This Spanish horse, so thick-necked and muscular that it seems to have been sculptured from bronze, exhibits its Arab-ancestry.
I recommend especially Bertrand’s four-page chapter ‘The Balance-Sheet of the Arab Conquest,’ in which he summarizes his conclusions: Spain owed three positive debts to the Muslims. The concept of the university was Muslim, even though the teaching was “terrible in its verbalism and almost entirely theological.’ Muslim art also exerted a strong influence, as did Muslim poetry. More important, however, were the negative influences upon Spanish character, and these manifested themselves in various ways. The excessive individualism of the Spaniard, his tendency toward anarchy, is a Muslim inheritance to such a point that half a dozen Spaniards could not find themselves together in a fort or a caravel without at once forming two or three parties bent upon destroying one another.’ Especially destructive to the Spanish character was ‘the sinuosity of these Africans and Asiatics,’ for from this developed the Spaniard’s tendency toward bad faith and the breaking of his word. The bloodthirsty rapacity of the Spaniard and his lust for gold are directly attributable to his contact with the Muslim, as is the custom of keeping women behind bars. The worst of the borrowed characteristics was the parasitism of the nomads whereby living off one’s neighbor became an acceptable practice, but almost as bad was the habit of putting the conquered to fire and sword which the Muslims introduced into the peninsula. Bertrand concludes his dismal summary by citing two influences that were particularly destructive and persistent: the cruelty of the Muslim warrior, which became the cruelty of the Spaniard, and the incapacity of the Muslim to organize a government or to run it methodically. ‘The traveler through the mournful solitudes of La Mancha feels only too intensely that the Berbers of Africa have passed that way.’
Elsewhere he makes an additional point of great importance. Conceding that agriculture declined when the Moors were expelled, he warns against interpreting this as proof of Muslim accomplishment, because wherever the Moors went they destroyed agriculture; they did not promote it. The secret was that the good agriculture of the Moorish period was attributable to Spanish farmers using Spanish methods. They had converted to Islam, but when the Moors left, they left too, out of loyalty to their new religion. Bertrand’s final comment is unqualified: ‘On balance, it can fairly be said that the Muslim domination was a great misfortune for Spain.’
If I were forced to choose between the sentimentalities of Washington Irving and the hard analysis of Louis Bertrand, I would be inclined toward the latter, but I suspect that Bertrand’s strictures are somewhat more harsh than truth would dictate, for I detect in his argument more a defense of France’s contemporary policy vis-à-vis the difficult Muslims of North Africa than a concern for Spain’s historic problems with those same people. It seems to me that Bertrand underemphasizes the artistic accomplishments of the Muslims while overstressing their cruelty; but on one point he is eminently sound and it is one that has not been stressed before: that Spain’s proven incapacity to govern herself in the responsible French-English-American pattern is due primarily to her extended experience with Muslims, who fragmented their own holdings into a score of petty principalities and who prevented Spain from doing otherwise until the habit became so ingrained that regional economic separatism became the curse of Spanish life, whether in the homeland or in the Americas. It is this dreadful heritage of anarchy that keeps the Spanish republics of our hemisphere in confusion.
I was restrained from accepting all of Bertrand’s conclusions by a curious experience I was having in the Alhambra. Whenever I was tempted to agree that the Moors were as bad as Bertrand said, I would close my books and walk out into the gardens, and there I would find myself face to face with that hideous stone palace which Carlos V had caused to be built in the middle of the grounds and juxtaposed to the loveliest of the Alhambra palaces. One sight of that monstrous edifice, better suited to a cliff along the Rhine than to Granada, satisfied me that although the Moor may have had faults, he also had taste; this castle was so alien to the spirit of the Alhambra that no reconciliation of Spanish ideals and Moorish was possible.
The castle boasts a façade that is grotesquely ugly, as if someone had set out to burlesque the worst taste of the time. Its lower ranges consist of massive stones cut in that style which leaves the central area six or eight inches higher than the edges, producing an effect of brute strength, while the upper portions consist of some of the heaviest and most overly ornamented windows I had ever seen. Since the sides of the building form a square, what one has is an undigested cube of rock, and whoever designed it failed to realize that when plumped down beside the delicate Moorish palaces upon which it encroaches, it could only look ridiculous. There were reasons to forgive the intrusion of the cathedral in the middle of Córdoba’s Great Mosque, but the Carlos V castle in the Alhambra can have no justification.
For several days I refused to enter the place, but finally a Spanish friend took me inside and I saw that the interior was a bleak two-tiered circular cloister, unfinished and gapingly open to the sky. This meant that the brutal cube had rooms only around the four sides and these I did not care to see, but my friend insisted, and on the second floor I did find something that made the visit rewarding. I was standing in a royal dining hall, one end of which was decorated by a marble fireplace featuring a medallion bas-relief showing Leda being raped in the most explicit way by Jupiter in the form of a swan, and I said to my guide, ‘I’ll bet a lot of Spaniards spilled their soup in this room,’ but he was already leading me to another hall that contained a painting which years ago I had seen reproduced. It was titled ‘The Expulsion of the Jews’ and was by Emilio Sala (1850–1910), who won a prize with it at the Berlin Exposition of 1891. The guide said, with much enthusiasm, ‘It shows us a historic event which occurred in this very city in January, 1492. You see King Fernando on his throne and beside him Queen Isabel. Look at their banner which united Spain with its motto, Tanto Monta. It means that he and she are equal in dignity. Now, who are those two churchmen who seem so excited? The one in crimson, under better control, is Cardinal Mendoza, who served as a general during our Christian victory at Granada. The one in black is the great Cardinal Cisneros. Look at him point with his forefinger as he shouts. “The Jews must go!” You can see that Fernando and Isabel don’t want to throw their Jews out, but Cisneros insists.’ I was fascinated by the canvas, vast in size, for it was the only one I knew showing the four figures whose histories had become so important to me: Fernando, Isabel, Mendoza and Cisneros, and to see it was worth a trip even through the gloomy palace of Carlos V.
Alas, my enthusiasm was misguided. Long after I had left Granada, I discovered that the agitated figure in black was not my hero Cisneros but rather his predecessor as head of the Inquisition, Tomás de Torquemada, and the scene represented was the famous incident in which King Fernando announced that he had decided not to expel the Jews because they had offered him a bribe of thirty thousand ducats not to do so. Then Torquemada stormed into the room where the sovereigns were listening to the Jews plead for their freedom and he waved on high a crucifix, shouting at the same time, ‘Judas Iscariot betrayed our Lord for thirty pieces of silver. The kings of Spain would sell him a second time for thirty thousand. Well, here he is.’ With this he threw the crucifix onto the table and disappeared, crying as he went, ‘Take him and barter him for thirty thousand pieces of silver.’ And the decision to expel was decided upon that day.
In Granada one has conflicting thoughts about Cisneros, for it was as late as 1499, when passions aroused by the Conquest should have subsided, that he ordered the collecting of all Muslim manuscripts in the area and supervised their burning in what has often subsequently been lamented as a major crime against both history and scholarship.
It is appropriate, I suppose, that Fernando and Isabel rest permanently in Granada, the city which had attracted them like a magnet and whose capture became the principal jewel in their crown. In the cente
r of the city, in a royal chapel of florid but pleasing design, lying adjacent to the cathedral, of which it is a part, rest the tombs of the Catholic Kings. The plain leaden caskets lie below ground in a crypt, which can be visited so as to satisfy oneself that the wishes of the kings were respected; they preferred to be buried simply and without undue panoply. But above them, on ground level, a magnificent wrought-iron grille subtends an area which is further enclosed by a plain but handsome iron fence, inside which stand four splendid catafalques, the first pair carved in Genoa of Carrara marble, the second pair in Spain. They represent four royal persons who concern us repeatedly in this book. As you face them, King Fernando V lies to your left in premier position, hands on chest and very regal. Beside him, in second position, lies Queen Isabel I, hands folded and, for some reason I have not been able to discern, looking away from her husband. As we shall see later, he gave her ample reason for dismissing him in this manner, but it was not within her character to do so and I find the tombs disturbing. Beside the great kings, and elevated above them, which seems quite improper, rest two of the unhappiest rulers who ever held a throne in Europe. The young king, who again lies to the left in the premier position, is Philip of Burgundy and Austria, known in Spain as Felipe I of Castilla, recognized in his lifetime as the most elegant of princes and known through Europe as Philip the Handsome. He was a miserable, mean human being, and it is shameful to have him sleeping where he does, for he served Spain poorly, abused the faith Isabel placed in him, fought openly against Fernando and crucified his unfortunate wife, their daughter Juana, who lies beside him. This time it is understandable that the thin-faced, demented woman looks the other way. Hers is a tragic figure, excellently portrayed by the Spanish sculptor, who may have worked from a death mask but also from reports of how the mad queen behaved.
The fact that young Felipe’s body is here at all is a compelling story, for the path to this sepulcher was a grim one, but of that we shall hear later. For the present we must fix in our minds the noble panoply of the four kings: Fernando, Isabel, Felipe and Juana la Loca. No kings of Europe enjoy a more gracious mausoleum.
In the sacristy next to the chapel appear two wooden statues which bring the Catholic Kings to life, for here are Fernando and Isabel kneeling on purple pillows as they pray. The wood is polychromed, so that the cheeks of the rulers look as if they had been rouged this morning, and each strand of hair is carved and painted a Spanish black. The statues are delightful and show two pudgy-jowled monarchs in the early years of their reign, with none of the heavy seriousness that characterized them later. They are so appealing that they must be quite popular with Spanish visitors, but I had never heard of them; one look satisfied me that this was the way they appeared to their subjects, and now whenever I think of the Catholic sovereigns, I think of them as these polychromed statues kneeling in prayer. Had they been shown sweating over the problems of government, or leading armies, or haggling with cardinals, or writing snippy letters to the Pope, or deciding what to do with Fernando’s regular procession of illegitimate children, the statues would be closer to the truth. These two had but little time for prayer, yet that is how they come down to us.
One day as I was walking through the gardens adjacent to the Alhambra, I came upon a kiosk selling a postcard titled ‘Carmen de Manuel de Falla,’ a carmen being a rustic house and garden, and it showed an attractive patio with a winding iron-railed staircase leading to the second floor. I knew that Falla (1876–1946) was of Catalan descent but did not know that he had been born in Cádiz and had lived in Andalucía, even though some of his themes appeared to be of that derivation. ‘Yes!’ the kiosk keeper said. ‘Don Manuel had his carmen along that road that climbs the hillside. In the shadow of the Alhambra, you might say.’
I walked along a beautiful road that clung to the hill and provided a fine view of the valley, but soon I came to a fork, and the left path was so narrow that cars could not enter. I hesitated, but a woman cried, ‘Is it for Falla’s carmen? Along, along.’ This trail was even more pleasant than the other and finally I came to an unpretentious house with a garden that climbed up the hill to three different levels, each of which had its unique natural quality. I had not at this point determined whether this was the carmen of Spain’s foremost modern musician, but I was satisfied that it was the house of one who loved nature, and it required no imagination to visualize Falla sitting in this exquisite spot as he traced out in his mind the piano passages for his delicate orchestral suite Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain, 1916).
Once inside the house one knew that it had belonged to Falla, for it was crowded with mementos of a life to which fame had come abundantly, not only in Spain but also in France. In the bedroom hung the English card commemorating his first communion: ‘His death our life. His life our death. June 26, 1886.’ For his first confession on June 20, 1884, the card had been in French. Here also were the works of art he had enjoyed: a Goya etching showing the torero Joaqín Rodriguez, called Costillares; a fine Hiroshige print showing two geese, one white, one colored, flying against a full moon with three reeds below. Teófilo Gautier had lived in this street and there was a memento giving his Spanish name. Here Federico García Lorca had attended a testimonial dinner to Falla on February 9, 1927, and farther on was a recollection of Pío Baroja. In these rooms I felt close to Falla, but it was in the wandering gardens that his music came alive.
Standing beside the bamboo trees and looking out across the dry fields and mountains of Andalucía, I could begin to hear those extraordinary rhythms he had used in his four chief works, Noches, El amor brujo (Love the Magician, 1915), El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat, 1919) and the little-known El retablo de Maese Pedro (The Puppet Show of Master Peter, 1920). Here, too, I could understand better how he caught those dark and precise chords so representative of Spanish thought.
To Falla, Spain was important, and the part of Spain he understood best was this hot, impassioned Andalusian section. Contrary to what most believe and many write, he did not introduce folk themes directly into his music, for in his work only two or three instances of such use occur, but he did allow the intention of folk music to infect him, and his re-creation of its purposes is what makes his music so superior to that of colleagues like Albéniz, Granados and Turina. The more I hear Falla the more convinced I am that he was a true original. He is a very clean and honest composer; he speaks with a compact vocabulary and his message is no less profound because it is so brief. I once had the interesting experience of hearing Igor Markevich directing a conductors’ school in a baroque church in northern Spain, and for two days I listened to the Radio Madrid Orchestra playing dances from El sombrero, over and over again, and two things impressed me: the music never grew stale, for on each repetition I heard some brilliant bit of orchestration or juxtaposition that I had missed before, so rich was Falla’s construction; but when the would-be conductors were German or English or Russian, they seemed to fight the rhythms, whereas when the conductor was a Spaniard he fell with ease into what Falla intended. Conversely, of course, the other Europeans found Mozart rather easy to handle, whereas the Spaniards treated him too heavily.
Falla is the most important composer Spain has produced since the closing years of the sixteenth century. It is Falla’s solid authenticity that appeals to me, the high specific gravity of all he does. His themes are inventive and speak of the Spanish soil; his rhythms are unexpected and although they do not copy the handclapping of flamenco, they derive from it, as in that series of twenty-one staccato chords that closes the ‘Ritual Fire Dance’ in El amor brujo and the seven strange chords that intrude in the Miller’s farruca in El sombrero; but it is principally his orchestration, as precise as Bizet’s, that accounts for the high quality of his work.
That he did not compose much, when compared to contemporaries like Debussy and Richard Strauss, and that he did not attempt large pieces in the great tradition followed by Sibelius are characteristics comm
on to all the Spanish artists of his day. When I was in Granada, wasting lovely hours in Falla’s carmen, I had not yet tried to rationalize why the Spanish composers produced so little and I did not yet see this as part of a general cultural malaise; that would come later. For the present I was pleased to have seen the workshop of this notable artist and to have heard again in memory those unanticipated dark notes which García Lorca praised.
Then, as I was driving out of Granada on my way back to Córdoba, I saw on the road map a name which evoked a whole cascade of sound, trivial, to be sure, but sound which I have long enjoyed. The map had a small red arrow pointing to a cul-de-sac and the words Torre Bermeja. I had not known that the Torre Bermeja actually existed, nor had I realized that if it did exist it was in Granada, for this was the title of an unimportant orchestral piece by Isaac Albéniz, another Catalan who chose to write about Andalucía. I had first heard ‘Torre Bermeja’ (Bright Reddish Tower) as a student attending a concert in London, and even then I had enough knowledge to know that this was not a major piece of music, but it had a captivating lilt and one lambent theme, which Albéniz overworked. But what made the piece important to me was the program note which said that the Torre Bermeja was a Moorish tower, and that was enough to send me daydreaming of a Spain I had not yet seen. I supposed the tower to be some magnificent thing which bespoke its Moorishness to all who saw, and through the years I kept looking for a photograph of what I was sure must be a considerable structure; since I did not know what part of Spain it was in, I never saw it, but whenever I accidentally heard the slow sweet music on the radio I visualized a brooding Moorish tower and felt a strange identification with Spain.
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