The Year I Named the Constellations

The Year I Named the Constellations is a named period in Piranesi’s chronology, defined by his survey of the House and by the growing friendship between him and the Other. It is both a measure of time in his journal system and a formative year: Piranesi pushes farther into the House, while an episode in its dangerous tides leaves the Other afraid of them.

Dates and Journal Sequence

The surviving journal record places this period between the Tenth Day of the Seventh Month in the Year I discovered the Coral Halls and the Ninth Day of the Fourth Month in the Year I named the Constellations. The next volume begins on the Fifteenth Day of the Fourth Month of this year and continues to the Thirtieth Day of the Ninth Month in the Year I counted and named the Dead. The overlapping labels mark the year through Piranesi’s own sequence of named periods rather than through ordinary calendar dates.

This system makes the year legible through the events and acts of attention that give it a name. The title recalls Piranesi’s work of naming the constellations, while the journal’s date ranges situate that activity within a continuing record of exploration and daily life.

Exploration of the House

Piranesi’s account of the World presents exploration as an open-ended undertaking: he is determined to see as much of it as he can in his lifetime. He has travelled to the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to the North, and the Seven-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South. He has also climbed to the Upper Halls, where clouds move and statues emerge from mist, and explored the Drowned Halls, whose dark waters are covered with white water lilies.

The Eastern region offers a stark contrast. In the Derelict Halls, ceilings, floors, and sometimes walls have collapsed, leaving shafts of grey light in the dimness. Yet even there, standing in doorways and looking ahead, Piranesi sees no sign that the World is ending: halls and passageways continue into the distance. His description makes the House seem at once damaged in particular places and without visible boundary as a whole.

Statues fill nearly every hall, vestibule, staircase, and passage. Against that profusion, occasional empty plinths, niches, apses, and bare patches on statue-covered walls register as absences that are mysterious in their own right. The record therefore treats exploration not only as the discovery of new spaces, but as attentive observation of what is missing within them.

The Other and the Tides

During this year, the Other is swept away by a dangerous meeting of tides. A strong tide rises in the Tenth Vestibule from the Northern Halls; moments later, an equally strong tide from the Eastern Halls rises in the Twelfth Vestibule. Water pours into the surrounding halls, catches the Other in the Eighth Northern Hall, and carries him through doors, battering him against walls and statues. He is submerged several times and expects to drown before the tides cast him onto the pavement of the Third Western Hall, seven halls from where he began.

Piranesi finds him there and responds with practical care: he brings a blanket and hot soup made from seaweed and mussels. Once able to walk, the Other leaves without a word, and Piranesi does not know where he goes. The episode becomes a lasting point in their relationship. Even after Piranesi assures him there is no danger, the Other remains afraid of the tides.

Friendship and the Problem of Shoes

The journal records the Other’s gifts as a list Piranesi has made so that he will remember to be grateful and thank the House for sending him such an excellent friend. In the Year I named the Constellations, the Other gives him a sleeping bag and a pillow. The list turns material objects into evidence of a developing bond: the Other provides comforts that Piranesi remembers as gifts, while Piranesi frames the friendship through gratitude and the House’s providence.

That care is also set against unequal circumstances. When they discuss travelling to the One-Hundred-and-Ninety-Second Western Hall, Piranesi explains that the route passes through the Seventy-Eighth Vestibule, a region subject to frequent flooding. Although it is then dry, tides scatter debris from the Lower Halls; jagged pieces of broken marble can cut a traveller’s feet, with infection a further danger. The passage is possible, but careful and laborious.

The Other points out that Piranesi has passed through before without harm and asks what has changed. Piranesi blushes and looks down at the pavement, conscious of the contrast between the Other’s neat suit and shining shoes and his own ragged, seawater-rotted clothes. What changed, he explains, is that he used to have shoes and now has none. The exchange gives the journey’s abstract hazards a bodily cost, and shows how the Other’s relative comfort makes Piranesi’s deprivation visible even within their friendship.

A Year’s Continuing Consequences

The year’s experiences persist in later events. The Other’s fear of the tides is a lasting consequence of his near-drowning, while the gifts and acts of care underpin Piranesi’s understanding of him as a friend. Much later, Piranesi follows the carefully written route left by 16 from the Sixth North-Western Hall to the First Vestibule, marking doorways in yellow chalk and noting that 16 is shorter than him. This later use of routes and marks echoes the practical knowledge required to move through the House, though it belongs to a different stage of the chronology.

At the end of Piranesi’s time in the House, he prepares to leave with his journals and favourite pens. He puts back the seashells, coral beads, pearls, pebbles, and fishbones he has collected for his hair, then walks with Raphael toward the shimmering corridor between the two Minotaurs in the south-eastern corner. His final look at the House and Raphael’s hand in his mark a departure from the world he has spent years exploring. The year named for the constellations belongs to the earlier formation of that life: exploration, acts of naming, and a friendship whose gifts and dangers continue to matter.