Laatste update op 8 May 2020
Twice to Venice
De Mérode visited Venice twice in first half of the 20th century. According to his biographer Hans Werkman, his trip to the city in 1936 must have been one of the happiest of his life. After I read almost everything there is to be read about Willem de Mérode I can only stress this must be true. For De Mérode important elements of his life came together. Sadness, erotisicm, art, intellect, love and nostalgia.
The sweet black & white snapshot was taken during one of their gondola trips in 1936. Willem de Mérode and his friend Bram Corbijn van Willenswaard sit together in the black velvet. The location of the picture is at the Ponte della Paglia, the bridge in front of the Bridge of Sighs, seen from the San Marco Bacino (as my favorite gondeliere Kiko told me). When you mount at Piazza San Marco, this is usually the last part of the boating tour.
Willem and Bram in Venice
During their stay in Venice, both resided in the luxurious hotel Bauer Grünwald at the Camp San Moisè, a stone’s through away from Piazza San Marco. No doubt this was an expensive hotel, intended for the moneyed traveller. These days a stay in this hotel will cost at least € 220,– per night. However, De Mérode was not ardently enthusiastic about his stay. He thought the other hotel guests made too much noise and he complained about that elaborately in his diary in which both Bram and Willem scribbled down all kind of information about their trip. Bram´s annotations mostly depict the food they ate btw.
Already in 1921 Willem de Mérode caught the gondola ride he would take in 1936 de gondeltocht strikingly in a poem. Hans Werkman describes in the revised biography ´Bitterzoete overvloed´ (2011) that Bram and Willem took a gondola ride three times because it gave them so much pleasure.
VENEZIA
‘t Was avond toen wij in een gondel gleden
Diep weggezonken in het zwart sameet
De lucht leek als een wazig zilverkleed
En ‘t water lag vol vage kostbaarheden.Wij luisterden: koel murmelde ‘t beneden,
En langs de piazetta zoel en wreed
Deinde muziek; maar werelds liefde en leed
Was als een ziekte in onze jeugd gegleden.Uw hoofd lag zorgloos aan mijn knie gebogen.
Zacht streelden mij uw schemergouden oogen,
Uw haren glansden in diep gouden gloed.Over ons dreef de roep der gondelieren,
Die wild en vleiend ‘t donker leven vieren.
Maar rustig en gelukkig ruischte ons bloed.
From: Het kostbare bloed, written in 1921
Ponte di Paglia
The bridge of the gondolieres, seen from the tower of San Giorgio.
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