One world, for example, is an endless library ( The Library of Babel). Some of the worlds he created are strange - worlds that pose philosophical questions and make you think in ways you’ve never thought before. They’re generally very short, very precise and very jewel-like. In my twenties, I loved the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges. Barfield called this idea ‘original participation’ and I tried to describe this sort of relationship in Piranesi’s attitude to the House. They did not see the world as meaningless they saw it as a great and sacred drama in which they took part. Ancient peoples did not feel alienated from their surroundings the way in which we sometimes do.
One of Barfield’s ideas was that people in the past related to the world in quite different ways than we do now. Owen Barfield was a friend of CS Lewis’s, another of the Inklings. What the second quality of the Woods between the Worlds is, I don’t intend to say, but it has quite an important parallel in Piranesi. But there are other people who come there and who hate it.
They feel absolutely content and peaceful they never want to leave. While they are in the Wood they feel part of that reality, part of the richness of the trees growing, part of the quietness and part of the green light. The first quality is that some of the people who come there find it a marvellous place. In The Magician’s Nephew there’s also a place called the Woods between the Worlds which has two very striking qualities. (I say ‘I imagine I was back in the palace,’ which I suppose suggests that I’ve actually been there, but like many people for whom Narnia was a formative reading experience that’s what it feels like.) But sometimes when I was walking in a street and there were people near me, I would imagine I was back in the palace of Charn, or a place very like it and the silence and the solitude calmed me. Fortunately this period didn’t last terribly long. It didn’t matter whether they were taking notice of me or not. Whenever other people were around me I felt intensely uncomfortable and threatened. I think Piranesi’s world (which he calls the House) owes something to Charn.įor a while, around 2010, I had social agoraphobia. I liked the silence and the crumbling architecture and the endless, empty courtyards. Lewis meant this to be an utterly desolate place, literally empty and spiritually empty. They spend a long time wandering through the courtyards and halls of a deserted, ruinous palace. In The Magician’s Nephew one of the worlds the children visit is a very old, dying world called Charn. There are two worlds in that book (neither of them Narnia) which have quite strong connections to Piranesi’s reality. The Narnia book which most influenced Piranesi is The Magician’s Nephew. How much did CS Lewis inspire Piranesi? Can you tell us about some of the other influences for this novel? Like CS Lewis, you conjure a different, parallel world. In the prelude to Piranesi you quote from CS Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew.
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