In addition to the elaborate and ancient Festa del Redentore (Feast of the Redeemer), which is still mounted today, there were seemingly endless
serenate, which involved boats coasting up and down the Grand Canal.
Intellettuale cosmopolita, Marinetti guarda alla propria italianita con distacco, trovando insopportabili le rappresentazioni dell'Italia come "un museo, un albergo, una villeggiatura, un orizzonte ridipinto di blu di Prussia per le lune di miele internazionali", (2) degli italiani come "cantori di
serenate, ciceroni e mendicanti" (dichiarazione di Marinetti, 19).
This intricate theodical sonnet accomplishes much more than the attitudinizing and posturing of the lovelorn Petrarchan lover and his supercilious mistress, an artifice Paradise Lost's hymn to wedded love later disdained as the "
Serenate, which the starv'd Lover sings / To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain" (PL IV.769-70).