Alone with the night again,
And the water’s monotone;
I and the night alone,
And the world and the ways of men
Farther from me than the stars.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
VENETIAN NIGHT
Her eyes in the darkness shone, in the twilight shed
By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head.
Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went;
A white glove shone as her black fan lifted and leant
Where the silk of her dress, the blue of a bittern’s wing,
Rustled against my knee, and, murmuring
The sweet slow hesitant English of a child,
Her voice was articulate laughter, her soul smiled.
Softly the gondola rocked, lights came and went;
From the sleeping houses a shadow of slumber leant
Over our heads like a wing, and the dim lagoon,
Rustling with silence, slumbered under the moon.
Softly the gondola rocked, and a pale light came
Over the waters, mild as a silver flame;
She lay back, thrilling with smiles, in the twilight shed
By the gondola bent like the darkness over her head;
I saw her eyes shine subtly, then close awhile:
I remember her silence, and, in the night, her smile.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
NIGHT IN VENICE
Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in
winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of
the mountains are too different in kind to be compared.
There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before
day is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the
lagoon, which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their
prow; ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the
Salute; pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta;
flooding the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal
whiteness; piercing but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of _rio_
linked with _rio_, through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach
once more the level glories and the luminous expanse of heaven beyond
Misericordia.
This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a single impression
of the night has to be retained from one visit to Venice, those are
fortunate who chance upon a full moon of fair weather. Yet I know
not whether some quieter and soberer effects are not more thrilling.
To-night, for example, the waning moon will rise late through veils
of _scirocco_. Over the bridges of San Cristofore and San Gregorio,
through the deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness,
pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way along its
Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea alone, between
the Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist wind ruffles the water and
cools our forehead. It is so dark that we can only see San Giorgio by
the light reflected on it from the Piazzetta. The same light climbs
the Campanile of St. Mark, and shows the golden angel in a mystery
of gloom. The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum from the
Piazza. Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water whispers
in our ears a tale of death. And now we hear a splash of oars, and
gliding through the darkness comes a single boat. One man leaps upon
the landing-place without a word and disappears. There is another
wrapped in a military cloak asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale and
quiet. The _barcaruolo_ turns the point in silence. From the darkness
they came; into the darkness they have gone. It is only an ordinary
incident of coastguard service. But the spirit of the night has made a
poem of it.
Even tempestuous and rainy weather, though melancholy enough, is never
sordid here. There is no noise from carriage traffic in Venice, and
the sea-wind preserves the purity and transparency of the atmosphere.
It had been raining all day, but at evening came a partial clearing.
I went down to the Molo, where the large reach of the lagoon was all
moon-silvered, and San Giorgio Maggiore dark against the bluish sky,
and Santa Maria della Salute domed with moon-irradiated pearl, and the
wet slabs of the Riva shimmering in moonlight, the whole misty sky,
with its clouds and stellar spaces, drenched in moonlight, nothing but
moonlight sensible except the tawny flare of gas-lamps and the orange
lights of gondolas afloat upon the waters. On such a night the very
spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea.
Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi’s
_Forza del Destino_ at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked
homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the
narrow _calle_ which leads to the _traghetto_ of the Salute. It was a
warm moist starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those
narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace called him as
we jumped into his boat, and rang our _soldi_ on the gunwale. Then
he arose and turned the _ferro_ round, and stood across towards the
Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the oppression of confinement in the
airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night
we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said
good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief
passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things--the freshness,
and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night
above the sea.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
AT THE DOGANA
INTERMEZZO: VENETIAN NIGHTS
Night, and the silence of the night,
In Venice; far away, a song;
As if the lyric water made
Itself a serenade;
As if the water’s silence were a song
Sent up into the night.
Night, a more perfect day,
A day of shadows luminous,
Water and sky at one, at one with us;
As if the very peace of night,
The older peace than heaven or light,
Came down into the day.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
THE SEASONS IN VENICE
May in Venice is better than April, but June is best of all. Then
the days are hot, but not too hot, and the nights are more
beautiful than the days. Then Venice is rosier than ever in
the morning, and more golden than ever as the day descends. It
seems to expand and evaporate, to multiply all its reflections
and iridescences. Then the life of its people and the strangeness
of its constitution become a perpetual comedy, or, at least, a
perpetual drama. Then the gondola is your sole habitation, and you
spend days between sea and sky.
HENRY JAMES.
HOW SPRING COMES TO VENICE
VENICE, _1st May, 1834_.
My friend, you have no idea of what Venice is. She has not quitted
the mourning garb she assumed in winter, when you saw her ancient
pillars of Greek marble, which in colour and form you compared to dry
bones. At present, spring has breathed upon her, as though her breath
were emerald dust. The base of her palaces, where oysters clustered
in the stagnant moss, is now covered with the most tender green, and
gondolas float between two banks of this verdure, soft as velvet,
and the noise of the water dies away languishingly, mingled with the
foam of the gondola’s track. All the balconies are filled with vases
of flowers; and the flowers of Venice, brought to light in this warm
clayey soil, blossoming in this damp atmosphere, have a freshness, a
richness of tissue, and a languor of attitude which makes them resemble
the women of this climate, whose beauty is brilliant and evanescent
as their own. The double flowering bramble climbs round every pillar,
and suspends its garlands of white rosettes, from the black arabesques
of the balconies. The vanilla iris, the Persian tulip, so beautifully
striped with pure red and white that it seems formed from the material
in which the ancient Venetians used to dress; Greek roses, and
pyramids of gigantic campanulas are heaped in the vases which cover
the balustrades. Sometimes there is quite an arbour of honeysuckle
crowning the balcony from one end to the other, and two or three cages
hidden in the foliage, contain nightingales that sing day and night,
as though they were in the open country. These tame nightingales are
a luxury peculiar to Venice. The women there have a remarkable talent
for bringing up and educating, so to speak, these poor harmonious
prisoners, and know how, by every species of delicacy and kindness, to
soften the _ennui_ of their captivity. In the night, the birds call
to and answer one another from each side of the canal. If a serenade
passes, they are quiet and listen, and as soon as it has passed by,
they recommence their song, and seem vying to surpass the melody they
have just heard. At every street corner, the Madonna shelters her
mysterious lamp under a jasmine canopy; and the _traghetti_, shaded by
trellises, diffuse, all along the Grand Canal, the perfume of the vine
in flower, perhaps the sweetest odour among plants.
These _traghetti_ are the stations for the public gondolas. Those which
are established on the shores of the Canalazzo are the rendezvous of
the porters who come to smoke and talk with the gondoliers. These
often present very theatrical-looking groups. Whilst one, lying on his
gondola, alternately smiles and yawns at the stars, another on the
shore, with open breast, and air of mockery, his hat thrust back upon a
forest of long crisp curled hair, throws his great shadow on the wall.
He is the hero of the _traghetto_.
GEORGE SAND.
SPRING IN VENICE
The way in which the spring made itself felt upon the lagoon was full
of curious delight. It was not so early in the season that we should
know the spring by the first raw warmth in the air, and there was as
yet no assurance of her presence in the growth--later so luxuriant--of
the coarse grasses of the shallows. But somehow the spring was there,
giving us new life with every breath. There were fewer gulls than
usual, and those we saw sailed far overhead, debating departure. There
was deeper languor in the laziness of the soldiers of finance, as they
lounged and slept upon their floating custom-houses in every channel
of the lagoons; and the hollow voices of the boatmen, yelling to each
other as their wont is, had an uncommon tendency to diffuse themselves
in echo. Over all, the heavens had put on their summer blue, in promise
of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year,
and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and
azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home--days of which the
sumptuous splendour used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and
regret even in Italy;--but we do not have, week after week, month after
month, that
‘Blue, unclouded weather,’
which, at Venice, contents all your senses, and makes you exult to be
alive with the inarticulate gladness of children, or of the swallows
that there all day wheel and dart through the air, and shriek out a
delight too intense and precipitate for song.
W. D. HOWELLS.
APRIL IN VENICE
VENICE, _1st May, 1834_.
Do you remember that, when we left France, you said you cared for
nothing but sculptured marble? You called me a savage, when I replied
that I would quit any palace in the world to see a mountain of unhewn
marble in the Alps or Apennines.
You may remember after a few days you were satiated with statues,
frescoes, churches, and galleries. The sweetest _souvenir_ which was
left to you was that of the cold and limpid waters of a fountain
where you bathed your heated and weary brow in a garden in Genoa. The
creatures of art speak to the intellect alone, but the spectacle of
Nature appeals to every faculty. It influences as through every pore,
as well as through every idea. To the entirely intellectual pleasure of
admiration the aspect of the country adds a purely sensual enjoyment.
The freshness of the fountains, the perfume of plants, the harmony
of the winds, circulates through every nerve, whilst the brilliancy
of colours and the beauty of outlines insinuate themselves into the
imagination. This feeling of pleasure and gratification is appreciable
by every organization, even the commonest animals feel it to a
certain degree. But to an elevated mind it affords but a transitory
pleasure, an agreeable repose after the more energetic functions of
the intellect. To great minds, the entire universe is necessary; the
works of God, and the works of man. The fountain of pure water invites
and charms you, but only for an instant do you repose there. You must
exhaust Michael Angelo and Raphael before you linger again on the
wayside; and when you have washed off the dust of the journey in the
waters of the spring, you pass on saying, ‘Let us see what more there
is under the sun.’
To minds so _médiocre_ and idle as my own, the side of a hedge would
suffice to sleep away my life, if this rough and barren journey might
be slept or dreamt away. But even then, for me the fosse must be just
like this one of Bassano; that is to say, it must be at least one
hundred feet above a delicious valley, and every morning must bring
its breakfast on a grassy slope covered with primroses, with excellent
coffee, mountain butter, and aniseed bread.
To such a breakfast I invite you, when you have time to wish for
repose. When that time comes, everything will be known to you; life
will have no more secrets for you. Your hair will be slightly grey,
mine entirely so; but the valley of Bassano will be just as lovely, the
Alpine snows as pure; and our friendship?--I trust in your heart, and I
answer for my own....
In the midst of this immense garden, the Brenta flows rapidly and
silently over its sandy bed, between banks covered with pebbles and
rocky fragments, torn from the bosom of the Alps, with which it furrows
the plain in its days of anger. A half-circle of fertile hills covered
with those long vine branches which suspend themselves from every
tree in Venetia, were the immediate border of the picture, and the
snowy mountains, sparkling in the sun’s first rays, formed an immense
framework which rose like a silver fringe into the deep blue of the
atmosphere.
‘I wish you to observe,’ said the doctor to me, ‘that your coffee is
getting cold, and the _vetturino_ is waiting for us.’
‘Now, Doctor,’ said I, ‘do you really believe I am going back to Venice
with you?’
* * * * *
Towards sunset I was in the public garden [of Venice]. As usual, there
was very little company there. The elegant Venetian ladies dread the
heat, and dare not go out in full daylight, but they also dread the
cold, and never venture out in the night. There are three or four days
in each season which seem expressly made for them, and then they raise
the covers of their gondolas, but they rarely put their foot to the
ground.
They are a _species_ set apart, beings so frail and delicate, that
one ray of sunlight would wither their beauty, or one breath of the
breeze expose their very existence. All civilized men seek those
places by preference where they may meet the fair sex; the theatres,
the _conversazioni_, the cafés, and the sheltered enclosure of the
Piazzetta, about seven o’clock in the evening. Therefore few remain
in the gardens, but grumbling old men, stupid smokers, or melancholy
victims to bile. You may class me amongst whichever you like of these
three classes.
Gradually, I found myself quite alone; the elegant café, which extends
itself to the lagoons, extinguished its tapers placed in lilies and
marine flowers made of the crystal of Murano.
The last time you saw this garden, it was damp and sad enough! As for
me, I went not there to seek bright thoughts, nor hoping to disencumber
myself of my spleen. But the spring! as you say, who can resist the
influence of the month of April? and at Venice, my dear friend, it is
yet more impossible.
Even the stones are being clothed with verdure; those infected marshes
which our gondolas so carefully avoided, two months since, are now
watery meadows covered by cresses, seaweeds, reeds and flags, and
all sorts of marine mosses, exhaling a peculiar perfume, beloved by
those to whom the sea is a cherished memory; and harbouring thousands
of sea-gulls, divers, and the lesser bustard. The petrel incessantly
hovers over these floating meadows, where the ebb and flow bring the
waters of the Adriatic every day, teeming with myriads of insects,
madrepores, and shells.
Instead of the icy-cold alleys from which we so hastily fled, on the
evening before your departure, and which I had never since had the
courage to revisit, a half-warm sand, patches of Easter daisies, and
groves of sumach and sycamores were just opening to the soft breezes
from the Grecian shore. The little promontory, planted in the English
fashion, is so beautiful, so thickly grown, so rich in flowers,
perfume, and prospect, that I asked myself if it were not the promised
land my dreams had revealed to me. But no, the promised land is pure
from all sorrow, and this is already watered with my tears.
The sun had just sunk behind the Vicentine mountains. Blue mists were
covering the whole heaven above Venice.
The tower of St. Mark, the cupolas of St. Mary, and little groves
of pinnacles and minarets which rise from all quarters of the town,
were defined like so many black points upon the vivid background of
the horizon. The colour of the heavens changed through a wonderful
gradation of softening tints, from crimson to blue; and the water, calm
and limpid, faithfully reflected the rainbow tints of colour. Below
the town, the waves looked exactly like a large mirror of red copper.
Never had I seen Venice so beautiful, so fairy-like. This black shadow
thrown between the sky and the glowing waters, as though in a lake of
fire, seemed one of those sublime aberrations of architecture which the
poet of the Apocalypse saw, in his visions, floating on the shores of
Patmos, when he dreamed his new Jerusalem, and compared her to a bride.
Little by little the bright colours faded, the outlines became more
massive, the depths more mysterious. Venice assumed the aspect of an
immense fleet, then of a lofty wood of cypresses, into which the canals
flowed like high roads of silver sand. At such moments I delight in
contemplating the distance. When the outlines become vague, when every
object is trembling in the mist, when my imagination may disport in an
immense field of conjecture and caprice, when, by merely half closing
the eyes, one can in fancy destroy a city, turn it into a forest, a
camp, or a cemetery, when I can metamorphose the high roads, white with
dust, into peaceful rivers, and the rivulets, winding so serpent-like
down the dark verdure of the hills, into rapid torrents, then it is
that I really enjoy Nature, I play with her, I reign over her, with one
glance I possess her and people her with my own fantasies.
GEORGE SAND.
MAY IN VENICE
_May 17th, 4 p.m._--Looking east the water is calm, and reflects
the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity: the sky, which is pale
blue, is in its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little
deeper; but the _vessels’ hulls, which are black, are reflected
in pale sea-green_--_i.e._, the natural colour of the water under
sunlight--while the _orange masts_ of the vessels, wet with a recent
shower, are reflected _without change of colour_, only not quite so
bright as above. One ship has a white, another a red stripe (I ought to
have said running horizontally along the gunwales), _of these the water
takes no notice_.
What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the
water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white;
this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright
reflected sky.
A boat swinging near the quay casts an apparent shadow on the rippled
water. This appearance I find to be owing altogether to the increased
_reflective_ power of the water in the shaded space; for the farther
sides of the ripples therein take the deep pure blue of the sky, coming
strongly dark on the pale green, and the nearer sides take the pale
grey of the cloud, hardly darker than the green.
JOHN RUSKIN.
VENICE IN AUTUMN
To this black, shell-encrusted stake
Girt with sea-grasses, moist and green,
I now would moor my boat and make
A survey of the lonely scene.
Here all is sad and still and grey;
Wide water-fields around me lie;
Cool mirrors that for miles away
Reflect the pale October sky.
Where at the city’s boundary
Trees crowd and garden-bushes spread,
Wan, slanting sunlight fitfully
Brightens their blots of brown and red
Or touches on the ocean-rim
Afar, some ochre-tinted sail
Of speeding boat where Chioggians swim
Out to the Adriatic gale.
From pilèd barge that blocks the stream
Some dog at sea-bird wheeling low
Bays; and I hear the madmen scream
In sinister San Servolo.
No other living noise, no cry;
The Sea-Queen wears her saddest dress;
And my soul all insensibly
Catches her mood of mournfulness.
Fairer she seemed when April light
And fragrance played around her throne.
Or when through all some languid night
Large yellow worlds above her shone.
Forsaken, now, her briny streets;
No red-booked strangers pass and pry;
No crowded gondola one meets
Rocking its careless company.
The window-panes above the quay,
Row upon row and square on square,
Seem human faces turned to me
With vacant, melancholy stare.
What would they watch? Some gleaming train
Of galleys go in silver state?
One black hull only drifts amain,
With one sad passenger as freight.
PERCY PINKERTON.
AUTUMN AND VENICE
It was still the hour that in one of his books he had called ‘Titian’s
hour,’ because in it all things seemed, like that painter’s nude
creations, to shine with a rich glow of their own, and almost to
illumine the sky rather than receive light from it. The strange,
sumptuous octagonal temple drawn by Baldassare Longhena from the dream
of Polifilo was now emerging from its blue-green shadow with its
cupola, its scrolls, its statues, its columns, its balustrades, like a
temple dedicated to Neptune, constructed after the pattern of tortuous
marine shapes, and shading off into a haze of mother of pearl. In the
hollows of the stone the wet sea-salt had deposited something fresh and
silvery and jewel-like, that vaguely suggested pearl shells lying open
in their native waters.... Does it not strike you that we seem to be
following the princely retinue of dead Summer? There she lies, sleeping
in her funeral boat, all dressed in gold like the wife of a Doge, like
a Loredana, or a Morosina, or a Soranza, of the enlightened centuries.
And the procession is taking her to the Island of Murano, where some
masterly Lord of Fire will make her a crystal coffin. And the walls
of the coffin shall be of opal, so that when once submerged in the
Laguna, she may at least see the languid play of the seaweed through
her transparent eyelids, and while awaiting the hour of resurrection
give herself the illusion of having still about her person the constant
undulation of her voluptuous hair....
Indeed, that sudden allegory in both its form and rhythm truthfully
expressed the feeling that was permeating all things. As the milky
blue of the opal is filled with hidden fire, so the pale monotonous
water of the harbour held dissimulated splendours that were brought to
light by each shock of the oars. Beyond the straight forest of ships
motionless on their anchors San Giorgio stood out like a vast rosy
galley, its prow turned to the _Fortuna_ that attracted it from the
height of its golden sphere. A placid estuary opened out in the centre
of the Giudecca. The laden boats that came down the rivers flowing into
it brought with their weight of splintered trunks what seemed the very
spirit of the woods that bend over the running waters of their far-away
sources.
And from the _Molo_, from the twofold miracle of the porticoes open
to the popular applause, where the red and white wall rose as if to
enclose that dominant will, the Riva unfolded its gentle arch towards
the shady gardens and the fertile islands, as if to lead away the
thoughts excited by the arduous symbols of art to the restfulness of
Nature. And almost as if still further to complete the avocation of
Autumn there passed a string of boats laden with fruit, like great
floating baskets that spread over the waters reflecting the perpetual
foliage of the cusps and capitols, the fragrance of the island fruit
gardens....