The deepest part of us seeks silence; solitude. It is the place we go to when we are washed over by the somnambulistic rhythm of the waves, when we’re in the densest part of the forest, when our eyes soften gazing out of the window at the trees and mountains on a long journey.
This is perhaps why Susanna Clarke’s book, Piranesi leaves us feeling that in her words are captured the essence of humanity, for the protagonist, Piranesi, is in deep solitude. He is transported from the real world to another realm, where exists, the House by the Sea. Although done against his will, he eventually forgets his past life and begins a new one in the House.
In the House, which is regularly flooded by the Sea, he lives alone, except for the ‘Other’, who visits once a week, and who, although he does not know it for a long time, is the perpetrator of Piranesi’s predicament. Piranesi’s life in the House is profound in its simplicity. He hunts fish and dries seaweed for food and fuel, and has fresh water from the rain captured in the Upper Halls of the House. He knows his way around the large Lower and Upper Halls (for there are a great many which create an elaborate labyrinth) and their majestic statues, memorising distance and direction from one to another. He is able to predict the times during which the Sea will flood the House, climbing up to the highest statues in the Upper Halls to keep out of harm’s way. Absent from this world is noise; of other people, traffic, technology.
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