Venice Rediscovered

By John Pemble

Book Overview

Venice, the city of the soul. In the two centuries since its political extinction, this shabby relic of a despised tyranny has become one of our greatest modern icons. As American consul Edmund Flagg wrote in 1853, in words that hold true today, "To one weary of the world...there is not a spot in all Italy--in all the world perhaps--as beautiful as Venice."
In Venice Rediscovered, historian John Pemble traces the development of our modern passion for the city of canals, charting its evolution from a forgotten oddity in the 18th century to a celebrated center for the arts, a city that saw its glory in the years before World War I as home for a great expatriate community and host to a golden age in literature. He begins his history in 1797, when Venice, still accessible only by sea, ceased to be a sovereign republic and saw its captains and the kings depart. A viaduct across the lagoon would not be opened until a half century later, and in 1857 a railway was completed to Milan. For the first time, Venice was within reach of the travelling public of Europe and the United States. By 1881, Henry James could write of tour guides "leading their helpless captives through churches and galleries in dense, irresponsible groups," but Pemble maintains that it was the development of the Lido beach resort that finally put Venice on the map for the chic international clientele. The combination of architectural wonder, literary associations, and seaside sophistication built a scene that led Ezra Pound to wryly remark in 1913 that Venice "seemed yesterday like one large Carlton Hotel."
Drawing on an international range of published and unpublished sources, Pemble links this transfiguration of Venice to the larger current of social and intellectual changes sweeping Europe and North America. Evoking the enduring appeal of Venice to novelists, historians, and other apostles of culture--Pound, James, Ruskin, Proust, Mann, and Nietzche among them--Pemble explains how their perceptions of the city gradually changed, and how they created the language and the imagery that shaped one of the most potent paradoxes of modern culture--Venice as a paragon of a timeless but fading elegance, constantly worshipped yet forever dying, sinking daily into the canals that define it.
Though the famed literary center has given way to museum tours and moonlit gondoliers, Venice remains a destination of distinction for travellers from around the world. A searching exploration of our eternal fascination with a city that continues to inspire artists, writers, and lovers alike, Venice Rediscovered is an important contribution to our understanding of modern culture and will captivate anyone who has ever visited--or dreamed of visiting--Venice itself.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198205015
• ISBN13: 9780198205012
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A study of mankind's obsessions

Be careful with the earlier reviewer's heading: this is not a travel book. It is a sophisticated look at a sophisticated handful of travelers from an earlier time, and a one-of-a-kind look at Venice at a point in her history when we only rarely get to see her. This is not the pompous Venice of the Doges or the racy city of Casanova. This is a look at the Venice of some of Henry James' more obscure stories, the Venice of Ranke, a historian no longer read even by historians, the Venice of wastrel American social climbers obsessed "with the idea of a dying city which must be preserved at all costs." What is it about the watery streets and the decaying palazzi and the icy interiors of the churches and chapels of Venice that has managed to draw thousands, millions of tourists to it over the years? For me, the most fascinating thing that emerges from these stories of men and women trapped in Venice's warm embrace is the idea of the continuity of mankind's longing for Culture, order and beauty, and perhaps above all, for the memory of the past. Anyone who reads this book who has had their own encounter with Venice will suddenly realize they aren't alone in their love of this bizarre and haunting place.

Great Travel Book!

Everything the book cover claimed it would be - highly readable, despite the many names and historical as well as architectural references with which I was unfamiliar. A wonderfully motley collection of bits of information and insight into many more things than the seductive city of Venice: how we came to write und understand history as we do, Victorian censorship, homosexuality in the 19th century. Don't take this on your trip to Venice, however; save it for home and allow yourself time to enjoy it.A good guide for understanding the Weltanschauung of the Venetians, perhaps. I've quite enjoyed it!