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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Enjoyable and Comfortable Journey Into La Serenissima,
By
This review is from: The Silver Age of Venice (Hardcover)
Maurice Rowdon wrote several well-received travel books during the 60's and 70's including this charmer of a history about 18th century Venice. If you have not yet read some of Rowdon's other works, such as "Italian Sketches" or a "Roman Street", you have missed some lovely books.
"The Silver Age of Venice" mixes history and culture while never straying too far from today's here and now. Venice's time-capsule aura of place allows this to a far greater extent than practically any other city. Free of the intrusion of automobiles and the scale-upsetting imbalance of modern skyscrapers, Venice can still be strolled with a greater sense of the past than possibly any city of Europe. This visible presence of lost memories infuses the best writing about the city, and is on display throughout Rowdon's little book. Rowdon divides his cultural history into a series of short chapters, starting with; 1) The Thousand-year Fight for Survival, and 2) "Crafty and Malignant Foxes' These two chapters lead off with an introductory 30 page summary of Venetian history up until the start of the 18th century. 3) The Aristocratic Showcase of Europe - the beginning of the book proper as Rowdon discusses with grace and wit the book's main subject, the no-longer powerful Venice as she drifted into pleasant political senility, a great empire's decline and fall. As Rowdon notes, "Only in Venice could you see a minister of state being tapped playfully on the nose by a great courtesan at the theatre." The remaining chapters discuss specific subjects, though Rowdon constantly pulls us back into the present with his depictions of a topical contemporary building or setting. 4) Bead and Circuses 5) The Artists and Venetian Light 6) The Last Great Artists of the Republic 7) A Dying Nobility and a Healthy People 8) La Zentildonna 9) 'Liberty and Licence" 10) The City of Music 11) Literary Lions and 'Il Gran Goldoni" 12) The Last Years of the Republic "The Silver Age of Venice includes a useful, if dated, bibliography, and an excellent and thorough index. Rowdon chose over 30 apt black and white illustrations. The book is just a little under 150 pages of text, nicely presented in easily readable typeface including wide margins for those who like to make notations in their travel books. Rowdon feels free when appropriate to swing back a few centuries as lead in for each chapter. Thus, the 5th chapter on art discusses Titian at length, while similar backtracking occurs in chapter 10, The City of Music. Rowdon writes very well about art; in my experience studying Art History an all too rare talent. It's also a pleasure to follow him on literature and music as well. Most Americans know little of the remarkable Venetian dramatist and poet, Goldoni; we read how "We are always so much 'there', in the moment. When we finish one play we get a hunger for another, because we miss his consolingly intimate scenes, as if they were now those of our own lives...he rarely took more than eight days to write a play; Once when a play of his was hissed he promised the audience sixteen plays in the following year, and he gave them seventeen." Rowdon's chapter is a fine place to begin an appreciation of this most ephemeral and charming of playwrights. Rowdon does not abuse style; out of his great respect and love for Venice he refrains from adding extraneous and florid touches of purpling prose in a vain attempt to magnify his own vision and upstage his subject. Nor does he, as do many more famous modern travel writers, seek to enter too much into the scene, lavishing an enormous amount of our time on their personal anecdotes. I like Rowdon's balance as writer, and highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys their history mixed with the spice of life. Rowdon's chapter discussing the various plights of Venetian women throughout the social scale, entitled La Zentildonna, certainly could be anthologized, as might several of the other fine pieces.
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