challenge the natural order of things and thereby bring destruction on themselves. By insolvability I mean briefly a sense that something important has gone bad that can never really be made right again.
One way to create the typically Gothic sense of insolvabi lity is by depicting a world which resembles an infinite, terrible labyrinth. This can be done for example by depic tions of labyrinthine environments, such as subterranean passages, the insides of castles, dark woods or city environments. These environments are often made like Chinese boxes, in which one room contains another room etc, or they are made of strange geometries, circles, repetition, multi-layers and the like, which makes them seem infathomable and claustrophobic as well as endless. Sometimes the feeling that one is in a labyrinth is not created by help of the environment but by the main character behaving as if he or she is in a laby rinth. Then the actions of the main character become repetitive and wandering. The character may for example walk in circles. Sometimes the labyrinthine feeling is created by help of the language in the work. This is the case when the language is fragmented, irrational, meaningless, structured like a tale in a tale etc. Yet another example of how the labyrinthine feeling might be created is when the Gothic work contains references to the reality of the reader. We all know the kind of story that tells of someone who is reading a story while a murderer sneaks up from behind. At this time we, the real readers, get an impulse ourselves to look over the shoulder, even though we know we are reading fiction. This is one example of how the Gothic work can pretend to depict the world of the reader. Another example of this is when the Gothic work mentions real places in the world of the reader, for example real city names.
In Kandre’s works, the world is depicted as a labyrinth in two ways – as a wonderful labyrinth and as a Gothic labyrinth. One example of the former is that in Deliria the dead are said to be present – they lay in layer upon layer inside