“The sun makes the season in this leafless city; it bathes the golden dome of St. Mark’s in radiant summer light.”
My mind rested after reading this sentence.
The rhythm of changing seasons is made picturesque with leaves turning warm shades of yellow, red, and orange. The leaves then fall from their ‘roots,’ shrivel, and are eventually gathered. They make way for new growth in the future.
In Venice however, this montage of autumnal colors does not exist. Yes, the change in weather and start of high tide mark the season’s cycles. But, what is more evident here is the contrast of light and dark: the radiance of the sun contrasted with the darkness of shadows cast onto facades pealing or well preserved, sun filled piazzas contrasted with narrow calle that escape its blaze, or a dark moment passing beneath a bridge upon a gleaming canal.
Here, the constant montage of light and dark is more prevalent than a visual change in seasons. The reminder of time passing by is the rising and setting of the sun. This renders Venice almost as if a place outside of time as understood elsewhere; a place in which the lives of those living within and those passing by are what endow it with the passage of time.
