Venice.
Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice—the multitude admire force above everything—anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far. Another in the distance, who is acquainted with the melody and knows the words, takes it up and answers with the next verse, and then the first replies, so that the one is as it were the echo of the other. The song continues through whole nights and is kept up without fatigue. The further the singers are from each other, the more touching sounds the strain. The best place for the listener is halfway between the two.
In order to let me hear it, they landed on the bank of the Guidecca, and took up different positions by the canal. I walked backwards and forwards between them, so as to leave the one whose turn it was to sing, and to join the one who had just left off. Then it was that the effect of the strain first opened upon me. As a voice from the distance it sounds in the highest degree strange—as a lament without sadness: it has an incredible effect and is moving even to tears. I ascribed this to my own state of mind, but my old boatsman said: "è singolare, como quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu quando è piu ben cantato." He wished that I could hear the women of the Lido, especially those of Malamocco, and Pelestrina. These also, he told me, chanted Tasso and Ariosto to the same or similar melodies. He went on: "in the evening, while their husbands are on the sea fishing, they are accustomed to sit on the beach, and with shrill-penetrating voice to make these strains resound, until they catch from the distance the voices of their partners, and in this way they keep up a communication with them." Is not that beautiful? and yet, it is very possible that one who heard them close by, would take little pleasure in such tones which have to vie with the waves of the sea. Human, however, and true becomes the song in this way: thus is life given to the melody, on whose dead elements we should otherwise have been sadly puzzled. It is the song of one solitary, singing at a distance, in the hope that another of kindred feelings and sentiments may hear and answer.
Venice, Oct. 8, 1786.
I paid a visit to the palace Pisani Moretta, for the sake of a charming picture by Paul Veronese. The females of the family of Darius are represented kneeling before Alexander and Hephæstion; his mother, who is in the foreground, mistakes Hephæstion for the king;—turning away from her he points to Alexander. A strange story is told about this painting; the artist had been well received and for a long time honorably entertained in the palace; in return he secretly painted the picture and left it behind him as a present, rolled up under his bed. Certainly it well deserves to have had a singular origin, for it gives an idea of all the peculiar merits of this master. The great art with which he manages by a skilful distribution of light and shade, and by an equally clever contrast of the local colors, to produce a most delightful harmony without throwing any sameness of tone over the whole picture, is here most strikingly visible. For the picture is in excellent preservation, and stands before us almost with the freshness of yesterday.—Indeed, whenever a painting of this order has suffered from neglect, our enjoyment of it is marred on the spot, even before we are conscious what the cause may be.
Whoever feels disposed to quarrel with the artist on the score of costume has only to say he ought to have painted a scene of the sixteenth century; and the matter is at an end. The gradation in the expression from the mother through the wife to the daughters, is in the highest degree true and happy. The youngest princess, who kneels behind all the rest, is a beautiful girl, and has a very pretty, but somewhat independent and haughty countenance. Her position does not at all seem to please her.
October 8, 1786.
My old gift of seeing the world with the eyes of that artist, whose pictures have most recently made an impression on me, has occasioned me some peculiar reflections. It is evident that the eye forms itself by the objects, which, from youth up, it is accustomed to look upon, and so the Venetian artist must see all things in a clearer and brighter light than other men. We, whose eye when out of doors, falls on a dingy soil, which, when not muddy, is dusty,—and which, always colourless, gives a sombre hue to the reflected rays, or at home spend our lives in close, narrow rooms, can never attain to such a cheerful view of nature.