Paying tribute

While in Venice, I wanted to pay some kind of homage to my Venetian forefather. So on our way to Murano, the island world-famous for its hand-made glass, we hopped off half way in the Venetian lagoon on the cemetery island of San Michele. The island that is for the most part surrounded by terracotta brick walls is only a few minutes away from Cannaregio, the northernmost of the Venetian districts.

The vaporetto stop is located by the 15th century monastery of San Michele that has also served as a prison once. Some earlier visitors had left their tributes, small religious busts and figurines, by the entrance to the cloister (see the first photo of this post).

I didn’t expect to discover anything. I had read that the cemetery was established only in 1807 in the Napoleonic era when burials were suddenly considered unsanitary on the Venetian mainland and the main islands. My ancestor born in 1734 had already reached the end of his life here in the north with two marriages and nine children two years earlier.

Furthermore, I do not know his born name as it was almost certainly localized at least to some extent when recorded in the Finnish parish register. It would have been impossible to recognize any tombs of his younger relatives in any case.

Chapel of San Rocco.

The current cemetery island was originally two islands both of which were named after their 15th century church: the Roman Catholic San Michele in Isola and the Greek Orthodox San Cristoforo della Pace. The islands used to be separated by a canal that was later filled.

San Michele in Isola.

San Cristoforo, rebuilt in the mid-19th century.

We walked slowly along the paths lined with giant cypresses to the other end of the large cemetery. It was a warm October afternoon full of brilliant sunshine. The sections with hundreds and thousands of tombstones are separated by pavements with terracotta brick walls under which the most prominent or wealthy people had their final resting place.

The cemetery is still in use but no longer that final. It has been fully packed for ages and therefore some unusual practices are being followed. People are granted their burial plot on the cemetery island for some 12 years only. After that the bones are dug up to release space for the never-ending string of new departed.

The war graves are among the permanents on the island.

The bones are no longer transferred to a dedicated ‘bone yard’ on the island of Sant’ Ariano a bit further away in the lagoon. These days you have the option to have the remains put in a small metal box for final storage, for a fee of course. Despite the lovely setting of the Isola di San Michele, it is easy to believe most of the Venetians are now buried in the smaller cemeteries and on the mainland.

Statue of San Michele.

Tombstone of Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian ballet impresario who 'found' Stravinsky.

Tombstone of a Russian aristocrat, a princess by her first marriage.

The practicality of the bone removal might have shocked us had we known about it at that time. As we were in the dark, it simply felt good to make the symbolic gesture of strolling around the graveyard as a tribute to my few drops of Venetian blood. I am planning to return to spend some more time there exploring the lovely carved busts, tombstones and memorials with their angels and Madonnas in more detail (some photos of those we spotted this time can be found in my following post here). After all, those are more important than the actual bones, I believe.

San Michele in Isola with Cappella Emiliana on the left.

View from Murano towards San Michele.

Wheels and young William

Back to Venice and its abundance of history, art and romance. The wonderful city is so overpoweringly full of exquisite beauty – house after house, street after street, canal after canal – it made me almost blind to the details. I did manage to observe a particular building on the Canal Grande from the very first time we were riding past it on a vaporetto, a local water bus.

It was the richly decorated balconies with the unique wheel motifs and the relatively small size that appealed to me. I am a modest person with modest dreams. An adorable little palace of these proportions, with a width of a single room, would fulfill my fantasies of a Venetian residence bountifully.

Little did I know I had set my eyes on the Palazzo Contarini Fasan, also called ‘Casa di Desdemona’. According to legend, this 15th century palace is the house where Othello’s loved one Desdemona from Shakespeare’s ‘Othello, the Moor of Venice’ lived. There is probably no truth in the legend and even if there were how could Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, have known about the tale?

'Shakespeare stories 1985', illustration by Michael Foreman.

Quite a number of Shakespeare’s plays are set on the Continent, especially in Italy. Many of his plots were borrowed from older works, both classical and contemporary, which was customary at that time. He must have got acquainted with classical writings at school. However, some of the original tales dating from his time were from abroad, such as ‘Un Capitano Moro’, the story by Cinthio from 1565 ‘Othello’ is based on. What’s more, some scholars find it inconceivable Shakespeare could have been able to describe, say, Venice in such detail had he not seen the setting himself.

There is a period of several years in William Shakespeare’s life called ‘the lost years’. That is because there are no records on his whereabouts in his early adulthood. Italy was the centre of the Renaissance and therefore the dream destination for anyone with a serious interest in the arts. Shakespeare may have made a voyage on one of the merchant ships that were sailing between England and Venice, for example. Thanks to the handsome dowry that came with the 26-year-old lady he married at 18 he could have afforded it. It is completely imaginable an eager and resourceful man in his early 20s may have spent several years on the Continent exploring all the glorious places he had read and heard about, earning his board and lodging on his way, in the process learning a thing or two about human nature.

Stranger things have happened even to ordinary people. Travels have been made also the other way around. Some people left Venice for good, such as my maternal grandmother’s grandfather’s grandfather who ended up living the rest of his life in northern Europe, although that took place more than 150 years later, in Casanova’s time in the mid-18th century. The once powerful Republic of Venice had started drying out and the ancestor of mine must have decided to try his luck up in the north where the armed forced of the relatively fresh superpower, the Kingdom of Sweden, would welcome mercenaries from far-away places.

In Sicily, legend has it that also Shakespeare was an immigrant. Sicilians claim he was Michelangelo Florio Crollalanza (the last name translates ‘shake spear’) from Messina whose family fled the Holy Inquisition first to Venice and later settled down in England. Is this just a fabulous piece of fiction? No one with a mother tongue other than English could certainly have created the verses his brilliant pen produced. Then again, what if he was only a child when the family left Sicily…? I don’t think so but who am I to tell, who is anyone in our time to tell? People were moving freely around Europe for all kinds of reasons centuries before the concept of free movement of people within the EU was ever invented.

I sometimes regret I studied English at a business school where we never dug deeper than Austen and Dickens. Luckily, a mammoth entitled the Complete Works of William Shakespeare has been patiently waiting on my bookshelf for at least a quarter of a century now. One of these days, it will be a thrill to find out how much I can actually decipher of the original texts. One thing is certain: Shakespeare’s works are a precious gift to the whole of mankind wherever the author might or might not have originated from.

'The Complete Works by William Shakespeare', Tudor edition 1951, illustration by Eric Fraser.

Here I go again. I couldn’t help getting carried away with my recently discovered love for Venice. It is fascinating to be able to visit such vast man-made sites that are largely almost identical to those someone, let alone your ancestors, beheld hundreds of years ago. By the way, he who wound up on the west coast of the Ostrobothnia province of the Swedish county of Finland was no more than 9 years Giacomo Casanova’s junior so I’m happy to report my ancestry is safe in that respect.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

Othello, Act III, Scene III

Start of the race

Despite the digital era, our small nation of about 5.4 million people still send some 40 million greeting card for Christmas, almost two thirds of all the postcards we send annually. I plead guilty for more than my fair share of them.

This year, I brought some cards from Rome and ordered some from Lyyti, the Etsy shop of a lovely Finnish photographer. I entered into the writing job last night continuing until I ran out of cards. The reduced seasonal postage rate will be valid for two more days and I’m all set. Well done, considering it’s me I’m talking about.

Brewing with the greeting cards is generally the tradition that will start my race for the season. Some people choose to make Christmas a marathon. I’m afraid I’m one of those who tend to succeed in turning preparations of every festivity, however big or small, into a sprint. Wish me luck that this might change one day, at least into a middle-distance event.

Visit of snow

We’ve had some snowfall over the weekend. The first round of the white stuff is, however, never expected to stay, which will be the case also this time.  Let’s enjoy it while we can.