Venice unmasked

Dimenticare Venezia

In 1892, in Italian Hours, Henry James wrote that, Venetian life, in the large old sense, has long since come to an end, and the essential present character of the most melancholy of cities resides simply in its being the most beautiful of tombs.

 
In 1956, Mary McCarthy (an American critic and novelist, 1912 – 1989) wrote, in Venice Observed, And there is no use pretending that the tourist Venice is not the real Venice, which is possible with other cities – Rome or Florence or Naples.  The tourist Venice is Venice: the gondolas, the sunsets, the changing light, Florian’s, Quadri’s, Torcello, Harry’s Bar, Murano, Burano, the pigeons, the glass beads, the vaporetto.  Venice is a folding picture postcard of itself.

 
Both these statements, I believe, ring true today, but neither should be taken as the last word. Many other writers have added their pennyworths to the pile of thoughts that Venice inspires.  Charles Dickens, in Pictures from Italy (1846) dreamt of buildings that were high and low, and black, and white, and straight, and crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong.....  He fancied he saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built up with shops and humming with the tongues of men.....  Jan (then James) Morris wrote in 1960 that, In Venice the past and the present are curiously interwoven.....and that Melancholia contributes strongly to the Venetian atmosphere.  

Joseph Brodsky, in Watermark (1992), referred to the chiming of bells, his room flooded with this outer, peal-laden haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers.....  

More recently, in Venice is a Fish (2000), Tiziano Scarpa suggests that the visitor to Venice should put on very dark sunglasses....  Venice can be lethal, he says.  In the historic centre the aesthetic radioactivity is extremely high.  

Every angle radiates beauty; apparently shabby; profoundly devious, inexorable.  The sublime pours in bucketloads from the churches, but even the calli without monuments, the bridges to the rii, are picturesque at the very least.

My love affair with Venezia has lasted almost fifty years, though over those years we have both aged and changed.  It may be a platitude to say that the magic has worn a little thin, and that I feel a little less excited about our relationship than perhaps I did when I first set foot in La Serenissima.  But I guess the feeling is reciprocal – she loves me a little less too.  I am just one of millions of admirers, and the restauranteurs and the gondoliers know it.  

There is nothing special about me.

So, during my recent stay, in a tiny quiet apartment above a courtyard in the Santa Croce sestiero, 

a step away from the delightful Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio, 

I retrace the steps of many years, revisiting the great churches of the Frari and Saints Giovanni and Paolo, the Salute, 

San Giorgio Maggiore, as well as, of course, San Marco.  

I climb campanili to see the views across the city and the lagoon to the distant Dolomiti.  

I wander over the Rialto, through the markets, through the Correr, the Accademia, the Scuole (dei Carmini, Grande di San Rocco, 

di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni), the Guggenheim, 

the great Palazzi (Ducale, Ca’ Rezzonico, Ca’ Pesaro).  I visit La Fenice (for Il Barbiere di Siviglia), having not been there since I went with Amanda before the fire....  I visit the campi (too many to mention) and the islands (Murano with its flamboyant glass, multi-coloured Burano, 

silent Torcello, 

the Lido with its Adriatic strand 

and Giudecca with its busy boatyards).....  

In the Arsenale we see a magical show about Casanova, boats and floats and acrobats, and projections on fountains. 

 

And with every step come memories but also new pleasures as the light changes, and I see things I hadn’t noticed before.  The Carnival adds spice and splendour, 

the old Bacari replenish flagging spirits, 

various trattorie fill my belly (but drain my wallet) with bigoli in salsa, risotto di nero di seppia, pasta e fagioli, moleche (soft-shelled crabs), branzino (sea bass), pesce san Pietro (John Dory), all lubricated with copious glasses of Tai (Venetian Tocai) or Soave (et alios).....  

My love is rekindled and, as the weather turns from rain and cold to crystal clear skies and gentle breezes, I relax into a routine of living once more all’Italiana: a cappuccino and cornetto con crema at Lavena, then a walk, as Tiziano Scarpa recommends: The first and only itinerary I suggest to you has a name.  It’s called: at random.  Subtitle: aimlessly.....  Getting lost is the only place worth going to.....  I feel a new sense of delight in every calle, every sottoportico, every campo.  Here you can sit and dream.  Here you can immerse yourself in a book 

or just take the sun with your floppy dog.  

There you can compose a sketch, 

or sip a spritz. 

I like to watch the world go by.  It is reassuring to see people going about their lives in this timeless place.  

And I love to exchange a cheeky glance here and there.....

And then as the days spin away, the sun falls, 

the moon and stars appear above the rooftops, 

and the canals become deep dark alleys lit only by the occasional lamp.  I love the close dark silence, just sometimes broken by a lonely splash.  I love the mellow warmth of the crumbling walls.  

It can be eerily quiet – so many palazzi now are uninhabited, and very few are the animal sounds of the night.

I even get so lost in my reveries that I photograph a man with a mop of silver hair leaning on a bridge without realising who he is.  

Later I discover that if I had £8,450 to spare I could have indulged in six days (partly) in the company of acclaimed architect and descendant of an ancient Venetian dynasty, Francesco da Mosto to discover the layered history of the Floating City, exploring its waterscapes, architecture and artworks.  

Ah well!  Another time....

But will there be another time?  There are other places.  Beautiful and unique as Venice is I feel this may have been the last time.  So now, perhaps, is the time to forget Venice, as in Dimenticare Venezia, the 1979 film written and directed by Franco Brusati which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but which tied for the 1979 David di Donatello Award for Best Film with The Tree of Wooden Clogs and Christ Stopped at Eboli (it was a very good year!)

The film isn’t really about Venice at all, but I know it because one of my students at the time had a role in it and that was quite something. The main point here is that there comes a time when decisions must be made, and relationships may be more important than seeking diversion in fanciful plans.  

I love Venice, and had a really good time there this year, but perhaps I should acknowledge that there are alternatives to beating on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past (F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby).

To quote Henry James again, this time from 1882 (Italian Hours), When I hear, when I see, the magical name I have written above these pages [Venice], it is not of the great square that I think, with its strange basilica and its high arcades, nor of the wide mouth of the Grand Canal, with the stately steps and the well-poised dome of the Salute; it is not of the low lagoon, nor the sweet Piazzetta, nor the dark chambers of St Mark’s.  I simply see a narrow canal in the heart of the city – a patch of green water and a surface of pink wall.....

Basta.

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I wrote another piece about Venice on this blog some fifteen years ago (updated, I think, a year or two after).  If you have the stamina, have a glance:

https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2010/04/venezia-venice.html

And then, if you need some light relief, join in with Joe Dolan's audience in this jolly piece of theatre.....

https://youtu.be/p0G9Fq3nsbo?feature=shared

******

{For Sarah H}

*****

Piano Concerto No. 2 (Rachmaninoff)

Going out with the tide.....

This morning I rose early.  Yesterday it rained, miserably, soaking my hopes of a useful BioBlitz at Wild Ken Hill, but today dawned well, despite the wind.

So I determined to walk to RSPB Snettisham to see and photograph the Whirling Waders before walking on to see (my wife) Amanda in her Home at Heacham.  

I was underdressed and the northerly wind was brisk and chilly, but eventually 32,000 Knot rose from the rising tide on the Wash, together with a large number of Oystercatchers, and whirred overhead to the shingle bars in the safety of the tideless lagoons behind.

Every day is different, but when the conditions are favourable, the human observer on the shore may see shoals of birds flinging themselves up and overhead.  The RSPB promote these as "Snettisham Spectaculars," or "Whirling Waders."  Many visitors confuse them with "Murmurations" as in the great flocks of starlings that fall to roost in many places.  Locals may refer to them as "Tangles of Knots".....

It doesn't matter.

Bird watchers, twitchers, photographers and others (including me) gather early in the mornings to see these wonders.  Over the winter thousands more Knot will join here from their breeding grounds in the far north, so they can feed from the rich mud of the Wash.

Behind the Sea Wall there are lagoons of safety, protected from the rising tides, and it is to these that these canny waders retire when the waters become too difficult.

Spooked perhaps by the turbulent winds they take their time to settle, but in their thousands they do eventually find a tiny space of sanctuary until the tide begins to fall and they can return to the muddy spaces where they can sift and forage.

But I have to make tracks.  I have miles to walk, to visit Amanda in her Care Home, where the tide of her life is going out.  I walk nine miles overall and my knees and feet are tired and bruised.  Nothing really.  The upside is that as I enter the Home I think that perhaps she recognises me and brightens.....  There is no way of telling, as she is non-verbal now, but it heartens me to imagine that perhaps she knows who I am.

She would love the clouds of birds.  She would be delighted to walk the shingle paths and see the watchers by the water.  But, we have to genuflect to the ghastly truths of life.....

Then, in the evening, alone in my capacious home, I tune the radio to a Promenade Concert and a young man (Alim Beisembayev - born in Kazakhstan in 1998) plays Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto Number 2.  How does he do this?  His fingers dance across the keyboard, his mind controls the pressures applied, but he has memorised the work and doesn't leave the orchestra behind.....  Not only dazzling, but beautiful.

Romanticism is not (yet) dead.  Tears come to my eyes as I wish Amanda could enjoy this too....

Although this is not connected to the flowing music of Rachmaninoff, Chapter 30 of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield rises in my mind:

The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw him, to be very small. He was lying with his head and shoulders out of bed, in an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box which had cost him so much pain and trouble. I learned, that, when he was past creeping out of bed to open it, and past assuring himself of its safety by means of the divining rod I had seen him use, he had required to have it placed on the chair at the bed–side, where he had ever since embraced it, night and day. His arm lay on it now. Time and the world were slipping from beneath him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered were (in an explanatory tone) 'Old clothes!'

'Barkis, my dear!' said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over him, while her brother and I stood at the bed's foot. 'Here's my dear boy—my dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together, Barkis! That you sent messages by, you know! Won't you speak to Master Davy?'

He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form derived the only expression it had.

'He's a going out with the tide,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his hand.

My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty's; but I repeated in a whisper, 'With the tide?'

'People can't die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in—not properly born, till flood. He's a going out with the tide. It's ebb at half–arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide.

With love from North-West Norfolk

England, My England

WHAT have I done for you,

England, my England?

What is there I would not do, 

England, my own?

Not long before the First World War, D H Lawrence wrote a story entitled England, My England.  In 1912 he had eloped with Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of one of his former teachers at Nottingham.  They started their life together in Germany, but Lawrence was arrested as an English spy.  They walked south, across the Alps, into Italy.

After Frieda obtained a divorce, she and Lawrence were married, in July 1914, in England.  They lived for a while in Zennor, in Cornwall, but were accused of spying, and signalling to German submarines.

In October 1917, under the Defence of the Realm Act, Lawrence was forced to leave Cornwall at three days notice.  They lived for a while in Berkshire, and then in Derbyshire, but as soon as they were able, they left England, escaping, if you will, from poverty and harassment, and seeking better health (Lawrence suffered from lung problems for much of his life, and died in 1930 from tuberculosis).

They travelled to Sicily, and then, in 1922, to Ceylon, to Australia,  and eventually to Taos, in New Mexico.  In this year, his collection of short stories entitled England, My England, was published.

In the late twenties, the couple returned to Italy, and then, finally, they moved to Vence, in the south of France, where Lawrence died in March, 1930, aged 44.

The short story, England, My England, is not a hymn of praise.  In part it makes fun of the patriotism expressed in W E Henley's Victorian poem of the same name.....  In part it is a satirical portrait of Percy Lucas, brother of E V Lucas, and a genial dilettante, who in 1916 died stoically and miserably from gangrene following wounds suffered in battle.  When Lawrence heard of this, he wrote, I wish that story at the bottom of the sea, before it had even been printed.

However, at the end of the story, I wrote, in 1975, a note.  I don't now know where I got it from, but here goes:  Inexorable destruction of life as it used to be - always as it used to be.  The savage England has been broken up by the darkness of the twentieth century.  The war was something of a coup de grace - the damage had already been done.  Egbert's family, home and garden had been founded in true, spontaneous love, the only valid force, but as the love had died so had the health of the whole situation..... 

We are about a hundred years on from Lawrence's fugue from his homeland, but I sense a curious connection.  When I first lived in Italy, in the late 1970s, I found myself conflicted between enormous enjoyment of new stimuli and an agony of nostalgia.  I read Lawrence, Hardy, Dickens et al in abundance, yearning for a world I had 'sort of' left behind.  The world was in turmoil, again. Aldo Moro's death led to ruinous corruption in the politics of Italy; Mrs Thatcher inspired the greed of capitalist consumerism which led eventually to economic austerity and subsequently the rise of populism.

I was raised in an England recovering from a shattering war.  We played in air-raid shelters and bomb craters.  My grandfathers had served in the First War; my parents in the Second.  We watched films such as The Dam-busters and Dunkirk.  And read G K Chesterton and Ian Fleming.  The only time I went abroad was on a school trip to Norway when I was 14.

I love England, even though I left these shores for twenty years at the age of 25.  I loved the windswept beaches and soggy canvas of our family holidays, the ritual of stirring the Christmas pudding mix, the way my mother served kedgeree, or stuffed lamb's hearts.

Yes, I have grown old, and grumpy, and nowadays hold a list of dislikes as long as your arm (cyclists on footpaths, Jacob Rees Mogg, people who talk loudly on hands free phones on public transport, Chris Grayling, people who don't thank you for giving way, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, untrained dogs that leap up at you, Theresa May, children in bars, Nigel Farage, David Cameron, drones, the leader of the labour party, skinny lattes in takeaway cups....etc.)

But.....  the list of things I like is infinitely longer (wine, pasta, cheese, walking, soft rain, grey skies, the sound of waves on the shore, the smell of earth before a storm, my allotments, song thrushes.....)

Aye.  there's a lot to love, and in quirky, unreal moments, I could even love those who mistakenly voted for the UK to leave the EU......

However, I love France, and Spain and Greece, Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, Portugal, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, 

And all who live in them!

I love Hymns (Ancient, not Modern!) 

And Stencil Art in suburbia:

Darkness, and light:

Field mushrooms and cats' ears:

Quiet dinners with friends:

Gnomes (and rabbits) in gardens:

And kites in the sky:

Trees in winter, and cows, and starlings:

The sky, whenever, but especially when in flame:

And again skylines, at the turning of the year:

Everyone has their own England, or Wales:

Or Belgium, or whatever.  That's part of the joy of life - we are all different with different backgrounds and hopes, fears and stories.  Some of our experiences are shared, and some are suffered, or enjoyed, in private.  

But this nonsense of the inexorable destruction of life as it used to be is just that: nonsense.  We need to build on the experience of the past founded in true, spontaneous love, the only valid force.....

Whatever our station in life.....

Ever the faith endures,
England, my England:—
'Take and break us: we are yours,
England, my own!
Life is good, and joy runs high
Between English earth and sky:
Death is death; but we shall die
To the Song on your bugles blown,
England—
To the stars on your bugles blown!'  

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) 

Neither nationalism, nor patriotism, need exclude mutually profitable relationships with others.  The infatuation with regaining 'control' and the misguided belief that some kind of independence will lead to regained status or greater wealth are delusions that exist only in the minds of those who are already rich and who lack any real understanding of either history or people.  

As D H Lawrence wrote, in England, My England, And as the years passed, the lightning cleared the sky more and more rarely, less and less the blue showed. Gradually the grey lid sank down upon them, as if it would be permanent.

Amen to that......