Writings and Imagery from Julianne Davidow

OUTER BEAUTY, INNER JOY: CONTEMPLATING THE SOUL OF THE RENAISSANCE: Preface

The first time I came to Italy, I arrived in Venice on a sunny September day and stepped out of the train station into another world. The usual street vendors were displaying their wares, and swarms of tourists surged along the streets and in the squares. But this scene from daily life was unfolding against a backdrop of sparkling waterways and buildings of unbelievable beauty. The art and architecture of the place leaped out at me. I screened out the tourists and began to absorb the ancient vibrations of the city.

So began my Italian ‘second life.’ I found myself returning to Italy again and again, with shorter periods between trips. The continued exposure to the ancient sights impressed themselves in my mind, working a kind of slow alchemy, drawing me deeper into the contemplation of their forms and essence.

Eventually I began to delve into the writings of the Renaissance, for it was primarily the work of this period that compelled me. Perhaps I was inspired by the courage of the artists who broke from dogma, and in returning to the study of the past, found a new freedom of expression. They studied the wisdom of ancient esoteric traditions that said love and beauty could be a route to divine insights. They wanted to act as a conduit for the all-originating Source they believed in, to bring an immaterial substance into form. Thomas Moore, in his Care of the Soul, speaks of the Renaissance artists, theologians, and merchants who “cultivated a concrete world full of soul. The beauty of Renaissance art is inseparable from the soul-affirming quality that tutored it.”

I realized that in order to fully appreciate the work of Renaissance artists, it would be important to enter into the essential impulse that inspired their creations. And I also realized that through viewing these works, it would be possible to become transformed by them. The artists brought the qualities of harmony, proportion, order, and a unique beauty or grace into their productions. What new essence can seeing and absorbing the energy from these old creations bring to an individual’s life? I think it’s possible to find, in the Italian Renaissance writings and art, a way to initiate a Renaissance in one’s own life.

In making Outer Beauty, Inner Joy I was following my inner driving force, or daemon, as Plato called it. Working with these words and images helped connect me with the energy of the writers and artists presented here. I hope this book will be a springboard for those wishing to explore more deeply the art and literature of this time and place, taking the best of what the Renaissance had to offer, and incorporating it into their own lives. The subject of the Italian Renaissance is vast, its story complex, and I am focusing here only on a few elements that have impressed themselves upon me. There are many more players in this story who have not been included. This book is simply a brief encapsulation of the way I’ve understood what I’ve been reading and discovering, but the depths of knowledge to be found in this subject continues for me without a visible end in sight. These pages are only a dip into the Renaissance, one which may lead the reader to a longer and more profound immersion, and one that I think can be beneficial in reawakening a part of ourselves that may have grown dormant in the modern, technological world. I believe that the only way to deal with the immense problems we face today will be through recognizing the union of the material and spiritual worlds, cultivating tolerance for all great spiritual traditions, and deepening our connection to each other and to the planet.

LIVING IN VENICE: Hobby Natura Magazine

I’d been coming to Venice for years, and it was always a place of respite for me, an oasis where I could escape the noise and confusion of New York, my home town. I’d rent an apartment and stay two, three, or four weeks at a time. Here I could shake off the jitters of a high-speed pace of life and curb the feeling that time was slipping away all too quickly.

Venice felt safe and stable, especially compared with New York, where everything is always changing, and buildings are continuously being torn down and put up. Of course things are changing in Venice too, but slowly, and not so visibly. With the lack of cars and the virtual impossibility of building any modern structures, except for the Calatrava bridge at Piazzale Roma. Venice truly is a world apart, seeming to exist in its own unique time and space.

Very little ‘business’ except the tourist trade exists here anymore. The Venetian population is steadily diminishing, and Venetian craft shops and traditional bars are being bought by foreigners. Still, except for the motor boats, television antennae, and the way tourists talk and dress these days, many things have remained more or less the same. Venice is still hanging on to some remnant of an old way of life.

Now I’ve decided to stay for an extended period of time. When I arrived last November, it was bone-cold, damp, and foggy. But the presence of waters all around me and the gray skies had a calming, protective effect. It was so very quiet, like a cocoon—quite the oppostive of New York, “the city that never sleeps.”

But New York is big, you can travel vast distances and still be in ‘The City.’ Buildings are tall, but from a certain height, you can see for miles and have a sense of space. Here I can also walk and walk, but there is a sense of restriction: walls are everywhere and most apartments face one. Now the feeling of being in a protective space, the feeling I used to love when I came here for short periods of time, is often accompanied by one of being too enclosed. Even looking out to sea, I feel I’m cut off from the rest of the world.

Perhaps this constraint confers another kind of freedom though. Over the centuries, writers and artists have found inspiration in Venice; there are few distractions and the city impels a kind of interiority, making it a good environment in which to concentrate and to create. Creative people often feel that they don’t ‘fit in’ to normal society, but find a sense of belonging here. The longer I stay in Venice, the more the city seems to become a part of me, and I of it. The streets feel like they are ‘mine.’ People who love Venice become very possessive of it.

Venice can be alternately melancholy or cheerful in an otherworldly way. On its melancholy days, the peeling walls and dark waters impart a sense of foreboding and gloom. It’s on days like these that I notice the pictures of the newly departed that are pasted up on walls. And the evidence that time has worn this city down becomes more striking. So many palazzi are abandoned and decrepit, their windows dark. They seem to be in mourning for their former glory. I wish I could go back to the Renaissance for a day or two, back to when the buildings were frescoed and decorated with gold, when travelers poured in from all over Europe to hear concerts in convents and conservatories; or to the 19th century, when it was still possible to swim in the canals and go to the ‘Bagni,’ to bathe in fresh or salt water and take mud baths.

Still, the art and architecture live on. I go to Rome for a weekend, and the eternal city is wonderful. It’s open, filled with parks and big spaces. It also has glorious art and architecture. But these exist side by side with modern buildings and speeding motorists. Rome is happening, it’s young, it’s ‘now.’ When I return to Venice, it feels a bit old and shabby, small and close. Yet soon the walls and water entice me into their domain, and I again give in to their magnetism. I often think of the many public events and rituals that were once held in many parts of the city: Musical processions, marriage festivities, theatrical performances, political parades. Somehow, the walls must have absorbed these vibrations and retain them still.

From Hobby Natura. Click to read the full article and see more photos of Venice.

VENICE IN MY DREAMS: Rosebud Literary Magazine

On the night of January first, 2002, I dreamed that a woman came into my bedroom and wrote the word Venice on the wall. She resembled an old person I had met at a party that day, but a young version, with long blonde hair. Maybe it’s the same woman, a sixteenth-century courtesan, who lives in a novel in my head.

The next day I remembered how the last time I was in Venice, I’d imagined dressing in the kinds of clothes this courtesan wore, in the city where she lived. I had been researching Renaissance Venice for some time, reading about Veronica Franco, a sixteenth-century courtesan and poet. But recently I hadn’t been thinking much about traveling. I had a lot of pressing things to do at home in New York. After the dream however, when I looked at the web page for the city of Venice and discovered that Carnival began on February first, I found myself making plans to go there.

Like almost every New Yorker, I’d experienced great anxiety during 2001. None of the assumptions I’d made about my life could be taken for granted anymore. I’ve always been the kind of person who contemplated mortality on a daily basis, but now I’d become even more painfully aware of each moment slipping away, and needed to regain some sense of equilibrium. Whenever I’ve felt troubled I’ve found solace in Venice, and it was good to know I’d soon be there again.

I have an enduring fascination with Venice. For years before I went there for the first time, I had been having dreams with a few Italian words thrown in, although I had never studied the language. Once I ev/a/pen dreamed I was in a room overlooking a canal.

On another occasion, I was in a jewelry store and felt compelled to buy a small gold charm, a winged lion holding a book. Later I learned that this is the lion of St. Mark, patron saint of Veniceh2. St. Mark’s lion was the symbol of the Venetian city-state known as La Serenissima, The Most Serene Republic, which, until Napoleon arrived and conquered her, had been an independent community for almost a millennium.

Now Venice has turned into an expensive Disneyland, lined with souvenir and designer clothing shops, attracting throngs of tourists from all over the world. When John Ruskin, author of The Stones of Venice, returned in 1845 after a lapse of six years, he was distraught over the decay that had taken place since his first visit. One hundred and fifty years later, I can only with difficulty try to imagine the splendor of the city during the Renaissance, when palaces were covered with porphyry and gold.

It’s still Venice, though, and the stones and buildings retain the vibrations of a thousand years of history. The first time I went there, in 1990, I spent the week in a daze, walking for hours. Surrounding me were Gothic and Byzantine palaces, ancient stone bridges, gondolas on the canals, busts of angels and faces in bas-relief on the facades of buildings, open-air markets, store windows displaying hand-blown glass, people of all nationalities mingling on the streets.

Each time I return, I have the sensation of being enveloped by something old, something real, something lasting. There’s an eternal feeling about the city, even as it crumbles into the sea.

After the plane reservations have been made and an apartment rented, I realize how relieved I am at the prospect of escaping New York City to return to a place where the only two modes of transportation are by foot or by boat. But the vaporetti, water taxis, are motorized and packed with tourists these days. So I prefer to walk or take the traghetto, the gondola service between two opposing points along a canal. That way I’m more in sync with the old ways.

I’ve never been able to feel a part of any particular group, church or organization, being more of a “solitary meditator.” But these days, no prayer or practice can stem my fear as dark waters of chaos swirl about the world. And although there are many religions and nationalities in New York, none seem intrinsic to the place. But in Venice, the vestiges of some of its once vast array of public rituals and calendrical rites still remain. As an independent Republic, Venice had a cohesive societal structure that allowed it to remain stable despite the tremendous forces for change that were occurring all around. Public rituals supported and sustained this unity and stability. Venetians of all classes identified strongly with their city, believing that it was a place chosen by God and that they were a chosen people. Legend has it that a mystical bond was established between Saint Mark and Venice when he stopped there while evangelizing in Italy. He had a dream in which an angel came and spoke the words that are now written on the book held by the winged lion: “Peace to you Mark, my Evangelist.” The angel also told him that his body would eventually rest there. And, according to legend, his relics were brought to Venice from Moslem controlled Alexandria in 827 or 828.

This, then, is the myth of Venice as a Renaissance Utopia, with a selfless ruling class, a balanced constitution, and a lack of social tensions.

Gabriele Fiamma, a fifteenth-century writer said: “I was born a Venetian and live in this happy homeland, protected by the prayers and guardianship of Saint Mark, from whom that Most Serene Republic acknowledges its greatness, its victories and all its good fortune.”

Ah, to be able to share in that feeling, if only for a little while.

From Rosebud

Staying on the Train: Promethean Literary Journal; Rosebud Literary Magazine

“Look who died today,” my father would often comment while reading the newspaper after work. He’d sit in his big ‘easy chair,’ holding the paper in front of him so that only his hands and crossed legs were visible. His voice, muffled by the paper, went on to describe the person, remarking on how young or old the newly deceased was. Later, at dinner, if my siblings or I did something he didn’t approve of, he’d say drily, “You’ll be sorry when I’m six feet under,” or “You’re killing your mother.”

Always restless, when I wasn’t jumping up from the table to dance around, I would wander into the adjoining living room where the television set was invariably on. In those days, news of the Viet Nam war filled the airwaves, and I’d watch men in camouflage clothes creeping through the jungle, accompanied by sounds of machine gun fire or explosions.

Those images of war, the cacophony of voices, and my father’s comments led me to ponder the solidity and interdependence of things. If my parents died, would I still be alive? How real was our house? Or any of us for that matter? When would death arrive here?

Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we used to drive from the new development where we lived in our modern, ranch-style house, to the opposite side of town where my grandmother lived in the humble, old wooden house where my father grew up.

She looked very old—old and rather frail like her house, with sunken cheeks and thin, gray hair pulled back into a low bun. I think some of her teeth were missing. I know there was always dish of hard candies on the coffee table, and I used to do a little dance for her that she liked.

She sat in a chair—I think it was a rocking chair—with her hands on her stomach, complaining about a pain, saying she was dying. She had come to this country from a village in Russia, where, I later learned, the Jews were attacked and she’d seen her sister being raped. I have no memory of her death, but perhaps it was her disappearance that impelled me to ask my mother:

“What happens when you die?” I must have been five or six years old, and I was standing near her legs as she worked on a sewing project at the dining room table.

“Go away. Don’t bother me,” she curtly replied, waving her hand to motion me to leave.

I said no more. Death must be a forbidden subject, I thought, at least for me. Although it seemed fine for others to talk about it. My mother had her own death stories that she repeated. One was about her mother’s death: she had been laughing and talking one minute, and then the next just sat down and died. And there was another about her father’s heart attack: how she’d stayed by his bed caring for him and how after he died, she cried so much, she never wanted to cry again. I only saw my mother cry when she watched old movies, and once when she had a cancer scare and had to go to the hospital for a biopsy. She used to laugh too, laugh until she cried, at some of those old movies. That’s when everyone in the family laughed together, watching such films as “I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy” with Jimmy Cagney. When my mother’s parents came to the States from Russia, her father had opened a movie house and her happy memories mostly had to do with watching movies.

My mother suffered from tachycardia. During an attack, her heart beat very rapidly and she’d retreat to her room and lie on her bed with her hand hanging down over the edge to keep it lower than her chest. Sometimes I’d stand in the doorway and see her body rocking, her two fingers measuring the pulse in her neck. Of course she was afraid of death, like everyone else. She must have felt her heart could give out at any moment.

I started to wonder about, and want to contact, a power greater than me, greater than death—some source of refuge or safety.

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