Lagoon Part Two

Here we are visiting the Island of Torcello for lunch.

both quotes below are from Wikipedia

"Torcello is a sparsely populated[ island at the 

northern end of the Venetian Lagoon, in north-eastern Italy.

It is the oldest continuously populated region of Venice,

and once held the largest population of the Republic of

Venice."

One of the most popular site is,

"The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (Cattedrale di 

Santa Maria Assunta) is a basilica church. It is a notable 

example of Venetian-Byzantine architecture, one of the most 

ancient religious edifices in the Venetto, and containing the 

earliest mosaics in the area of Venice."

We were blown away by how lovely the island was and 

the mosaic's in the church were amazing. We hoped to go 

back for a second visit but ran out of time.

                               

We did climb the church tower, but most of my photos

were not great, it was still a bit foggy. Someone has found

a way to shorten the commute.

The boat driver took us to a family fish farm. This farm was not stocked 

with a single species like ours are, they open metal gates so the fry can 

enter and then close them and feed whatever enters.

Helen loved this small building that was built on an

old barge that was then floated in and sunk.

Hunters were busy building duck blinds.

"On the far shore

a white bird is standing

like a white candle —"

from At Great Pond

by Mary Oliver

The lagoon was very quiet and peaceful, we saw egrets, herons, 

cormorants, gulls, terns, a Kingfisher, swallows, and shorebirds,

but none of the sparrows and blackbirds we expected.

Leonard Norman Cohen, 21 September 1934 – 10 November 2016

"All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky 
The holy books are open wide 
The doctors working day and night 
But they'll never ever find that cure for love 
There ain't no drink no drug 
(Ah tell them, angels) 
There's nothing pure enough to be a cure for love "

"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin 

                    Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in 
                   Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove 
                                     Dance me to the end of love"

" They are also called liberal because their aim to free us. 

It's as if knowledge contains within itself the power

 to give us some form of freedom, to free us from 

various sorts of tyranny; "

from reading dante (text version of the free 

Yale Open Course on Dante' s Comedy)

by Giuseppe Mazzotta, this quote is on 

the difference between the liberal and 
mechanical arts, "an old medieval 
distinction."

I think in this trying time, when rationality and decency seem
largely absent, that I need to turn my back on the certainties 

of the past, engage less in the present (especially the news) 
and quietly reexamine what I want to do for myself, my family
and what I want to contribute to the world. I see this as part exile

and part journey of discovery, to identify some new mental or 
emotional tools that can bring me a new, stronger sense of 
equilibrium that I can use to deal with a changing world.

I may have mentioned before that I have spent many years
studying the lives and works to two very contradictory individuals

 Charles Darwin and Dante Alighieri, in my mind Darwin personifies 
scientific inquiry and Dante the results of government and faith 
questioned. Both questioned what they saw, spoke truth to power
and both left works of great beauty and power. As Dante himself 
may have melodramatically phrased it , They shall be my Virgil.

"I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours 

of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, 

meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns 

taken, cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, 

Poland, &c., daily musters and preparations, and such like; 

which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many 

men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights; 

peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarums. A vast confusion 

of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, 

proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our 

ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole 

catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, 

schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now 

come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, 

jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, 

sports, plays ; then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, 

cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, 

burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, 

then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers created, 

to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours 

conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another 

breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then 

again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, 

weeps, &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public 

news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world"

from Anatomy of Melancholy 

by Robert Burton 

Venice Lagoon Part 1

"the tide
and the current for a moment seemed to hang
still in balance and the creaking and knocking
of wood stopped all at once and the known voices
died away"

from Another River

by W.S. Merwin

We spent a day on the Venetian lagoon. It was a bit foggy 

to start but lovely by late morning.

“Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.” 

from In the Skin of a Lion

Michael Ondaatje

"The Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark (officially known in Italian as the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco and commonly known as Saint Mark's Basilica) is the cathedral church of the Roam Catholic Archdiocese of Venice, northern Italy. It is the most famous of the city's churches and one of the best known examples of Italo-Byzantine architecture It lies at the eastern end of the Piazza San Marco, adjacent and connected to the Doge's Palace. Originally it was the chapel of the Doge, and has only been the city's cathedral since 1807." 

from Wikipedia

Photos of the exterior of Saint Mark's 

"Which of the horses

we passed yesterday whinnied

all night in my dreams?

I want that one."

from Stories from Kansas

 by William Stafford

The Lion of Saint Mark

Ezekiel 1:5-28New King James Version (NKJV)

"Also from within it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. Each one had four faces, and each one had four wings.  Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the soles of calves’ feet. They sparkled like the color of burnished bronze.  The hands of a man were under their wings on their four sides; and each of the four had faces and wings. Their wings touched one another. The creatures did not turn when they went, but each one went straight forward.

As for the likeness of their faces, each had the face of a man; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right side, each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and each of the four had the face of an eagle.  Thus were their faces. Their wings stretched upward; two wings of each one touched one another, and two covered their bodies.  And each one went straight forward; they went wherever the spirit wanted to go, and they did not turn when they went."

I have been reading various translations of Dante's Comedy for many years as well as works and courses about it, so I developed an interest in Christian imagery and iconography. We saw these four figures, an angel, eagle, winged lion, and winged bull in painting and sculpture in many places, these examples are from the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, a stunning church a few blocks from our hotel. Some googling indicated they represent the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Since Venice is reputed to be the final resting place of the body of St. Mark a winged lion became a symbol of the city, and a favourite of my wife.

"St Mark, represented as a lion, is a typical Christian iconography derived from the prophetic visions contained in the verse of the Apocalypse of St John 4:7. The lion is one of the four living creatures described in the book as a place around the throne of the Almighty and they are chosen as symbols of the four evangelists. These "beings" were previously described by the prophet Ezekiel."

from Wikipedia

The Lion of St. Mark is depicted everywhere in Venice, in painting, sculptures and of course tourist fare like T-shirts, flags and busts, we came home with all three. 

Lions abound around St. Mark's Square and Basilica

Doge Francesco Foscari and the Lion

The Giant's Staircase at the Doge's Palace

The Doge's Palace

At the Arsenal of Venice

At a fish farm in the Venice Lagoon

At the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

The lion below adorns the monument to Titian

This rather melancholy lion occupies the memorial to the 

sculptor Canova

             Doge's Palace Vittore Carpaccio, The Lion of St Mark, 1516 

and detail

"O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall,

Were raining down dilated flakes of fire,

As of the snow on Alp without a wind. 

As Alexander, in those torrid parts 

of India, beheld upon his host 

Flames fall unbroken till they reached the ground,"

Dante Inferno XIV, Longfellow trans. 

And the winter weather, skiffs of snow regularly 

since our return from Venice 

continues apace.