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....
The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the Angelus, and their ponderous roll dilated in long waves along the mirror of the harbour, vibrated through the masts of the ships, spread afar towards the infinite lagoon. From San Giorgio Maggiore, from San Giorgio dei Greci, from San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, from San Giovanni in Bragora, from San Moise, from the churches of the Salute and the Redentore and beyond, over the whole domain of the Evangelist, from the far towers of the Madonna dell’ Orto, of San Giobbe, of Sant’ Andrea, bronze voices answered, mingling in one great chorus, spreading over the silent company of stones and water one great dome of invisible metal, the vibrations of which seemed to reach the twinkling of the earliest stars. In the purity of evening the sacred voices gave the City of Silence a sort of immensity of grandeur. From the summit of their temples they brought anxious mankind the message sent by the immortal multitudes hidden in the darkness of deep aisles, or mysteriously troubled by the light of votive lamps; they brought to spirits worn out by the day the message of the superhuman creatures figured on the walls of secluded chapels and in the niches of inner altars, who had announced miracles and promised worlds. And all the apparitions of the consoling Beauty invoked by unanimous Prayer, rose on that storm of sound, spoke in that aerial chorus, irradiated the face of the marvellous night.
One afternoon not long ago, returning from the Gardens along the warm bank of the Schiavoni, that must often have seemed to some wandering poet like I know not what golden magic bridge stretching out over a sea of light and silence to some infinite dream of beauty, I thought, or rather I stood by and watched my own thoughts as I would an intimate spectacle,—I thought of the nuptial alliance of Autumn and Venice under those skies.
A sense of life was diffused everywhere; a sense of life made up of passionate expectation and restrained ardour, that surprised me by its vehemence, but yet could not seem new to me, because I had already found it gathered in some belt of shadow under the almost deathly immobility of summer, and I had also felt it here vibrating now and then like a mysterious pulsation under the strange, feverish odour of the waters. Thus, I thought, this pure City of Art truly aspires to the supreme condition of that beauty that is an annual return in her as is the giving forth of flowers to the forest. She tends to reveal herself in a full harmony as if she still carried in herself, powerful and conscious, that desire of perfection from which she was born and formed through the ages like some divine creature. Under the motionless fires of a summer sky she seemed pulseless and breathless, dead indeed in her green waters; but my feeling did not deceive me when I divined her secretly labouring under a spirit of life that would prove sufficiently powerful to renew the highest of older miracles....
The mutual passion of Venice and Autumn that exalts the one and the other to the highest degree of their sensuous beauty has its origin in a deep affinity; for the soul of Venice, the soul fashioned for the City Beautiful by its great artists is autumnal.
The correspondence between the external and the interior spectacle once discovered, my enjoyment found itself unspeakably multiplied. The crowd of imperishable forms that peoples its churches and palaces seemed from these latter to answer the harmony of daylight with a chord so deep and powerful that it soon became dominant. And—because the light of Heaven alternates with shadows, but the light of Art lasts in the human soul and cannot be extinguished—when the miracle of the hour ceased to cover all those things, my spirit felt itself alone and ecstatic among the splendours of an ideal autumn.
GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO.
FROM A VENETIAN BALCONY
High-tide at Venice; warm wind driving in from the sea.
Hark! the cry of the gulls as they flit o’er the wide canal,
Flit and circle and skim, and dip in their savage glee,
Striking the lead-coloured waves that scatter tempestual,
Striking with sharp white wing like a flail, gorging their prey:
Frutto di mare, fruit of the ocean, drift of the way.
Hither and thither wend other wild birds in the storm—
Gondolas black as the swift that floats o’er an autumn sky—
Gondolas silent and shadowy, wondrously slender of form—
Gliding in close-measured rhythm down where the barges lie,
Under the glimmering bridges, and near to the palace walls
That frown in a gloomy dusk, as the sea-mist gathers and falls.
Now, with a burst of voices, clang the Salute’s bells,
From yonder tower-lofts straining, heav’n high as they may go.
Again, to our fretful world, surely the Angelus tells
Patience for need and pain, and solace and calm for woe.
As I listen the peal dies out—alas, and alas! alas!
But from over the pallid sunset the heavy storm-clouds pass.
O weird sea-birds, as ye utter your hoarse and discordant cry,
Do ye wot of the north, and the hearts that are watching your ominous course?
Or is it enough for ye, birds, as gyrating and slanting ye fly,
To ride the broad Adriatic, and drink of her glamour and force,
Regardless that realms beyond realms, as waves upon waves, in unrest,
Look up for the message of love that God’s angel brings to the blest?
LADY LINDSAY.
AUTUMN IN VENICE
It is now late in October. The days are short but luminous still when the mists do not drift in from the lagoons of the Lido, or from the marshes of the low-lying lands beyond Mestre and Fucina. Boats still come in with rosy sunrise reflection shed on their orange sails, and take their loads of autumn apples and pears and walnuts to the fruit-market above Rialto. But soon, very soon, it will be winter, and the gondolas will glide by with closed felze, and the water will be a troubled waste between the city and the Lido, and men will hurry with muffled heads over the square of Saint Mark when the Alpine wind blows, and the strange big ships creep on their piloted course tediously and timidly through the snowstorms to their anchorage in the wide Giudecca.
OUIDA.
VENICE AT TWILIGHT
O for the autumn, and twilight and dream,
Where still waters gleam.
O for sky-distances, fading in blue,
With Venice in view.
O for the opal of cloud and lagoon,
With night-shadows strewn.
Palaces, blue-green, and hushed as in sleep,
Keep watch o’er the deep.
O for the autumn, and Venice aglow,
Where silken winds blow.
Like a chrysanthemum droops the fair town
As Night cometh down,
Crushing those petals of watery bloom
In tenderest gloom.
O at this hour, when Venice is blest,
May I, to my breast,
Gather one petal of delicate hue—
To bring, Love—to you!
HÉLÈNE VACARESCO.
Translated by Fred. G. Bowles