It’s so beautiful that you know that nothing in your life you can come up with or produce — especially in terms
of pure existence—would have a corresponding beauty. It’s so superior. If I had to live a different incarnation,
I’d rather live in Venice as a cat, or anything, but in Venice.
Joseph Brodsky
Venice Acqua alta
Inspired by Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni
“Depict it,” whispers the winter light, stopped flat by the brick wall of a hospital or arriving home at the paradise of San Zaccaria’s fronton after its long passage through the cosmos. And you sense this light’s fatigue as it rests in Zaccaria’s marble shells for another hour or so, while the earth is turning its other cheek to the luminary. This is the winter light at its purest. It carries no warmth or energy, having shed them and left them behind somewhere in the universe or in the nearby cumulus. It’s particles’ only ambition is to reach an object and make it, big or small, visible. It’s a private light, the light of Giorgione and Bellini, not the light of Tiepolo or Tintoretto.
And the city lingers in it, savoring its touch, the caress …
Joseph Brodsky
Vivaldi's morning in Venice
Inspired by Antonio Lucio Vivaldi & Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni
