Piranesi

The enormous labyrinth mingles with the elements above (sky) and below (sea). Upper levels create a “Cloud-haunted World” (34) while in the lower levels, there is “Water lapping the Walls in a thousand, thousand Chambers” (58). Elements include celestial beings, such as witnessing the moon while “Night fishing [...] when the fish are drawn to play in spots of bright Moonlight and are easy to see” (35) and how “the Spray caught the Sun; it was as if someone had suddenly thrown a hundred barrelfuls of diamond into the Hall” (207). However, there is an absence of earthly elements. For instance, the narrator wonders “Do trees exist?” (17) when he spots a leaf, and his journals are evidence of trees in a dead, processed form.

While represented as powerful proper nouns, elements are also defined by their opposites and their mutable qualities. The elements are in constant conversation with architecture: “The wildness of the Water contrasted with the severity of the lines of the Doorway” (29). Water itself transforms through condensation: fresh “water [...] was delicious and refreshing (it had been a Cloud only hours before)” (163) and freezing: “Every statue with an outstretched Arm (of which there are many) held an icicle like a dangling sword or else a line of icicles hung from the Arm as if it were sprouting feathers” (27).