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.