This article is posted on my website on the travel page. I love Venice, and wanted to share its magic here too. Hope you enjoy my impressions of this incredible city.
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I’m just waking up on Giudecca Island to a volley of sights and sounds – a deliverance from the cathartic, but brooding history of Rome, from where we just came. Here, in Venice, I imagine I’m in a living painting, and an artist, with his paintbrush in hand, captures me peeking out my window – just now at the Hilton Molino Stucky, his studio across the way.
Outside, I hear the echoing serenade of tolling church bells, which I can pinpoint with my own eyes, to various steeples throughout the city that traipse along the river. Splashing waves steadily rise and fall onto green and blue algae-covered seawalls, looming directly below me, while power boats dot the landscape like steed on an aqua-colored field, gliding in various directions through the water carrying townspeople and holiday tourists about the city. And, in the foggy haze, we’re graced with this omnipotent view – and it occurs to me, I must be Dickens’ modern Venice in his “Italian Dream.”
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By James Grant
Plato famously said that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. But with respect to one aspect of poetry, namely metaphor, many contemporary philosophers have made peace with the poets. In their view, we need metaphor. Without it, many truths would be inexpressible and unknowable. For example, we cannot describe feelings and sensations adequately without it. Take Gerard Manley Hopkins’s exceptionally powerful metaphor of despair:
selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and shelterless,
thoughts against thoughts in groans grind.
How else could precisely this kind of mood be expressed? Describing how things appear to our senses is also thought to require metaphor, as when we speak of the silken sound of a harp, the warm colours of a Titian, and the bold or jolly flavour of a wine. Science advances by the use of metaphors – of the mind as a computer, of electricity as a current, or of the atom as a solar system. And metaphysical and religious truths are often thought to be inexpressible in literal language. Plato condemned poets for claiming to provide knowledge they did not have. But if these philosophers are right, there is at least one poetic use of language that is needed for the communication of many truths.
In my view, however, this is the wrong way to defend the value of metaphor. Comparisons may well be indispensable for communication in many situations. We convey the unfamiliar by likening it to the familiar. But many hold that it is specifically metaphor – and no other kind of comparison – that is indispensable. Metaphor tells us things the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ never could. If true, this would be fascinating. It would reveal the limits of what is expressible in literal language. But no one has come close to giving a good argument for it. And in any case, metaphor does not have to be an indispensable means to knowledge in order to be as valuable as we take it to be.
Metaphor may not tell us anything that couldn’t be expressed by other means. But good metaphors have many other effects on readers than making them grasp some bit of information, and these are often precisely the effects the metaphor-user wants to have. There is far more to the effective use of language than transmitting information. My particular interest is in how art critics use metaphor to help us appreciate paintings, architecture, music, and other artworks. There are many reasons why metaphor matters, but art criticism reveals two reasons of particular importance.
Take this passage from John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice. Ruskin describes arriving in Venice by boat and seeing ‘the long ranges of columned palaces,—each with its black boat moored at the portal,—each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation’, and observing how ‘the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation’.
One thing Ruskin’s metaphors do is describe the waters of Venice and the Ducal palace at an extraordinary level of specificity. There are many ways water looks when breezes blow across its surface. There are fewer ways it looks when breezes blow across its surface and make it look like something broken into many pieces. And there are still fewer ways it looks when breezes blow across its surface and make it look like something broken into pieces forming a rich mosaic with the colours of Venetian palaces and a greenish tint. Ruskin’s metaphor communicates that the waters of Venice look like that. The metaphor of the Ducal palace as ‘flushed with its sanguine veins’ likewise narrows the possible appearances considerably. Characterizing appearances very specifically is of particular use to art critics, as they often want to articulate the specific appearance an artwork presents.
A second thing metaphors like Ruskin’s do is cause readers to imagine seeing what he describes. We naturally tend to picture the palace or the water on hearing Ruskin’s metaphor. This function of metaphor has often been noted: George Orwell, for instance, writes that ‘a newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image’.
Why do novel metaphors evoke images? Precisely because they are novel uses of words. To understand them, we cannot rely on our knowledge of the literal meanings of the words alone. We often have to employ imagination. To understand Ruskin’s metaphor, we try to imagine seeing water that looks like a broken mosaic. If we manage this, we know the kind of look that he is attributing to the water.
Imagining a thing is often needed to appreciate that thing. Knowing facts about it is often not enough by itself. Accurately imagining Hopkins’s despondency, or the experience of arriving in Venice by boat, gives us some appreciation of these experiences. By enabling us to imagine accurately and specifically, metaphor is exceptionally well suited to enhancing our appreciation of what it describes.
James Grant is a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of The Critical Imagination.
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Michelle Lovric is a long-term ABBA Irregular, posting here many times in last five years. She’s the author of four children’s books set in Venice and five for adults, also with a Venetian theme. She’s guesting today with an account of an embarrassment that may well have befallen other writers.
NB Cathy Butler, who kindly donated her day, will be back in this spot next month.
Did I mention that I also write books for adults? The end result of those scribbles at the Palazzo Papadopoli is published this week: The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, about seven Irish siblings with 37 feet of hair between them. Born in the wake of the Famine, they grow rich and famous on the commercial exploitation of what grows naturally from their heads.
My first reaction was to leap up, red-faced. I had been writing a somewhat spicy love scene, and I’d been caught in the act.
Yet he did. Thousands of lines – Beppo, Don Juan and a steady stream of (ok, I’ll admit it) brilliant letters – the latter, to my mind, far better than the poems. They were just as preeningly self-conscious, however: his most private correspondence was crammed with wit informed by a foreknowledge of its publication. When writing my first adult novel, Carnevale, of which he is a kind of anti-hero, I found his letters far more useful than his poetry.
So even Byron worked on his writing, though he wouldn’t be caught dead actually doing it. And I, in
There's a new pinterest site for the book and an interview with Mary Hoffman on the History Girls June 1st.
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My little sojourn in the hospital in Bari appeared to be just what I needed. A comfy bed, some saucy fresh pasta (once I got off the drip) and perky Italian nurses put me right back on my feet in … Continue reading
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Title: Venom Author: Fiona Paul |
May Contain Spoilers
From Amazon:
Love, lust, murder, mayhem and high society converge in one thrilling debut
Cassandra Caravello has everything a girl could desire: elegant gowns, sparkling jewels, invitations to the best parties, and a handsome, wealthy fiancé—yet she longs for something more. Ever since her parents’ death, Cassandra has felt trapped, alone in a city of water, where the dark and labyrinthine canals whisper of escape.
When Cass stumbles upon the body of a murdered woman—with a bloody X carved across her heart—she’s drawn into a dangerous world of secret societies, courtesans, and killers. Soon, she finds herself falling for Falco, a poor artist with a mischievous grin . . . and a habit of getting into trouble. Will Cassandra find the murderer before he finds her? And will she stay true to her fiancé or succumb to her uncontrollable feelings for Falco?
Beauty, romance, and mystery weave together in a novel that’s as seductive and stunning as the city of Venice itself.
Review:
When I read that Venom is set in Renaissance Venice, I couldn’t wait to read it. I love Venice, and think that it’s a great backdrop for any story. Fiona Paul’s descriptions of the city and culture give Venom a splash of color and excitement; with her vivid descriptions, I could almost hear the water splashing from the oars of the gondoliers and the hustle and bustle of the city. With its network of twisting , turning canals, Venice is the perfect setting for murder, mystery, and the constant threat of danger. It’s also home to glamorous parties, wealthy nobles, and exquisite architecture. I loved all of the details packed into this novel, from the graveyards to Cass’s smoldering old home.
Cass is an orphan. She is being raised by her elderly Aunt Agnese, a strict matron who expects Cass to behave as her station demands. Cass, however, wants nothing to do with all of the gentle pursuits expected of her. Embroidery bores her to tears, she has no patience for timidity, and she wants to question everything around her. She longs to live. This gets her into quite a bit of trouble, and Agnese is worried that Cass will cause a scandal and get them both kicked out of her cousin’s house, where they both live until he achieves his majority. While Cass does try to rein in her wilder side, when she stumbles upon the corpse of a murdered woman she just can’t help herself. She needs to know who she was, and why she was in her friend’s family crypt, instead of her friend, Livi, who died after losing a fight against an illness.
Cass immediately sets the expectation that she is an impulsive, bold girl, and she lives up to that. She wants to live life instead of just sitting still and watching it spin by her. She is curious and wants to know what makes the world tick. Her recklessness gets her into so much trouble, and her aunt’s sternness just makes her long to do everything that is reckless and exciting. When she meets Falco, an artist, she is instantly attracted to him. He is mischievous and spirited, and completely different from her boring, studious finance, Luca. Even though there is no hope that they could ever be together because of their class differences, Cass is still drawn to Falco again and again. When the murderer sends Cass a note that she will be the next victim, she feels an even greater compulsion to be with Falco and to savor all of the forbidden attraction that she feels for him. While I completely bought into the intensity of her emotions and the undeniable charisma between the two characters, I had a hard time liking Falco. Sweet and fun-loving one moment, he could also be sarcastic and evasive the next.
There were two plot points that kept me from enjoying Venom as much as I would have liked. Both are commonly used plot devices in YA fiction that I just can’t connect with. The first was Cass’s recklessness. She is impulsive to the point that I began to wonder how she survived into her late teens. She frequently waited until dark, when all of the aging residents of the household were sound asleep, to creep out of the house and sneak into the graveyard behind the palazzo. She repeatedly engaged in this dangerous activity, so she could think or write in her journal. I don’t know about you, but hanging out in a graveyard in the wee hours of the night, alone, with a lantern to announce my presence and my location, just doesn’t seem an intelligent activity to pursue. Add in one brutal murderer, who has sent a note to you proclaiming the intention to make you the next victim and, I’m sorry, but you obviously have serious issues making a rational decision or you have a death wish.
The second plot point that made me want to rip my hair out – both Luca and Falco, Cass’s love interests, expected her to accept them at face value, to believe in them and trust them, while not trusting her enough to share potential life saving secrets with her. This drove me crazy. Cass catches Falco in a blatant lie, one that causes her to question his character and everything that he has told her, and still he won’t tell her the truth. All the while proclaiming his intense love for her. Luca does the same thing later in the book. Both young men claim to love her, and both are well acquainted with her stubbornness. She isn’t going to meekly do what they say and stop putting herself in danger. They both know this about her personality, yet they both remain silent, putting her life at risk. Whenever I run into this plot device, it just comes across as condescending to me. These guys claim to care for her, but they are keeping secrets that are going to get her killed. Trust is a two way street. I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with a guy would can’t be upfront with me. This isn’t romantic; it’s manipulative. Rant off.
While Venom left me disappointed, fans of Hush, Hush and Fallen should enjoy this suspenseful and atmospheric mystery.
Grade: C+
Review copy provided by publicist
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Title: The Midwife of Venice Author: Roberta Rich Publisher: Gallery Books ISBN: 978-1451657470 |
May Contain Spoilers
From Amazon:
Hannah Levi is renowned throughout Venice for her gift at coaxing reluctant babies from their mothers—a gift aided by the secret “birthing spoons” she designed. But when a count implores her to attend to his wife, who has been laboring for days to give birth to their firstborn son, Hannah is torn. A Papal edict forbids Jews from rendering medical treatment to Christians, but the payment he offers is enough to ransom her beloved husband, Isaac, who has been captured at sea. Can Hannah refuse her duty to a suffering woman? Hannah’s choice entangles her in a treacherous family rivalry that endangers the baby and threatens her voyage to Malta, where Isaac, believing her dead in the plague, is preparing to buy his passage to a new life. Not since The Red Tent or People of the Book has a novel transported readers so intimately into the complex lives of women centuries ago or so richly into a story of intrigue that transcends the boundaries of history., |
Review:
After reading this book, I wonder how anybody survived childbirth in the 16th century. Ugh! I found this historical drama about Hannah, a Jewish midwife, fascinating, and couldn’t put it down. I didn’t find the chapters chronicling Isaac’s captivity on Malta as compelling, but I did find that their alternating POV worked well for this novel.
Hannah is a Jewish midwife living in the Jewish ghetto of Venice. Her husband, Isaac, has been captured by at sea while trying to make a fortune trading, and is waiting in Malta to be ransomed. Desperate to free her beloved husband and have him returned to her, Hannah agrees to help a wealthy Christian deliver a baby, despite the Papal edict prohibiting Jews from rendering medical aid to Christians. Immediately at odds with the Rabbi, Hannah’s decision could bring disaster to the ghetto. The Christians don’t need much of an excuse to bring death to the Jews, but Hannah is determined to earn the money to free her husband.
The first few chapters of this book are INTENSE. Hannah is willing to put the lives of everyone in the ghetto on the line to deliver the Contessa’s baby, and she is going to need a miracle if both mother and baby are to survive. Lucia has been in labor for days, and is bleeding uncontrollably. The baby is turned and won’t survive for much longer. Hannah has a terrible choice to make; save the mother or save the infant? This entire scene had me on the edge of my seat, and I couldn’t stop reading until I learned the outcome. The thought of Hannah having to use the crochet was just horrifying! And the thought that her contemporaries believed
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Mom says:
It seems that most of the urban picture books I read have a New York City bias. This is not by grand design on my part; it is only natural that my local library would stock such books. As a result of this bias I try to search out books which are set in other cities, and I especially like finding ones set in non-U.S. cities. It's not as easy as it may seem, and most of them I come across by accident.
Candace Fleming's Gabriella's Song is one of those accidental finds, and it is so lovely. Whereas many city sounds books (like this one) focus on the cacophony of noises made by machines, Fleming draws our attention to gentler noises. The slap-slaps of laundry, the flap-flaps of pigeons, the bump-bumps of the gondolas and other sounds provide the inspiration for Gabriella's singing. In turn, Gabriella's song inspires the people of the city in different ways and brings them all together (The city as a linked community of unique individuals is a popular theme in many picture books.) at an outdoor symphony.
Giselle Potter's illustrations evoke the familiar enchanting feeling that we often get when looking at pictures of an old world city. The scenes show a variety of perspectives of the city and some fun touches: who doesn't love to know that even a brilliant composer hangs his underwear up to dry in his living room?
Big Kid says: Venice only has water instead of streets, right?
Little Kid says: Guitar!
Mom responds: Actually, sweetie, that's a cello.
Want More?
Candace Fleming has a good classroom guide for this book.
Other Venice books which I have yet to read include, Olivia Goes to Venice, Guido's Gondola,
3 Comments on Musical City: Gabriella's Song, last added: 11/22/2010
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First there was Neil, a handsome black-and-white gentleman, on the first floor window sill. And then, just a few days later, the lovely Samantha appeared on the floor below. The two cats also saw each other. It’s a proper colpo di fulmine, blinding love at searing first sight. Neil gazes down at Samantha. Samantha gazes up at Neil. It’s a wrap.
But it’s also an impossible love – for an entire tall floor of a Venetian palazzo separates Samantha from Neil.
Now Samantha and Neil pass some hours each day in the kind of yearning contemplation that calls to mind John Donne’s poem The Ecstasy. Sometimes Neil cannot take it any more – he makes for the dangerous edge of his parapet. But at the last moment common or cat sense always brings him back to safety. Sometimes Samantha is gripped by the fever of love, and stands on her back legs in her window-sill, scrabbling at the cruel walls.
These are quintessentially Venetian cats and therefore know the value of presentation. Neil’s tapir markings are set off beautifully by his two green cushions, one in each window on the canal. Samantha is probably just a particularly alluring tabby, but the nobility of her palazzo setting lends her the air of an Abyssinian. With apologies to R. Chandler, she’s a cat who would make an ailurophile pope (as we have now) kick a hole in a stained glass window. What amazing kittens they would make together …
But alas, there is another reason why this love is never to be. A few weeks after this love affair ignited. I discovered that Neil is … married! I should have guessed that there’d be a wife somewhere – handsome, prosperous chap like him.
I nearly dropped my binoculars when matriarchal Bessie – big and grey and pear-shaped – appeared on Neil’s window sill. She delivered a sharp cuff about the ear when she caught her man in the act of mooning after Samantha. There followed a Mexican standoff between Samantha and Bessie. Samantha eventually slunk back into her house. And now she and Neil snatch their lyrical moments when they can – but Bessie always appears quite promptly to administer wifely discipline to her husband and give Samantha the death stare.
Samantha is plotting something. She’ll have Neil, if it’s the last thing she does. Bessie’s grown complacent. She thinks Neil’s well cowed. But she’s not seen the glint in his green love-rat eyes lately. If I were Bessie, I wouldn’t be straying too close to the edge of that parapet any time soon.
My deeply embarrassed husband at this point insists that I inform you that ‘Neil’ and ‘Samantha’ and ‘Bessie’ are not their real names. They’re probably something guttingly prosaic. Neil might even be a ‘Maria’; Samantha could well be a ‘Gianni.’ But I swear that Bessie could never be anything else but Bessie. Unless she was a ‘Bertha’.
You’d never guess that I earn my living as a writer, would you?
Michelle Lovric’s latest novel, The Mourning Emporium, the sequel to The Undrowned Child, is published on October 28th. Any similarities between the feline characters in this blog and those in the books are purely coincidental.
Michelle Lovric’s
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Neither of us owns Venice. We both earn our right to write about Italy novel by novel. But we did admit to a flicker of annoyance at books that cynically employ the undeniable commercial lustre of Venice to gild their lily – or to put a velvet bow on their dog.
Now I have returned from Ilkley to Italy … only to discover that Mary and I have both been thoroughly trumped in our attempts to write a properly Venetian Venice … perhaps. For a Venetian gondolier has just been and gone and published a novel.
Sad to tell, Angelo Tumino’s novel contains nothing of moonlight, romance or lapping waves. Invasione Negata takes the form of a diary of a widowed retired engineer who finds himself living in a condominium in the suburbs of Rome, surrounded by immigrants who speak other tongues, cook foreign foods – and persecute, rob and attack the native Italians.
Tumino, 36, claims that he is a gondolier only by economic necessity: his true calling is as a writer. He’s hoping that Invasione negata will lift him away from a life at the oar and into a properly literary existence in front of a computer.
Instead, the slim volume has so far propelled Tumino into controversy. The author claims that the book’s intention is to document the most profound fear that strikes the rich nations of the west – fear of the foreigner. He claims that the politicians are incapable of solving the problems and it is the ordinary citizens who pay the costs of clandestine immigration.
‘I would say it is a tale of metropolitan conflict,’ says Tumino.
What he not saying – according to La Nuova newspaper – is if he’s a member of the right-wing anti-immigration Lega Nord. But that’s not stopping others from labelling him that, and worse. The Indymedia Lombardia website has written a profile of Tumino entitled ‘The Nazi Gondolier’. And describes his work as ‘di chiaro stampo hitleriano’ – ‘of a clearly Hitlerian stamp’. But the site has been much criticized for the intemperance of its coverage, and in other places the novel and its writer have been highly praised.
Tumino protests that the character depicted in the novel is not a self portrait. He adds ‘Reading Stephen King, one might think that this is an author with psychological problems. But in fact he is a totally normal person.’
Invasione negata had its official launch at the fish market in Venice on October 12th, as its author (still) serves on the traghetto between Santa Sofia and Rialto.
In Tumino's top drawer are two other books – a collection of comic short stories – The Gondolier without a Gondola and American Gondolier, a science fiction story set in a Venice that has been bought up by the Americans and is inhabited by android gondoliers.
So is it still safe for Mary and me to go in the water, with our historical novels about Venice and Italy?
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The following books represent a few of the many different genres available for young, independent readers. I'm positive that they will be enjoyed by many.
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I have completed by travel blogs, and will post soon but as the saying goes life interfered with my plans. My daughter came home for a long weekend and we're spending time together.
In the meantime, I have regained full rights to two short stories I have written and plan on putting them on Amazon and Kindle, as soon as I figure out the how and why, etc...
The best advice I have found is from Joe Konrath, he has an amazing web site http://www.jakonrath.com/ where he shares his vast marketing knowledge with his readers and offers terrific advice to authors who are part of the weird world of writing, advertising, promoting and everything else needed to get the name out there, wherever out there is. Joe is a master. I plan to use his his advice, thanks Joe.
The other thing I have done is hook up with author Susan Miura (introduction by Amy Alessio, thank you Amy)to do library events 'A Taste of Italy' is all set, proposal finished and submitted to many libraries and we have three gigs so far.
The Italian program includes tasty treats from Italy, pictures, (of course I have pictures of Venice and Murano) discussions on travel and our writing styles and how they relate to travel. I'm hoping at some point to include Paris.
In the works is 'A Taste of Mexico'.
For now, I'm going to prepare breakfast and spent some time with my daughter.
Till next week,
Margot Justes
http://www.mjustes.com/
A Hotel In Paris
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It is that fascinating object, a Column of Infamy. It was erected to the eternal dishonour of one Bajamonte Tiepolo, Venetian nobleman.
Bajamonte’s plot to murder Doge Pietro Gradenigo dissolved into a bloody comedy of savagely ironic errors. A last-minute betrayal cost him the element of surprise. Then the heavens opened, drowning in wind and rain all Bajamonte’s plans for simultaneous strikes on San Marco from three different directions. The whole grandiose conspiracy was finally quashed after an old lady dropped a stone mortar-and-pestle on the head of Bajamonte’s standard-bearer, scattering brains and blood. When it was all over, Bajamonte Tiepolo’s palazzo at Sant’Agostin was razed, his family crest suppressed, the man himself consigned to perpetual exile, a kind of living death, the worst possible punishment for a Venetian. Except …
Except knowing that on the site of your destroyed home, your vengeful vanquisher, Doge Gradenigo, has erected a colonna d’infamia, a metre-tall column of white marble with an inscription to keep your name in perpetual odium. ‘For ever’, says the column, one of the earliest examples of stone script in Venice.
For this writer, the idea of a Column of Infamy has an irresistible appeal. What can compare with it by way of an insult? A libellous roman-a-clef? A spiteful scrawl of graffiti? A rancid blog? A perpetual icon at the top of every Google search? A malicious character assassination in a national newspaper? I don’t think so. This is an insult that becomes part of the fabric of the city: a phantasmagorical white effigy by moonlight, a harsh reality by day. It’s a urinal for the dogs, and for humans with some dog in their nature. (And don’t think Doge Gradenigo didn’t think of that when he put up the column.)
And it turns out that Bajamonte Tiepolo’s Column of Infamy has a story of its own, something stranger and perhaps sadder than even a novelist could invent.
For even in exile, Bajamonte Tiepolo could not bear the thought of it. One of his henchmen was sent in the night to destroy the column. He succeeded in breaking it in three pieces before he was caught in the act. The henchman was deprived of a hand and his eyes were put out. The column was repaired and re-erected. For a while.
Also implicated in the Tiepolo conspiracy were members of the Querini clan, one of whom was Bajamonte’s father-in-law, Marco. Family counts in Italy. Memories are long. It seems that in 1785, one Angelo Maria Querini asked the city if he could buy the column. No-one paid too much attention, it seems, when the shameful object was quietly sold off and a humble stone plaque embedded in the pavement. Loc. Col. Bai. The. MCCCX. says the broken slab, which almost seems designed to obfuscate all but those who speak abbreviated Latin and know fourteenth-century Venetian history.
Strangely, however, Querini did not destroy the column. Instead, he sent it to his villa in Altichiero on the mainland. Then it passed into the hands of the antiquarian Antonio Sanquirico, and finally to the heir of the Duke of Melzi, who used it as a garden ornament at a mansion on Lake Como. It was returned to Venice in 1838 by the last inhabitant of the villa, Duchess Joséphine Melzi-d'Eril Barbò, and it was briefly put on display in a courtyard of the Correr Museum. But some time, at least a hundred yea
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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
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You’ve probably read about it, heard the grim pronouncements on the radio or seen a clip on television: last Saturday, November 14th, Venice staged her own funeral.
At least that’s the version that appeared in the international press, which likes nothing better than to bury Venice.
But I was there, and I want to explain that it wasn’t quite like that.
For some time, the people behind the passionately pro-Venice website Venessia.com have promised that they would do something to show their pain if the city’s population dropped below 60,000. The exodus of real Venetians is recorded weekly in an illuminated display – the Venetian-counter – in the window of the Morelli pharmacy at Rialto. This month, for the first time, we are down to 59, 984. The streets of Venice each day now hold fewer Venetians than tourists.
Venessia.com maintains that Venice has not died a natural death but been assassinated by mismanagement, greed and stupidity. It comes down to housing. If the city does not provide houses for young couples, how can young couples provide new Venetians for the city?
In response to the sinking numbers, Venessia.com decided to do what Venice has always done in extremis: throw a masked party, in which the macabre would mix with the ironic, the burlesque with the profound. A furious discussion breaks out in the city. People start sending ‘telegrams of condolence’ for the dead city to Venessia.com.
November 14th dawns moody grey and morbidly humid. Grim-faced locals and stupefied tourists swarm at Rialto. The deceased city, represented by a hot-pink coffin draped with the Venetian flag, is floated up the canal on a balotina, in which stands the black-cloaked actor Cesare Colonnese, his face made up in a deathly pallor. Even so, it cannot express quite enough tragedy: he carries another mask of pain mounted on a stick. The balotina follows a barge in which a grand piano is played by Paolo Zanarella, his black cloak flowing behind him.
At 11.55 the riot police arrive and arrange themselves under the portico of the town hall. (City officials, who have scoffed at idea of the funeral, are nowhere to be seen). At 11.55 the international press disembarks from crowded taxis, for Venessia.com has caught not just the city’s but the world’s imagination with its gesture. At 12.00 the funeral procession arrives at Rialto, escorted by police boats. As they pass under the bridge, the rowers raise their oars in solemn salute to the crowd. The coffin is lifted on the shoulders of the chief mourners and carried along the passarelle into the portico, accompanied by a funeral bouquet in the Venetian colours of yellow and maroon. There’s another huge bouquet made of slivers of paper – the telegrams of condolence. Gilberto Gasparini reads out a long poem of lament and betrayal. Cesare Colonnese pronounces the funeral oration in Venetian.
And then the surprise. From two yards away, I hear the tone of Colonnese’s voice change. He asks, ‘Who says Venice is dead? It’s time to stop lamenting. Rise up! Rise up! Do something! Yes, you too! … And stop saying that Venice is dead!’
The caped organisers jump on the coffin and joyfully smash it to bits. From the splinters, they pull out a painting of a golden phoenix rising from the ashes. ‘Long live Venice!’ they cry.
This is not a funeral. It is an exorcism.
The death of Venice is pronounced dead. Venice is rebo
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Well, not exactly paddling--but here are photos from our recent trip to Bruge in Belgium as we traverse some of the local waterways.
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The city of Venice herself is the stage for Incentive Harmony's International Debutante Ball, set to premiere in 2010. Once again, Nicolas Arnita, master magician of Venetian balls, together with his wife, Jeanne-Bénédicte, have imagined a way to transform their love of Venice into a wondrous dream to share with the world. What better place for a young woman to make her debut than supported by the majestic arms of the Queen of the Sea?
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Once upon a time I set myself the task of keeping a poem diary for the year (I'm particularly bad at diaries and only got to March). But looking back, I see that I wrote about a hurricane in Selsey which removed tiles, my daughter's chickenpox, my aunt's funeral, a filming trip to the middle of a muddy wood, among more normal stuff. The events of everyday life provided me with fuel for my writing endeavour. So they were useful too.
But what of the inner life and emotions? Are they not the most useful thing of all to a writer? I was bullied as a child and I exorcised those memories by writing about them in my novel. Naming that demon (as Terry Pratchett so eloquently puts it) helped me to put the experience behind me, and, somewhat, to understand the other side--the bullies' side--so that I could write about that in a current project. Right now I have an ongoing problem with insomnia, which leaves me tired and wretched. But those dark and restless hours of the night provided me with material for a poem which chronicles those feelings, once again making use of something which should logically be of no use whatsoever. However mundane, boring, terrible, painful, wonderful, uplifting the feeling, emotion, experience, sight, action is, it can be crafted and wrestled with and made to dance to the writer's music. We only have one life to live and write in. I'm more than ever determined to make use of mine--whatever happens.
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This book sounds neat - and it would be a great addition to a Geography lesson on Italy (or Venice, of course).
Oooo... I want this one for me! I love Venice!
Venice was fun (when we visited it for real). Everyone raves about Madeleine series, but to be honest I didn't care much for the story line or for illustrations even though the first story is set in my favorite city.