![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And the further you read the more your apprehension grows. Piranesi’s acceptance of his life is quietly unsettling, his innocence frustrating, his equanimity troubling, his obliviousness infuriating, his kindness at times disturbing, his adaptability admirable, and his content lack of curiosity puzzling. “It occurs to me that there are many other ideas that I understand perfectly, even though no such things exist in the World.” Even the harshest things that happen to him seem to have a silver lining through his attitude of acceptance and gratitude. It’s a story rooted in living in the present because the past is nonexistent, untroubled by the questions of identity, resistant to egotistical impulses - because Piranesi seems to know exactly who he is, the “Beloved Child of the House”. It’s the story of reverence and contemplation, ingenuity and survival, innocence and evil, curiosity and contentment. It’s the story of loneliness and solitude and isolation. It is not the means to an end.” It’s the story of kindness and gratitude. The House is valuable because it is the House. The sight of the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall in the Moonlight made me see how ridiculous that is. “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. You know from everything he refers to that his world used to be much bigger than the enormous half-derelict labyrinthine House. He is the Beloved Child of the House, worshipful of its beauty and kindness, grateful for the survival it allows him, full of wondrous innocence and remarkable naïveté to the point where you fervently hope that he indeed loses some of that innocence before it’s too late. He has always been here, or at least from 2012 and until the Year the Albatross Came to the South-Western Halls. Piranesi has no memory of ever being anywhere else. Of the fifteen people whose existence is verifiable, only Myself and the Other are now living.” Possibly there have been more but I am a scientist and must proceed according to the evidence. “Since the World began it is certain that there have existed fifteen people. There are birds and fish and remains of thirteen humans, and two living ones - the Other, a man who visits our narrator for hour-long appointments twice a week on the search for mysterious Knowledge, a man clearly of the world that is similar to our own, and our narrator who the Other refers to as Piranesi, although “Piranesi” knows that it’s not his name. I have seen the Derelict Halls of the East where Ceilings, Floors – sometimes even Walls! – have collapsed and the dimness is split by shafts of grey Light.” I have explored the Drowned Halls where the Dark Waters are carpeted with white water lilies. I have climbed up to the Upper Halls where Clouds move in slow procession and Statues appear suddenly out of the Mists. To this end I have travelled as far as the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to the North and the Seven-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South. “I am determined to explore as much of the World as I can in my lifetime. No entrances or exits, just the House that is the World, both decrepitude and perfection. Imagine a labyrinthine partially ruined “House” with endless procession of interconnected enormous Halls and Vestibules, with bottom levels flooded by the ocean somehow held inside, and top layers covered in thick clouds, with enormous marble staircases covered by clashing Tides, and thousands upon thousands of marble statues. This is like a dream, slow, strange and intensely atmospheric, unbelievably immersive and engrossing. Regrettably, there’s not a single piranha in sight. “The Beauty of the House is immeasurable its Kindness infinite.”First of all, for those who - like me - read the blurb for this book, noted the mention of “the house with the ocean imprisoned in it” and automatically assumed that “Piranesi” has something to do with piranhas (because ocean = fish, right?) - yeah, that’s certainly not what the story is about.
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