What Book to Read?

The Alhambra (titled Tales of the Alhambra in later editions) was published in 1832, and now forms Volume 14 in the standard edition of Washington Irving’s complete works – and there are at least ten more volumes in the set. But who, these days, has heard of Washington Irving – except maybe to remember that he was the creator of Rip Van Winkle? Yet in his day, he was considered a major – possibly the major – American literary figure. A travel writer, a writer of tales and histories rather than a novelist, he fitted the now rarely used category of a writer of ‘belles lettres’, and his work was popular in both Europe and America.

Born in 1783, and named for a hero of the recently successful American Revolution, Irving travelled extensively in Europe, and lived in Spain in 1826-9. There he wrote a book about the life and journeys of Christopher Columbus and a history of the conquest of Granada by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. In 1829, he lived for some months in the Alhambra, and as a result, produced this mixture of journal, social commentary, history and legend.

The Alhambra palace and fortress complex was constructed in something like its current form in 1333 by Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada, a place, Irving says, ‘of grace and beauty’. When Irving saw it in 1828, and lived in it in 1829, some of it was in ruins and much of it was deserted. According to him,  it had been saved from the ‘absolute ruin and desolation that were overwhelming it’, not by the Spanish, but by the French forces that occupied it during the Peninsular War of 1808 -14; they had fixed leaking roofs and restored the water supply, the fountains and the gardens. On leaving they had also blown up some of the watch towers around the walls, which is perhaps why some Spanish commentators blame the French for all the decay. Irving also gives credit to Granada’s governor of the day, who was beginning the restoration which would slowly bring the site back to life. But it is in their very dereliction that Irving sees the abandoned halls and gardens as full of ‘poetry and romance’.

The tales Irving tells about ‘this Moslem pile in the midst of a Christian land’ are written with a light touch, with humour and acute observation. Some of them are about his day to day experiences, such as his journey to Granada, moving into what had been the Governor’s quarters, exploring the halls and gardens and the country round about; he finds the Alhambra to be ‘an elegant memento  of a brave, intelligent and graceful people’. There are a number of legends, which he embroiders from the tales told to him by the locals. There is often a touch of magic to them, reflecting the fancies of the locals who view the faded magnificence of the Alhambra with superstitious awe and believe that there must have been magicians involved in its creation. These legends echo the Moorish tradition of tales such as the Arabian Nights. My favourite is ‘The Legend of Ahmed al Kamel’; I like how Ahmed can’t control his magic horse.

Some of Irving’s ‘tales’ are musings on the history of the Alhambra; for example he traces the route taken by the ‘unfortunate’ Boabdil, the last Emir of Granada, when he left his beautiful palace to go into exile after the conquest of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. ‘You do well to weep as a woman,’ his mother said, ‘over what you could not defend as a man.’ By Irving’s account, this was an unfair comment; the Moslems that still remained in Spain were fighting among themselves as well as against the Christians, and Boabdil’s only option other than surrender was to die in a losing battle. Perhaps that was his mother’s point. But Irving sincerely feels for poor Boabdil. ‘He was personally brave,’ writes Irving, ‘but wanted moral courage … [and this] deprived him of the heroic grace which would have given grandeur and dignity to his fate, and rendered him worthy of closing the splendid drama of the Moslem domination of Spain.’ Again, a very romantic view of these events.

In fact, Irving is a thorough-going Romantic. He sees Spain in general and the Alhambra in particular as almost part of a fairy tale; ‘there is a romance,’ he says, ‘about all the recollection of the Peninsular dear to the imagination.’ It might be thought from this that his interest in the exotic remnants of Eastern culture he found in Spain were part of the movement in nineteenth century Europe that has been called Orientalism. Following the thesis of Edward Said’s seminal book Orientalism, critics have claimed that the nineteenth century western visitors and writers who established that the East was glamorous but outlandish, played to the idea that the East was both ‘other’ and ‘inferior’, indeed by definition, the opposite of the West. It’s true that Irving does occasionally slip into the common stereotype whereby the east is supine and impractical, as when he talks about the ‘voluptuous lords of the Alhambra’ indulging in ‘that dreamy repose so dear to the Orientalists’. But for the most part, he admires the Moors far more than the Spanish peasants who have replaced them at the Alhambra. His aim, he says, is both ‘to record the regal and chivalrous traditions concerning those who once trod its courts and the whimsical and superstitious legends of the motley race now burrowing among its ruins.’

When we recently visited the Alhambra, our guide told us that Washington Irving’s interest in the Alhambra, and the interest in it generated by his book, helped persuade the Spanish government to pursue its restoration. It seems that the move to restore it began before Irving’s book was published, but I like to think he may well have contributed to the impetus that has produced the magnificent World Heritage site that exists today.

You can read more about Washington Irving here. The Wikipedia entry for the Alhambra is here, and if you want to follow up on Washington Irving and Spanish Orientalism, try this and this.