The Alhambra in Writerly Company

"I remember Granada as one should remember a sweetheart who has died." F.G.L

This weekend, I traveled to Granada, a city at the base of the Sierra Nevadas, to visit Sarah, my good friend and co-writer of this blog. As an added bonus, I was able to witness the native city of one of my favorite poets, Federico García Lorca, and to experience the tragic beauty of the place he often said had shaped him into the writer he was.

The highlight, not surprisingly, was the Alhambra, an astounding hilltop Moorish fortress that, in my opinion, more than lived up to its reputation as a nominee for the Seven Wonders of the World. Constructed in the 14th century by the Moors in an effort to mask their diminishing power, the Alhambra stands as a testament to the depth of the Arabs' influence in Spain and, in particular, Andalucía.

Lorca considered the Catholic Reconquest that followed the Alhambra's construction and ended Moorish reign a "disaster," since it destroyed a unique society in which Muslims, Jews and Christians had co-existed for seven centuries. Despite the Reconquest having taken place long before his time, he identified profoundly with those who had been unfairly accused, converted, and ultimately driven from their homes and country. "Being from Granada gives me a sympathetic understanding of those who are persecuted," he once wrote, "of the gypsy, the black, the Jew... of the Moor, whom all Grandinos carry with us."

For Lorca, the Alhambra epitomized this and all suffering. In his play "Doña Rosita the Spinster and the Language of Flowers," one of the characters calls the Moorish palace "a jasmine of grief." The water that filled the pools and fountains in the Alhambra, the adjacent gardens, and the two rivers that cut through the city below, was, to Lorca, the most somber element of all. Listening to the trickle of the fountains and the slow current of the dry rivers, the sad pulse of this ancient city and its history became real for me as well.

Personally, though, I felt more giddy from the incredible beauty of the Alhambra's design than depressed by the realization that its creators had been annihilated. Call me insensitive, but as I stood in one of the palace's courtyard, beside intricately molded stucco walls, finely carved wooden ceilings and elaborate muqarnas (honeycomb or stalactite) vaulting, all of which reflected in the central pools like an Islamic mirage of heaven, it seemed nothing less than a miracle that I could see such a thing in Western Europe at all.

For those of you who speak Spanish, here is an excerpt from Lorca's play Bodas de Sangre, a personal favorite of mine:

Leonardo:

¡Que vidrios se me clavan en la lengua!

Porque yo quise olvidar

y puse un muro de piedra

entre tu casa y la mía.

Es verdad. ¿No lo recuerdas?

Y cuando te vi de lejos

me eché en los ojos arena.

Pero montaba a caballo

y el caballo iba a tu puerta.

Con alfileres de plata

mi sangre se puso negra,

y el sueño me fue llenando

las carnes de mala hierba.

Que yo no tengo la culpa

que la culpa es de la tierra

y de ese olor que te sale

de los pechos y las trenzas.

Novia:

¡Ay que sinrazón! No quiero

contigo cama ni cena,

y no hay minuto del día

que estar contigo no quiera,

porque me arrastras y voy,

y me dice que me vuelva

y te sigo por el aire

como una brizna de hierba.

He dejado a un hombre duro

y a toda su descendencia

en la mitad de la boda

y con la corona puesta.

Para ti será el castigo

y no quiero que lo sea.

¡Déjame sola! ¡Huye tú!

No hay nadie que te defienda.

For more photos of my trip to Granada, check out my Facebook album "GRANADA"

Sources:

Gibson, Ian. "Literary Pilgrimages: Federico García Lorca." May 10, 1998. The New York Times. October 22, 2008. www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/10/specials/lorca.html

Stainton, Leslie. "The Granada of Federico García Lorca." May 4, 1986. The New York Times. October 22, 2008. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9A0EED81E3AF937A35756C0A960948260