The act of walking out of Santa Lucia station and beholding the Grand Canal feels a bit like stepping onto a stage and bowing to thundering applause. I always feel momentarily cleansed of all absurdity when I arrive in Venice, found innocent of all criminal charges, proud of myself and my life, as if Venezia is something I had a hand in creating, as if it couldn’t exist without me and my rush of radiant emotion. For a while I always sit by the water and watch the waterbuses arrive and leave, the gondoliers ease their boats up towards the Rialto Bridge. The blue of the sky invariably has a pristine ethereal quality which only Italian skies seem to have. I’m not at all fat, just the opposite, but if I were fat I imagine looking up at an Italian sky would make me feel like I had miraculously lost two stone overnight.
Oh, I love Venice too... quite, quite beautiful and I've secretly always fancied attending one of those seductive masked balls.
ReplyDeleteHave you read "Baroque Concerto" by Alejo Carpentier?
ReplyDeleteIt details a meeting in Venice, during carnival, between Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Handel in 1709, watched by a South American Don, with percussion from his young black servant. It's a riot. A beautiful, dense, musical book.
Someday I will visit Venice. When I do, I will remember this.
ReplyDeleteStunning first two sentences. You've captured the moment perfectly, and now I remember that fist time outside the station, though my own experience was altogether less noble: my companion threw his jacket over a bunch of pigeons, slipped his hand inside and strangled a couple for supper.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Simon. I'll check out Baroque Concerto. The Aspern Papers and Death in Venice are probably the best two evocations of Venice I've read. Both depict it as a place of decay and slumbering menace.
ReplyDeleteYou should start a new novel off with the pigeon scene, Pete. Of all the things to do the moment you arrive in Venice you could hardly beat that for originality and black humour.