all. I had forgotten many things! Worse still, at the very point at which the Other has declared he will kill me if I become mad, I have discovered that I am mad already!
• I felt a great pressure there as if a whole host of half-formed ideas were about to break through into my consciousness, bringing with them more madness or else understanding.
• The camera meanders around various enormous rooms, presumably in different castles or palaces (we cannot be seeing one building; it is simply too vast). The walls are lined with statues and puddles
• It occurs to me that there are many other ideas that I understand perfectly, even though no such things exist in the World. For example I know that a garden is a place where one can refresh oneself with the sight of plants and trees.
• How horrible, how terrible to be in this dreadful place and MAD. I am DETERMINED TO KILL him before this happens. Before I forget why I HATE HIM.
• I did when I wrote to the Other or to Laurence (the person who had wanted to see the Statue of an Elderly Fox teaching some Squirrels).
• Reality was not only capable of taking part in a dialogue – intelligible and articulate – it was also persuadable. Nature was willing to bend to men’s desires, to lend them its attributes.
• All around me doors into other worlds began appearing but I knew the one I wanted, the one into which everything forgotten flows. The edges of that door were frayed and worn by the passage of old ideas leaving this world.
• I am … I am the Beloved Child of the House. Yes. Immediately I felt calmer. Was any other identity even necessary?
• ‘Timey-Wimey: Steven Moffat, Blink and J. W. Dunne’s theories of Time’, Journal
• The Berlioz was playing. He turned down the volume but it still played in the background of our conversation, the soundtrack of catastrophe.
• Spray as high as the Ceiling exploded through all the Northern Doors. The Spray caught the Sun; it was as if someone had suddenly thrown a hundred barrelfuls of diamonds into the Hall.
• ‘Your good looks are gone,’ I told him. ‘But you mustn’t worry about it. This unsightly condition is only temporary. Don’t be sad. Don’t fear. I will place you somewhere where the fish and the birds can strip away all this broken flesh. It will soon be gone. Then you will be a handsome skull and handsome bones. I will put you in good order and you can rest in the Sunlight and the Starlight.
• Perhaps I should send them a message explaining that Matthew Rose Sorensen now lives inside me, that he is unconscious but perfectly safe, and that I am a strong and resourceful person who will care for him assiduously, exactly as I care for any others of the Dead.
• There is a Lion enmeshed in a cage of coral and a Man holding a Little Box. The coral has grown so profusely over his Left Side that half of him appears to be engulfed in red- and rose-coloured flames, while the other half is not.
• Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not. Perhaps that is what Raphael means.
• But now, wanting to look my best when I enter the New World, I spent two or three hours putting them back in, all the pretty things that I have found or made: seashells, coral beads, pearls, tiny pebbles and interesting fishbones.
• This, I suppose, is where I differ from both of them – from Matthew Rose Sorensen and Piranesi; I find I do not care greatly about clothes.
• But I was wrong. When faced with a person or situation I do not understand, my first impulse is still to look for a statue that will enlighten me.
• A woman passed me with two children. One of the children had a wooden recorder in his hands. I knew them too. They are depicted in the twenty-seventh southern hall: a statue of two children laughing, one of them holding a flute.