logo
Venice in Winter, With a Poet as Our Guide

Venice in Winter, With a Poet as Our Guide

New York Times27-01-2025
By 2 a.m. we were happily lost again. Dimly illuminated arches and doorways reflected off the green canal waters. My daughter, Vivian, 16, and I were on a lion hunt in Venice, an annual occurrence for six years now.
If I felt slightly silly coming to this ancient tourist trap every year, I was comforted that arguably the world's coolest tourist, the exiled Russian, Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky, did the same thing for 17 winters, resulting in what many regard as the bible of travelogues, 'Watermark,' published in 1992: 135 pages of vivid, profound, often funny impressionistic musings on the city Brodsky called 'the greatest masterpiece our species ever produced.'
Brodsky's fascination with Venice was colored by his childhood in St. Petersburg (then named Leningrad), another city of canals, where he'd lived in a communal apartment on a bustling street lined with czarist palaces. 'I, too, once lived in a city where cornices used to court clouds with statues,' he wrote.
My own attraction was shaped by a Danish childhood next to the languorous waters of the Baltic Sea. As for Viv? Strolling the city is the only endurance sport we can both participate in as equals and where the setting trumps her phone screen. She is a warrior princess here.
Venice recently made headlines for charging a 5 euro admission fee to stem the Disneyesque hordes of summer fanny packers. (The fee is supposed to double in April.) But on this March night the city was as tranquil and evocative as an ornate tomb. A whiff of frozen seaweed blew off the Adriatic. Viv mischievously pulled out her cellphone, but we use map apps only as a last resort. 'Not yet,' I said, and she put it back into her pocket.
We climbed the steps of yet another one of the city's more than 450 bridges and peered around the next alley leading to a square where, lit up like an alter, was our lion.
The marble beast called the 'Piraeus Lion' was plundered from Athens's main harbor in 1687 and was as familiar to Viv and me as the family dog. It has become a touchstone for many of our walks. The star of four mismatched marble lions guarding the Arsenale gate to the city's ancient fleet, the beast's ferocity was mitigated by our knowledge that runes were graffitied into its flanks by marauding Vikings — our kinsmen!
I suppressed the usual desire to drone on about the lion's 23-century history. Why kill intuitive beauty with data gleaned from tourist books? The real pleasure of wandering in Venice is to drown our egos in undefinable grandeur. 'The city is narcissistic enough to turn your mind into an amalgam, unburdening it of its depths,' Brodsky wrote. 'After a two-week stay — even at off-season rates — you become both broke and selfless, like a Buddhist monk.'
'The imperative of cold and brief daylight'
Throughout the 1960s, Brodsky's free-spirited personality and verses got him into hot water with the Soviet authorities, who subjected him to increasingly messy persecutions. The relatively unknown poet grew into an international cause célèbre until finally, in 1972, the Soviets booted him from the country with little more than a small leather suitcase in which he packed two bottles of vodka.
He landed in Ann Arbor, Mich., at the University of Michigan, where he continued writing prolifically as a poet in residence. When he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, the charismatic writer became a literary pop star, packing lecture halls around the world with his melodic readings.
'Watermark' opens with Brodsky arriving for the first time in Venice's main train station in 1972, hoping to seduce a Russian acquaintance. She rebuffed him, but he instead became seduced by the city whose smells, surfaces, moods and tastes he would detail as tenderly as a lover's. 'Love is an affair between a reflection and its object,' Brodsky wrote. 'This is in the end what brings one back to this city.'
He returned almost every winter, when he could enjoy Venice unclouded by tourists. 'This is the season low on color and big on the imperative of cold and brief daylight,' he wrote. 'Everything is harder and more stark.'
'Part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers'
In the bohemian Dorsoduro neighborhood on the south bank of the Grand Canal, where some bars display 'No Tourist' signs, I met the American expatriate painter Robert Morgan, 82, to whom Brodsky dedicated 'Watermark.' After half a century in Venice, Mr. Morgan still works in his studio every day, painting sky blue cityscapes. He was introduced to Brodsky when both men were in their late 20s, creating a bond that lasted to the grave.
'We took to each other because we were both single exiles in love with this place,' Mr. Morgan told me. 'We walked and talked, often all night, without any big purpose, although we did tend to bump into a lot of women, cocktails and cicchetti.'
Cicchetti are Venice's version of tapas, which absolve Venice of two centuries of mediocre tourist restaurants. These snacks were also integral to Viv's and my nightly foraging routine, where instead of dining at restaurants, we wandered bar to bar nibbling fresh cod, cottony finger sandwiches, pickled vegetables and other bites to be walked off until the next worthy spot.
'Joseph joked that wherever he ate here, he knew he was eating better than the Soviet Council of People's Commissars, who had given him so much trouble,' Mr. Morgan said.
Mr. Morgan invited me up to his flat, with its bright paintings and flowers, tended to by his sparkling writer wife, Ewa, 52. Tea was served, gossip and stories shared. Brodsky's playful spirit animated his octogenarian friend. 'You could see him observing everything behind the cigarette smoke and Irish whiskey,' Mr. Morgan said. 'Always making mental notes even when entertaining an entire table.'
I wandered 10 minutes east of the Morgans' apartment to a dead-end street, Calle Querini, where, at No. 252, a salmon-colored house was the setting for a provocative literary encounter in 'Watermark.' A marble plaque above the narrow front door explained that this was where the American poet Ezra Pound lived with his mistress, Olga Rudge, while broadcasting Fascist propaganda to the United States during World War II. Brodsky wrote about squeezing through this doorway in 1977, five years after Pound's death, with his girlfriend, the writer Susan Sontag, for tea with Rudge, guarded by a three-foot phallic bust of Pound.
Although Brodsky had translated Pound to Russian in his youth, Rudge's pro-Mussolini utterances and the oppressive bust had Sontag and Brodsky hastily retreating back down this tiny street into the night. The bust is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
One morning after an all-night walk, Viv and I emerged on Piazza San Marco, Venice's main square. The pale winter sun rose across the lagoon and the weak rays unexpectedly exploded off the five domes of San Marco, turning them into lighthouses against the leaden sky.
Brodsky described winter mornings here as 'part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers,' and sure enough, the bells in the campanile began tolling for morning Mass while waiters pulled out tables and chairs from the surrounding cafes. This was our last stop, as it usually was for Brodsky, who often ended up lounging on these very chairs with a cigarette and an espresso.
Venice, forever
Brodsky's chain smoking and lifelong poor health felled him in New York at the age of 55. His Italian wife, Maria Sozzani, whom he had met just six years earlier when she was a student at one of his lectures, arranged for him to be buried on the cemetery island of San Michele just north of Venice.
The funeral was not without one last drama in this dramatic man's life. Mr. Morgan told me that he and Roberto Calasso, Brodsky's Italian publisher, went to the cemetery before the cortege floated across the lagoon and discovered the grave was adjoining none other than Pound's. 'Roberto and I told the gravediggers there's no way he could be buried there, and they hastily found a spot a few yards away. They were still digging when the coffin arrived.'
On our last evening, Viv and I jumped on a vaporetto and crossed over to San Michele, whose cypress trees towered over the island's walls like ghost sails. 'I knew what water feels like being caressed by water,' Brodsky wrote sensually about sailing to this island of death. He often tarried here among the many exiled Russians' tombs, notably the composer Igor Stravinsky and the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, where dancers still leave their worn slippers on his gravestone.
Viv and I wandered over to the familiar rounded white marble headstone at the edge of the Protestant section, where two Ukrainian women in miniskirts despite the cold were taking selfies. Brodsky seduces even from the grave.
San Michele closed at 6 p.m. and we headed back to the tiny jetty beyond the cemetery gates as Venice's night lights set the medieval towers aglow across the lagoon. The evening fog danced across the walls and around the cypress trees like ballerinas. One of San Michele's cemetery cats approached Viv while we were waiting for the vaporetto, which reminded me of a line from 'Watermark': 'I would like to live my next life in Venice. To be a cat there, anything, even a rat, but always in Venice.'
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Michael Ward, 'Top Boy' actor, charged with rape in UK
Michael Ward, 'Top Boy' actor, charged with rape in UK

USA Today

time2 minutes ago

  • USA Today

Michael Ward, 'Top Boy' actor, charged with rape in UK

Michael Ward, the BAFTA-winning actor best known for his performance in "Top Boy," has been charged with several counts of sexual assault and rape following an investigation. Ward, 27, a native of the United Kingdom, was charged with two counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault, a July 25 release from the country's Metropolitan Police confirmed. The assaults are connected to one woman, and allegedly took place in January 2023, authorities say. Ward is scheduled to appear at the Thames Magistrates' Court in the U.K. on Thursday, Aug. 28. USA TODAY has reached out to a representative for Ward for comment. "Our specialist officers continue to support the woman who has come forward − we know investigations of this nature can have significant impact on those who make reports," Detective Superintendent Scott Ware, whose team is leading the investigation, said in the release. An ex-model who crossed over into acting, Ward first graced the big screen in 2016 with "Brotherhood." His big break came with television roles, however, both in "The A-List" and Netflix's "Top Boy." Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward shine in Sam Mendes' 'Empire of Light' He also scored the leading role in 2019's "Blue Story," a split-screen film that follows two friends whose relationship is challenged by dangerous gang violence. Ward won a BAFTA for his performance. In 2022, he also starred alongside Olivia Colman and Colin Firth in "Empire of Light," a critically acclaimed film that earned both a Golden Globe and Academy Award nod. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and Spanish at: (4673) and and en Español

The Langbaan Team Will Open a Thai Restaurant (Potentially) in Pok Pok's SE Division Building
The Langbaan Team Will Open a Thai Restaurant (Potentially) in Pok Pok's SE Division Building

Eater

time32 minutes ago

  • Eater

The Langbaan Team Will Open a Thai Restaurant (Potentially) in Pok Pok's SE Division Building

is the regional editor for Eater's Northern California/Pacific Northwest sites, writing about restaurant and bar trends, upcoming openings, and pop-ups for the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, and Denver. Fans of blind items may have been tickled to see an article from the Oregonian tease a possible new restaurant from the James Beard Award-winning Langbaan team, but it appears the news is true: Chef Akkapong 'Earl' Ninsom confirms that he, along with Eric Nelson and chef Sam Smith of Yaowarat, will open a new restaurant dubbed OK Chicken & Khaosoi. 'Our vision is to bring a Northern Thai dining experience back to Portland — something the city has been missing since early in the pandemic,' Ninsom writes in an email to Eater. While that news in itself is worthy of excitement, exactly where the restaurant may set up shop is, in itself, a surprise. While the team is still in the lease negotiation process, if all goes well, they will take over the former Pok Pok space at 3226 SE Division Street. A tentative opening date of winter 2025 is set. (Again, if things work out with the space.) 'We feel the location — with its existing Northern Thai feel and history — would be a perfect fit for the concept we're exploring,' Ninsom writes in an email to Eater. The exterior of Pok Pok, as seen on June 17, 2020. Bloomberg via Getty Images Ninsom shares that the team is exploring a restaurant 'that balances fun and approachability with a practical, sustainable model.' What that means is counter-service or bar-style ordering, with a simple order sheet for diners to fill out, before settling into a table. Ninsom points to this model as something the team has seen in their previous research trips. 'As for the concept itself — Northern Thai flavors, late-night energy, possibly with karaoke — we see it as a way to fill a gap while also creating a place that feels vibrant but operationally efficient,' Ninsom writes. 'It's still early, so we don't have firm timelines (hoping for this winter if all goes as planned).' Meanwhile, food reporters have been trying to parse out more details via the new restaurant's Instagram page. Ninsom, Nelson, and Smith highlighted some of the dishes they sampled on a recent trip, which the Oregonian reports was 'a research trip specifically to study Northern Thai cuisine, which had [been] Pok Pok's specialty.' Parsing through the photos, the Oregonian specifically pointed to a Pok Pok-like whole roasted chicken; the photos also tease laab muang, or Northern Thai-style laab, as well as som tum, and other dishes. The winner khao soi bowl of the trip, highlighted on the Instagram page, points to a Muslim version from Khao Soi Lung Surin in the Chiang Mai village of Doi Pui, per the caption. The team is already testing the namesake khao soi at Yaowarat's staff meal (of which all staff meals are diligently catalogued on @yaowaratpdx_staff_meal). Looks like you'll have to join the Yaowarat team to get an early taste, suggests Nelson, or wait patiently for the grand opening. Eater Portland All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

See the first trailer for ‘The History of Sound,' a romantic period drama set in New England
See the first trailer for ‘The History of Sound,' a romantic period drama set in New England

Boston Globe

timean hour ago

  • Boston Globe

See the first trailer for ‘The History of Sound,' a romantic period drama set in New England

In the film, Mescal ('Gladiator II'), stars as Lionel, a singer who moves from Kentucky to Boston, where he meets David, a fellow student studying music composition, played by O'Connor ('Challengers'). David is soon drafted into the war, but the pair later reconnects for a journey through Maine, where they collect traditional folk songs from the region to preserve for future generations. Oscar-winning actor and Kingston resident Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, earning a six-minute standing ovation, according to Advertisement Shattuck, who's married to Milton native Advertisement ''The History of Sound' is polyphonic fiction, a choir of characters from different ages and different stations of life,' Vognar wrote. '[It] marks Shattuck as one of the form's brightest lights.' Isabella Bernstein can be reached at

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store