The soil and sand rose beneath the desecrating feet in a sorrowful
cloud that hid the glory in advance and around him. "The peace lies
deeper yet," he thought, watching the center and pushing on. But ever
before him rose the obscuring cloud of his own creation. He can no
longer wade, but strikes out boldly, greedily, to plunder the lake of
its secret. He finds that no physical force or finesse can touch the
delicate beauty he desires; and after vainly striving to grasp the fine
lines of soul-sense, he returns to the shore, weary, disappointed, and
bitter.
"It is all illusion," he railed. "No other Hunter excels me in strength
or skill; yet when this promised happiness is almost within my grasp,
it fades and disappears. There is no reality behind the dissolving
pictures of a deceitful world."
The Dreamer looked from the fair strength of the Hunter on the bank to
the cloudy, restless water. There he saw reflected his own figure--a
dusky, broken image with the pessimistic poise. Then the light which
he had longed for shone full upon his mind. He was the Traveler
whose rude selfishness had despoiled the trusting Rose. He was the
Hunter of Happiness. Around him were the rejected trophies of his
skill--sweet-voiced birds and creatures fleet of foot and quick of
eye. Too well they vouched for his unerring aim with bloody breast and
broken limb and dull, unseeing eyes. He had wasted the life that gave
these things their joy and beauty. Only the pitiful, unlovely forms
were his possessions; from these his wearied senses turned in sick
distaste.
The Dreamer's eyes fell before the luminous scene in which the Hunter
was the one dark stain. How worse than blind his whole career had been.
His life was but a crowded list of failures. How fair were Nature's
pictures everywhere before he marred them with greedy, sordid touch.
Now he saw that the world was alive with a wondrous reality for those
who sought it unselfishly.
"The fault is all my own," he groaned in bitter shame. "That is mine,
indeed, all mine. Oh, for a chance to redeem this wretched past!" he
cried, pierced with so keen a heartache that he awoke.
Through the open windows the dewy morning air came in, sweet with the
breath of flowers and alive with the subdued joy of birds. The great
elms brooded over the lesser things with stately tenderness, while with
slender, outstretched branches, like waving magnetic fingers, they
soothed and awakened the freshened earth. In the east the lavender
veil fell down before the sacred flame which daily gives new hope and
strength to light dull lamps of clay.
VENICE: by Grace Knoche
It is one of the world's wonders that a little community should rise
up from the midst of untillable marsh lands--literally out of the
sea--and within a few centuries, through its energy, thrift, invention,
and sheer ability, should become a world power not only in diplomacy,
arms, and commerce, but in architecture, art, philosophy, and _belles
lettres_. And all this, in spite of envy and attacks from without and
conspiracies from within.
The power of Venice, "the wealthy republic," was so great in her palmy
days that the honor of alliance with her was covetously sought by
emperors and popes alike. At a time when, as history declares, a dictum
from the Pope, or a threat of excommunication, would have brought
almost any other nation of Europe to its knees in groveling terror,
Venice laughed at both and pursued the even tenor of her imperial way.
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. FRA PAOLO SARPI]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. CARTA GATE AND
CORNER OF DUCAL PALACE, VENICE, ITALY]
The climax of her independence of dogmatic rule was reached in those
glorious and courageous later days when Fra Paolo Sarpi lived and
guided her destinies, Sarpi, "the noblest of the Venetians," who
realized more fully than any other in that republic the dangers that
would threaten should outside influences ever gain a foothold in the
chambers of government. Had there been a successor to Fra Paolo, one
worthy of his example, one who grasped his purposes, knew the spirit
of the teacher that molded them and what beneficent power lay behind,
who possessed as well the power to continue Sarpi's work--had such
an exceptional soul appeared, Venice would not have decayed. At Fra
Paolo's death the decline of Venetian greatness set in.
In the course of her history--and three centuries practically included
the period of her undisputed greatness--Venice attained a position of
supremacy on virtually every line of activity. In war she was dreaded.
Says Yriarte, author of _L'Histoire de Venise_:
The arsenal of Venice, which still exists, was its palladium; the
high organization of this establishment, the technical skill of its
workmen, the specially selected body of the "arsenalotti," to whom the
republic entrusted the duty of guarding the senate and great council,
and its admirable discipline, were for centuries the envy of other
European powers.... At the most critical period in its history, when
it (Venice) was engaged in its great struggle with the Turks ... the
arsenal regularly sent forth a fully equipped galley each morning
for a hundred successive days.... At the acme of its prosperity the
arsenal employed 16,000 workmen.
It is impossible to touch upon the political life and fortunes of
Venice in the short space of a single article. Moreover, information
on this is very accessible, for the Venetians themselves were great
chroniclers, who firmly believed that their city was building in a
strange way for the future and that its foundation stones should not
rest unmarked. And though the last thing these old recorders dreamed of
was the imminent decay of their proud city--their idol, their divinity,
the object of their passionate adoration--they were right. Venice _was_
building for the future--to which seeming mystery Theosophy also has
the key.
Suffice it to say that when the inner history of Katherine Tingley's
visit to Venice, upon the occasion of her first trip around the
world in the interest of Theosophy, is given out publicly, a new
interpretation will be given to some of these old records. The spirit
of Venice has never died although untoward aims and evils have for
nearly four centuries obscured the outer expression of it. But that,
like the history of Fra Paolo, is another story, too, and volumes would
be needed to contain it.
Venice was in her days the commercial link between Europe and the
Orient and her merchants neglected no opportunity. The result was that
not only did the city become fabulously wealthy but new trades and
wonderful art-crafts sprung up. Rare damasks, glass, tapestries, silks,
enamels, metal-work of various kinds, plastic work, mosaics, brought
from the countries of the Orient by Venetian merchants, served as
models to craftsmen who not only copied but improved upon them in the
great industrial centers which sprang up. Venetian art-craftsmanship
became throughout Europe a synonym for the ultra, the perfect.
A link between Italy and Greece, Venice afforded an asylum for Grecian
men of letters when the light in their own land failed. These men
Venice honored. They taught in her universities; they lighted up in
the city not only a knowledge of the great literary monuments of
the ancients but a love for them; they filled her libraries with
translations. Plato, Socrates, Thucydides, Strabo, Xenophon, Homer, and
Orpheus, became something more than names. Says Yriarte:
Venice, more than any other town, has the credit of having rescued
from oblivion, by editions and translations, the master-pieces of
Greek literature.
The art of printing was welcomed upon the very threshold of its
discovery and the services of Venice on this line are unique in the
history of letters. Her printers were not mere workmen; some of them
were scholars. "The Aldine Press" is synonymous with scholarship today
as it was in renaissance Italy. Symonds describes the enthusiasm of
the elder Aldus (or Aldo) for Greek literature, and his life-ambition,
which was "to secure the literature of Greece from further accident
by committing its chief masterpieces to type." He relates how Aldo,
already a scholar and qualified as a humanist, "according to the
custom of the country," spent a further two years in a study of Greek
literature. Not a Venetian himself and with no ties in the city, by
some "accident of fortune" he selected Venice as the place in which to
build up a work whose parallel the world has not since afforded and of
which a similar record is not to be found in the past unless possibly
in the secret records of ancient China.
At Venice Aldo gathered an army of Greek scholars and compositors
around him. His trade was carried on by Greeks and Greek was the
language of his household. Instructions to typesetters and binders
were given in Greek. The prefaces to his editions were written in
Greek. Greeks from Crete collated MSS., read proofs, and gave models
of calligraphy for casts of Greek type.
Not counting the craftsmen employed in merely manual labor, Aldo
entertained as many as thirty of these Greek assistants in his family.
His own energy and industry were unremitting. In 1495 he issued the
first volume of his Aristotle. Four more volumes completed the work in
1497-98. Nine comedies of Aristophanes appeared in 1498. Thucydides,
Sophocles, and Herodotus followed in 1502; Xenophon's _Hellenics_ and
Euripides in 1503; Demosthenes in 1504.
The troubles of Italy, which pressed heavily on Venice, suspended
Aldo's labors for awhile. But in 1508 he resumed his work with an
edition of the minor Greek orators; and in 1509 appeared the lesser
works of Plutarch.
Then came another stoppage. The league of Cambray had driven Venice
back to her lagoons, and all the forces of the republic were
concentrated on a struggle to the death with the allied powers of
Europe. In 1513 Aldo reappeared with Plato ... in a preface eloquently
and earnestly comparing the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy
with the sublime and tranquil objects of a student's life. Pindar,
Hesychius, and Athenaeus followed in 1514.
But Aldo's enthusiasm for the classics was not confined to those of
Greece. He issued superb editions of the principal Latin and Italian
classics as well, in an exquisite type especially cast for his Press
and which it is said he had copied from the very handwriting of
Petrarch.
There is something very reminiscent of the Orient in Aldo's reverence
for beautiful calligraphy. To the Chinese scholar the ideograph is
sacred and to write it well demands art and philosophy both. There is
an ancient Chinese legend which says that once upon a time certain
ideographs "came down from their tablets and spoke unto mankind."
Curious, that one should recall it here. But not to know Aldo is to
miss a great light upon the spirit that made Venice what it became, the
spirit that animated every soul in that wonderful city--devotion to
a high ideal, absolute unselfishness and service. Where is the Press
today that combines these unpurchasable qualities with the acme of
scholarship? We know of one--but only one.
Even in a short article, with Venice herself a subject for volumes,
libraries, it is impossible to omit the following--also from Symonds:
Aldo ... burned with a humanist's enthusiasm for the books he printed;
and we may well pause astonished at his industry, when we remember
what a task it was in that age to prepare texts of authors so numerous
and so voluminous from MSS. Whatever the students of this century may
think of Aldo's scholarship, they must allow that only vast erudition
and thorough familiarity with the Greek language could have enabled
him to accomplish what he did. In his own days Aldo's learning won the
hearty acknowledgment of ripe scholars.
To his fellow workers he was uniformly generous, free from jealousy
and prodigal of praise. His stores of MSS. were as open to the learned
as his printed books were liberally given to the public. While aiming
at that excellence of typography which renders his editions the
treasures of the book-collector, he strove at the same time to make
them cheap.... His great undertaking was carried on under continual
difficulties, arising from strikes among his workmen, the piracies of
rivals, and the interruptions of war. When he died, bequeathing Greek
literature as an inalienable possession to the world, he was a poor
man.
To touch with any show of justice upon the architecture of Venice would
task the eloquence of a Ruskin. But it is possible to indicate a few of
the causes that contributed to make Venice the architectural marvel of
Europe and her palaces and churches unique in the world.
According to tradition, there were both castles and "churches" in
Venice several centuries before the earliest examples that survive.
The first "church," it is said, was founded in 432 by one Giacomo del
Rialto, but the earliest of which we have tangible evidence--and it is
still standing--was built in the eleventh century. Of the eleventh and
twelfth century castles or palaces, a number still may be seen.
Venetian architecture, like her literary and industrial life--indeed,
like her whole life--was a combination of Oriental and Occidental
influences. Her people were discoverers, adapters; they had a
perfect genius for appreciation of the artistic, the eloquent, the
statesmanlike, the progressive--in a word, "the Good, the Beautiful and
the True" in the work of others--and with opportunities strewn along
her path thicker than flowers in June, Venice seemed to grasp them all.
Although Venetian architecture was complex and composite to a degree,
it is possible to trace the predominating influences as they set
their mark upon style after style. Up to the thirteenth century the
prevailing style was Byzantine, of which the leading characteristics
seem to have been in Venice the semi-circular arch and a prodigal use
of sculptured ornament. The method of construction employed by the
Venetians--the walls being of a fine hard brick which was covered with
stucco, or in the finer buildings with thin slabs of costly marbles and
porphyries--permitted no end of surface decoration. And in this the
color-loving Venetians reveled. Moldings, carvings, rolls, _cavettos_,
flutings, panels, bands and diapers of flowing scroll work, lent
their support to most varied adaptations of characteristic Persian or
Moslem design, with its semi-conventional foliage, animals, dragons,
birds, flowers, etc. Markedly beautiful, and in a way peculiar, is the
effect of the façades of many buildings, "studded with gorgeous panels
like jewels on a rich brocade."
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. VENICE]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. A "STREET" IN VENICE]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. ST. MARK'S, VENICE]
[Illustration: Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept. RIO PINELLI]
But in the thirteenth century a period of transition ushered out the
round Byzantine arch, and in the pointed Gothic arch of the countries
immediately north. Very soon, however, the Early Renaissance style, as
exemplified in Verona and other Italian cities, became a dominating
influence, this in turn to give way to the Classic, which became the
"grand style" of sixteenth-century Venice. After that, the deluge--of
mediocrity.
The Venetians, a conquering people by virtue of their navy which was
the envy of Europe, made their city the storehouse of rich treasures
stripped from the ruined cities of the past, and from other cities made
her own by conquest. And her merchants did the rest. Quantities of
rich marbles were brought from fallen Aquileia, Ravenna, and Heraclea,
cities which in their turn had brought them from Egypt, Greece, and
Arabia, and Numidia--
the red porphyry of Egypt and the green porphyry of Mt. Taygetus,
red and gray Egyptian granites, the beautiful lapis Atracius (_verde
antico_), Oriental alabaster from Numidia and Arabia, the Phrygian
_pavonazzetto_ with its purple mottlings, cipollino from Carystus,
and, in great quantities, the alabaster-like Proconnesian marble with
bluish and amber-colored striations.
Add to this magnificence a lavish use of gold and color, particularly
the warm ochres and earth reds, and the costly ultramarine, and the
modern mind, accustomed to uncolored and unstriated marbles and the
quiet gray of stone, can hardly imagine the gorgeous luxuriance of
color that marked the city in her prime.
The architectural glory of Venice is of course the Church of St. Mark,
which, says Professor Middleton,
stands quite alone among the buildings of the world in respect of
its unequaled richness of material and decoration, and also from the
fact that it has been constructed with the spoils of countless other
buildings, and therefore forms a museum of sculpture of the most
varied kind, nearly every century from the fourth down to the latest
Renaissance being represented in some carved panel or capital, if not
more largely....
During the long period from its dedication in 1085 till the overthrow
of the Venetian republic by Napoleon, every doge's reign saw some
addition to the rich decorations of the church--mosaics, sculpture,
wall linings or columns of precious marbles. By degrees the whole
walls inside and outside were completely faced either with glass
mosaics on gold grounds or with precious colored marbles and
porphyries, plain white marble being only used for sculpture, and
then thickly covered with gold.... No less than five hundred columns
of porphyry and costly marbles are used.... A whole volume might be
written on the sculptured capitals, panels, screens.
The use of inlay is almost peculiar to St. Mark's, as is also the
method of enriching sculptured reliefs with backgrounds of brilliant
gold and colored glass mosaics, producing an effect of extraordinary
magnificence.
One of the great glories of St. Mark's is the most magnificent gold
retable in the world, most sumptuously decorated with jewels and
enamels, usually known as the Pala d'Oro.... This marvelous retable is
made up of an immense number of microscopically minute gold cloisonné
enamel pictures, of the utmost splendor in color and detail.
Of the architecture and art of the great council hall of the doges, the
Ducal Palace, little need be said after the description of St. Mark's,
for while not so lavishly ornamented, it is a world in itself in the
style of architectural beauty that most appealed to the Venetians.
The original Palace of the Doges was built in the ninth century, but
the vicissitudes of war and of fire decreed its rebuilding several
times, and the Ducal Palace that we know today dates from the
fourteenth century. Says Professor Middleton:
The two main façades, those towards the sea and the _Piazzetta_,
consist of a repetition of the same design, that which was begun in
the early years of the fourteenth century.... The design of these
façades is very striking, and unlike that of any other building in the
world....
The main walls are wholly of brick; but none was left visible. The
whole surface of the upper story is faced with small blocks of fine
Istrian and red Verona marbles, arranged so as to make a large diaper
pattern, with, in the center of each lozenge, a cross made of verde
antico and other costly marbles. The colonnades, string-courses, and
other decorative features are built in solid Istrian stone.
Very beautiful sculpture, executed with an ivory-like minuteness
of finish, is used to decorate the whole building with wonderful
profusion. At each of the three free angles is a large group
immediately over the lower column. At the south-east angle is the
Drunkenness of Noah, at the south-west the Fall of Man, and at the
north-west the Judgment of Solomon. Over each at a much higher level
is a colossal figure of an archangel--Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel.
The sculpture of all the capitals, especially of those on the
thirty-six lower columns, is very beautiful and elaborate, a great
variety of subjects being introduced among the decorative foliage,
such as the virtues, vices, months of the year, age of man,
occupations, sciences, animals, nations of the world, and the like.
On the whole, the sculpture of the fourteenth century part is finer
than that of the later part near St. Mark's.
On the walls of the chief council chambers are a magnificent series
of oil paintings by Tintoretto and other, less able, Venetians--among
them Tintoretto's masterpiece, Bacchus and Ariadne and his enormous
picture of Paradise, the largest oil painting in the world.
Up to and during a part of the sixteenth century the state prisons were
on the ground floor of the Ducal Palace, but they were finally removed
to a new structure on the opposite side of the narrow canal, and a
bridge, the "Ponte dei Sospiri" or "Bridge of Sighs," was thrown across
the canal, connecting the two buildings.
In the magnificence and beauty of its homes--its _palazzi_ or
palaces--Venice is unique in the world. It is said that no other city,
then or since, is to be compared with Venice in the loveliness and
romantic interest of its domestic architecture. Up to the twelfth
century the Byzantine style of architecture prevailed, but the
thirteenth and fourteenth century palaces--whose builders were more
or less influenced by the design of the Ducal Palace, then nearing
completion--are Venetian Gothic.
The climax of splendor was reached in the "Golden House" the wonderful
_Ca' d'Oro_, so named from the lavish use of gold leaf on its
sculptured ornamentations. It was literally a "golden house."
No words can describe the magnificence of this palace on the Grand
Canal, its whole façade faced with the most costly variegated marbles,
once picked out with gold, vermillion and ultramarine, the walls
pierced with the elaborate traceried windows and enriched with bands
and panels of delicate carving--in combined richness of form and
wealth of color giving an effect of almost dazzling splendor.
But following close upon this magnificence--which was reflected
in nearly all the palaces that were built toward the close of the
fourteenth century--came the inevitable reaction toward a less ornate
style, the Early Renaissance. Compared with the _Ca' d'Oro_ one
writer has described the sixteenth century palaces, which followed
Early Renaissance and Classic models, as "dull and scholastic." They
certainly must have been a restful change.
So much for the architecture of Venice--
White swan of cities, slumbering in her nest
So wonderfully built among the reeds
Of the lagoon.
But the visitor to the Venice of today finds his interest in her
buildings doubled from the fact that upon the walls of many of them are
to be found the works of some of the greatest painters the Occident
has known. When we reflect that in the sixteenth century Venice
possessed a school of art that for power, technical perfection, and
gorgeous interpretation of color, stood pre-eminent in its own day
and has not been surpassed in ours, little more need be said. Palma
Vecchio, Giorgione, the great portraitist Lorenzo Lotto, Paul Veronese,
Tintoretto, and--Titian! What a galaxy! Surely nothing more need be
said upon the art of Venice. As in everything else, the impossible
seemed not the exceptional but the mediocre.
In short, to give one the outline of only a few of the activities of
the people of this City of Destiny is to drown oneself in superlatives.
Her history is as fraught with heroism, with simple dauntless courage,
as that of the Dutch Republic; it is as colored with romance as that
of Palmyra or Thebes. _Karma_ is the only key to an understanding of
the strange destiny which brought to flower such transcendant energy in
so seemingly sterile a soil. _Reincarnation_ is the only theory which
can hope to throw light upon the _quality_ of effort that marked her
citizens as a body of people apart, who must have worked together in
the past as they unquestionably will in the future.