Spain, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

Such moments are very sad ones for a stranger. I remember that I could have struck my head against the wall. I wandered here and there almost abashed, with hanging head and sad heart, as if all that crowd was amusing itself for the sole purpose of insulting my loneliness and melancholy. It was too late to present my letters of introduction, too early to go to bed: I was the slave of that crowd and that gaiety, and was obliged to endure it for many hours. I found a solace in resolving not to look at the faces of the women, but I could not always keep my resolve, and when my eyes inadvertently met two black pupils the wound, because so unexpected, was more grievous than if I had encountered the danger more boldly. Yes, I was in the midst of those wonderfully famous women of Seville! I saw them pass on the arms of their husbands and lovers; I touched their dresses, breathed their perfume, heard the sound of their soft speech, and the blood leaped to my head like a flame of fire. Fortunately, I remembered to have heard from a Sevillian at Madrid that the Italian consul was in the habit of spending the evening at the shop of his son, a merchant; I sought out the shop, entered, and found the consul, and as I handed him a letter from a friend I said, with a dramatic air which made him laugh, "Dear sir, protect me; Seville has terrified me."

At midnight the appearance of the city was unchanged: the crowd and light had not disappeared; I returned to the hotel and locked my door with the intention of going to bed. Worse and worse! The windows of my room opened on a square where crowds of people were swarming around an orchestra that played without interruption, when the music finally ended the guitars commenced, together with the cries of the water-carriers and snatches of song and laughter; the whole night through there was noise enough to wake the dead. I had a dream at once delightful and tantalizing, but rather more tantalizing than delightful. I seemed to be tied to the bed by a very long tress of dark hair twisted into a thousand knots, and felt on my lips a mouth of burning coals which sucked my breath, and around my neck two vigorous little hands which were crushing my head against the handle of a guitar.

The following morning I went at once to see the cathedral.

To adequately describe this measureless edifice one should have at hand a collection of the most superlative adjectives and all the most extravagant similes which have come from the pens of the grand writers of every country whenever they have described something of prodigious height, enormous size, appalling depth, and incredible grandeur. When I talk to my friends about it, I too, like the Mirabeau of Victor Hugo, involuntarily make un colossal mouvement d'epaules, puff out my throat, and gradually raise my voice, like Tommaso Salvini in the tragedy of Samson when, in tones which make the parquet tremble, he says that he feels his strength returning to his limbs. To talk of the cathedral of Seville tires one like playing a great wind instrument or carrying on a conversation across a roaring torrent.

The cathedral of Seville stands alone in the centre of a vast square, and consequently one can measure its vastness at a single glance. At the first moment I thought of the famous motto which the chapter of the primitive church adopted on the eighth of July, 1401, when they decreed the erection of the new cathedral: "Let us build a monument which will make posterity declare that we were mad." Those reverend canons did not fail in their intention. But one must enter to be sure of this.

The exterior of the cathedral is grand and magnificent, but not to be compared with the interior. The façade is lacking: a high wall surrounds the entire building like a fortress. However much one walks around and looks at it, one cannot succeed in fixing in one's mind a single outline which, like the preface of a book, will give a clear conception of the design of the work; one admires and occasionally breaks out in the exclamation, "It is stupendous!" but it does not please, and one hurries into the church, hoping to feel a sentiment of deeper admiration.

On first entering one is amazed, and feels as if one were lost in an abyss, and for some moments the eye can only describe immense curves through that vast space, as if to assure you that the sight is real and that fancy is not deceiving you. Then you approach one of the pilasters, measure it, and look at the others in the distance: they are as massive as towers, and yet they look so slender that one trembles to think the edifice is resting on them. You run from one to another with a rapid glance, follow their lines from pavement to vaulted arch, and seem to be able to count the moments which it would take for the eye to climb them. There are five naves, each of which would form a great church, and in the central nave one could build another high cathedral with its cupola and belfry. Altogether they form sixty light, noble vaults which seem to be slowly expanding and rising as one looks at them. Everything in this cathedral is enormous. The great chapel in the middle of the principal nave, so high that it almost touches the roof, seems like a chapel built for giant priests, to whose knees the common altars would scarcely reach; the Easter candle seems like the mast of a ship, the bronze candlestick which supports it, like the pilaster of a church; the organs are like houses; the choir is a museum of sculpture and carving which alone deserves a day's study. The chapels are worthy of the church: in them are scattered the masterpieces of sixty-seven sculptors and thirty-eight painters. Montegna, Zurbaran, Murillo, Valdes, Herrera, Boldan, Roelas, and Campana have left a thousand immortal traces of their handiwork. The chapel of Saint Ferdinand, which contains the tombs of this king, his wife Beatrice, Alfonso the Wise, the celebrated minister Florida Blanca, and other illustrious personages, is one of the richest and most beautiful. The body of King Ferdinand, who rescued Seville from the dominion of the Arabs, clothed in his coat-of-mail with crown and royal robe, rests in a crystal casket covered with a pall; on one side lies the sword which he wore on the day of his entrance into Seville; on the other, the staff, an emblem of authority. In this same chapel is preserved a little ivory Virgin which the sainted king carried with him to war, and other relics of great value. In the other chapels there are great marble altars, Gothic tombs, statues of stone, wood, and silver enclosed in large glass cases, with the breast and hands covered with diamonds and rubies; there are also magnificent paintings, but, unfortunately, the dim light which falls from the high windows does not make them clear enough to be enjoyed in all their beauty.

From the examination of the chapels, paintings, and sculptures one returns unwearied to admire the cathedral in its grand and, if one may say, its formidable aspect. After climbing to those dizzy heights one's glance and thoughts, as if exhausted by the effort, fall back to the earth to gather new strength for another ascent. And the images which multiply in one's head correspond to the vastness of the basilica—measureless angels, heads of enormous cherubim, great wings like the sails of a ship, and the fluttering of immense white robes. The impression produced by this cathedral is wholly religious, but it is not depressing: it is that sentiment which bears the thought into interminable spaces and the awful silences where the thoughts of Leopardi lost themselves; it is a sentiment full of yearning and holy boldness, that delightful shudder which one feels on the brink of a precipice, the turbulence and confusion of great thoughts, the divine fear of the infinite.

As the cathedral is the most various of Spain (since the Gothic, Germanic, Græco-Roman, Moorish, and, as it is vulgarly called, the plateresque styles of architecture, have each left their individual impress upon it), it is also the richest and has the greatest privileges. In the times of greater clerical power they burned in it every year twenty thousand pounds of wax; in it every day were celebrated five hundred masses on eighty altars; the wine consumed in the sacrifice amounted to the incredible quantity of eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty litres. The canons had trains of male attendants like monarchs, came to church in splendid carriages drawn by superb horses, and while they were celebrating mass had priests to fan them with enormous fans adorned with feathers and pearls—a direct concession from the Pope of which some avail themselves even in this day. One need not speak of the festivals of Holy Week, which are still famous the world over, and to which people gather from all parts of Europe.

But the most curious privilege of the cathedral of Seville is the so-called dance de los seises, which takes place every evening at dusk for eight consecutive days after the festival of Corpus Domini. I was in Seville during those days, and went to see it, and it seems to me worth describing. From what had been told me I expected to see a scandalous piece of buffoonery, and entered the church with my mind prepared for a feeling of indignation at the desecration of the sanctuary. The church was dark; only the great chapel was lighted; a crowd of kneeling women filled the space between the chapel and the choir. Some priests were sitting to the right and left of the altar; in front of the altar-steps was spread a great carpet; two lines of boys from eight to thirteen years of age, dressed like Spanish cavaliers of the Middle Ages, with plumed hats and white stockings, were drawn up, one before the other, facing the altar. At a signal from a priest a soft strain from violins broke the profound silence of the church, and the two rows of boys advanced with the step of a contra-dance, and began to divide, intermingle, separate, and come together again with a thousand graceful movements, and then all together they broke into a harmonious musical chant, which echoed through the gloom of the vast cathedral like the singing of an angelic choir; and a moment later they began to accompany the dance and the chant with tamborines. No religious ceremony has ever moved me like this. It is impossible to express the effect produced by those young voices under those immense domes, those little creatures at the foot of the towering altars, that dance, solemn and almost humble, the ancient costume, the kneeling crowd, and the surrounding gloom. I left the church with my soul calmed as if I had been praying.