Association, Identification, Authentication

There are many possible reasons for a trip to Venice. It is a totally unique place, and it has many attractions. Yet any reason one might give for a visit to this city can be attributed to some sort of longing. Further, I believe that longing, whatever one might say they long for, can be pared down and defined as a longing for association, identification, and/or authentication. For example, Venice is perhaps most commonly identified with the Renaissance. Significant Venetian Renaissance artists included Bellini, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Titian and Veronese, among many others. Although he was not from Venice, Leonardo da Vinci famously visited (fled to) the city in 1499. The art aficionado visiting Venice does not come merely to see great artwork; he or she comes to see artwork by “the greats,” and thus to be, in however small a way, associated with them.

A lover of music will find numerous options in Venice. String quartets perform all day in the Piazza San Marco. Vivaldi concerts and operas take place constantly; it’s nearly impossible to walk in the city without passing a sign or being handed a flyer by someone in costume. As I write this, there is a multi-story advertisement covering scaffolding along the Doge’s Palace; Venezia: The Story of Venice, a “unique and entertaining show,” is performed every day at the Teatro San Gallo. (It’s performed in English, with audio guides in seven languages.) For those interested in the history of music, they can visit the Basilica di San Marco, whose great size and two separate choir lofts necessitated the invention of an entirely new style of music: Venetian polychoral style. Few know the name of Adrian Willaert, the maestro di capella who made the Venetian polychoral style famous, but they recognize Venice as a place of innovation and genius, and they wish to identify with it.

For anyone with an interest in architecture, Venice offers a chance to view almost every style from a single spot in the city. From the Piazza San Marco, it is possible to look upon and appreciate the Byzantine Basilica di San Marco, the gothic Doge’s Palace, and Sansovino’s Renaissance Loggetta, then across the lagoon there is Palladio’s conservative church of San Giorgio Maggiore contrasted with the nearby baroque cathedral Santa Maria della Salute. Elsewhere there is neoclassical and rococo, and practically anything else one might wish to find, even a pair of really horrible camels on another baroque church, San Moise. When one reports seeing these buildings, or sends postcards bearing their images, they are also claiming, however subtly, to have absorbed from them some knowledge, perhaps even some part of their creators.

Venice has much to offer even outside of the realm of the arts. Long before it was a member of the Italian Republic, it was “La Serenissima,” The Most Serene Republic of Venice. Its democracy served as a model for the United States. Although history has exposed Venice as something other than a prefect utopia, that is the idea which was created for it and which it embraced. Add to that the overabundance of churches- add faith to liberty and justice- and Venice is perceived as a land of high morals as well as superior education and talent.

Even those who come to Venice not to analyze, but only to appreciate and enjoy, come for identification. Any place in the world may be enjoyed, but Venice is a destination. As a tourist attraction, it serves, as we have discussed before, as a heterotopic space, much like Disneyland. It is a place of carnevale, even when it is not the time of carnevale. One of the peculiarities of Venice is that it can exist simultaneously as a place for very high society, high morals and ideals, and also a proscribed space of debauchery. This is due, in part, to such figures as Casanova and Lord Byron, but also to the nature of Venice itself, which has always hidden a darker side behind its bright marble facade. For tourists seeking that side, Venice is an outlet- like Las Vegas or many spring break destinations- and a place of freedom in many senses of the word. Venice is also a place of novelty, of perceived scarcity. One must see Venice before it sinks, or before all of the other tourists ruin it forever! Merely the ability to say one has seen Venice provides social capital; the visitor, upon their return to reality, is vested with knowledge everything their less fortunate friends and family associate with the city.

Of course, in today’s society, declarations of such magnitude are of little worth without some form of proof. Or, as Susan Stewart put it in On Longing, “Within the development of culture under an exchange economy, the search for authentic experience and, correlatively, the search for the authentic object become critical.” As previously discussed, there is no set single “real” Venice, or at the very least it is indefinable. However, there do seem to be certain things one must see and do in order for their visit to Venice to “count.” Enter the souvenir. People don’t buy miniature gondolas (or gondola switchblades) because they value the thing for itself. “The souvenir... authenticates the experience of the viewer.” One buys a carnevale mask in Venice not because they plan to wear it at home, but so that they can display it; it will be a conversation piece, the thing that gives them an opening to discuss their journey and their experiences. “The souvenir is by definition always incomplete. It will not function without the supplementary narrative discourse that both attaches it to its origins and creates a myth with regard to those origins. What is this narrative of origins? It is a narrative of interiority and authenticity. It is not a narrative of the object; it is a narrative of the possessor. The souvenir as bibelot or curiosity has little if any value attached to its materiality. Furthermore, the souvenir is often attached to locations and experiences that are not for sale. The substituting power of the souvenir operates within the following analogy: as experience is to an imagined point of authenticity, so narrative is to the souvenir. The souvenir displaces the point of authenticity as it itself becomes the point of origin for narrative. Such a narrative cannot be generalized to encompass the experience of anyone; it pertains only to the possessor of the object.”

Stewart has much to say about postcards as well. In all honesty, it makes little sense to buy them. Their images are most often images one could (and probably does) reproduce for themselves. The space on the opposite is really inadequate for writing if you have much to say; it’s far inferior to a letter and can hardly be compared to any form of communication utilizing the internet. And yet people continue to send them, because it is not the message, but the postcard itself that is significant. “The other's reception of the postcard is the receipt, the ticket stub, that validates the experience of the site, which we now can name as the site of the subject himself or herself.”

To be fair, though, it is not only the visitors to Venice who experience longing. Venice is not only an object of longing, but a subject. Earlier in its history, Venice longed for power and recognition, much of which it received. It longed to be identified as the new Rome, to the point that Venetians looted Constantinople and proudly displayed part of their plunder, four bronze horses stolen from the Hippodrome, on the Basilica di San Marco. On the facade of another church, Santa Maria del Giglio, there are bas reliefs depicting cities under Venetian rule. Rome is arrogantly included as well.

Today, Venice is no longer a major power and is no longer aspires to anything so grand. Instead, it is lost in nostalgia. If its past glory cannot be reclaimed, it longs only to continue. Venice refuses to die, and it refuses to become a museum city, which is akin to death. Although I was not aware of it at the time, the mock funeral I witnessed last weekend may have been the most poignant display of longing Venice has to offer.