Stopford A. Brooke

“ It reflects all things with a wonderful perfection. Whatever loveliness is by its side it makes more lovely. Shallow itself, it seems deep; and the towers and palaces of Venice in all their colours descend and shine among other clouds and in another sky below. All outlines of sculpture and architecture, of embossment, in wall and window; all play of sunshine and shade; all the human life in balcony, bridge or quay, on barge or boat, are in the waters as in a silent dream—revealed in every line and colour, but with an exquisite difference in softness and purity. ”

“ This was delightful; nor is it less delightful, having made friends with the owners of one of the larger boats, to sail up and down the sea-streets of the lagoon, when the wind is fresh and the tide running fast, and the night is dark, save for glimpses of the hurrying moon. The steersman is silent, the sky is silent, the soul itself is silent. Nothing speaks but the wind in the sail and the water round the rushing prow, and these sounds deepen the silence. That which men feel who stand sentinel on the bow of a ship in the midst of the great Oceans, one may feel here close to a busy town. ”

“ Other great towns belong to humanity and art; even when they are sea-ports they are of the land, and are the creation of the land. But Venice, full of her own humanity, wrought into beauty by the art of her children, raised from the waves by the labour of those who loved her, belongs only to the sea, and seems to be the creation, not only of man, but of great Nature herself. Her streets are streams of the sea, and were planned by the will of the sea. The great path which, curling like a serpent, divides her city; by which her palaces of business, pleasure, and government were built ”

“ But it was chiefly on the lagoon that the artists saw the richest and softest colour. In subdued sunlight, such as is frequent in the haze of the sea, the soft silvery, pearly grays vary infinitely over the smooth waters. In fresher and brighter days when the wind brings the flying clouds, the colour is that which is native to a sea-atmosphere, often clear, often thrilling through veils of ruby, sapphire, and emerald vapour, steeped always in the diffused light which is felt, like joy, over wide spaces of water, and under a vast expanse of sky. ”

“ Guardi cares more than Il Canale for the waters of Venice. He did his best to represent their lovely trembling in the light, and the images they made in their mirror of the buildings above them and of the life which moves upon them. It is easy, when one does not require the best, to admire, even to have a special liking for, his pictures. As to what the moderns have done for the Venetian waters, what the sea-charm of the city has impelled on their canvas—it would require an essay as long as this to tell the tale of it. ”

“ No view makes a deeper impression on the historian. [Pg 8] But when that impression has been realized, there will steal into his mind, if he have with him the spirit of imagination, another impression; one of curious charm, a charm half of nature and half of humanity, a charm not of the land, but of the sea. In that charm there is the breath of the salt winds and the life of the dark blue waves which beyond Venice he sees from Torcello breaking in flashing foam on the Lido which defends the lagoon and shelters the city. ”

“ It is as delightful to stand on the sea-wall on the Lido, near the Church of San Nicolo di Bari, where the lagoon opens into the Adriatic, and watch these barks coming in from the sea, one by one; glowing in the lovely light, changing the waters below into orange, red, and black, edged with gold. Sometimes, grouped into a mass, they cluster together in the deep places of the canals, or lie in a changing crowd together near the mouth of the Piave, nets, mast and sails one glow of shifting colour. ”

“ And in the silence, the impression that Nature alone exists, that the city is her work and that man is nothing, is deepened for the moment into an unforgettable reality.
A similar impression is made on the voyager who rows at the dead of night, when the sky is full of stars, out into the lagoon half way between Venice and the Lido. The city, with its scattered lights, has no clear outlines; it rises like an exhalation from the sea. The campaniles are white ghosts that appeal to the dark blue heavens. Below them, the crowd of buildings wavers in the sea-mist like a shaken curtain. ”

“ The row home from this island as the sun [Pg 51] descends to its rest on autumn evenings, is of an extraordinary splendour and beauty. The little wavelets of the lagoon are ebony in shade and blazing gold on the side where the light falls. The sea-banks turn a golden brown, and their grasses seem to change into the warm green of the deep sea. The sky drops from liquid and pellucid blue to pearl, and then to orange, crimson and gold. The wild lights fall on the city which grows slowly on the eyes, and every tower is a tower of fire. ”

“ Day by day, this warm softness of colour was instilled into the artists and nourished by the sea-nature of the place. It was a spirit in their pallet and their pencil.
The capacity for receiving such an impression was strengthened by the circumstances under which it was received. There is no place where the reception of the elements of beauty derived from Nature is so easy, undistracted, and uninterrupted as in Venice. Gliding in a gondola is very different from riding, driving, or walking. ”

“ It fits them all. The natural, therefore, and the human mingle in it more harmoniously than in any other boat. It is distinctive as Venice is distinctive; it has its own sentiment, its own charm; but it seems also to share in the sentiment and beauty of the sea. The cries of its rowers are like the cries of seamen. In its movement is the softness, ease, and grace of the subdued obedient waters over which it glides. ”

“ No human art has made its wonder.
Nearer to our eyes the islands lie outstretched like sea-creatures, risen from the depths to behold the stars and to rest from their labours. The boats which lie at anchor against the tide do not belong to man, but are the chariots of Amphitrite and her crew. And in the profound silence we hear the deep breathing of the sea, a marvellous, soft, universal sound ”

“ Palace, rises with uplifted arms and face from the angle above the Chair of the Doge as he sat in council, towards the figure of Christ at the summit of the canvass, be in truth, as some have conjectured, the Angel of the Sea, whose nursling was Venice—Tintoret, setting this incarnation of the history of the city above its senate in council, among the saintly host, and aspiring to the throne of God, did most nobly and religiously conceive the sea as the mother and guard and glory of Venice. ”

“ Sea and sun have there worked with a fierce and racking climate to produce the colour, but to destroy its beauty by destroying the texture of the skin. But, at Venice, these natural forces work in a climate which does not injure the skin; and they overlay its surface with a glow of red and golden colour which is one of the loveliest hues in the world, and has the special qualities of depth and life, even of a certain passion. ”

“ In conclusion, I may write a little word on the sensational charm of Venice seated in the hearing of the sea waves, and adorned for worship by the beauty of her water-world. The word sensational here brings no reproach; it only means that the vivid impressions made on the senses are more numerous, varied, and intense in Venice than elsewhere. Each of them is accompanied with a spiritual passion as intense as the sensible impression. The imagination is incessantly kindled into creation by what it sees. ”

“ Again, the Venetian painters saw day by day the human body in graceful and incessantly changing movement, and the charm of it was derived from the sea-life of Venice. There are few attitudes and movements in any human work more graceful than those of the single rower of a gondola. He is so placed, and his peculiar method of rowing is such, that his labour educates him in lovely movement, and of movement altering almost at every instant to meet new circumstances. He is unable to take an awkward attitude. If he does, so lightly poised is he, he is tossed out of the boat ”

“ To stand in the dawn, before the city is awake, on the quay of the Schiavoni, when the East beyond the Lido is flushing like a bride, and the morning star grows dim above the sea, is to forget that the stones on which we stand, the palaces and churches, bridges and towers, were built by man’s wit or set up for his business and his pleasure. ”

“ Lest we should lose the power of this dream, we will not watch the buildings grow solid in the growing light, but keep our eyes on the broad expanse of the lagoon, shimmering in silver-gray out to the Port of Lido, where the silver meets the leaping blue of the Adriatic. The whole water-surface is alive, though it seem asleep, with the swift rushing of the tide. Around the angles of the quay, over the marble steps, all along the smooth stones of the wall, up the narrow canals, looping past the piles, swirling against the boats, the musical water ripples ”

“ Chioggia, Lido and Tre Porti, with the force and swiftness of an impetuous river, and these four water-systems, in their meetings and retreats, fill the lagoon with incessant movement, with clashing, swirling, and sweeping currents. Then, the tide does not always keep at this low level. When the attractions of the sun and moon combine, it rises higher and floods and washes out the canals, and when the angry south, blowing fiercely up Adria, has piled up the waters at the head of the gulf, they block in the falling tide. ”

“ It is thus penetrated and encompassed by the life and beauty of the sea; but it is the sea tamed to a love of rest; made temperate, even in furious wind, by the barriers its own force [Pg 20] has built to shield its favoured daughter; keeping its natural freedom and love of movement, but obedient to the laws of help, and sacrificing its reckless and destroying will in order to do the work that rivers do for men; preserving thus, along with its own wild charm, the charm also of the great streams that bless the earth. The sea, then which makes Venice unique, has lost its recklessness and terror. ”

“ The Alexandrian Square he has made into the Piazzetta of Venice. The rain is falling in torrents, the waterspouts cascade to the pavement. The pavement is so deep in the running water that it is looped around the legs of the bearers of the body, fiercely swirling. It is a splendid picture of a Venetian storm, and in the background of it, that we may not lose the sea, the waves of the lagoon are breaking over the quay. ”

“ The same thing, some aver, may be said of a Dutch town full of canals. Partly, that is true; but the canals only carry the heavy business of these towns, and in Venice all human life, in its gaiety and beauty as well as its work, is on the water. Moreover, the water itself, not half stagnant like the canals of Holland, is always thrilling with its own ebbing and flowing, has its own fine spirit, and takes, as I have often thought, its own share and pleasure in all that is done upon it. Life answers there to life—living Nature to living man. ”

“ The old wall was still there and its decayed brickwork, and I used to fancy that the souls of the dead were in the azure insects that never ceased to flit in whirling, silent flight among the wild grass and over the tombstones of that solitary place—souls so small, so courteous to one another, so beautiful in colour and in movement that I thought the charm of the sea had entered into their nature, that they desired to charm, but were unconscious of their charm. ”

“ To look over the side of the boat into the water is to cry, “I see infinite space.”
That is part of this charm of the reflecting water. But this only belongs to Nature and the feeling her beauty awakens. There is another charm in this work of the water. Whatever pleasure the living and varied movement of a great town, whatever interest its activities, bring to men, is doubled, so far as charm is concerned, in Venice. For they are exercised on water as well as on land, and their movements and methods are different on each. The sights of life are doubly varied. The land has its own way with them ”

“ When there are two rowers half the charm is lost. The second rower labouring at his oar in front of the sitter removes the pleasant, psychical illusion that the boat moves by its own will. There is almost an intellectual pleasure in the rowing and steering of a gondola by the single oar behind. If the gondolier be a master of his craft, he will make his boat move through a crowded canal, or glide round the angles of a narrow water lane, as swiftly, as softly as a serpent through the branches of a tree. ”

“ There is more opportunity in Venice for its formation than in other southern sea-ports. All through the summer and autumn the Venetian youths of the people spend their time all but naked in the water. They walk, ankle-deep, over the shallows of the lagoons, fishing for sea-plunder. The men work on the embankments only in their shirts. ”

“ The rest of the heaven was cloudy, but the sweetness of solitude, and the peace of this deserted place, and the spirit of the coming evening, were so full of grace that I landed, dismissed my gondola, and stood under the porch of the late Gothic church, enjoying the silence. There is a carving over the door, so simple and childlike in feeling that it is hard to believe it is Renaissance work. ”