The Generalife is situated not far from the Alhambra on a spur of the
same mountain. You get to it by a kind of dug out road that traverses
the ravine of Los Molinos, which is bordered all the way with fig-trees
of enormous glistening leaves, green oaks, pistachio-trees, laurels,
and rock roses of a remarkably exuberant vegetation. The ground on
which you walk is composed of yellow sand oozing with water, wonderful
in its fecundity. Nothing is more delightful than to follow this
road, which has the appearance of running through a virgin forest of
America, so thickly is it choked with foliage and flowers, and so great
is the overwhelming scent of the aromatic plants you inhale there.
Vines spring through the cracks of the broken walls, and hang from all
their branches fantastic tendrils and leaves resembling the tracery
of Arabian ornaments; the aloe opens its fan of bluish blades and the
orange trees twist their knotty trunks and cling with fang-like roots
to the rents in the steep slopes. Everything flourishes and blooms
in a tangled disorder full of the most charming effects of chance. A
straying branch of jasmin mingles its white stars with the scarlet
flowers of the pomegranate, and a laurel leaps from one side of the
road to the other to embrace a cactus, notwithstanding its thorns.
Nature, left to herself, seems to take pride in her coquetry, and
wishes to show how far she surpasses even the most exquisite and
finished art.
After a quarter of an hour’s walk, you come to the Generalife, which
is, in some sense, nothing but the _casa de campo_, the country
house, of the Alhambra. The exterior, like that of all oriental
buildings, is very simple: it consists of large walls without windows
and surmounted by a terrace with a gallery divided into arcades,
the whole being crowned with a little modern belvedere. Of the
Generalife nothing now remains but some arcades and some large panels
of arabesques, unfortunately plastered over with layers of whitewash
that have been applied again and again with all the obstinacy of a
dispiriting cleanliness. Little by little the delicate sculptures and
the marvellous guilloches of this fairy-like architecture have been
obliterated, filled up, and engulfed. What is at present nothing more
than a faintly-vermiculated wall, was formerly open lace-work as fine
as those ivory leaves which the patience of the Chinese carves for
fans. The brush of the whitewasher has caused more _chefs d’œuvre_
to disappear than the scythe of Time, if I may be allowed to use that
superannuated, mythological expression. In a fairly well preserved
hall, you notice a series of smoky portraits of the kings of Spain, but
these have only a chronological value.
[Illustration: THE GENERALIFE, SPAIN.]
The real charm of the Generalife consists in its gardens and waters. A
canal paved with marble runs through the whole length of the enclosure,
and rolls its abundant and rapid waves under a series of leafy arches,
formed by yews curiously bent and clipped. Orange-trees and
cypresses are planted on each border; it was at the foot of one of
these cypresses, of a prodigious size, and which dates from the time of
the Moors, that the favourite of Boabdil, if we may believe the legend,
often proved that bolts and grilles are but slight protectors of the
virtue of sultanas. One thing, at least, is certain,--that the yew is
very large and very old.
The perspective is terminated by a porticoed gallery, ornamented
with fountains and marble columns, like the Patio of Myrtles in the
Alhambra. The canal turns sharply and you then enter other enclosures
ornamented with water-works and whose walls still retain traces of the
frescoes of the Sixteenth Century representing rustic architecture
and distant views. In the centre of one of these basins of water, a
gigantic oleander of a singular brilliancy and incomparable beauty
rises like an immense basket of flowers. At the time that I saw it,
it seemed like an explosion of blossoms, or a bouquet of vegetable
fireworks; its ruddy hue was so splendid and vigorous,--indeed almost
clamorous, if one may apply that word to colours,--as to dim the hue of
the most vermilion rose. Its lovely flowers leaped with all the ardour
of desire towards the pure light of the sky; and its noble leaves,
shaped expressly by nature for a crown of glory and sprinkled by the
spray of the fountain, sparkled in the sunshine like emeralds. Never
did anything inspire me with a higher sentiment of the beautiful than
this rose-bay of the Generalife.
The water is brought to the gardens down a very steep inclined plane,
bordered by little walls, forming on each side a kind of parapet,
supporting canals hollowed out and lined with large tiles through which
the water runs beneath the open sky with the gayest and liveliest
chatter in the world. At yard intervals, well-supplied water-jets
burst forth from the centre of little basins and shoot their crystal
aigrettes into the thick foliage of the groves of laurels whose
branches interlace above them. The mountain gushes with water on every
side; at each step a spring starts out, and you continually hear at
your side the murmuring of some rivulet turned from its course, and
going to supply a fountain, or to carry refreshment to the foot of
some tree. The Arabs have carried the art of irrigation to the highest
degree; their hydraulic-works attest the most advanced state of
civilization; these works still exist to-day, and it is to them that
Grenada owes the reputation it has of being the Paradise of Spain, and
of enjoying eternal spring in an African climate. An arm of the Darro
has been turned out of its course by the Arabs and carried for more
than two leagues along the hill of the Alhambra.
From the Belvedere of the Generalife you can clearly see the outline
of the Alhambra with its enclosure of reddish, half-ruined towers, and
its pieces of wall which rise and fall with the undulations of the
mountain. The Palace of Charles V., which is not visible from the side
of the city, stands out with its square and heavy mass, gilded with a
pale reflection of sunlight, upon the damask-like slopes of the Sierra
Nevada, whose white ridges are strongly notched against the sky. The
bell-tower of Saint-Marie lifts its Christian silhouette above the
Moorish battlements. A few cypresses thrust their sorrowful leaves
through the crevices in the walls, in the midst of all this light and
azure sky, like a melancholy thought at a joyous festival. The slopes
of the hill running down towards the Darro and the ravine of Los
Molinos disappear beneath an ocean of verdure. It is one of the most
beautiful views that can be imagined.
On the other side, as if to form a contrast with so much verdure, there
rises an uncultivated, scorched, tawny mountain with patches of ocre
and burnt Sienna which is called La Silla del Moro, on account of some
ruins of buildings upon its summit. It was from here that King Boabdil
used to view the Arabian horsemen jousting in the Vega with Christian
knights. The memory of the Moors is still vivid in Grenada. You would
think that they left the city only yesterday, and, if we should judge
of them by their traces, it is a pity that they ever left it at all.
What southern Spain requires is African civilization and not the
civilization of Europe, which is not in sympathy with the heat of the
climate, or the passions it inspires.