Intruder in the Alhambra

Quote of the Week:

Cees Nooteboom (1933-)

The pink walls of the Alcazaba are tinged with a different shade each hour, the disciplined gardens around me, the eroded brick of the fortifications which seem to bleed in places, the gates and patios I saw that day, the excruciating intricacy and refinement of the decorations in corridors and pavilions and then suddenly, in the midst of it all, rises Charles V’s Renaissance palace like an intruder clinging to the remains of that vanished Orient, a proclamation of power and conquest.

A severe statement, a massive square enclosing a magnificent circle, a courtyard the size of a town square, one of the most lovely open spaces I know, as if even air could express the advent of a new era and a new might. Columns are curiously akin to trees, the multicoloured chunks of rock that nature once pressed into these marble thunks to make a superior kind of brawn, bear witness to a new military caste deploying its forces worldwide to destroy empires and amass the gold with which armies are fed, palaces built, and inflation generated. Skulls of oxen, stone tablets commemorating battles, iron rings decorated with eagles’ heads that once served to tie up horses, winged women of great beauty reclining dreamily on the pediments, their broken wings half spread, there is no more tangible evidence of the confrontation that took place here than those two intertwined palaces: the one extroverted, out to seduce, the other haughty, self-absorved; over and above the hedonistic bloom of the sultans the imperial edifice points to the might of the other, earlier caesars who ruled Europe long before the armies of Islam came and went.

(Cees Nooteboom: Roads to Santiago)

Palace of Charles V / Palacio de Carlos V, Granada

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⇒ The Palace of Charles V in Granada

The Grammar of Ornament (The Beauty of Patterns II)

The Beauty of Mathematics

Back in July I almost managed to convince myself that mathematics was beautiful.

And certainly, the result of mathematics at least is often quite beautiful:

Chambered nautilus shell by Jitze Couperus via Flickr. [CC BY 2.0]

The bit of mathematics illustrated above is a favourite of nature, and goes by the name of the Fibonacci sequence. Today, however, we’re going to ignore nature to see instead what man can do with a bit of mathematics. Or rather, what one particular man did with a bit of mathematics.

Decorations from Pompeii, image plate in The Grammar of Ornament. Photo by Eric Gjerde via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Spain in Black & White III (España en blanco y negro III)

Temple of Diana / Templo de Diana, Mérida

El Escorial

Alhambra, Granada

Roman Theatre / Teatro Romano, Mérida

Cáceres

Tales of the Alhambra

Today I’m writing about a book that has a title which makes you think of the tales of Scheherazade – and which in places reads like it too.

A Day Trip to Granada

I only visited Granada once but hope to go back there someday. And when I go back, I’ll make sure I pack a jumper.

We were staying in Seville for a week and we took the train for a day trip to Granada. It was the end of October but it was warm and sunny, and we had been wandering around Seville in summer clothes, eating a lot of ice-cream. On the train, the ticket inspector took one look at us, in t-shirts, shorts and summer dresses, and exclaimed, “It’s very cold in Granada!” Assuming that we didn’t understand Spanish, she proceeded to illustrate what she meant by treating us to an excellent pantomime: she hugged herself, gave a huge shiver, stomped her feet, then rubbed her hands together, repeating, “Mucho frío…” (Very cold.) After she moved on, we laughingly agreed among ourselves that the Spanish obviously considered anything below 20 degrees as cold… but naturally, as ‘hardy northerners’, we’d be fine. Well, we should have taken her more seriously, although it was too late to do anything about it by then of course. Because what we didn’t realise was that Seville is down on the plains and Granada is up in the mountains. It was cold, windy and it was raining on and off all day. The kind of weather you get in London at the end of October, in fact.

And so my picture of the Alhambra is suitably overcast.

The Alhambra of Granada

The Palace of Charles V in Granada

The patio of the Palace of Charles V in Granada

I read this marvellous article in the Spanish cultural magazine JotDown recently (it’s been written a couple of years ago, but that’s the beauty of the internet): Si van a Granada y solo pueden ver una cosa, visiten el Palacio de Carlos V en la Alhambra (If You Go to Granada And Can Only See One Thing, Visit the Palace of Charles V in the Alhambra) by Pedro Torrijos. Even if you can’t speak a word of Castilian, I would encourage you to click through to the article to enjoy the photos accompanying it – far better than mine above.

Sketches Of Spain: Granada

Leer esto en castellano

There are books of which there’s nothing to write because all has been said before. There are others of which there’s nothing to write because the only thing to do is to quote.  This is one of the latter ones.

“Seen from this tower, the night is an array of wonderful, magical sounds. If moonlit, a vague, deeply sensual mood invades the chords, if there is no moon… the river sings a unique, dreamy melody… but it is twilight that generates the most original, intense variations where colour assumes the haziest musical expressions. The ground has been prepared from mid-afternoon… Shadows slip over the bonfire that is the Alhambra… The Vega lies flat and silent. The sun hides and infinite waterfalls of musical colour burst from the hillsides and hasten soft and velvety over city and mountains, and the music of colour melts into the waves of sound… invoking melody, ancient sadness and lamentation.”

A rich and rewarding book for those who love Spain… & poetry.

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Sketches of Spain: Castile
The Palace of Charles V in Granada
A Day Trip to Granada