Remembering the Alhambra

When, thirty years ago, I heard for the first time Recuerdos de la Alhambra played by Narciso Yepes, I thought it was a terribly difficult piece, a for-four-hands written for a single guitar, the peak of virtuoso guitar. But I was so fascinated by it that I asked my teacher to let me have it as my exam piece. Just as I was practicing, I realized how simple it was. It is one single calm, big-hearted romantic tune, like a Venetian gondoliere song. And this light and spacious framework is constantly woven around by the tremolo of the three middle fingers, this creates the crystal palace, as British Romanticism called the Alhambra. Because the Alhambra itself is built like this.


Francisco Tarrega: Recuerdos de la Alhambra (1896). Leo Brouwer’s concert recording from the 1970s

Perspective

Ronda, Andalusia

Seville, airport. The X-ray detects some elctronics in the stomach of the bag, which is no wonder, as it ate it for breakfast.The twenty-some-year old security guard takes me aside. “Please open it, because the books don’t let it see well.” I look at him, startled. “But it is precisely books that make you see better.” He is brooding, while his hand does it job mechanically. “I would not say better”, he says, „but rather more widely”. He finishes it, closes the bag. “Señor, yo soy un gran lector. Reading is like mountaineering. It is hard to get up”, he points at the stretching bag, “but once you are on the top, there’s a lot more perspective up there.” We shake hands.

Lookout La Lastra, Andalusia

The birds of the air

The Colossal portal recently published a nice post with Caner Cangül’s photos and Kate Sierzputowski’s brief text about those Ottoman-era “bird houses” that were carved in the form of miniature mosques and palaces, and embedded in the façades of real mosques and palaces. A larger, better illustrated version of this article had been published on Caner Cangül’s own Istanbulium blogj, és and in general, the topic is abundantly present on Istanbul’s city blogs. The “sparrow palaces”, as folk mouth has called them, were raised mainly by religious inspiration, as a good act towards God’s creatures. However, they fit nicely in the love of animals of the people of Istanbul, who seldom have their own pets, but devotionally provide for the city’s public dogs and public cats, as we have just seen in Kedi – Cats of Istanbul.


In Europe, care for public birds has rather secular rooots, from titmouse feeding through stork wheels to Bird Day. That is why it is so interesting that in Seville, the Law of 19.9.1896 on the Protection of Birds was published with reference to the children’s fear of God, in the usual way of the period, in azulejo inserted in the wall.

“Children, do not deprive birds from their freedom, don’t torture them, neither destroy their nests. God rewards those children who protect birds, and the law prohibits hunting them, destroying their nests, and kidnapping their nestlings.”

Life is there

Just four hundred meters from a huge cathedral, it looks as if we are in a suburb. A small bar on a side street, with three tables. At one of them, two thirty-something women friends are talking, having escaped for a few minutes from their children; at the other a colorful Gipsy woman, I cannot see the face of the man next to her, and I am sitting at the third one. I ask for a tapas “with some kind of ham”, we discuss how the bread should be toasted and seasoned with alioli, plus a beer. I’m listening to the conversation of those standing at the counter, I’m adjusting my ears to the lisping Andalusian dialect. Even after many years, it is strange how adult people can make do with so few consonants. I’d like to pay, but I spot the barrels behind the counter. I ask for a glass of old jerez to say good-bye. The bartender winks at me. “It’s not good enough.” He pours me from a bottle, San Diego, it is really heavenly. He also praises it to his actual conversation partner, filling up half a glass to him, to prove how good it is. “It smells like wood”, he knocks on the counter. In a Sevillan way, he writes the amount with chalk on the counter, in a vivid, almost Moorish hand; he generously skips the tapas, counting only the beer and the jerez. I take a photo of the beautiful handwriting. He positions himself above it, he imitates writing it once more, I also take photos of it.


I also praise his jerez, he pours another glass, he does not accept money for it. “Salud”, I lift it. While he is pouring one for himself, he points at the security camera, “I really should not do this, but I’m the boss here”. We clink glasses. “What’s your name?” “Tomás.” “Pedro.” “Encantado.” “Tomás, when I saw you browsing the menu outside there, I thought that whoever leaves deserves it, and whoever comes in also deserves it.” He pours again. “However, in Seville, the downtown is not the real thing. But the barrios, the suburbs around it!” He draws a circle with his hand. “Wow. Life is there. I come from Huelva, I have been working here since I was twelve. I lived in twenty-eight places,” he also writes it with number on the counter. “I know everything.” I start questioning him as to what is worth seeing there, where life is. He lists it. Quarters, encounters, loves, friendships. “Because friendship is the most important thing in life.” And of course bars, taverns and cellars, the theaters of friendship, where you can show that you have a friend. “Tomás. On Sunday, at half past two, I close here,  I go with my daughter around Seville, to the white villages. There is such a cellar there, full of wild game, deer, wild boar. Everything is completely fresh. Come with us.” “Thank you.” Obviously, I say, “I will be here.” “Call me beforehand, on Saturday,” he writes on a napkin his number. “I have not invited anyone there yet.”

The fifty shades of Latin

In the bird’s-eye view, one might have the comforting illusion that country borders are also language borders. Especially where the borders follow the ranges of high mountains that separate peoples, like the Alps or the Pyrenees. In Germany they speak German, in Italy Italian. In France French, in Spain Spanish (all right, in Catalonia Catalan). This is supported by the historical experience that in Eastern Europe, in the past century, the changes of state borders were usually followed by the forced resettlement or assimilation of peoples speaking other languages. So that, for example, on the two sides of the Ukrainian-Polish border, arbitrarily drawn in 1939, or of the German-Polish border, also so drawn in 1945, we can hardly find anyone speaking the language of the other side. However, when you happen to survey in the ant’s-eye view a more fortunate border zone, where neither the border nor the residents have moved very much over the past centuries, your experience will be quite different.

I want to go north from Catalonia’s northernmost region, the Boí Valley, one of the cradles of European Romanesque art, to France’s southernmost region, the Upper Garonne, to the pilgrimage church of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, which was for the inhabitants of the valley the nearest connecting point to the great Compostela pilgrimage road throughout the Middle Ages. The distance from Castilló de Tor, which guards the entrance of the valley, to the cathedral of Comminges, is just ninety kilometers, which you can cover in one hour and a half by car, including the obligatory slow downs.


The Spanish-language Wikipedia site of the destination, Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges informs us (the French one does not), that the little town is called San Bertran de Comenge in the Occitan language. Why is this interesting? Because the inhabitants of the town, although declining in proportion, speak this language. Occitan – the lengua d’oc, as Dante called it after the word oc meaning “yes”, and as opposed to his own lingua de sì –, the original Latin language version of Southern France has been increasingly pushed into the background by French in recent centuries.

But Occitan is also divided into various dialects, from eastern Provençal to western Gascon, the latter being spoken here, in the region of Saint-Bertrand. This dialect is known to all of us, as one of its most famous speakers was D’Artagnan, the fourth musketeer, who, as a rookie in Paris, was mocked simply for his Gascon accent. The Gascons were excellent soldiers, they formed the backbone of the King’s musketeer guard, and also represented a peculiar linguistic patch of color in 17th-century Paris. Another famous Gascon speaker was none less than the Virgin Mary. At least, in 1858 she said to Bernardette Soubirous, the shepherd girl of Lourdes, in the latter’s native language: Que sòi era Immaculada Councepciou, “I am the Immaculate Conception”, which is still emblazoned on the pedestal of her statue in Lourdes. No wonder, then, that the locals are proud of their ancient tongue, and in more and more towns they operate a nursery and primary school in this language, although no version of Occitan is officially recognized in France.




Crossing the Spanish or Catalan border, you would expect to hear only Spanish or Catalan. But the first café in the town of Bossòst, over whose streets the peak of Tuc d’Aubas hovers like Mount Fuji, bears the proud name Er Occitan – The Occitan –, and moreover, as marked by the peculiar definite article neither in Spanish nor Catalan, but in the Occitan language.



And the main language of the information board at the town’s 11th-century Romanesque church – whose northern gate is adorned with the loveliest Romanesque relief of the Virgin Mary – is also not Catalan or Spanish. But yet another, which I can only assume, for lack of competence, is Occitan. The assumption is correct, but not precise.



In fact, a few towns away, on the gate of the Romanesque church of Vila a board announces the hours and languages of the Mass for the settlements of the neighboring Aran Valley. Even the language of the board and the names of the days are peculiar. And in the center of the valley, in the town of Vielha – which is called Viella both in Catalan and Spanish, for nevertheless the former version is written at the entrance of the town – they celebrate Sunday Mass in the Aranès language.




Aranès or Aranese is the version of Occitan, more precisely of Gascon, or even more precisely, of Pyrenean Gascon, which, as the name indicates, is spoken in Aran Valley. This small area, which falls to the north of the ridge of the Pyrenees, but still belongs to Catalonia, and is home to the source of Garonne River. The dialect of its inhabitants is closer to the adjacent Occitan than to Catalan, from which they are separated by the ridge. The number of its speakers is less than ten thousand, yet it is the official language of the valley. Moreover, in 2010 it was adopted by the Catalan parliament as the third official language of all Catalonia, in addition to Spanish and Catalan. Thus Catalonia is the only state where a variant of Occitan enjoys official status.


Crossing the mountain, we get back to Boí Valley. This is already in Catalonia, therefore, we might assume, they speak Catalan. Yes, but what kind? The language they speak among themselves in the shops and pubs is appreciably different from the one you hear in Barcelona: it is deeper, they often say -a or -au instead of -e, the -er at the end of the words is pronounced -é, like in French, and a lot of Spanish words are used. This is the Ribagorçan dialect, spoken on both sides of the Catalan-Aragonian border instead of the official Catalan or Spanish. Even if the great linguist Joan Corominas considers this to be the “most archaic and purest” form of Catalan, you would have to cross quite a few valleys going south-east to hear the standard version of Catalan.

Romance linguistics teaches that by walking across the former Roman Empire from Sicily to Normandy, every pair of neighboring villages can understand each other. It is nice to see how this really works on a small scale.

The road of tea and horse

A week ago at this time, on Sunday morning I sat on the beach in Mallorca, and while the group was having coffee, I leafed through the elegant Spanish travel magazine Passion, whose copies there are on most coffee shop tables. The first article was dedicated to the number one tourist destination in Spain: Mallorca. The essay Walking around Mallorca was introduced with the photo of the island’s northern peninsula, the Formentor Cape. I only had to look to the right to find out how in step with fashion we are. I saw this, indeed:


But it was the second article which really demonstrated, how sensitive the tours of Río Wang are to the latest tourist trends of the world. This one talked about an exotic destination, virtually unknown to Western travelers: the road of tea and horse. This path is winding beneath the Himalayas, between the mountains of Yunnan in southwestern China, in the source area of Mekong and Yangtze. For centuries, the caravans shipped along it the tea pressed in bricks from China’s best tea producing region, southern Yunnan, to the north, the tribes of Tibet, and brought back in return the excellent mountain horses to the south, the courts and garrisons of China. As the article writes in detail:

“It was never as famous as the Silk Road, but at one time, when tea could cost more than this delicate fabric, the winding Ancient Tea Horse Road, in Chinese Chamadao 茶马道, became an important trading route. Although the itinerary would vary, it ran over nearly 4,000 kilometres, from Yunnan and Sichuan, in China, to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. On it, porters would carry tea leaves on their backs in great bamboo bundles, forming human caravans through some of the most complicated orography in the world, passing over the Hengduan Mountains, dozens of rivers, canyons, stone and rope bridges, and encountering bandits and avalanches.

The eagerly sought goal, glimpsed nearly five months after setting off, was the Potala Palace, the former residence of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa, when they could at last set down the heavy burdens which generally speaking weighed around 100 kilos per person, depending on each individual’s body weight. The caravan of porters was known as bā, and each one of them could bring a maximum of twelve horses back. To organise the bundles and facilitate the transport, the tea was pressed into cubes of bricks using cylindrical stones that weighed over 30 kilos, and which are still used artisanally today. Often, the tea order had to be taken to India too, lengthening the harsh journey to up to a year, going through the Himalayas.

Tea first reached Tibet in the year 641 when princess Wen Cheng, of the Tang dynasty, married the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo. In a cold region such as this, Tibetans developed a taste for this instantly hot drink and since then, they have drunk on average 40 cups a day mixed with yak butter and a little salt and accompanied by what is a staple food for them tsampa, which is barley flour toasted on the fire. The low temperatures have always made it necessary for Tibetans to ingest very calorific foodstuffs, such as dairy and meat produce. Since they have no vegetables, tea appeared to be a magical solution for cleansing themselves and facilitating digestion, as well as helping them wake up and being consumed in their meditation temples. Tea was so successful in Tibet that by the 13th century China was transporting tons of tea every year in exchange for 25,000 horses.

The tea horse road, largely unknown to the West, was considered one of the most dangerous routes in the world. Nowadays both residents – for commercial reasons – and tourists captivated by its history travel along it once more, with variations in the path, and no longer on foot, but on four wheels.”


And now, one week later, on Sunday morning, I’m sitting on the airplane towards Yunnan, to prepare the autumn tour of Río Wang, on which we will follow the road of tea and horse from the southern tea plantations to the Tibetan foothills through emerald green valleys, dizzying canyons and thousand-year-old towns, where time stopped many centuries ago. I cannot yet post a photograph of mine under the respective picture of Passion, but in the next few weeks I will abundantly make up for it.

Dissolving: The tempest

The church fortress and town of Ardara (Sardinia) after tempest, at sunset

El Greco: Toledo, or Tempest above Toledo, ca. 1599, the first Spanish landscape. Art historical analysis explains in many ways the stormy sky, from the artist’s troubled state of mind through his relationship to God to a presentiment of a threatening future. Is it not possible that he only painted what he saw?

Disolución: Revelaciones • Dissolving: Revelations

“Wanderer, come nearer to see, what hides in the shadow. For though he lies buried,
the letters indicated by the combination of numbers will clearly reveal
who rests in this coffin, who Memphis is preparing
a new celestial sphere for.” *

Lágrimas amantes de la excelentísima Ciudad de Barcelona [...] en las Magníficas Exequias que celebró a las Amadas y Venerables Memorias de su difunto Rey y Señor don Carlos II [...] Descríbelas Joseph Rocaberti. Barcelona: Juan Pablo Martí, 1701, p. 263. El texto debe completarse siguiendo la secuencia numérica. Para la muerte de Carlos II, sin descendencia y desencadenadora de la larga guerra mundial conocida como Guerra de Sucesión, la generalidad de las imprentas hispanas ofrecieron de manera exagerada —reveladora de una necesidad de saturar, de colmatar la superficie gráfica cuando tan poco bueno se podía augurar— todo tipo de muestras de poesía visual, enigmática o «metamétrica».

Tears of Love, shed by the eminent City of Barcelona […] in the magnificent mourning rituals dedicated to the beloved and venerated memory of her deceased King and Lord, don Carlos II […] Described by Joseph Rocaberti. Barcelona: Juan Pablo Martí, 1701, p. 263. The text is to be supplemented according to the numeric combinations. Charles II died without a heir, and his death ignitd the long world war known as the War of the Spanish Succession. Most of the Spanish printers paid a tribute to the memory of the deceased ruler with a variety of exaggerated visual, enigmatic and “metametric” poems, which clearly reveal, what an effort it was to fill the blank pages when there was so little good to say.

Letra A (alfa). Folio 6 del Comentario del Apocalipsis, encargado por el rey Fernando I al beato Facundo. Lo acabó en 1047 (Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid). Cristo, de pie bajo la inicial y apuntando hacia ella, tiene la letra Omega en la mano: «Yo soy el Alfa y Omega, el Principio y el Fin, dice el Señor» (Ap 1:8)

Initial A (alfa) on fol. 6 of the Commentary to John’s Revelations, illuminated by Beatus Facundus (see the history of these codex) for Ferdinand I of Castille and León (completed in 1047, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional). Christ, standing under the initial and pointing to it, holds the letter omega in His hand: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord” (Rev 1:8)

Letters to Saint Peter from Ruthenia

In the treatise Modus epistolandi, that is, The art of writing letters (1488), which was fairly popular throughout Renaissance Europe, Francesco Nigro gave precise and detailed rhetoric guidelines for writing not fewer than twenty types of letters. The first one was the commendatitium or letter of recommendation, which, for its part, was separated into two subtypes, and each divided into four mandatory parts. Later, many other humanists put their two cents into these rhetorical standards by collecting and adapting the ideas and exercises of ancient progymnasmata. Not only Erasmus, Vives and Lipsius, the list is much longer: Gasparino Barzizza, Juan Lorenzo Palmireno, Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Bartolomé Bravo, Juan Vicente Peliger, Badius Ascensius, Sulpizio di Verola, Gaspar de Tejeda, Henri Estienne, Basin de Sendacourt, Heinrich Bebel, Valentinus Erythraeus, Pietro Bembo, Tomás Gracián Dantisco, Espinosa de Santayana, Moravus de Olomouc, and so on. And though none of these authors offered guidance to writing letters of recommendation to the Hereafter, nevertheless such letters existed, and they were regularly written according to controlled formulas, sprinkled with writing-sand and sealed, and addressed to no less a person than Saint Peter himself, into his own hands.

News of these letters came to Spain from Ruthenia, as the humanist, numismatist, archbishop of Tarragona and extraordinarily curious man, don Antonio Agustín (1517-1586) jotted down in his handwritten notebook. In folio 23 of this book, called Alveolus, written about 1555, we find this account on the tradition of “the Ruthenian Church”: *

“Rutheni populi Moschouitarum sunt Polonis contigui, quorum regem adgnoscunt; et in religione Patriarcham Constantinopolitanum, cuius ritum, ceremonias et instituta sequuntur. Eorum prouincia nunc Russia nuncupatur. Lingua Dalmatica loquuntur, cuius per uniuersum orientem magnus usus est; characteres mixti Grecis atque Barbaris Sclauonicis quos appellant. Hi populi ridiculam consuetudinem exequiarum obseruant. Mortuorum enim parentes affines propinquí et amici, litteras ab Archiepiscopo prouintiae suae accipiunt, et sigillo et subscriptione firmatas: quibus Archiepiscopus sancto Petro scribit, mortuum propinquum et amicum commendans; rogans mortuo liceat in consortium coelitum adscribi. Quae littere mortui manui inseruntur; unaque cum iis, tamquam eas diuo Petro Vitae Innocentiaeque suae testes redditurus, sepelitur. Emuntur autem magno tales littere; neque cuiquam nisi soluenti pecuniam conceduntur. Quo fit, ut pauperes eas non accipiant, scribuntur lingua Dalmatica. Earum formulam, ex ea lingua translatam in Latinam a Georgio Ticinensi Lithphano, infra suscribi iussimus:

«MACARIVS Dei gratia Ecclesiarum Domini Dei nostri in hoc corruptibili mundo uicarius, tibi Petro qui olim summus Christi in terris uicarius extitisti, notificamus: quod nuper non sine ingenii moerore, Dilecti filii Ecclesiae Dei, nobis rettulerunt; quendam Nicolaum Gregorii Filium, hanc miseriis plenam uitam reliquisse; in aliumque felicem ac deliciis plenum mundum commigrasse. In quo fidelium omnium animulae, omnibus desiderato Domini nostri Jesuchristi, eiusque matris incorruptae intuitu frui ac gaudere numquam cessant. Quas opera tua in regnum coelorum, cuius ianitor et clauiger existis, esse admissas receptasque nemo ambigit. Nam eam clauium potestatem, ipse humani generis restauratos, tibi iam in coelis uero in terris indubie concessit, quos suarum Ecclesiarum in hoc mundo presides esse uoluit.

Cum igitur officii nostri sit ad te, de conuersatione eorum qui relicto hoc mundo istuc commigrant, rescribere, ideo, indubiam tibi litteris his nostris fidem facimus Nicolaum Gregorii Filium, toto tempore uitae suae pie ac christiane uixisse, neminem offendisse, ac omnia Ecclesiarum Dei praecepta, diligenter obseruasse. Quem, prius quam deo conditori suo spiritum commodaticium reddidisset, ab omnibus suis peccatis, quibus diuinam Maiestatem aliquando offendit, absoluimus. Et, propterea iustum esse censemus, quod in conspectum Domini Dei conditoris nostri admittatur; electorumque Dei numero tuis meritis precibusque adiutus, adscribatur. Quod ut pro more officioque tuo facias, supplices petimus. Datum, etc. Sub manu, et sigillo nostro.»” (Alveolus. Manuscrito escurialense S-II-18, Madrid, FUE, 1982, 33-35.)

“The Ruthenians are Muscovite people in the neighborhood of the Poles, whose king they recognize as their lord. In religious matters they recognize the Patriarch of Constantinople, and follow his rites, ceremonies and institutions. Their region is now called Land of the Russians. They speak the Dalmatian [Church Slavonic] language, which is quite widespread in all the East. Their writing is a mixture of the Greek alphabet and the letters of the barbarian Slavic language, as they call it. These peoples have a ridiculous funeral rite. The relatives and close friends of the deceased get a sealed and signed letter from the archbishop of the diocese, which the archbishop addresses to Saint Peter, recommending the deceased into his friendship and company. They put this letter into the hands of the deceased, and bury him with it, as a testimony of his life and innocence. These letters have a high price, and are not granted to anyone unless he pays for them. Thus, the poor have no access to them. They are written in Dalmatian language. Their text, translated by George of Pavia from this language to Latin, is as follows:

«Makarios, by the grace of God vicar of the Church of God our Lord in this corruptible world, let it be known unto thee, Peter, who once was in this land the supreme vicar of Christ, that recently we have been visited by certain beloved children of the Church of God, relating with great pain, that a certain Nicholas, son of Gregory departed this life full of misery, and migrated to the happy hereafter, full of delight, where the little souls of all believers do not cease to rejoice and enjoy the vision, desired by all of us, of our Lord Jesus Christ and his uncorrupted Mother. To which it is, beyond doubt, thou who receivest and letst them enter, being the gatekeeper of the kingdom of heaven, for into thine hands is deposited the power of the keys on earth and in the heavens He, the Restorer of the human race, who wanted thee to be the superior of His Church in this world.

Being therefore our duty to report to thee about the conduct of those who migrated from this world to that one, we undoubtedly let it be known unto thee and certify with faith, that Nicholas, son of Gregory, lived in a pious and Christian way throughout the period of his life, having not hurt anyone, and diligently observing all the commandments of the Church of God. And before delivering his soul unto God, his Creator, we absolved him of all of the sins, with which he had ever offended His Divine Majesty. We therefore consider it fair to let him be admitted into the presence of God, our Lord, and to be enrolled among the numbers of the elect, with the help of thy merits and prayers. We pray unto thee to grant it and do so with thy usual mercy and condescension. Date etc. From our hand and seal.»”

Our imagination is excited by the high price that one had to pay for these letters to the archbishop, and which made them inaccessible to the poor. We wonder what the black market for these letters was like, the grave robberies, the elimination of the name of the deceased in the letters and their replacement in the hands of another, less wealthy deceased, the refined techniques of the skilled counterfeiters of signatures and seals, by which they were able to trick the gatekeeper of the Paradise himself… Or perhaps this idea is totally inconceivable for a Ruthenian, and can arise only in the picaresque Iberian imagination?

But if so, how could one of these letters get into the hands of Don Antonio?

Our illustrations are processional flags from Ruthenian villages in the collection of the Lemberg/Lviv Icon Museum