The Marriage of the Sea
Huntington, NY
2019, Junior, Creative Writing
The intercom blared, “It’s a wonderful morning here on the RMS. It’s currently 9:15 a.m. on January 22, 2924. For those who are a part of our red group, please head to the East Wing on the 14th floor by 10.”
Slowly but surely, a group of people trudged from their rooms to the East Wing. The elevators spanning the height of the ship rose from floor 1 to floor 50. Men, women, and children entered an auditorium as large as an opera theater. In place of a stage was a gigantic window, stories high and overlooking the country of Italy.
“What you’re seeing is each region in its prime. Using our augmented reality technology, you can move your eyes from one region to the next so you’re not just traveling across land but across hundreds of years,” announced the tour guide.
The Colosseum was overflowing, the Tower of Pisa was upright, the Duomos were shining and glistening in the sun, and the Mediterranean was as blue as the sky. As the tour guide walked towards the screen these famous structures started to fall apart. The red tiles of Rome flew off as the city shrank, reverting to a large green field; the Sistine Chapel was stripped of paint; and Mount Vesuvius swallowed back its ash—the entirety of Italy was populated by only green mounds and a few hundred thousand people.
She stepped aside to show a close-up of the region of Veneto, allowing the tourists to identify ships going to and from a wet marsh to mainland Italy to penetrate the ground with wooden pikes.
“Venice was founded in 421 C.E., just a few decades before the fall of the Roman Empire and it wasn’t always the…”
As she covers the beginnings of Venice, the city takes shape from these pikes. Giant structures begin to emerge. As the guide continues talking about the construction of Venice, it was literally being constructed a week every second, resembling an ad from a mobile game. The Saint Mark’s Basilica was just about finished when the speed of the construction slowed to a halt.
The guide was still talking: “Pietro II Orseolo had been the Doge of Venice for roughly a decade by the time he began the Sposalizio del Mare, the Marriage of the Sea. This lavish festival symbolized Venice’s growing dominance over the Adriatic.2 This of course was after…”
Bright red ships and artfully made gondolas poured out of canals into the Lido port. All of these boats clustered around the Doge’s palace, awaiting the Bucentaur, Oreseolo’s Barge.2 Slowly a massive red barge emerged from the canals, an enormous flag casting a shadow on ships nearby, and on this barge was Orseolo.
“For us and all who sail thereon the sea may be calm and quiet,” he proclaimed as a priest sprinkled him with holy water. The remaining water was thrown in the sea.2
The priests then chanted, “Aspergēs mē hȳ sōpō, et mundābor,” meaning, “Sprinkle me with hyssop, and I will be clean.”2
The Doge announced, “I wed thee, O Sea, in token of true and lasting dominion,”1 and threw a ring into the sea.2
“As you can see, Venice has had both a metaphorical and literal marriage to the sea. The city completely relied on the Adriatic to trade upon and grow Venice’s riches. Venice acknowledged this fact through a ceremony representing their everlasting relationship. Sure, it’s called the Marriage of the Sea, but Venice seemed to be getting the better bargain. This ceremony continues for centuries. As time went on, the ceremony becomes less and less grand. Smaller barges carrying 20 to 30 people come instead of the hundred the Bucentaur could fit, but the principle remains.”
The ship’s massive window became opaque as the guide walked to the left. The lights dimmed as paintings filled the window.
“For a period of time the canals of Venice were a beautiful sight, paired with beautiful Venetian architecture. Hard to believe, I know, but Monet created Le Grand Canal to illustrate how dreamlike it really was and Gondola in Venice illustrating how mirror-like the water was…”
A massive image of a purple gondola and its wavy reflection sitting in front of a deep fog covered the window. It was somewhat hard to make out the detail of the gondola because of the blurry Impressionistic haze characteristic of many of Monet’s works.
“…The dreaminess could come from Monet’s art style, but if you look at Thomas Moran’s View of Venice, the water isn’t dark brown or green like it was right before the flood of I will admit that the canals have always been distasteful as they function as the open air sewage system of the city,5 but the water could look quite nice. This is because the water was well-circulated and the tides allowed the water to be pushed around and flushed out5. But due to the rise of tourism and neglect from city officials, the canals lost their color, or rather, got another one.”5
The painting faded as time whizzed past once again from the 1000s, 1100s, 1200s… and decelerated as the 1990s and 2000s went by. It was November of 2018—11 had died due to flood-related causes,3 and the Saint Mark’s Basilica had flooded for the fifth time since the Marriage of the Sea.3
“It didn’t stop there: the combination of global warming, pollution, and tourism became too much. The city began to sink into the ocean; floods consumed the marble and granite floors, and people had to trudge through the sickening waters that were five feet above sea level.3 Eventually people died… it’s sad really, how you work so hard to create something so beautiful, and it just disintegrates like a sandcastle being pulled back into the ocean…”
“…in 2050 there was another flood, this time six feet above sea level. Seventeen people died and two had gone missing when a few city blocks began to weather and fall.
In 2062, UNESCO had to ban entrance to certain districts of Venice and reconstruct them before each flood season; this helped a lot, but the Basilica was still flooding and everything that had any value whatsoever had to be moved from the city. By 2084 massive floods deemed
Venice uninhabitable after three-fourths of the residents had died or gone missing. The world grieved the entire year following the disaster, the leaders of nations made statements, campaigns to help the reconstruction of Venice were held—but it was too late.
A team of rescuers went missing after the Doge’s palace collapsed above them. The undying St. Mark’s Campanile stood high as the perpetually overcast sky overlooked a collapsing city. By 2090, the world gave up on Venice, an aquatic ghost town yielding only the great structures left by its previous residents. Through the 2090s, reports kept coming in as more and more blocks collapsed, the Rialto bridge floated in the Grand Canal, the train station transformed practically into an aquarium. New Year’s 2101 was the day it was announced that Venice had become the first city in recorded history to be completely submerged into the sea.4 Nothing but bricks, glass, and crosses floated where the world’s richest city once stood. The St. Mark’s Campanile had drowned and Saint Peter’s Square had become the new seabed. Venice had returned to his wife, to live with her evermore.”
1. Eschner, Kat. “Venice Has Been Married to the Sea for Over a Thousand Years.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 26 May 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/venice-has-been-married-sea-over-thousand-years-180963370.
2. “Marriage of the Sea Ceremony.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 June 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_of_the_Sea_ceremony.
3. Pitofsky, Marina. “Historic Flooding in Italy: What Role Has Climate Change Played in the Destruction?” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 1 Nov. 2018, www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/10/31/italy-flooding-climate-change-venice/1831116002.
4. Varley, Raphaele. “Science Says This Is When Venice Will Become an Underwater City.” Culture Trip, 22 Nov. 2017, theculturetrip.com/europe/italy/articles/science-says-this-is-when-venice-will-become-an-underwater-city.
5. Varni, Steven. “The Dirty Truth about Venice’s Canals.” Italian American Bilingual News Source, 5 Mar. 2013, italoamericano.org/story/2013-4-5/Venice-Canals.
Reflection
I personally don’t belong to a faith and for a while I thought the universe and the Earth were mostly serendipitous in their creation or happy little accidents, as Bob Ross would say, but I never quite denied the presence of something bigger than us. So whenever I stood before the sea, looked up to the sky, or stared into the void of space, I had to think: how in god’s name is this here? Yes, scientists have proven how the ocean and land came about, but how lucky is Earth for it to contain liquid water. From time to time I still think about this—before I sleep or if I ever find myself standing before the sea—but one time I came to a realization: the sea isn’t just a planet-sized pool; it’s much more than that. Countless species are contained within the shallows and depths of the seas. and every city, country, and civilization had some kind of reliance on water. Mesopotamia was an entire civilization based on two rivers, and the city of Venice became a world power because of its position on the Adriatic. Humanity has exploited so much of the ocean that many have forgotten to take care of it. After decades of people abusing the sea, the sea is starting to absorb all of the Earth back. Humanity exploited the ocean and ended up harming much of it, and if we continue on this track, we’ll be the ones paying the price.