Drawn sea and drawn ship is floating with drawn monks, or just pilgrims on its board. All of them are looking a bit crazy, although feeling happy indeed. Feasts are getting arranged, dashing songs are heard from the deck. The lute is badly tuned, clattering cups form the kind of accompaniment to it. Blissful smiles enlighten toothless mouths.

Damned be the fools, that are unable to realize, that their half-wretched ship has misrouted, that the only mast has become an abode for wild branches and wondrous birds, while the allmouth has prepared the deepest place for each of them at the sea bottom.

However, fools rush in, where angels fear to tread, that means the blessed ship always fortunes to avoid everything dangerous for to return to the same very seaport Venice with its Piazza San Marco - the most pleasurable place for pilgrims, while the time of carnivals is the cream of crops of reality itself. Here one may instantly mingle with miraculous queer masks. Here one ma y burst into laughter, coming in touch with ridiculous personages of ever-green Commedia dell’arte.

Vladimir Korovitsyn

Contents:

I. SHIP OF FOOLS
II. VENETIAN MASKS
III. BUFFOONERY