The charm of Venice

by Unknown

VENICE

The sylphs and ondines,

And the sea-kings and queens,

Long ago; long ago, on the waves built a city,

As lovely as seems

To some bard, in his dreams,

The soul of his latest love-ditty.

Long ago, long ago,—ah! that was long ago

Thick as gems on the chalices

Kings keep for treasure,

Were the temples and palaces

In this city of pleasure;

And the night broke out shining

With lamps and with festival,

O’er the squares, o’er the streets;

And the soft sea went, pining

With love, through the musical,

Musical bridges, and marble retreats

Of this city of wonder, where dwelt the ondines,

Long ago, and the sylphs, and the sea-kings and queens.

—Ah! that was long ago!

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

Embark at the Piazzetta at eleven o’clock on a clear sweet starlight evening, and tell the gondolier to go into the canal of the Giudecca. The gondola enters on the golden track, you have left the custom-house on your right. The stars touch with light the gold ball which carries Fortune on it, and the lamp at the foot of the portico, the steps of which run down into the water, lights up the white façade, and makes it reflect itself in the slightly rippled waters. The faubourg of the Giudecca is on our left—a red-brown by daylight and dark by night; a few scattered lanterns alone break this black ground like the gold sparkles which appear and disappear on a piece of burning paper, and sometimes under the stars, as in the picture of the English painter Orchardson, two lovers exchange their soft vows ‘in the pale light of stars’ under the brightly spangled sky.

The Giudecca is long and low, and becomes faint and almost bluish as it prolongs itself towards the horizon. The black keels of some boats at anchor, their masts and fine cordage, outline themselves distinctly against the clear sky; the dome of the Redentore, the church of the faubourg, rounds itself above the houses. On the right we have the Zattere and their quays with polished flagstones, looking white in the rays of the moon, with the great palaces, regular and noble, the little deserted jetties, and here and there the bridges at the openings of the canals.

The Giudecca is dark; the Zattere is as light as day, but with that veiled illumination which the moon throws over everything it floods with its rays. The silence is profound and the calmness undisturbed; the distant echoes, the solemn striking of the hour by the clock of St. Mark’s, the song of a solitary sailor guarding his felucca which he has brought timber-laden from Dalmatia, the voice of a belated gondolier who sits swinging his legs in that nocturnal reverie which is like the kief of the East: who can render this impression at once sweet and solemn, the incomparable charms which lulls all longings, and attaches us to Venice with an imperishable love?

CHARLES YRIARTE.