rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land,
and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall--block piled on block--of
Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for
the waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful
waste. The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on
these _murazzi_, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic
in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them
had to be brought across the Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the
Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea
might effect an entrance into the lagoon. Our gondoliers told us of
some places where the _murazzi_ were broken in a gale, or _sciroccale_,
not very long ago. Lying awake in Venice, when the wind blows hard,
one hears the sea thundering upon its sandy barrier, and blesses God
for the _murazzi_. On such a night it happened once to me to dream a
dream of Venice overwhelmed by water. I saw the billows roll across
the smooth lagoon, like a gigantic Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled,
and San Marco’s domes went down. The Campanile rocked and shivered like
a reed. And all along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless,
tottering to their fall, while boats piled high with men and women
strove to stem the tide, and save themselves from those impending
ruins. It was a mad dream, born of the sea’s roar and Tintoretto’s
painting. But this afternoon no such visions are suggested. The sea
sleeps, and in the moist autumn air we break tall branches of the
seeded yellowing samphire from hollows of the rocks, and bear them
homeward in a wayward bouquet mixed with cobs of Indian-corn.
Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the mouth of
the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in marsh and meadows,
intersected by broad renes. In spring the ditches bloom with
fleurs-de-lys; in autumn they take sober colouring from lilac daisies
and the delicate sea-lavender. Scores of tiny plants are turning
scarlet on the brown moist earth; and when the sun goes down behind
the Euganean hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these
shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the
common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and
rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with
a pale light from the east, and beyond this pallid mirror shines
Venice--a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush.
Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded.
The western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark
fire-rimmed clouds. The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids,
Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches
of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing
lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. Then, at last,
we see the first lamps glitter on the Zattere. The quiet of the night
has come.
Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of Venetian
sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet stormy days, when the
west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth of fire, when chasms of clear
turquoise heavens emerge, and horns of flame are flashed to the
zenith, and unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step
over step, stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome
throbs. Or, again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches,
and high, infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of
half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush crimson,
and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gemlike
blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one
such evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea
between Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were reflected
without interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat
was the only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang
suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an
insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these
melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps,
are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch
of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples here and there on
the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come. And
beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky
alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping
from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface. There is no
deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but
purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
AT THE LIDO
Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent.
It has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station
of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the
water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like
a river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy,
above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The
Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure
up the personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a
fashionable resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied
by pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world
quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and
Sant’ Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than
the glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant’
Elisabetta offers.
But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth
sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned
poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour’s contemplation of a
limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant’
Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across
the island and back again. Antonio and Francesco wait and order wine,
which we drink with them in the shade of the little _osteria’s_ wall.
A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to Lido
was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are
welcome to the artist’s soul. I have always held that in our modern
life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopœic sense--that
sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the
powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii
of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the
appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates
for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It
seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting
for this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been
previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the
touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music
dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form
and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain
no longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex
conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail judged by
this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.
I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the
lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful
risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their
shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked
myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity
of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the Ægean
or Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The
Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the
fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the curled crest of a wave,
crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to caverns
where the billows plunge in tideless instability.
We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic
shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad
_pergola_. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a dish
of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of them soon
rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged
man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender,
for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is
equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the
muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free
sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed
these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to
its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved
with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown
back upon his matted _zazzera_ of dark hair tipped with dusky brown.
This shock of hair, cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me
of the lagoon grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals,
and sunset gilds its sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed
intensely, with compulsive effluence of electricity. It was the wild
glance of a Triton. Short blonde moustache, dazzling teeth, skin
bronzed, but showing white and healthful through open front and sleeves
of lilac shirt. The dashing sparkle of this animate splendour, who
looked to me as though the sea-waves and the sun had made him in some
hour of secret and unquiet rapture, was somehow emphasized by a curious
dint dividing his square chin--a cleft that harmonized with smile on
lip and steady flame in eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have
upon a reader to compare eyes to opals. Yet Stefano’s eyes, as they
met mine, had the vitreous intensity of opals, as though the colour
of Venetian waters were vitalized in them. This noticeable being had
a rough, hoarse voice, which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god,
might have screamed in storm or whispered raucous messages from crests
of tossing billows.
I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the
lagoons was humanized; the spirit of the salt-water lakes had appeared
to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given; I
was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.
Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews’ cemetery. It is a quiet
place, where the flat gravestones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian,
lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would
fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk,
had left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature.
Yet, knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not
affirm so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which
seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from
San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes.
Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with
their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and
rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and
defile these habitations of the dead:
‘Corruption most abhorred
Mingling itself with their renowned ashes.’
Some of the gravestones have been used to fence the towing-path; and
one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian
marble.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
THE LIDO
Yesterday I set out early with my tutelary genius for the Lido, the
tongue of land which shuts in the lagoons, and divides them from the
sea. We landed and walked straight across the isthmus. I heard a loud
hollow murmur,--it was the sea! I soon saw it: it crested high against
the shore, as it retired,--it was about noon, and time of ebb. I have
then seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful
bed, just as it quitted it. I wished the children had been there to
gather the shells; childlike, I myself picked up plenty of them.... On
the Lido, not far from the sea, is the burial-place of Englishmen, and
a little further on, of the Jews: both alike are refused the privilege
of resting in consecrated ground. I found here the tomb of Smith, the
noble English consul, and that of his first wife. It is to him that
I owe my first copy of Palladio; I thanked him for it here in his
unconsecrated grave....
The Lido is at best but a sand-bank. But the sea--it is a grand sight!
I will try and get a sail upon it some day in a fishing-boat: the
gondolas never venture out so far....
A delicious day from morning to night! I have been towards Chioggia, as
far as Pelestrina, where are the great structures, called _murazzi_,
which the Republic has caused to be raised against the sea. They are
hewn of stone, and properly are intended to protect from the fury of
the wild element the Lido, which separates the lagoons from the sea.
The lagoons are the work of old nature. First of all, the land and
tide, the ebb and flow, working against each other, and then the
gradual sinking of the primal waters, were, together, the causes why,
at the upper end of the Adriatic, we find a pretty extensive range of
marshes, which, covered by the flood-tide, are partly left bare by the
ebb. Art took possession of the highest spots, and thus arose Venice,
formed out of a group of a hundred isles, and surrounded by hundreds
more. Moreover, at an incredible expense of money and labour, deep
canals have been dug through the marshes, in order that at the time of
high water, ships of war might pass to the chief points. What human
industry and wit contrived and executed of old, skill and industry must
now keep up....
Yesterday evening I ascended the tower of St. Mark’s: as I had lately
seen from its top the lagoons in their glory at flood-time, I wished
to see them at low water; for in order to have a correct idea of the
place, it is necessary to take in both views. It looks rather strange
to see land all around one, where a little before the eye fell upon a
mirror of waters. The islands are no longer islands--merely higher and
house-crowned spots in one large morass of a grey-greenish colour, and
intersected by beautiful canals.
GOETHE.
ON THE LAGOONS
My gondola goes sailing
Over the ruffled brine,
While in the west are paling
The purple and carmine.
The light yet burns and blazes
With richest, rosiest hue
Where red San Giorgio raises
Its belfry in the blue.
As soft scirocco tosses
Foam to my face and spray
Athwart my _ferro_ crosses,
Along the water-way,
In cage-like _barca_ seated,
A soldier, pale and bent,
One to whom has been meted
Long, lonely punishment.
I catch the look imploring
That he to me has cast,
As, indolently oaring,
His sullen guards go past.
Not any word is spoken,
Only a smile from me
Gives the poor prisoner token
Of my heart’s sympathy.
Brief, brief has been our meeting,
And, as the sea grows grey,
Amid the rose light fleeting
We pass upon our way.
PERCY PINKERTON.
À LA ZUECCA
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Vous étiez, vous étiez bien aise
À Saint-Blaise.
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Nous étions bien là.
Mais de vous en souvenir
Prendrez vous la peine?
Mais de vous en souvenir
Et d’y revenir,
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Dans les prés fleuris cueillir la verveine;
À Saint-Blaise, à la Zuecca,
Vivre et mourir là.
ALFRED DE MUSSET.
LA MADONNA DELL’ACQUA
_In the centre of the lagoon between Venice and the mouths of the
Brenta, supported on a few mouldering piles, stands a small shrine
dedicated to the Madonna dell’Acqua, which the gondolier never passes
without a prayer._
Around her shrine no earthly blossoms blow,
No footsteps fret the pathway to and fro;
No sign nor record of departed prayer,
Print of the stone, nor echo of the air;
Worn by the lip, nor wearied by the knee,--
Only a deeper silence of the sea:
For there, in passing, pause the breezes bleak,
And the foam fades, and all the waves are weak.
The pulse-like oars in softer fall succeed,
The black prow falters through the wild seaweed--
Where, twilight-borne, the minute thunders reach,
Of deep-mouthed surf, that bays by Lido’s beach.
With intermittent motion traversed far,
And shattered glancing of the western star,
Till the faint storm-bird on the heaving flow
Drops in white circles, silently like snow.
Not here the ponderous gem nor pealing note,
Dim to adorn--insentient to adore--
But purple-dyed, the mists of evening float,
In ceaseless incense from the burning floor
Of ocean, and the gathered gold of heaven
Laces its sapphire vault, and, early given
The white rays of the rushing firmament
Pierce the blue-quivering night through wreath or rent
Of cloud inscrutable and motionless,--
Hectic and wan, and moon-companioned cloud!
Oh! lone Madonna, angel of the deep,
When the night falls, and deadly winds are loud,
Will not thy love be with us while we keep
Our watch upon the waters, and the gaze
Of thy soft eyes, that slumber not, nor sleep?
Deem not then, stranger, that such trust is vain;
Faith walks not on these weary waves alone,
Though weakness dread or apathy disdain
The spot which God has hallowed for His own.
They sin who pass it lightly, ill-divining
The glory of this place of bitter prayer;
And hoping against hope, and self-resigning,
And reach of faith, and wrestling with despair,
And resurrection of the last distress,
Into the sense of Heaven, when earth is bare,
And of God’s voice, when man’s is comfortless.
JOHN RUSKIN.
LORD BYRON ON THE LIDO
Lord Byron (writes the poet’s friend) proposed to me to accompany him
in his rides on the Lido.... Every day that the weather would permit,
Lord Byron called for me in his gondola, and we found the horses
waiting for us outside the fort. We rode as far as we could along the
sea-shore, and then on a kind of dyke, or embankment, which has been
raised where the island was very narrow, as far as another small fort,
about half-way between the principal one and the town or village of
Malamocco, near the other extremity of the island,--the distance being
about three miles.
On the land side of the embankment, near the smaller fort, was a
boundary stone, which probably marked some division of property,--all
the side of the island, nearest the lagoon, being divided into gardens
for the cultivation of vegetables. At the foot of this stone, Lord
Byron repeatedly told me that I should cause him to be interred, if he
should die in Venice, or its neighbourhood. During my residence here
... nothing could be more delightful than these rides on the Lido. We
were from half to three-quarters of an hour crossing the water, during
which his conversation was most amusing and interesting. Sometimes
he would bring with him any new book he had received, and read to me
the passages which struck him most. Often he would repeat to me whole
stanzas of the poems he was writing, as he had composed them on the
preceding evening.
THOMAS MOORE.
THE LIDO AND ITS GRAVES
I went to greet the full May-moon
On that long narrow shoal
Which lies between the still lagoon
And the open ocean’s roll.
How pleasant was that grassy shore,
When one for months had been
Shut up in streets,--to feel once more
One’s footfall on the green!
There are thick trees too in that place;
But straight from sea to sea,
Over a rough uncultured space,
The path goes drearily.
I pass along with many a bound
To hail the fresh free wave;
But, pausing, wonderingly found
I was treading on a grave.
Then, at one careless look, I saw
That, for some distance round,
Tombstones, without design or law,
Were scattered on the ground:
Of pirates or of mariners
I deemed that these might be
The fitly-chosen sepulchres,
Encircled by the sea.
But there are words inscribed on all,
In the tongue of a far land,
And marks of things symbolical,
I could not understand.
They are the graves of that sad race,
Who, from their Syrian home,
For ages, without resting-place,
Are doomed in woe to roam;
Who, in the days of sternest faith,
Glutted the sword and flame,
As if a taint of moral death
Were in their very name:
And even under laws most mild,
All shame was deemed their due,
And the nurse told the Christian child
To shun the cursèd Jew.
Thus all their gold’s insidious grace
Availed not here to gain,
For their last sleep, a seemlier place
Than this bleak-featured plain.
Apart, severely separate.
On the verge of the outer sea,
Their home of death is desolate
As their life’s home could be.
The common sand-path had defaced
And prest down many a stone;
Others can be but faintly traced
In the rank grass o’er them grown.
I thought of Shylock,--the fierce heart
Whose wrongs and injuries old
Temper, in Shakespeare’s world of art,
His lusts of blood and gold;
Perchance that form of broken pride
Here at my feet once lay,--
But lay alone,--for at his side
There was no Jessica!
Fondly I love each island-shore,
Embraced by Adrian waves;
But none has memory cherished more
Than Lido and its graves.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.
AN ISLAND VISIT
I am just returned from visiting the isles of Murano, Torcello, and
Mazorbo, distant about five miles from Venice. To these amphibious
spots the Romans, inhabitants of eastern Lombardy, fled from the rapine
of Attila; and, if we may believe Cassiodorus, there was a time when
they presented a beautiful appearance. Beyond them, on the coast of the
lagoons, rose the once populous city of Altina, with its six stately
gates, which Dandolo mentions. Its neighbourhood was scattered with
innumerable villas and temples, composing altogether a prospect which
Martial compares to Baiæ: ‘Æmula Baiunis Altini littora villis.’
But this agreeable scene, like so many others, is passed entirely away,
and has left nothing, except heaps of stones and misshapen fragments,
to vouch for its former magnificence. Two of the islands, Costanziaco
and Amiano, that are imagined to have contained the bowers and gardens
of the Altinatians, have sunk beneath the waters; those which remain
are scarcely worthy to rise above their surface.
Though I was persuaded little was left to be seen above ground, I
could not deny myself the imaginary pleasure of treading a corner of
the earth once so adorned and cultivated; and of walking over the
roofs, perhaps, of concealed halls and undiscovered palaces. Hiring,
therefore, a _peiotte_, we took some provisions and music (to us
equally necessaries of life), and launched into the canal, between St.
Michael and Murano.
The waves coursed each other with violence, and dark clouds hung over
the grand sweep of northern mountains, whilst the west smiled with
azure and bright sunshine. Thunder rolled awfully at a distance, and
those white and greyish birds, the harbingers of storms, flitted
frequently before our bark. For some moments we were in doubt whether
to proceed; but as we advanced by a little dome in the Isle of St.
Michael, shaped like an ancient temple, the sky cleared, and the ocean
subsiding by degrees, soon presented a tranquil expanse, across which
we were smoothly wafted. Our instruments played several delightful
airs, that called forth the inhabitants of every island, and held them
silent, as if spellbound, on the edge of their quays and terraces, till
we were out of hearing.
Leaving Murano far behind, Venice and its world of turrets began to
sink on the horizon, and the low desert isles beyond Mazorbo to lie
stretched out before us. Now we beheld vast wastes of purple flowers,
and could distinguish the low hum of the insects which hover above
them; such was the silence of the place. Coasting these solitary
fields, we wound amongst several serpentine canals, bordered by gardens
of figs and pomegranates, with neat Indian-looking inclosures of cane
and reed: an aromatic plant clothes the margin of the waters, which the
people justly dignify with the title of marine incense. It proved very
serviceable in subduing a musky odour, which attacked us the moment we
landed, and which proceeds from serpents that lurk in the hedges. These
animals, say the gondoliers, defend immense treasures which lie buried
under the ruins. Woe to those who attempt invading them, or prying too
cautiously about!