came with the Nazrite dynasty whose founder, Al-Ahmar, captured the town
in 1238 from the Moorish Almohades. And Al-Ahmar, born in Córdoba,
claimed descent from the pure Yemen Arabs of Kharzrej and Ansár. Which
is important, since it displays the dangers of speaking, biometrically,
of a _race_. The family that reigned in Moorish Granada was perhaps as
Arab as the dynasties of Córdoba and Seville! And of course, the very
first Arabs in Spain brought with them Berbers, negroes, Copts. Why then
was Córdoba Arab, and Granada Moorish?... We require the names, and for
them there are reasons. The first Moslem invasion was _Arab_: for its
impulse, its energy, its leadership came straight from the Arabs. And
that first Moslem culture which from Córdoba held all Spain north to
Toledo, south, west, east to the seas was also _Arab_ for the identical
reason. Now come fresh leaders to defend Moslem Spain; and when they
have driven back Castile they disperse the Arab masters who bade them
in. These hosts come in two waves: the Almoravides--_men of
religion_--are Berbers from the Senegal, and the Almohades--_men of the
Unity_--are Berbers from the Atlas. It is right to call them Moors since
they rose to power in Morocco. And it is right to call their dominance
in Spain the Moorish epoch since, after their coming, the culture of all
Moslem Spain not only differed from that of Córdoba but was deeply
homogeneous within itself despite political chaos.) ...
In the towns of Spain lived still the Spaniard with his absorption of
Semite, African, Latin, German. But the difference of the Moor from the
Arab was a change in his Idea and in the ways of life begotten by it.
The Christian forces were vastly stronger than they had been. Their own
Idea had been enhanced by Moslem contact. They were come a long ways
from the invertebrate Christianity of the Visigoths. The first Moslem
sweep to Biscay and the Pyrenees had planted a germ of resistance which
with the ages grew to be this vital Christian body, a body stripped and
ruthless as ever had been Islam. So the Moor could not, like the Arab,
dismount from his saddle to invite his soul. The Moor did not become
tolerant under pleasant skies. He welcomed no Jewish thinkers and
statesmen, he housed no Christian convents. Under the benignity of peace
he made no introverted, rational culture. When the Moor rested, it meant
that he was weary; and then he invited his body. Arab refinement became
voluptuousness; Arab ease became prostration. The energy of the Idea of
Islam had by the Arab been transformed into a _contrasting_ culture.
Under the Moor it became at best a _reposing_ culture. And indeed, the
Idea did not change. Christian armies saw to that. But the need of
Islam--to expand--could not be fulfilled. The Christian armies saw to
that, as well. Here then was a warlike energy that could not spread and
yet could not transform. It turned against itself. Moor fought Moor.
Granada alone held long to the appearance of a dignified state. And the
appearance was false. Moorish Granada helped the Christian San Fernando
to march against Moorish Seville, as a century before Moorish troops had
helped the Cid win Moorish Valencia. A hundred years ere its fall,
dynastic quarrels had split Granada into a chaos of tiny states; the
Catholic Kings needed to take it piecemeal in a series of raids on petty
princes.
* * * * *
The Idea of Islam is no more within this lovely world. But high and low,
strewn through the summits and the troughs of the Sierra, lives the
wreckage of the Moorish body. Across a gorge, Al-Baicín and Al-Hambra
face each other. Al-Hambra! all that may be said of the skill of the
goldsmith may be said of this Palace, with its scores of patios and
halls. It brings to mind, not other architectures but the triumphs of
the Cellinis of the Renaissance, the delicate perfections in Pompeii and
in Egyptian tombs. In minute and marvelous grace, it transcends them
all: and yet it is a building!
Within the _patio de los arrayanes_ there is a pool enclosed in myrtle
as a sapphire within emerald. Overhead is the soft pale sky. Beyond the
_sala de la barca_, arched like a ship, is the Ambassadors’ Hall, its
dome an incessancy of carven woods, columns and walls so tooled that
they seem lace threaded with gems. Myriad patios on either side are
myriad surprises of wood, plaster, stone that flows with arabesques and
softens to the creaminess of linens.
Some architectures make one think of man; some make one think of God;
some, of the tragic struggle in men’s flesh between the man and the god.
Al-Hambra exiles both the earth and heaven. That a palace lacks high
poetry, movement of aspirance, is not amiss. But Al-Hambra lacks as well
the sense of being made for men to dwell in. It is cold as a jewel and
as a jewel hard. Yet unlike other jewels, it adorns no breast and no
altar. It is faëry. Yet unlike other visions of surprise, it does not
entice the mind. It is no outward form of the old dreams. Nor is it
strong, save as some stellar gem, fallen in the mud of our world, has
its impregnable strength. It is immaculate of men. It is too far from
man, too far from God. It is not strong, yet it is not poetic. Poetry
must pay its tribute. If it sing a blade of grass, a kingdom, a
divinity--yet it must make its tribute to the world: man in giving music
gives himself. Al-Hambra, for all its matchless grace, is incarnate of
no warmth, no joy, no agony, no love.... It is a jeweled monster; a sort
of dissociate birth of human will. Although its tints are magic, its
curves delicate as a woman’s mouth, its forms courteous, and its stuffs
transfigurations of the elements into the radiance of silk and the
sweetness of wool, yet it is but a fragment. Its rapture parts not from
itself. It is Narcissus. It is a _Golem_ of the Moors.
* * * * *
The rock of Al-Hambra falls into the river and on the farther side rises
Al-Baicín, antiphony of Al-Hambra.
In the days of the first Nazrites, here was a place of noble mansions.
But when the Moslems, exiled from conquered towns, poured into Granada,
Al-Baicín became what it is now--a swarming city. This is as near to the
Kasbah of Algiers, to the dense Attarine of Fez as you may come in
Spain. The town is a lay of alleys maggoting up the breast of the
Sierra. The throngs are dark, aburst with energy. Eyes are gentle and
give forth no light. Faces are locked as if in obscure struggle of
themselves. This folk is neither gay nor sad, savage nor kind. It
partakes of the ineffable nature of the houses. What it is, what it has
to say--as with the houses--is detached from the hour, is a minglement
of nostalgia and obsession. An incommunicable town, knowing no tongue
save an archaic one: its houses speak not to us but to their own old
shadows.
A patio stable with its mangy mules, a gigantic oven where bread in
memorial Moorish shapes is thrust at the end of a pole ... such are the
words of the streets. Beneath the language which the people speak, this
rhythmic word of the streets.
Al-Baicín has a soul. What Al-Baicín lacks is body! Groveling life
within an ancient molder of walls, patios, wine shops black as
warts--this life so halted, so disgraced, so blind is life that lacks a
body. And there, polished clean of the clamors of the spirit, shines the
body on the opposite hill--soulless Al-Hambra.
_d._ _A Goddess and Don Juan_
The air is spiced with murmur, throat call, peal, with stirring of feet,
clink of earth-jar; it is a weave through which the horse’s hoof, flick
of whip, _ar-r-ra_ and _shuh_ of driver make a swathe. Singing cry of a
girl, crying song of a girl cascade to church bells.... Silence.... A
little square (Castilians say _patio_, Andalusians say _compás_) holds
an alicatado fountain: thin water within a sapphire bowl wavers,
splinters, fades like stars at a dawn. All about, the wings of a vast
Church. Fortress-like they rise, rise in terrace, in forest of
sculpture, in buttresses that sweep out of sight. And straight above, a
tower. It is the old prayer tower of a mosque--_al-minar_: the muedzin
post which the Christians call Giralda.
In the compas, it is cool; high overhead within the well of the walls,
the heat of afternoon is writhing. Heat cannot pierce the eight foot
walls of the tower. A pavement, so gradual and wide that a coach could
follow it, climbs to the peak. There are windows to tell how you climb.
The Cathedral, resonant with statues; the stucco palace of the Bishop
beside a compas sleepy and cool like a virgin at dawn; a slant of street
with houses dodging sun.... Cathedral roof, a groined and columned
symphony with transepts trilling in overtones away; a knot of buttresses
that scale a higher wall you could not guess was there; a grove of
turrets against the town, green trees; a line of river; town itself keen
in the gyrant air ... guitar-like music under the voice of the sun. A
scarf of hill, treeless and red. A court within the sapphire day like
rubies and emeralds--the _patio de los naranjos_--a frame of creamy
walls holding the rows of orange trees. The top of Giralda.
Seville: No, this body is Isbilíya. Town of the Visigoths, the Yemen
Arabs and the Copts, alcázar of the Moorish Yusuf who built Giralda,
town whence Ferdinand of Castile with the aid of his friend the Moslem
of Granada drove countless Moslems in 1248, bringing in other men who
said Christ, not Allah--said it in the same Mosque rechristened, in the
same town, under the same sun, from the same Giralda.
The repeopling, the christening could not avail against the might of
this past. Christ dimmed again; Our Lady grew. Our Lady who was Isis ere
she was Mary: consort of Osiris, Horus, Khem, ere she sat with Jesus.
And in her hand, through Seville, through Andalusia, a lily that does
not grow in Spain but grows indeed on the Nile ... lily or lotus or more
simply still _la flor_ in all heraldry, all holy craft of the land. For
Islam had passed to Egypt and won the Christian Copts who were in heresy
for that they adored a living Trinity and had no Christ on the Cross, a
trinity older than the Pyramids with the new Christian names. And now,
for an age, their trinity disappeared. But Our Lady became Fatima,
daughter of the Prophet and virgin although she bore miraculous sons.
And Arab and Copt march on to Spain. And the Christian saint comes
south. And the mosque of Seville is again the church of Our Lady. And
from Seville to Rome goes the first urgency to make a dogma of the
Immaculate Conception....
The town is so very thick with houses, where are the streets? Those
sharp cracks weaving through the roofs are streets? The roofs are live,
bewildering planes. White flat roofs under dominant chimneys. Roofs that
run with their walls. Roofs that are clusters of rush. Roofs that are
little gardens for goats and chickens. Roofs that are vineyards. Roofs
that are nurseries. Roofs that are streets on which stand huts of turf.
In a court, is a palm; its round head sends green star-rays to the sky.
The town is so very wide; solid it rings you. The breaks are breathings
for a palm, or a wide wall with crenellated top or a tiled dome like a
jewel in the breast of Seville. Thick town ... intricate, turning
roofs. Until the sudden stop! Seville does not linger. There is thick
town, then huerta. Country gardens are perfumed brasiers. A wandering
ribbon of low trees marks the sleepy river creeping down to the copper
wall of sunset....
It is cool now. They have drawn to the roof tops the canopies that
shield the streets. Now let you go down into Seville.
* * * * *
Varying weathers fall upon Seville. In summer days, she smiles resilient
and cool within a fire that shrivels the river. In winter, under a
slatey sky with her streets drenched, she is smiling still. Weather and
invasions come upon Seville; she masters them all.
She is an Eastern goddess unknown of the Greeks, whose cult is sung with
cymbals and in blood. She is no Semite; she is the antistrophe in this,
as in all things, of her great brother of the north: Toledo. Within the
huddle of her streets, lives clarity; within her sudden and esconded
curves, glows coolness. She is immeasurably far from the hot Jew and
Arab. Seville is Pagan. But her pagan spirit is uniquely hers. It is not
dark and carnal like the Sumerian; not analytic, open-eyed like the
Greek; it lacks the Italic will. Nor is it Berber. This spirit has a
spirit; the Giralda. To see Giralda from the town is to see both the
tower and Seville. Everywhere al-minar follows. It is cool in the sun;
in the damp of winter it is gleam. On the river’s margin where vessels
coal, it is a yesterday when ships had sails. Its simple face is
strength above the prone complexity of life. Variant, it is constant,
sovereignly self-contained. It mirrors men’s perceptions, who can see of
it at each moment but a flash of time. It stands for Seville whose
traits and deeds are facets of a Crystal.
This fixity, this intricate appearance within fixity is the deep trait
of Seville. Her genius, her emotions, her religion are in fixity for
they are held unwavering to herself. She looks not at Spain nor the
world. Not like Venus does this goddess walk and give herself to men.
Not like Astarte, thirst for the blood of others. Not like Isis is she
concerned with the cycles of sun and planet. Seville loves only herself;
and the moon and stars are brilliants for her hair.
* * * * *
The narcism of Seville is fecund. The gorgeous litany of the Semana
Santa is but the most famous of her arts. Religion is but the most
obvious pretext of her self-worship. Seville abounds in dramas and in
altars of her self-delight. Wander through her streets, commune with her
churches and cafés, watch her ample daughters dance to the splendor of
their own high breasts; read the legends--Don Juan, La Macarena. An hour
will come, perhaps at dusk in the park along the river, when she will
tell her secret:
“The Guadalquivir is my scarf of saffron; the orange blossoms sing
the chant of my flesh; the sky is a mantón of rose and purple on my
white shoulders. Church and God, love, blood and death are
castanets! I am Real. I am the dancer. I am Isbilíya.”
* * * * *
Sierpes, chief street of the town, is a bit of a way with a crick in its
middle: too narrow for horses and mules: the lines of shops and clubs
face each other across a slender sidewalk. When the good weather comes
the doors open; the clubs and cafés pile chairs pell-mell upon the
street. And Seville sits down and looks at herself. Drinks coffee,
Manzanilla wine, and looks at herself. Eats mariscos and looks some more
at herself. Athwart the Sierpes, other streets are a maze of tiny shops:
shops small and delicate like toys, shops secret and uncommercial like
the good Majas[7] who keep them, shops with too deep modesty to display
their wares and too little will to have much wares to display. Reticent,
charming shops like the hearts of simple folk, so full they are of warm
darkness. In such a passage, crammed with stores (for these central
streets are merely passages), in the very heart of a world of dolls,
lottery tickets, pastries, newspapers, umbrellas, fans and pipes, is a
Chapel. It is open to the street and it reveals within a long recess its
garish bower of candles. The throng crowds by. Dark clad, the women;
drab, the men with wide stiff hats and a clank to their high heels. They
talk of little things; eyes hold to the unconscious rhythm of the
throng. And as they pass, they shift their talk an instant into prayer;
or they make the sign of the cross; or they kneel. So Seville prays to
herself.
In the Parish church of San Gil, there is the figure of a woman. Is it
some crude artisan’s idea of a prosperous Maja? The dress is modern on
La Macarena--idol of Our Lady. And La Macarena is the most vaunted, the
most puissant goddess in Seville. At Semana Santa, in her garish dress,
she parades the town. The Majas of Seville throw themselves before her;
and sing; and pray. And as the Doll, who is both Mary and Maja, moves
through Seville, the streets are paved with the breasts of the
Sevillanas, loving their own image.
The Gardens of Alcázar are a geometric maze of tiny verdant patios. Each
stands at its own level, a gradual step lowering with the flow of water.
Each is a little bower with tiled floor, an intimate garden holding to
its charm in the great sum of gardens. The patios make a mosaic. The
design is severe; it is a heritage of the analytic Moslems. But in
Seville, the mathematic form is snared into an idyll.
Hundreds of churches in Seville. Many of them are bleak rococo monsters
and their interiors gross piles of gilt and scarlet. They are not bad
taste in Seville. Murillo is not bad taste in Seville. They are parts of
a ceremonial. Seville’s love is great enough to hold and to transform
them. So, in the compas of the Convento de Santa Paula, a noble Gothic
portal stands with a palm tree; so the rococo dome of Santa Catalina
blazes to ceramic; so the Plaza Santa Cruz becomes a faëry quarter, its
rows of ancient houses painted like the flowers and the birds that hang
from the low casements; so, even the Casa de las Dueñas, home of the
bloody Dukes of Alba, winds behind its iron gates into quaint patios and
palms and archways.
Each street has its garland of self-praise. A color of façade, a jewel
of ceramic, a tiny unsuspected court elbowed between the blank backs of
two houses, from which oak doors lead into other courts--communities of
painters, artisans, teachers of the dance. And each season has its
pretext for self-song. The Semana Santa and the Feria are the most
famous rites: in Holy Week, the spirit of Seville meets Seville’s body
in orgasmic climax. But other seasons have not less typical embraces.
The Velada de San Pedro comes in summer. There are no foreigners and the
rich townsfolk are north in the Basque country. Night follows a day’s
fever. And now the people open their doors, throw wide their canopies
and go into Seville. The servants carry great hampers of _fiambres_:
cold sea food, mostly, with jars of Jérez and Manzanilla. They proceed
to the popular squares, Alameda de Hiércules, Plaza de León, Plaza
Encarnación, near the Mercado where with cool night comes the stir of
odors ... greens, fruits, cheeses. They spread themselves, the good
folk: they eat and play.
La Plaza de San Juan Bautista de la Palma is not as large as it sounds.
A dozen families fill it: it is a pretty stage for the Sevillan drama.
Overhead are the crisp stars. The houses, painted cream, blue, pink,
fade in unlighted shadow. In the center is a pavilion cut into tiny
booths for _churros_, _pasteles_, _bombones_, _patas_, _mariscos_,
_bocadillos_, _fiambres_, _vinos_, _cervezas_, _gaseosas_--myriad
tidbits _de media noche_. Nearby sit three men and a woman. They play
the guitar, the mandolin, the fiddle; and the woman sings. She wears a
buff shawl that is caught tight over one shoulder and tighter still
under the other armpit. Rondures of breast and stomach press the lashed
silk. She is a _gitana_: she comes of an immodest race, but ere she goes
among the crowd for coppers she will place a black shawl over the
revealing buff one. Each of a dozen groups has its place in the Square.
They eat, drink, dance and court within their private precinct. They are
as unconcerned as if they were in their own private compas. But their
gayety is richer; this open sharing of a public place is the sharing of
a rite.
You have seen a young girl in some peasant road step _endimanchée_ from
her house to the sun. The velvet bosom of her bodice rises. A jewel at
her neck, a ring on a finger, an eye gleam brighter than the jewel make
of her a song that runs with the Spring sun and the grass. You know that
the peasant girl loves and is loved. Love has wrought this miracle on
her flesh. And so, in Seville: the miracle of her streets is the same
alchemy. She is adance with the magic of fondness; she is gay in a
perpetual Spring of self-delight.
* * * * *
Near the Guadalquivir and not far from the Torre de Oro, a dodecagonal
relic of the Moors who built their castle on the waterfront, there is a
baroque structure. It is the _Hospital de la Caridad_. In the
seventeenth century Don Miguel de Mañara was a caballero in Seville; a
knight so dissolute that legend makes him the Burlador, the true Don
Juan. This the nuns of the Caridad deny. But the day came when the Lord
miraculously spared his life from the assault of a noble seeking to
avenge the honor of his sister. Don Miguel avowed the will of God and
his sins; and caused to be built this Charity as witness, through
perpetual good works, of his atonement.
Above the chapel there is a chaste stone hall; a stair, spreading from
above like the train of a regal robe, leads to the carved door of the
Consistory. Here hangs the portrait of Don Miguel de Mañara. The face is
darkly sensual and brooding. The chin is obtrusive, the eyes have the
rigidity of a madman’s. He sits at a table, and behind him in the room
there opens a fantastic landscape. It is radiant and nubilous, a
landscape of vapors rather than of earth. And on the floor beside the
table and at Don Miguel’s feet, squats a boy and looks at him and
smiles. Pedro Salinas, the poet, has a theory about this portrait. Don
Miguel is mad, says he: the landscape, so amazingly like the “spirit
paintings” of our day, is his vision of madness. The boy is the sane
boy--the Sancho Panza--laughing at the madman.
Whatever the painter meant, whatever the historical connection of Don
Miguel with the legended Don Juan, here at least is his true
interpretation. Don Juan is the most conspicuous symbol of Seville.
Since Tirso de Molina in the seventeenth century made a play from the
old ballad and folklore sources of Don Juan, poets and playwrights of
many lands have retold his story.[8] The modern mood has freshened him
again with new psychology into a modish legend. But it is futile to
approach Don Juan save through the spirit of his town. The Don Juan of
Tirso, the first, remains the greatest. For Tirso placed his hero in the
proper setting. Tirso was no analyst, but he was a poet ... a great
dramatic poet. And his plastic presentation needs no analysis to reach
the truth.
Seville--auto-erotic, self-rapt goddess--has a god. Her streets, her
churches, her festivals bring you her lord. Don Juan is not the
full-grown lover. The true lover dwells within the spirit and body of
his woman as within a world holding heaven but earth too and hell: and
he enfeoffed to them all for that they all are the true world which he
loves. The true lover is constant; he has seen his woman so deep that he
has found infinitude within her; and how could he desire to transcend
it? What holds him to her is not pleasure: pleasure is but a moment in
this eternity of love. Anguish, anger, the black shades of
disappointment are also in his woman and he accepts them also. The true
lover is rare, rarer than genius. But Don Juan is one who loves in
woman his own senses, his own victory, and seeking ever these fleet
constants of himself moves ever on from breast to breast. The true lover
is rare because the full-grown man is rare. Don Juan is common because
infancy is common: the state of seeking only oneself, of taking life as
a flowered highway along which appetite and ease run gayly in pursuit of
their own image.
Like his mother Seville, Don Juan is restlessly pagan, hunting in
countless dramatic scenes a tribute to self-adoration. Each woman is a
mirror to himself; love of each woman is a pageant in which he enacts
his triumph. When the glance has been enjoyed, what is the mirror for?
When the pageant is past, what are its faded garlands? The real is Don
Juan! That he may be forever fresh, that his triumph may be forever
clear, undulled by custom, there must be new mirrors, new pageants--new
women.
Under Don Juan’s lyric words, there is coldness; under his exploits,
there is abstraction. His passion is but the spark, ere it has kindled
life and made life passion. And his deeds are fantasies, for only he is
real and the women whom he meets he never knows, knowing only his
desire. Therefore, his deeds like the landscape in the portrait of
Mañara are abstract.
All the elements of Don Juan are in Seville. But Seville is greater than
her son. His worship of himself in the white bodies of women is true
Seville. The constant shift of his deeds, like facets in the crystal of
desire, is true Seville. His orgiastic use of blood, of mysticisms, his
encounters with statues, necrophiles and ghosts--are Seville of the
Semana Santa. His ultimate sinking into the peace of self-absorption is
Seville. But the town is ampler, deeper. Don Juan conquers only women.
Seville conquers Spain.