Piscatorial
J. G. Links
A Venetian Bestiary Jan Morris
(Thames & Hudson £8.95)
The theme of this 'epilogue' to Jan Morris's 35 years of writing about Venice is the special affinity of the Venetian with the creatures of the lagoon. They were there long before he was and, to those in the outside world, sometimes seemed to have moulded his character. The Venetians were like fish, thought Pius II, 'and as among brute beasts aquatic creatures have the least intelligence, so among human beings the Venetians are the least just and the least capable of humanity ... ' But this was just pique at yet another example of the Vene- tians' determination to co-operate with nobody and to trust only those under their immediate control. The truth, as Jan Mor- ris sees it, is that the Venetians 'lived far closer to their own element, the water, than other city-people did to theirs, the land; and so they retained a profound feeling for the birds, the fishes and the beasts'. Thus was created 'a civic bestiary, in the mind and in the flesh' that was like no other.
I call this a 'theme', but it is more an `apology' in the old sense of the word. The author wanted to write about Carpaccio's dogs, St Theodore's crocodile, the lions round every corner (one of the winged ones `with grinning teeth and a slightly Lan- cashire look') and about the cats, gulls and wildfowl of real life in the lagoon, and seems to have felt the need for some excuse. The excuse is on every page, such as this description of the fish market: It smells aggressively aquatic, its floors are slippery with discarded fins or decapitations, its air is loud with the
crunched axeing of tuna-steaks or the clatter of bucketed crabs, and all around are strange shapes and matters of the underwater — not simply shining flanks and scaled strips, but tubes and tentacles, and bulbous shells, and writhing string- like things, and goggle-eyes, and blodges of jelly, and claws still groping, and legs still hopping, and big lugubrious prawns.
The mammals are in a different category since there were none when the Venetians moved into the lagoon. The earliest settlers probably took their dogs with them and their successors have been there ever since, in both life and art. Carpaccio's little ter- riers are everybody's favourites, and if Canaletto painted more dogs it is because he painted more pictures (hence his name, Caneletto, as a guide at Woburn was overheard telling his listeners, according to a usually reliable friend of mine). Cats, °n the other hand, failed to inspire Venetian artists to paint them adequately; they have had to wait for the present book which con- tains a colour photograph by Sarah Quill which is surely the best tribute ever paid to the Venetian cat. It cannot have occurred to the early Venetians that they could live without horses and thousands were brought into the city; the bridges across the canals were built flat for their convenience and one doge kept a stable of 400. Then it was discovered that horses were unnecessary and they were banned, first from the Piazza by edict, then from everywhere else by the humped bridges over the canals which allowed bigger boats to pass under. The on- ly horses that remain, apart from Colleont 5 Call snort and swagger') and Victor Emanuel's on the Riva degli Schiavoni, are the four bronze ones that spent 750 Years above the doorway of St Mark's (give or take a few years in Paris and Rome from the exigencies of war). Now they are look- ing for a new home, and I must confess to have been more moved by confrontation at eye level with the one we had at the RoYal Academy a couple of years ago than I ever was by craning my neck or rubbing alongside them in the past — and almost four times as moved last week by the sight of all four in their temporary home in 5. Basso. It was not always real creatures that the mosaicists, sculptors and painters turned to and Jan Morris has a 'Fantasy of Monsters, ranging from Giorgione's unicorn ('the best ever to lay its white horned head IIP°n a maiden's knee') to Carpaccio's basilisk from which St Tryphone exorcised the demon (it has always seemed to lack authenticity, no doubt because it looks 'less like a manifestation of Satan than a large, prickly and cocky sort of earwig').
Then
there were the visitors, as sure to be immor- talised in stone or on canvas as the residents. There are rhinoceros, camels, and many bulls, but best of all to me is the pair of elephants shown in another photograph ambling along a narrow calle, one in front of another like an Arab couple. They look for all the world like tourists who have forgotten their cameras and so have little interest in the wonders of Venice. How different from the one Lord Byron saw: 'he went mad for want of a She, it being the rutting month, and ate up a fruitshop and killed his keeper' before being 'at last killed by a Cannon Shot brought from the Arsenal'.
It was a happy day for lovers of books about Venice when the city first bewitched Jan Morris and held her 'in and out of love with the place'. This enchanting little book is a worthy sign-off to a long series of writings 'in fluctuating temper and varying fortune', to use her own words, but of un- varying stylishness and distinction.
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