John Julius Norwich’s book about the Mediterranean goes to a bit more than six-hundred pages of sheer text, not counting bibliographic references, family trees, maps, and the index, but I am struggling some hundred pages before the end. And I have been struggling for some eighty pages already. On page four-hundred and twenty-one, to be exact, the Venetian Republic was snuffed out by Napoleon. On Friday, May 12, 1797, the Great Council of Venice abortively met in the Ducal Palace for the very last time. And it fell apart like some harmless mirage. Alarmed by shots fired outside their windows, the councilors slipped out of the palace in haste, leaving their all-too-distinctive robes of office strewn behind them. After more than a thousand years, the Serenissima expired preposterously. Disgracefully. Dishonorably. The Mediterranean I still love, but what is it without Venice? What is it without its indefatigable if fussy mistress? Which is why I am struggling with Norwich’s last book past page four-hundred and twenty-one.

Addendum (November 27, 2016)

Only a few months short of two-hundred and twenty years ago, the end of the Serenissima still boggles the mind. For me, the millennium or so of its glory still amounts to real history, history as such, whereas the history of preceding and succeeding empires strike me as mere trappings of the old genre. The funny part of my fascination with Venice is that it has started with the breakup of Yugoslavia. Distraught by the coming bloodshed, I distanced myself from the South Slavs by grabbing onto my father’s family roots. A mere trick though it is, it has worked quite miraculously over the years. Although Yugoslavia ceased to exist a quarter of a century ago, my attachment to Venice remains intact to this day. In fact, it has only grown. My move to Motovun, a Venetian hilltown through and through, has only accentuated my emotions. By now, Napoleon is very like Hitler to me. The vermin. The best I can do, though, is to make sure to commemorate my world’s demise a bit more than five months from now. It falls ten days after my father’s birthday, too.