Venice Portfolio: Creating the Myth of Venice

Introduction

“When twenty-five years after his first visit, the well-known English traveler and Catholic, Henry Vollam Morton, chose to stay a second time in Venice, he took a hotel quite near the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop on the Riva degli Schiavoni, in the so-called Calle delle Rasse. Eager reader of sites that he was, he immediately wanted to find out what the name of the street in which he was to spend the next couple of weeks meant, and he came across two things typically Venetian. What he first learnt was that the calle took its name from the type of weather-resistant black cloth imported from the Serbian landscapes of Raska or Rassia and used for the covering of gondola roofs, a cloth which, at one time, had been the main trade of the row. The calle thus proved to be a rightfully Venetian site, a place not merely situated in a city of gondolas but also metonymically designating it: not just a mere part of the city’s syntax but also already part of its semantics. In addition to this, however, H.V. Morton also learnt that, in the eighteenth century, a rasse-like fabric formed the basis for the production of some kind of ribbon, a ribbon strong enough to hold together long thin slats of wood, which were then arranged in such a way as to produce a type of blind which, from that time on, became known all over Europe as ‘Venetian’.
‘While discovering the meaning of rasse, I solved a mystery which may perhaps have puzzled others: why window-blinds of a type never seen in Venice should be called ‘Venetian’. The explanation is that during the eighteenth century, when this kind of blind was first made, the slats were bound with a strong canvas similar to rasse known as Venetian.’
The name of the calle thus also referred him to the central element in the construction of such a blind, i.e. to the instrument with which you can shut out, or let in, the view. Reading a city is to try and raise its blinds. Any travel writer’s fantasy is to see himself as ‘master of the rasse’, as the one manipulating the strings in order to make his readers see the, or at least his, view. Detecting, discovering, unveiling are his main activities. So are explaining, interpreting, attributing meaning. With the choice of his hotel, Morton had quite inadvertently hit the very centre of the semiotic mechanism governing travel writing: the more you manage to manipulate the strings, the more you will be able to let in new signifiers, which you will then combine with the signifieds already deciphered so as to complete the semantic profile of the place” (Mahler 29-30).

Although rather long, I believe that this anecdote from the beginning of Andreas Mahler’s essay “Writing Venice: Paradoxical Signification as Connotational Feature” very neatly sums up the experience of being a writer in Venice, particularly the bit which states that “Any travel writer’s fantasy is to see himself as ‘master of the rasse’, as the one manipulating the strings in order to make his readers see the, or at least his, view. Detecting, discovering, unveiling are his main activities. So are explaining, interpreting, attributing meaning” (Mahler 30). The traveler’s joy comes not only from his or her own experience, but also in relating that experience to eager listeners and readers. However, no story or picture can ever quite fully capture the experience of travel and so the traveler has to make decisions about which anecdotes and photos he or she will present to his or her audience. When the traveler decides which parts of the travel experience to talk about, he or she is in effect creating a myth of the city, for by not delving into all parts, but only into the parts which make up an interesting story, the traveler is not truly recreating the city, he or she is recreating a mythical city which exists only in the stories which the traveler tells to listeners or readers. Collective travelers’ stories all about the same aspects of the city will eventually lead to the myth of the city becoming more recognizable than the true story. And so the myth continues to be perpetuated by future travelers because that is what people now want to hear. Although all travelers repeat the myth of Venice, it is the ways in which they tweak the myth to suit their own tastes and purposes that keep it fresh and interesting to audiences and which help it to continue to grow and thrive. How different travelers, from Lord Byron to Henry James to my classmates and I, have repackaged the myth of Venice, and attempted to make it their own, is the focus of this portfolio.

First, though, it may be necessary to quickly define the, or what in this portfolio is accepted as the, typical myth of Venice. The typical myth of Venice as defined for this portfolio is best described by John Martin and Dennis Romano in their essay “Reconsidering Venice”:

“the myth of Venice has…played an important role in shaping Venetian society, politics, and culture. [Scholars] have, in short, not only specified the fundamental attributes of the myth but also shown how the myth served particular functions and interests…the central elements of the myth were the beauty of the city, the stability of its government, the greatness of its empire, the piety of its citizens, and, finally, its liberta, its exceptional ability to preserve its independence from foreign power…The identification of the power of the myth as a discourse also had a tremendously important effect on the study of Venetian art and music, whose portrayal of the city’s history, legends, and, yes, myth could now be fruitfully analyzed. From the mosaics and the music of San Marco to the rich and variegated cultural life of the city’s churches, monasteries, guilds, and confraternities, art, music, literature, and theater have come to be seen as vehicles that celebrated and reproduced Venetian culture” (Martin/Romano 8-9).

For the purposes of this portfolio, the most important aspects of the myth as described by Martin and Romano are the facts of Venice’s beauty and the Venetian culture represented by the art, music, literature, and theater. The myth of Venice that I will be exploring is part what is told about in guidebooks, part what is said about it by scholars, and part what is simply experienced by being in the city.

Why Venice?

What is it about Venice that seems to inspire mythmaking more than other cities? Why is it this city in particular of which Henry James writes, “Venice has been painted and described many thousands of times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer's and you will find three or four high-coloured ‘views’ of it. There is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of photographs”? Why speak this way of Venice rather than London, Paris, or Amsterdam, or for that matter, New York or Beijing? What is that specific essential quality of Venice that so particularly inspires the imagination?

Perhaps it is Venice’s uniqueness. With its canals as its principal “roadways” there is truly no other city like it in the world. So in that instance, this alien aspect of Venice that is so strange compared to the typical city roaring with wheeled vehicles, Venice is not only unique, but exceptionally foreign, making it a place that is an even greater escape than any other popular vacation destination. As Thomas Coryat writes in Coryat’s Crudities about his travels “But I will descend to the particular description of this peerelesse place, wherein if I seeme too tedious, I crave pardon of thee (gentle Reader) seeing the variety of the curious objects which it exhibiteth to the spectator is such, that a man shall much wrong it to speake a little of it” (Coryat 315).

There is also the fact that for centuries Venice was the intersection between the Eastern world and the Western world and the city today still maintains many of the vestiges of this past. The greatest example of this cross between East and West is the Basilica di San Marco, with its Eastern-influenced Byzantine mosaics that look down upon Western-influenced Roman Catholic Masses. Other instances of this cross between East and West include the many statues and symbols in Venice that hearken back to the Western-oriented Roman empire, which Venice wished to be associated with to increase their own standing, while in the midst of these Romanesque objects stands the clock tower in Piazza San Marco, with the zodiac used by sailors for navigation right on its face; astronomy was always a science more centered in the Middle and Far East, than in the Ptolemy-worshipping West. In present day, with all the turmoil in the Middle East, travelers who wish to view Byzantine mosaics and get a taste of Eastern influence without actually putting themselves in harm’s way by being tourists in a dangerous country can come to Venice and look upon these Eastern artifacts, while still being safely ensconced in the “more civilized” West.

There is also the fact of Piazza San Marco, said by many to be the most beautiful square in the world, containing not only the magnificent Basilica di San Marco, but also the stately and beautiful Palazzo Ducale, with the campanile soaring above it all and the lagoon perfectly picturesquely framed between the pillars of San Marco and San Teodoro. Coryat says about the piazza that it is “the fairest place of all the citie (which is indeed of that admirable and incomparable beauty, that I thinke no place whatsoever, eyther in Christendome or Paganisme may compare with it)” (Coryat 314).

Perhaps ultimately though the reason that Venice is a city about which myths are always being made is because it is a city that was founded upon a myth. Although history states that the first Venetian settlers had fled to the lagoon to escape barbarians ravaging their farms and towns on the mainland and had to work hard to make homes on the many water-logged islands of the lagoon, the Venetian story is that the city rose from the water on the feast day of the Annunciation, which is the feast celebrating the day the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and asked her to be the mother of Jesus. This myth also serves to raise Venetian importance as it aligns the city’s birth with the announcement of the coming of the single most influential human being in history. A city which bases its founding on such a grand myth is a city which will always gladly lend itself to being made mythical.

Recreating Venice for People at Home: Establishing My Venetian Myth

In my blog titled “Maria in Venice”, which I wrote for friends and family back home, I found myself almost immediately resorting to the tried and true myth of Venice when deciding what to write about for each post. One of the most interesting things I found when I read back over my earliest blog posts was the way many things are described as “just perfectly Italian.” In Kim Moreland’s essay “Bringing “Italianicity” Home: Hemingway Returns to Oak Park”, she states that
“Hemingway consciously signified what Roland Barthes terms “Italianicity” upon his return from Italy to Oak Park. Barthes notes the difficulty of naming the “signifieds of connotation,” offering, as the best means of doing so, a construction employing the suffix “-icity” that “derive[es] an abstract noun from [an] adjective” (Barthes 48). Thus “Italianicity is not Italy, it is the condensed essence of everything that could be Italian, from spaghetti to painting” (Barthes 48). In other words, Italianicity connotes rather than denotes Italy; it is the abstract sense of Italy, rather than its concrete reality” (Moreland 52).
As Hemingway presented an almost clichéd version of Italy to his friends and family when he returned from his time overseas, so too did I fall into the trap of signifying “Italianicity” in my blog at times, by sticking to pat versions of the same Venetian myth, rather than going deeper and trying to uncover for my friends and family the true Italy that lay beneath. I provided, rather than a full example of absorption into Italian culture, a “condensed essence of everything that could be Italian, from spaghetti to painting” or, to keep true to Venice, everything from gondolas to the campanile.

What I discovered, however, and what I believe that Byron and Casanova at least knew, was that the most important thing to keep in mind was that I was writing for an audience. So, for instance, while I found Gregory Dowling’s lecture on the different Tintoretto paintings, and the differences between each of them, fascinating, that tour only comprised one brief paragraph in my blog because, as most people I know who would be reading my blog are not art historians, that discussion would not have been that interesting to them. The night tour of the basilica of St. Mark, on the other hand, had an entire post dedicated to it, because the basilica is such a staple of Venice which people know about and so that is what they want to hear about. However, by focusing on the more well-known aspects of the city, such as San Marco, the Palazzo Ducale, and the Biennale, rather than delving more deeply into aspects of the culture such as not touching the fruit at the vendor’s stands and the way most dogs are well-trained enough to run around without leashes, I have stuck to crafting once more the tried and true myth of Venice, the Venice of the stunning basilica with its golden mosaics, the beautiful and imposing Ducal Palace, and the quiet romance of a gondola ride. These are the things people expect to read about in a travel blog about Venice and so that is what I supplied.

Even while I was recycling the typical Venice that, as James suggests, everyone has already talked about, I was equally creating my own version of the myth by means of what I selected to talk about. For instance, even though I spoke both of the Doge’s Palace and San Marco, I found in rereading my posts that St. Mark’s basilica makes many more appearances in them than the Doge’s Palace. Although both make their obligatory appearance into my recreation of Venice, my own personal tastes lead me more strongly towards the basilica and so, because I find that more interesting than the Ducal Palace, its importance in my blog, and thus in Venice itself as I am creating it for my readers, becomes much greater. As Mahler suggested, the travel writer is “the one manipulating the strings in order to make his readers see the, or at least his, view”, which is exactly what I did through my blog. I raised the blinds on both the Doge’s Palace and San Marco, but because of my own interests, I raised the blinds higher and left them up for longer on the view of the basilica.

This focus on the basilica itself is also another specific example of “Italianicity” permeating my writing, because one of the pat images of Italy, and, I think, Europe in general, is the massive, echoing cathedral with its splendid ceilings and priceless pieces of art. Because churches such as this are fairly rare within the United States, people traveling to Italy, or reading about others’ travels to Italy, are particularly interested in seeing and hearing about these cathedrals. Yi-Fu Tuan states that “architectural space reveals and instructs”. In America, churches are typically just more institutionalized buildings with some religious symbols thrown in, which speaks to the way in which Americans see church as just another obligation, similar to a job in an unimaginative office space. The space in the Italian cathedrals, on the other hand, not only reveals the power of the states that built them, but also instructs those that enter the church for worship to feel small and insignificant before the Lord. As with Venice itself, it is their uniqueness, compared to churches in the United States, which makes them particularly fascinating to readers “back home”.

My use of photos (see Appendix A) and videos (see link on the side of the blog) also contributed greatly to my recreation of the myth of Venice for people reading my blog because one does not take a picture of the pigeon and dog poop lining the streets; instead, one takes pictures of the basilica, the piazza, and the canals, all the things which are represented on innumerable postcards because they are considered the true signifiers of Venice. The videos in particular are representative of creating the myth of Venice because I did not take videos of Italians shopping at the Billa, I took videos of the Venetian soccer game and the Salute celebration, situations which are more exotic than grocery shopping, experiences which people at home would not have the opportunity to enjoy in Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.

All of these objects together, my photos, my videos, and most importantly, my blog itself, create a myth of Venice that represents the typical myth but at the same time is unique to me.

My Contemporaries’ Recreations of the Venetian Myth

As I prepared this portfolio about recreating the myth of Venice, it only made sense to explore how my classmates, who were writing their own blogs, recreated the myth, since we were all here discovering the city simultaneously. Having not had much of a chance to really read my classmates’ blogs over the semester, I was truly blown away by the depth of analysis included in everyone’s posts. It was fascinating to go through and see how everyone not only discussed the myth of Venice, but also disseminated it, so that although at times blog posts were simply descriptive, as a blog is typically designed to be, there was always analysis included which broke down the myth of Venice and tried to get at the real city, or at least tried to further understand the myth and why it existed.

However, while everyone in some way discussed the myth of Venice, because it was such an important part of our class discussions, everyone covered different aspects of it. Even when people covered similar aspects of it, such as Caylen and Natalie both discussing our gondola ride, each person put their own unique spin on the topic (see Appendix B). This falls in with my thesis that although all travelers repeat the myth of Venice, it is the ways in which they tweak the myth to suit their own tastes and purposed that keep it fresh and interesting to audiences and which help it to continue to grow and thrive. A simple but interesting example of the ways in which we all repeated the same concept but each brought something different to the table is in the names which we all chose to give our blogs. On Blogger (which incidentally every single person used, despite the plethora of blog sites out there; this likely speaks to the quality of Blogger blogs), you must not only set up your blog with its title, but you must also choose your own website address. What I found fascinating was that, even with almost limitless choices before us, we all kept to pretty similar address names; the majority not only used their name in the address, but the word “Venice” as well. In fact, Dane, Caylen, and I all used the address “nameinvenice.blogspot.com” for our blogs. Clearly we were all thinking along similar lines in first establishing our blogs, but it is where each individual blog goes from there that is fascinating (see Appendix B for select excerpts).

Due to the fact that we all see many of the sites, usually together, I assumed that most of the blogs would stick to the same topics, the basilica, the clock tower, the different museums, etc. However, while most of these topics were covered in one way or another, different people pointed out different aspects of the topics, as well as publishing some blog posts that were completely individual to their own experiences, such as Dane’s “Walking in Dorsoduro” post and Shannon’s post about “My Parents in Venice” (see Appendix B).

Reading through my classmates’ blog posts provided another view, not only of the ways in which people recreate the Venetian myth, but also of our collective Venetian experience of the past eleven weeks.

Historical Recreations of the Venetian Myth

Although it was Henry James who famously suggested that there was nothing new to say about Venice, he also, within the same paragraph, suggests that
“It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice-lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when there would be something new to say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having no information whatever to enlighten the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme” (James 3-4).

It is clear that James sees no problem with the myth of Venice. In fact, he suggests that this is as it should be and he believes that “it would be a sad day indeed when there would be something new to say.” This is not to suggest, though, that he does not believe that different writers will not bring their own bent to the same story of Venice, because while James is blatantly fond of the place, he admits that “It is possible to dislike Venice, and to entertain the sentiment in a responsible and intelligent manner” (James 7). In fact, he says that “There are travelers who think the place odious, and those who are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others were only more numerous” (James 7) because “the sentimental tourist’s sole quarrel with his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be alone; to be original; to have (to himself, at least) the air of making discoveries” (James 7). So while James suggests that there is nothing new to say about the city, he also admits that people will “discover” things that are new to them, which each person, who brings back a “collection of photographs”, will describe in their own way.

The passage which James wrote about the tourist’s brief experience of Venice compared to the visit of the traveler who stays longer was quite interesting because of the style in which he wrote it (see Appendix C for full text of this James passage). Instead of using either no pronouns, first person pronouns, or third person pronouns, James opts for the second-person singular, using “you” throughout his descriptions of the brief tourist’s experience in Venice. For example, he states that “After you have stayed a week and the bloom of novelty has rubbed off you wonder if you can accommodate yourself to the peculiar conditions” (James 8). By using “you” instead of “I” or even “he”, James creates the effect of speaking to the reader as if about their own experience, rather than his own, if he had used “I”, or the experience of some other random person, if he had used “he”. By using “you”, James makes the descriptions intensely personal to the reader. This creates an overall sense that the reader has in fact had these experiences in Venice which ties back to what James began his book with, the suggestion that “every one has been [to Venice]” because it is possible to “open the first book and you will find a rhapsody about it,” as in James’s own book. James strengthens the myth of Venice through his descriptions of it, told in such a way that the reader is momentarily convinced that he or she has actually shared in his experience.

Lord Byron is another writer who famously strengthened the myth of Venice. In fact, Byron can be said to be even more influential than James in strengthening the myth because it was Byron’s poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which talks about the Bridge of Sighs, which effectively created a new landmark for tourists to view.
“I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand. I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: A thousand years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O'er the far times, when many a subject land Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sat in state, thron'd on her hundred isles!” –From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iv. Stanza 1

With the publication of Childe Harold, Byron became an almost instant celebrity and people hung on his every word. People would consult their Byron while they were in Venice in order to make sure that they were seeing all the “right” sites. This great readership increased the power and authority of the myth which Byron created in his writing, most notable, as already stated, in the case of making the Bridge of Sighs an important Venetian landmark. In the case of Byron, even more so than James, it was the devoted audience which helped to make legitimate the myth which he had formed.

There is a clear difference in the way in which James and Byron propagate the Venetian myth than in the way it is done by present-day writers. The language for one, while descriptive for both sets, is much more flowery and intricate when coming from the hands of the great masters of literature than when it comes from my hands. However, the sites described are still the same. The Doge’s Palace, the basilica, the piazza, the gondolas, the canals, all the necessary facets of the Venetian myth are present both then and now.


Is there a “true” Venice or does it now exist only in myth?


Having come this far in analyzing the myth of Venice in both the present and the past, the final question to ask is this: Is there, in fact, a “true” Venice or does it now exist only in myth?

James Donald, in his essay “Imagining the Modern City”, would suggest that there was, in fact, never a real Venice because cities themselves are only imagined.

“It is true that what we experience is never the real city, ‘the thing itself’. It is also true that the everyday reality of the city is always a space already constituted and structured by symbolic mechanisms. But representation does not quite get the measure of the relationship between those two realities, for it implies that one reality must be a model for the other, or a copy of it. More to the point, maybe, is Ihab Hassan’s invocation of the immaterial city which, he suggests, has ‘in-formed history from the start, moulding human space and time ever since time and space moulded themselves to the wagging tongue’…If it is not quite a representation, maybe…it would be more accurate to think of the city as an imagined environment. This environment embraces not just the cities created by the ‘wagging tongues’ of architects, planners and builders, sociologists and novelists, poets and politicians, but also the translation of the places they have made into the imaginary reality of our mental life” (Donald 8).

Donald suggests that what is typically thought of as “the city” is actually simply the combined stories of the people who have talked about or written about the city. This applies directly to the myth of Venice because it suggests that, in fact, the myth, the collective story which people tell about Venice, is the only true reality of the city.

Conclusion

All travelers repeat the myth of Venice but all travelers present different facets of the myth, depending on what interests them most and the way in which they describe it. Ultimately, it is all of these versions of the same myth that collectively make up, not only the myth of Venice, but, as Donald suggests, Venice itself. The myth is Venice. Venice is its myth. The city cannot be separated from the way people perceive it and that is as it should be. To greatly alter the myth, to greatly alter the city, would be to destroy it, as James maintains when discussing the much-repeated myth. Travelers come to Venice hoping to uncover the real, but the real Venice is in fact the myth, the myth which has been drawing people to this city for centuries.

*************************************************************************************

Bibliography of Non-Class Readings

Mahler, Andreas. “Writing Venice: Paradoxical Significations as Connotational Feature”. Venetian Views, Venetian Blinds: English Fantasies of Venice. Eds. Manfred Pfister and Barbara Schaff. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V. 1999.

Moreland, Kim. “Bringing ‘Italianicity’ Home: Hemingway Returns to Oak Park”. Hemingway’s Italy: New Perspectives. Ed. Rena Sanderson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2006.

Appendix A: Photos of Venice

These are a sampling of the pictures I used to try to recreate my experiences in Venice for the people on the other side of the ocean.

Appendix B: Quotes from Classmates' Blogs

Gondola Quotes:

“It was a nice, cool evening, and we were rowed down quiet canals, along quiet streets, and under quiet bridges. Much of the time, the only sound came from the oars in the water. It was incredibly peaceful, which was a nice change from our busy schedule and the bustle of the tourist areas during the day, and being down in the canal like that, I really felt close to Venice. That is how you should see Venice. It's not just something fabricated for tourists; it's the way Venetians have traveled the canals for centuries.”-Caylen Redden, “Gondole!”, Exploring Venice cayleninvenice.blogspot.com

“And the darkness somehow threw everything into greater power; the structures that were beautiful in the daylight became mesmerizing in its absence. It felt like a secret Venice. With our boat gliding so smoothly, so slowly, and with no commotion to fill our ears, we were left with only our own reflections on what we were seeing.” –Natalie Banka, “Gondola Ride”, A Semester in Venice nataliaarriva.blogspot.com

Piazza San Marco-related Quotes:

“One of the most worthwhile experiences for me personally was our class trip to the Campanile. Probably deemed in every Venice tour book imagined is going to the top of the Campanile to get a bird’s eye view of the city. However, I feel that this activity should only be experienced after one has a chance to get to know the city beforehand. Throughout my travels to other cities, I have been to the top of many Campaniles to view the cities from high above the ground. Although they always offer beautiful sights, they remain very impersonal and usually blend together because of my lack of any strong ties to the city. Because the trip to the Venetian Campanile was one of the last things we did in class, the experience left a lasting impression; not only because of the breathtaking views but because of the familiarity and fondness I have gained from living in the extraordinary city.”-Elyse Strand, “View from the Top”, Discovering Venice
discoveringvenice.blogspot.com

“Of all of the elements we’ve discussed in class which can be connected to Venice –the power, the myth, the history, and the mixture of architectural features—Gothic, Byzantine, Renaissance, and Baroque, there is not one which cannot be seen in the Piazza. The square truly is the gem and essence of Venice.”-Lizzie Stouder, “Piazza San Marco”, Experiencing Venice
estouder.blogspot.com

“The tower’s main façade is one of decadence and display while its secondary façade is more personal and simple. This dual façade highlights a key characteristic of Venice. The city “dresses up” for visitors, lavishing herself in her jewels and best clothes. The city puts on a show and is in itself a spectacle, with its dramatic Carnivale masks, beautifully sculpted gondolas fluttering with an aura of romance, and elaborately decorated churches. However, the true Venice is one of simplicity and domesticity- a daily life (for the limited number of Venetians who still remain in the city) which centers on family and tradition. The true Venetian is not adorned in expensive gems and elegant attire, but instead a simpleton going about their daily life. The clock faces reflect these two identities- one of lavish display and the other of simple domesticity.”—Stephanie Lowe, “Once Upon a Time…”, A Semester in Venice
stephanie-venice.blogspot.com

Tourism-related Quotes:

“My parents go to usually prescribed tourist locations, which in Venice would be St. Mark’s Square, The Doge’s Palace and the Rialto, enjoying the sights, usually with the help of at least two different guide books...However, personally, I do not find touristic travel a negative way to travel. It is a leisure time that can be used to escape the rigor of working life...My parents, as well as many tourists, work very hard, so a vacation that is leisure time is often well deserved.”-Shannon Peters, “My Parents in Venice”, The Wonders of Venice Fall 2009
wondersofvenicepeterssm.blogspot.com

“Tourism is the hasty visiting of a place to claim some fraction of possession or relation to it, or, more commonly, to its idea. Somewhat like a sped up version of the late practice of "grand touring," tourism is a repeated collection of fleeting moments prewritten by travelers who came before and experienced by most visitors to the same place.”-Audrey Jenkins, “The Way Goethe Traveled”, A Student of Venice audreyalysejenkins.blogspot.com

Mythical Venice/ “Italianicity” Quotes:

“I fell into Campo San Margherita and fell out of it. I passed cafes filled with Italian students from Ca'Foscari. The tangle of calli and canals would straighten and retangle as I walked. Olive trees, a church with an elaborate well and a lawn, a marina, a military zone, a pet store, shrines. I passed men unloading oranges from a boat and smelled aromas from the kitchen of an oesteria. Ponte and sorteportego, camponile and canal, twist and turn wove together into the tapestry of the choices of my footfalls.”—Dane Sauffer, “Walking in Dorsoduro”, L’Isola: The Chronicle of a Venetian Adventure
daneinvenice.blogspot.com

”Venice is arguably the most unique city in the world. Its streets of water, dotted with the famous black gondolas, weave peacefully through the city, crisscrossing with its endless maze of pedestrian only pathways. This uniqueness is precisely why so many people long for Venice. They long for a break in the everyday humdrum of their ordinary lives and to actually have an adventure.”—Sara Beasley, “Escaping Reality”, The Wonders of Venice
sarabeasley.blogspot.com

Appendix C: Full Quote from Henry James's "Italian Hours"

“It is possible to dislike Venice, and to entertain the sentiment in a responsible and intelligent manner. There are travelers who think the place odious, and those who are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others were only more numerous. The sentimental tourist’s sole quarrel with his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be alone; to be original; to have (to himself, at least) the air of making discoveries. The Venice of to-day is a vast museum where the little wicket that admits you is perpetually turning and creaking, and you march through the institution with a herd of fellow gazers. There is nothing left to discover or describe, (end of 7) and originality of attitude is completely impossible. This is often very annoying; you can only turn your back on your impertinent playfellow and curse his want of delicacy. But this is not the fault of Venice; it is the fault of the rest of the world. The fault of Venice is that, though she is easy to admire, she is not so easy to live with as you count living in other places. After you have stayed a week and the bloom of novelty has rubbed off you wonder if you can accommodate yourself to the peculiar conditions. Your old habits become impracticable and you find yourself obliged to form new ones of an undesirable and unprofitable character. You are tired of your gondola (or you think you are) and you have seen all the principal pictures and heard the names of the palaces announced a dozen times by your gondolier, who brings them out almost as impressively as if he were an English butler bawling titles into a drawing-room. You have walked several hundred times around the Piazza and bought several bushels of photographs. You have visited the antiquity mongers whose horrible sign-boards dishonour some of the grandest vistas in the Grand Canal; you have tried the opera and found it very bad; you have bathed at the Lido and found the water flat. You have begun to have a shipboard-feeling—to regard the Piazza as an enormous saloon and the Riva degli Schiavoni as a promenade-deck. You are obstructed and engaged; your desire for space is unsatisfied; you miss your usual exercise. You try to take a walk and you fail, and meantime, as I say, you have come to regard your gondola as a sort of magnified baby’s cradle. You have no desire to be rocked to sleep, though you are sufficiently (end of 8) kept awake by the irritation produced, as you gaze across the shallow lagoon, by the attitude of the perpetual gondolier, with his turned-out toes, his protruded chin, his absurdly unscientific stroke. The canals have a horrible smell, and the everlasting Piazza, where you have looked repeatedly at every article in every shop-window and found them all rubbish, where the young Venetians who sell bead bracelets and “panoramas” are perpetually thrusting their wares at you, where the same tightly-buttoned officers are for ever sucking the same black weeds, at the same empty tables, in front of the same cafés—the Piazza, as I say, has resolved itself into a magnificent tread-mill. This is the state of mind of those shallow inquirers who find Venice all very well for a week; and if in such a state of mind you take your departure you act with fatal rashness. The loss is your own, moreover; it is not—with all deference to your personal attractions—that of your companions who remain behind; for though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors. The conditions are peculiar, but your intolerance of them evaporates before it has had time to become a prejudice. When you have called for the bill to go, pay it and remain, and you will find on the morrow that you are deeply attached to Venice. It is by living there from day to day that you feel the fullness of her charm; that you invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit” (James, Italian Hours 7-9).

Venice in the Details: The Relics of San Zaccaria

The church of San Zaccaria is so named in honor of San Zaccaria, or St. Zechariah, who was the father of John the Baptist. The remains of St. Zechariah reside in the church of San Zaccaria here in Venice.

The story of St. Zechariah strongly resembles that of both Mary the mother of Jesus and the Old Testament patriarch Abraham. Zechariah was a priest who was working in the temple one day when the angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him that he would have a son, even though Zechariah was quite advanced in age and his wife Elizabeth was barren. Zechariah was told that the baby’s name was to be John and that he would be a great man in the sight of the Lord. Naturally, the announcement by the angel Gabriel of a child to be born resembles the story of the Annunciation to Mary, and the fact that Zechariah and his wife were elderly and barren resembles the story of Abraham, patriarch of the Hebrew people. However, unlike Mary and Abraham, Zechariah doubted the angel’s message and so Gabriel informed him that he would be struck dumb until the miracle of the child’s birth occurred. When Zechariah left the temple, he was unable to speak and so everyone knew that he had had a vision of some sorts. Shortly after this, Elizabeth his wife became pregnant. When the baby was born and it came time for him to be circumcised, all the people wanted to call him Zechariah, after his father. However, Elizabeth insisted that his name was to be John. The people then asked Zechariah what he wanted his son’s name to be and because he could not talk, he wrote down “His name is John.” As soon as he wrote this, he was able to speak again. These are the only biblical facts which are given about Zechariah, but there is an unverifiable tradition that states that Zechariah was murdered in the temple for refusing to say where his son John was.

The church of San Zaccaria itself was built in a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance styles between 1444 and 1515. Antonio Gambello was the principal architect, but the façade was eventually completed by Mauro Codussi. It contains a number of great works of art, in addition to the bones of San Zaccaria, including paintings by Tiepolo, Tintoretto, and Bellini’s last Madonna.

St. Jerome, who is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin which has come to be known as the Vulgate, wrote, “We do not adore, I will not say the relics of the martyrs, but either the sun or the moon or even the angels…But we honor the martyrs’ relics, so that thereby we give honor to Him Whose [witness] they are: we honor the servants, that the honor shown to them may reflect on their Master.” This is an important principle of Catholicism of which many non-Catholics may not be aware. Catholics do not worship Mary, the saints, and their relics. Instead, Catholics honor these people and their relics as a way to show respect for how they did God’s work. The same concept applies to intercession, when Catholics do not pray to the saints in the same way they pray to God, but rather ask the saints, or Mary, to intercede for them to God, as a way to, to put it bluntly, add a little extra power to a prayer. For these reasons, relics of saints, including not only their bones, but objects that once belonged to or were used by them, are to be honored and shown proper respect so that, as St. Jerome writes, “the honor shown to them may reflect on their Master.”

Although all relics are to be honored and shown proper respect, not all relics are equal. There are actually three separate classes of relics. A first class relic is a part of the saint, such as a bone, hair, etc., or the instruments of Christ’s passion, such as pieces of the cross, the nails used to nail Christ to the cross, the spear thrust into His side or the crown of thorns. A second class relic is something owned by the saint, such as a crucifix, a book, or a piece of clothing, or instruments of torture that were used against a martyr. A third class relic is something that has been touched to a first or second class relic or to the tomb of a saint. There are Church laws which govern the treatment of relics, including Canon Law 1190 which states that not only is it absolutely wrong to sell sacred relics, but distinguished relics and others which are held in great veneration by the people may not validly be in any way alienated nor transferred on a permanent basis without the permission of the Apostolic See. Also, while it is okay to purchase sacred relics in order to keep them from being desecrated, bidding for them at auction is strongly frowned upon because this may involve driving up the price for someone who simply wants to rescue the relic from desecration.

Siegel states that “The objectification of desire entailed in journeys and collections will tend to yield—as Proust will put it—something less and something more than satisfaction.” While sacred relics are honored by pilgrims seeking to kneel by the bones of saints whom they respect, the relics themselves are often collected and hoarded by certain cities seeking to increase their own importance by being able to brag about the influential religious figures whose final resting places are within their city limits. Venice is not least among these, for the city has always sought to increase its own importance, as well as its ties to Rome. Rome, of course, is the unofficial capital of relics, possessing far more than any other city in the world, including the bones of St. Peter beneath the basilica of the same name. Venice, by also collecting relics, sought to strengthen in the minds of its citizens, and its visitors, its similarities to Rome. Not to mention that Venice has, from early on, been a bit relic-crazy. The best example of Venice’s long-standing tradition of going to great lengths to acquire relics is the story of how the bones of St. Mark the Evangelist came to reside in the city. They were smuggled out of Alexandria, Egypt, when the Venetians stole the body and covered it in pork to keep the Muslim Egyptians from finding it. This need to obtain the body of one of the greatest saints underlies a Venetian need to obtain proof of their greatness. The Venetians desired tangible proof of their excellence and superiority, and possessing the relics of one of the four Gospel writers certainly provided them with a certain degree of fame. Baudrillard states that “only a more or less complex organization of objects, each of which refers to all the others, can endow each with an abstractness such that the subject will be able to grasp it in that lived abstractness which is the experience of possession.” This applies to the fact that there are classes of relics and, even when someone is not aware of these specific classes, they are aware that some relics are clearly more prized than others, thus making them worth possessing and collecting for their rarity and importance.

Relics, such as the bones of San Zaccaria, can be seen as not only important from a religious standpoint, but they can also contribute to the importance and power of a city, simply through their collection.

Anti-Tourism vs. Tourism

In E.M. Forster’s “Room With a View,” the character of Miss Lavish exhibits the characteristics of the quintessential anti-tourist. While she herself is, in fact, a tourist, she simultaneously looks down her nose at both tourists and the tourist industry and searches for the “real” Italy, rather than simply making the rounds of the usual tourist sites. As she herself states, “Tut, tut! Miss Lucy! I hope we shall soon emancipate you from Baedeker. He does but touch the surface of things. As to the true Italy—he does not even dream of it. The true Italy is only to be found by patient observation” (32). Through this statement, Miss Lavish at once both demonstrates her disdain for tourism, while trying to make herself appear more knowledgeable than she truly is. The irony of her statement is reflected back at her when, rather than “patiently observing,” she simply wanders through the streets of Florence with Lucy, discussing English politics, missing everything along the way.

An anti-tourist is a person who considers themselves a “traveler” rather than a “tourist”, who comes to a country to “experience the real” country, rather than simply to see the major sights and get out, and all of this describes Miss Lavish to a tee. She shows interest only in unconventional aspects of Florence. For example, when Lucy stops to look at some statues, “Lucy thought she had never seen anything more beautiful; but Miss Lavish, with a shriek of dismay, dragged her forward, declaring that they were out of their path now by at least a mile” (36). Similarly, when they approach Santa Croce, one of the almost required spots to visit in Florence, Miss Lavish shows no interest in it, but instead “disappeared down a side street…gesticulating largely” (38) with her “local-colour box” (38). So in essence, while searching for the “real Florence” she in fact misses out on something that makes it what it is.

Another mark of the anti-tourist displayed by Miss Lavish is that, while she delights in Prato, a “place [which] is too sweetly squalid for words” (19) she feels no actual sympathy to the people living in squalor there. She pretends to see and understand the unpleasant conditions of the people, the reality of the situation, when in fact she clearly feels no true sympathy for their plight and, because she is completely caught up in the romanticism of what she likely deems the picturesqueness of the situation, she fails to see the true reality of the circumstances surrounding her.

However, even while Miss Lavish would surely refer to herself as an anti-tourist, she has clear moments that display her as a tourist, as well. For instance, her attitude towards Italians themselves is a quite elitist tourist attitude. Not only is she patronizing in referring to conditions of poverty as “sweetly squalid”, she also talks down to, or down about, Italians whom they pass. One such example is when a wine-cart passes them and she tells Lucy to “look at that adorable wine-cart! How the driver stares at us, dear, simple soul” (33). She then goes farther, only a few sentences later, by instructing Lucy to “take the word of an old woman, Miss Lucy: you will never repent of a little civility to your inferiors” (34). Perhaps coming from another character, such as Mr. Emerson or Mr. Beebe, this would seem less offensive, but coming as it does from Miss Lavish, it is the attitude behind the words that is more insulting than what she actually says. Despite all her talk about wishing to experience the “real” Italy, Miss Lavish is truly just there to be impressed with herself. She has built up in her mind a simulacral version of herself as she appears in Italy, as much as she has built up a simulacral impression of Italy itself. She believes that by leaving the what now could be called Disneyland version of Italy, she will experience the true country and see the people as they truly are, but because of her mindset, she is never able to leave the hetertopic Italy. She is trying so hard not to be a tourist that she fails completely and becomes an even more obnoxious one.

The difficulty with the anti-tourist is that she is so negative to the tourist and to the tourism industry in general that she fails to see that she herself is, in fact, still a tourist. She refers to herself instead as a “traveler” and believes that because she approaches things from an academic standpoint, this frees her from the “tourist” term. However, though looking at things from an academic standpoint may provide a fuller and richer experience of a city, because there will, to a degree, be a greater understanding and therefore appreciation of what one is seeing, the academic “travelers”, the anti-tourists, temporarily in a city are still in essence tourists. They just come to see different sights. They may sneer at the typical tourist sites and refuse to purchase souvenirs from the numerous small shops and stands, but they are still just as much a tourist as those who do engage in those activities. Miss Lavish, for example, though she seems to scorn a number of the sites that most people come to Florence to see, is still doing her own brand of sight-seeing. She may be an anti-tourist in that she scorns tourism and prefers to search out the “real” Italy, but she is still a tourist in that she is touring the more “sweetly squalid” areas, rather than the more common churches and museums.

In the end, although Forster sets forth Miss Lavish as the archetypal anti-tourist, at the root of her character, she is still simply a tourist; she’s just admiring different sites.

An Italian Thanksgiving

The concept of an Italian Thanksgiving seems quite contradictory, as it is an entirely American holiday. However, when you are an American abroad, it would seem very wrong to bypass the holiday entirely, and so instead we celebrate Thanksgiving Italian style. For me, that meant foregoing the turkey dinner and pumpkin pie at my grandparents’ house to which I am accustomed and instead eating an entirely different kind of food at an osteria with my classmates and professors. But it was not only the food and the people (and the country) that were different this Thanksgiving; the overall atmosphere of the holiday was changed by being in a foreign country. Thanksgiving is such a massively important holiday in the United States that it was incredibly strange to seemingly be the only people in the city, and maybe even the country, celebrating it.

This was the second major holiday I have spent in Venice. The first was Halloween and although it was somewhat of a disappointment compared to the usual festivities of Halloween at home, I was less bothered by it because there were still people celebrating it. Besides, Halloween was never an American holiday, not originally, we’ve just revamped it into what it is today. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is a strictly American holiday and has been ever since its origination in the 17th century.

It actually made me somewhat sad that the Italians around us weren’t celebrating Thanksgiving as well. It wasn’t because they, and we, were missing out on the traditional foods (though I have to admit that I was sorry I was missing my mom’s green beans and my grandma’s homemade pecan pie), but because they were missing out on the spirit of Thanksgiving. The holiday, which thankfully has missed out on most of the commercialization that sometimes threatens to overwhelm Halloween and Christmas, is all about gratitude, about being thankful for what we have, and, to me, always about family. As wonderful as the trip to the clock-tower truly was and as much as I enjoyed that tour, the best part of my day was still receiving the card from family. Because to me, that’s what Thanksgiving has always been about: family. As much as I love Halloween and Christmas, there is a very strong commercial element to both of those. However, Thanksgiving has somehow miraculously avoided that commercialization and retained its true roots. These roots include thankfulness for what we have, gratitude for what we have been given, and appreciation for the people around us.

But then I began to wonder about whether the Italians need a day like Thanksgiving as much as we do in America. Italian society already seems to be very family-focused because they are given such long breaks in the afternoons, during which they can go home and spend time with their families. Whereas, in the U.S. lunch is barely an hour, and sometimes not that, and people don’t see their families until sometimes as late as seven or eight in the evening due to work. So it has become especially important to have this one day on which tradition dictates that you sit down and enjoy time and a meal with your family. This holiday, more than any other was, I felt, strange to experience in Venice, not only because it is a strictly American holiday but because it is so family-centric and, with the exception of Shannon whose parents were present, none of us had our families with us. It was still a good holiday, it was just different.

Calcio

Last Sunday, I went with Sara, Elyse, and Audrey to a Venetian soccer game. Soccer in Italian is known as “calcio.” I definitely experienced a certain amount of trepidation upon approaching the stadium, because I had heard before of how wild European soccer crowds could become. However, as it turned out, everyone was very nice to us and the crowd was not a great deal wilder than crowds I have been a part of at Purdue football or basketball games. What I found the most interesting, though, was how the battle down on the field was carried over into the stands. As Geertz says, “As much of America surfaces in a ball park, on a golf links, at a race track, or around a poker table, much of Bali surfaces in a cock ring. For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men” (2). This applies just as aptly to an Italian soccer match. It was clearly a male-dominated arena. Though there were women there, females were quite strongly in the minority. Also, interestingly, in the area we were sitting anyway, age-wise we were also in the minority; most of the people around us were at least fifty or sixty years old. There were a few boys who were about twelve or thirteen, but they seemed to be an exception, rather than the norm of the spectators. Possibly across the field, where many banners were waving and where the cheering was loudest, we would have encountered others closer to our own age, but there was no way to get over there, Elyse and Audrey tried.

What fascinated me even more than the demographics of the situation was the way in which the action on the field spilled over into the stands. Not literally, of course, for the players were well contained down on their field. What carried over into the crowd was the battle for supremacy. Significantly, the debates over calls belonged almost exclusively to the crowd. The players, after a call was made, usually just shrugged, helped each other up, and moved on with the game. But in the crowd, certain calls could spark a minutes long debate involving two or more men standing up and yelling at each other over the seats. While the players down on the field simply went about their business, the men in the stands carried the game to a new level by being incredibly invested in the outcome, to the point of yelling across the aisles at each other, sharing in a debate about the match. The importance of this social aspect of attending the game cannot be overlooked. The game itself was only a simulacra of the real match, which was taking place in the stands after every call or goal in the form of heated debates among the men watching. To reiterate Geertz, “For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men” (2). Though, to make the quote more appropriately fit the calcio situation, it ought to state, “For it is only apparently the soccer players that are fighting there. Actually, it is the men in the stands.”

Venice Longing for Stability

Before coming to Venice, whenever I would talk about getting ready to go or mention something about Venice, my dad would always say, “Venice is sinking, you know,” to which I would reply, “Yeah, I’ve heard.” It was just a little ongoing inside joke, but once I actually got here, it started me thinking. It seems to me that one of the facets of Venice is a longing for stability. Because the city was built on the water, there is a constant battle to create a stable environment. The liquid element is what makes Venice the unique city that it is, for “Venice can only be compared to itself” (Goethe), but at the same time, this feature which makes Venice what it is, is at the same time killing it, slowly but steadily.

This concept of Venice being an attraction which is “only here for a limited time” creates a second type of longing, a longing in people to come to Venice, to see the city with their own eyes, to “collect” it , if you will, as a part of their travels, before it is gone. Susan Stewart writes that, “In his work on tourism, Dean McCannell notes that while sights and attractions are collected by entire societies, souvenirs are collected by individual tourists” (Stewart 4). I agree with McCannell that sights like Piazza San Marco are collected by societies, while souvenirs like a miniature campanile are collected by individual tourists. However, I think that sights can also be collected by individual tourists, not only in the form of photographs, which are really more souvenirs, but just through the pure experience of being present within these attractions or through viewing these sights. A tourist collects cities, and sights within them, even if they are doing it unconsciously. This is made clear by the response to the question, “Where have you been and what did you do there?” In answer to this question, someone will rattle off a list of names of cities and sights as if naming the parts of their collection. And if Venice is considered a dying city, or a rare, “limited time” commodity, then that makes it an even more important piece to add to the “travel collection,” and the tourist longs to do so.

But even the tourists, Venice’s constant pillar of industry, are not completely stable. However, while the tourist industry is still thriving, the instability of the tourists is purely physical. Tourists are subjected to instability in the form of being unable to keep their balance on the vaporetti and the docks, being unused to being constantly on the water. This is representative, though, of the mental wavering of the tourists, as well. They come wanting to see Venice, to experience the city, but for the most part, they really only want the heterotopic, simulacral version of Venice, the Venice born of the myth of the city. They are torn between a longing to know the true city and a desire to have a great experience, which typically involves nicer hotels and pronounceable food. This divide creates an instability in the minds of the tourists, a lack of determination as they struggle with a yearning to truly experience the city while at the same time battling an equally strong wish to avoid assimilation. Then, of course, there is the very simple fact of the individual tourist’s lack of permanence, as they move in and out of the city, sometimes within the span of only a day. So the current most stable institution in Venice, the tourist industry, is also a form of instability because of the constant ebb and flow of tourists throughout the year.

The most obvious examples of Venice’s longing for permanence in a city that is constantly changing are the massive buildings and cathedrals. A mammoth cathedral like San Marco is the very epitomy of permanence and yet, in Venice, it is in constant danger of falling into nonexistence due to the instability of the ground upon which it is built. Between the crypts which are below water level and into which water leaks, the acqua alta which spills into the main entrance of the church and warps the tiles there, and the simple immense weight of the church itself pressing into the swampy ground of the lagoon, the most stable paradigm of Venice is actually constantly in flux.

Venice is longing for stability, but it is unlikely to ever achieve its desire because the very circumstances which make it unique are also the same forces which seek to destabilize and destroy it. And so the concept of viewing Venice as a commodity, as something to be seen before it is gone, will continue.

Italian Beach Culture

A quick note on the pictures: I did not actually have my camera on me the day we went in October, so I took these pictures instead just this past week, which is why the beach is not as crowded as I described in my essay. There were many more people on the beach back in October.

As I’ve mentioned before, in my essay on the politics of Gothic architecture, Americans are, at times, much more restrained as a culture than Italians. This was notable when I went to an Italian beach on the Lido. We had gone as a group to the Lido, the very first weekend of classes, while it was still warm, so the beach was still fairly busy. Not realizing that this was a partially nude beach, it was incredibly shocking to see an entire family stripping down and changing clothes, right there on the sand. The woman, presumably the mother, took her top off, so that she was standing there completely bare-chested in front of God and everybody, while one of the children, who looked at least nine or ten, was completely nude. The father and another child still seemed to be half-dressed. The most amazing thing, to me anyway, was their complete lack of embarrassment. It was absolutely no big deal to be changing clothes right on the beach. Anyone who has ever been to an amusement park with a water park knows that this is not at all the case in the United States, where the line for the dressing rooms can seems to go on for ages and no one, save perhaps for very young children two or three years old and younger, would ever change right out in front of the world like that. Or if they did choose to do so, they would almost certainly be shunned in some way and looked upon as quite odd and strange. Here, it was clearly no big deal.

Another difference that I noted also involved clothes. I saw several men wearing Speedos, the tiny little men’s swimming suits that look more like a woman’s bikini bottom. And here, just let me say that while this look works on some Olympic swimmers because they have fit bodies, it is not such a good look for an overweight sixty-five year old man. I saw an overweight sixty-five year old man wearing a Speedo, along with a couple other men, slightly younger and fitter, wearing them as well, but it was not a look that particularly flattered any of them. But the point of this analysis is not to become a fashion critique. What interested me, socio-anthropologically, about the Speedos, was that these men were wearing them at all, and that multiple men were wearing them. Occasionally at a beach in the United States there is the one oddball older man who is wearing a Speedo, but this is the rarity, not the rule, while on the Lido it seemed as common as swim trunks. This goes along with the concept that Italians are more comfortable with their bodies than Americans, because typical American men are not so comfortable putting their upper thighs and, ahem, other parts, right on display. This, I believe, is why swimming trunks are more common in the United States than Speedos because they are more modest, they cover the body better.

We have discussed in class several times about how, in general, Italians are more comfortable with their bodies than Americans are with theirs. For instance, Italians, though absolutely not dirty, are still far less obsessed with hygiene than Americans, as noted by the fact that on the vaporetti, many times, I have noticed that one or more people around me are giving off the very distinct smell of body odor. Though this does happen in America, I feel that it is far less frequent, largely due to our obsession with deodorant. Also on the vaporetti, it is noticeable that far more couples are involved in public displays of affection. Again, this is not unheard of in America, but still I find it far more frequent here in Venice. I think that it is because, despite our sex-saturated culture as a result of mass media, sex in America is still something that is private and something to be kept behind closed doors. It goes back, once again, to Italians being more comfortable with their bodies than Americans, and less ashamed of displaying affection in public places.

Overall, what began as an examination of Italian beach culture, particularly how Italians are not as concerned about nudity in a public place such as the beach, ended with considering how in general Italians are more comfortable with their bodies than Americans. This is just one of the aspects of Italian culture which I have noticed differing from American culture and it was interesting to examine it more closely.

Virtuosi di Venezia

I must admit that I was unsure of what to write a blog about for this week, until tonight when we saw the performance by the Virtuosi di Venezia. I must also admit that I was not necessarily looking forward to the concert. With an essay due this week, plus the readings for tomorrow, I felt as if I was too busy to sit and enjoy a concert, especially when I was unsure how long it would last. However, by the end of the first song, I had completely forgotten my homework and was simply sitting, wishing that the performance could go on all night. Somewhere along the line, I had forgotten that I actually enjoy classical music. And this performance, I felt, was stunning.

I used to play the violin myself, I took lessons about nine or ten years ago now, but I haven’t played in at least seven years. Watching the two violinists tonight, not only was I awed by seeing their masterful playing, I also felt an ache in my chest from remembering how it felt to hold the instrument, and the simple joy that comes from standing in a room, just playing for your own pleasure. I especially love to play Christmas music, and because the season is coming up, that made the ache all the more pronounced. For the first song (I almost don’t like using the word “song” because it seems insufficient to describe the music we heard tonight, but I can’t think of another), I couldn’t take my eyes off the violinists’ hands, jumping easily from first to second position, drawing the bow in long, slow strokes to draw the notes out, then shorter, faster jabs for quicker notes. To be honest, the only times I took my eyes off the violins were when the two singers were on stage.

Until tonight, I had never heard opera and I had the same aversion to it that I think pretty much everyone does, that it would be boring and slightly strange. Instead, I thought that it was beautiful. The songs were amazing and what the singers could do with their voices blew me away. The lady, the soprano, was fantastic, but the gentleman, the tenor, had the kind of stage presence that makes you unable to take your eyes off of him. He was so expressive that even though I couldn’t understand the Italian they were singing in, I still knew what was going on, just from his face.

The thing that struck me the most, though, was just the joy that all the performers seemed to have. Even though it must have been quite stressful, because the music was clearly difficult to play, each and every one of them, the two violinists, the viola player, the cellist, the pianist, and the two singers, all looked so happy to be on that stage and playing their music. The faces of the musicians as they went through the songs not only had a look of joy on them, but also of peace, as if there was nowhere they would rather be than there making music. The faces of the singers were nearly elated, even during the sad scenes, as they stood there and I’m pretty sure that the cellist had a smile on his face throughout most of the performance. I think the fact that they were enjoying the performance so much made it all the more enjoyable, definitely for myself, but also for the audience in general.

It is an amazing thing about music, that, like a good book, it can lift us out of ourselves and carry us away, it can make us forget our present problems and simply exist somewhere else, even if only for a short time. I think that can be said of any true art, though, whether it is a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music, or a book. The best art, of any kind, transforms us, and the greatest paintings, sculptures, songs, and stories stay with us long after we have listened to the final note, closed the book, and walked away.

The Myth of Venice

Reading a classmate’s blog today, I saw something mentioned about a refinery, for gasoline to keep the boats and vaporetti running. This struck me quite hard, because up until that moment, I had not considered that the boats which run here constantly need fuel to continue to run constantly. I have not seen one gassing up, but perhaps that’s because I’ve just been in the wrong part of the city to be able to see that. And as I’ve said, I hadn’t even thought about how the many boats do need fuel to continue their trips up and down canals and around the lagoon. I suppose that to my mind, the boats ran simply because they are supposed to, because this is Venice and it has boats, which I see going constantly. I had not thought about them stopping to replenish their fuel supply. It seems like such an almost vulgar, corporeal thing. I am used to seeing cars getting gas at home and having to go about that weekly chore myself, but in Venice, for some reason, a gas station seems wildly inappropriate, even if it’s for boats. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there are no cars here, so I expect to see no gas stations here. Or maybe it has to do more with the fact that I am still clinging to the myth of Venice, rather than fully seeing the reality, even if it is right before my eyes.

A tourist doesn’t stop and think about how the boats run, about where and when they get fuel. All a tourist wants to know is when and where to catch the next vaporetto, as I heard a clearly American gentleman asking one of the workers at the ACTV booth by the San Servolo stop, loudly and slowly in English. I smiled to myself at his blatant touristicness, but then I realized that I’ve caught myself doing the same thing, trying to speak simple sentences to make myself understood, sometimes getting progressively louder, until I catch myself and modulate my voice. Between that experience and reading about the gasoline refinery today, I find myself wondering why it is that I am still clinging to this myth of Venice. After all of our class discussions and readings, after all the analysis we have been doing on the city, shouldn’t I be past this myth, this simulacrum of the city which I have built in my mind? Shouldn’t I be grounding myself more in the reality of Venice, rather than the Venice I imagine? Five weeks into the course, why do I still feel this disconnect with the reality of the city?

Maybe it has to do with the fact that out on San Servolo, which I like to think of as “our island”, there is a very literal, physical removal from Venice, the main portion of it, anyway. From the vaporetto stop on the island, I can look across the lagoon and see the buildings and campanili of Venice, as often as not with the snow-covered Alps piercing the sky behind them, and I find it beautiful, like a postcard, but I feel removed from it. I don’t feel like a part of the real, living, breathing city and at times, when I stand on the vaporetto stop and look across the water, I don’t even feel that Venice is a living, breathing city. It seems more like a mirage or a myth, which rose from the sea like Venus and which will one day simply grow hazy and disappear, leaving only an unobstructed view of the mountains behind it. Even when we descend into the city, as a class, there is still a disconnect from the everyday world. We are in our circle, discussing architecture, off to the side, while the life of the city is flowing around us. We are enveloping ourselves in the past, while the present is floating by and then away. This is not to suggest that we should not concern ourselves with the past and its architecture. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, after all, and most buildings, especially modern buildings, can do without creepy camels on their facades. No, I am not suggesting that it is wrong to study the art and architecture and the past of Venice, because I find it fascinating; I am simply trying to uncover why I am still attached to my myth of Venice, rather than the reality of the city around me.

There have been times when I can see the city for what it is, rather than what I imagine it to be, both in good ways and bad ways. For instance, walking down the front yesterday, I must have seen at least thirty “purse guys”, the men who stand out on the sidewalk trying to hawk the wares laid out on the blanket in front of them, and at least half of them or more tried to talk to me, to stop me and get me to buy something. I consider that seeing the bad reality of Venice, because annoying purse guys are not something that typically crops up in someone’s fantasy of the city. But then I walked down Via Garibaldi, just wandered up and down the street for awhile, and saw the good reality of Venice, in the normal people going about their daily lives, with far less tourists around than can be seen in other parts of the city. And for that time, while I was immersed in the living, daily business part of the city, the reality before me was stronger than the myth in my mind.

So it seems that I hold on to my myth of Venice, not because I am incapable of seeing the reality, but perhaps because I choose not to. Despite our readings, despite our four times weekly discussions of them and our dissemination of the myth of Venice, in our attempt to probe the reality of the city which underlies the myth, despite all this evidence that I should give up my own myth of Venice and accept the reality of the city alone, still, I cannot do it. Because I like my myth of Venice. Because to me, it represents the Venice I came here for, the city I flew four thousand miles to see. I do my readings and I participate in the class discussions in order to get a fuller picture, a stronger image, of the true city as it exists today, strongly, blatantly corporeal, sometimes vulgar, but also brazenly real. But at the same time, deep down, I still hold to my myth, I still cling to my image of Venice. Because long after the words of Foucault and Ruskin have faded from my mind, the images I have collected in it of Venice will still be burning. Images like that of flying over Venice, seeing for the first time with my own eyes the city rising out of the sea like Botticelli’s Venus, and almost crying because it was so beautiful and I was so exhausted and relieved to see it. And the day I went, alone, to Piazza San Marco and simply stood in the middle of the square, with the columns at my back, the basilica in front of me, the Palazzo Ducale to one side and the biblioteca to the other, with the campanile soaring above it all, and simply let myself be overwhelmed by the massiveness and the majesty of it. Those images, though they may be the perpetuation of a myth, still I feel, deep down, that they are the Venice that I will take home with me.

But I think perhaps all travelers feel that way. Even the ones who know and understand a city the best, still, there is a part of them which has built it up, placed it somehow on a pedestal from which they refuse to remove it. Because even though we, the travelers, see firsthand the vulgar and negative parts of the city, the parts that aren’t always mentioned in guidebooks, we still feel a love for the city to which we have gone and we want others to love it, too. And so we choose to perpetuate the myth, to keep the city on its pedestal, so that others, the ones who have not been here, can also feel for it as we do. We hide the bad and bring forth the good, the positive, the best of the city, all to keep from killing the myth. Because for a city like Venice, so linked to its tourism industry, so bound up with its myth, to kill the myth would be to kill the city. People don’t travel thousands of miles to Venice for the reality of the city, to see boats getting gas and the carabinieri chasing away the purse guys, they come to see the myth of Venice, the breathtaking Piazza San Marco, the awe-inspiring churches, and yes, even the gondole. So, to keep the myth going, to keep the city alive, it is necessary to perpetuate the myth, even to ourselves.

And maybe, in the end, it is possible to have both the reality and the myth, for one could not exist without the other. There can be no myth without there first being a reality on which it can be based. Equally, there is no reality which did not, at some point, for someone, grow out of a myth, or a dream. So I will continue to try to have both, to appreciate Venice for its glorious, fascinating, infuriating reality, but at the same time also to hold onto my myth, which helps to shed just a little extra beauty on a city that, for the most part, doesn’t need the extra help. And I think, if I can find the time, I will also try to find a gas station for boats. Just to be sure it’s not a myth.

Burano

This weekend, I went with Caylen, Audrey, Natalie, and Dane to two of the islands in the northern portion of the lagoon, Burano and Torcello. It felt almost like a day trip out of Venice because it took us so long to get there. And once we arrived, it felt as if we really had completely left Venice. The main city was far enough away that I could just barely make it out across the water. Burano has a completely different feel from the main part of Venice. It is much more relaxed, due partially to being much more residential. Also, the colors on the houses are absolutely fantastic, very bright and vivid, they also serve to give the island a different tone from that of Venice, which is somewhat monochromatic, at least compared to Burano. There are also not nearly as many vaporetto that go all the way out there. However, Burano sees its fair share of tourists. The vaporetti that we were on, both going to and coming from the island, were completely packed, mostly with tourists. The lines to get onto the vaporetti reminded me very strongly of standing in line at an amusement park. That was one of the strong impressions which I got from Burano, that it was more "theme-park Italy" than even Venice is. Not to say that the island wasn't beautiful or that I didn't enjoy it, because it was very beautiful and I really enjoyed being there. However, as I said, it is a much more residential place with several very blatantly tourist spots. The main street which runs away from the cathedral, for instance, is simply lined with shops and, so it seemed to me, over-priced restaurants. Also, the shopkeepers were much more aggressive here than they are on Venice. Whenever we would enter a shop, we would be nearly harassed by the owner, who would want to point out everything and talk about how it was very high quality stuff, and then hover a few feet away while we looked at things. There was a sort of desperation in the attitudes of these shopkeepers, which I don't think is as evident in the main part of Venice. I believe it probably has something to do with the fact that in Venice, there is no lack of tourists. Shopkeepers are not so anxious for visitors to buy things because they know there will always be someone else right behind them who probably will make a purchase. However, on Burano, though the vaporetti were packed, it was still far less tourists than we are used to being around and the fact that the tourism industry, though by no means minuscule, is certainly smaller than on the main island of Venice, it would affect the way the shopkeepers behave because they still have to make a living, but they have less people on whom to ply their wares. Burano was an interesting mix, because while some parts were very "quaint" and strongly residential, other parts were overwhelmingly geared towards tourists. The mix made it clear that while people live on Burano, they must also make their living on Burano.