IX.v. Venice Absurd

"Among the many strange things that have befallen Venice, she has had the good fortune to become the object of passion to a man of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in doing so has made her the world's."
- Henry James

my visits to Venice, Florence, and other major cities, that these places will only become increasingly crowded until my departure from Italy. I had been too spoiled during the winter months when even Venice was largely empty of tourists, turned over instead to meeker, more sensitive travelers. Still, despite the masses of heedless individuals in Saint Mark's square, the scaffolding, the hawkers, the pigeons, we still found the space and time necessary to admire something set apart from the crowd. Dizzy and enthralled by their imagery, we spent a good half hour admiring the intricately carved capitals of Istrian stone that support the first level of the Ducal palace, the pages of a petrified encyclopedia ignored by nearly all and drowned out by the crass outdoor orchestra in front of one of the cafes in the square. It seemed as though we were the only ones to have taken notice of the glorious sculptures ever since Ruskin lavished a good ten pages on them in The Stones of Venice. Still, we had fallen victim to Mary McCarthy's now famous assertion that nothing in the floating city can ever be looked on with any degree of originality. Well aware of this irony, I had taken Venice Observed along with me, and read out loud a humorous passage while we ate our lunch on the steps of Campo San Beneto:
    One thing is certain. Sophistication, that modern kind of sophistication that begs to differ, to be paradoxical, to invert, is not a possible attitude in Venice. In time, this becomes the beauty of the place. One gives up the struggle and submits to a classic experience. One accepts the fact that what one is about to feel or say has not only been said before by Goethe or Musset but is on the tip of the tongue of the tourist from Iowa who is alighting in the Piazzetta with his wife in her furpiece and jeweled pin.
    What could one do but concur and give up the childish protests against other tourists that necessarily reflect back upon any foreigner here, however sensitive? I surrendered and found it difficult as ever to conceal the passion that grips me when talking about the mirrored marble sheets, the distant spolia, the holy relics, the gold that adorns Saint Mark's. I went through all the glorious catalogue of thievery and pride; the columns from Tyre, the porphyry tetrarchs from Alexandria, the Chinese bronze chimera that somehow made its way here in the twelfth century, the Constantinopolitan horses briefly in Paris, the granite, the alabaster, the stone, as if I had captured it all myself and it belonged to me.

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    Our day in Venice had gone seamlessly. It was only upon leaving the city that disaster happened upon us. Half an hour into its voyage, our train ended its run unannounced. The redoubtable Italian sciopero had struck us a severe blow. We were stranded, more than I had ever been in this country, in front of the unwelcoming train station at Padua. It was late, and no further trains were to operate for the next twenty-four hours. We weren't quite alone, and some were public enough with their discontent to require a police escort for the departing railway employees who so promptly left the confines of the station at precisely nine o'clock.
    Almost despairing, we had nearly taken the painful decision to book a room at the youth hostel located at the other end of town. Just then, a kindly man in his thirties asked us if we were trying to get back to Bologna. He informed us that he, too, had to return home tonight no matter what the cost. His car was parked in Ferrara, some one hundred kilometers away, and he had no choice but to take a taxi in order to recuperate it. If we split the cost of the taxi with him, he could then drive us on to Bologna, as he needed to go even further, on to Reggio Emilia. We consented fearing this was the only plausible option, though it was expensive, and were finally able to find a taxi less outrageously priced than all the others. We reached Ferrara, found our friend's car, and eventually returned to the security and comfort of Bologna. In the meantime, the personable though slightly absent-minded man who so altruistically assisted us, Luca by name, had even offered to chauffeur us around the Emilian countryside on Sunday when we planned to visit various outlying villages. We politely declined, saying that he had already gone far enough out of his way for us. Before parting, he insisted on giving us his number on the off chance that we would require his vehicular help once again. Tired, happy to be back in Bologna after yet another long day, we collapsed into our respective bed and did not wake up until late the next morning.