Fauns + Metaphysics
“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
A man resides in an endless stone house with the sea in its basement and the sky in its attic. He is a rigorous explorer of his own home, charting the tides, weaving twine from dried seaweed, recording the particulars of the infinite statues that populate the halls. Of all the statues, his favorite is a faun, but only the reader will recognize the memory the statue evokes as a well-known scene from The Chronicles of Narnia.
He lives among the birds and fish, attends to the bones of the dead, and collaborates with The Other, a well-dressed man who comes and goes in his search of a great and secret knowledge. The Other calls the protagonist ‘Piranesi’ as his own little joke.
The protagonist knows this isn’t his name, but doesn’t seem to have another. He is the blessed Child of the House, but there is no evidence of a human community. He remembers only this life, but he knows things he shouldn’t know and makes references he shouldn’t get, unless—well, unless he’s British.
The protagonist has a highly curious mind, with detailed, indexed journals that chronicle his daily chores and his discoveries. But at first, he is utterly uninterested in the questions the reader might have: Is he from our world? What is this place and why is it like this? Isn’t The Other acting really, really suspicious?
Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a music-box precise mystery novel. Last month I prematurely referred to it as a howdunit, based on memory. It’s more accurate to say that it’s the victim’s identity, rather than the perpetrator’s, that’s the driving question of the mystery. Not a whodunit but a who-am-I, and we get into the how along the way.
(This identity reveal is reminiscent of ‘The House of Asterion’, one of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories that Clarke evokes in Piranesi. Not for nothing is the First Vestibule of the House populated with statues of minotaurs. I’ve encountered enough Borges references within stories—and Borges comparisons on jacket copy—that I consider the mention of him a signal of cosmic intent.)
Like all thought-provoking cosmic mysteries, Piranesi is focused on questions of why and how. To talk about the whys and hows, though, we have to clarify the who and what, the when and where. Spoilers below.
Let’s first summarize the story from the perspective of Detective Raphael, who only appears near the end. Raphael investigates the disappearance of a writer named Matthew Rose Sorenson. With the trail cold, she delves into the subject Rose Sorenson was researching when he went missing: Laurence Arne-Sayles. Arne-Sayles is infamous for luring brilliant young intellects into an informal cult based on his fringe beliefs about ancient energy and other worlds—and infamous for the resulting disappearances and murders.
When Raphael questions Arne-Sayles, he tells her Rose Sorenson is still alive in another world—the House. He points her toward his former student, Ketterley, who has foresworn Arne-Sayles publicly but is still devoted to his teachings, particularly Arne-Sayles’ method of kidnapping and coercing people to explore other worlds on his behalf. Arne-Sayles also shows Raphael the method used to travel to other worlds.
Raphael conducts this ritual, which takes her to an endless labyrinthine structure in which she leaves messages for Rose Sorenson. After a confrontation with Ketterley results in Ketterley’s drowning, Raphael discovers that Rose Sorenson has lost his memory. She persuades him to come with her to our world, and occasionally returns with or without him to the labyrinth.
To reiterate, this is not the way the story is presented in the novel. The Blessed Child of the House has only one human friend: a man he refers to as The Other. One day, while arguing about scientific priorities, The Other reveals that they have had this conversation before, and that the protagonist occasionally loses track of time and forgets many things. Shortly after, The Other says that an interloper will drive the protagonist mad (that classic ailment of cosmic horror) and must be avoided at all costs. The protagonist calls this person ‘16’, since he knows of fifteen humans, alive or dead.
Shortly after, the protagonist encounters an unfamiliar, elderly man in the halls. He nicknames this man The Prophet, because he shares knowledge of the House and hints at being acquainted with the protagonist. The protagonist understands this is not 16. In recording these revelations, the protagonist re-examines his own journals. He discovers that The Other, Ketterley, has kidnapped him from another world and manipulated him—or rather, Ketterley kidnapped Matthew Rose Sorenson, who eventually lost his memory and was given a new life as a Child of the House.
The protagonist discovers that a conjunction of three tides will flood his area of the House, threatening both Ketterley and 16 (Detective Raphael). Ketterley drowns in the confrontation that follows, and after the protagonist respectfully deals with Ketterley’s corpse, he goes with Raphael to our world. There, he becomes someone who isn’t quite the protagonist we know, but isn’t Rose Sorenson, either.
I can’t really speculate about why Clarke chose to present the story from the victim’s perspective rather than that of Detective Raphael, though it’s worth noting that crime fiction more broadly has been experimenting with giving victims more of the spotlight, over the now much tropified detective. What I can say for sure is what this choice of protagonist gives us: more time in a strange world from the perspective of a man attuned to its wonders.
Last month I talked about interdimensional cosmic horror for the characters versus cosmic wonder for the audience, but in this case, there’s a little of the reverse. For the longest time, the protagonist assuages his uncertainties and cognitive gaps with faith in the House’s mysterious ways. This is a cornerstone of his religion, but the reader can’t help but become more and more worried on his behalf.
If the story were to follow Raphael, most of the investigation would take place in England as she followed Rose Sorenson’s trail. We would encounter the House first within the context of skepticism and Arne-Sayles’ ego, some rain-chilled musings about metaphysics and the possibilities of other worlds, probably balance it out with some scene work at the local police department. Once Raphael follows Rose Sorenson into the other world, the confirmation of the House’s existence would feel like a conclusion. In the published version of the story, Clarke has too much to tell of the House to entrust it to a character who isn’t intimately familiar with it.
(In another, other version of this story, one of Arne-Sayles’ victim-protegés, Sylvia D’Agostino, would have made a great missing person in the cosmic mystery theme of the compelling creator. A multimedia artist with cluey diaries whose footage of the House has riled devotees for years, who disappears immediately after she becomes disenchanted with her mentor? Let’s do it.)
All this is to say that, with cosmic mysteries being atypical mysteries anyway, the character with the most interesting story to tell might not be the one with the badge or the P.I. license.
Clarke never reveals the true nature of the House. Sometimes (not always, but in this case, absolutely) a cosmic mystery is more interesting when left unexplained. How then, to leave the reader feeling satisfied?
Perspective is of highest importance in Piranesi. Much character nuance—and a lot of the tension—comes from the dissonance between how the very sweet protagonist views a character and what the reader might think of that character. Perspective is what gives Piranesi a satisfying ending even with the House left unexplained. Instead, Clarke focuses on what the House means to several of its human visitors.
For Ketterley, the House is only important because it might contain a secret knowledge that could grant him power and influence back in our world. For Raphael, it is a quiet world with its own logic that sometimes makes more sense to her than her own. For Arne-Sayles in his later years, the House validates his metaphysical authority—it’s proof he’s right. Because the House is significant to him in this way, he’s the one to come forward with an explanation, even if that explanation shouldn’t be treated as fact.
Arne-Sayles believes that ancient humans were in literal conversation with their surroundings, which gave them untold power. Unlike Ketterley, he’s not so interested in regaining that power, at least not anymore. He believes that when humans stopped talking with their surroundings, they lost this power. And because I guess abstract power is exactly like energy, this power cannot be destroyed, only redistributed elsewhere. The House is a ‘distributary world’, formed by that power on its way somewhere else.
Arne-Sayles says that faith and belief have nothing to do with this science of his, but it’s possible he’s mixing up his ability to access the House with the thoughts that got him there, calling it science because it suits him. The protagonist also draws some distinctions between science and mysticism. When he first reads Rose Sorenson’s journal entries, he believes them to be the writings of an oracle who has induced an altered state, and separates that sharply from his task of exploring the House and interpreting its messages.
The book spends most of its time on what the House means to the protagonist. This complicates the question of whether we should want him to return to our mundane world.
To the protagonist, the House is his community, a place-entity that provides for him, communicates with him (via its statues and other creatures), and comforts him. Arne-Sayles believes all that power is gone from the House, but the protagonist knows that the House still speaks to him every day. In one early scene, the protagonist receives a warning from the House by interpreting the statues landed on by a particular murmuration of birds. The scene is fascinating, both for the protagonist’s attention and certainty, and because symbolic interpretation can only happen within cultural context, and his interpretations align with a Western (British) sensibility. This conversation, then, takes place not directly between the protagonist and the House, but among him, the movement of the birds, and the world of Rose Sorenson.
We never learn what the House means to Rose Sorenson, only that when he sensed he was beginning to lose himself, he sometimes caught himself talking to the statues as if they were people. The protagonist becomes someone else when he returns to our world. A little Rose Sorenson, some ‘Piranesi’ (he calls his former self by Ketterley’s nickname). To him, the House is a possibility, a place to return to if he finds this world too tiresome. If he went back, would he become ‘Piranesi’ again? Or would he become a fourth person seeking new meaning within the House?
NEXT MONTH
Thank you, everyone, for your continued curiosity in this weird genre experiment. If you haven’t already, please subscribe, and if someone you know also loves strange mysteries, please let them know they’re very welcome here at the Cosmic Mystery Club.
Next month we’re trading physical labyrinths for mental labyrinths in Obsidian Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios’ illuminated manuscript-inspired video game Pentiment. We’ll investigate murders, chat with Socrates in our dreams, and watch the consequences of our offhand remarks and petty grudges ripple out to affect generations. See you then.