Henri Le Sidaner in Venice
"It is glorious and outmoded, magnificent and eroded, a heroic ruin."
Camille Mauclair in his biography of the painter Henri Le Sidaner (my translation):
No artistic city has been painted more often than Venice, and none is more appealingly and mysteriously changeable. It blooms in the sun and is a beauty at night. It is happy and tragic, loving and fearful, obvious and secret. It is triumphant in the present and overwhelmed by the weight of the past. It is glorious and outmoded, magnificent and eroded, a heroic ruin. How does one see it, grasp it, interpret it? A cosmopolitan crowd swarms the place. The barbarians descend from rainy countries, the Germans who tyrannized over the city for a century and a half still lust after it, and it remains the traditional honeymoon spot for dull, bourgeois couples.
The idle, the vicious, and the depraved of every nation frolic in Venice, just as profligate and playful as they were in the 18th century, when the city was at its nadir: dispossessed of its colonial empire, its arsenals empty and its commerce dead, its queen turned courtesan, the city became a pleasure destination for all the debauchees of Europe. All this, combined with the visitors who are infatuated with painting and architecture, gives one a false impression of Venice and its inhabitants, who hide inside during the tourist season and detest the foreigners who make the hotel owners and common people rich.
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