But the sylphs and ondines,
And the sea-kings and queens
Are fled under the waves:
And I glide, and I glide
Up the glimmering tide
Through a city of graves.
Here will I bury my heart,
Wrapt in the dream it dreamed;
One grave more to the many!
One grave as silent as any;
Sculptured about with art,--
For a palace this tomb once seemed.
Light lips have laughed there,
Bright eyes have beamed.
Revel and dance;
Lady and lover!
Pleasure hath quaffed there:
Beauty hath gleamed,
Love wooed Romance.
Now all is over!
And I glide, and I glide
Up the glimmering tide,
’Mid forms silently passing, as silent as any,
Here, ’mid the waves,
In the city of graves,
To bury my heart--one grave more to the many!
OWEN MEREDITH.
THE QUIETUDE OF THE LAGOON
What I have learnt about Venice, Venice as a person, has come to me
more or less unconsciously, from living on the Zattere, where I could
see the masts of ships and the black hulls of barges, whenever I looked
out of my windows on the canal of the Giudecca; from sitting night
after night outside a café in the Piazza, listening to the military
band, watching people pass, thinking of nothing, only singularly
content to be there; from strolling night after night down to the
promontory of the Dogana, and looking into the darkness of the water
watching a man catching fish in a net like a shrimping net, while
the sound of the mandolines and of the voices of singers who sat in
lantern-lighted gondolas outside the windows of the hotels on the Grand
Canal came to me in a double chorus, crossing one another in a strange,
not inharmonious confusion of tunes; and especially from the Lido, that
long, narrow bank between the lagoon and the Adriatic, to whose seaward
side I went so often, merely to be there, on the sand beyond the
bathing-huts, watching the quietude of the sea. On the horizon there
would be a long, tall line of fishing-boats, their red sails floating
against the pearl grey of the sky like the painted wings of great
moths, spread for flight; as you gazed at them, they seemed to stand
there motionless; then, as you looked away for a moment and looked back
again, one of them would have vanished suddenly, as if it had gone down
into the sea. And the water, which rippled so gently against the sand
at my feet, had something of the gentleness of colour of that water
which wanders about the shores of Ireland. It shone, and seemed to grow
whiter and whiter, as it stretched out towards the horizon, where the
fishing-boats stood up in their long, tall fine against the sky; it had
the delicacy, the quietude of the lagoon, with, in those bright sails,
the beckoning of a possible escape from the monotony of too exquisite
things....
Melancholy ... is an element in the charm of Venice; but a certain
sadness is inherent in the very sound and colour of still water, and
a little of the melancholy which we now feel must always have been a
background of shadow.... Why is it, then, that the melancholy of Venice
is the most exquisite melancholy in the world? It is because that
melancholy is no nearer to one’s heart than the melancholy in the face
of a portrait. It is the tender and gracious sadness of that beautiful
woman who leans her face upon her hands in a famous picture in the
Accademia. The feast is over, the wine still flushes the glass on the
table, the little negro strikes his lute, she listens to the song, her
husband sits beside her, proudly: something not in the world, a vague
thought, a memory, a forgetfulness, has possessed her for the moment,
setting those pensive lines about her lips, which have just smiled, and
which will smile again when she has lifted her eyelids.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
A SEA-VIEW
_Translated by_ BARONESS SWIFT.
Before me spreads the sea, clear and serene;
Upon its shore a wave flows to and fro,
A sky reflecting, bright as beryl’s sheen,
A sky resplendent with the sunlight’s glow.
A snowy sail, afar, in ether blue,
Seems from the world detach’d, half lost to view,
And, o’er the sea, a gull, pausing in flight,
Laughs at his image in that mirror bright.
ANTONIO NEGRI.
VENICE: ITS PLEASURABLE MELANCHOLY
Venice, the Queen of the Adriatic, is distinguished, not only by the
glory of her arts, the strangeness of her position, the romance of her
origin, but by the great historical memories of her days of power.
These throw an interest over a city which survives its own glories, and
even its own life, like the scenery in some great theatre after the
play is done and all the actors are withdrawn. A pleasurable melancholy
grows upon the traveller who wanders among the churches or glides along
on the canals of Venice. Although misfortune has overcast the city
with a pall of sadness, it still preserves the indefinable grace of
things Italian. Its old magnificence imposes on the mind, while the
charm of its present melancholy creeps about the heart. And even on
the brightest day, when the unconquerable sun looks down most broadly
on the glittering city of St. Mark, silence and melancholy still hold
their court on the canals; and the most unsentimental spirit yields to
the elegiac influence.
At Venice, he who is happy, he for whom silence has no charms and
who loves the tumult of the world, soon finds his footsteps dogged
by limping dulness. But those who have known the sorrows of life
return gladly thither; the place is catching--every corner or open
square recommends itself to the affections. The lightness of the
heavens, the even purity of the air, the steely shine of the lagoon,
the roseate reflections of the walls, the nights as clear as day, the
softness of the Venetian dialect, the trustfulness and placability of
the people, their tolerance for all men’s humours, and their gentle
intercourse--out of all these results that unseizable and seductive
quality which is indeed Venice, which sings at a man’s heart, and so
possesses and subdues him that he shall feel far from home whenever he
is far from the Piazzetta.
Travel where you will, neither Rome nor Jerusalem, neither Granada,
Toledo, nor the Golden Horn, will offer you the spectacle of such
another enchanted approach. It is a dream that has taken shape; a
vision of fairyland turned into reality by human hands. The order
of nature is suspended; the lagoon is like the heavens, the heavens
are like the sea; these rosy islets carrying temples are like bards
voyaging the sky; and away upon the horizon, towards Malamocca, the
clouds and the green islands lie mingled as bafflingly as shapes in
the mirage of the desert. The very buildings have an air of dreamland;
solids hang suspended over voids; and ponderous halls and palaces stand
paradoxically supported on the stone lace-work of mediæval sculptors.
All the principles of art are violated: and out of their violation
springs a new art, borrowed from the East but stamped with the mark
of Venice; in a while this is transformed and becomes, in the hands
of the Lombardi, the Leopardi, and the Sansovino, the glory and the
adornment of the city. Opulent and untamed imaginations have spoiled
the treasury of the Magnificoes to build these sculptured palaces and
basilicas of marble and mosaic, to lay their pavements with precious
stones and cover their walls with gold and onyx and Oriental alabaster.
They used the pillage of Aquileia, Altinum, Damascus, and Heliopolis.
With a nameless daring they raised high in air, over the porches and
among their domes, the huge antique bronze horses of Byzantium. They
sustained a mighty palace upon pillars whose carvings seem wrought by
workmen in some opiate dream making them reckless of the cost of time.
They dammed back the sea to set up their city in its place. In the
lagoon, to the sound of strange workmen’s choruses, they buried all
the oaks of Istria and Dalmatia, of Albania and the Julian Alps. They
transformed the climate of the Illyrian peninsula, leaving plains
instead of mountains, and sunburnt deserts in the place of green and
grateful forests; for all the hills have become palaces, as at the
touch of a wand; and deep in the salt sea the old oaks stand embedded,
sustaining the city of St. Mark.
CHARLES YRIARTE.
YOUTH IN VENICE
_Guard._ ... How feel you?
_Jacopo Foscari._ Like a boy--Oh Venice!
_Guard._ And your limbs?
_Jac. Fos._ Limbs! how often have they borne me
Bounding o’er yon blue tide, as I have skimm’d
The gondola along in childish race,
And, masked as a young gondolier, amidst
My gay competitors, noble as I,
Raced for our pleasure, in the pride of strength;
While the fair populace of crowding beauties,
Plebeian as patrician, cheer’d us on
With dazzling smiles, and wishes audible,
And waving kerchiefs, and applauding hands,
Even to the goal!--How many times have I
Cloven with arm still lustier, breast more daring,
The waves all roughen’d; with a swimmer’s stroke
Flinging the billows back from my drench’d hair.
And laughing from my lips the audacious brine,
Which kiss’d it like a wine-cup, rising o’er
The waves as they arose, and prouder still
The loftier they uplifted me; and oft,
In wantonness of spirit, plunging down
Into their green and glassy gulfs, and making
My way to shells and sea-weed, all unseen
By those above, till they wax’d fearful; then
Returning with my grasp full of such tokens
As show’d that I had search’d the deep: exulting
With a far-dashing stroke, and drawing deep
The long-suspended breath, again I spurn’d
The foam which broke around me, and pursued
My track like a sea-bird.--I was a boy then.
LORD BYRON.
BOATS AND VOICES
The boat rocks backwards and forwards, to the gondolier’s circling oar,
the shadows dance a delicious contredanse. Splash, gentle oar; rise,
domes and spires upon the vault; sing, voices, calling along the water;
stream, golden suns, reflected there. The gondola flies down a narrow
passage towards an open place where the canals diverge; the shadows
part, and fire is streaming from the tumultuous water. _Sà premi!_
cry the gondoliers; for a moment all is in swinging confusion....
Lights flash from the upper windows of the tall palaces, balconies
start overhead marked upon the sky. Now it is a palace to let, with
wooden shutters swinging in shadow; now we pass the yawning vaults of
great warehouses filled with saffron and crimson dyes, where barges
are moored and workmen strain at the rolling barrels.... Now it is the
brown wall of some garden terrace; a garland has crept over the brick,
and droops almost to the water; one little spray encircles a rusty ring
hanging there with its shadow.... Now we touch palace walls, and with
a hollow jar start off once more. Now comes a snatch of song through
an old archway; here are boats and voices, the gondolier’s earrings
twinkle in the sun; here are vine wreaths, and steps where children,
those untiring spectators of life, are clustering; more barges with
heavy fruit and golden treasure go by. A little brown-faced boy is
lying with his brown legs in the sun on the very edge of a barge,
dreaming over into the green water; he lazily raises his head to look,
and falls back again; now a black boat passes like a ghost, its slender
points start upwards in a line with the curve of yonder spire; now it
is out of all this swing of shadow and confusion that we cross a broad
sweet breadth of sunlight, and come into the Grand Canal.
LADY RITCHIE.
FROM A PALACE-STEP AT VENICE
I muse ... on a ruined palace-step
At Venice: why should I break off, nor sit
Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit
England gave birth to? Who’s adorable
Enough reclaim a----no Sordello’s Will
Alack!--be queen to me? That Bassanese
Busied among her smoking fruit-boats? These
Perhaps from our delicious Asolo
Who twinkle, pigeons o’er the portico
Not prettier, bind June lilies into sheaves
To deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves
Soiled by their own loose gold-meal? Ah, beneath
The cool arch stoops she, brownest cheek! Her wreath
Endures a month--a half-month--if I make
A queen of her, continue for her sake
Sordello’s story? Nay, that Paduan girl
Splashes with barer legs where a live whirl
In the dead black Giudecca proves sea-weed
Drifting has sucked down three, four, all indeed
Save one pale-red striped, pale-blue turbaned post
For gondolas.
You sad dishevelled ghost
That pluck at me and point, are you advised
I breathe? Let stay those girls (e’en her disguised
--Jewels i’ the locks that love no crownet like
Their native field-buds and the green wheat-spike
So fair! who left this end of June’s turmoil,
Shook off, as might a lily its gold soil,
Pomp, save a foolish gem or two, and free
In dream, came join the peasants o’er the sea.)
Look they too happy, too tricked out? Confess
There is such niggard stock of happiness
To share, that, do one’s uttermost, dear wretch,
One labours ineffectually to stretch
If o’er you so that mother and children, both
May equitably flaunt the sumpter-cloth!
Divide the robe yet farther: be content
With seeing just a score pre-eminent
Through shreds of it, acknowledged happy wights,
Engrossing what should furnish all, by rights!
For, these in evidence, you clearlier claim
A garb for all the rest,--grace all, the same
All these my peasants. I ask youth and strength
And health for each of you, not more--at length
Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
Might add the spirit’s to the body’s grace,
And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
But in this magic weather one discards
Much old requirements: Venice seems a type
Of Life--’twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe,
As Life, the somewhat, hangs ’twixt nought and nought:
’Tis Venice, and ’tis Life--as good you sought
To spare me the Piazza’s slippery stone
Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone,
As hinder Life the evil with the good
Which make up Living, rightly understood.
ROBERT BROWNING.
THE UNWEARIEDNESS OF VENICE
In returning from an excursion ... it is generally at sunset that
one re-enters Venice, the city all ablaze with purple and gold, the
radiance of the descending orb; the lagoon is a pearly grey studded
with the black points of the piles, and all the campaniles, domes, and
warehouses along the bank seem crowned with halos of gold.
These are the spectacles--these, and such as are presented to us by
everyday life, which, after a long sojourn in Venice, end by engrossing
our interest above all others: as though man soon tired of the works
of men, and kept his appetite and desire always keen, always alive
for the works of God only, for nature and for life. In truth, however
passionate a man may be for the things of art, he is soon surfeited
in so colossal a museum as is the city of Venice; he comes at last to
the pass of looking at Tintoret without attention, he stands before a
Giovanni Bellini without emotion; masterpiece crowds upon masterpiece,
Titian on Carpaccio, Pordenone on Palma; bronzes, enamels, triptychs,
marbles, figures of doges lying on their biers, famous condottieri
buried in their armour and standing proud and valorous in the garb
of war upon their sepulchres--all these sights and glories leave us
indifferent.... The truth is, the air of Venice, the sky and its
varying moods, the extraordinary colouring which the atmosphere throws
over everything, offer a charm which surpasses all others; and the
open air, the lagoon, the life of the port, with the changing aspect
of the pearly waves, that glimmering surface which Guardi has so well
rendered, the trembling light upon the silvery field all barred by
tongues of sand and dotted by the black points of the piles, are beyond
the highest inspirations of man.
To sit in front of a café on the Riva, with no other object but that
of looking before you, is a keen pleasure for anyone who has the love
of the picturesque. The incessant movement; the never ungentle pranks
of the motley crowds; those singular colloquies of which the meaning
unfortunately escapes the ear unfamiliar with the Venetian dialect;
the colouring, the sunshine; the changing effects, the seductive
distances; the constant arrivals of great ships, the entrance or
departure of the Chioggiotes or the Greeks of Zante, or sailors of
Sporades, with their ruddy sails making blots of colour on the lagoon,
and when stretched like a bow by the wind, showing in the transparent
air the great Virgin rudely painted on their surface; the caravans
of strangers that pass, with the special character peculiar to each
nationality,--methodical Englishmen,--American ladies with their long
loose hair,--southern Italians high-coloured and vehement,--blond
Germans in spectacles,--quick Frenchmen running with their noses in the
air,--Italian soldiers with helmets of grey canvas; lastly the quaint
industries sheltered under immense umbrellas; chance singers, who fling
upon the echoes of the lagoon an air of Verdi or Gordigiani--all this
is what one never wearies of at Venice.
And what new surprises in the streets, and on the open places great
and small! Here you go up some steps to cross a canal, there the way
is barred, and a little staircase descends right into the water; old
women, worthy copies of the old woman with the basket of eggs in
Titian’s _Presentation of the Virgin_, brush along the wall, their
heads covered up in their shawls....
Nature, the warm air, the limpid and transparent atmosphere in which
Venice is bathed,--it is the emotion of this which after all remains
the strangest among your impressions. After a visit to that prodigious
Ducal Palace, where masterpieces are heaped upon masterpieces, you
long to breathe the clear air and hurry away to the gardens. You pass
along the whole length of the Riva degli Schiavoni, you get among the
shipping, and the farther you go the better you can see the long front
of Venice composing itself into a single view. You turn from time to
time to enjoy the panorama, for it is the most admirable scene ever
dreamt of by a Desplechin, a Thierry, a Cambon, a Chapron, a Nolan, or
a Rubbé, and when you lean on the terrace you soon forget the great
works of art on which you have but now been gazing, in presence of this
mighty work of the Master of masters! The man of letters and the critic
in you give way to the painter, and you are held enchanted by the spell
of these wonderful harmonies. The grounds of the garden are a light
grey, the grass is green, the trees in the foreground, still bare of
leaves, cut out against the sky the delicate tracery of their boughs,
the water is pearly with diamond spangles and shifting facets of light
as bright as stars; the tongues of sand and dry places of the lagoon
come cutting here and there with bars of brown that silver mirror; San
Giorgio Maggiore, red and white, catches a luminous reflection; the
Grand Canal and its palaces close the horizon. All is solitary in the
gardens, the green lizards glide quiveringly from sight, a gondolier
cries _alla barca_, a pretty little girl passes with bare head, her
hair deftly dressed and draped in her shawl; stretched on the scanty
grass all round, the gondoliers sleep in the sunshine. All this would
no doubt not satisfy the desires and aspirations of practical minds
and natures hungry for life and change, for sensations ever new and
spectacles ever varied. But for us it is a world sufficient, and we
are not alone in feeling it to be so. ‘You dwell there in delight,’
says Paul de St. Victor, ‘and you look back to the days of your sojourn
with emotion. Venice casts about you a charm as tender as the charm
of woman. The rosy atmosphere in which she lies steeped, the shimmer
of her lagoons, the jewelled hues that change with the changing hour
upon her domes, her fascinating vistas, the masterpieces of her radiant
painting, the gentle temper of her men and women, the sweet and pensive
gladness that you breathe with her very air--all these are so many
divers but interlinked enchantments. Other cities had admirers, Venice
alone has lovers.’
CHARLES YRIARTE.
ON THE ZATTERE
INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS
Only to live, only to be
In Venice, is enough for me.
To be a beggar, and to lie
At home beneath the equal sky,
To feel the sun, to drink the night,
Had been enough for my delight;
Happy because the sun allowed
The luxury of being proud
Not to some only, but to all
The right to lie along the wall.
Here my ambition dies; I ask
No more than some half-idle task,
To be done idly, and to fill
Some gaps of leisure when I will.
I care not if the world forget
That it was ever in my debt;
I care not where its prizes fall;
I long for nothing, having all.
The sun each morning, on his way,
Calls for me at the Zattere;
I wake and greet him, I go out,
Meet him, and follow him about;
We spend the day together, he
Goes to bed early; as for me,
I make the moon my mistress, prove
Constant to my inconstant love.
For she is coy with me, will hie
To my arms amorously, and fly
Ere I have kissed her; ah! but she,
She it is, to eternity,
I adore only; but her smile
Bewilders the enchanted isle
To more celestial magic glows
At once the crystal and the rose.
The crazy lover of the moon,
I hold her, on the still lagoon,
Sometimes I hold her in my arms;
’Tis her cold silver kiss that warms
My blood to singing, and puts fire
Into the heart of my desire.
And all desire in Venice dies
To such diviner lunacies;
Life dreams itself: the world goes on,
Oblivious, in oblivion;
Life dreams itself, content to keep
Happy immortally, in sleep.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
‘THE SUN OF VENICE GOING TO SEA’
The Venetian fishing-boats, almost without exceptions carry canvass
painted with bright colours, the favourite design for the centre being
either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favourite colours
being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally. The radiance
of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes at the mast-heads
under sunlight is beyond all painting; but it is strange that, of
constant occurrence as these boats are on all the lagoons, Turner alone
should have availed himself of them. Nothing could be more faithful
than the boat which was the principal object in this picture, in the
cut of the sail, the filling of it, the exact height of the boom above
the deck, the quartering of it with colour; finally and especially,
the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows. All these, however,
are comparatively minor merits (though not the blaze of colour which
the artist elicited from the right use of these circumstances), but
the peculiar power of the picture was the painting of the sea surface,
where there were no reflections to assist it. A stream of splendid
colour fell from the boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the
distance the city and crowded boats threw down some playing lines,
but these still left on each side of the boat a large space of water
reflecting nothing but the morning sky. This was divided by an eddying
swell, on whose continuous sides the local colour of the water was
seen, pure aqua-marine (a beautiful occurrence of closely-observed
truth), but still there remained a large blank space of pale water to
be treated, the sky above had no distinct details and was pure faint
grey, with broken white vestiges of cloud; it gave no help, therefore.
But there the water lay, no dead grey flat paint, but downright clear,
playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite hue and retiring as
regularly and visibly back and far away, as if there had been objects
all over it to tell the story by perspective. Now it is the doing of
this which tries the painter, and it is his having done this which made
me say above that ‘no man had ever painted the surface of calm water
but Turner.’ The San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina, contained a
similar passage, equally fine; in one of the Canale della Giudecca the
specific green colour of the water is seen in front, with the shadows
of the boats thrown on it in purple; all, as it retires, passing into
the pure reflective blue.
JOHN RUSKIN.
VENICE UNDER THE STARLIGHT