I’ve been to Venice. But it’s still on my bucket list. Why?

Because I haven’t been there on April 25, a reMARKable date in the City of Canals. It’s the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, whose relics are in St. Mark’s Basilica on Piazza San Marco, where you’ll also see a winged lion, symbol of the saint, atop a column. There’s even a street called Via XXV Aprile, so close is the date linked with the city's patron.

And since my name is Mark, April 25 is my name day or saint’s day, I’m fascinated by the Venetian customs. But my story begins in Slovakia, where I would MARK the occasion like anyone else celebrating a name day, a tradition that had become largely secularized after four decades of Communist Party rule. (Name days exist largely in Catholic and Orthodox traditions, where there’s a saint for every day of the year.) I would provide wine or schnapps for my teacher colleagues – yes, alcohol in a secondary school, I know, I know – and fellow choir members. They would give me flowers and candy. Females, a majority in both groups, would line up to shake hands, kiss me on the cheek, and say, “I wish you all the best on your name day: lots of love, happiness, and success, but mainly love.” They almost competed with each other at elocution.

Venice's association with St. Mark goes back to 828, when according to legend, his bones were smuggled out of Alexandria, Cairo. In pig lard or some form of pork, so the story goes, so that the Muslim customs officials wouldn't even touch anything.

Nowadays Venetian men give women roses, which has become a symbol of the day. There is a large procession and, naturally, a special Mass in the basilica. It also happens to be the anniversary of liberation in WWII. Here’s a web page that explains the customs more thoroughly.

The occasion of Holy or Maundy Thursday reminds me of a curious custom of the former Crown Lands where I have traveled so widely and spent seven years of my life. The usual tradition is for a priest to wash the feet of parishioners in imitation of Christ washing His disciples’ feet before the Last Supper. It reminds all present of Christ's wisdom that all who lead should serve.

In the Austrian monarchical tradition, the Emperor would wash the feet of twelve of Vienna’s poorest in the Hofburg palace. In the ceremony—separate from the day's Mass—the paupers would sit on a dais. The Emperor would also serve them a meal, and archdukes would take away the dishes.
 
The accompanying illustration was made around 1910, when Franz Joseph was nearly eighty. His nephew Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, is in the foreground, wearing the light-blue hussar jacket.
 
Here is another post on the pageantry of Austria-Hungary, about the coronation of Emperor Charles I in 1916.
 
Also, while browsing Getty Images prints from the old Danubian Monarchy, I ran into the one below, which is related to my blog entry on Franz Joseph’s reign from the centenary of his death last November. That article is here.

Since the beginning of 2014, I have been commemorating the events of a century ago. For one thing, I have been reading Peter Englund’s The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War, which gives diary accounts of how soldiers and civilians experienced the conflict. And of course, I was present in Sarajevo for the centenary of the assassination, and it was largely in anticipation of that trip that I launched Galloping Gypsy when I did.
 
I am mainly interested in World War I from a European perspective, so I won’t comment much on this anniversary. But a great uncle of mine fought for the U.S. in France. My family knows little of his service, since he never talked about it.
 
Please see my posts from the anniversary of the assassination in Sarajevo and pics from the anniversary of the outbreak of war on my Gallery page. You might also be interested in my entry on the last emperor of Austria-Hungary, and how he might have brought an early end to the war.

Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko died Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had lived and taught for much of the past quarter-century. I now regret that I missed his appearance at Ohio State in my first year of grad school there because I “had too much work to do.” But then I was a linguist specializing in Czech and Slovak matters, and didn’t realize what a great humanitarian and artist he truly was.
 
It was only later that I began to read his poetry, notably from a bilingual book with original and translation on facing pages. Even then what spurred me on was seeing that OSU performance I’d missed in a recording that had become part of the video collection of the Center for Slavic Studies. His interaction with grad students who’d been chosen to read parts of his poems in English and Russian. The loving look in his eyes that showed his appreciation for their involvement. The laughs and other spontaneous reactions of the audience. For Yevtushenko, poetry was theater.
 
The most moving was “Babi Yar,” his monument to the 1941 slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews by Nazi invaders of the Soviet Union at a location of that name in Ukraine. The poem was a daring attempt not just condemning the murder but also critiquing the regime, which until the piece’s publication in 1961, had consistently failed to mention the atrocity as part of the Holocaust. The poem also laments Russian and Soviet anti-Semitism, while Yevtushenko’s personal voice strives for a personal identity with the sufferings of the Jewish people. As he writes in the opening stanza, “Today I am as old in years as all the Jewish people,” and in the final lines:
 
                              In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
                              In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
                              must hate me now as a Jew.
                              For that reason
                                                             I am a true Russian!
 
Yevtushenko is also remembered for his protests against the Soviet authorities’ 1956 trial of author Joseph Brodsky and the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. He will be buried in the cemetery of the artist colony Peredelkino, outside of Moscow.