Veneti

“ Never did father more solemnly promise his protection to the child from whom he was parting, than did Cristoforo Moro, the Serenissimo, pledge the faith and support of Venetia to the Daughter of the Republic, as with slow majesty, to the rhythm of an ancient wedding canticle, the Bucentoro, escorted by all the galleys of the arsenal of Venice, the mighty galléasses of her patrician merchants and the gondolas of her nobles, moved forward, beyond the Lido, where the Ambassador Filippo Podacatharo waited with the fleet of Cyprus—most sumptuously outfitted—to receive the bride of Janus. ”

“ This face and figure are almost unique among the beautiful things of Venice, and they leave the susceptible observer with the impression of having made, or rather having missed, a strange, a dangerous, but a most valuable, acquaintance. The lady, who is superbly handsome, is the typical Venetian of the sixteenth century, and she remains for the mind the perfect flower of that society. Never was there a greater air of breeding, a deeper expression of tranquil superiority. She walks a goddess--as if she trod without sinking the waves of the Adriatic. ”

“ The mere use of one's eyes in Venice is happiness enough, and generous observers find it hard to keep an account of their profits in this line. Everything the attention touches holds it, keeps playing with it--thanks to some inscrutable flattery of the atmosphere. Your brown-skinned, white-shirted gondolier, twisting himself in the light, seems to you, as you lie at contemplation beneath your awning, a perpetual symbol of Venetian "effect." The light here is in fact a mighty magician and, with all respect to Titian, Veronese and Tintoret, the greatest artist of them all. ”

“ All Venetian basements are damp; it is their normal condition. If the water runs in, it will run out again. They have known this Old Sea King for centuries, and they know every whim in his head. As long as the Murazzi hold—the great stone dykes breasting the Adriatic outside the lagoons—Venice is safe. To-morrow the blessed sun will shine again, and the warm air will dry up the last vestige of the night’s frolic. ”

“ There was nothing the Venetians would not do to add to its greatness, glory, and splendour. It was this which led them to make of the city itself that wondrous monument to the love and awe they felt for their Republic, which still rouses more admiration and gives more pleasure than any other one achievement of the art-impulse in man. ”

“ But then Venice was wrapped in the transfiguring atmosphere of the Lagunes, and could see, towering above the rich Venetian plains and the lower slopes of the Friulan mountains, the higher, the more aspiring peaks of the purer region. Reality, with all its warmth and all its truth, in Venetian art was still reality. ”

“ The noble Venetian representing the alternating radiance and gloom of earth, its fairest pages as they unfold themselves, the joys and sorrows, the teeming life of humanity; the mighty Florentine disdainful of the world, its colours, its pulsations, its pomps and vanities, incurious of mankind save in its great symbolical figures, soaring like the solitary eagle into an atmosphere of his own where the dejected beholder can scarce breathe, and, sick at heart, oppressed with awe, lags far behind! ”

“ It was certainly true that an impression of Venice as humanly sweet might easily found itself on the frankness and quickness and amiability of these little people. They were at least so much to the good; for the philosophy of their patroness was as Venetian as everything else; helping her to accept experience without bitterness and to remain fresh, even in the fatigue which finally overtook her, for pleasant surprises and proved sincerities. ”

“ No longer, fond of the sun and breeze as a beautiful bird, was Venetia seen, as heretofore, glancing in the garden, or bounding over the lawns; too often might she be found reclining on the couch, in spite of all the temptations of the spring; while her temper, once so singularly sweet that it seemed there was not in the world a word that could ruffle it, and which required so keenly and responded so quickly to sympathy, became reserved, if not absolutely sullen, or at times even captious and fretful. ”

“ Venetians were united in one aim,—that Venice should be the most beautiful and most powerful of cities. And so it happens that in the voluminous records of her history and life, while they give a vivid realization of the thought, energy, and power which thousands of her sons must have possessed and must have dedicated to her glory; while as one reads he may almost hear the hum of her busy life and feel the throbbing of her pulses, little prominence is given to individuals. ”

“ Venice itself was really so different to any other Italian city; a richly adorned bride for the mighty sea. The winged Venetian lion waved on the flag above me. The sails swelled in the wind, and concealed the coast from me. I sat upon the right side of the ship, and looked out across the blue, billowy sea; a young lad sat not far from me, and sang a Venetian song about the bliss of love and the shortness of life: ‘Kiss the red lips, on the morrow thou art with the dead; love whilst thy heart is young, and thy blood is fire and flame! Grey hairs are the flowers of death: then is the blood ice ”

“ Compare them with the dreamers of Perugino’s school: you feel at once that a gulf lies between them; the fabric of their dream is of another substance. The great Venetians are giants; like the sea’s, their embrace is vast and powerful, endowed also with the gentleness of strength. ”

“ He somehow came to associate certain inflections of her voice with the sweet sounds that make the undertone of Venetian life; the plash of the oar, the cooing of doves about the Salute, the bells of Murano, softened in the distance, the sound of the surf beating outside the Lido of a still evening, when one floats far out on [148] the lagoon, and the familiar, every-day world seems farther away than those other worlds, shining overhead. ”

“ In the daytime the population of the Piazza is more foreign than Venetian. In fact the only Venetians to be seen are waiters, photographers, and guides, the knots of errand boys watching the artists, and, I might add, the pigeons. But at night Venice claims it, although the foreigner is there too. It is amusing to sit at a table on the outside edge of Florian's great quadrangle of chairs and watch the nationalities, the Venetians, the Germans, the Austrians, and the Anglo-Saxons, as they move steadily round and round. ”

“ It was already completely night as I stood on the little steamer, which is the Venetian omnibus, and was borne, swiftly and silently, through the nocturnal mystery of the Grand Canal. More than ever, Venice is romantic at such an hour. Its palaces glimmer above the flood in a perfection that the day denies. ”

“ The men who guarded the docks were absolutely incorruptible. In the sixteenth century it seemed as if the pure blood of the old Venetians ran only in their veins, and as if they alone still upheld the noble traditions of loyalty and simplicity which the founders of the Republic had handed down from braver days. ”

“ The beauty of Venice is in its sky and its women. What pretty creatures the Venetian women are! Their forms are so slender and supple under their black shawls. If nothing remained of these women except a bone, one would find in that bone the charm of their exquisite structure. Sundays, at church, they form laughing groups, agitated, with hips a little pointed, elegant necks, flowery smiles, and inflaming glances. ”

“ But you must go to Venice in very fact to see the other masters, who form part of your life while you are there, who illuminate your view of the universe. It is difficult to express one's relation to them; the whole Venetian art-world is so near, so familiar, so much an extension and adjunct of the spreading actual, that it seems almost invidious to say one owes more to one of them than to the other. ”

“ In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with a pale light from the east, and beyond this pallid mirror shines Venice—a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush. Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded. The western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark fire-rimmed clouds. The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids, Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. ”

“ Amidst grand architectural forms of balconies and spiral columns sits Venice, the blonde, on a throne, radiant with beauty, with that fresh and rosy carnation peculiar to the daughters of humid climates, her silken skirt spread out beneath a silken mantle. Around her a circle of young women bend over with a voluptuous and yet haughty smile, possessing that Venetian charm peculiar to a goddess who has a courtesan's blood in her veins, but who rests on a cloud and attracts men to her instead of descending to them. ”

“ It is above all in the wonderful Venetian landscape—a mountain-bordered vale, along which flocks and herds are being driven, under a sky of the most intense blue—that the master shows himself supreme. Nature is therein not so much detailed as synthesised with a sweeping breadth which makes of the scene not the reflection of one beautiful spot in the Venetian territory, but without loss of essential truth or character a very type of Venetian landscape of the sixteenth century. ”

“ Is it not strange that for at least six hundred years the Venetians have been contending with those rivers at their mouths—that is to say, where their strength has become wholly irresistible—and never once thought of contending with them at their sources, where their infinitely separated streamlets might be, and are meant by Heaven to be, ruled as easily as children? ”

“ In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is easy, then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and fair ladies—with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon the rich argosies of Venetian commerce—with Othellos and Desdemonas, with Iagos and Roderigos—with noble fleets and victorious legions returning from the wars. ”

“ The misery of Venice stands there for all the world to see; it is part of the spectacle—a thorough-going devotee of local colour might consistently say it is part of the pleasure. The Venetian people have little to call their own—little more than the bare privilege of leading their lives in the most beautiful of towns. ”

“ Venetia shook her head.
'Can you be unhappy?'
'To be unhappy would be wicked,' said Venetia; 'but my mind has lost its spring.'
'Ah! say not so, Venetia, or you will make even me gloomy. I am happy, positively happy. There must not be a cloud upon your brow.'
'You are joyous,' said Venetia, 'because you are excited. It is the novelty of return that animates you. It will wear off; you will grow weary, and when you go to the university you will think yourself happy again.'
'I do not intend to go to the university,' said Cadurcis. ”

“ The barge of the ambassador met them at Fusina, and when Venetia beheld the towers and cupolas of Venice, suffused with a golden light and rising out of the bright blue waters, for a moment her spirit seemed to lighten. It is indeed a spectacle as beautiful as rare, and one to which the world offers few, if any, rivals. ”

“ It was very common for the great Venetian nobles to play patron to poets, painters, and architects, and almost every name that became famous in the arts and sciences recalls that of some patrician or secretary who protected the artist, the writer, or the student. The Republic was often the refuge of gifted men whom political or personal reasons had exiled from their homes. Roman, Tuscan, and Lombard celebrities spent their lives in Venice and added their glory to hers. ”

“ Venetia in evening dress on the moon-drenched terrace of Tanglewood; Venetia on the tennis-courts, all in white, glorified by sunlight, an amazingly spirited, victorious figure; Venetia with her hair blown across her eyes, at the wheel of one of Tankerville's racing motor-craft; Venetia in the gloom of the Grand Central Station, lingering to say good-bye to her betrothed....
It required several days for this stupid gentleman to awaken to the fact that the name of his trouble was merely love; that an acknowledged lover is a person vastly different from a diffident and distant worshipper ”

“ Venetia.
'Poor Cadurcis!' said his cousin, shaking his head, 'if any man ever had reason to be miserable, it is he.'
'We are none of us very happy, I think,' said Venetia, mournfully. 'I am sure when I look back to the last few years of my life it seems to me that there is some curse hanging over our families. ”

“ 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 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. ”