In all it is a good though not, I think, a great novel. I suppose those images refract: (a) Clarke herself stuck largely inside her house since 2012 with her debilitating, chronic illness, (b) a Lewisian Narnia-style allegory by which the world is God’s strange mansion - Magician’s Nephew supplies the novel’s epigraph - and (c) some manner of anxiety about climate change (the lower levels are dangerously flooded!)
The worst you could say is that it’s more cool conceit than rigorous narrative, more a arrangement of striking images than a framework able to furnish all the satisfactions the novel as a form. This is all well-evoked, the universe of the House neither mistily sketched nor over-rigorously delineated. Piranesi is an unusually ingenuous, almost a child-like narrator, and we soon realise that the only other person in the House - a twice weekly visitor called ‘The Other’, whom Piranesi considers a friend - is probably not all he pretends, no matter how much Piranesi trusts him. The House consists of an endless succession of rooms and corridors, adorned everywhere with marble statuary past which Piranesi wanders, feeding on seaweed and fruits de mer from the ground floor, and tending the skeletons of thirteen previous inhabitants of the place. But perhaps you want to exercise caution.Ĭlarke’s title character, narrating in first-person via his journal entries, is the only living inhabitant of a vast mansion - so vast that he can never find a way out of it, so huge an ocean washes tidally through the lower levels, and clouds float through the upper ones. Fountain in foreground.', 1748įrontispiece, with statue of Minerva.Reviews of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi have been cagey about revealing too much of the plot, as if to say even rudimentary things about the novel would be to spoil it. 'St Peter's, with forecourt and colonnades. 'St Peter's, interior with the nave.', 1748 'St Peter's, from the Piazza della Sagrestia.', 1748 Giovanni in Laterano, main façade, with palace and Scala Santa on the right.', 1749 Maria Maggiore with the column from the Basilica of Constantine in the foreground.', 1749 Maria Maggiore with the obelisk in the Piazza dell'Esquilino.', 1749 'The Piazza del Quirinale, with the statues of the horse tamers in side view.', 1750 'The Piazza della Rotonda, with the Pantheon and Obelisk.', 1751 Maria di Loreto and Santissimo Nome di Maria.', 1762 'The Palazzo dell'Academia di Francia (The Palazzo Salviati).', 1752 'The harbour and quay, called the Ripa Grande.', 1753 'The smaller harbour, called the Porto di Ripetta.', 1753 'The Ponte Lucano, with the tomb of the Plautii.', 1763 'The tomb of the Plautii, near the Ponte Lucano.', 1761 'The Hadrianeum (once used as a custom house) in the Piazza di Pietra.', 1753 Teodoro in middle distance, and Monte Aventino in the distance.', 1757 'A corner of the Forum Romanum, with the temple of Castor and Pollux, and S. 'The Forum of Augustus (erroneously called Forum of Nerva).', 1757 Giovanni e Paolo (formerly called the Curia Hostilia).', 1757 'Substructure of the Temple of Claudius at the Church of SS. 'The so-called Temple of Fortuna Virilis (now Church of S. 'The so-called Temple of Bacchus, now the Church of S. 'The Temple of Portunus (?) (the round temple near S. 'The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina.', 1757 'The Temple of Venus and Roma (erroneously called Temple of Sol and Luna).', 1757 'The Egyptian Obelisk in the Piazza di S. 'The Arch of Septimius Severus, with the Church of S. 'The Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum.', 1757 'The so-called Temple of Salus, on the road to Albano.', 1757 ''The Portico of Octavia: The Entrance Porch, exterior.', 1757 'The Portico of Octavia: the entrance porch, interior.', 1757 'The Baths of Caracalla, interior of the central hall.', 1757 'The Pantheon, interior of the portico.', 1757 'The Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli, with another temple right, once used as Church of S.
'The so-called Temple of Minerva Medica.', 1757 'Entrance door to part of the villa called the 'Sette Bassi' on the road to Frascati.', 1757 The Arch with a Shell Ornament, early 1770s Prisoners on a Projecting Platform, early 1770s Vue des restes interieurs du Temple de Neptune, Vue de ce qui reste encore des Murs A de l'ancienne Ville de Pesto, 'Vue A de quelques unes des Colonnes de la façade.', 'Vue des restes d'une grande enceinte de colonnes.' 'Vüe interieure du Collége supposé des Anfictions', 'Autre Vüe interieure des restes du Collége supposé des Anfictions, ''Vüe des restes interieures d'un des Pronaos du Temple de Neptune', ''Vüe des restes du derriere du Pronaos du Temple de Neptune', ''Vüe des restes de la Celle du temple de Neptune.', 'Vüe d'un autre temple, dans la Ville de Pesto.',
'Vüe intérieure du Temple, que l'on croit avoir été dédié à Junon', Works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in the RA Collection 186 results
0 kommentar(er)
