I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls: 'Piranesi' by Susanna Clarke – Book Recommendation

 

Eighteenth-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi produced a number of etchings depicting huge architectural labyrinths, known as Carceri d'invenzione or Imaginary Prisons. His name is ascribed by another character to the protagonist in Susanna Clarke’s brilliantly inventive fantasy. Piranesi dwells in the House, a monumental maze of marble halls filled with statues and seawater. You can almost hear the waves, taste the salt, and feel the cold, coral-covered, slippery stone which constitute Piranesi’s world.

The novel considers notions of reality ‘taking part in a dialogue’ and being ‘persuadable…willing to bend to men’s desires’. The threshold to an Otherworld can be crossed by ‘go[ing] back to a pre-rational mode of thought’ and seeking ‘wherever magic had gone’. How did Piranesi arrive in the House, and why does he remain so attached to it? Clarke’s novel explores loneliness and the human need to share (including, briefly and ironically, the inherent nonsensicality of financial exchange: ‘Piranesi wants to say: But I need the thing you have, so why don’t you just give it to me? And then when I have something you need, I will just give it to you’). Most adults understand that the reality of human nature necessitates the fantasy of money (or does it?). However, in Piranesi, reversion to childlike innocence aids not only survival per se but also the survival of empathy in extremis. Alongside its evocative imagery, Piranesi raises intriguing questions concerning the extent to which reality is simply perception (magical thinking or ‘my truth’, anyone?), and considers the boundaries not only between reality and imagination but also between freedom and entrapment, since escapism, ironically, can imprison. Is Piranesi inside the House, or is the House inside him, its ‘Beauty’ and ‘Kindness’ as respectively ‘immeasurable’ and ‘infinite’ as the one experiencing it?

Clarke has crafted a very unusual novel, and I found myself quite drawn into a dream of Drowned Halls, enchanted by the strangeness of a half-human, half-natural Otherworld existing within the reach of a thought. It’s definitely worth a visit…even if you don’t stay, it will likely stay with you.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke ISBN: 9781526622433