TRADITION
When colour thaws the chill
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It has, at best, the aura of a ballet, a Watteau, picnic painting, rather than a party. UDAY K. CHAKRABORTY on the Venice Carnival.
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UDAY K. CHAKRABORTY
Discover a new identity in costume and mask.
IT is winter in Venice — La Serenissima. The jostling crowds have gone, the canals have lost most of their pungency and the pigeons have reclaimed St. Mark's Square. A calm has descended on this most enigmatic of cities.
Yet, for a week every February, the calm is shattered. For this is the week of the Venice Carnival, when the chilly quiet is banished. An old tradition revived in the 1970s, the carnival is an excuse to dress up in all manner of finery. Extravagantly robed and masked figures — some jovial, some slightly mysterious — glide down alleyways and across squares, elevating the Passegiatta (that very Mediterranean stroll, where the main aim is not to see but to be seen), to an art form.
A farewell to winter
After three and half centuries, Venezia's first great fiesta of the year, a farewell to winter, still retains its dream-like, slightly sinister, black-magical atmosphere, unlike any other in the world.
From early morning in St. Marks' Square emerge hooded, masked, alien creatures trailing clouds of mauve chiffon. In a corner of Florian's sits a trio of 18th Century coffee-house fops, unnervingly impressive behind black eye-masks, occasionally pressing lace handkerchiefs to silvered lips. A mild, beatifically beaming nun goes by clasping her rosary, nodding to left and right: when you cast a backward glance at this faintly suspect vision you see that a large oval has been cut out of the habit, revealing a horridly hirsute male back and bottom.
Once, as I was approaching a crooked little bridge along a narrow cadle on a February morning, my step faltered: immobile in my path like ghostly highwaymen, posed on the bridge's crest lounged a trio clad in a funeral dress — long black cloaks, black tricorns and white half masks — this is the bautta or domino, one of the carnival's most popular traditional costumes yet, one of its most haunting. A thin cold mist rose from the canal. A shiver went down my spine as I stepped into this De Chirico painting but I emerged on the other side back into reality.
It is believed that the original carnival was a much bigger and rowdier affair with fights, bear baitings and puppet shows, bull fights and secret assignations in gondolas. According to Francis Mission who visited Venice in 1688, "Vice and virtue were, never so well counterfeited. There is everywhere a general motion, and confusion, as if the world were turn'd fools in an instant."
Lasted for about eight weeks
In its heyday, the carnival lasted from Christmas until Shrove Tuesday (about eight weeks). Events officially began when a government official gave permission for people of all ranks to wear masks. For what was a highly stratified and rigid society, it was an unusually egalitarian holiday, as masks were worn by everyone: noblemen and beggars, courtesan and priests and no one — in theory anyway — was any the wiser.
As for the costumes, the more flamboyant, the better. The crowds in St. Mark's Square routinely comprised Cossacks and Barbary pirates, Chinese mandarins and characters from the commedia dell'arte.
The celebration traditionally came to a climax in the presence of the Doge, or Ruler of Venice. Amid fireworks and cheering, an acrobat undertook the dangerous volo by sliding down a rope from the top of the Campanile, or the bell tower, to present a posy to the Doge. At midnight, the bells of St. Mark's gave warning that the fun was over for another year. As the last fireworks hissed into the Grand Canal and the crowd walked home, no doubt exhausted by the frivolity, the streets were left strewn with feathers, ribbons and confetti.
By mid-19th Century, interest in the carnival had declined. Venice was then under Austrian rule and its citizens reluctant to rejoice while the city was in the grip of foreign power. Venice's days as "Mistress of the Seas" were over and, before long, the Carnival too was consigned to history.
But history is never dead in Venice. Back in the 1970s, after a series of successful mini-carnivals, the municipal authorities took control and the festivities have since gone from strength to strength, even if they've not quite reached the excesses of bygone years. Today, the grand finale takes place on Shrove Tuesday with a huge ball in St. Mark's Square. The city's population almost doubles and the authorities have been known to close the causeway when the city becomes too crowded.
Indeed, it is the only period when traffic police control movement in the "pedestrian only" streets and alleys!
For the `better sort' of tourist
In the week before Lent, "La Serenissima" offers a wondrous show on a wonderful stage. Some Northerners have held their noses with a shudder at this show-off spectacle. It is for those who love dressing up, loud music, naughtiness with a dash off childish obscenity and crowds. And it is quite different from the Afro-Latin festival of Rio, New Orleans or Trinidad. There are no great floats, no ceremonial avenues here, no diesel fumes, no cars, no Mardi Gras madness, and no murderous mayhem. Wine and "grappa" flow freely, but people do not come here to start fights. For Italians, public drunkenness is the worst short of brutta figura, bad manners, and this is very much an Italian festival — to which the "better sort" of tourists is made most welcome.
It has, at best, the aura of a ballet, a Watteau, picnic painting, rather than a party.
In this slow, melancholy city of strollers, the carnival moves on foot, by gondola or by vaporetto along the canals. One pauses to compliment a strangers on some felicitous nuances of costume or to take someone's photograph
You can be anyone you want to be when it's carnival time in Venice.
The true thrill of carnival is the chance to escape, to find a new identity in costume and mask — to glimpse a gaudy reflection in a street window and recognise with shock — yourself!
Then it's all over. The crowds go home and winter reclaims the city. A quite descends. La Serenissima is serene once more.
For more information visit: www.carnivalofvenice.com
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