High life
Modern barbarians
Taki
IVenice felt like Aschenbach over the weekend, but in my case it wasn't over Tadzio, but Vittoria. Undoubtedly, Italian is the language d'amore, and where amore leads, marriage follows. Mind you, not mine. My friend Gianfranco Cicogna chose the most famous setting in Europe for his wedding to a beautiful Italian girl, and some of us took full advantage of a place in which only a Belgian politician could resist falling in love. More about Venice in a moment, but first a word about Belgian politicians.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Belgian foreign minister, Louis Michel, was born of a union between a cockroach and a cow. Michel threatened to make Austria a pariah when the sweetest people in Europe voted for the big bad wolf Jorg Haider. He then went after the chicest people anywhere, the Italians, because they chose Silvio Berlusconi as their Duce. Now another fat Belgian, prime minister Guy Vershofstadt, is making antiBerlusconi noises in an effort to please the Taleban, Harry bin Laden, members of White's club and assorted towelheads.
What in Allah's name is going on here? Of course Berlusconi is right in praising Western civilisation. What was he supposed to do, promise the stoning of women for giving away a little nookie? Admire Islam's nostalgia for the past in keeping its people in the stone age? I say screw the bureaucrooks and hacks who use political correctness to curtail free speech. Unlike the rest of the rabble, the Straws, the Cooks, the Blairs, the Michels and the Prodis — all without a profession except as politicians and living off the state — Berlusconi made it on his own, and if they had a scintilla of integrity they would bow low and kiss his Coriolanus.
But back to Venice. It's like someone described Vienna, a once-grand opera now performed by the understudies. I compare her more to an incredibly beautiful woman who keeps company with cheap men, The city is steeped in Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance treasures, but totally overrun by tourists, and it's very cheap tourism at that. Honky-tonk souvenir shops, bored gondoliers and fast-food artists have no place among the Be!finis, Titians, Tintorettos and Veroneses. Even worse is the graffiti. What kind of modern barbarian would spray graffiti on the side of the Doge's palace? tell you the kind. The sort who write anti-racism, pro-multiculturalism slogans, which most of the vile graffiti were about.
Still, Venice is eternal and I had a hell of a time running into old friends and flirting away the night of the ball. On Saturday morning, before the real boozing and skirtchasing began, I went with the mother of my children to the Balthus exhibition, a soso affair. There are about 250 works tracing the artist's development and placed according to subject-matter. Although I'm a fan of both Balthus and of young nude girls, the pictures I liked the best were his self-portraits. And some disturbingly beautiful sleeping young women. The next day I gave a lunch for old friends, got nice and tanked up and was driven to Milan for matters sartorial.
What is there to say about Italy that doesn't sound like a cliché? Milan may be an industrial centre, but compared to it Manchester, say, or Leeds look like Grozny. Italian men and women put the rest of Europe to shame with their looks and style. And when was the last time you heard a bad Italian love song? Most Italians are not racist, but nor will they permit the PC Nazis to curtail their sense of humour. Japanese cars are referred to as yellow, and an American Indian was recently called a redskin. What's wrong with that'?
This is the good news. Further good news is that Sir Evelyn and Lady de Rothschild cancelled his 70th birthday party in London out of deference to the horrible events in the Big Bagel. This is of course the correct and right thing to do, but then the Rothschilds have very seldom put a foot wrong. Not to worry. We'll celebrate once the scum that did it are lying in a shallow grave, one I will regularly visit to relieve myself on.
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