Gondola by Donna Leon

Author:Donna Leon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Can a Boat Be a Fashion Statement?

Venice is a tidal city, a fact evident to anyone who takes a look at the water in the canals. At six-hour intervals, the tide changes direction and either begins to flow out of the laguna in which the city rests or to flow in, bringing with it cleaner water from the Adriatic. This natural flow brings shrimp, crabs, and fish into the bacino and removes whatever waste has gone into the water since the last tide, a twice-daily cleansing that has happened with predictable exactitude ever since there were tides.

Water is not the only medium that changes in Venice: ever since its foundation, products and fashions have flowed naturally into and out, reaching Venice more quickly than land-locked cities, mountain cities, desert cities. Unlike the tide, which is predictable and measurable, new ideas and new desires slipped in when they will, their force and velocity as impossible to calculate as they are to resist.

The history of Venice contains frequent accounts of the attempts of its rulers to protect the citizens of the city from these other invasive tides, but this has never been an easy thing to achieve. Accustomed as they are to living in a city of twists and turns and calli that undulate as if with a will of their own, Venetians were not and are not likely to have any special sympathy for rules or laws that attempt to control the manner in which they are expected to behave. People who see daily evidence of the irresistible force of nature are not likely to be much interested in restraint or the attempt to restrain their desires. City authorities, faced with the invasive tides of luxury goods and adornment, attempted to heap up legal dykes and sea walls to block their entry to the city. The cause of this, I believe, was economic. An English poet wrote, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” This was a truth known only too well by the original guardians of Venice’s wealth and well-being (often considered as one and the same). Consider for a moment: money spent on transitory beauty – a dress, a brocade jacket, a new pair of satin shoes – is money that is removed from the solid, accumulated wealth of the city. It is paid to foreign exporters: the silk, the design, the manufacture were likely to come from France or the Orient, so the money escaped from the city and thus would do nothing to further its glory or its power. What is more transitory than a fashionable garment? This year’s glory is next year’s cleaning rag. A palazzo, a pile of gold ducats: these were examples of real wealth, not some whim of fashion that could evaporate as quickly as it was created. Of course, the prohibitions against outward displays of luxury and extravagance were presented in the costume of morality and religion: a plainly-dressed woman was likely to be a virtuous woman. A Sixteenth Century law

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