Venices
Page 14
On the 14th of August, Masséna moved into the Palazzo Gradenigo. Families that owned more than one gondola had to relinquish them to the occupying forces, together with the gondoliers, who were expected to provide food for themselves; the conscripts fled. Nevertheless, five theatres remained open. Sérurier arrived, with a large general staff; the Arsenal was emptied; they set fire to the Bucintoro. The end of the Serenissima (Memoirs of L. Manin, Venice, 1886).
Mallet du Pan, at the time, Molmenti, later on, and Guy Dumas, in our own time, have persuaded us that Venice was corrupt and ridden with vice; she was no more so than the rest of Europe, this Serenissima that had endured for thirteen centuries, and whose disappearance was lamented by all her people.
Whether it was 1797 or 1945, any more the soldiers of the Directoire than the New Zealand armoured car troops under the command of the English General Freyberg, Venice has scarcely put up fierce resistance; she wanted to avoid pillage and fire; the names of the conquering generals are forgotten in a few months, treaties turn yellow after ten years, and empires will never be other than empires; the duty of a unique city is to survive.6
APRIL 196…
THE HEIGHTS and the depths of Venice, where human life fluctuated for so long between two extremes, between piombi and pozzi, between the drains up above, and the wells beneath; a town of poor fishermen and a golden city; along the same canal passed both the Wagner of the duet from Tristan and the man of the funebral gondola, his own. Non nobis, Domine…
1908–1970
THE THREE AGES OF MAN
HOW MANY YEARS, social circles, fashions, pledges and hopes have I seen pass by beneath these Procuraties, among these after-dinner strollers… The soldiers from the time of the Triple Alliance carrying their sabres that were never drawn, under their arms; their bulging riding britches and their loose-fitting boots, Tor di Quinto style, with wide regimental stripes, yellow, blue and cerise, and their huge kepis and their plumes, wearing a monocle and a curled-up Wilhelm II moustache; the Venetian women in their black shawls (and the noise of their clogs on the pavement, now nothing but a memory); the beautiful foreign women, with their feathered boas and their high collars drawn taut with stays, holding their dress in one hand, a tortoise-shell lorgnette or a fan in the other.
Next came the Allied armies in their green and bronze, or khaki uniforms, and their medals.
Then the blackshirts, the Balbo-like beards, the riding britches once more, but this time worn down to the knees, in the knickerbocker style, like the Guards; and still those boots, now very tight-fitting; the rhythmic march, the banners, the stacks of weapons and the commemorative crowns, followed by the ministers in gaiters (in morning coats and bowler hats); more ladies, sportswomen wearing eye-shades in the style of Suzanne Lenglen, or balillas… Workers’ marches… In about 1935, the Mussolini style gave way to uniforms in the Hitler mould: white tunics over tobacco-coloured trousers.
Pursuing History at a trot, it is now the Liberation, with American jackets everywhere and high-laced military boots; armbands bearing the letters MP, cowboy shirts and open collars, Kodak cameras with telephoto lens, and Lucky Strikes in their holsters.
And now here we are today: weeping willow hairstyles, bell-bottoms worn over oilskins, dresses cut from old curtains that drag along among the rubbish, sandals, bare feet, a sleeping-bag over the shoulder, the pilgrimages to the source. It’s a time of letting go, of “let’s crash down here, no point in going any further”.
I shall bring this procession of ghosts through St Mark’s Square to a halt, not being a Carpaccio; nor a Saint-Simon, who nevertheless wrote: “These trifles are scarcely ever included in the Memoirs; however, they give an accurate idea of almost everything one looks for in them.”
There’s a dispute between the Venice city council and the military authorities which, like their equivalents in every country, do not want to relinquish anything. Venice is still scattered with islands or islets which are no longer of any strategic importance: Santo Spirito, Lazaretto Vecchio, La Celestia, San Giacomo in Palude, La Certosa… Those old monasteries, those fortresses that have nothing to defend… The Italian empire is long past and the Office of Tourism requires hotels and more hotels.
PIAZZALE ROMA, 197…
WHAT THE railway line began, the pneumatic tyre has achieved. The land takes its revenge over the sea; ever since 1931 those who supported terra firma were the victors, having their way against Mussolini who, being artistically minded, wanted to cut off Venice from the Italian mainland.
Confronted with a garage for mammoths, Europe hurls herself upon Venice, hurriedly devours her, and then goes away again. Thieves who steal spare wheels, those who falsify police placards, money-changers, hitchhiking prostitutes and other knaves add to the confusion of the pilgrims in a Europe that is trying to patch together her different parts.
Bridges built of ancient brick are interspersed with foot bridges made of concrete, which are themselves overlooked by the multi-lane flyovers. The eurobuses and trains on rubber wheels holding eighty passengers pass minibuses setting off for Nepal. The whole of this Santa Croce district smokes with gas and carbon monoxide, Cinzano fumes and marijuana. Collapsing suitcases that have fallen off the top decks of buses like moraines from a moving glacier, the Japanese with their top-heavy Leicas, the 16mm film strewn over the ground, the mattresses and rolled-up sleeping-bags, bulging more with cooking utensils than with stuffing, everybody converges in this hotchpotch of humanity where people who have driven through the night try to glimpse Venice on a morning such as this, when the sun has not managed to pierce through the kilometres of dust.
Unlike the Basilica of St Mark’s, the Piazzale Roma is a cathedral of drivers. You have to choose between the museum and life.
NOTES
1. Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–89) was a Swiss artist and engraver widely admired for his precise and detailed portraits of Oriental people. [Tr.]
2. Which means broadly: “Whether I have the Palazzo Labia or not, I shall always be a Labia.” [Tr.]
3. Marcel Jouhandeau (1888–1979) was a prolific French novelist and essayist who in certain of his books (in particular, Chroniques maritales, 1935) provided a ruthless analysis of the difficulties of conjugal life and his relationship with his wife Élise. [Tr.]
4. And if they adorn the summits of your palaces / It is by right of virtue, not by right of conquest. [Tr.]
5. “lo sarò un Attila per lo stato veneto.”
6. This was what I tried to explain to Paul Reynaud, as gently as possible, one spring evening in London in 1940, when he maintained that not a stone should be left standing in Paris. There had been four of us dining at Ava Wigram’s house, with Hore-Belisha; the British Secretary of State for War had arrived late after making a speech in the House of Commons and had immediately wanted to hear himself again, insisting that a wireless set be placed on the table, thereby making all conversation impossible. Hore-Belisha approved of Reynaud. Both men are dead; Paris remains.
IV
IT’S EASIER TO START THAN IT IS TO END
AT THE DOGES’ PALACE, 23 SEPTEMBER 1967
WHO WOULD ATTEMPT to build Venice again? One man ventured to do so, Volpi, in full flight, in October 1917, anno fra i più tristi della storia d’ltalia. On land that one would hardly dare call firm, he constructed Italy’s second port, Porto Marghera, in a terrain that bred malaria, mosquitoes and frogs. It developed into two thousand solid hectares of refineries and factories producing aluminium or refined nitrogen.
In a few days’ time we shall celebrate the fiftieth anniver sary of this astonishing enterprise; in this very place, at the Doges’ Palace, the first Venice is to pay homage to the founder of the second, il signor conte Volpi di Misurata.
Having climbed the Giants’ Staircase, then the Scala d’Oro, I enter the Great Council room, and I stand beside the woman who was the constant and kindly shadow of the celebrated Venetian.
Seventy-two doges look down upon us, lined up
between the victories won by la Serenissima that are painted on the walls. Facing one another are the Gothic bays giving on to San Giorgio Maggiore, bathed in the setting sun, and Tintoretto’s Paradise. Above our heads, as if sculpted from a massive piece of gold, the immense oval of the ceiling painted by Veronese pierces the joists that seem to be pushed upwards by the brushwork of the clouds towards a sky that is higher than the actual one; the structural details disappear beneath the golden profusion of this floating Bucentaurus.
The last time I had seen Volpi was in Paris, in his hotel bedroom, in 1943; I discovered a man who was worn out by events, and whose gigantic creation was being called into question from the Adriatic to Libya; within a quarter of a century everything had been lost. I thought again about what Philippe Berthelot had frequently told me, by way of justifying the long anti-Italian tradition of the Quai d’Orsay: “They’re a mediocre instrument, we shall never do anything with the Italians.” (That’s true of war, which is Death, but it’s not true of industry, buildings, agriculture, which are Life.)
The Venetians are made of stern stuff and are proof against the deluge. They always extricate themselves; their houses all have two exits, one on the water, the other on land.
A victory in Venice is worth a hundred victories anywhere else.
Tonight is very much a final victory for Volpi the Venetian. The whole of Venice is here: the Cardinal Patriarch brings the Pope’s blessing; Andreotti, that of the government; he reads a telegram from Saragat celebrating the “genius of the man”; the Under-Secretary of State to the Treasury pays tribute to someone who, as Mussolini’s Minister of Finance, and with the backing of the Bank of England and loans from Morgan, saved his country; the Syndic and the whole Municipality of Venice listen to an account of Volpi’s life over many reigns, not one of which witnessed an undertaking that could not be ruined: what Volpi wanted, fifty years ago, exists; the 100,000-ton and more oil tankers enter by Malamocco and arrive at Mestre. At home, nobody would mention his name; here, they think only of the glory of the very serene Serenissima; politics are forgotten; we are among Venetians; Italy is but one century old, Venice fifteen, and the old adage remains true: Veneziani, poi Cristiani! (Venetians first, then Christians).
OCTOBER 1970
YESTERDAY I WAS at the Venice Courthouse. A photographer from Chioggia was being tried, accused of holding arty parties, which were attended by young Venetian boys. Alerted by the number of cars with Treviso, Padua and Trieste numberplates that were being parked there at night, the Chioggia police burst into his studio; the guests fled through the windows. The man’s lawyer pleaded not guilty, Merlin’s law on prostitution not being applicable, according to him, to male prostitution.
8 OCTOBER 1970
AT THE FENICE, the first performance of Aretino’s Cortigiana, by the Teatro stabile, at the “Festival of Prose”. Two parallel “witticisms”: a man from Siena, a candidate for the cardinalate, is learning the art of becoming a courtier; he is brought on in a curious piece of machinery, a sort of oven for shaping courtiers; an amorous Neapolitan braggart (gran vantatore) arrives; a procuress, who is meant to smooth his path, substitutes the baker’s wife for the woman he idolizes. There were a great many secondary characters, the most successful being the caricature of a man of letters, attired in manuscripts, the pages of which were sewn on to his costume and hung down, making him look like a bookstall.
The performance was “perishingly” boring, as Lucien Daudet used to say. Dialogue in regional dialect, obscene allusions and anti-clericalism in the worst possible taste: “Here come the Turks! For fear of being impaled, everyone has fled, apart from the priests”; incomprehensible and ignorant comments on literature or contemporary politics. The actors declaimed for five acts, abusando del registro urlato; dramatic art nowadays consists of nothing but exaggerated and bawled-out aggression; actors, whose job it is to “look as though” they are doing something, ought to be taught that they should look as if they are shouting, without actually doing so. If only they would give us Aristophanes, Calderón or Shakespeare, instead of constant Brecht. The result was the following, from this morning’s Corriere: “The audience, which to begin with was very large, disappeared during the interval.” “Il pubblico, molto numeroso all’inizio, ha calato durante l’intervallo.”
AUGUST 1969
THIS EXTREMITY of the Adriatic is a real lobster pot… All the refugees throughout History; within the arms of her lagoons the sea cradles a never-ending exodus: confronted with swamps that are impassable, Goths, Avars, Lombards have had to relinquish their prey; it was here that Philip-Augustus watched the Jews slip through his fingers, and where the Pope gave up trying to track down Aretino. Today, it is still Venice, rather than Crete and Istanbul, that the hippies, those scavengers after the Absolute, opt for before they set off from “foul” Europe.
I was coming out of one of those little delicatessens that are hidden away behind the Danieli, among the narrow streets at right angles to the quayside, where bedrooms as big as trunks can be rented by the day. Beneath the span of the Bridge of Sighs my eyes were dazzled by the setting sun which had transformed the entrance to the Giudecca, to the west of San Giorgio Maggiore, into a pool of rose essence.
I had just caught a whiff of a stench of goat: I was to leeward of three young men whose bare torsos had been scorched in the furnaces of the travelling life; they wore gold crosses around their necks, naturally. Their beauty was more offensive than ugliness. A protesting Valkyrie, her hair spread across shoulders gnawed by salt, appeared to be keeping them on a tight rein, reminiscent of some stone-age matriarchy; their armpits smelt of leeks, their buttocks of venison; their sleeping-bags rolled beneath their necks, they were stretched out, looking as if they had been shot, on the floor of a money-changer’s shop, against a background of international gold coins. They had let themselves go to such a degree that they seemed to have forgotten how to use chairs and they squatted down nimbly and naturally. Their fingers, the colour of iodine, rolled forbidden cigarettes; the chewing gum in the mouth of the third of them, an American, incorporated the national pastime of masticating with a naturally bovine brutishness. What could possibly restrain these creatures: some Bonaparte who had mistaken the century, a Chateaubriand who would never write a word, a Guatamelata without a destiny, a Lope de Vega without a manuscript? To imagine them at the age of eighty sent a shiver down the spine.
I came across them again on my way back from the Lido the following evening, seated Buddha-like with their life-belts on, at the back of a vaporetto; these spineless young things did not know how to stand vertically.
We were approaching the Giardini. As we coasted along, the vapours ripped through the lagoon like scissors cutting through a length of silk; the water was frothy and whipped up with dirty snow like a real cappuccino.
I handed the Valkyrie my flask of grappa; the wretched ragamuffin grabbed it without a word of thanks.
“Man can revert to being an ape or a wolf in six months,” I launched forth, “but to produce a Plato, it must have taken millions of years… As for conceiving of Venice…”
“I shit on Venice,” replied the Valkyrie.
“You can leave that to the pigeons, Mademoiselle…” I said, taking back my empty flask.
1969
VENICE IN THE AUTUMN, disinfected of tourists (apart from the unbudgeable Buddha-like hippies, so lacking in any curiosity), her buildings decked in dust covers, cloaked in rain; it’s the least frivolous time. Venice in spring, when her paving stones start to sweat and the Campanile is reflected in the lake that forms in St Mark’s Square. Venice in winter, the time of the temperatura rigida and the congelamento, when the fire-wardens watch out for fires in the tall chimneys, and the wolves come down from the Dolomites. As for Venice in summertime, it’s the worst time…
1970
AN OVERCAST October sky this morning; an opaline grey, the colour of old chandeliers, so fragile that they sell marabou feathers with which to dust them
.
1970
ON THIS OCTOBER EVENING, it was still summertime; the surface of the water was like a piece of shattered glass, with tug-boats wailing, transporter bridges scattering the flocks of seagulls that rested on the mud-flats, pilot ships towing sea-going oil tankers, ferries from the Lido disgorging their vehicles from both ends, and motor boats constructed of nickel, chrome and mahogany clattering against a surface hardened by speed; they are driven by elegant bare-chested Tritons who steer standing up—they are ashamed to steer sitting down in Venice. Everything seemed to be churning up the brackish water and to be drawing it towards itself as one might a sheet; this water disappeared beneath the hulls, just as in those regattas painted by Guardi in which the scores of gondolas transform the Grand Canal into a pontoon bridge.
THE SAME DAY
VENICE… rather than being a seminary of morbidezza is an academy of energy; Barrès might have been able to draw strength here by touching the water rather than the earth. That evening Venice-the-Red, where, in Alfred de Musset’s time, not a boat stirred, could offer nothing but deafening sirens, whipped-up waves and a sky perforated by jet planes; everywhere lights burned brightly, people shouted and everything was steaming with perspiration.
As we drew up in front of the Danieli, night was falling, but the constant hubbub continued; the flecks of froth clung to the bows until we reached the steps of the jetty. This screech of outboard motors wailing at five thousand revolutions per minute and the traffic pounding by all served to mount a challenge to that old literary hack whom we call Death; everything seemed to cry out: “Enough debris, enough relics, enough remains, put a stop to all this twilight! Enough of this moaning from such a gay city!”