This may look like Denmark in the Winter but isn’t. Believe it or not, it’s Venezia, in one of those luminous but grey winter days.
Behind those dreary whitish skies is the Sun, illuminating all with a certain sadness. Venezia was for me the town of melancholy and loneliness. Because that is Venezia during the Winter (for me) when the tourists have disappeared and the town is left to itself. And there is such a silence, such a calm, such beauty (also). This is the beach outside town, one has to take a boat to go there, it’s not nearby at all, though Venezia faces the sea.
Venezia in the cold months of Winter is abandoned to itself, and that’s where you really, really meet this town as it is in its truth.
Yes, I know that during the Summer or Spring it’s full of color, liveliness, and people, but not in November, not in January. In the Fall we had acqua alta (regular flooding), lots of fog, a fog so dense one couldn’t see the houses and squares, as vague shadows walked by going about their business.
I still have this Venezia in my mind. Sometimes during the pitch-black evenings we would hear a slight and far away Oé, a lone gondoliere rounding a corner in the canals, just making sure he can cross safely without crashing into another gondola. We knew the secret Venezia.
Venezia is so many things
It’s what the tourists see and experience, good business for the locals and a hot, hot, humid town in the Summer. And then it’s the humid and foggy grey Winter, when only those really knowing and living the town emerge and go to the Theater, to school, grocery shopping at the market on the Rialto Bridge. Finally relaxed, nothing to hide, insular and special.
I don’t long for Venezia, it was never my place, I was young and hopeful, too young for that place, though I love the beautiful sadness and incredible colors it offered. I still appreciate Beautiful Sadness to this day. Proust, Mahler, Kafka, Mann… and I still carry the moods in my heart.
Beware of the temporale in August…
…when the thunderstorm would suddenly change all colors to the vibrant vividness with stark shadows, and after, when all the wetness would be glistening in the Sun, or the incredible sunsets enveloping churches in gold… Truly one would think certain colors were not real, did not exist as seen in some paintings: but the artist was just showing what he saw. A dreamy atmosphere nothing can replicate adequately, not even the most beautiful photograph. Certain things must be experienced ‘live’.
Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) is – I find – the movie that best represents it. Luchino Visconti knew how to describe the deadly decay that pervades it.
Today I have the same windy grey, long Winters, but so utterly different up here in the Great North
With climate change (?) it’s raining, windy, humid, dark and cold – maybe not icy cold but still: cold and very wet. Even the Danes avoid it as much as they can. My little market was deserted in the rain. We are all tired of Winter now. And oh, like the locals, I so long for Spring, but it will take endless months before it’s here. However, we do have more luminosity finally, and we do appreciate this. The dark Winter-nights are about over, we will soon enjoy light nearly 24/7 for a while.
And I will again forget that lonely figure, walking deserted beaches waiting for Life to begin.
Morte a Venezia Winter Sea. The lonely Winter beaches are my passion, as they are battered by the wind and one can walk deep in thoughts, meditating upon Life in their eerie silence.
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Art can help us feel known; it encourages us to persevere when times are tough, and it offers a way to transcend our current reality. Art speaks to a deeper story we are living.
Linda Cornelius Artist 