FORMAL ESSAY: THE WORLD'S COURTESAN

A beautiful woman steeped in mystery and available to the world at the price of mere coinage, Venice is a city of longing akin to her once profuse population of famed and desired courtesans. Having passed through the hands of emperors and kings in years past and today through the hands of thousands of tourists, Venice has both a long history and a modern persona that align the city’s identity with the collective identity of the courtesans that once ruled its calli and canals. Wanted, desired, longed for, paid for, Venice has been and is something of a modern courtesan for whom tourists pine, dreaming of the promises that Venice makes them as a goddess of their deepest desires, and for whom longing is in return her only means of sustenance. Through this resemblance of Venice to a courtesan, we can understand the city as a place that has become dependent on people who long for what it offers and we can make sense of the powers that have driven the world crazy in the city's pursuit. What we find in scrutiny is that longing, just as for a courtesan, is for Venice a way of making a living, and for Venice's clients, longing is an outlet for their emotions of desire that they will never tire of.

The feminized city of Venice has been a heterotopic place representative of people's desires for centuries, representative of ideas that speak to the desires of those who travel to Venice as clients of its persona. Margaret F. Rosenthal writes in her book The Honest Courtesan that “the Venetian courtesan has long captured people's imagination(s) as a female symbol of sexual license, elegance, beauty, and social unruli-ness.” Although it may seem from this extracted quote that Rosenthal is describing Venice itself, what Rosenthal is really writing of are Venice's actual courtesans who, as early as the sixteenth-century, were symbols of freedom, risk, and excitement that helped to make Venice an international space for quenching possibly guilty desires such as "social unruli-ness." Desires like freedom, risk, and excitement, that were also symbolized by Venetian Carnivale, art, music, government, and architecture, sparked a flow of tourism to Venice during a time when Venice still had purpose beyond tourism, yet just as that purpose, as port and merchant town, was declining. Artists in particular flocked to Venice, a dying, feminine city, to be inspired by its unique position as declining empire beautiful in its decay, or as "a thing of yesterday," as John Ruskin once wrote (The Genius of John Ruskin). Desire to visit Venice was also created in its uniqueness. I think Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s quote, “Venice can only be compared with itself,” from his travel journal The Italian Journey gives perfect insight into why people desire Venice. When tourists go to Venice, the main things they imagine themselves doing are most likely riding in a gondola, walking the bridges, wandering the narrow alleyways, and sitting in famous locations such as Saint Marc's Square for a leisurely lunch or coffee. The uniqueness of Venice is exactly what draws people to its shores, to see something so different from the everyday that they can remove themselves from their old rigid worlds and relax in a place where the old rules, or even their old identities, do not matter and life is free. As a result of Venice's appeal, tourists furthermore desire to associate themselves with it simply because of its desirable quality. Romantic allure of freedom and inspiration as well as fame make Venice desirable and special; this is where the longing that Venice relies on finds root.

Longing, the wanting of something that cannot easily be obtained, is by far the most important aspect of Venice’s courtesan persona. People long to see Venice with their own eyes and they long to take Venice home. Unlike the concept of “desire” discussed earlier, “longing” is when tourists must wait a long time to finally behold Venice, the object of their desires. Courtesans thrive on longing because it makes them more cherished or expensive. If a courtesan’s basic purpose, as prostitute, were all she gave for the price she charged, her value would quickly diminish. For Venice, the same goes. Venice does not deliver openly to its “clients,” it does not franchise itself across the world (luckily it could never) or lower its prices, because the very expense of a vacation in Venice is a part of the longing, the saving up, and "once in a lifetime experience." Tourists pay dearly for their vacations to Venice mainly because Venice is unique, “one of a kind,” and its demand is high. Longing, therefore, is a useful tool that Venice can use to make money and to preserve itself the way it is today as a tourists' city. Just as the Venetian courtesan survived by enhancing the masturbatory fantasies surrounding her by making herself scarce and by writing poetry or developing skill in prose, as Veronica Franco, Venice's most famous courtesan, once did, Venice relies on its persona as a place people long to experience and associate themselves with in order to remain a city. Without the longing of tourists that leads to large fiscal influx from the tourism industry, the Venetian economy would have a difficult time supporting itself as a city. Longing helps Venice to continue by bringing in tourists and therefore money to nourish its economy. When people come to Venice with a sense of longing they tend to spend a lot of money, splurging because they know that their trip may be their one chance to remember through expensive memorabilia, through the enjoyment of a gondola ride, or even a fancy dinner. Longing makes Venice important to people, makes it an accomplishment to celebrate at high costs, and Venice lives off this longing by providing easy access to the desires of its clientele.

Venice is the world’s courtesan, a place of desire for which people pay dearly simply to pretend that they are where they wish they were or what they wish they were. It is a place of desires and, most importantly to Venice, a place of longing. Essentially, the creation of lust, or longing, is the job of the city and the trade by which its inhabitants exist. Like a courtesan of the old Venice, Venice can be nothing else than what it is for the world; Venice can only be longed for, desired, because it functionally cannot participate in other economical society. Like a courtesan, Venice must create a sense of longing to survive.