November 15, 1917 LAND & WATER 
Venice : On the Giudecca 
By Arthur Symons 
II 
FROM the Casa on the Giudecca I look across the water 
and see \'enice. Is there another window from which 
one can see so much of the beauty of land and water ? 
Opposite, along the Zattere, they are unloading the 
boats. I see the black hulls and a forest of masts and rigging. 
A steamer has come in from Trieste, and lies between San 
Giorgio and the Dogana, with its little black flock of gondolas 
about it. An orange sail creeps stealtiiily past the window\ 
and I hear the sail creak against the mast. 
High above the houses almost with the dominance of the 
Suleimaine at Constantinople, the great domes of the Salute 
rise above the green trees and brown roofs of the Patriarch's 
palace. That long line above the water, curving slightly until 
San Giorgio intercepts it, is the Riva. and at all hours I cati 
watch it change colour, and sink into shadow, and emerge 
with the lamps at night, a dark outline, out of which the 
i)oge's Palace rises, always white, always mysterious, always 
at once solid and exquisite. 
Every df^y one sees, beside and above it, the greyish green 
of the bulbous domes of St. Mark's, the two columns of 
SjTian granite on the Piazzetta, and the winged lion of St. 
Mark, with his fierce laughter and alert springing body, who, 
from that height, challenges the ships. 
This long narrow island of the Giudecca, with its houses now 
mere shells , granaries, storehouses^ or cottages for fisher- 
people had its palaces once, and the Casa in which I am living 
was built by Palladio, who planned the Redeatore on the 
left, and San Giorgio Maggiore on the little neighbouring 
island to the right. Everything in the house is beautiful and . 
ample ; the long courtyard opening through two stone pillars 
wreathed with vines upon the garden, the stone staircase, 
ind the immense room, shaped like a cross without a top, 
its longer wall almost filled with tall and slender windows 
opening upon stone balconies over the water ; windows at the 
narrow end looking over the garden, and beyond, the iron gate- 
way, with its carved stone figures on the gate-posts, over the 
vast green and brcwn orchard and vineyard, stretching to 
tlie still waters of the lagoon op the other side of the island. 
There are timbered roofs, vast garrets, and a chapel with its 
lamp still burning before an image of the Virgin. 
The guests sit down to their meals in the great hall, and are 
so far away ^rom each other that their presence has almost 
a touch of unreality ;one hears and sees them vaguely, as if 
in a dream, and the Venetian woman who waits upon us all, 
passing to and fro with a sleepy dignity, has little curls of hair 
hanging about her eyes like a woman in one of Carpaccio's 
pictures. Outside there is always sun on the garden, once a ' 
very formal garden, and now just dilapidated enough for its 
quaint conventionality to borrow a new refinement, a touch of 
ruined dignity, l^ne may wander through low alleys of 
trellised vines to the water ; and beyond the water, on the 
other side of a narrow bank of land, the sea lies. 
There is, to those liring on the Giudecca, a constant sense 
of the sea, and not only because there are always fishermen 
lounging on the quay, and fishing-boats moored in the side 
canals, and nets drying on the land, and crab-pots hanging half 
out of the water. There is a quality in the air one breathes 
in the whole sensation of resistance, which is like a purification 
from the soft and entangling enchantments of Venice. 
On the other side of the water, which can look so much like 
the sea and form so rapid a barrier, yet across which every 
mivejnent on the quay can be distinguished, Venice begins ; 
and in Venice one is as if caught in an immense network, 
or spider's web, which, as one walks in its midst, seems to 
tighten the closer about one. The streets, narrow overhead, 
push outward with beams and stone balconies and many 
turning angles ; seem to loosen their hold for a moment where 
a Ijridge crosses a narrow canal between high walls and over 
dark water, and then tighten again in close lanes where the 
smells of the shops ipeet and fume about one's face. The lanes 
are bxisy with men in rough clothes and with women in shawls, 
bare-headed and with great soft bushes of hair, who come and 
go quietly, slipping past one another in these narrow spaces, 
where there is hardly room to pass, as the gondolas slip past 
one another in the narrow canals. The road is difficult to find, 
for a single wrong turning may lead one to the other end of 
Venice. 
This movement, the tangles of the way, the continual 
arresting of one's attention by some window, doorway or bal- 
cony, put a strain upon one's eyes, and began after a time to 
tire and stupefy the brain. There is no more bewildering 
rity and, as night comes on, the bewilderment grows almost 
ilisqinV-tiiie OtK-'i'i'tt'- to bf turning in a circle to which there 
is no outlet, and from which all one's desire is to escape. 
Coming out at last upon the Zattere, and seeing the breadth 
of water before one, it is as if one had gone back to the sea. 
The ships lie close together along the quay, ten deep, their 
masts etched against the sky; the water, or that faint shadow 
with its hard outline (almost level, but for the larger and 
lesser domes of the Redentore and the Zitelle) which is the 
island of the Giudecca. A few voices rise from the boats; 
the hulls creak gently, as if they were talking together ; there 
is a faint splashing of water, and beyond, silent, hardly 
visible, unlightcd by the few lamps along the quay, the island 
waits, a little desolate and unfi iendlj', but halfway to the sea. 
By Night 
At night the moon swings in the sky, like the lamp of an 
illumination. There are curtains of dark, half drawn, and, 
higher in the sky, pale gold stars, like faint candles, in a dark 
which is luminous. Or, on an autumn night which is like 
summer, a moon like a silver medallion hangs low over San 
Giorgio, and turns slowly to gold, while the w'ater, between 
moonrise and sunset, pales and glows, and the dark begins to 
creep around the masts and rigging. 
Rain in autumn brings a new, fierce beauty into Venice, as it 
falls hammering on the water and rattles on the wood of the 
boats and settles in pools in all the hollows of the stones. 
Seen under that stormy light, just before sunset, with a hot 
yellow moon struggling to come through the rain-clouds, 
Venice is as if veiledi and all its colours take on a fine deep 
richness, seen through water, like polished stones in sea- 
pools. The slender masts, the thin black network of the lig- 
giqg stand out delicately, and with an almost livid distinctness. 
The gondolas move like black streaks on the water. For a 
moment the west brightens, as the sun goes down behind a 
space of sky that burns white, and shivers dully, streaked 
with dim yellow and with fleeces. 
There was a roaring of the sea all night, and in the niorning. 
the water splashed under the windows, almost level with th« 
pavements. The whole Giudecca was swollen, and rose every- 
where into grey waves, tipped with white as they fell over. 
Sea-gulls had come in from the sea, and flew in circles over 
the water, dipping to the crest of the waves, and curving around 
the boats laden with timber, that crowded close together 
against the Zattere. The wind still blew with violence, 
and a little rain fell. The sky and the water were of the same 
leaden grey, and the sea-gulls flying between water and sky 
shone like white flakes of snow blown by the wind. 
There is no city in Europe which contains so much silence 
as Venice, and the sUence of the Giudecca is more lonely than 
any silence in Venice. Yet, by day and night, there are cer- 
tain noises, which one learns to expect, becomes familiar 
with, and finds no distraction in ; the roar of the sea, 
when there is wind on the sea-walls, a dull, continuous, 
enveloping sound, which seems unintelligible as one looks 
across at solid land on the other side of water ; the loud and 
shaking violence of wind ; the hoarse, echoing hoot and 
trumpeting of great black or red steamers, which pass slowly, 
or anchor almost under the windows, to take in stores from the 
granaries that stand locked and barred and as if empty, 
along the fondamenta ; the deep splash of the oars of barges, 
as the men who push with long oars in the water set^ th« 
oars against their row-locks and begin the heavy rowing ; 
the thin plash of the oneoar of gondolas ; the guttural cries, 
from water and the narrow strip of land, all in thick vowels, 
clotted together without a consonant between ; and the 
ceaseless busy flapping of water upon the steps and around 
hulls, with little noises never twice quite the same. 
I saw Venice first by night, and I walked from the railway 
station to thejPiazza alone, and without a map or guide-book, 
in order to come into the midst of the city as casually as pos- 
sible, and so find out a few of its secrets by surprise. A place 
has almost the shyness of a person, with strangers ; and its 
secret is not to be surprised by a too direct interrogation. I 
have spent weeks in the churches of Venice, climbing upon 
ladders, and propping myself against altars, and lying on my 
back on benches to look at pictures ; and 1 have learnt many 
things about Tintoretto and Bellini and Carpaccio and Tiepolo 
which I could have learnt in no other way. 
But what I have learnt about Venice, Venice as a person, 
has come to me more or less unconsciously, from living on 
the Zattere, where I could see the masts of ships and the 
black hulls of barges, whenever I looked out of my windows 
on the canal of the Giudecca. 
