The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe
Samuel Irenaeus Prime
9781465657015
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The South and the North of Europe are contrasted in this volume. Not by any formal comparison of the morals and manners, the institutions and condition of the peoples in different latitudes, but by candid statement and description, I have sought to give a fair view of life as it is in Spain and Scandinavia. Since the journey was made, the Queen of Spain has fled, and the Emperor of France has perished from among men. But the social life of the nations remains the same from age to age. The Alhambra is a type of the South. The Kremlin is a symbol of the North. Both of them are fortresses enclosing palaces: the glory of Spain in ruins, the pride of the North in its strength and beauty. Vague and indefinite ideas of these wonderful edifices, and of the countries they represent, have been entertained by many, who may find in these pages pictures of things as they are, which the writer trusts are faithful and portable. IN the grounds of the Alhambra, the ancient palace of the Moorish kings of Granada, what time those conquerors of Spain here held their right regal court, I have come to sit down and to rest. My lodgings are just under the walls of the old castle, in sight of its crumbling towers, in hearing of its many falling waters, and under the shadow of its English elms, which the Duke of Wellington gave to Spain. At any moment a few steps take me into the courts and halls and chambers of the Alhambra. In years past, while this pearl of Arab art and Oriental splendor was silently suffered to fall into ruin, with the lapse of centuries, it has been the habit of some travelled authors more addicted to romance than others, to get the easy privilege of sharing lodgings with the bats in some deserted chamber, and they doubtless fancied themselves inspired with the genius of the place, as they dreamed and wrote where fair sultanas with their charms eclipsed the splendors of the fairy place itself. As it is no part of my purpose to indulge in romance while writing these sketches of the Alhambra and of Spain, and as the walls of a comfortable inn are much more to the taste of a weary traveller than the stone floors and open windows of a tumbling old castle, it is my preference to take up my abode for the present with the good people in the Alhambra Hotel, and not with the keepers of the palace itself. Besides, there is no choice left. The government has undertaken the work of restoring the Alhambra to its pristine beauty, and this process is now going onward under the direction of Sr. Contreras. He has already displayed so much skill in imitating the arabesque decorations of the walls, that only a practised eye perceives the difference when the ancient and the modern art appear in the same chamber. Architects as well as amateur travellers from all parts of the civilized world, for centuries past, have made artistic and pleasure journeys hither to study and admire the style that has nothing like it except in Spain, and here only where the Moors held sway. And perhaps no work of art in the whole world has been more frequently and fully described than the Alhambra of Granada. History, poetry, and science have tried their several hands upon it. Romance has been so busy with it that it is not an easy task to disentangle the web of fiction, and get the only part of the tale worth knowing. So dear is truth, the simple, naked truth of history, to every true soul, that he is a great doer of evil who seizes upon history, and while professing to write it, weaves into his story the fancies of his own prolific genius, and that so deftly and so charmingly that the whole is accepted as veritable history, and the romance as the most credible and interesting of the whole. Early English history has thus been illustrated and inextricably confused. The spell of the magician’s wand has thus made the conquest of Mexico a poem rather than a reliable narrative.
