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 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 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.
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.
(I discovered too late that my previous version needed some weeding at the end. This has been cleaned up. Apologies.)
January is a first-class month here (I’ll let you know if I think of one that isn’t).
Nothing against gray. Gray can also be beautiful here, often more beautiful than blue.
I say this for two reasons. First, the end of the month — or more or less starting now — is composed of the so-called “giorni della merla,” or days of the blackbird. Specifically, the female blackbird, which isn’t black at all, but never mind, and who is commonly believed to be busy building her nest right now for her imminent new brood. This is the only intimation, however remote, of the eventual coming warmth.
Gray actually has a lot of points in its favor.
This designation isn’t limited to Venice; our little interlude goes by the same name all over Italy. This brief span of days — specifically the last three of the month — are famous for being really cold; in fact, they used to be fairly dependably the coldest of the winter. Perhaps they’re not as cold now as they may once have been (though they’re plenty cold just the same), but if we didn’t get a sudden drop in temperature in late January I would be extremely upset. Just so you know.
Those more inclined toward literature than ecology may recall that this frigid period strikes just about on St. Agnes’ Eve, or January 20. John Keats’s eponymous poem, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” sets the mood:
“St. Agnes Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl for all his feathers was a-cold; / The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass / And silent was the flock in woolly fold: / Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told / His rosary…” And so on. Odd that I can still remember that from high school.
Unless you don’t like humidity, in which case gray is not your color.
So “days of the blackbird” is just a more attractive way of saying “cold snap,” though at the moment we’re in more of a gray snap. Between fog, snow sputters, and generally heavy overcast, the only light on the horizon is the dimly perceptible gleam of Carnival — a gleam not caused by the sun so much as by merchants’ smiles glinting off loose change.
The second reason I love January leads me to ask: Have you ever wondered where all the water of the acqua alta goes when the tide turns? There is a phenomenon which is particularly Venetian and again, I notice, dedicated to a female figure. In these few weeks, when the water gets let out of the lagoon it reveals the “seche de la marantega barola” (SEKK-eh deh la mah-RAN-tega ba-RO-la), or the exposed mudbanks of the shriveled old hag. The Befana, they mean, even though she went home two weeks ago.
I suppose they could have called them the seche of St. Agnes, but it just isn’t the same. From what I gather, it would have to have been rendered as the “exposed mudbanks of the young virgin martyr.” Not bad, but still.
The lagoon is particularly beautiful in two ways when the year begins. First, with real cold, the water becomes utterly pellucid. Peering down from the bridge over our canal, I can easily make out all sorts of debris in perfect detail, down to the number on a lost license plate settling into the mud. Out in the lagoon, the water has an amazing Caribbean/Greek island transparency.
Second, and just as beautiful as the water, is what you see when the water goes away. The “seche de la barola” are startling prairies of luxuriant emerald algae emerging from the shallows, replacing the usual water with verdant swathes worthy of Nebraska.
I love this, not only because it’s so strange (the first time, anyway), but because it shows in one of countless ways how alive the lagoon is. As the late-January twilight briefly weaves itself into the fading sky with soft skeins of mist, the tide silently turns and this extravagant greensward begins to imperceptibly sink beneath the water again. Imperceptible to me, perhaps, but not to the feeding waterbirds tiptoeing delicately among the soggy tussocks, seeking one last little morsel.
In the city, you may notice that the boats are very low at their moorings. One year I even saw boats sitting on bare mud along the shores of the Grand Canal. That was exciting. It was like being in Fowey, or one of those other little ports in Cornwall where the tide leaves fleets of pleasure boats sprawled yards and yards from the water’s edge.
Oddly, this low tide happened at dawn in June a few years ago, rather than dusk in January. But you get the idea.
The seche de la barola are well-known to the municipal tide office, which publishes the daily tide predictions on its website and also in the Gazzettino. One symptom of how the tides have gone haywire in general this winter isn’t so much (to my mind) the high water, though that makes such entertaining pictures. It was how the anticipated low tides refused to go low. They just refused. You can see it here:
The lower line indicates the previously forecast high and low tide levels. The upper line traces what is really happening. Quite a difference. And this went on for days.
To give you an idea of what I mean by “low,” here are some numbers on the seche a year ago.
Istituzione Centro Previsioni e Segnalazioni Maree
Minimi di marea <-50 cm Punta della Salute – anno 2009
Estremali <-50 cm
N °
Data
Ora solare
Valore
1
09-Jan-09
16.20
-52
2
10-Jan-09
16.35
-57
3
11-Jan-09
17.25
-58
4
12-Jan-09
18.05
-59
Minus 59 centimeters is 23 inches below the median sea level. Just so you know.
So come visit sometime in January, and see what the Befana left behind. She’ll be back next year to do it all over again.
You can have your first robin of spring — yesterday I detected the very first signs of Carnival .
The official Carnival celebrations this year will be running from February 6 to 16. Does ten days sound like not very many? Unless you’re a hotel owner, or a street cleaner in need of overtime, they’re more than enough, because each day will be filled with many, many tourists. In the sense that the Serengeti migration involves many, many wildebeest.
But in our little corner of the city, the signs are more appealing:
The first sprinkles of colored paper, thrown at random by small-to-smallish children. They haven’t even put on their costumes yet; for them, it’s enough to have a bag of confetti and an adult who is looking somewhere else.
The dog is looking somewhere else because evidently confetti has no discernible odor.
And pastry!! Specifically, frittelle (free-TELL-eh) or, in Venetian, fritole (FREE-to-eh), and galani (gah-LAH-nee).
Crunchy, full of fat, loaded with sugar -- what's not to like?
Our neighborhood pastry-shop (above) makes what I used to think were the best galani in the universe (if you will disregard their lavish use of powdered sugar, which is wrong). That was until I tried making them myself.
For the cost of a few fundamental ingredients and a couple of hours, you have a high probability, as a scientist would say, of producing something like this:
The day I made these, they were so good (the entire batch heaped six plates like this one) that we sat down and just started eating. We didn't eat them all, but that turned out to have been dinner.
Fritole are another matter. As something to eat, they are less thrilling than galani (they trade the crunch factor for the dense-and-spongy factor), and as something to make, they’re even more work, though real Venetian housewives will deny it. I make no comment, I only observe that these women have had decades of a head start on me.
Not only does this bakery/pastry shop offer classic Venetian fritole in abundance, they drive home the point by writing "normal frittelle" on the price card. They assume you know what "normal" means.
Fritole involve yeast, and substantial quantities of hot oil, neither of which appeals to me — speaking as the maker, I mean, not the consumer.
Classic Venetian fritole contain bits of raisins and/or candied fruit, are covered in normal (again, not powdered) sugar, and are both crunchy and soft, in just the right proportions. I can’t tell you what those are — you’ll know them when you taste them.
Venetian fritole are becoming so rare that shops will put up a sign announcing they have them. Evidently the same impulse (culinary, commercial, cultural) which has turned the simple Christmas fugassa into a panettone that’s become a cross between a pinata and a myocardial infarction has also struck this classic Carnival treat.
Here you see the entire line-up of fritole, filled with cream, or zabaione (as they spell it), and now even chocolate.
Now you get fritole filled with thick cream or zabaglione, and covered with powdered sugar. These are, as the Good Book puts it, an abomination and a hissing. But they sell, and I’m not sure what the Good Book has to say about that.
As a bonus, I mention the unheralded but modestly good castagnole (kas-tan-YOLE-eh), which are essentially doughnut holes. They’re much easier to fix than fritole, if the recipes I found can be believed, and they are also approved (by me) for Carnival authenticity.
Here are the essential recipes, taken from my own culinary good book, my trusty “Cento Antiche Ricette di Cucina Veneziana” (One Hundred Ancient Recipes of Venetian Cooking):
GALANI
Ingredients: 1/2 kilo (1 pound) flour, 2 eggs, 30 grams (1 oz) butter, 10 grams (1/3 oz) “vanilla’d sugar” (zucchero vanigliato) or a few drops of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and a small glass of rum or other liqueur. Oil for frying (peanut is good; I use sunflower. They say you can also use lard. I’ll stand back.)
Mix all ingredients (your hands are the only effective option), divide the dough into portions about the size of a baseball (or bocce ball, if you wish).
Roll out on a floured surface with a rolling pin till the dough is about as thick as a sheet of paper. I’m serious about this. I know it’s a lot of work — the dough becomes more elastic and resistant to being rolled the more you keep at it — but if you fudge on this part you’ll never get the result you want. The first time I made these I stopped rolling when the dough was the thickness of carton, and they were a spectacular disaster. So just make up your mind to it.
Cut the PAPER-THIN sheet of dough into strips that are somewhere between a square and a rectangle, no longer than the span of your hand. (“One Hundred Recipes” says to tie each into a knot, but I’ve never seen them like this.) I say cut them into whatever shape you want as long as it’s not too big.
Lay them, a few strips at a time, in the extremely-hot-but-not-boiling oil. Watch them turn brown. (No need to turn them.) Remove quickly — they are born with an innate desire to burn and turn black — and put on paper towels.
Sprinkle with sugar. If you want to use powdered sugar, go ahead. You’re the one who’ll be eating them, and I won’t be there to check up on you.
Unfortunately, as fabulous as these are when they’re just made, they stay almost as good for days. So don’t feel you must consume them all at one go. Then again, it’s Carnival, so the rules have been disabled. Live it up.
FRITOLE
Ingredients: yeast, flour, raisins, pine nuts, candied lemon, one or two small glasses of some liqueur. Cooking oil (or lard).
I’m sorry I can’t be more precise; “One Hundred Recipes” sometimes falls back on the old-fashioned “you’ll know it when you see it” approach to quantities.
Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water with a little flour in a wooden bowl and place it near a source of warmth.
When it begins to rise, add the raisins, pine nuts, and liqueur. Mix “forcefully,” they say.
Add more flour, but make sure the mixture remains semi-liquid.
Cover the bowl with a cloth and put it back in the warm spot till the yeast has completely risen. (“You’ll know it when you see it.”)
Take soup-spoon-sized portions of the dough and drop in the hot oil. They say boiling oil — you’re on your own here.
Cook till done (ditto). Sprinkle with sugar.
The humble castagnole await you at what appears to be a higher price, weight-to-euros, than its bigger cousins. Perhaps it's the cost of labor.
CASTAGNOLE
Ingredients: 300 grams (10 oz) flour, 60 grams (2 oz) sugar, 50 grams (1 1/2 oz) butter, 2 eggs, 1 envelope of yeast (no quantity of contents given, hm…), two soup-spoons of rum or grappa, a pinch of salt, grated rind of one lemon or orange, Alchermes, powdered sugar, oil for frying.
Mix all the ingredients except the powdered sugar, oil, and Alchermes.
Let the dough “rest” for half an hour.
Make little balls (size of golf balls) of the dough and fry in the oil for about 15 minutes.
Take out and place on paper towels. While they’re still hot, pour a few drops of the Alchermes on each and sprinkle with the powdered sugar.
ALCHERMES
This is a bonus for all of you who want to go the distance, and to have something unusual (and probably delectable — I haven’t tried this. Yet.) in the house. It sounds good enough to rate being included in almost every recipe I can think of: pot roast, lasagne, creamed chipped beef on toast, Waldorf salad…
I am making a moderately educated guess that it’s pronounced Al-ker-MESS.
350 grams (12 oz) grain alcohol, 350 grams (12 oz) sugar, 500 grams (17 oz) water, 5 grams (1/10 oz) stick cinnamon, 1 gram (a pinch, I’d say) each of cloves,cardamom, and vanilla, 60 grams(2 oz) rosewater (the cooking, not the cosmetic, variety) and 4 grams (a few drops) carmine, otherwise known as Red Dye E 120.
My source gives no procedure at this point, so I’m going to suppose that you mix it all together, pour it into a container which closes tightly, put it somewhere dark, and don’t take it out for a while. Perhaps a long while.
Interesting historical note: You will already have assumed that this potion has Arabic roots because of the first syllable “al.” It’s a concoction once popular in Southern Italy and Sicily (where there was a notable Arab influence). It was customarily given to children to calm them whenever they were stricken with fear, profoundly shocked, moderately upset, slightly annoyed… Actually, I believe it was mainly administered in extreme situations, which in a region subject to earthquakes and eruptions aren’t completely theoretical.
If I were a southern Italian child, though, I’d make a point of evincing drastic distress every once in a while just to be able to taste this elixir. I imagine that life as a southern Italian child could be rife with possibilities to evince distress even without extreme natural events. Sunday lunch with the relatives comes to mind.
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.
Nothing against gray. Gray can also be beautiful here, often more beautiful than blue.
Gray actually has a lot of points in its favor.
Unless you don’t like humidity, in which case gray is not your color.
Oddly, this low tide happened at dawn in June a few years ago, rather than dusk in January. But you get the idea.
The lower line indicates the previously forecast high and low tide levels. The upper line traces what is really happening. Quite a difference. And this went on for days.
