Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy
Their interest in the drama is like that in a real event. When the tyrant gave his son a sword and required him to kill his own wife, who was standing opposite, the people began loudly to express their disapprobation of this demand, and there was a great risk that the piece would have been interrupted. They insisted that the old man should take his sword back, in which case all the subsequent situations in the drama would have been completely spoiled. At last, the distressed son plucked up courage, advanced to the proscenium, and humbly entreated that the audience would have patience for a moment, assuring them that all would turn out to their entire satisfaction. But even judging from an artistical point of view, this situation was, under the circumstances, silly and unnatural, and I commended the people for their feeling.
I can now better understand the long speeches and the frequent dissertations, pro and con, in the Greek tragedy. The Athenians liked still more to hear speaking, and were still better judges of it, than the Italians. They learned something from the courts of law, where they spent the whole day.
Oct. 6.
In those works of Palladio, which are completed, I have found much to blame, together with much that is highly valuable. While I was thinking it over in my mind how far I was right or wrong in setting my judgment in opposition to that of so extraordinary a man, I felt as if he stood by and said, "I did so and so against my will, but, nevertheless, I did it, because in this manner alone was it possible for me, under the given circumstances, to approximate to my highest idea." The more I think the matter over, it seems to me, that Palladio, while contemplating the height and width of an already existing church, or of an old house to which he was to attach facades, only considered: "How will you give the greatest form to these dimensions? Some part of the detail must from the necessity of the case, be put out of its place or spoiled, and something unseemly is sure to arise here and there. Be that as it may, the whole will have a grand style, and you will be pleased with your work."
And thus he carried out the great image which he had within his soul, just to the point where it was not quite suitable, and where he was obliged in the detail to mutilate or to overcrowd it.
On the other hand, the wing of the Carità cannot be too highly prized, for here the artist's hands were free, and he could follow the bent of his own mind without constraint. If the convent were finished there would, perhaps, be no work of architecture more perfect throughout the present world.
Venice
How he thought and how he worked becomes more and more clear to me, the more I read his works, and reflect how he treated the ancients; for he says few words, but they are all important. The fourth book, which illustrates the antique temples, is a good introduction to a judicious examination of ancient remains.
Oct. 6.
Yesterday evening I saw the Electra of Crebillon – that is to say, a translation – at the theatre S. Crisostomo. I cannot say, how absurd the piece appeared to me, and how terribly it tired me out.
The actors are generally good, and know how to put off the public with single passages.
Orestes alone has three narratives, poetically set off, in one scene. Electra, a pretty little woman of the middle size and stature, with almost French vivacity, and with a good deportment, delivered the verses beautifully, only she acted the part madly from beginning to end, which, alas! it requires. However, I have again learned something. The Italian Iambic, which is invariably of eleven syllables, is very inconvenient for declamation, because the last syllable is always short, and causes an elevation of the voice against the will of the declaimer.
Oct. 6.
This morning I was present at high mass, which annually on this day the Doge must attend, in the church of St. Justina, to commemorate an old victory over the Turks. When the gilded barks, which carry the princes and a portion of the nobility approach the little square, when the boatmen, in their rare liveries, are plying their red-painted oars, when on the shore the clergy and the religious fraternities are standing, pushing, moving about, and waiting with their lighted torches fixed upon poles and portable silver chandeliers; then, when the gangways covered with carpet are placed from the vessels to the shore, and first the full violet dresses of the Savii, next the ample red robes of the Senators are unfolded upon the pavement, and lastly when the old Doge adorned with his golden Phrygian cap, in his long golden talar and his ermine cloak, steps out of the vessel – when all this, I say, takes place in a little square before the portal of a church, one feels as if one were looking at an old worked tapestry, exceedingly well designed and coloured. To me, northern fugitive as I am, this ceremony gave a great deal of pleasure. With us, who parade nothing but short coats in our processions of pomp, and who conceive nothing greater than one performed with shouldered arms, such an affair might be out of place. But these trains, these peaceful celebrations are all in keeping here.
The Doge is a well-grown and well-shaped man, who, perhaps, suffers from ill health, but, nevertheless, for dignity's sake, bears himself upright under his heavy robe. In other respects he looks like the grandpapa of the whole race, and is kind and affable. His dress is very becoming, the little cap, which he wears under the large one, does not offend the eye, resting as it does upon the whitest and finest hair in the world.
About fifty nobili, with long dark-red trains, were with him. For the most part they were handsome men, and there was not a single uncouth figure among them. Several of them were tall with large heads, so that the white curly wigs were very becoming to them. Their features are prominent; the flesh of their faces is soft and white, without looking flabby and disagreeable. On the contrary, there is an appearance of talent without exertion, repose, self-confidence, easiness of existence, and a certain joyousness-pervades the whole.
When all had taken their places in the church, and mass began, the fraternities entered by the chief door, and went out at the side door to the right, after they had received holy water in couples, and made their obeisance to the high altar, to the Doge, and the nobility.
Oct. 6.
This evening I bespoke the celebrated song of the mariners, who chaunt Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be beard as a thing, of course, but rather belongs to the half forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moon-light, with one singer before and the other behind me. They sing their song taking up the verses alternately. The melody, which we know through Rousseau, is of a middle kind, between choral and recitative, maintaining throughout the same cadence, with out any fixed time. The modulation is also uniform, only varying with a sort of declamation both tone and measure, according to the subject of the verse. But the spirit – the life of it, is as follows: —
Without inquiring into the construction of the melody, suffice it to say that it is admirably suited to that easy class of people, who, always humming something or other to themselves, adapt such tunes to any little poem they know by heart.
Venice
Sitting on the shore of an island, on the bank of a canal, or on the side of a boat, a gondolier will sing away with a loud penetrating voice – the multitude admire force above everything – anxious only to be heard as far as possible. Over the silent mirror it travels far. Another in the distance, who is acquainted with the melody and knows the words, takes it up and answers with the next verse, and then the first replies, so that the one is as it were the echo of the other. The song continues through whole nights and is kept up without fatigue. The further the singers are from each other, the more touching sounds the strain. The best place for the listener is halfway between the two.
In order to let me hear it, they landed on the bank of the Guidecca, and took up different positions by the canal. I walked backwards and forwards between them, so as to leave the one whose turn it was to sing, and to join the one who had just left off. Then it was that the effect of the strain first opened upon me. As a voice from the distance it sounds in the highest degree strange – as a lament without sadness: it has an incredible effect and is moving even to tears. I ascribed this to my own state of mind, but my old boatsman said: "è singolare, como quel canto intenerisce, e molto piu quando è piu ben cantato." He wished that I could hear the women of the Lido, especially those of Malamocco, and Pelestrina. These also, he told me, chanted Tasso and Ariosto to the same or similar melodies. He went on: "in the evening, while their husbands are on the sea fishing, they are accustomed to sit on the beach, and with shrill-penetrating voice to make these strains resound, until they catch from the distance the voices of their partners, and in this way they keep up a communication with them." Is not that beautiful? and yet, it is very possible that one who heard them close by, would take little pleasure in such tones which have to vie with the waves of the sea. Human, however, and true becomes the song in this way: thus is life given to the melody, on whose dead elements we should otherwise have been sadly puzzled. It is the song of one solitary, singing at a distance, in the hope that another of kindred feelings and sentiments may hear and answer.
Venice, Oct. 8, 1786.
I paid a visit to the palace Pisani Moretta, for the sake of a charming picture by Paul Veronese. The females of the family of Darius are represented kneeling before Alexander and Hephæstion; his mother, who is in the foreground, mistakes Hephæstion for the king; – turning away from her he points to Alexander. A strange story is told about this painting; the artist had been well received and for a long time honorably entertained in the palace; in return he secretly painted the picture and left it behind him as a present, rolled up under his bed. Certainly it well deserves to have had a singular origin, for it gives an idea of all the peculiar merits of this master. The great art with which he manages by a skilful distribution of light and shade, and by an equally clever contrast of the local colors, to produce a most delightful harmony without throwing any sameness of tone over the whole picture, is here most strikingly visible. For the picture is in excellent preservation, and stands before us almost with the freshness of yesterday. – Indeed, whenever a painting of this order has suffered from neglect, our enjoyment of it is marred on the spot, even before we are conscious what the cause may be.
Whoever feels disposed to quarrel with the artist on the score of costume has only to say he ought to have painted a scene of the sixteenth century; and the matter is at an end. The gradation in the expression from the mother through the wife to the daughters, is in the highest degree true and happy. The youngest princess, who kneels behind all the rest, is a beautiful girl, and has a very pretty, but somewhat independent and haughty countenance. Her position does not at all seem to please her.
October 8, 1786.
My old gift of seeing the world with the eyes of that artist, whose pictures have most recently made an impression on me, has occasioned me some peculiar reflections. It is evident that the eye forms itself by the objects, which, from youth up, it is accustomed to look upon, and so the Venetian artist must see all things in a clearer and brighter light than other men. We, whose eye when out of doors, falls on a dingy soil, which, when not muddy, is dusty, – and which, always colourless, gives a sombre hue to the reflected rays, or at home spend our lives in close, narrow rooms, can never attain to such a cheerful view of nature.
Venice
As I floated down the lagunes in the full sunshine, and observed how the figures of the gondoliers in their motley costume, and as they rowed, lightly moving above the sides of the gondola, stood out from the bright green surface and against the blue sky, I caught the best and freshest type possible of the Venetian school. The sunshine brought out the local colours with dazzling brilliancy, and the shades even were so luminous, that, comparatively, they in their turn might serve as lights. And the same may be said of the reflection from the sea-green water. All was painted "chiaro nell chiaro," so that foamy waves and lightning flashes were necessary to give it a grand finish (um die Tüpfchen auf sie zu setzen).
Titian and Paul have this brilliancy in the highest degree, and whenever we do not find it in any of their works, the piece is either damaged or has been touched up.
The cupola and vaulting of St. Mark's, with its side-walls, – are covered with paintings – a mass of richly colored figures on a golden ground; all in mosaic work: some of them very good, others but poor, according to the masters who furnished the cartoons.
Circumstances here have strangely impressed on my mind how everything depends on the first invention, and that this constitutes the right standard – the true genius – since with little square-pieces of glass (and here not in the soberest manner), it is possible to imitate the good as well as the bad. The art which furnished to the ancients their pavements, and to the Christians the vaulted ceilings of their churches, fritters itself away in our days on snuff-box lids and bracelets-clasps. The present times are worse even than one thinks.
Venice, October 8, 1786.
In the Farsetti palace there is a valuable collection of casts from the best antiques. I pass over all such as I had seen before at Mannheim or elsewhere, and mention only new acquaintances. A Cleopatra in intense repose, with the asp coiled round her arm, and sinking into the sleep of death; – a Niobe shrouding with her robe her youngest daughter from the arrows of Apollo; – some gladiators; – a winged genius, resting in his flight; – some philosophers, both in sitting and standing postures.
They are works from which, for thousands of years to come, the world may receive delight and instruction, without ever being able to equal with their thanks the merits of the artists.
Many speaking busts transported me to the old glorious times. Only I felt, alas, how backward I am in these studies; however, I will go on with them – at least I know the way. Palladio has opened the road for me to this and every other art and life. That sounds probably somewhat strange, and yet not so paradoxical as when Jacob Böhme says that, by seeing a pewter platter by a ray from Jupiter, he was enlightened as to the whole universe. There is also in this collection a fragment of the entablature of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome.
The bold front of this noble piece of architecture reminded me of the capitol of the Pantheon at Mannheim. It is, indeed, something very different from our queer saints, piled up one above the other on little consoles after the gothic style of decoration, – something different from our tobacco-pipe-like shafts, – our little steeple-crowned towers, and foliated terminals, – from all taste for these – I am now, thank God, set free for ever!
I will further mention a few works of statuary, which, as I passed along these last few days, I have observed with astonishment and instruction: before the gate of the arsenal two huge lions of white marble, – the one is half recumbent, raising himself up on his fore-feet, – the other is lying down: noble emblems of the variety of life. They are of such huge proportions, that all around appears little, and man himself would become as nought, did not sublime objects elevate him. They are of the best times of Greece, and were brought here from the Piraeus in the better days of the Republic.
Venice
From Athens, too, in all probability, came two bas-reliefs which have been introduced in the church of St. Justina, the conqueress of the Turks. Unfortunately they are in some degree hidden by the church seats. The sacristan called my attention to them on account of the tradition that Titian, modelled from them the beautiful angel in his picture of the martyrdom of St. Peter. The relievos represent genii who are decking themselves out with, the attributes of the gods, – so beautiful in truth, as to transcend all idea or conception.
Next I contemplated with quite peculiar feelings the naked colossal statue of Marcus Agrippa, in the court of a palace; a dolphin which is twisting itself by his side, points out the naval hero. How does such a heroic representation make the mere man equal to the gods!
I took a close view of the horses of S. Mark's. Looking up at them from below, it is easy to see that they are spotted: in places they exhibit a beautiful yellow-metallic lustre, in others a coppery green has run over them. Viewing them more closely, one sees distinctly that once they were gilt all over, and long streaks are still to be seen over them, as the barbarians did not attempt to file off the gold, but tried to cut it off. That, too, is well: thus the shape at least has been preserved.
A glorious team of horses, – I should like to hear the opinion of a good judge of horse-flesh. What seemed strange to me was, that closely viewed, they appear heavy, while from the piazza below they look as light as deer.
October 8, 1786.
Yesterday I set out early with my tutelary genius for the "Lido," the tongue of land which shuts in the lagunes, and divides them from the sea. We landed and walked straight across the isthmus. I heard a loud hollow murmur, – it was the sea! I soon saw it: it crested high against the shore, as it retired, – it was about noon, and time of ebb. I have then at last seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted it. I wished the children had been there to gather the shells; child-like I myself picked up plenty of them; however, I attempted to make them useful; I tried to dry in them some of the fluid of the cuttle fish, which here dart away from you in shoals.
On the "Lido," not far from the sea, is the burial place of Englishmen, and a little further on, of the Jews: both alike are refused the privilege of resting in consecrated ground. I found here the tomb of Smith, the noble English consul, and of his first wife. It is to him that I owe my first copy of Palladio; I thanked him for it here in his unconsecrated grave. And not only unconsecrated, but half buried is the tomb. The "Lido" is at best but a sand-bank (daune): The sand is carried from it backwards and forwards by the wind, and thrown up in heaps is encroaching on every side. In a short time the monument, which is tolerably high, will no longer be visible.
But the sea – it is a grand sight! I will try and get a sail upon it some day in a fishing-boat: the gondolas never venture out so far.
Oct. 8, 1786.
On the sea-coast I found also several plants, whose characters similar to others I already knew, enabled me to recognize pretty well their properties. They are all alike, fat and strong-full of sap and clammy, – and it is evident that the old salt of the sandy soil, but still more the saline atmosphere, gives them these properties. Like aquatic plants they abound in sap, and are fleshy and tough, like mountainous ones; those whose leaves shew a tendency to put forth prickles, after the manner of thistles, have them extremely sharp and strong. I found a bush with leaves of this kind. It looked very much like our harmless coltsfoot, only here it is armed with sharp weapons, – the leaves like leather, as also are the seed-vessels, and the stalk very thick and succulent. I bring with me seeds and specimens of the leaves. (Eryngium maritimum.)
The fish-market, with its numberless marine productions, afforded me much amusement. I often go there to contemplate the poor captive inhabitants of the sea.
Venice, Oct. 9, 1786.
A delicious day from morning to night! I have been towards Chiozza, as far as Pelestrina, where are the great structures, called Murazzi, which the Republic has caused to be raised against the sea. They are of hewn stone, and properly are intended to protect from the fury of the wild element the tongue of land called the Lido, which separates the lagoons from the sea.
Venice
The lagunes are the work of old nature. First of all, the land and tide, the ebb and flow, working against one another, and then the gradual sinking of the primal waters, were, together, the causes why, at the upper end of the Adriatic, we find a pretty extensive range of marshes, which, covered by the flood-tide, are partly left bare by the ebb. Art took possession of the highest spots, and thus arose Venice, formed out of a groupe of a hundred isles, and surrounded by hundreds more. Moreover, at an incredible expense of money and labour, deep canals have been dug through the marshes, in order that at the time of high water, ships of war might pass to the chief points. What human industry and wit contrived and executed of old, skill and industry must now keep up. The Lido, a long narrow strip of land, separates the lagunes from the sea, which can enter only at two points – at the castle and at the opposite end near Chiozza. The tide flows in usually twice a-day, and with the ebb again carries out the waters twice, and always by the same channel and in the same direction. The flood covers the lower parts of the morass, but leaves the higher, if not dry, yet visible.
The case would be quite altered were the sea to make new ways for itself, to attack the tongue of land and flow in and out wherever it chose. Not to mention that the little villages on the Lido, Pelestrina, viz., S. Peter's and others would be overwhelmed, the canals of communication would be choked up, and while the water involved all in ruin, the Lido would be changed into an island, and the islands which now lie behind it be converted into necks and tongues of land. To guard against this it was necessary to protect the Lido as far as possible, lest the furious element should capriciously attack and overthrow what man had already taken possession of, and with a certain end and purpose given shape and use to.
In extraordinary cases when the sea rises above measure, it is especially necessary to prevent it entering at more than two points. Accordingly the rest of the sluice-gates being shut, with all its violence it is unable to enter, and in a few hours submits to the law of the ebb, and its fury lessens.
Otherwise Venice has nothing to fear; the extreme slowness with which the sea-line retires, assures to her thousands of years yet, and by prudently deepening the canals from time to time, they will easily maintain their possessions against the inroads of the water.
I could only wish that they kept their streets a little cleaner – a duty which is as necessary as it is easy of performance, and which in fact becomes of great consequence in the course of centuries. Even now in the principal thoroughfares it is forbidden to throw anything into the canals: the sweepings even of the streets may not be cast into them. No measures, however, are taken to prevent the rain, which here falls in sudden and violent torrents, from carrying off the dirt which is collected in piles at the corner of every street, and washing it into the lagunes – nay, what is still worse, into the gutters for carrying off the water, which consequently are often so completely stopped up, that the principal squares are in danger of being under water. Even in the smaller piazza of S. Mark's, I have seen the gullies which are well laid down there, as well as in the greater square, choked up and full of water.
When a rainy day comes, the filth is intolerable; every one is cursing and scolding. In ascending and descending the bridges one soils one's mantle and great coat (Tabarro), which is here worn all the year long, and as one goes along in shoes and silk stockings, one gets splashed, and then scolds, for it is not common mud, but mud that adheres and stains that one is here splashed with. The weather soon becomes fine again, and then no one thinks of cleaning the streets. How true is the saying: the public is ever complaining that is ill served, and never knows how to set about getting better served. Here if the sovereign-people wished it, it might be done forthwith.
