Venetian-ness | Venice: I am not making this up

Carnival, the first stage

February 9, 2010 2 Comments

I’m not a big fan of Carnival in Venice. The only bigness I can evince where this annual demolition derby is concerned is a jumbo-size package of the old Aristotelian pity and terror.

Last year there was a sort of dancing metal raptor to give the crowd at the Piazza San Marco some sensation of movement.

That’s not completely true: I don’t feel pity.

But this year I decided to take a different approach. When Carnival erupted last Sunday (after several premonitory tremors) I thought I’d imagine it was something that could be fun, amusing, diverting, worth the trip. Not for me — I’ve figured out how to make it fun for me but it doesn’t involve costumes or the Piazza San Marco — but just going with the idea that it could be entertaining for the thousands upon thousands of people who come to Venice expecting to enjoy themselves, at least, if not enjoy everybody else.

By which I mean, enjoy being squashed like a grape in a winepress by your fellow humans.

So far, it’s working. I had a fine time on Sunday afternoon. But that’s because I made a point of not going to the Piazza San Marco. The Gazzettino reported that some 90,000 people were there. They certainly didn’t need me, even if there had been room.

The first years I was here I did go, at least a few times, to the Piazza San Marco, the gravitational center of the festivities. It was all so new and strange, and memory reports that there weren’t quite so many thousands. Memory may be lying but it was fine anyway. Perhaps the novelty of the situation carried me over the crush, as it may well do to people today.

I dress up, I walk around, I pose, therefore I am. It doesn't exactly cry out "whirl of gaiety."

Then there was a hiatus, partly because I didn’t enjoy the winepress experience and also because what was going on there seemed strangely unfestive: Loads of people in costume (95 percent of which seemed to be identical), walking around just looking at each other, striking attitudes, or taking pictures of each other with or without tourists posing next to them. The nadir is occupied by the people in costume who charge money for allowing themselves to be photographed with your cousin or your kid. And they can make a bundle.

The details are sometimes lovelier than the whole costume.

Dressing up as an ancient monument deserves a tip of the hat, or whatever she's got on her head.

Then we came to Castello and I discovered something of the way Carnival was, decades ago, before the event was trampled by the tourism behemoth. Kids and families and dogs, and relatively few tourists. And did I mention the kids?

A princess, a fairy with gauzy green wings, and an animal I still haven't identified. This is more like it.

Put an aristocrat behind the wheel and just get out of the way.

Perhaps I’m going senile, or perhaps it’s because the confetti-throwing and occasional Silly String-spraying and strolling around have no evident commercial focus, but I think the downtown version of Carnival beats San Marco in straight sets. Here, if you see somebody taking a picture of a person in costume, it’s almost certainly a besotted relative.

Still trying to get the hang of how to make it spray.

Dressing your kid as a skunk (probably Bambi's friend Flower) doesn't seem like a compliment, but when he's this cute it probably doesn't matter what you put him in.

Just a little bit of face paint, artfully applied by one of the many artful appliers in and around San Marco. But it's enough.

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If you start to look around, you begin to notice how little it really takes to dress up and play Carnival. There were people who were looking great with only a hat, or a wig, or a moustache or whiskers scribbled on with a black marker– even the simplest mask imaginable just barely covering the eyes. No plumes, no sequins, no layers of painted papier-mache. It really works.

Or just a mask, and never mind the fancy garb. This is a version of the classic mask of a Zanni, the clever and/or foolish servant in comedies of the Commedia dell'Arte.

The first Sunday of Carnival (February 7 this year) was Opening Day, one of the maximum moments, as you can imagine. The others are Fat Thursday (Giovedi’ Grasso), and Fat Tuesday (Martedi’ Grasso). And the weekend between them. If the weather is beautiful — as it was on Sunday — it can feel like a party even if you don’t do anything special. If it’s really cold, overcast, windy or rainy, obviously the merriment becomes shredded and forced. This isn’t Rio.

Next chapter: I’ll be tossing out a few festive fistfuls of history, gathered from a large bag of brightly-colored bits of trivia.

Here’s a sample. “Confetti” here refers to the sugared almonds which are given to wedding guests. What speakers of English (and French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch) call confetti — brightly-colored bits of paper — here are called coriandoli (ko-ree-AN-dolee). Why?

Because back in the Olden Days, Carnival revelers would toss all sorts of things around or at or on each other — eggs full of rosewater was one hugely amusing toy to everybody except the women who were on the receiving end. People would also toss various tiny edibles, particularly coriander seeds, which were used in pastries. Then they became bits of sugar pretending to be coriander seeds. Only much later — in 1875 — did flakes of paper begin to be used instead, which is an entirely different story. People who had always called the flying fragments of food “coriandoli” merely transferred to term to the newer-fangled form.

Venetian-ness

Chase those winter blues

February 5, 2010 No Comments

I’m not complaining about the weather this winter (or even today), although I could. Other places and people have had it much, much worse.

But I’m not sure how many other places could offer you the blithe little experience I had a few days ago.

It had snowed. The wind was blowing, it was cold and gray — as you can see. We got off the vaporetto at the stop for the City Hospital because it was closest to where we were going. So far, so banal.

Two men emerged from the hospital through an unidentified door and began walking down the fondamenta with us. Somebody was with them. Somebody who was going — in fact, had already gone — in a radically different direction.

Just what we needed on a dismal sodden morning, a jolt of the old memento mori, the “Caesar too must die,” whatever fragments of macabre poetry by Edgar Allan Poe might have remained stuck between your mental molars, and any similar lugubrious injunctions that could be really helpful if we were ever to take them seriously.

Seesawing up over the bridge -- this is quite a little perambulation.

But you know how it is. Instead of running to confession and giving all our goods to the poor, we went and drank coffee with our friends. I can only hope that our anonymous confrere would have done the same in our place.

Soon we stop at another unidentified door....

End of the line for today, and perhaps even until the funeral. We kept going.

Events, History, Nature, Venetian-ness

Groundhog-mas

February 1, 2010 2 Comments

While Americans are watching Punxsutawney Phil, February 2 here in Venice is still known as the feast of the Madonna Candelora (can-del-ORA). Or Candlemas, according to its very old English name, or the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the medium-old locution, or the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple today.

"The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple," by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1342).

You’ll be startled to hear that it does not involve special food, songs, costumes, or any other acts or even thoughts, although down here at the waterline there may be some fragments of litany or dogma I haven’t come across. This general silence may be because Carnival has overwhelmed it, a festival famous for its lack of litany and dogma.

However, this baby step toward spring is still recognized in an old saying you hear around, which goes like this:

Ala Madona Candelora/de l’inverno semo fora/Se xe piove o xe vento/de l’inverno semo dentro.

“At the Madonna Candelora/ we’re out of winter/ But if it’s rainy or windy / we’re still inside it.”

No mention of how long the extended winter might be (one of Phil’s more helpful services, the six-more-weeks footnote). The canny Venetians may not have wanted to commit themselves. Or the Blessed Virgin.

I have discovered by other means, though, that the feast was mentioned in a document dated 380, and celebrated on February 14. Later modifications by popes and emperors brought it to February 2; Pope/Saint Gelasius (492-496) finally suppressed the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (also involving purification), and connected it to respect the calculation governing the Jewish ritual of a woman’s purification 40 days after giving birth (hence in the Christian calendar in the West it falls 40 days after Christmas).

This extraordinary relief is so thoroughly imprisoned for protection that it's impossible to photograph all of its beauty. It is clearly a depiction of the presentation of Jesus; the two birds prescribed as an offering (Luke 2: 22-24) are hidden by the bars. — This extraordinary relief by the Ponte Tetta is so thoroughly imprisoned for protection that it's impossible to photograph all of its beauty. It is clearly a depiction of the presentation of Jesus; the two birds prescribed as an offering (Luke 2: 22-24) are hidden by the bars.

Some (not all) scholars also assert that the feast was instituted to replace, smother, or otherwise push off the road the rites honoring the ancient Italic goddess Cerere (borrowed from the Greeks’ Demeter), goddess of growing things, particularly grain.

Speaking of Cerere, a few years ago I was researching an article on the myriad peoples, lumped together under the rubric “Italic,” which were doing just fine in Italy prior to the Roman domination (“Italy Before the Romans,” National Geographic, January, 2005). One of these peoples, the Samnites, occupied the territories in and around Campobasso, in Molise.

This is one of only a few depictions of Mary I've ever seen that show how young she was when she became a mother.

I came upon a fountain surmounted by a statue of Cerere in the square of Baranello, a small town of 2,745 souls six miles from Campobasso. It was clearly not ancient; in fact, it was created in 1896. Perhaps the harvest was a disaster that year — I’m just guessing. Then again, maybe they’d had a bumper crop and didn’t want to appear to take it for granted. I suspect that farmers tend to be belt-and-suspenders people.

The inscriptions on the statue’s pedestal (translated by me) state:

(Front) I dedicate this fountain in honor of the farmers of Baranello who with work and sobriety contributed to its well-being

(left) Almo Sun, who with your shining chariot makes the day rise and disappear and returns to be born, different but the same, may you contemplate something larger than this town. May the earth, fertile with fruit and flocks, give to Cerere a crown of wheat-ears and may the salubrious waters and the nimbus of Jove nourish the people

(Right) O Gods, grant honest customs to docile youth, to old age placidity, and to the Samnite people give wealth, progeny, and every glory

Lest you think that this effusion represents the apex of Victorian nostalgia — the anonymous donor clearly beat Mussolini to the public declaration of worship of their Latin forebears — let me note that a statue of Cerere also stands atop the Chicago Board of Trade, as well as appearing on the Great Seal of the State of New Jersey, holding a cornucopia. These notions die hard. Or not at all.

Back to our — with all due respect — meteorological Madonna. The forecast for February 2 is for brilliant sun all day. I’m ready.

Enough with winter already. Even the statues are waiting for spring, including Nino Bixio, who's got Garibaldi's back. — Enough with the winter already -- it was snowing on January 26. Even the statues are waiting for spring, including the faithful Nino Bixio, who's got Garibaldi's back.

Boatworld, Problems, Tourism, Venetian-ness, Water

Motondoso, Part 4: The lagoon’s-eye view

January 27, 2010 1 Comment

Quick review so far: Who or what does motondoso hurt? You’re going to say “Buildings and sidewalks.” It’s obvious.

Buildings are what people care about — logical, since no buildings, no Venice. Some Venetians have told me that they don’t believe anything will be done to resolve motondoso till an entire building collapses, a notion that once seemed idiotic until I came to realize that it could happen. A building collapsing, I mean, not that it would lead to any meaningful action, though one can always dream.

So perhaps some structure really will have to be sacrificed, like an unblemished white heifer, for the benefit of the tribe. The idea has a romantic, mythic quality to it that’s almost appealing.

You could also say “People,” about which I haven’t said much, if anything, and you’d be right again. The most obvious hazard that waves present is the risk of capsizing; every so often you read about some tourists in gondolas who have gone into the drink. There was even a traghetto (gondola ferry that crosses the Grand Canal) that got blindsided by an anomalous wave and the whole cargo of passengers went overboard. I seem to recall that a small child got caught beneath the overturned boat, but one of the gondoliers pulled him out in time. Some years ago an American woman drowned. Fun.

Erosion caused by the waves continually sucking soil out from under and between stones means the stones collapse, but sometimes a person collapses with them. It happened to a woman walking along near the Giardini one day — she put her foot on a stone, it gave way, and faster than you can say “Doge Obelerio Antenoreo” she fell into a hole higher than she was. Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised; they’d been sending complaints to the city for months to no avail.

Then there was the child playing on a stretch of greensward at Sacca Fisola facing the Giudecca Canal when a hole suddenly opened up beneath him. If a man with quick reflexes hadn’t grabbed him, the child would long since have gone out to sea. Events such as these — and may they be few — no longer inspire surprise.

This satellite view of the Venetian lagoon gives a general hint of the variations in depth. These variations are part of what make it a lagoon and not, say, Baffin Bay.

But what if you weren’t a human? This question may not often cross your mind, but Venice looks radically different to its other fauna, and not a few flora, as well. And waves are not their friend.

What really makes Venice so special is its lagoon, which covers 212 square miles. Without the lagoon and its concomitant canals, Venice would merely be a batch of really old buildings — beautiful or not, depending on your taste — which could just as well be sitting on the outskirts of Enid, Oklahoma.

I will be expatiating on the lagoon on another occasion. (A Venetian word, by the way: laguna). The witness (that would be me) is instructed (by me) to stick to the topic at hand, which is waves.

A more detailed view of the lagoon immediately surrounding Venice gives a better idea of how the area is shaped. These shallows, though, are not barene. (Photo: oceana.org)

The Venetian lagoon is a silent but intimate partner in Venice’s fate. Not only are the waves undermining the foundations of the city, they are scouring away the foundations of the lagoon. And while damage to buildings is certainly important, there is arguably even more damage being done to its waters. And they’re going to be a lot harder to fix than a palace.

So if you haven’t got time to watch what waves can do to buildings, you should take a look at what they do to the lagoon — specifically to the barene (bah-RAY-neh), the marshy, squidgy islets strewn about out there. Venice was built on 118 of them.

These are barene. Looks like lots, but 60 years ago there were half again as many. That was a real lagoon.

Barene are the building blocks of the lagoon. They form 20 percent of its total area, and are crucial to everything in it: microorganisms, plants, animals, birds, fish and, till not so long ago, also people.

Let’s say you have less than no interest in ecosystems and their inhabitants, at least the inhabitants smaller than humans. Barene, along with their myriad meandering capillary channels, are perfect for slowing down the speed and force of the incoming tide. They act as a built-in assortment of natural barriers which, if they could remain where they were, would already be limiting the force and the quantity of acqua alta in good old Venice.

But over the past 60 years, half of the lagoon’s barene have been lopped away by waves. The World Wildlife Fund estimated, several years ago, that at the current rate of erosion (erosion caused by motondoso), in 50 years there would be no more barene left.

A cross-section of a barena near Burano. If you were an endangered bird, or even just a really tired one, this patch of mud would be more beautiful to you than twenty Titians.

Why do we care? Even if all we’re really interested in is buildings, we care because as the barene diminish, the tide can reach the city faster and ever more aggressively. The natural brakes, so to speak, are being taken out.

And we also care because, as I have probably said before, whatever a wave can do to a batch of mud it can and will eventually do to bricks and marble.

Part 5: Solutions?

Waves are as destructive to wetlands as they are to buildings, but the wetlands can't even put up a fight.

The large pilings were put in ages ago, to mark the line between the channel and the barena. As you see, the waves have shrunk the barena, so the large pilings are only sort of symbolic. As a bonus, we see the remnants of the wall of smaller pilings which was installed to prevent any further erosion of the barena.

The distance between pilings and barena here is just another of many examples of the very simple effect of waves.

I remember when this channel was only half this wide. Most of these boats belong to people from the mainland who come all this way so they can just sit. Lovely, admittedly, but they bring waves and take away part of the lagoon when they go home.

Tourist launches of all sizes offer day trips around the lagoon.

Taxis are always in a hurry, especially on airport runs. (Photo: Italia Nostra)

Ordinary working barges at Sant' Erasmo on a Sunday afternoon. Their owners are almost certainly out in smaller motorboats, but tomorrow it will be back to work with all of these.