“For the hours of thy happiness are over and joy is not gathered twice in a life, as the roses of Paestum twice in a year.” (Edgar Allan Poe)
in this issue--
Ancient Pages at Revue_Blanche
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) is not my favorite artist, I only appreciate his etchings Vedute--the impressive Views of Rome and views of Paestum--and his series The Prisons simply horrified my imagination one day and I never wanted to see those masterpieces again. Thomas De Quincey in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1820) mentioned Piranesi’s most fearsome works:
“Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist ... which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever: some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr Coleridge's account) representing vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below. ... But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher: on which again Piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld: and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labors: and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. ...”
De Quincey, Piranesi, the great English poet Coleridge. What do the names have in common with each other? The point is that all the three men were either drug-addicts or took narcotics. I am not sure concerning Coleridge, but Piranesi was a drug-addict, and I’ve been surprised seeing Wikipedia omit this generally known fact in the article, dedicated to Piranesi.
from views of Paestum:
Etching of the Pyramid of Cestius:
The Arch of Trajan at Benevento as it appeared in the 18th century:
all pictures
http://www.picure.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp:8080/e_piranesi.html
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SeasideMan
Pro 
Lovely.
Tom.