Casanova and me, and Me Too - Michelle Lovric

My first novel, Carnevale, published eighteen years ago. I was anxious then – because I was daring to be the first female writer to describe how it might have felt to be loved by a man like Casanova. Today I would be much more afraid. For Casanova has fallen foul of the Me Too movement, something I learned at a fascinating symposium held in Venice last month.

Delegates explained how last year’s touring exhibition about Casanova met with fierce criticism in the United States. Some galleries even stoked the fire to court publicity. Today’s sensibility has judged him harshly on his interest in very young girls, the avidness of his seductions and two cases of violence against women (for which he also condemned himself).

I cannot defend him on any of those points, but those who now vilify him would find some surprising material if they went so far as to read any of his 3000 pages of memoirs. Casanova was no Don Giovanni. He deplored cold-hearted notchers of bedposts. He thought women had more pleasure from sex than men, ‘because the feast takes place in their own house’ and because they risked the pain and danger of childbirth with each sexual act. As Malina Stefanovska observed during the symposium, Casanova may have been projecting somewhat when he declared that the visible pleasure of his lovers made up four-fifths of his own. However, he took responsibility for contraception. He would stay celibate rather than transmit a sexual disease. He would not sleep with England’s premier courtesan Kitty Fisher because his English would not have allowed for the all-important post-coital chatting. For these reasons, and because he once declared that he would like to be reincarnated as a woman, I suspect that he might have been rather on the side of the Me Too movement.

'Casanova in Place', beautifully choreographed by Kathleen González, was a multidisciplinary event, uniting an international cohort of academics, biographers and novelists in a spirit of amity, curiosity and sometimes hilarity. In this, it would have delighted the man who inspired it.

I was honoured to sit on a panel of writers discussing how to render in fiction or biography a man who had written 3000 pages about himself. The day before, novelist and academic Gregory Dowling had delivered a lecture about Casanova in fiction, in which I found my work discussed in rather starry company. Then it was time for the writers to speak for ourselves.

You can see us here above, left to right. Malina, our facilitator, had previously treated the symposium to a reading from one of her own letters to Casanova, in this case on the subject of exile. (This hybrid form, part personal essay, part academic study, proved a moving and apt way to encounter Casanova. I was so inspired by Malina’s rendering that I wrote a poem in response.) Next right there’s myself, author of Carnevale and The Wishing Bones. Then Ian Kelly, who wrote and researched Casanova, a biography, which has been turned into a ballet by Kenneth Tindall , which was also screened for the symposium. Barbara Lynn-Davis wrote Casanova’s Secret Wife, an intense and lyrical first-person account of one of his most famous love affairs through the eyes of his teenage lover Caterina Capretta. Kathleen González is the author of Seductive Venice: In Casanova’s Footsteps (published in Italy by Supernova Edizioni as Casanova’s Venice: A Walking Guide).

Kathleen herself has written here a precis of our discussions about how, as a writer, one handles the hot property that is Casanova’s life.

I was the unicorn in the room, not because I wrote about Casanova in a novel, but because I’d put him into a novel for children aged nine to twelve. So I had the opportunity to explain why, against all expectation, I felt that Casanova was not just an acceptable but even an excellent protagonist for a children’s book.

The Casanova of The Wishing Bones is thirteen rising fourteen, and on cusp of adulthood. All transitions are potentially perilous. You need lots of peril in a children’s book. The symposium seemed rather bemused when I explained that the rule in all children’s books is that you must immediately get rid of the parents - otherwise, someone is looking out for the children and they cannot have proper adventures. Well, Zanetta and Gaetano, Casanova’s parents, delivered that for me without being asked. Gaetano died when Casanova was eight. Zanetta took little notice of her son, regularly abandoning him to travel the courts of Europe as an actress/courtesan/whatever, and even despatching him to the mainland as a very young child to board in terrible conditions on the pretext that the air in Venice was bad for his frequent nosebleeds.

I then explained that the child-protagonist must have an urgent agenda of their own - an inconsolable need or want. As Malina eloquently pointed out the day before, Casanova needed to make the world pay for his abandonment. His issues triggered behaviours that I could use as storylines.

Casanova’s unusually intense youthful physicality made him a useful character. Children can identify with Casanova’s sense of being an outsider, in a bodily and emotional sense, till he was eight. This was manifested in his muteness, his outrageously prolific nosebleeds and the strange cure he underwent for them. In The Wishing Bones, I originally used the entire episode of the trip to Murano with his adoring grandmother, who put him in the hands of a witch who cured his muteness and his bleeding in a series of picturesque acts and visions. However, in the end, this part of my book was abbreviated and accessorised with other elements more appropriate to this age range, such as beating hearts in buckets and rude talking cats. (Casanova's own witch had black cats, but they were silent).

Casanova’s frank greed for particular foods makes him a suitable character for children’s book. Children are very interested in food. It is one of the few things in which they can exercise power, even if it is the power of 'NO!' And Casanova's totemic foods - his ‘Madeleine moments’ - are even character-aligned … the crab soup his abandoning mother craved when he was in the womb, for example.

I explained that I write for children in the specific genre of junior ‘histfantfic’, which allows for magic. Casanova dabbled for profit and pleasure in occult practices, notably with the elderly Marquise d'Urfé, the richest woman in France, whom he pretended to impregnate with her own cloned spirit. In so far as his memoirs are an act of self-creation, there are many metaphorical rabbits pulled out of many plumed hats. He even wrote his own magical-real novel, with science-fiction elements. So I think Casanova would have enjoyed histfantfic.

His love of novelty also made Casanova an ideal candidate to be the protagonist of a children’s novel. Most of my children’s books feature young, lovely and rather rude mermaids, who speak sea-salt slang because how else would they learn Humantongue except by eavesdropping on pirates? Casanova loved new faces - new ‘title pages’, as he styled them – so imagine Casanova with a cavern full of beautiful young women whose ‘treasure’ (as he would put it), is mysteriously situated – almost like that of the Bellino of his memoirs. Obsessively attracted to this young ‘castrato’ male singer, Casanova unmasked Bellino as a girl masquerading as a boy using an ingenious rubber device that rendered her a virtual hermaphrodite.

Moreover, the mermaids of The Wishing Bones are compelling, strong women who wear scallop shells on their breasts. How is Casanova not going to be fascinated by them? For me, it was a kind of chemistry experiment: put young Casanova with magical creatures possessing a powerful femininity – and see what bubbles up.

I was also able to make use of Casanova’s invention of himself as an extrovert, a larger-than-life person. People like that always mess up. In The Wishing Bones, Casanova’s innocent enthusiasm for the witch on Murano – the one who stopped his nosebleeds - leads him to betray his friends, almost fatally.

I was asked to keep Casanova rather polite in The Wishing Bones. My original draft included verbal hints of his burgeoning sexual awareness, but that did not survive into the final manuscript. Even though in real life he had already acquired sexual experience by the age I show him in the novel, that side of his life is not visible. Instead, I tried to show the abundance of his joys, his lively greed, his charm and his desire to please ladies. He is attracted to one of my young female protagonists, and she takes pleasure in his warmth. But there is no question of precocious sexual activity being allowed when writing for this age group.

Among my embellishments is Casanova pre-shadowing his work as a violinist. He is hired to entertain the English guests at their Venetian 'Hotel of What You Want’ with singing, violin-playing and heart-tugging recitals of romantic verse. The violin – restrung with mermaid hair – becomes young Casanova’s tool for repainting the colour in a city that has been drained of its beauty by the enactment of an ancient prophecy.

Of course he needs to stare deeply into the eyes of a lovely girl while he goes about this important work.

Will this site me in the sights of Me Too? I hope not.

Michelle Lovric’s website

P.S. Apologies to anyone who was planning to attend my Wishing Bones event at the Finchley Road O2 Waterstones on this coming Sunday August 4th. Almost appropriately, for a book set in Venice, this event has been delayed by a flood. It will be reconvened as soon as possible.

Byzantium’s Attila or her Spiritual Heiress? – Michelle Lovric

I have previously interviewed Gregory Dowling about Ascension, his historical mystery set in Venice.

When I heard he had a new book out, I asked if we might speak about it. To sweeten the bait, I promised that I, for my part, would not indulge in another extended catfight about Byron. Graciously, Gregory agreed. His publishers kindly sent me the book, and I took it Venice to read – the perfect book for a rare day of dense rain gurgling down the drainpipes into pewter-grey canals.

In The Four Horsemen, Gregory Dowling’s protagonist Alvise Marangon is set to investigate a secret society that has suddenly manifested unpleasantly with the murder of a scholar so eccentric and impoverished that it’s a mystery as to why he was worth killing at all.

This novel is about spy-circles that overlap and clash. It is also about a clash of beliefs … the chief characters believe that Venice was either an Attila to the ancient of city of Constantinople, or the rightful heiress to its holy leadership. Some people believe in one or the other so strongly that they must murder, commission murder, or die.

Alvise Marangon is one of those indispensable uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin characters. He straddles two worlds, being Venetian but brought up in England. He’s a cicerone, a learned guide to English Grand Tourists, so he knows the city inside out – a useful knowledge base for a novel about Venice recounted in the first person.

The discomfort of Marangon’s position is that he is not quite one thing or the other. He’s a poor man who sometimes moves in the most elevated society and the most elegant of spaces, like the Querini Stampalia palace, pictured below. Alvise is clever, but not so clever as to evade a constant stream of deadly troubles. He is a last-minute merchant, an excellent device for keeping readers on the edges of their seats. being the son of an actress, his sense of theatre enlivens the novel. He’s endowed with a few failings, including an over-fondness of wine. And he indulges in one reprehensible moral lapse that I found shocking, mostly because I was so engaged with the character.

So here are my questions to Alvise's creator ...

Those of us who write about Venice in the eighteenth century find ourselves using the vocabulary of the time. For me, it is always interesting to hear another writer explain the terms that are the currency of our books. Could you give me your personal definitions of 

1. A ‘confidente’
A paid informer. Their reports can be found in the state archives and make fascinating if often depressing reading. A great deal of what one reads amounts to little more than local gossip, but (or perhaps “and so”) it helps to give one an idea of Venetian society. Alvise finds himself forced into this role.

2. As did one Giacomo Casanova, thirty years after your story. What about a ‘sbirro’?
A law-enforcer at the humblest level; the term is almost always derogatory, as they were generally reputed to be corrupt and/or violent.

3. A 'bravo'?
A hired thug.

4. A 'cisisbeo' (without mentioning Byron, if possible, or just a little bit)?

The semi-official “gallant” of a married woman, often but not always actually her lover, also referred to as “cavalier servente”. Difficult not to quote from Byron’s Beppo:

 


Byron by George Henry Harlow,
courtesty of Wikimedia Commons

But “Cavalier Servente” is the phrase
Used in politest circles to express

This supernumerary slave who stays

Close to the lady as a part of dress –

Her word the only law which he obeys –

His is no Sinecure, as you may guess;

Coach, Servants, Gondola, he goes to call,

And carries fan and tippet, gloves, and shawl.

  And he wrote the poem before he actually found himself playing the role to his lover, Teresa Guiccioli, a noblewoman from Ravenna. With the benefit of this inside knowledge he described the behaviour of Italian noblewomen to his publisher, John Murray:

 

Their system has it’s [sic] rules—and it’s fitnesses—and decorums—so as to be reduced to a kind of discipline—or game at hearts—which admits few deviations unless you wish to lose it.——They are extremely tenacious—and jealous as furies—not permitting their Lovers even to marry if they can help it—and keeping them always close to them in public as in private whenever they can.——In short they transfer marriage to adultery—and strike the not out of that commandment.—The reason is that they marry for their parents and love for themselves.—They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honour—while they pay the husband as a tradesman—that is not at all.—— You hear a person’s character—male or female—canvassed—not as depending on their conduct to their husbands or wives—but to their mistress or lover.——[…] It is to be observed that while they do all this—the greatest outward respect is to be paid to the husbands—and not only by the ladies—but by their Serventi—particularly if the husband serves no one himself (which is not often the case however) so that you would often suppose them relations—the Servente making the figure of one adopted into the family.—Sometimes the ladies run a little restive—and elope—or divide—or make a scene—but this is at starting generally—when they know no better—or when they fall in love with a foreigner—or some such anomaly—and is always reckoned unnecessary and extravagant.

Palazzo Mocenigo where Byron did some of his cavalier servente-ing

5.       A 'casino'?
A room or set of rooms kept by Venetian men or women of high rank for purposes of pleasure; often but not always the pleasure consisted in games of chance (hence the modern meaning of the word), but a casino could also be used for sexual liaisons or just for refined conversation and social gatherings.

Can you explain the background to your premise that Venice should be regarded as the end of Byzantium or the heiress to its spiritual hegemony? What kind of people would have espoused each of these views?

Well, I wouldn’t say it is my premise but that of certain characters in the novel. Venice grew up in its early years in the shadow of Constantinople; it never fell under the aegis of the Holy Roman Empire of the West, precisely because it was under the protection of Constantinople. This gave it a certain independence as compared with other Italian cities and states. And then as it grew in wealth and power it came to rival Constantinople and this culminated in the Fourth Crusade, in which Venice led the assault on its old protector, sacking the city and basically assuming for itself the role that Constantinople had always had, as the leading power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

One only has to look at the great paintings celebrating the event in the Doge’s Palace to see that this event was considered a foundational moment in Venetian history. Venice, which had no classical past, having been founded in the fifth century, now took upon itself the heritage of imperial Rome – with all the additional prestige conferred by the religious status of Constantinople, as the city created by the first Christian emperor.

Of course, that is not how it was seen by victims of that assault – which is to say, by the Greek-speaking world of the Eastern Roman Empire, the inhabitants of which suddenly found themselves under the rule of the Franks and the Venetians. And so in the novel it is primarily the non-Venetian characters, specifically the Greeks, who bewail and fiercely resent the end of Constantinople – because the eventual fall of the city to the Turks in 1453 can also be attributed to the fatal weakening of the city in that Crusade two and half centuries earlier. Venice, so to speak, sowed the seeds of its own decline.

And can you tell us how you use the symbolism of the four famous horses that can be seen in replica above the doors to the basilica of San Marco? (with the real ones safely inside) And how they relate to your story?
The four horses are considered the greatest trophy looted from Constantinople. The general theory is that they once stood in the hippodrome of Constantinople, even though we have no definite evidence of this. The important thing is that they are clearly a symbol of Roman-ness (to translate the word romanità); it’s certainly difficult to see any religious symbolism in them, unless one drags up the idea of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (obviously hinted at in my title), and so it may seem rather odd that they should have been placed on the front of Venice’s most important church. But, of course, they were a clear statement of Venice’s imperial ambitions; the city was thus proclaiming itself as having assumed the leadership of the Roman Empire of the East. It’s interesting that they came to be closely identified with Venetian power, so that in the fourteenth century a Genoese admiral, for example, talked about bridling the horses of St Mark, rather than taming the city’s winged lion.

And about the association of the Venier family, from Venice’s Golden Book of nobles, with Venus? And how the birthplace of the goddess is transposed from one island to another?

That was clearly just a piece of wishful or opportunistic etymology on the part of the family, wanting to justify their possession of the island of Kythira, birthplace of Venus. Cyprus, too, claims to be the birthplace of Venus (or Aphrodite). My knowledge of classical mythology is not extensive enough for me to make any pronouncements on this dispute. But it’s another example of how the interpretation of history and mythology depends very much on the intentions and desires of the interpreter. One thing Alvise learns from his experiences is a certain fundamental scepticism.

The story focuses on outrages committed against ‘Turkish’ – Muslim – visitors to Venice. Were current East-West relations in your mind when writing this book?

Yes, inevitably. Also because these relations are all part of a continuous history, which we really need to know. If George W. Bush had known a little more about such things then he might have avoided talking about the need for a new Crusade after 9/11. That is a word that has very different connotations, depending on which side of the great divide you are speaking from.



Sultan Mehmet II,
portrait by unknown artist
clearly influence by Bellini
courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons

Having said that, there is no doubt that Venice played an important role as a bridge between these two worlds. To the great scandal of many in the Christian West, Venice continued to trade with the city of Constantinople, or Istanbul, as it would become, after it had fallen to the Turks. In the sixteenth century more than half of Venice’s grain came from lands under Ottoman rule. Sultan Mahomet II even invited the artist Gentile Bellini to his court, where he spent two years, which furnished him with exotic backgrounds for his paintings for years to come; it’s thank to him that we know what the Sultan looked like. (Something I've written about on this site).

And just as Venice had been the first place in western Europe to adopt the Byzantine table-fork, so it became the first to start drinking Turkish “black water”, or coffee.

And speaking of religious matters, it’s worth remembering that the first printed copy of the Koran was produced in Venice. The historian Niccolò Contarini, who became Doge in 1630, studied the cohesion of the Ottoman Empire and concluded, with all the practicality of a Machiavelli, that Mahomet had succeeded better than anyone else “in organising religion to bring the multitude to himself and to extend the state”. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that Pope Clement VIII said to a Venetian envoy in the sixteenth century: “We would be happy if you behaved with as much respect to the Apostolic See and the person of the Pope as you do to the Turks.”

One of your characters is a sexually rapacious noblewoman. I have heard it said that the 18th century was the most feminine of times – when women enjoyed more equality, freedom and power than at other periods. Is your Isabella Venier a metaphor for Venice of the 18th Century?

Well, I don’t like to think of my characters purely in terms of metaphors or symbols. I hope she comes across first of all as a living, breathing person. Of course, there had been women of influence and prestige before the 18th century (Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, Sarra Copia Sulam, to name just a few – and anyone who is interested should get hold of Kathleen Ann Gonzalez’s book A Beautiful Woman in Venice), but probably it did become easier for women, at least of a certain rank, to play a public role in the 18th century – and not only in Venice, of course.

The Casino Venier:: infinite luxury in
a small room,
ideal site for seduction

Under the circumstances, do you think readers will forgive Marangon for his lapse?

I hope so. I can’t really say more than that. He certainly isn’t perfect and knows it.

I see that this may not be the last Alvise Marangon mystery. Are you prepared to say more?

The third mystery is under way. This time the Venetian scuole will come into the story – particularly the Scuola di Sant’Orsola, for which Carpaccio created the marvellous cycle of paintings now in the Accademia.

Thanks for the interview – and thanks especially for your description of Alvise at the beginning, which is exactly how I hope readers perceive him. Apologies for having dragged in Byron yet again …

You're forgiven. Thank you for a fascinating conversation ...

Gregory Dowling’s The Four Horsemen is published by Polygon. His website

Michelle Lovric’s website

James Bond meets Goldoni, and more musings on the Byron question - Michelle Lovric

Gregory Dowling’s new historical novel, Ascension, is set in Venice in the 1749. By coincidence, my current WIP is set in La Serenissima in 1740, so I devoured his book with particular voracity. It’s also a fine read – pacy, humorous and well supplied with edge-of-seat factor. So I asked Gregory, whom I’ve known for far too many years, if he would agree to being interviewed. Very kindly, he did.

First, a little background.

Gregory Dowling – novelist and academic – is Bristol-born. He read English at Oxford. It’s now more than thirty years since he moved to Venice, where he is Associate Professor of American Literature at Ca' Foscari University. He has published four novels, co-edited two anthologies of poetry, written various non-fiction books and academic articles on Italian, British and American literature. He has a special interest in British and American writers in Italy, from the Romantic age onwards, and has written extensively about Byron in Venice. From the last fact, regular readers will know that Gregory and I have something to argue about.

But let us not dive head-first into controversy, and begin with the basics.

How did your personal and professional relationship with Venice begin?

First of all, thank you, Michelle, for offering me this chance to talk about my book – and thanks for your kind words on it. I’m very glad you enjoyed it; that means a lot to me.

 I first saw Venice in 1979, after four months teaching English in Naples. I came up to the north of Italy in June to visit an old school-friend who was working at a language school in Treviso and we went to Venice on a day-trip. And then I went back again by myself the next day. And the next day… And I knew I would be going back often. After Naples I did a stint at a language-school in Siena; and then, in January 1980, I got a job at a language school in Verona and while living there (for the next year and a half) I used to spend almost every weekend pottering about in Venice. In summer 1981 I was beginning to think I ought perhaps to go back to England and get a “proper job”—but then I said to myself if I could just have one year living in Venice… And I moved to a language school in Venice. And one year turned into another, and then I was offered the chance to start teaching at the university. And here I still am, now teaching American literature as well as English language. So I never got that “proper job”.

the view from Sant-Elena - Gregory's part of Venice

In a sentence or two, tell us what Ascension is about.

It’s a spy-story set in 18th-century Venice, with a hero, Alvise Marangon, who finds himself, against his will, inveigled into the Venetian secret service. Alvise was born in Venice but brought up in England in the world of theatre and so a certain amount of make-believe comes naturally to him. It is intended as a thriller, with, I hope, some elements of comedy. James Bond meets Goldoni, perhaps…

Why did you choose 1749 for the setting of this novel?

 Well, my choice was originally a little vaguer. It’s still there as an epigraph to the novel: “Venice, under the Dogeship of Pietro Grimani (1741-52).” As I wasn’t tying myself to any specific historic event I was quite happy with that general indication—rather like the old-fashioned convention you find in Victorian novels of leaving the last digit in the date as a dash. Those years attract me as a historical setting for a number of reasons: the final decline of the city is still several decades off; great art, music and literature are still being produced, and—should I so choose in future novels—I can bring in such figures as Casanova and Goldoni, who were very much part of the scene. However, the publisher decided that the “shout-line” on the cover needed a specific date, so after some hemming and hawing I opted for 1749, which seemed right.

Arsenale, setting of one of the climactic scenes of the new novel

One of your characters says, ‘In this city, everything is connected with everything else.’ Can you explain how this applies especially to Venice.

It still seems true to me. Perhaps it is just that Venice, despite its glittering cosmopolitan image, is also at heart a village, where people tend to know what everyone else is up to—and who they are related to.

 Another observation that caught my attention: ‘this city does bring out the histrionic in everyone’. Do you think that this is as true in 2015 as in 1749?

 Well, I suppose we can still point to carnival. However, there is something a little forced and artificial about carnival today (I used the contemporary carnival for the climax of my previous thriller set in Venice, Every Picture Tells a Story, St Martin’s Press, 1991). Or, to put it in another way, the artifice doesn’t seem to come quite so naturally today. Nonetheless, there’s still a good deal of performance in Venetian life, whether at the Rialto market or at faculty meetings at the university.

How do you make use of your locations? Do you physically go to write in the settings of your scenes? Do you superimpose a map or diagram of how things were then over how they are now? I am particularly thinking of your description of the Piazza San Marco at night, which well illustrates how things were different then. I also loved your description of the cheese shop in the middle of the fishiest bit of Dorsoduro.

I don’t feel the need to actually be in the place while writing a scene. Sitting down with my laptop in the Doge’s Palace would be a little inconvenient, after all. But I do try to remain faithful to the city’s geography as it was then, which essentially means remembering that streets like Via 22 Marzo, the Strada Nova, and Via Garibaldi did not exist; that there was just the one bridge over the Grand Canal; that Venice itself was a true island… Obvious things like that, for a start. It’s possible that a real expert might find I’ve allowed my characters to cross a bridge that wasn’t there at the time and I’ll be happy to accept correction on such points. However, I won’t lose too much sleep over it, since it’s the overall faithfulness to the period that counts, I feel. And I hope I captured that in such things as my descriptions of Piazza San Marco at night.

 I’m glad you liked the cheese shop; that, of course, is purely imaginary. I’m not drawing on any records of such an establishment in the archives.

Sant'Isepo, one of the little-known corners of Venice explored in the novel

Were you able to go inside the Palazzo Garzoni to research the scenes you set there? Was that during its recent restoration?

Actually, the department I belong to at the university was situated in Ca’ Garzoni for many years, until the university sold the building. So I know the palace well. I allowed myself a little licence in describing its attic, mind you. And I never climbed on to the rooftop either…

The Missier Grande is inevitably part of the crime-and-punishment scenario of all novels set in Venice. But your book offers the first time I can remember him being an actual character with a personality. How did you come up with your particular and charismatic Missier Grande, in the context of his political role?

I was drawn to the character precisely because he is usually such a vague figure. I imagine that at the time a certain anonymity was considered desirable, in order to instil the necessary awe among the populace. That gave me some scope to make what I wanted, more or less, of the figure. I was also intrigued by the fact that the post was held by figures for fairly long periods, amid a context in which most positions of authority had very strict time-limits. So I was interested in how this would affect relations between such figures.

How do you deal with the issue of info-dumping – trying to get on with the story while accommodating the need to explain the strange workings Venetian life in the 18th century? Lately I have been shucking off history in favour of character in my books, but that doesn’t mean I don’t do the research. However I find that I increasingly discard explanations of Venice from the novel I submit, partly to avoid the editor’s red pen. What is your attitude to the balance between educating the reader and entertaining him/her?

Well, the particular position of my hero-narrator helps here. He is Venetian by birth but not by upbringing, and that means he has had to learn most of the strange workings of the city for himself. Also he is a professional cicerone, so it isn’t too unnatural that he should occasionally feel the need to explain things as he narrates. And I also imagine that a reader who chooses such a novel will have a certain amount of curiosity about the city and the period and thus a certain degree of toleration for such information. Having said that, I will always tilt the scales in favour of entertainment over education.

I understand that you, your wife and children were charmingly inserted by your father into a copy he made of a Francesco Guardi painting of the Bucintoro, the Doge’s ceremonial boat, which features at the climax of the novel. I am envious of that picture! I guess this is what historical novelists do – we insert ourselves into history. Do you agree? And can you tell me more about the painting?

 

My father, after he retired as a G.P., took up painting, something he hadn’t done since schooldays. He regularly attended an art-class for years and did countless view-paintings, as well as portraits. Occasionally he did copies of famous paintings. One of these is of the Francesco Guardi painting you refer to, and in the bottom right-hand corner he included my own family: myself, my wife Patrizia and our two sons, Christopher and Alessandro.

 

Judging from the fact that Patrizia and I are holding the boys in our arms, the painting must have been done about 24 or 25 years ago. The painting now hangs in my father’s bedroom, just one of numerous Venetian views that cover three of the walls of the room. It is possible that when I began thinking of a plot for the novel, I was unconsciously influenced by this painting, since, as you say, we have been inserted into history—into a particularly splendid moment of history.

It’s hardly a secret after my novel Carnevale that I fail to admire Byron. I find much of the poetry facile, and even brilliant poetry could not make up for the cruel way he treated his mother, daughter Allegra, and nearly every woman who passed through what I cannot even bring myself to call his ‘romantic’ life. As far as I am concerned, Byron’s only big love affair was with himself. I enjoy his letters, but only because I like the dark, vicious humour there. I still pity his targets. Those letters are rampantly self-conscious, knowingly destined for publication. So they are only half letters; other half is posing with curlicues. Well, I got off the fence! I think you would defend Byron, would you not? Tell us what about your own writings on him. 

Byron by George Henry Harlow,
courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Well, now here is where I could wear out your and your readers’ patience, since I could bang on about Byron for pages and pages (if we can refer to a blog having pages). The first thing to say, of course, is that Byron’s behaviour is at times indefensible. The story of Allegra is a terribly sad one and Byron comes out very badly from it. (People might be interested in this half-hour BBC Radio 4 programme by Michael Symmons Roberts that was made about her short life a few weeks ago, in which I feature briefly: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ygl5 ) And I won’t try and defend his behaviour towards his wife, either, just as I wouldn’t try and defend that of Charles Dickens or that of Graham Greene towards their wives. But it is worth saying that not all women had such negative experiences with him; you only have to read Teresa Guiccioli’s adoring account of his life to see that. And another interesting case is that of Mary Shelley, an extremely intelligent and sensitive woman who had every reason to have a very negative view of him, since she was so closely tied to the story of Allegra, but who after his death had to admit to the enduring fascination he exerted over her.

And if you want to get a much more positive view of Byron it is well worth reading accounts of his last year, the year of the so-called Greek adventure. A very good book on it came out two years ago by Roderick Beaton, Byron’s War. It’s a period that is extremely well-documented, since almost everyone who came into contact with Byron during his time in Greece wrote their own accounts of the story and of his death. And it is clear that Byron made a strong and favourable impression on most of these people, who are extremely diverse in character and background. Particularly touching is the account by Teresa’s brother, Pietro Gamba, who accompanied Byron to Greece and also died there; before meeting Byron he had tried to warn his sister against associating with him, influenced by the tales he had heard of Byron’s behaviour; after meeting him he became one of Byron’s most loyal friends.

Another book that is a passionate defence of Byron the man as well as Byron the poet is the recent L'estate di un ghiro - Il mito di Lord Byron attraverso la vita, i viaggi, gli amori, le opere by the Italian critic Vincenzo Patanè, who lives and works in Venice, the first full-length Italian biography of the poet. A very good book.

 But of course the real reason we continue to be fascinated by Byron is his poetry and here I have to disagree vigorously with your opinion—while at the same time acknowledging that there is a nugget of truth in what you say about it. There is a lot of Byron’s poetry that is “facile”, as you put it; it’s the stuff that made Byron famous: much of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the Oriental Tales etc. The kind of stuff that created the Byronic legend, and made him famous throughout Europe. The kind of poetry that Byron himself said had “corrupted the public taste”. It’s enjoyable enough, in its own rather undemanding way, but it is not what keeps Byron’s reputation so high today. Byron’s greatest works are the poems he wrote in ottava rima, the Italian stanza form he encountered in Italy: Beppo, The Vision of Judgement, and, in particular, Don Juan. Beppo gives us a delightful picture of Venetian society, in a story that works as a parody of his own oriental romances. The Vision of Judgement is one of the greatest satirical poems in the language, and is also highly imaginative. Don Juan is an extraordinary work, varying in tone and register from canto to canto, ranging from tender love poetry to bedroom farce, from epic adventures to literary parody, from scenes of war to humorous reflections on religion, politics, high society… While his poetry in the “Byronic” style had a huge and immediate influence on so many of the other European Romantics of the day, in all fields of art, from Turner to Delacroix and Gericault, from Tchaikovsky to Berlioz and Schumann and Verdi, Don Juan had a long-lasting but even more powerful influence on such great works as Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Auden’s satirical poetry and, to come up to our own days, Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. In fact, I’d leave the last word on Byron to Auden, by far and away the best critic on Byron.

“Whatever its faults Don Juan is the most original poem in English; nothing like had ever been written before. Speaking for myself, I don’t feel like reading it very often, but when I do, it is the only poem I want to read: no other will do.”

 Which writers, in your opinion, do Venice justice on the page? (I’d love to ask you who doesn’t deliver, but let’s not be uncharitable, shall we? At least to the living.)

Well, I’ll start with Beppo, then. And in fact I could remain with Byron to make a distinction between those writers who are good at the Childe Harold vision of the city—describing Venice in terms of sheer romantic spectacle—and those who are good at the Beppo mode—describing Venice in terms of its daily life, depicting it, one might say, from a more intimate point of view, the point of view of the long-term Venetian resident. Some, like Byron, can do both, but in general writers tend towards one or the other.

The best of the former kind is Anthony Hecht in his extraordinary poem The Venetian Vespers, which contains some of the most moving descriptions of the city’s beauty in all literature: I’m thinking of the end of the second section and the beginning of the third, with the description of the interior of San Marco, or the final section, with its sunset description. All as part of a great psychological portrait of a tormented American exile in the city. Other poets I admire on the city are James Merrill and John Drury.

Henry James also has some wonderful descriptive passages; perhaps not so much in the novels (although the storm and its aftermath in The Wings of the Dove are wonderful) as in his essays in Italian Hours.

Remaining more or less in that period, I would say that the best of the “Beppo”-type writers is William Dean Howells, in his wonderful book Venetian Life, a great account of everyday life in 19th-century Venice.

My favourite essayist on the city is Mary McCarthy, whose book Venice Observed contains some of the most acute and brilliant descriptions of different aspects of Venice, but most particularly its art.

Novels I’ve enjoyed that are set in the city are Miss Garnet’s Angel by Sally Vickers, with its wonderful pictures of Dorsoduro and the Guardi paintings in the church of Angelo Raffaele. Vikram Seth’s pages in An Equal Music are brilliant; there’s a wonderful range in them, from the magnificent descriptions of the Carpaccio paintings in S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni and the mosaics of Torcello to the homely depictions of life in S. Elena, my own part of town. So he manages to do both Childe Harold and Beppo.

And to turn to fiction in my own genre, Donna Leon is always reliable for pictures of Venice today (even if the city is, of course, rather less crime-ridden than one might expect from a reading of her novels). Rather more melodramatic, but enormous fun, is the crime novel Lucifer’s Shadow by David Hewson.

I have a guilty fondness for the novels of Simon Raven, and two in particular have well-drawn Venetian settings: Brother Cain and The Survivors.

Andrea Molesini, among Venetian writers, is extremely imaginative in his children’s novels set in the city, particularly Tutto il tempo del mondo.

Fruttero and Lucentini wrote a strange but very atmospheric novel set in Venice, L’amante senza fissa dimora, which I translated for Chatto and Windus; however, for some reason, after publishing two other books of theirs that I had translated they decided not to proceed with this one, which was a pity, since it was perhaps the best of the three.

For my own purposes—that is, to get the sense of 18th-century Venice—Andrea di Robilant’s books have proved invaluable, particularly A Venetian Affair. As, of course, have the works of Goldoni and Casanova.

And that brings me to your own novels, which I have greatly enjoyed. I particularly love the imaginative extravagance of your children’s books. I may even have got the idea of putting the story of Marino Faliero at the heart of my book from the use that you made (although very different) of the figure of Baiamonte Tiepolo.

Thank you so much, Gregory, for this tour around your literary Venice. You have almost swayed me about Byron. Almost.  I too love the Hecht and the Howells, different as they are.  And you have added to my books-to-buy-list, very expensively.

Michelle Lovric's website
Photographs of Venice by Gregory Dowling.
Portrait of Gregory Dowling, and photograph of the Guardi painting, by Barnaby Dowling.