Galloping Gypsy
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • About
  • Music
    • Repertoire
  • Events
  • Links
  • Gallery
  • Blog 2

Venice is a Fish: Review

31/5/2017

0 Comments

 
“In the eighties, groups of tourists from Eastern Europe started to Venice,” writes Tiziano Scarpa in Venice is a Fish. “From dawn to dusk they wandered along the calli in well-behaved committees. They had travelled through the night from Budapest or Prague to feast their eyes on as many cities as possible in twelve hours.”
 
In addition to my affinity for the grande viaggiatore Marco Polo and the very name Mark (the city’s patron, as I wrote in April), that’s my personal connection to the book and to Venice. You see, in the nineties, I was one of those tourists, an American travelling by bus with a Slovak chorus. In our case, the overnight trip was from Central Slovakia to Trent, a couple of hours to the northwest of the city of canals. After a couple of concerts and three nights in dormitories, we (foolishly) travelled overnight to the Republic of San Marino, several hours south—which just wasn’t worth the hardship. Then we went back up Italy’s Adriatic Coast and spent a couple of hours in Venice before continuing to Croatia to give more concerts. Much more than twelve hours, but Scarpa is essentially right.
 
Venice native Scarpa’s portrays out-of-the-way places – and many common ones – lovingly; that is, like a lover who knows the other’s body all too well. Not all the smells are pleasant. Nor are all the other sensations of Venice. “Feel how your toes turn prehensile on the steps of the bridges, clutching at worn or squared edges as you climb; your soles brake you on the way down, your heels halt you,” he writes in the chapter “feet” (lowercase in my English edition—all the chapters are body parts). He observes that Venitians have little heart disease, thanks to all the stair climbing. In “mouth,” he introduces you to the city’s dialect and cuisine.
 
Venice is a Fish is a feast for all the senses. A movable feast, at 5 x 7” and 150 pp., you can easily take it on vacation, even to less exotic locales. Published in Italian in 2000, English translation 2008 by Shaun Whiteside.
 
For what it’s worth, there’s an experimental music album of the same name, based on Theresa Wong’s two-year sojourn in the city of Marco Polo. It has a lot of the same approach as Tiziano.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    December 2022
    December 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014

    Musical & Literary Wanderings of a Galloping Gypsy

    Mark Eliot Nuckols is a travel writer from Silver Beach Virginia who is also a musician and teacher.

    Categories

    All
    Austria
    Birthday
    Central Europe
    Czechoslovakia
    Czech Republic
    Folk Music
    Francis Ferdinand
    Grand Budapest Hotel
    Hungary
    Martin
    Mozart
    Music
    Pécs
    Prague
    Requiem
    Sarajevo
    Slovakia
    St. Cecilia
    Stefan Zweig
    The World Of Yesterday
    Vienna
    World War I

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly