Venice
Venice’s form results from an unnatural relationship between water and architecture and, therefore, its implications. Far from being a completed organism or – in Alois Riegl’s terms – “an unintentional monument” generated by an organic, “natural” growth created by the slow passage of time, Venice is a “monument” (if I may say so). It lives from and within a perpetual conflict between necessity and will; the same conflict that constructs the water-architecture relationship; that is, the unity of form and the assumption of form. The shape of Venice (and its own history) coincides with the ways in which this conflict has been governed, as Francesco Petrarca observed as early as 1300. He wrote that Venice was the “only port where the ships of men take refuge”. Using a naval analogy ships-man, Petrarch perceived a homology between “the firm and immovable concord”, which made the city safe, and “the firmness of the marbles” on which it was founded. This passage, so often quoted, reminds us that the stone arrangement on which Venice was built is the result of a will exercised with “prudent wisdom” to counteract the element on which they are placed: water. Water “by nature tends to descend (aquam natura petere ima)” and “ the more you try to prevent it from unleashing its strength, the more tenaciously it resists and presses (et suis quo magis uti prohjbeas viribus, eo cuntumatius illuctari adversum atque inniti)”, as written by Leon Battista Alberti in the tenth book of De re aedificatoria. Besides, Alberti adds that as water “loves to be alone […] and its upper surface is perfectly aligned at the same level as the extreme edges (sedibus sese tantum contentam esse; […] surfacemque summam sese ad coaequatam altitudinis parilitatem limbo extremisque labris collibrare)”, architecture and the city cannot but violate its status. Of this sacrilege, Venice is an accomplished representation. Likewise, it is the current image of resistance that must be opposed to “the concentration of time in the circle of necessity” (Hermann Broch).
The myths linked to the origin of Venice must be interpreted as stages in the continuous renewal of the assumption that unifies various founding rituals, for which the recognition of water’s sacredness is a constitutive condition. Anita Seppilli, in her book Sacralità dell’acqua e sacrilegio dei ponti, identifies the most eloquent example in Aeschylus’ The Persians, which clarifies, in turn, the meaning of the words rape and desecration used earlier. The fate of Xerxes, the Great King defeated at Salamis (“the ships guided them, the ships ruined them” [The Persians, 560]), was marked by “a fatal guilt to atone for”. The construction of the bridge that, as Herodotus described, allowed his immense army to cross the Dardanelles Strait (Hellespont). Xerxes was a victim of hýbris, the opposite of “prudent wisdom”, which led him to dare to “enslave the sacred Hellespont, to chain that sacred water, the divine Bosphorus current. From the ford he made a path […]. He, a mortal, believed to be more powerful even than the gods – what a foolish idea! – more powerful than Poseidon” (The Persians, 745-750). Poseidon, the god of water, Υαιήοχος, meaning “he who surrounds the earth”, “he who fertilises and agitates the earth”.
Catastrophe
In general, the founding rituals reveal that the two meanings of the terms creation and construction tend to overlap and frequently coincide. As rituals, their purpose is to propitiate the composition of history made by man with nature’s changes. On the one hand, they are atonement rituals: they are intended to appease the spirits that every act of foundation disturbs. Here, we could lightly imagine them as pioneer manifestations of what Petrarch humanly described in 1321 as prudent wisdom, which affirmed even the stones on which Venice was founded. On the other hand, as taught by religious history scholars, this involves recognising the divine creation, the god of water, as the protector of constructions (Alberti defines Neptune-Poseidon as a tutor). Since water separates, the god who wields his power is also the god of construction. In fact, every construction coincides with a settlement, with the separation “of the middle, totius soli” of “an area, a portion of space exactly delimited and surrounded by walls (area vero erit certum quodam loci prescriptuom spacium, quod quidem muro ad usus utilitatem ambiatur)” (De re aedificatoria I, 2). From this coincidence – from this god’s dual nature – derive many definitions of the architect’s work, such as those highlighted by Stella Kramrisch when explaining the meaning of the word Staphati, “the master of what remains”, in Hindu construction practices. These few indications should lead us to rethink the coincidence between the divinity of the god of water and the god of architecture, even within modern culture. To confirm this, we should refer to the tenth book of De re aedificatoria. In it, Alberti recalls how in “all kinds of ceremonies, according to ancient customs, we use water (in nuptiis in expiationibus ac ferme omnibus denique in sacris vetustissimo ritu aquam adhibemus)”. The reason why this custom is ancient but current is explained by Alberti at the beginning of the second chapter, “water, according to Thales of Miletus, would be the beginning of all things and community among men (aquam Milesius Tales principium essererum y humanae coniunctionis dixit)”. These claims are not original and demonstrate Alberti’s debt to Vitruvius. Without going into this argument, we could just point out how Vitruvius, based on his knowledge of ancient beliefs and rituals, considered water to be the founding element of all constructive practice. The eighth book of De architectura is dedicated to the mirabilia aquarum. From the second to the seventh book, Vitruvius centres on the use of building materials and techniques (II), orders and different types of buildings (III-VII). After that, he deals with water, as a necessary element for life as air, fire, and earth. However, it is with the force of water (with its energeia as echoed by Alberti) with which architecture must harmonise, as a power that dialogues and confronts another power. “Those who exercise priestly dignity according to the Egyptian rite demonstrate that at the base of everything is the strength of the liquid element (ex eo etiam qui sacerdotia gerunt moribus Aegyptiorum, ostendunt omnes res e liquoris potestate consistere)”. It is “the opinion of both the philosophers of nature and the priests that at the base of all things lies the power of water (cum ergo et physicis et philophis et ab sacerdotibus idudicetur ex potestate acquae res constare)”.
That said, let us take a step back and refer to Poseidon again. Poseidon is the god of waters and earthquakes. A fertile and terrible god. Fertile because terrible? To challenge him, as the Great King of the Persians did, means to expose oneself to catastrophe. Herodotus says that Xerxes ordered the Hellespont to be whipped to punish its “arrogant water”, when the first bridge he built was destroyed “by a violent storm”. The “barbaric and insolent words” (Herodotus) that he pronounced when issuing this order preluded those with which he recognised “the ruin of my country, it is me” (The Persians, 934). This, at the end of the war that began with the construction of the bridge, defeated and naked as described by Euripides, Xerxes “who had dared to chain to the sea” (Herodotus). If we were looking for a demonstration that every great constructive effort implies an imminent catastrophe, I think we could find it in these pages of Herodotus. But, moving closer in time, is it not Alberti who reminds us (in the tenth book) that “numerous extraordinary, unpredictable, and unthinkable (inaudita insperata incredibilia, three words he wrote without separations) accidents caused by nature’s prodigious force are capable of suddenly damaging and altering any well-ordered architectural conception? (et quae multa in dies prodigiosa naturae vis possit afferre, quibus omnis bene deducta ratio architecti vitietur atque disturbetur)”. Therefore, it is not enough to read Kant, Voltaire or Leopardi and study how they reacted to the 1755 earthquake – which placed Lisbon’s ruins in the hands of a great city builder (the Marquis of Pombal) – to conclude that it is impossible to approach history without thinking of it as the history of catastrophes. Especially in our time, it would be opportune to recall that from the destruction of nature comes the empire (“de la destruction la nature est l’empire”, Voltaire, Poëme sur le désastre de Lisbonne, 1756).
Water and architecture and myth’s usefulness
As mentioned in Paul Tillich’s The Demonic, “myth relates the great cosmic catastrophes to the struggles between gods and demons.” We must start from here to better explain how the water-architecture relationship comprises a violation; it entails a sacrilege, from which the notions of creating and building (which I refer to) are derived. The myth demonstrates how the perception that building involves unleashing dangerous dark forces was widespread. Even today, this danger is perceived with an imprecision only matched by the determination with which it is exercised. In humanism, it was quite common to place gold coins on the foundations of the most representative constructions, as an exorcism. It was a way of ingratiating with the benevolence of the constructions’ god and of making amends for a violation.
Are we sure that the justifications we usually give to the works we build are devoid of even the echo of this kind of exorcism? At the extremes of the varied rhetorical paraphernalia, that we usually use to justify our constructions, are necessity and celebration. Is it not in here that the perception of violating (first and foremost) the natural balance plays an increasingly important role? Is not this leading us today to generally think that the purpose of architecture is to avoid disturbance? A praxis devoid of pathos, whose objective is the “return” of the world’s happiness (“le bonheur du monde”), as in any case other hands will build your burning palaces, other people will be born within your crushed walls (“D’autres mains vont bâtir vos palais embrasés, / D’autres peuples naîtront dans vos murs écrasés”, Voltaire, Poëme).
The sacrilege’s magnitude involved in building is especially explicit when perceiving the spiritual character of the constructions that violate the power of water separation. That perception generates fear, and bridges are the most disturbing of all constructions. Herodotus described how, after failing, the bridge that crossed the Hellespont was built by the expert hands of carpenters hired by Xerxes in Egypt and Phoenicia. They protected its flanks “so that animals and horses would not be frightened of the sea below.” “Walking on water” doesn’t just scare animals. To understand the reason behind it, we must question how to interpret the meaning of the term bridge. Does bridge mean path or wholeness? Seppilli answers this question by quoting Judith Hallett “a pons provides a way to confront and compete with the numinous powers; the bridge builder must have initially earned the respect of his fellow citizens for his ability to create a concrete and tangible artefact that would allow facing dangerous, uncertain, supernatural situations” (as mentioned before, Alberti used three words: inaudita insperata incredibilia).
This ability to avoid danger by building artefacts was recognised in Rome for the pontifex, “the sacred builder of a via varcante l’acqua (water crossing)”. The functions of the rex were collectively attributed to the pontiffs. This fact was justified by the ability they must have not only to interpret the prodigy, but also to maintain the Pons Sublicius (a bridge over poles spanning the Tiber River) built in the seventh century BC according to tradition. Julius Caesar also held the office of pontifex maximus before leading the military campaign that brought him to the mouth of the Rhine (55 BC). It is worth questioning whether the “engineering expertise” he displayed when building the bridge over the Rhine by modifying the Sublice Bridge’s structure was nothing more than a consequence of his status as a “specialist in ritual sciences”. This follows De bello Gallico (IV, 17) passage in which Caesar describes how the wooden poles were nailed to the Rhine’s bed “not in an upright position (non sublicae modo), but oblique and inclined so that they were oriented towards the current (ut secumdum naturam fluminis procumberent).” They were locked in a structure so “the bigger the current’s momentum, the closer its parts fit together.”
That said, one wonders: did Caesar not also demonstrate his knowledge of the waters’ oracular power, that is, his scholarship about what the current forced the builder to do? The function of the pontifex maximus became increasingly recognised as the custody of the bridge. However, the truth is that the importance given to the rituals associated with its construction and maintenance has always been linked, not only in Rome, with the perception of the danger represented by the violation of the numinous water power. The bridge is “a path to the gods” – another of the word’s meanings – but, at the same time, a diabolical place.
There are countless legends emerging in every corner of the world that describe how the devil was summoned to build bridges. The devil’s bridges are found in every country in Europe. Even Venice has one, and although the legend that gave it its name refers to a recent event, it also evokes that the audacity to build a bridge is diabolical and that its danger requires the intervention of a great thaumaturgist – Caesar, for example. Anita Seppilli concludes that “all of this shows how the work (the bridge) is understood or was, until a recent past, as sacredly reckless.” Even the devil and thaumaturgist’s presence (required by the most daring and terrifying constructions) confirm the sacrilegious origin of every construction, where “the tension between creation and destruction, which is the base of the demonic” emerges. However, Paul Tillich explained that the demonic should not be confused with the satanic. In the satanic “destruction is conceived without creation"; on the other hand, the demonic is “the union of depth and the abyss”. It is “the positive force that continually drives us to leave the innocence condition (which can become temptation) only because it is the force of creativity.” Particularly those who devote themselves to architectural history must continually confront this force, its energy, its complexity, and its indefinite nature. To do this, you must use many and diverse tools, among which are the books that I mentioned. For example, the debate that animates architectural culture usually refers to Vitruvius’ or Alberti’s work as a tradition that is no longer able to speak to us. But if we do not continue to dialogue with this tradition, we are the ones who no longer know how to dialogue with each other.
In reference to books on the water-architecture link, I would like to say that they, plus the myths (especially those that wander in historic time, as seen with Herodotus), offer extraordinary lessons to understand and experience our present by unearthing its roots. This conviction is also found in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, where Nietzsche writes “generally, to live, one must see one’s own existence, as it is presented, in a transfiguring mirror.” Myths, first, and history, later.
