Spain, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

We were in the Court of the Lions.

If at that moment I had been obliged to go out as I had come in, I could not have told what I had seen. A forest of columns, a vision of arches and tracery, an indefinable elegance, an unimaginable delicacy, prodigious wealth; an irrepressible sense of airiness, transparency, and wavy motion like a great pavilion of lace; an appearance as of an edifice which must dissolve at a breath; a variety of lights and mysterious shadows; a confusion, a capricious disorder, of little things; the grandeur of a castle, the gayety of a summer-house; an harmonious grace, an extravagance, a delight; the fancy of an enamored girl, the dream of an angel; a madness, a nameless something,—such is the first effect of the Court of the Lions.

The court is not larger than a great ball-room; it is rectangular in form, with walls no higher than a two-storied Andalusian cottage. A light portico runs all around, supported by very slender white marble columns grouped in symmetrical disorder, two by two and three by three, almost without pedestals, so that they are like the trunks of trees standing on the ground: they have varied capitals, high and graceful, in the form of little pilasters, above which bend little arches of very graceful form, which do not seem to rest upon the columns, but rather to be suspended over them like curtains upholding the columns themselves and resembling ribbons and twining garlands. From the middle of the two shortest sides advance two groups of columns forming two little square temples of nine arches in the form of stalactites, fringes, pendants, and tassels that seem as though they ought to swing and become tangled with the slightest breeze. Large Arabian inscriptions run along the four walls, over the arches, around the capitals, and along the walls of the little temple. In the middle of the court rises a great marble basin supported by twelve lions and surrounded by a paved channel, from which flow four other smaller channels that make a cross between the four sides of the court, cross the portico, enter the adjoining rooms, and join the other water-courses which surround the entire edifice. Behind the two two little temples and in the middle of the other two sides there appear halls and suites of rooms with great open doors, through which one can see the dark background broken by the white columns, gleaming as if they stood at the mouth of a grotto. At every step the forest of columns seems to move and rearrange itself in a new way; behind a column that is apparently single spring up two, three, a row of columns; some fade away, others unite, and still others separate: on looking back from the end of one of the halls everything appears different; the arches on the opposite side seem very far away; the columns appear out of place; the little temples have changed their form; one sees new arches rising beyond the walls, and new columns gleaming here in the sunlight, there in the shadow, yonder scarcely visible by the dim light which sifts through the tracery of the stucco, and the farthest lost in the darkness. There is a constant variety of scene, distance, deceptive effects, mysteries, and playful tricks of the eye, produced by the architecture, the sun, and one's heightened imagination.

"What must this patio have been," said Gongora, "when the inner walls of the portico were resplendent with mosaics, the capitals of the columns flashed with gold, the ceilings and vaults were painted in a thousand colors, the doors hung with silken curtains, the niches full of flowers, and under the little temples and through the halls ran streams of perfumed water, and from the nostrils of the lions spurted twelve jets which fell into the basin, and the air was heavy with the most delicious perfumes of Arabia!"

We remained in the court over an hour, and the time passed like a flash; and I too did what all have done in that place—Spaniards and foreigners alike, men and women, poets and those who are not poets. I ran my hand along the walls, touched all the little columns, clasped them one by one with my two hands like the waist of a child, hid among them, counted them, looked at them from a hundred directions, crossed the court in a hundred ways; tried if it were true that by speaking a word in a deep voice in the mouth of one of the lions you could hear it distinctly from the mouths of all the others; searched along the marbles for the blood-spots of the romantic legends, and wearied my eyes and brain in following the arabesques. There were a number of ladies present. In the Court of the Lions ladies show every sort of childish delight: they look out between two twin columns, hide in the dark corners, sit on the floor, and stand for hours motionless, resting their heads upon their hands, dreaming. These ladies did likewise. There was one dressed in white who, as she passed behind the distant columns, when she thought no one saw her assumed a certain majestic air, like a melancholy sultana, and then laughed with one of her friends: it was enchanting.

"Let us go," said my friend.

"Let us go," I replied, and could not move a step. I was experiencing not only a delightful sense of surprise, but I was trembling with pleasure, and was filled with a longing to touch, to probe, and in some way to see behind those walls and those columns, as if they were made of some secret material and ought to disclose in their inmost part the first cause of the fascination which the place exerts. In all my life I have never thought or said, or shall ever say, so many fond words, so many foolish expressions, so many pretty, happy, senseless things, as I thought and said at that hour.

"But one must come here at sunrise," said Gongora, "one must come at sunset, or at night when the moon is full, to see the miracles of color, light, and shade. It is enough to make one lose one's head."

We went to see the halls. On the eastern side is the Hall of Justice, which is reached by passing under three great arches, each of which corresponds with a door opening into the court. It is a long, narrow hall, with intricate arabesques and precious mosaics, and its vaulted ceiling all points and hollows and clusters of stucco that hang down from the arches and run along the walls, clustered together here and there, drooping, growing one out of the other, crowding and overtopping each other, so that they seem to dispute the space like the bubbles in boiling water, and still presenting in many parts traces of old colors that must have given the ceiling the appearance of a pavilion covered with flowers and hanging fruit. The hall has three little alcoves, in each of which one may see a Moorish painting, to which time and the extreme rarity of works remaining from the brush of Moorish artists have given a very high value. The paintings are on leather, and the leather is fastened to the wall. In the central alcove there are painted on a golden ground ten men, supposed to be ten kings of Granada, clothed in white, with cowls on their heads and scimitars in their hands, sitting on embroidered cushions. The paintings in the other two alcoves represent castles, ladies and cavaliers, hunting scenes, and love episodes whose significance it is difficult to understand. But the faces of the ten kings are marvellously true to the picture one has formed of their race: there is the dark olive complexion, the sensuous lips, the black eyes, with an intense mysterious glance that seems always to be shining in the dark corners of the halls of the Alhambra.

On the north side of the court there is another hall, called the hall De las dos Hermanas (of the two sisters), so called from two great marble slabs which form the pavement. It is the most beautiful hall in the Alhambra—a little square arched room, with one of those ceilings in the form of a cupola which the Spaniards call half oranges, supported by slender columns and arches arranged in a circle, all adorned, like a grotto full of stalactites, with an infinite number of points and hollows, colored and gilded, and so light to the view that it seems as if they are suspended in the air, and would tremble at a touch like a curtain or separate like a cloud or disappear like a cluster of soap-bubbles. The walls, like those of all the other halls, are bedecked with stucco and carved with arabesques incredibly intricate and delicate, forming one of the most marvellous works of human patience and imagination. The more one looks, the more numberless become the lines which blend and cross, and from one figure springs another, and from that a third, and all three produce a fourth that has escaped the eye, and this divides suddenly into ten other figures that have passed unnoticed, and then they mingle again and are again transformed; and one never ceases to discover new combinations, for when the first reappear they are already forgotten, and produce the same effect as at the beginning. One would lose sight and reason in trying to comprehend that labyrinth: it would require an hour to study the outlines of a window, the ornaments of a pilaster, and the arabesques of a frieze; an hour would not be sufficient to fix upon the mind the design of one of the stupendous cedar doors. On either side of the hall there are two little alcoves, and in the centre a little basin with a pipe for a fountain that empties into the channel that crosses the portico and flows to the Fountain of the Lions.