'What so fascinated me was the iridiscent trick of light caused by any glow or movement, a flickering like that of a shy tongue, and delicate even on the slightest ripple of water. Countless times I spied that darting light. Once it was the slow passage of a cargo ship, fresh painted in vermilion, which caused me a special pleasure. The penetrating red seemed to force itself on the otherwise reluctant surface to steal a pure and clear reflection from the waves, the only sharp bright hue among the quiet melodyof shades'. That is how Hermann Hesse described it in his 'Journey in Italy', deeply moved by his having spent a week sharing the boat, food and bedding with afisherman who had taken him wandering about the lagoon.
The colours had enchanted him.The rusty orange of certain sails, the pale yellow of the reeds bent by the wind, the pearl grey of the fish farms, the bright purple of some of the little boats, the transparent white of the nets hanging above the canals. And it is all there, at the back of Cavallino: a world which miraculously remained intact, quite similar to that which the inhabitants of Aquileia discovered when they fled here to escape from Attila the Hun and founded Venice.
