| Title | : | Venice Observed |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 015693521X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780156935210 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 158 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1956 |
Venice Observed Reviews
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'I envy you, writing about Venice,' says the newcomer. 'I pity you,' says the old hand. One thing is certain. Sophistication, that modern kind of sophistication that begs to differ, to be paradoxical, to invert, is not a possible attitude in Venice. In time, this becomes the beauty of the place. Once gives up the struggle and submits to a classic experience. Once accepts the fact that what one is about to feel or say has not only been said before by Goethe or Musset but is on the tip of the tongue of the tourist from Iowa who is alighting in the Piazzetta with his wife in her furpiece and jeweled pin. Those Others, the existential enemy, are here identical with oneself. After a time in Venice, one comes to look with pity on the efforts of the newcomer to disassociate himself from the crowd. He has found a 'little' church - has he? - quite off the beaten track, a real gem, with inlaid coloured marbles on a soft dove grey, like a jewel box. He means Santa Maria dei Miracoli. As you name it, his face falls. It is so well known, then? Or has he the notion of counting the lions that look down from the window ledges of the palazzi? They remind him of cats. Has anybody ever noticed how many cats there are in Venice or compared them to the lions? On my table two books lie open with chapters on the Cats of Venice. My face had fallen too when I came upon them in the house of an old bookseller, for I too had dared think that I had hold of an original perception.
-- Mary McCarthy, from "Venice Preserved" in Venice Observed
Despite the fact that her first chapter is an insistence that nothing original can be said of Venice anymore, I always find myself looking to Mary McCarthy's Venice Observed as one of the great volumes on Venice. It's a lovely dip into the history and atmosphere of the world's most fascinating city. I've read this before, so this time, everything had a familiar feel to it... perhaps like a lot of Venice (or any city) when you make a return trip... and since I'm planning to go back to Venice next month, it seemed like a good thing to re-read.
The book is divided into small, self-contained chapters that focus on different elements of Venice's history or the author's experience with the city, always focused on the city and the people within it. McCarthy has a lovely way of strolling through the lessons in an effortless fashion, a font of Venetian wisdom. Even if she might have some small criticisms, she is always aware of the magic of the city, the thing that enchants us all, even if it's just a construct for tourists. The city has been a touristic location for four hundred years, after all. Its very existence is improbable and yet it continues to delight, spinning a history of the fantastic and surprising. Many of her observations, indeed, took root in my mind and stick with me as I think of Venice. In particular, her descriptions of qualities that took root in Venetian character, such as the Venetian's inventive and clever nature (the result of a city "with nothing of its own," and so it had "to steal and improvise"), or their complicated relationship with Rome on a political and religious level ("The pope was in Rome, and God was in heaven, but they were in Venice."), and that Venetians focus on "applied reason" (there are no real Venetian writers or philosophers -- "Venetians printed books but seldom wrote them"). She discusses the fairy tale nature of the city (and how people tend to be surprised that Venetians were so money-oriented, but what are fairy tales except stories filled with treasure and gold?) and spends a great deal of time on the many people who have painted the city.
McCarthy's prose is beautiful and detailed. Despite its short length, this really isn't a book one can gobble down with speed -- or at least one should not. It should be savored and the reader should take time to think about each chapter, lest they blend together and the nuggets of illumination be forgotten. Ideally, one might be the perfect companion to a drink while sitting in a Venetian square... because when one looks up from this book, that is the only view one wishes to look upon. One yearns for Venice after reading this book, and while the longing for Venice might always accompany those who have visited that magnificent city, there's something rather painfully delicious about piquing that hunger with books like this that make the city come alive in one's mind. -
Delightful "profile" of Venice, Venetian art, people, and places...McCarthy has no background in art history so I take some of what she says with a grain of salt, but it is a wonderful literary portrait of a city. Heavy on analogy and metaphor but strikingly well-researched and thorough; she draws some stunning connections and reveals some hilarious minutiae about Venetian character and history.
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For the tourist who tires of hagiography at every turn and wonders tentatively if it's permissible not to like every painting in every church and gallery she enters. With clear-eyed wit, McCarthy examines a city whose entire identity and history is wrapped up in being observed, yet finds fresh facts and novel interpretations.
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I picked this up today to read the first chapter to see what I thought of it. I didn't want to put it down and kept on reading until I finished it tonight. McCarthy's descriptive and intelligent writing completely immersed me in the unusual world of Venice.
Next time I read it I will probably watch a documentary on Venice first so I can see in my mind's eye all the architecture, art, and people she wrote about. I do recommend it, especially if you are interested in the art and history of Venice. -
Probably the best book about Venice I have ever read. McCarthy is an amazing observer and her writing takes my breath away.I have read its 158 short pages twice now, put in many markers, and want to read it again.
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Read this in Venice. Quite dated now, and not as good as Stones of Florence, but McCarthy's writing is a great cross between journalistic, poetic and personal.
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This and THE STONES OF FLORENCE.
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I found Mary McCarthy in an essay anthology and bought this based on that. Not as good as her political writing and literary criticism, but a nice read.
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A few years ago as I was planning my first trip to Venice, I looked for books to read to learn more about the city. I was already familiar with many literary references to the city, particularly Thomas Mann's "Death In Venice" and more than one appearance of the city in the works of Henry James, but I was looking for a high brow history and travel guide. I circled around Ruskin, but "The Stones of Venice" was too daunting so I settled on Peter Ackryod's "Venice: Pure City". I learned a lot from that book that helped my appreciation of the place when I got there, but it was long and dry and left me wanting something better, something more. It's a damned shame that it took me until now to discover Mary McCarthy's gem, which would have given me all that I wanted. It's smart and concise. It covers all of the basics of Venice history, geography, and art with the charming perspective of an American visitor who knows the city for the sham adult theme park that it has become in the years since the republic ended with Napoleon's conquest, but who loves the city and appreciates the quirky culture that she sees as evolving out of a mentality that put commerce before all else. Ms. McCarthy gives us all of the basics - St. Marks, the Doge's Palace, the architecture of Palladio, the art of Titian and Tintoretto, but she also guides us to places around the edges - the Ghetto, Burano (where they make lace, not Murano the tourist place where they make glass), and Torcello, and when it comes to art, she spends more time on Giorgione and Veronese than Titian. Her tastes are not obscure, but are just eclectic enough to lead you down paths less traveled, though she is also careful to note that one of the traits of Venice is that you can never discover anything truly new that others have not found before you.
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I think it's high time that I go back to observe it some more ❤️
Poetic, very intelectual, meandering almost stream-of-consciousness love letter to Venice.
Not quite my cup of tea, tbh, but still nice to get transported back to one of my favourite places for a bit.
2.5 really at most for me. -
I was preparing for my third trip to Venice and picked up this book published in 1956 to get a different perspective on this magnificent city. Alas, I was not able to read the book until my return from Europe, but lived through the street flooding in Venice which was a quite different experience. Following my short stay in Venice I decided to read this book to get a feel for this City from the view of an established writer & artist. Although the book is short it is not an easy read & certainly not your typical tourist review. It covers 8 separate analyses of the people, their history, art, music, politics & architecture. My problem is that the tone of this book was really pedantic and at times boring. I thought it would have helped when discussing the art & architecture that it would be easier to understand her review if there had been photos or paintings included in the critiques. It was hard to visualize what McCarthy was talking about. One thing I did like was the discussion about cats & lions and the various doges but nothing about Marco Polo. McCarthy does clearly point out that this town had to survive by ingenuity and isolation developed as a successful merchant city with a fully developed republic and that set it apart from all the other European cities. Pragmatism overcame religion & racism. However their essences & soul became something unique not depending on what others thought. To me Venice reminds me a lot of New Orleans which also never adapted to modernization or big business preferring to continue to living to the beat of their own drum still relying on the past, preserving their history & relying on tourism. Like New Orleans Venice suffers yearly from flooding & while New Orleans is the City that Care forgot Venice is the Queen of the Adriatic. Magical & mysterious.
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an intelligent commentary on various aspects of Venice -- its art, its artists, its (lack of) architecture, its (lack of) great thinkers. An original interpretation, short and thought-provoking.
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The history of Venice completely out of the general context. I had the impression to read only subjective interpretations based on the author's preferences and preconceptions rather than on documented facts: a history of Venice according to Mary McCarthy. The author remains an external observer, a stranger more than a foreigner, despite living in Venice and breathing the city. She tries to describe Venice by making comparisons to other cities, buildings, monuments and, therefore, she thoroughly misses its essence. Many details are inexact, as one easily realises by looking up photos on the internet. The high-relief that she describes, near Piazza S. Marco, of a Venetian woman throwing a brick to the revolutionaries is actually a woman with a mortar, and the legend is slightly different from what she tells. Did she really see the sculpture? This is a meaningless detail, which, however, makes me wonder about how inaccurate her descriptions of historical events are. I also found her descriptions of Giorgione's paintings hilarious, but these, of course, can be subjective. I appreciated some mentioning of monuments and artistic works I was unaware of: they really exist and I'm curious to discover them.
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As other reviewers have noted, this is not a practical guidebook, or really a guidebook at all. What it is is a rather idiosyncratic but learned set of personal reflections upon and reactions to the phenomenon of Venice by an idiosyncratic and learned writer. What one learns is that Venice is essentially sui generis, a fact it knows about itself and about which it is justly proud. It is a city that probably shouldn't exist but does, that should not enjoy the level of historical prominence it once did but nevertheless enjoyed, that knows itself and its priceless contents to be doomed by time and tide (and now by global climate flux), that insists all the same on being itself and still opens itself to the visitors that are both a source of amusement and its lifeblood. Venice is a city of secrets still, McCarthy intimates, a city that cannot be known from above or afar, but must be entered by boat and by foot and experienced slowly and intimately, a city proud of its mercantile past but also worthy of mention alongside big sisters Florence and Rome for its humanistic riches in art and architecture.
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She really did her homework, and plenty of comparative art history, architecture critiques, and detailed, granular first hand observation from mid 20th Century. She explains how Venice went from fishing villages on the fens to inaccessible refugee hideout, to world naval and commerce power, to crossroads of rival religions and political maneuvers, to art, and finally a theme park.
Quote:
"Traffic lights are not funny, but it is funny to have one in Venice over a canal-intersection. . . in the unreal realm of the canals, as in a Swiftian Lilliput, the real world, with its contrivances, appears as a vast folly."
~ Mary McCarthy in VENICE OBSERVED (1956). -
A superb little book in which the author shares in lucid prose her knowledge and understanding of Venice, past and (her) present. She knew about as much as was available to know at the time, and all of it is fascinating. I read it after visiting Venice, and I wish I'd read it prior. But I think I would then want to read it again after returning home. (p.s. This book seemed less packed with information than her book on Florence ("The Stones of Florence"). In that book, the info comes at you fast and hard, somewhat like an avalanche. But both books are terrific.
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It takes a lot for me to dislike a book about Venice. Not sure why the author stayed there, as everything in Venice was described as either sad, dead, ugly, talentless, fake or turned to dust. (I think this series of essays was actually commissioned by the New Yorker.) Venice certainly isn't the same glorious Republic it was 200 years ago, but there only seemed to be a handful of good words about Venice or Venetians across the entire book. One of the most lopsided books about Venice I've ever read.
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Pros: Some really good early history of Venice. Big pages of pictures and portraits. Due to when it was written, there was an amusing simile about buying something way back when would have been like buying something behind the Iron Curtain.
Cons: Overwrought midcentury syntax. Pictures and portraits didn't match up with the descriptions of art. Too much discussion of art.
Would I recommend this for someone going to Venice? Maybe. Don't make yourself read all of it if sections don't apply to your interests. -
Erudite but engagingly conversational, this classic work displays this one-of-a-kind city in all its splendor, with all its quixotic characteristics, all its contradictions. The commercial mindset of the inventive and adaptable Venetians through the centuries has shaped their politics, art and architecture, social structure, and views on power, religion, and morals.
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Using the fish in the bowl full of coins as a metaphor for Venice is just brilliant.
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3.5
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Ever since I saw the film Dangerous Beauty about the famous Venetian courtesan, Veronica Franco, I have been obsessed with Venice. I read everything I can get my hands on about La Serenissima, the most serene republic.
This book, unlike the histories and other books I read, is an intensely personal reaction to the city. As we travel through the city, we share the keen observations of an articulate writer who has the gift of description.
I may never see Venice in this life, but this account is pure pleasure.
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