VENICE BY NIGHT

Hokitika Guardian, 17 October 1927, Page 1

VENICE BY NIGHT

(By JAMES DUNN in the London " Daily Mail.”) VENICE, Aug. 30. Night comes to Venice bringing gift" from the glorious jiast; for this is the city of dreams. In the sweet silence shadows take form, .names seek their owners, and the great dead glide over tho dark water keeping trysts made long ago when A'eniee ruled the sea and romance ruled A'eniee.

The night H big with mystery, and the warm wind is sowing secrets along the waterways. Knowing waves are chuckling under the bridges and gossiping before closed doors, gossiping of love that cannot die. Night has come to A'eniee not like a curtain that is lowered but as a veil that is raised. Under the spell of the past I sit in the gondola seeing memories, hearing silences. This is the A'eniee of Titian A'eeillio himself and other great masters of lights and colours, the Venice of the Doges and the Great Council. IN THE TRACK OF HISTORY. Quietly—almost fearfully—we steal down dark and narrow canals, past barred windows and railed balconies, followed by shadows that meet "other shadows surprised as the silent gondola looms round a bend in the waterwav.

AVe are in the track of history, seen only by the peeping stars that keep the forgotten secrets of the unforgotten dead. Legends and stories and songs of long ago come unhidden to memory. There on the steps against the studded iron door a man was killed while a guilty kiss was still warm on his lips. There under the shrine of the Madonna a traitor was taken to the dungeon of the living death. There beneath the flowered balcony a lover who was also a poet sang his songs to the woman who had inspired them. Ghosts and memories—how they thrill in the sweet silence of the night amid the beauty that is A'eniee.

But my gondolier lias had his fill of ghosts and of silences. He likes not the dark ways and the loneliness. Is not the hand playing in the square of St. Mark’s, and has not a great singer been engaged to sing in the yacht moored in the Grand Canal r AA'hat would the signor have? Surely lie would not he mooning half the niglit along the narroAv dark ways with never a song or a tune and only the shadows and the smells! INTO THE LIGHT AND MUSIC. The mood is gone; gone also is the glamour of the past. Let us to the Grand Canal, for romance and beauty are of all time, and it is good to he alive. Under mighty trusts-of the big oar the gondola spurns the shadows, and with many a cunning twist and many a graceful curve we shot swiftly into the light and music which is the Grand Canal. Here is the living A'eniee, tho A'eniee of carnival, true to itself and its tradition.

AA’o slip under the stern of a noble yacht aglitter with lights, and we are stayed liy the magic of a voice. A trained soprano is singing. I do not recogise the air, hut it is licautiful. Tlie gondolier is transformed. He is a horn child of music. His eyes glow in rapture, and his balanced body sways to the rhythm of the song, and from his parted lips comes a sort of crooning accompaniment. He is a Venetian, my gondolier, and his soul is set to music.

The song ends too soon, and we move on towards more music, for music is everywhere. It is the voice of A'eniee calling upon her children to be glad, for the spirit of carnival is abroad on the wide water. They are dancing on the floating floor laid over moored gondolas, dancing in a garden of lights, dancing in a dance boat.