Cop26, the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts appeals to Prime Minister Mario Draghi to take the necessary measures to stop the disaster. The appeal was shared by the Nobel Prize for Literature Orhan Pamuk.

Mr. President of the Council, in the spring of 2009 I spent a semester teaching comparative literature at the Ca ‘Foscari University of Venice. I don’t say this just because the beauty of what surrounded me made those days become the most magical days of my life; I say this because he knew that I speak as someone who lived and worked in Venice, and who speaks to you, as a Venetian, from within the city itself. These heartfelt words are not only those of a man who has always resided in Istanbul, but they are also those of a Venetian.

Mr. President of the Council, the future of Venice is in your hands!

Every morning, on my way to Ca ‘Foscari, I took a gondola from San Samuele to Ca’ Rezzonico and walked to Ca ‘Macana, where I sipped a coffee in the quiet spring morning reflecting on why I found this city so fascinating and, while giving lessons in the mirrored room of a large palace, it occurred to me that preserving history and the past are among the greatest virtues of humanity.

After the lesson, my legs extended the journey back home to Palazzo Malipiero of their own accord, and I found myself on the road to Rialto. As always, I was getting lost in the alleys of Do Draghi or San Pantalon or near the Church of San Tomà, so much so that when I left those winding streets and reached the Rialto Bridge, a few hours had already passed.

In those two months I had memorized the route from Rialto to the Palace where I was staying, yet every day I crossed those same streets as if it were the first time – the calm step, the look full of wonder – and every now and then I managed to lose my orientation too. in that short ride. Because, as I could understand later, getting lost in the streets of Venice is not a geographical question, but a disturbing experience like the feeling of being lost in history.

Under the effect of this sensation and this metaphysical transformation, to recite the names of the places I saw as if the lines of a poem that came spontaneously to me begin.

«Here, Santa Maria della Salute!», I said to myself. “There is the La Fenice Theater where I gave that speech … That is the Church of the Madonna dell’Orto … The Accademia Bridge, the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Palazzo Santa Sofia … Piazza San Marco … The Church of San Zaccaria, the Correr Museum … ».

Sometimes I read the books of writers who had visited Venice many years before me and daydreamed during my endless walks. Here was the Palazzo Mocenigo, where Lord Byron had stayed. The protagonist of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice must have taken a vaporetto like this one from the Lido. Here was the palace that had housed Henry James, whose novel Il Carteggio Aspern is one of the most beautiful books ever set in Venice.

But as you know, Mr. Prime Minister, the best “Venetian novel” of all time was written by an Italian author, Italo Calvino. Its events take place elsewhere. In The Invisible Cities, the Venetian Marco Polo tells the Chinese emperor, Kublai Khan, all the cities he saw on his journey from Venice to Beijing.

But attentive readers, and those like me who delight in getting lost in the labyrinths and in the history of Venice, will understand from the descriptions of the towers, of the clothes hanging out to dry in the narrow streets, and from many other signs, that every city that appears in the book it is, in fact, Venice itself.

Of course! Only an Italian could have such an idea! And then, inspired by the great Italo Calvino, we declare:

Venice is Beijing … Venice is Boston, Venice is Kyoto, Venice is Calcutta, Venice is Saint Petersburg, Venice is Madrid, Hamburg, Paris and Istanbul. Saving Venice is saving all humanity and every city in the world… Lagos, Cairo, Sao Paulo, New York and Hong Kong.

The decision you are about to make, Mr. Prime Minister, will not only save Venice …. It will also serve as an example for all humanity and will show all of us that saving and preserving our cities also means saving our memories and identity and, above all, to preserve our unique testimonies of the different ways in which one can be human.

Prime Minister, the future of Venice and every other invisible city in the world is in your hands!

© Orhan Pamuk, 2021

Written in support of the appeal to Mario Draghi of the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts

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