La Serenissima

Piazzetta de San Marco

It was at Venice...this beautiful counterpoise of the world, which even in its embellishments is full of latent energies ever more finely ramified... passing foreigners gather round... and people stand about... in this city they abandon themselves nonchalantly to the most extravagant possibilities.

In their customary existence they constantly confound the extraordinary with the forbidden, so that the expectation of something wonderful... the feeling that at home only momentarily possesses them, at concerts, or alone with a novel, they openly express as a legitimate condition in these encouraging surroundings.

So I stood among them and rejoiced that I was not going away...overcome with the pleasant weariness of...ideals.

- Rainier Maria Rilke in Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, English translation by John Linton, 1930

I came to Venice for the second time in two years. This time I visited alone. On the late afternoon of my arrival I was greeted by a thickly-clouded, waterlogged sky. Spurning the threat of rain, I left the confines of my hotel room the minute I unpacked and strolled out to the waterfront trail to see a profusion of gondola speckling the gray-green waters of the Grand Canal. I wandered up the wooden dock, where a row of these swan-like boats were anchored. On the farthest end was a particularly attractive boat, its interior upholstered in indigo-dyed velvet trimmed with a thin piping of gold brocade. Two rolled cushions encased in the same rich fabric were positioned as armrests on either side. In a small corner was a low stool that could be pulled out and used as a footrest. Stamped on the stool's surface was a winged lion, a symbol emblematic of Venice's noble past, a time from which the gondola and its oarsman have endured as living remnants.

I lingered over these fine details, catching the attention of the gondola's owner, who promptly drew near and launched into an animated account of his city's history. I had not intended to do anything beyond admiring his boat's stately trappings but I was eventually prevailed upon to concede to a tour that would allow me to absorb various impressions of the place. My recommended itinerary consisted of traveling down the length of the main watercourse to the six districts or sestieri that subdivided Venice. We would occasionally veer off into the smaller canals to explore more of each district's distinct characteristics: the oriental elements of Canareggio, the promenades and shipyards of Castello, the churches of San Polo/Santa Croce. I would disembark at the Piazzetta of the Two Columns, a small harbor situated at the entrance of the Great Basin. From there I could walk towards the main Piazza and take a few moments to ramble around the region's most storied landmark - a sprawling salon framed by the arched colonnades of the Procuratie and anchored by the Byzantine domes of the Basilica, famously described by Napoleon as the greatest drawing room in all of Europe.

Rialto

So I stepped into the adventure enthusiastically, notwithstanding the ominously massed clouds and the fact that the boat lacked an awning. With practiced ease the gondolier prodded the boat out of its berth and steered it towards the open water. The wind picked up and pushed the boat into a steady glide. Borne aloft on the placid waves I felt as if I had fallen off the grid of familiar and well-worn patterns into a breach of unhurried transition, where the only urgency was the soft rhythm of a single oar cutting through the liquid highway that lapped languidly at the ancient stonework and surged with relentless vitality through the low-slung bridges. In some places it's a brackish stew seeping through stone cells. Several vaporetto sped past, churning water in their wake.The water is everywhere.

I had settled into a half-recline between the gondola's tufted bolsters, gazing out at the august structures lining the edge of the channel. The exuberant Baroque ornamentation of Ca' Pesaro, the Grecian motifs of Palazzo Grimani, and the elegant Istrian arches of Ca' d'Oro are all hallmarks of the constantly shifting aesthetic that Venice so graciously accomodated over the centuries. As I relaxed into a roving mood, the lonely and untidy fragments of a poorly stated part of myself - the irreverent sfrontata, the enthralled passionata, and the grave assasina - anxiously clamored to play out in this moment where they felt unrestrained. That one could be moved to indulge the rogue aspects of oneself with relative ease and impunity was a matter of course to the ambiance of unusual intensity that permeated this place; there existed a primal energy that pulsed beneath the city's tradition of rigid social mores and took hold of her visitors unawares. As the gondolier put it,"In Venice, people behave out of character, yet they are never more themselves. Here, they are a bit more free to feel."

Il Redentore at the Dorsoduro sestiere

Halfway through the trip, the air had sharpened to a frigid dampness. I wrapped my coat tighter around myself. I reached down to the wool rug that lay under my feet, unfolded it, and pulled it over my lap. Winter has yet to entirely leave this place.

The gondolier offered to sing, perhaps to distract me from having to constantly rub the circulation back into my frozen face with equally frozen fingers. Most gondolieri have a set repertoire which they repeatedly croon to their indiscriminate and excitable audience; their most common requests are folk standards about a bright-eyed village girl with the sun on her face or an insolent maiden intent on drowning herself. I could not be persuaded to listen to either.

I humored him nevertheless. I picked out a song from memory, one that I haven't heard in a long time. I was so sure he would refuse to sing it, would plead that such a piece was beyond the scope of his musicality, as the words were not even Italian to begin with.

To my surprise he nodded easily, leaning on his oar. "Rakhmaninov is always a good choice. It would be my pleasure."

The boat had drifted, and he was poling it back to position with broad, forceful strokes. He hummed a few bars as he worked, testing the weight of the foreign tune on his tongue. After he straightened the boat in the current he opened to full melody with a gentle baritone. He possessed a florid lower register that drew out the lush lines in a fervent legato, molding the song into a restless and agitated invocation. I had never heard it sung like this, so raw and devoid of accompaniment. The fall of music tracked a swift path into my being, where it spread like a growing warmth that drew the chill from my surroundings. I was transfixed.

There was love in that secret dark, but there was sorrow too. And longing. Always longing.

When the song drew to a close, I half-turned in my seat, and looked up at him as the last notes bounced off the water's opaque surface into the icy air, where they achieved an unsullied clarity.

He glimpsed my face and stopped rowing. "Ti ho fatto piangere," he said, stricken. "Mi dispiace tanto --"

I waved away his concern. "You sang so beautifully."

"Ah." He sounded embarassed. "But I forgot some words."

Murano, the island of glass, evening

We finally arrived at the Piazzetta. The gondolier guided the boat into a slip in the harbor and threw a rope over the dock anchor. I let myself be handed out on wobbly, rubbery shins, yet once my feet hit firm ground I suddenly missed the turbulent solitude of being on water. A pack of tourists gathered a few paces ahead, staring up in quiet reverence at the Gothic facade of the Palazzo Ducale. The group shifted now and then, trying to dodge the horde of pigeons roaming underfoot. There must have been a thousand of these birds scattered around the plaza, their sleek heads dolefully pecking at the scraps left over from the day's bustle.

The gondolier silently stepped back into his boat and unfastened it from its moorings. I reached into my purse, and pulled out a wad of bills.

"No, no." He shook his head. "This ride is a gift."

"Everything has a price." I felt a pang as I said this, as if I took something precious and carelessly denigrated it with my practicality. I pressed my payment to his hand. "Grazie, signore."

"Marco," he offered unneccesarily. His name.

"Buona sera, Marco," was my halting reply.

Marco gave me a jaunty salute and paddled out to the bay, his spare frame bent over as he vigorously stirred the murky waters, like the dread Charon in his sable bark after ferrying another soul to the opposite bank of the Styx. I watched until his boat rounded an embankment, then looked beyond to a cottony fog rising from the lagoon. The city was preparing for dusk, its repose coming in the guise of a gray haze.

I stood there for a few moments, blinking; the horizon was fast diminishing, but across the shore at Dorsoduro, Il Redentore's glossy Palladian columns beckoned as they floated eternally level with the tides - a sight at once inviolate and fragile, in the manner of all things imagined.

Read/hear the companion piece to this post

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