'Vorticist Venice: Douglas Goldring in Venice and Dalmatia'
Dr. David Barnes (
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As the tide passes swiftly up the Grand Canal, one has a vision of Byron plunging into the water from the steps of the Palazzo Mocenigo, to swim in the Lido. Then one can see Musset and Georges Sand [...] arriving gracefully at the steps of the Teatro Goldoni [...] Then Shelley, Meredith, Turgenev, Whistler, Théophile Gautier, and a hundred others [...] have they not all endowed Venice with the glamour of their genius?
Douglas Goldring, Dream Cities (1913)
The only impression, so far, that I could get of the place was of a half-ruined city of great historic interest which had been bought up and "produced" by the management of the Earl's Court Exhibition. The band seemed good in so far as it conquered the din, and evidently the proprietors of the ruins who collected all the entrance fees were doing their best to make the antiquities amusing. One speculated as to who, actually, these proprietors were […] It was a mystery who had succeeded to the heritage of the Doges and acquired the tourist's cash…
Dream Cities
As I sat there […], outside the Quadri [...] I felt an irresistible longing to shout "Venice for the Venetians!" to goad them, […] even to welcome Marinetti with his multi-coloured manifests. I wished the ragged ones would rise and recapture their own houses, drive us all into the canal, build factories, engage in revolutions, and be alive […] Later on, when I sat in my window before getting into bed and looked down on the waters of intarnishable memory, I realized that all this was being merely peevish and fractious. Lovers enjoy, you know, being critical in the moments when their freedom has not finally left them, before they utterly succumb!
Dream Cities
Venice, once mistress of the seas, has sunk from the position of one of the Great Powers of Europe to that of an unsatisfactory provincial town; and now, is Austria nursing her Slav subjects till their day comes, for freedom, unity, and strength?
Dream Cities
And as for Venice; when Mr Marinetti and his friends shall have succeeded in destroying that ancient city, we will rebuild Venice on the Jersey mud flats and use the same for a tea-shop.
Ezra Pound, Patria Mia (1913)
The newly rebuilt Campanile was lit up at the top with a great pink light, flags waved from the red flagstaffs in front of the Duomo, the whole square was illuminated with thousands of electric bulbs picking out the lines of the buildings, and in the middle of it all the great military band played its loudest and was inaudible.
Dream Cities
The contrast between Venice – that melancholy town of tomblike palaces, whose inhabitants remind you of decayed baronets on the Thames embankment – and Trieste, brisk, wealthy, and bursting with vitality, is curious and arresting. The advantage is by no means all on the side of Venice. The jolly and successful plutocrat doesn't compare at all badly, in many respects, with the beggar who has an aristocratic profile and a béguin for your watch and chain.
Mussolini is busily occupied in the task of reorganising and regenerating the country, in which he has achieved a success so remarkable as to entitle him to be considered a constructive statesman of the highest rank […]
Goldring, Sardinia: The Island of the Nuraghi (1930)
'We stand for the Reality of the Present – not for the sentimental Future or the sacripant Past'.
Blast (1914)