Watermark

"Many moons ago the dollar was 870 lire and I was thirty-two."

Thus begins this really lovely meditation on Venice. Though it is occasionally marred by what I can only term "excessive use of language", a habit of Brodsky's of using multiple synonyms and esoteric words (perhaps because English is not his first language?), one easily puts that to one side.

Brodsky explains why everyone goes shopping when they come to Venice (like one needs an excuse!): "For this is the city of the eye; your other faculties play a faint second fiddle. The way the hues and rhythms of the local façades try to smooth the waves' ever-changing colors and patterns alone may send you to grab a fancy scarf, tie, or whatnot; it glues even an inveterate bachelor to show more a window flooded with its motley flaunted dresses, not to mention patent-leather shoes and suede boots scattered like all sorts of boats upon the laguna."

One of the chapters describes being shown a palazzo, going from a "long, poorly lit gallery with a convex ceiling swarming with putti", through a library with "fat, white, vellum-bound volumes . . . just enough for a gentleman; more would turn him into a penseur, with disastrous consequences either for his manners or for his estate" thence to an enfilade, room after empty room, with drapes brittle and threadbare, golden-framed mirrors, all powdered with dust and "unreasonably ghostly", until at last they reach the master bedroom. There looms a four-poster bed, sculptured with grotesque cherubs, and a portable TV in the corner.

For Brodsky, on his academic schedule, Venice is a city for winter, cold, wet, eerily beautiful, where "King Fog rode into the piazza, reined in his stalion, and started to unfurl his white turban".

If this book doesn't make you want to go to Venice, nothing will. show less

I read Joseph Brodsky's essay on Venice before and during my recent trip there. As well as being my first time in Venice, it was the first of Brodsky's books that I had read. However, it was not my first book on Venice that I had read – Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is one of my favourite books and had in great part inspired my desire to see this fabled city, along with Ruskin's Stones of Venice on the city's architecture, and of course Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.
Brodsky's essay is very different to Calvino's fictional homage, in that it is made up of his own impressions from the 17 or so winters he spent there during his lifetime love affair with the city. Though it is billed as an essay, it actually takes the form of many show more small sections, mostly self-contained, a paragraph to a few pages in length. Each of these cover a train of thought on something particular, or in most cases not that particular, relating to the city. It is a very good book to dip in and out of. The general tone is reflective, poetic, wandering – like the canals themselves, musing, and revealing very much the spirit of the city. Brodsky is frequently amusing, and occasionally quite clever, but never authoritative in the way that Ruskin is, nor quite as poetic as Calvino. However he does write with a particular type of knowing wit that is his own, and his philosophising though often given to sentimentality is not lacking in insight of a kind.
Add this to the worthwhile list of books to read on Venice, whether you have been yet or not, and soak up the unique atmosphere of this island labyrinth. show less

If there is one book on the imagination of Venice that architects read it is Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Such was the case when I spent a semester in Tuscany in the mid-1990s, and I'm guessing such is the case today. But wanting to venture beyond Calvino's classic for a recent trip to Venice (to cover the Biennale) I picked up Russian writer Joseph Brodsky's account of his visits to a city he clearly loved. Even though it is more memoir than fiction, what is real and what is not is never really clear. Brodsky talks about Venice during the winter, a time when the tourists stay away, which manages to paint the city even more fantastical (and sensual) than it is.

Watermark is powerful prose poetry, sometimes flashing a vivid image before the reader’s inner eye, sometimes wrapping its pearls tightly inside almost haiku-like sentences. “One is what one looks at,” Brodsky says, and I am glad I looked at this.

Brodsky's elegy to Venice swims in his own rather maudlin pensiveness. You can take him out of the city, but you cannot take the city out of him - he returns over and over - mostly in the winter. He is vaguely homophobic in his description of giggling queens at a party. And yet draws on seemingly vastly cultivated friends to lend some heft to his moody wandering around this city that fascinates him. His favorite word in the book seems to be "chordate."

“La bellezza non può essere programmata, essendo sempre l’effetto secondario di altre ricerche, spesso molto normali”.

Letto fra l’andata e ritorno di un breve soggiorno a Venezia (fine settimana alla Biennale), questo libretto mi lascia tanta ammirazione per la scrittura di Brodskij ma in fondo poco coinvolgimento nel suo amore per Venezia. Le note sul ruolo dell’occhio, sull’arte e sulla bellezza risultano - per me - più memorabili di quelle sulla nebbia e sull’acqua. Ma forse devo lasciar sedimentare questa lettura e riprenderla magari in occasione del prossimo passaggio in Laguna.

My only complaint about this book has nothing to do with the author or the writing, but the tiresome and obtuse marginalia of my used copy. Don’t write in books unless you have something to say. The same goes for writing books. Brodsky at least has something interesting to say even if his readers are dull-witted.