The last time I saw the sun shine was January 6. It must have been a special gift from the Befana, one heck of a great stocking stuffer for the whole city. Here is what the morning of Epiphany looked like. Dwell long and lovingly upon it, because evidently we’re not going to see its like again, if the week that followed is any indication.
“Glorious” is not a word I usually think of applying to via Garibaldi, but in this case the street applied it to itself and I just got to watch.
Well, that was wonderful. It was like falling in love; I wish it could have gone on forever. But the next morning fog took over and hasn’t left yet –the weather has become as tedious as Sheridan Whiteside, a/k/a “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” but not as amusing.
Because fog, whatever its density, wears out its welcome very fast. That’s just an expression; nobody welcomes fog. Water in the form of acqua alta is one thing; it may come, but you know it won’t be long before it goes. Water in the form of fog, when it’s not too heavy, is like an enormous sheet of grey gauze pulled across the face of the world, and you just have to put up with it until it’s gone, whenever that might be.
Jan. 7: The fog was too thick to allow us to go rowing (not that we’ve never rowed in the fog). But it did string some beads on the otherwise invisible spiderwebs on the bridge by Sant’ Elena.
Fog can be dangerous, of course, but it is more commonly inconvenient — it compels the “GiraCitta'” round-the-city motoscafos to go up the Grand Canal instead of their usual routes. But where big fog is brawny, the lesser forms of airborne condensation are as monotonous as the droning of the Indian tanpura.
In Italian, there is nebbia and foschia; fog and mist. In Venice people refer to caligo (kah-EE-go), which I’ve only heard used to describe medium- to heavyweight fog. Caligo derives from caligine, which means “haze” (I discover that Caligo is also a genus of butterfly, but let’s stick to the weather). Technically, caligine is more like smog, which thankfully we don’t have here.
Call it what you will, it’s grey. Dingy grey, drab grey.
Fog lends itself to a particularly useful expression: “filar caligo” (fee-yar kah-EE-go) — to spin fog. If you are worrying about something, worrying in a particularly elaborate way about something you can’t fix — obsessively, silently, baffled, anxious, and so on — you would say (or some exasperated friend might well say) that you were drio a filar caligo. It’s the best expression I’ve ever heard for that particularly futile and gnawing kind of worry that drives everybody crazy. Many people do not reveal that they are in that state of mind precisely because they recognize its futility. But that doesn’t mean they can stop, any more than you can make the fog stop. It just has to go away on its own, usually when the wind changes, or when the thing you dread either comes to pass, or evaporates.
Jan. 9: A morning view of the most beautiful city in the world, etc. etc. It’s out there somewhere — beautiful, undoubtedly.
Charles Aznavour wrote (with F. Dorin) a song entitled “Que C’est Triste Venise” (Com’e’ Triste Venezia, or “How Sad is Venice”). That was 1964, and versions in Italian, English, Spanish, German and Catalan have come out since then. http://youtu.be/aMQ6GyUs-fc
In my opinion, that gave another push to the general idea that Venice is sad. Maybe it’s where the idea started. But while this song deals only with how sad the city is for the singer because his love is no longer with him, people seem to have concluded that the city itself is sad. Fog helps, of course. Cold and dark, even better.
I realize that if you are bereft of the love of your life because the relationship has ended, evidently against your will, and you had happy moments in Venice, of course you’re going to see your own sadness in the city. It’s natural. But somehow it seems that the received wisdom about Venice is that it has a particular affinity for melancholy. It might go just fine with the fog (and cold and dark). And I suppose Mr. Aznavour could have sung about how sad it is to be in Venice even if he’d been walking down via Garibaldi on Epiphany morning, when the world was coruscating with light, if all he had on his mind was his lapsed love affair.
But why should Venice have to be the world’s favorite sad city? You could just as credibly sing “How sad is Paducah.” “How sad is Agbogbloshie.” “How sad is Sanary-sur-Mer.” If you’ve lost your love, anywhere is going to feel like Venice in the fog.
There you’d be, wandering aimlessly around downtown Platte City, or wherever, repeating the song’s phrases which admittedly sound much better in French: “How sad is (fill in your town here), in the time of dead loves, how sad is (name here) when one doesn’t love anymore…And how one thinks of irony, in the moonlight, to try to forget what one didn’t say….Farewell, Bridge of Sighs (Susitna River Bridge, Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, Sixth Street Viaduct), Farewell, lost dreams.”
Jan. 12: It wasn’t blue, it was grey.
So I’m going to risk saying something radical: Venice isn’t sad, and it doesn’t make people sad. Venice is just a city, like you and me and everybody who lives here and in Smederevo and Panther Burn and Poggibonsi, trying to figure out how to get from today to tomorrow without leaving too many dents and dings on the surface of life.
I’d like Mr. Aznavour to go find another city in which to remember his lost love. And I’d also like the fog to go somewhere else. One of my wishes is going to be fulfilled, eventually.
Jan. 13: Wherever you look, you see fuzz. Sometimes more, sometimes less. This weather doesn’t make me remember my lost love(s), it makes me wish I’d been better to my mother.
Umberto Da Preda (image from an album cover via YouTube, uncredited).
“Journalism,” said G.K. Chesterton, “is telling the public that Lord X is dead when the public didn’t know that Lord X had ever been alive.”
The case of the recently departed Umberto Da Preda might be a case in point.
Those who knew him, or at least had heard of him, were saddened to read on December 27 that he had died the day before, after a month-long illness in the hospital. The first article announcing this event was fairly long, partly in tribute and partly to refresh the memories or succor the ignorance of the day’s readers. Because while many people in his native sestiere of Cannaregio were genuinely grieved– though not taken entirely by surprise — Lino is convinced that there are plenty of Venetians who learned of his existence for the first time in the obituary.
Da Preda was “The ‘voice’ of the Venetian song,” as the Gazzettino termed it. Another report headlined: “Death of Da Preda, the most beautiful voice of the Venice which is no more.”
If such standards as “La biondina in gondoleta” or “El gondolier” are now widely known, it’s thanks to his innumerable performances and abundant recordings. The two respective links are: http://youtu.be/A0I0m6IPHtU and http://youtu.be/THinSRIRek0
The Gazzettino continues: “Umberto Da Preda leaves … a vast musical repertoire, 90 per cent of which is made up of traditional themes which even now represent the classics of the gondoliers during the serenades, and to which he gave a completely personal imprint.” (Note: Gondoliers almost never sing; the warbling comes from a singer hired to entertain his clients.)
Da Preda’s mainstays, some of which began to be composed in the 18th century, are generically termed “canzoni da batelo,” boat-songs, intended to be sung to the passengers out on the water enjoying a nocturnal summer fresco, (literally, “cool”). Many are anonymous pieces, passed along between generations. Like many of his vintage, Lino learned most of the approximately 8,319 songs he knows from his father, or from other Venetians. But Da Preda delved into deep cultural troves to bring forward an extraordinary assortment of songs, some of which were created by noteworthy poets and composers. They’re not all little ditties about wanting to take Ninetta out in the lagoon when the sun goes down.
Da Preda was on the way to an international career; he performed, with his guitar, in the Bahamas, in Russia, in Israel, in the US, and in England, where he sang for Queen Elizabeth II. But he loved Venice and preferred staying here, close to home, singing at the Danieli and Cipriani hotels, or in private palaces at what seems to have been a steady stream of fetes, entertainments, and soirees.
“What did he die of?” we asked a friend of his the next day.
He shrugged. “The sand in the hourglass ran out,” he said. “And he drank a Mississippi in his life.” Evidently Da Preda kept a bottle of whiskey close at hand on the many evenings he performed in assorted boites and restaurants. Singing is thirsty work, and I think in those days the sparkling-water-with-lemon-slice hadn’t been discovered. Not that he would have wanted it. I drink it and I don’t want it.
In any case, the friend continued, Da Preda didn’t take seriously any warnings about hard living he might have gotten from his nearest and dearest. “He said once, ‘I’ve eaten, I’ve drunk, I’ve done what I wanted in my life,'” the friend told us. “‘When it’s time for me to go, I’ll just head on out'” (vado in zo, which is the most casual leave-taking phrase there is in Venetian).
I went to his funeral on January 2 — a week ago today — a dreary, raw day. I admit I was curious to see what sort of farewell would be given. Naturally I can’t judge what emotions the 150 or so mourners were feeling, which may have been deep and intense, but if so they kept them well under control. It was a subdued ceremony, distinguished mainly by two things.
The first was the playing, as the casket was being taken out of the church, of Da Preda singing one of his best-known songs, “Ciao Venezia.” The second was the alzaremi, or oar-raising in salute, by rowers from the Settemari and Querini rowing clubs. The presence of any Venetian boats is always a beautiful thing, and although he wasn’t particularly prominent in the boating world, he was 100 percent Venetian, and this calls for some special acknowledgment, in my opinion.
He lived his life just the way he wanted to and if he had any regrets, he kept them to himself. That’s what I’m going to remember. Here’s the link: http://youtu.be/D8zmgatPh-w
The basilica of SS. Giovanni e Paolo is so big that even a large crowd seems modest.The priest pauses to pronounce the last phrases, more or less audible beneath the strains of “Ciao Venezia.”Accompanying the casket to the riva where the funeral motorboat is waiting.The gondolier bringing his clients back to shore removed his hat.As the casket is placed onto the fancy “we-don’t-have-to-sweat-anymore” platform, the rowers from the Settemari club execute an “alzaremi.” In 1979 Da Preda was voted “Venetian of the Year,” an annual recognition bestowed by the club. The commemorative plaque was placed on the casket during the service.The funeral boat, carrying the departed and his family, heads for the cemetery, followed by the “diesona” of the Settemari, and a gondola from the Querini. The people ashore applaud as their last farewell.It’s not far to the cemetery island of San Michele; the two boats are going to arrive only a few minutes after the motorboat, visible in the canal ahead of them (and just ahead of the vaporetto).
I hope the flag was flying bravely today; I didn’t get to the Piazza to see. I took this on another brave day.
Every country has so many holidays, commemorating events and personages that matter mainly (or only) to them, that something as modest, as wholesome, as foursquare as a Flag Day gets lost in the scrum. But there are plenty of them, I discover.
Forty-six countries, of the 180 or 190 or 206 countries on earth at the moment, celebrate a day either named, or at least mentioned in some way, as Flag Day.
I just found out this very morning that today, January 7, is Flag Day in Italy. It commemorates January 7, 1797, the day on which the Cispadana Republic was established by Napoleon. It was a transitory entity, a puppet creature of the French government, but the flag that was created by representatives of the cities of Reggio Emilia, Bologna, Modena and Ferrara lives on in their choice of red, white and green.
The day is celebrated with varying degrees of pomp around the country. In Reggio and Bologna, it gets a lot of attention, because their city colors are red and white. (Green represents hope, if that needs explaining.)
In Venice, the day is kept extremely quiet; so quiet that no notice whatever is made on the daily calendar of the Comune. I only was alerted to the significance of January 7 by a temporary sign set up at Sant’ Elena, propped against the flagpole. At least somebody cares.
In Rome, more fuss is made of the date, as you might imagine. At 3:15 PM, in front of the Quirinale Palace (residence of the President of the Republic), a special ceremony of the changing of the guard is performed by the Corazzieri, the branch of the carabinieri designated as the President’s honor guard. They always look great, partly because of their size (minimum required height: 190 cm, or six feet, 2.8 inches), partly because of their horses, and especially because of their dress uniforms. Not everybody can rock a shiny metal breastplate and helmet crowned with a horse’s tail. Here’s the link: http://youtu.be/tfGCTVfNo8E
Note: If the marching in begins to pall, skip to 7:45 for the moment of the changing of the guard.
Lino, like everybody of his vintage, learned batches of patriotic songs when he was a lad. It was like us memorizing “Trees” for Arbor Day. The minute I started playing “La Bandiera Tricolore” he began singing along. It’s short, but sweet. It basically says that our flag has always been the most beautiful and it’s the only one we want, along with liberty. Long live the three colors.
The Piazza is big, but it’s not THAT big. I still don’t grasp how 80,000 people got in there. Or got out.
Probably nobody is thinking about New Year’s Eve anymore, no matter where they spent it. But here in Venice it’s not over yet, as the papers continue to publish a cascade of ever-more-detailed articles, personal stories, and editorials on how things went.
In a word: Badly.
So I’m going to back up from my earlier post and try this report again. Because in case you don’t know, the three most beautiful words in the English language are not “I love you” (though they’re not the worst, either).
Nope. The three MOST beautiful words are “You were right.” And in my case, its close cousin: “I was wrong.”
I admit that I felt uneasy writing that sunny little post about New Year’s Eve. Even as I wrote it, I had the strange feeling that I was unaccountably speaking in some unknown language from the planet where life is beautiful all the time.
I must have inadvertently disconnected my internal smoke-detector, because the news is demonstrating, in ever more lurid detail, why I will never go near the Piazza San Marco on the night of Saint Sylvester. And how inexplicably incapable the city is of organizing big events in some reasonable manner. And when I refer to the organization of big events, I have some small experience elsewhere; for example, the Fiesta of San Fermin at Pamplona, which I have attended twice. And I’d go back again, no matter how much I hate crowds, and one of many reasons is because it is organized and maintained in the most dazzlingly intelligent and diligent manner for nine solid days and nights. And a mere twelve hours drives Venice to its knees.
From 9:30 PM, rivers of young people arriving by train filled the streets heading toward the Piazza, smashing bottles and setting off firecrackers as they went.
Far from being a scene of frolic and light-hearted conviviality, as the night dragged on the Piazza San Marco (and Piazzale Roma, whence thousands tried eventually to depart the most beautiful city in the world) resembled a war zone, or a frat party of intercontinental dimensions. Words such as “assault,” “devastation,” and “outrage” highlight the reports of the night, and the morning after.
Piles of shattered glass bottles and pools of biological fluids from either or both ends of homo stupidusprostratus were only some of the abundant remains. There were also the bodies of comatose sleeping revelers scattered around the streets, lying where they fell when the fumes ran out.
People are obsessed by the damage that water can do to the Piazza, but somehow the maxi-posters and the maxi-mobs have come to seem normal. So millions have been spent to control the water, but virtually nothing to resolve what in fact should be much easier to deal with. I don’t get it.
The story in figures:
80,000 partyers, 10,000 more than the past two years. Most of the yobbos weren’t Venetian, but from everywhere else — what in New York are called “bridge and tunnel” people. I’ve seen them there at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and it’s not lovely. It’s no lovelier here.
50 interventions by the 45 emergency medical personnel from the Green Cross, Civil Protection, and SUEM, the ambulance entity; most crises related to alcohol drunk, alcohol spilled (rendering the already wet pavement dangerously slippery), cuts by the broken glass of bottles blindly hurled into the air, blows to the head, and panic attacks caused by the mob and the explosions of firecrackers at close quarters.
100,000 euros ($135,868) the estimated cost to the city, excluding fireworks. This approximate number comprises: 60,000 euros for the collection and removal of 135 cubic meters (4,732 cubic feet)of garbage, of which 20 cubic meters (706 cubic feet) were of glass; 15,000 euros for the 60 Municipal Police agents on security duty. And the cost, not yet quantified, of the extra transport personnel (50 bus drivers and an unspecified number of vaporetto pilots). And the fuel required by the 20 garbage barges.
60 extra buses coming into Venice from the mainland; 123 extra buses between midnight and 7:00 AM from Venice to the mainland. Does this sound like a lot? Au contraire; the ACTV, in its wisdom, put on extra vaporettos, which worked well, but reduced the basic number of bus runs on a holiday eve. Because it’s, you know, a holiday, and the drivers want to be at home. New Year’s Eve in Venice, with reduced bus service. Explain this to the masses of tired, cold, exasperated people who were trying to get back home, who even overwhelmed the relatively few taxis in Piazzale Roma. Explain it to anybody, if you can. And I still can’t figure out how 50 extra bus drivers were sent to work if there were fewer buses. Or were they put to work scrolling the “Out of service” sign onto the buses’ forefronts?
The story in voices:
“It was hard, if not impossible, to move. Funky air, a mix of piss and drugs, the pavement “mined” with bottles, cans, and every sort of garbage…The Piazza was a disaster. Electronic music at full volume incited the crowd that was already drunk and out of control. A great number of young people had taken over, armed with every type of alcohol…the center of the Piazza was an inferno. Not just fireworks, but young people, Italian and foreign, were competing in a new entertainment: the launching of bottles…I didn’t see any security agents that would have forbidden this behavior…The day after, the marks remained on our city, heritage of humanity, devastated by barbarism.” (Margherita Gasco)
“According to a recent international survey, the night between the last and first of the year shows Venice to be among the principal capitals of the festivities on the planet. This shouldn’t prevent us from … reflecting critically on how these events are carried out — if they’re worth the trouble, if they still have their original sense.” (Gianfranco Bettin, the assessore for the Environment).
“Such a high number of people wasn’t predicted, nor predictable,” said Angela Vettese, the assessore of Culture and Tourism Development. (It wasn’t predictable? Does she not read tourism surveys?). “In the future, more prudence is necessary to protect the Piazza, and to invest in more surveillance, so that the police can check, count, and keep access to the Piazza within a determined limit. Furthermore, it’s necessary to organize only high-quality events, with spectacles that involve the public (more involved than they already were?), maintaining greater tranquillity.” She’s still new on the job, or she wouldn’t be talking like that; all these things have been said before, and before, and even before that.
A tranquil morning in late October.
Social network comments were divided between those who think New Year’s Eve in the Piazza is the greatest thing ever, and those who think the care and protection of the already fragile city is more important; those who insist it was just a normal night of festivity, and those who characterize is as another example of sheer lunacy.
“I urge the church to make itself heard, seeing that the civil authorities don’t feel any special need to safeguard the Piazza San Marco…Can we imagine an event like last Tuesday in the Piazza San Pietro in Rome?” (Franco Miracco, art historian).
“San Marco can’t be the only stage for events” (Mons. Antonio Meneguolo, diocese of Venice). “It’s not the number of people which creates bad behavior,” he said. “We can increase the security but it would be better to organize other activities elsewhere, and remove the emphasis of the publicity for “New Year’s in the Piazza,” seeing how the event ends up.”
“Venice continues to be seen as a city to exploit touristically down to the bone,” said Lidia Fersuoch, president of Italia Nostra. “More than limit access to the Piazza, it’s necessary to limited access to the city itself, because it’s impossible to contain more than a certain number of visitors.”
“Certainly, if we take as the limit the Pink Floyd concert of 1989, anything even just barely below that is considered tolerable…But hurling bottles, explosion of firecrackers, people who urinate and vomit in the streets, are these part of the normal course of public socializing? For some people, yes, but for us, no. Especially if it happens in the Piazza San Marco, which isn’t just any piazza, but a monumental area, as it was defined when concerts were stopped (because they have an excessive impact on the Piazza itself)… But why no to concerts, and yes to New Year’s Eve? We speak of “outrage” precisely because it’s a monumental area; you can’t remain indifferent seeing people climbing up the 16th-century columns of the Loggetta of Sansovino at the feet of the campanile. The piazza has always been the place for socializing, for events. But what events?” (Davide Scalzotto)
I think the Piazza looks wonderful like this. It’s not that I’m anti-social, but on days like this it looks peaceful, and clean, and safe. I don’t mean I feel safe, I mean it looks safe from us.
Here is what I ask myself and anyone who might be listening: There is a Superintendency of architecture, of art, of treasures. There is the Polizia di Stato, the carabinieri, the municipal police, the Guardia di Finanza. There are ordinances forbidding almost every dangerous and tumultuous form of behavior and the hazardous objects associated with them. Why is there no evident point at which any of these elements meet? The behavior and objects are at Point A, and any uniformed persons authorized to intervene are at Points Q, X, and Z. All told, there may have been more garbage collectors than anybody else at work in the Piazza, which seems backwards, to me.
In theory, if there were more agents of public order on duty, there would be less need for the First Aid stations, not to mention the ambulances and garbagemen.
But let me move on to a much more distressing thought.
Venice is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which, unlike many of the 981 sites on their list, is a real place where real people live and move and have their being. This presents special problems which nobody seems able to anticipate, or resolve. I am at a loss to say why, except that with ten fingers per city councilor, there’s plenty for pointing at other people.
There are 49 UNESCO sites in Italy, more than any other country on earth. So far, none is marked as being “in danger.” I think Venice should be. I cannot conceive of shenanigans such as New Year’s Eve in the Piazza San Marco being tolerated in Angkor, or Machu Picchu, or the Alhambra, or the Red Fort Complex, or the Etruscan Necropolises, or the Potala Palace, or the Galapagos Islands. And this is not the first time. And yet, it goes on.
And I’ll say one more thing, as long as I’m on the subject: Of all the “properties” on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites, only two, so far, have been de-listed. The reasons are given on this page of their website.
Between the catastrophes visited upon Venice under the ever-fresh rubber stamp of the Superintendency of Architectural Treasures (the tormented issue of the maxi-posters in the San Marco area has only been moderately resolved, among other things), and the continued abuse of the lagoon, which is also part of the World Heritage designation (from the Canale dei Petroli to MoSE and now to the imminent approval of the digging of the Contorta canal), I don’t think it’s inconceivable that eventually Venice could see itself de-listed from the UNESCO panoply.
This is not the most improbable scenario I’ve ever come up with. Except that I’d love to be able to say “I was wrong.”
