The term “dark academia” is somewhat difficult to define. It is a rather new aesthetic, but it has been the topic of books and movies for some decades. Among the books often considered dark academia is Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. Since it’s one of the shorter exemplars of the genre, I recently picked it up. A bit disorienting at first, it is the story of a fantasy world where oceans flood the lower floors of an elaborate labyrinth in which two people live. The narrator (or more properly epistolist) is one of the two. We come to learn that he is actually the only full-time resident of this world. And that this world was conjured from the world in which the rest of us live. It takes Piranesi, the narrator, about 70 pages to realize that something isn’t quite what he’s been led to believe.
The writing is beautiful and the world-building is fine. It would be possible to set an entire novel in this world, but, like most paradises, it wouldn’t satisfy. Indeed, there’s almost a biblical recognition of sin and human character. The voyage of discovery that Piranesi undergoes is both encouraging and dispiriting. Having a world in which one’s needs are met, and where most danger can be avoided by careful observation, seems desirable. There’s a sense of inevitability in Eden as well. The human psyche requires challenges and exercise. To remain in paradise would have been stultifying, if without danger. I’m not sure if Clarke intended that in her novel, but I definitely encountered it there.
But what does this have to do with dark academia? I asked myself that question along the way. The creator of this world was, at one point, an academician. Such are the kinds of people who attempt to build perfect worlds. The darkness comes from the fact that this world is not what it seems to be. It comes with a very high price. Even so, it is compelling to those who find it. Its creator is a cold and scheming individual. Unlike some such stories, we don’t hear much of the university life that gives the genre its name, but the classical setting is much like what universities once taught. And when they go wrong, this genre suggests itself. I don’t want to reveal how the story ends. It gets pretty exciting about halfway through and I had misguessed a few things along the way. In many ways it feels like fantasy, but it also dips into the academic world gone wrong.
