The dark brain of piranesi

The Dark Brain Of Piranesi (1984) by Marguerite Yourcenar is known in France as a brilliant essayist as well as a great novelist, but until now her essays have not been widely available to English-language readers. "The Dark Brain of Piranesi" gathers seven of her most important critical essays, essential to the understanding of the searching and remarkably informed spirit of this protean writer. The book begins with an essay on the "Historia Augusta", that chronicles the lives of the Caesars. Next, an essay whose wider subject is human intolerance cruelty in the sixteenth century but whose starting point is the violent Reformation epic "Les Tragiques". Yourcenar's evocation of the unstable life of the the château of Chenonceaux reminds us that we are all playthings of the conjugated powers of politics and money. A masterly account of Piranesi's great series of engraving analyzes the formal motivations of this extraordinary (and imaginary) architecture period. Finally, three great names of modern literature: Selma Lagerlöf, Nobel Prize epic storyteller; the enigmatic Greek poet of Alexandria, Constantin Cavafy; Thomas Mann, and the complex relations of the author to the old and learned traditions of the hermeticists and alchemists.

Quotes

 * I am the only person who has ever tried to make a map of the entire world. It is a very difficult task, as the world is very large, and very strange.
 * (Piranesi, Chapter 1)
 * The world is a series of rooms, and there is no end to them.
 * (Piranesi, Chapter 2)
 * The world is a beautiful place, even in its darkness.
 * (Piranesi, Chapter 3)
 * I have a very bad memory, and I am often confused about what is real and what is not.
 * (Piranesi, Chapter 4)
 * I am not sure who I am. I am not sure if I have always been here, or if I have come from somewhere else.
 * (Piranesi, Chapter 5)
 * The truth is a strange thing. It is often hidden in plain sight, but we are blind to it.
 * (The Other, Chapter 6)
 * There are many truths in the world, and they are not always compatible.
 * (The Other, Chapter 7)
 * The world is not what it seems. It is a reflection of our own minds.
 * (Piranesi, Chapter 8)
 * The only way to escape from the world is to create our own.
 * (The Other, Chapter 9)
 * the Theory of Other Worlds. Simply put, it said that when knowledge or power went out of this world it did two things: first, it created another place; and second, it left a hole, a door between this world where it had once existed and the new place it had made.
 * comfort
 * Several times Waves passed over our heads, but they fell back the next instant. We were drenched, we were numbed, we were blinded, we were deafened; but always we were saved.
 * salvation
 * Suddenly I saw in front of me the Statue of the Faun, the Statue that I love above all others. There was his calm, faintly smiling face; there was his forefinger gently pressed to his lips. [...] Hush! he told me. Be comforted!
 * comfort