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glories, and even its own life, like the scenery in some great theatre after the play is done and all the actors are withdrawn.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.