LETTER FROM VENICE
683
men singing, young women laughing, the sound of an oar, the mutter
of voices. From where? Where I stood, spying, these sounds came
from the lower world, all of them: the scene itself contradicted the
familiar sentiment. What I knew or felt to be true was not the
impression that the scene conveyed. The effect was not touching,
or pathetic, but ominous. Black on the sky, motionless, silent, the
Goya-like figures stood in judgment as the carefree sons and daughters
of men made their way to hell. A moment later, closing the ceremony,
the bells tolled the end of the Festa del Redentore.
If
I stand under the clock tower, facing the sea, and look across
the piazzetta toward the isle of San Giorgio, the fairy-tale world some–
times seen at the back of Carpaccio's paintings is visible. A liner may
pass, closing off the stage like the movement of scenery from the wings,
or a boat with painted sails from Chioggia.
If
the tri-color is flying
from the staffs in the Piazza, the eye reels with the prospect. Over the
choppy sea of heads, the tidal flow of the crowd, space arranges itself
in a painterly manner. Within the same frame the picture changes, the
light comes and goes. A maximum sense of spectacle, of theatre, is
achieved without diminishing the smallest element present-the stature
of man. He is in scale. He remains the unit of measurement. This may
explain why the Piazza seems to lift the crowd to its own level, rather
than overpower it, the more familiar effect of monuments. At night,
while the band plays, the lights transform the real facades enclosing
the Piazza into flat scene paintings appropriate to the operatic music
on display. Neither modern vulgarity nor antique pomp reduce the
scale of this impression. The Piazza, alone, seems the stage appropriate
to the world it contains.
If
there is a delinquent problem in Venice it goes by another
name. So do policemen. They function as ornaments and guides. A
vecchia scuola
of purse snatchers, pocket-pickers, et cetera, maintains
a long and dishonorable tradition, but it does not occur to me, in a
dark alley, to turn and see who it is behind me. That will come, perhaps,
but it is not yet here. Every citizen bolts and shutters his house as if
preparing for a storm at sea, but on the street he does not worry about
his head. Not yet. On festa days the streets are flooded with people,
but not with crime. The packs of young men raise their voices, but
little else.
An
American puzzled by this phenomenon is left with a
familiar dilemma. The open-the wide open society-and the closed.
After six months in the new world these boys, and girls, would change
