Cultura e letteratura inglese

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE: Turner's Venice

Turner's Venice is certainly part of the image that British had about Venice in the early 19th century. He is pointing at some aspects of Venice which will become iconic and stereotypical (in a positive way).

• "The Bridge of Sighs" and the "prison" are two striking images for Byron (the prison is an important element in B's biography and poetry = "The prisoner of Chillon")
• "Enchanter's wand": magical element; it will appear later in Victorian literature, which is highly indebted to Byron's poetic
• "Dying Glory": fall of Venice, recurrent element
• Venice is seen from afar (airy distance), perspective of Venice at a distance: reminds us of Turner's paintings (sense of distance)
• Venice will be codified in this way
• Lines in red = Byronic: city in decay nowadays, after presenting a city far away in time in the glorious past
• The buildings are collapsing

(decay);- The poets says that one would expect nature to overcome the ruins, but nature can't forget "how Venice once was dear" (contrast between nature and culture);- Nature respects the city of Venice and therefore has a special attitude towards it.Normally, "ruins become part of nature", according to Simmel's essay The Ruin. Byron instead, isclaiming that in Venice nature stops, and does not want to take over the city, because it respectsVenice's beauty and culture. This is a new, different, and special view on the typical notion of naturewinning over culture.4th stanza:- "spell": relationship with magic, literature and art (the strongest powers in the world);Venice cannot disappear (Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Othello, Turner'spaintings, Otway's Pierre, etc. grant Venice immortality);- These figures repeopled our imagination: Venice's power is disappearing, but its image willlast forever

colour: the colour of a city in decay.

184th and 185th stanzas (last lines of the poem):

• The poem ends "back home" (the poem is about a pilgrimage);
• Childe Harold's journey ends in water, in the ocean;
• The last image of the poem is about the poet leaving the city, facing the ocean, and dissolving;
• Venice dissolves with the poet (dissolution within the water and his voice).

Authoritative voices on Byron's work (critics):

"[cantos III and IV of Childe Harold] are pervaded by this sense of self which is constantly brought into existence in the mind and through language – and which is therefore also always provisional and on the point of dissolution"

Vincent Newey, "Authoring the Self, Childe Harold III and IV", in B. Betty and V. Newey (eds.), Byron and the Limits of Fiction, 1988, 152-65.

Tony Tanner writes about the image in Venice in writers:

• TT points out that Venice is seen from an "aery distance", from afar,

product of imagination, of magic;

This is the Venice which was codified in the 19th century;

Venice was an experience that travellers had, which combined decay and beauty;

Byron's element which will be developed by later Victorian and Modernist writers is that the beauty of Venice and its decay are seen as connected (Byron will notice that its beauty is not in spite of the decay, but connected with it);

Venice is even more beautiful because of its decay (the notion of beauty is changing because of the approach to the decadence aesthetic);

Venice is also unique in the combination of both factors.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The Shelleys were Byron's friends;

They go to Venice and meet with Byron in 1818;

After Venice they move towards Rome on a journey.

In Este, the Shelleys lost their little daughter (state of particular prostration).

Percy writes this poem, "Lines Written Upon Euganean Hills", in 1818. The poem is structured in 4 stanzas: Shelley

Il poeta si interroga su cosa possa sostenere un uomo nel dolore, perché ha bisogno di supporto mentre affronta le profonde tristezze della sua vita, e le strofe offrono le risposte alla sua domanda.

Il poema si apre con l'immagine della vita come un viaggio (una traversata in un mare pericoloso);

Il viaggio rappresenta un tipo di vita pericoloso;

Shelley scrive come le visioni che sorgono dai bellissimi paesaggi visti da una collina vicino a Este lo abbiano riportato in vita dalla disperazione;

Periodo romantico e immaginazione = il dolore può aiutare il poeta a guarire e a diventare un profeta del suo tempo;

La caduta di Venezia è rappresentata attraverso un mito che viene evocato per spiegare il suo declino. Shelley presenta una Venezia "cadente" legata alla mitologia greca: è vista come una figlia/moglie dell'oceano (Amphitrite è la moglie di Poseidone) e un labirinto (il labirinto nel palazzo del re Minosse a Creta);

Venezia è in qualche modo responsabile di alcuni peccati che sono stati commessi, e per questo motivo sta cadendo. Venezia ha disobbedito agli dei, come Minosse.

Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a snow-white bull as a sign of the god's favour. Minos was to sacrifice the bull to honour Poseidon but owing to the bull's beauty he decided instead to keep him. Minos believed that the god would accept a substitute sacrifice.

To punish Minos, Poseidon made Minos' wife Pasiphaë fall in love with the bull. The monstrous Minotaur was the result: the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast.

- Venice is also associated with England;

- Shelley attributes to Byron the possibility of saving Venice, he is the only poet who can save her from her fate through his poetry;

- "Bier": coffin, image of death.

SAMUEL ROGER'S VENICE (Victorian period)

Roger's Venice:

- Luigi;

- St Mark's Place;

- The gondola;

- The brides of Venice;

- Foscari;

- Marcolini.

S. Rogers, Italy, A Poem, 1830 (stanza IX)

These

lines refer to the arrival in Italy (the poem talks about the itinerary from the UK to Italy).

VENICE

John Ruskin starts the second chapter of his early unfinished novel, Velasquez the Novice (1835), with the lines from Shelley's "Lines Written Upon Euganean Hills".

"Underneath day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies,
On the blue and beaming line
Of the waters crystalline.
Column, tower, and dome, and spire
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with unconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies,
Like the flames of sacrifice."
-John Ruskin, Velasquez the Novice (1835), ch. II

John Ruskin VELASQUEZ, THE NOVICE (1835) CHAPTER I:

"There is a noble city in the sea;
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing, and the salt seaweed
Clings to the marble of her palaces."
- ROGERS

"The morning sun shone brightly on the little village of Mestre, and the white walls and flat roofs, which, simple"

as they are, impress so peculiar a character on the Italian landscape, as one touch of a master characterises a picture, were relieved against a sky of that brilliant blue which is only produced by the crystal clearness of a southern air, that clearness which is so tantalizing to the wearied traveller, by diminishing one half his apparent distance from the spires of the city of his destination.

Then, he describes his arrival in Venice:

Nevertheless, as the forest of towers and cupolas which belong to the principal parts of the city are seen, on the approach from Mestre, rising from behind a comparatively low and confused line of building, which consists chiefly of the suburbs and habitations of the lower classes, there might be perhaps a slight feeling of disappointment in the silence with which our travellers at first regarded the prospect which lay before them. But, as the swift gondola passed rapidly on its invisible path, as it advanced along the frequented thoroughfare of waters,