The Guardian of Memory

Marjorie Agosín is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, and activist, as well as Professor of Spanish language and Latin American literature at Wellesley College. The United Nations has honored her work on human rights, notably for women’s rights in Chile. Professor Agosín has won many important literary awards and in this book she, once again, uses her evocative poetry and distinctive voice to illuminate a hidden history of Venice that so richly deserves to be recorded and remembered.

The Guardian of Memory chronicles the meetings between the author and Aldo Izzo, the eponymous “Guardian of Memory,” a man who has tended the Venetian Jewish cemeteries for over 30 years. However, this work goes far beyond a mere homage to Aldo Izzo’s tireless work and becomes a sensory journey through the ancient city of Venice that is interleaved with memories and stories of those who have gone before.

Venice, perhaps the most liminal of cities, serves a backdrop to this meditation on the profound aspects of human existence. The elemental contrasts of light and dark, water and land, past and present, life and death, are enhanced by the atmospheric black and white photographs of Samuel Shats to provide an unforgettable and unique insight into the mysteries of the city.

As the book progresses, so the strange and, at times, ominous aspects of this history of Venice unfold, thus making this book so much more than a mere walk through the ancient streets of La Serenissima.