To conclude this guest blogging, I end on a light note and reflect on what I did during my summer vacation. At this writing, I am on my way back from “Serenissima Venizia” where I took a well-deserved break with my family. Those who remain fond of Death in Venice and other classical representations of this jewel of a city would certainly, like me, be disappointed by the place. One is hard-pressed to find more than a few virgin back alleys that do not cater to pizza-eating tourists. Piazza San Marco is elbow-to-elbow, even in comparison to Florence or Rome. The locals cannot be seen congregating anywhere, except for the younger ones who meet behind the Rialto fish market in the early evening (and the market location is probably very appropriate, although meat appears to be more in fashion than fish). The other locals who deal with tourism seem to be in a permanent state of enervation/aggravation. Moments on the “vaporeto” (the public transportation system) away from the crowds may be the closest one can get to “serene.” This left me very nostalgic about what Venice was thirty years ago when I first saw it as a back-pack carrying student. Then the place was unique and strange enough – unstandardized enough –that it was still possible to enter in a bordello by mistake (one of my fondest memories of this first trip).
A visit to the Biennale was the high point of our trip (of course, the art and the architecture remain inexhaustible, but other Italian Renaissance cities offer that as well). Three years ago I went to the Dokumenta in Kassel, which happens every five years whereas the Biennale is held every two years. Compared to the Biennale, the Dokumenta features representatives of many more countries (including from a number of smaller countries from East and South Asia and Africa), and more up upcoming artists. For this reason it truly offers a window into world culture in the making, which made the Dokumenta an unforgettable experience. The Biennale has a more institutional feel, featuring mainstays of the contemporary art scene such as London’s ubiquitous Gilbert and George. Nevertheless, the art found in Venice is often stimulating, almost always unexpected, and sometimes beautiful. A few days spent in the Guardini, the Arsenal, and the other locations where the Biennale is held, would not exhaust the possibilities. Even my 8 year old twins had the time of their life –much more intriguing to them than Titien and Tintorento (although they had been reading a children-friendly version of the Old Testament throughout the trip and were very taken by all the fantastic stories they were discovering, and which resonated with the many sculptures they saw).
I read <a href=http://www.hachette.com/livre/marc-lazar-l-italie-contemporaine-284941.html>a book edited by Mark Lazar</a> (a French expert on Italy) in preparation for the trip. A group of humanists and social scientists give an overview of contemporary Italy, covering all the standard topics ranging from the familialist state to Berlusconi, the mafia and clientelism, and new developments in Italian cinema. There again, I did not find anything surprising. Is it possible that a country with more than 2,500 years of history offers so few surprises? The wonderful humanist tradition remains invisible (for the most part) but omnipresent, and this is heartwarming (as is the Italian language, at least for someone like myself who studied Latin for several years). So perhaps Italy is to be appreciated more for how it does not change than for what it is becoming.
Arrivederci!! (and warm thanks again to Crooked Timber for the hospitality; I enjoyed writing for a public other than that of the usual reviewers, and reading all the postings, including those not addressed to my comments).
PS: Before taking off for Italy, I wrote a little <a href=http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/faculty/lamont/publications/Looking-Back-at-Bourdieu.pdf>autobiographical piece [pdf] on my relationship with Pierre Bourdieu</a> who was my mentor when I was a graduate student in Paris in the late seventies and whose work has become central to American cultural sociology, a subfield that has transformed the landscape of sociology as it exists in the United States today. I link to this piece here in case it would be of interest to some Crooked Timber readers. The paper connects the micro-biographical with disciplinary changes and may help understand the conditions of reception and diffusion of Bourdieu beyond France.
{ 23 comments }
Morhout 07.01.09 at 2:19 pm
You should return to Venice beginning of December or end of January, when there are no crowds, the mist flows (serenely) over the canals, and the whole city exudes an air of mystery. Bring a warm vest and a raincoat, though.
rea 07.01.09 at 2:48 pm
the mist flows (serenely) over the canals, and the whole city exudes an air of mystery
Is that what that was? Mystery’s air sometimes smells a bit funny . . .
Glen Tomkins 07.01.09 at 3:24 pm
It was the republic that was serenissima
The adjective was applied to the state, not the city, which in its heyday was more intrusively and brutally commercialized and hectic than today. Of course, at least the brutalizers from that era left behind the amazing architectural facade as their monument, while it is difficult to see what their comtemporary counterparts will leave behind, except ruin.
Most serene probably was, if only ironically, a good description of their governance, since the ruling oligarchs managed, through and with the facade of public governance, to get for themselves a de facto form of non-governance that froze out the very possibility of change. Not unlike what we have in the US today, down to such details as the over-developed secret police, as well as other features of a security state.
Brian Sholis 07.01.09 at 3:38 pm
It’s worth noting that each Documenta and Venice Biennale is organized by a different curator, and that the particular tastes and decision-making processes of those curators determines the characteristics of the resultant exhibition. Documenta 12, in 2007, was very different from this year’s Venice Biennale primarily because Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack, organizers of the earlier exhibition, are very different from Daniel Birnbaum, who organized the main exhibition at this year’s Biennale in Venice.
Also, those who enjoy Venice in winter may wish to read Joseph Brodsky’s small book Watermark. I recently posted two brief excerpts from it on my website.
Gene O'Grady 07.01.09 at 4:20 pm
I was there in November/December 1972 and have always wanted to go back. Maybe it’s just as well I won’t be able to. At that time it was a combination of romance beyond fantasy and push commercialism; although I was rather fond of the Coca ad in the Piazza San Marco where they spilled birdseed in the shape of bevete Coca Cola and got the pigeons to advertise.
Two questions — is it just as bad in the winter nowadays, and is the pizza uniquely Italian, so that it is something of an education for the tourists? (Not that uniquely Italian pizza is necessarily a good thing, even for those of us who can handle fish eyes. I remember once when I had a baby and very little money spending my last couple thousand lire on pizza that looked to be covered with exotic cheeses and instead was topped with less than exotic potato chips.
Brock 07.01.09 at 4:22 pm
This post puts me in mind of the “Dinner with Digby” sketch by Fry and Laurie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiV4F7HWHRk
“The place is positively heaving with Italians!”
fred lapides 07.01.09 at 6:32 pm
…things change. you changed too…nothing stays the same …your can go home again but they’ve turned it into a strip mall.
Stephen Kelly 07.01.09 at 6:41 pm
I visited Venice in July 2005 with my wife-to-be. We stayed in an apartment in a street just off the bridge from the train station. There were no other tourists in the area, apart from those streaming from the train station to the Piazza San Marco. We avoided the tourist trail, visiting Piazza San Marco very early in the morning. We found dozens of alleys, streets and hide-aways throughout the city which were wholly tourist-free and felt like natives when we came upon the vulgarity of the Rialto or San Marco. Indeed, in the bars, cafes and restaurants we frequented, we were the only tourists. In one, we were laughingly told we were welcome, but not to tell other tourists about the place. Late in the trip I took my wife-to-be to an outstanding seafood restaurant where I proposed marriage. As we made plans in the near-empty restaurant two disconsolate American tourists took the table nearby. They were clearly in bad form, a wonderful advertisement for marriage.
WIFE: So you don’t like it?
HUSBAND: No, it’s smelly and dirty and not what I expected.
WIFE (indifferently): but you’ve wanted to come here for years.
HUSBAND: to be honest, Venice in Vegas was more impressive.
I was reminded of this idiotic exchange by this post. Bella Venezia – as long as one avoids (American?) tourists!
des von bladet 07.01.09 at 7:08 pm
I went to Venice once, a few years ago, just before however they spell carnival. It was actually quite enigmatic and pleasant, although my perceptions were certainly improved by the fact that I was there for work and never got anywhere near the touriste areas.
(I wasn’t really interested in Heritage except for Paperino and Dylan Dog, which I am happy to inform timberites are widely available at kiosks even in the quietest parts of the city.)
Steve LaBonne 07.01.09 at 7:16 pm
Also, both commercial / maritime empires, with often aggressive foreign policies run with an eye to their oligarchs’ economic interests, and both began as outposts of older empires. I never thought about it before, but there really are multiple parallels, on very different scales of course. Interesting point.
I don’t think we’ll be leaving quite as distinguished an artistic heritage behind, though.
Stephen Johnson 07.01.09 at 7:19 pm
I was in Venice last in early November 2007. No crowds, no flooding, and near perfect weather. Sitting in the gallery of San Marco watching the sunlight move over the mosaics was wonderful.
La Serenessima still can be found, sometimes. Cheers!
novakant 07.01.09 at 9:50 pm
Are there still disfigured dwarfs dressed in red capes running around with knives?
'stina 07.01.09 at 10:31 pm
1995, around Easter time, was lovely in Venice. A few tourists, but not many, and great explorations.
1996, right after finals but right before Christmas, in Venice was one of the best experiences in a foreign city I’ve ever had. Almost no tourists, sun set near four, the city was coated with a mysterious and romantic fog. My companions and I, returning from a foray to the near-empty Guggenheim stumbled upon an open air market in a piazza one night. It was close to eight at night, but business was brisk: old books, antiques, jewelry, vintage clothes. Nothing plastic or touristy or gauche. It was simply lovely, and we spent a good hour and a half or so browsing. I’m pretty sure we were the only foreigners around.
The next morning, we went back to that piazza and all traces of the market were gone.
StevenAttewell 07.01.09 at 10:35 pm
Having gone to Venice in August, I can say the tourist crowds are less substantial then. It’s ungodly hot though, which tends to force a semi-nocturnal lietstyle, and Venice in the evenings in late summer is quite nice.
Although…ye gods, the canals in late summer.
And while we’re on the subject of Italian city-state republics, I’ve always been more attracted to the Florentine Republic. Intellectual and cultural ferment, struggle against aristocrats both internal and external, and of course, Machiavelli.
Randy Paul 07.02.09 at 1:41 am
Novakant,
Don’t Look Now, but I think I saw one.
My wife and I visited Venice in March of 2007. the crowds were huge, but I believe the most fun we had was in Cannareggio, the area where we stayed. There’s lots to see there: The Ghetto that gave the world the name, the church where Tintoretto is buried as well as his house, a poignant Holocaust memorial, few crowds, neighborhoods where families lived and worked and lots of stores and restaurants where I had to use my very rudimentary Italian. I have pictures ,a href=”http://www.beautifulhorizons.net/photos/venice_and_cannareggio/index.html”>here.
Randy Paul 07.02.09 at 1:43 am
Screwed up the link. Pictures are here.
eric 07.02.09 at 3:38 am
I’m surprised nobody has referenced Regis Debray’s “Against Venice”. I read it just before a trip to Italy a few years ago, and it had me convinced that I was going to hate Venice. It turned out to me among my favorite places. It probably helped that, like others who’ve already commented, we went in the off-season (March, when it was plenty misty and mysterious) and stayed in an apartment in a residential section rather than a hotel. Perhaps it also helped that I went with such low expectations. But I would go back — in winter — in a heartbeat.
John Quiggin 07.02.09 at 5:10 am
I enjoyed the Bourdieu essay, though large parts of it only served to confirm my suspicion that an acquaintance with the phrase “cultural capital”, and the intuitions that phrase suggest to an economist do not go all that far in understanding cultural sociology.
Chris Bertram 07.02.09 at 5:47 am
Yes, it is possible to have a perfectly fine experience of Venice. Avoid San Marco, especially at peak times. Spend time in Dorsoduro and other areas, get on the vaporetto and get out to Burano and Torcello. There are certainly plently of locals doing things on Burano.
Aika S. Granzchesta 07.02.09 at 6:07 pm
I prefer to stay on Neo Venezia, where the undine are much cuter than the gondoliers of Earth’s Venice.
StevenAttewell 07.02.09 at 7:22 pm
I just read the Debray excerpt. I dunno, I think when you are so highbrow and aesthetically-intense that you denounce the Ode to Joy, you’re too damn indie.
kat 07.06.09 at 3:08 am
I’ll echo what others have said:
At non-peak times (I went in mid February), Venice is unbelievable. My strategy was that on the first day, I would purposely get lost, just to find some un-touristed little streets.
The food is pretty bad, though. I splurged for one meal, and went to a restaurant recommended by my guide book. It was on the ground floor of a swanky hotel and was amazing. Otherwise, everything I ate was overpriced and tourist-oriented.
maitresse 07.06.09 at 7:55 pm
It is not actually that difficult to escape the tourist hordes, particularly in san polo, santa croce, cannareggio, and dorsoduro. ok, anywhere that isn’t san marco or the immediate vicinity of the biennale. The place you mention as thronged with youngsters behind the fish market is a wonderful place for an apéro no matter what your age, and the restaurant (Bancogiro) is really great too.
Comments on this entry are closed.