Venice in My Dreams

On the night of January first, 2002, I dreamed that a woman came into my bedroom and wrote the word Venice on the wall. She resembled an old person I had met at a party that day, but a young version, with long blonde hair. Maybe it’s the same woman, a sixteenth-century courtesan, who lives in a novel in my head.

The next day I remembered how the last time I was in Venice, I’d imagined dressing in the kinds of clothes this courtesan wore, in the city where she lived. I had been researching Renaissance Venice for some time, reading about Veronica Franco, a sixteenth-century courtesan and poet. But recently I hadn’t been thinking much about traveling. I had a lot of pressing things to do at home in New York. After the dream however, when I looked at the web page for the city of Venice and discovered that Carnival began on February first, I found myself making plans to go there.

Like almost every New Yorker, I’d experienced great anxiety during 2001. None of the assumptions I’d made about my life could be taken for granted anymore. I’ve always been the kind of person who contemplated mortality on a daily basis, but now I’d become even more painfully aware of each moment slipping away, and needed to regain some sense of equilibrium. Whenever I’ve felt troubled I’ve found solace in Venice, and it was good to know I’d soon be there again.

I have an enduring fascination with Venice. For years before I went there for the first time, I had been having dreams with a few Italian words thrown in, although I had never studied the language. Once I ev/a/pen dreamed I was in a room overlooking a canal.

On another occasion, I was in a jewelry store and felt compelled to buy a small gold charm, a winged lion holding a book. Later I learned that this is the lion of St. Mark, patron saint of Veniceh2. St. Mark’s lion was the symbol of the Venetian city-state known as La Serenissima, The Most Serene Republic, which, until Napoleon arrived and conquered her, had been an independent community for almost a millennium.

Now Venice has turned into an expensive Disneyland, lined with souvenir and designer clothing shops, attracting throngs of tourists from all over the world. When John Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice, returned in 1845 after a lapse of six years, he was distraught over the decay that had taken place since his first visit. One hundred and fifty years later, I can only with difficulty try to imagine the splendor of the city during the Renaissance, when palaces were covered with porphyry and gold.

It’s still Venice, though, and the stones and buildings retain the vibrations of a thousand years of history. The first time I went there, in 1990, I spent the week in a daze, walking for hours. Surrounding me were Gothic and Byzantine palaces, ancient stone bridges, gondolas on the canals, busts of angels and faces in bas-relief on the facades of buildings, open-air markets, store windows displaying hand-blown glass, people of all nationalities mingling on the streets.

Each time I return, I have the sensation of being enveloped by something old, something real, something lasting. There’s an eternal feeling about the city, even as it crumbles into the sea.

After the plane reservations have been made and an apartment rented, I realize how relieved I am at the prospect of escaping New York City to return to a place where the only two modes of transportation are by foot or by boat. But the vaporetti, water taxis, are motorized and packed with tourists these days. So I prefer to walk or take the traghetto, the gondola service between two opposing points along a canal. That way I’m more in sync with the old ways.

I’ve never been able to feel a part of any particular group, church or organization, being more of a “solitary meditator.” But these days, no prayer or practice can stem my fear as dark waters of chaos swirl about the world. And although there are many religions and nationalities in New York, none seem intrinsic to the place. But in Venice, the vestiges of some of its once vast array of public rituals and calendrical rites still remain. As an independent Republic, Venice had a cohesive societal structure that allowed it to remain stable despite the tremendous forces for change that were occurring all around. Public rituals supported and sustained this unity and stability. Venetians of all classes identified strongly with their city, believing that it was a place chosen by God and that they were a chosen people. Legend has it that a mystical bond was established between Saint Mark and Venice when he stopped there while evangelizing in Italy. He had a dream in which an angel came and spoke the words that are now written on the book held by the winged lion: “Peace to you Mark, my Evangelist.” The angel also told him that his body would eventually rest there. And, according to legend, his relics were brought to Venice from Moslem controlled Alexandria in 827 or 828.

This, then, is the myth of Venice as a Renaissance Utopia, with a selfless ruling class, a balanced constitution, and a lack of social tensions.

Gabriele Fiamma, a fifteenth-century writer said: “I was born a Venetian and live in this happy homeland, protected by the prayers and guardianship of Saint Mark, from whom that Most Serene Republic acknowledges its greatness, its victories and all its good fortune.”

Ah, to be able to share in that feeling, if only for a little while.

From Rosebud