My personal account of living real life in real Venice, and more
Here are a few more morsels of lore about Carnival back in the Old Days:
Laws: I realize that the Carnival motto is “anything goes,” which makes the idea of laws somewhat incongruous. But “anything” could — and did — lead to enough dangerous and unstable behavior over time that the adults supposedly supervising this city-wide party were forced to set some ground rules. Their significance is pretty obvious. For example:
It was forbidden in 1703 to wear the bauta in the ridotti, or gambling houses. The government was apparently the last to realize (after centuries of Carnival) that being completely disguised was a great way to hide from your creditors. So, no hiding behind masks and capes for any nefarious purpose, because they were also …
Just to make sure there was a stop to this particular bit of chicanery, on January 24, 1458 it was decreed that nobody wearing a mask would be permitted to enter a church, convent, or any other sacred place. Period.
The Carnival Calendar:
You couldn’t wear masks just any time you felt like it. It was like hunting season, with fairly specific dates:
It started in October, when everybody came back from summer vacation in their country villas, and the theatres began to open. At its height, Venice had 17 theatres, an extraordinary number for a city in those days. And Carnival continued, with a brief interruption for Christmas, until Ash Wednesday ushered in Lent.
Masks were also allowed to be worn during the two weeks of the feast of the Ascension and its phenomenal market, which filled the Piazza San Marco with vendors from all over the Mediterranean basin and beyond.
And then there was the convenient clause of “and whenever appropriate” (as I think of it). Masks could be permitted by special decree for very special occasions. For example, masks were allowed during the celebrations of the victory of the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Among the countless public festivities was a parade of allegorical floats: “Christianity” was represented in the act of crushing a chained dragon; “Victory” vaunted itself over the vanquished; and “Death” was triumphant, complete with sickle. It was all party, all the time for several weeks, and that could only mean break out the masks.
In any case, in good times or bad, one unassailable rule was that Carnival could not be interrupted. When doge Paolo Renier died on February 13, 1789, they didn’t report the death until March 2.
Party on!!
There are just too many curious things about the way Carnival was back in the Great Days, so I’m only going to tell you a few of the ones I think are interesting. Anyway, it’s not as if they have any relevance now. For all the roar of media coverage today, what goes on here is a hoarse whisper compared to the cacophony that was Carnival before 1797.
And Paris must be deserted; there are nothing but French people in town.
For many centuries, Carnival here was primarily a Venetian phenomenon, which is to say an integral part of Venetian life and culture. But when Vasco da Gama reached the Spice Islands by means of a daring new route round the Cape of Good Hope (1497), Venice’s monopoly of the spice trade collapsed virtually overnight, dragging the city’s economy down with it.
Struggling to get the city back on its feet, somebody began to put the word out that the Venice Carnival was one heck of a thing to see. Yes, Venice could discern its potential for tourism even before the invention of bullets and parachutes, and the Venetian merchants, staring into their now-empty coffers, were quick to make the most of it.
The wildly absurd and equally wildly obscene elements which so many favored (I refer to behavior as much as garb) were not simply a crucial social safety valve (keeping in mind that the patricians lived with loads of restrictions, too — it wasn’t just the salt of the earth that needed a break). It appears that people have always exploited the absurd and the obscene as a way of exorcising their dread of death and the demonic, and Carnival was the Olympics of spitting in the face of fear, as well as in the face of manners and rules and occasionally, I imagine, other people.
Sir Thomas More famously stated that “The devil, a proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked,” so the broader, sharper, and deeper the derision, the better. That went double for the rude and the lewd. So really, unless you were putting somebody life or savings in danger, there was no such thing as too wild, too crude, too raunchy– too anything. They organized races for boats rowed by dwarfs, or the blind.
The white mask often called a bauta is more correctly termed “Volto“ (face) or “Larva.” Sounds repellent, but it comes from the Latin meaning ghost, specter, minor evil spirit. Its extraordinary shape resolves several important concerns: First, it completely hides the face; second, it leaves space for the wearer to eat and drink; third, its shape alters the speaker’s voice, thereby acting as a kind of vocal, as well as visual, disguise. 
I think my favorite is the “Moretta,” or “Servetta Muta.” It’s so strange it could only have come from France (it did), and it started out, at least, as something to be worn by women when they went to visit a convent. It was usually made of black velvet, and wasn’t attached by ribbons; you kept it on your face by biting down on a small button attached to the faceward side. (Hence the term “mute.”)
I can see what the appeal would be for men, but if you couldn’t speak, why would you go visit someone in a convent in the first place? To give the nuns a chance to talk?
As if we needed any excuse — or permission — to gorge on food loaded with fat and sugar, today it’s take no prisoners. I haven’t found any special dispensation that promises that the fat and sugar consumed today will do less, or no, damage as they make themselves comfortable in their new home on your hips and in your arteries. But we can pretend. It’s Carnival, after all. No rules.
So the short version of today’s amusement can be summed up as: Fritole and galani. Venetians say that “El Zioba Grasso tute le boche lica” (“On Fat Thursday everybody licks their mouth”). More broadly translated: gorge, scarf, devour. Or my new favorite, “englut.” Makes me feel slightly sick without having eaten anything.
But even eating ten kilos of fritole and galani can’t match the excitement that was reserved for today back in the Olden Days.
The Venetian Republic made a fetish of commemorating important events in its life — every single victory, it would appear, and even some defeats. It all worked to keep Venetians united in their Venetian-ness and reinforce how very special, important, and amazing that was. And naturally any people who regard themselves and their city/nation/world in that light is bound to enjoy really laying it on when recalling certain events.
Take that little business of Ulrich of Treffen, Patriarch of Aquileia. No need to lose ourselves in the maze that was Venice’s relationship with ecclesiastical power; let’s just say that for centuries religious disagreements were more commonly (and certainly clearly) expressed in political and military terms. Or, conversely, political and military projects almost always involved some highly placed representatives of the Prince of Peace.
So the Patriarch of Aquileia, after a decisive battle in 1162, was taken prisoner and carried off to Venice along with his 12 canons. They offered an unusual ransom for their freedom: A bull and 12 fat pigs, which they promised would be provided every Fat Thursday for 200 years. And so it was.
Thus every Giovedi Grasso, to recall this glorious victory/humiliation, the public festivities involved the slaughter of the bull (the patriarch) and the fat pigs (the canons). Nice! I’m not referring to the aspect of blood, I’m referring to the aspect of insult. And everybody enjoyed it so much that it continued even after the 200 years were up.
In the early days of this entertainment, the bull was killed by the doge, and the pigs by the senators. (No comments, please.) Eventually Andrea Gritti (doge from 1523 to 1538), he of the palace which has become famous as a luxury hotel, decreed that the pigs be killed by members of the Butchers’ guild, while the bull would be dispatched by “the most robust member of the Ironworkers’ guild” with a single blow of a massive sword, a titanic decapitation in which the sword wasn’t allowed to touch the ground.
Even today, a common Venetian way of saying “Let’s get to the point” is “Tagliamo la testa al toro” — let’s cut the head off the bull. I hazard that “cut the bull” might be an Anglo-Saxon relative of the phrase and its meaning, but let’s move on.
So what did the doge and Senators do while the gore was flowing? They took clubs in hand and attacked 12 towers and a church made of marzipan, which they bludgeoned to smithereens.
Me, bludgeonless, I went to the Societa’ di Mutuo Soccorso dei Calafati e Carpentieri for their fritola-fest this afternoon. This mutual-aid society, formed by the erstwhile Caulkers and Carpenters of the Arsenal, makes a specialty of sometimes organizing little neighborhood parties, almost exclusively intended for the kids. Although — from what I’ve seen — each kid seems to arrive accompanied by a phalanx of voracious relatives, none of whom appears starved for fat or sugar, and with the phrase “Me First” invisibly tattooed on their foreheads.
When we walked out the front door at 4:45, the voluptuous perfume of just-fried fritole suffused our little street. Looking around, we discovered that they were being turned out in the taverna two steps away. A taverna here isn’t anything like in Greece; here the word connotes somebody’s (usually a guy, often old) haven that’s something like a cross between a garage and a rec room, usually with some kind of primitive kitchen set-up. Evidently one of the caulkers was frying up a fresh batch for the refreshment table.
It was a wonderful little interlude, out in via Garibaldi. The fritole were the best I’ve ever had, delectable little blobs, not too big, containing just the right amount of candied fruit and covered with a little more than the right amount of sugar. The galani were heavenly, shards of deep-fried dough thinner than onionskin, under clouds of powdered sugar. If there’d been more of a crowd I’d certainly have gone back for thirds, and fourths, and fifths. But I didn’t want the guys to start thinking, What — her again?
What I really want to know, though, is where the leftovers ended up. I want to go there and help dispose of them as nature intended.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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.