Part 11

Yet not less favoured when awake,--for now, Across my torpid brow Swept a cool current of the young night’s air, With a sharp kiss, and there Was I all clear awake,--drawn soft along There in my dear gondola, among The bright-eyed Venice isles, Lit up in constant smiles.-- What had my thoughts and heart to do With wild Egyptian bark, or frail canoe, Or mythic skiff out of Saturnian days, When I was there, with that rare scene to praise, That gondola to rest in and enjoy, That actual bliss to taste without alloy? Cradler of placid pleasures, deep delights, Bosomer of the poet’s wearied mind, Tempter from vulgar passions, scorns and spites, Enfolder of all feelings that be kind,-- Before our souls thy quiet motions spread, In one great calm, one undivided plain, Immediate joy, blest memories of the dead, And iris-tinted forms of hope’s domain, Child of the still lagoons, Open to every show Of summer sunsets and autumnal moons, Such as no other space of world can know,-- Dear boat, that makest dear Whatever thou comest near,-- In thy repose still let me gently roam, Still on thy couch of beauty find a home; Still let me share thy comfortable peace With all I have of dearest upon Earth, Friend, mistress, sister; and when death’s release Shall call my spirit to another birth, Would that I might thus lightly lapse away, Alone,--by moonlight,--in a gondola.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

WERE LIFE BUT AS THE GONDOLA!

Afloat; we move. Delicious! Ah, What else is like the gondola? This level floor of liquid glass Begins beneath us swift to pass. It goes as though it went alone By some impulsion of its own. (How light it moves, how softly! Ah, Were all things like the gondola!)

How light it moves, how softly! Ah, Could life, as does our gondola, Unvexed with quarrels, aims and cares, And moral duties and affairs, Unswaying, noiseless, swift, and strong, For ever thus--thus glide along! (How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!)

With no more motion than should bear A freshness to the languid air; With no more effort than exprest The need and naturalness of rest, Which we beneath a grateful shade Should take on peaceful pillows laid! (How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!)

In one unbroken passage borne To closing night from opening morn, Uplift at whiles slow eyes to mark Some palace front, some passing bark; Through windows catch the varying shore, And hear the soft turns of the oar! (How light we move, how softly! Ah, Were life but as the gondola!) ...

How light we go, how soft we skim! And all in moonlight seem to swim. In moonlight is it now, or shade? In planes of sure division made, By angles sharp of palace walls The clear light and the shadow falls; O sight of glory, sight of wonder! Seen, a pictorial portent, under. O great Rialto, the vast round Of thy thrice-solid arch profound! (How light we go, how softly! Ah, Life should be as the gondola!)

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

THE SONGS OF THE GONDOLIERS

This evening I bespoke the celebrated _song_ of the mariners, who sing Tasso and Ariosto to melodies of their own. This must actually be ordered, as it is not to be heard as a thing of course, but rather belongs to the half-forgotten traditions of former times. I entered a gondola by moonlight, 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, without any fixed time. The modulation is also uniform, only varying with a sort of declamation both tone and measures, 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.

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 low 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 half-way between the two.

In order to let me hear it, they landed on the bank of the Giudecca, 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 boatman said: ‘È singolare, come 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, sang 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 and 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.

GOETHE.

THE GONDOLA

Boy, call the gondola; the sun is set.-- It came, and we embarked; but instantly, As at the waving of a magic wand, Though she had stept on board so light of foot, So light of heart, laughing she knew not why, Sleep overcame her; on my arm she slept. From time to time I waked her; but the boat Rocked her to sleep again. The moon was now Rising full-orbed, but broken by a cloud. The wind was hushed, and the sea mirror-like. A single zephyr, as enamoured, played With her loose tresses, and drew more and more Her veil across her bosom. Long I lay Contemplating that face so beautiful.... I went alone beneath the silent moon; Thy square, St. Mark, thy churches, palaces, Glittering and frost-like, and, as day drew on, Melting away, an emblem of themselves. Those porches passed, thro’ which the water-breeze Plays, though no longer on the noble forms That moved there, sable-vested--and the quay, Silent, grass-grown--adventurer-like, I launched Into the deep, ere long discovering Isles such as cluster in the Southern seas, All verdure.... In Venice, when again In that strange place, so stirring and so still, Where nothing comes to drown the human voice But music, or the dashing of the tide, Ceased I to wonder. Now a Jessica Sung to her lute, her signal as she sate At her half-open window. Then, methought, A serenade broke silence, breathing hope Thro’ walls of stone, and torturing the proud heart Of some Priuli. Once, we could not err, (It was before an old Palladian house, As between night and day we floated by), A gondolier lay singing: and he sung, As in the time when Venice was herself, Of Tancred and Erminia. On our oars, We rested; and the verse was verse divine! We could not err--perhaps he was the last-- For none took up the strain, none answered him; And, when he ceased, he left upon my ear A something like the dying voice of Venice! The moon went down; and nothing now was seen Save where the lamp of a Madonna shone Faintly--or heard, but when he spoke, who stood Over the lantern at the prow and cried, Turning the corner of some reverend pile, Some school or hospital of old renown, Tho’ haply none were coming, none were near, ‘Hasten or slacken.’ But at length Night fled; And with her fled, scattering, the sons of pleasure. Star after star shot by, or, meteor-like, Crossed me and vanished--lost at once among Those hundred isles that tower majestically, That rise abruptly from the water-mark, Nor with rough crag, but marble, and the work Of noblest architects.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

SING TO ME, GONDOLIER

Sing to me, Gondolier! Sing words from Tasso’s lay; While blue, and still, and clear, Night seems but softer day. The gale is gently falling, As if it paused to hear Some strain the past recalling-- Sing to me, Gondolier!

Oh, ask me not to wake The memory of the brave; Bid no high numbers break The silence of the wave. Gone are the noble-hearted, Closed the bright pageants here; And the glad song is departed From the mournful Gondolier!

MRS. HEMANS.

THE GONDOLIER’S CRY

Most persons are now well acquainted with the general aspect of the Venetian gondola, but few have taken the pains to understand the cries of warning uttered by its boatmen, although those cries are peculiarly characteristic, and very impressive to a stranger.... It may perhaps be interesting to the traveller in Venice to know the general method of management of the boat to which he owes so many happy hours.

A gondola is in general rowed only by one man, _standing_ at the stern; those of the upper classes having two or more boatmen, for greater speed and magnificence. In order to raise the oar sufficiently, it rests, not on the side of the boat, but on a piece of crooked timber like the branch of a tree, rising about a foot from the boat’s side, and called a ‘fórcola.’ The fórcola is of different forms, according to the size and uses of the boat, and it is always somewhat complicated in its parts and curvature, allowing the oar various kinds of rest and catches on both its sides, but perfectly free play in all cases; as the management of the boat depends on the gondolier’s being able in an instant to place his oar in any position. The fórcola is set on the right-hand side of the boat, some six feet from the stern: the gondolier stands on a little flat platform or deck behind it, and throws nearly the entire weight of his body upon the forward stroke. The effect of this stroke would be naturally to turn the boat’s head round to the left, as well as to send it forward; but this tendency is corrected by keeping the blade of the oar under the water in the return stroke, and raising it gradually, as a full spoon is raised out of any liquid, so that the blade emerges from the water only an instant before it again plunges. A _downward_ and lateral pressure upon the fórcola is thus obtained, which entirely counteracts the tendency given by the forward stroke; and the effort, after a little practice, becomes hardly conscious, though, as it adds some labour to the back stroke, rowing a gondola at speed is hard and breathless work, though it appears easy and graceful to the looker-on.

If then the gondola is to be turned to the left, the forward impulse is given without the return stroke; if it is to be turned to the right, the plunged oar is brought forcibly up to the surface; in either case a single strong stroke being enough to turn the light and flat-bottomed boat. But as it has no keel, when the turn is made sharply, as out of one canal into another very narrow one, the impetus of the boat in its former direction gives it an enormous leeway, and it drifts laterally up against the wall of the canal, and that so forcibly, that if it has turned at speed, no gondolier can arrest the motion merely by strength or rapidity of stroke of oar; but it is checked by a strong thrust of the foot against the wall itself, the head of the boat being, of course, turned for the moment almost completely round to the opposite wall, and greater exertion made to give it, as quickly as possible, impulse in the new direction.

The boat being thus guided, the cry ‘Premi’ is the order from one gondolier to another that he should ‘press’ or thrust forward his oar, without the back stroke, so as to send his boat’s head round _to the left_; and the cry ‘Stali’ is the order that he should give the return or upward stroke which sends the boat’s head round to the _right_. Hence, if two gondoliers meet under any circumstances which render it a matter of question on which side they should pass each other, the gondolier who has at the moment the least power over his boat cries to the other ‘Premi,’ if he wishes the boats to pass with their right-hand sides to each other, and ‘Stali’ if with their left. Now, in turning a corner, there is, of course, risk of collision between boats coming from opposite sides, and warning is always clearly and loudly given on approaching an angle of the canals. It is, of course, presumed that the boat which gives the warning will be nearer the turn than the one which receives and answers it; and, therefore, will not have so much time to check itself or alter its course. Hence the advantage of the turn--that is, the outside, which allows the fullest swing, and greatest room for leeway--is always yielded to the boat which gives warning. Therefore, if the warning boat is going to turn to the right, as it is to have the outside position, it will keep its own right-hand side to the boat which it meets, and the cry of warning is therefore ‘Premi,’ twice given; first as soon as it can be heard round the angle, prolonged and loud, with the accent on the _e_, and another strongly accented _e_ added, a kind of question, ‘Prémi-é,’ followed, at the instant of turning, with ‘Ah Premí,’ with the accent sharp on the final _i_. If, on the other hand, the warning boat is going to turn to the left, it will pass with its left-hand side to the one it meets; and the warning cry is, ‘Stálié, Ah Stalí.’ Hence the confused idea in the mind of the traveller that Stali means ‘to the left,’ and ‘Premi’ to the right; while they mean, in reality, the direct reverse: the Stali, for instance, being the order to the unseen gondolier who may be behind the corner, coming from the left-hand side, that he should hold as much as possible _to his own right_; this being the only safe order for him, whether he is going to turn the corner himself, or to go straight on; for as the warning gondola will always swing right across the canal in turning, a collision with it is only to be avoided by keeping well within it, and close up to the corner which it turns.

There are several other cries necessary in the management of the gondola, but less frequently, so that the reader will hardly care for their interpretation; except only the ‘sciar,’ which is the order to the opposite gondolier to stop the boat as suddenly as possible by slipping his oar in front of the fórcola. The _cry_ is never heard except when the boatmen have got into some unexpected position, involving a risk of collision; but the action is seen constantly, when the gondola is rowed by two or more men (for if performed by the single gondolier it only swings the boat’s head sharp round to the right), in bringing up at a landing-place, especially when there is any intent of display, the boat being first urged to its full speed and then stopped with as much foam about the oar-blades as possible, the effect being much like that of stopping a horse at speed by pulling him on his haunches.

JOHN RUSKIN.

GONDOLIERS

VENICE, _May 1, 1834_.

You always wish to seize boldly upon beauty, to feel and know what it is, to know why and how nature is worthy of your admiration and love. I was explaining these feelings to our friend the other evening, as we were passing in a gondola under the sombre arcade of the Bridge of Sighs. Do you remember the light which is seen at the end of the canal, and which is reflected and multiplied in the old and shining marble of the palace of Bianca Cappello? In all Venice there is no canalletto more mysterious, more melancholy. This single light, glancing on all surrounding objects but enlightening none, dancing on the water, and appearing to play in the wake of the passing gondolas, as though it were an _ignis fatuus_ attached to their course, made me remember that long line of lamps which trembles in the Seine, and which in the water looks like long crooked tracks of fire.... I was quite absorbed in my customary fantasies, when I saw upon the canal of St. George, among the other objects upon its surface, a black spot moving so rapidly as soon to leave all the others behind. It was the new and brilliant gondola of the young Catullo. When within sight, I recognized the flower of our gondoliers, in his nankin vest.... In the interval of dipping the oar into the tranquil mirror of the lake, from time to time, he threw a glance of satisfaction upon his resplendent image, and charmed with his appearance, and penetrated with gratitude towards the generous soul of his patron, he managed the gondola with a vigorous hand, and made her bound over the waters like a wild duck.

Giulio (Catullo’s brother) was at the other end of the barque, and seconded his efforts with all the ease of a true child of the Adriatic. Our friend Pietro was lying indolently on the carpet of the gondola, and the beautiful Beppa, seated on the black morocco cushions, let the wind play among her ebony tresses, parted on her noble brow, and falling in two long loose curls upon her bosom.... The gondola slackened its pace whilst one of the rowers took breath, and when it neared the shady banks, it floated idly on the waves which caressed the marble stairs of the garden. Pietro asked Beppa to sing. Giulio took his guitar, and Beppa’s voice rose into the air full of passion as the appeal of a syren. She sang a verse from a song which Pietro composed for some fair lady, perhaps for Beppa herself:

‘Con lei sull’ onda placida Errai dalla laguna, Ella gli sguardi immobili In te fissava o luna! E a che pensava allor? Era un morrente palpito? Era un nascente amor?’

GEORGE SAND.

GONDOLIERS’ MUSIC

The gondolier, stationed at the _traghetto_, invites passengers by the most miraculous offers: ‘Will you go to Trieste this afternoon, monseigneur? Here is a beautiful gondola, that does not fear the tempest in the open sea, and a gondolier ready to row you, without stopping, to Constantinople.’ Unexpected pleasures are the only pleasures in the world. Yesterday I wished to go and see the moon rise over the Adriatic; I had never been able to decide Catullo to conduct me to the Lido. He pretended, what they all pretend when they do not wish to obey, that the water or the wind was contrary.... I was in desperate ill-humour when we met, just opposite La Salute, a barque which was floating gently towards the Grand Canal, leaving behind it, like a perfume, the sounds of a delightful serenade. ‘Turn the prow,’ said I to old Catullo; ‘I hope you are strong enough to follow that gondola.’ Another barque floating idly by, imitated my example, then a second, then another; at last all those who were enjoying the fresh air on the canal, and several even which were vacant, and whose gondoliers surrounded us, crying, ‘Music, music,’ with an air, hungry as the Israelites in the desert for the manna. In ten minutes a flotilla was formed round these dilettanti; all the oars were silent, and the barques were left at the will of the current.

The harmony floated softly in the breeze and the hautbois sighed so sweetly that each one held his breath for fear of interrupting its accents so full of tenderness and love. The violin mingled its voice so sad,--with such sympathetic yearnings.... Then the harp gave forth two or three chords of harmonious sounds, which seemed to descend from heaven, and promise the caresses and consolation of its angels to all souls suffering on this earth. Then came the horn as from the depths of a wood, and each of us might fancy he saw his first love advance from the forests of Friuli, and approach with these sounds of joy. The hautbois replied with sounds more full of passion than those uttered by the dove seeking her mate in the air. The violin exhaled its sobs of convulsive joy, the harp gave forth its full and generous vibrations, like the palpitations of an ardent breast, and then the sounds of the four instruments mingled like happy souls embracing each other before their departure for a better world. I drank in their accents, and my imagination heard them after they had ceased to exist. Their passage left a magic warmth in the atmosphere, as though Love had agitated it with his wings.

There was some minutes’ silence, which no one dared to break. The melodious barque began to flee before us as though it wished to make its escape, but we quickly followed in its track; we might have been compared to a flock of petrels disputing the possession of a goldfish. We pressed upon its flight with our prows, like large steel scythes in the moon’s beams, shining like the fiery teeth of Ariosto’s dragons. The fugitive achieved its deliverance in the same way as Orpheus: some chords from the harp reduced us all to order and silence. At the sound of its light _arpeggios_, three barques ranged themselves on each side of the one bearing the music, and followed the _adagio_ with the most religious slowness. The others remained behind like a cortège, and this was perhaps the best situation for hearing. This long file of silent gondolas, floating gently with the wind on the magnificent Grand Canal of Venice, was a _coup-d’œil_ which realized the most lovely dreams. Every undulation of the water, every slight movement of the oars, seemed to respond sympathetically to the sentiment of each musical passage, extracted from the harmonious themes of Oberon and Guillaume Tell. The gondoliers, erect on the poop, their bold attitudes clearly defined against the blue atmosphere, seemed to form a background of dark spectres behind the groups of friends and lovers they were conducting. The moon rose slowly, and peeping curiously over the roofs, seemed also to listen and love the music. A palace on one side of the canal, yet plunged in obscurity, defined upon the clear sky its enormous Moorish outlines, darker than the gates of hell.

The other shore, illumined by the rays of the full moon, at that time as large and brilliant as a silver shield, received the light upon its silent and serene arcades. These immense piles of fairy-like buildings, lighted only by the stars, wore an aspect of solitude, repose, and immobility truly sublime. The slender statues rising by hundreds into the air seemed mysterious spirits watching the repose of the quiet city, slumbering like the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and condemned, like her, to slumber for a hundred years or more.

GEORGE SAND.

THE GONDOLIERS OF VENICE