'It is nearing the end of my residency and, since the weather is so consistent, I will take the vaporetto to the Lido without fear of a sudden squall. When it lands, I step onto the wooden platform and walk past shops selling sunglasses, buckets and spades, ice creams. At the end of the avenue I am confronted with a screen of tall pine trees beyond which I get an inkling of the sand and shining line of the sea. I pay for a sunlounger and settle myself. I am aware of the Grand Hotel des Bains behind me, the setting for Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice.
The sand and sea stretch out before me invitingly. Blond children are frolicking in the water. A little boy stoops to observe a shell washed up by the tide. Everyone is either part of a family or a couple. It is dreamy to lie here in the balmy shaded light. As if conjured up by the sensation of the Hotel des Bains – its windows like eyes watching me – Mann’s spirit is revived in my own experience. I think about Death. I long for my husband.'
Image: Celia Paul, Shadows on the Grass, 2021
Oil on canvas
25.4 x 25.4 cm
10 x 10 in
© Celia Paul
Courtesy the artist, Gladstone and Victoria Miro
