Piranesi

I struggled at the onset, feeling it important to situate myself in this new space, to know where I was in relation to the third Northern Hall and the Ninth Vestibule with flooding in the Lower Staircase. Like this was some physical zodiac with clues to something larger, a riddle to be unraveled, a text to be interpreted. Surely all this points to some hidden Knowledge or greater mystery. I am the Other dismissing the rooms full of decaying figures covered in bird shit, mere scenery that obfuscates something truer. There are scattered letters, messages in chalk, words formed by pebbles and ideas transferred through the language of birds. To speak more to this puzzle box of a story is to spoil it.

I will say Susanna Clarke laboured through the writing of this while suffering debilitating chronic fatigue that trapped her at home, a situation not unlike what many of us found ourselves in this past year. Despite the confining situation, like Piranesi himself, there is still the opportunity to bear witness to the splendours of this world. Just lovely.