The Alhambra
1832
In the summer of 1828, an American writer named Washington Irving arrived in Granada and stumbled into a dream. The Alhambra, that crumbling Moorish palace perched above the city, had been largely forgotten by the world. Irving, recently famous for his sketches of New York and his life of Columbus, talked his way into the abandoned complex with the help of a seventeen-year-old guide named Mateo Ximenes. What he found there became this strange, wonderful book: part travel essay, part ghost story, part love letter to a civilization that had vanished five centuries before. Irving wandered the empty courtyards at dusk, crawled through forgotten tunnels, and listened to local legends about hidden Moorish princes and battles fought in the shadows of rose-covered walls. He wrote it all down, certain his words were inadequate, and yet the book that emerged is precisely what makes the Alhambra endure in the Western imagination. This is the work that invented the romantic Alhambra, the one tourists still seek today, the one that feels like stepping backward into a half-remembered poem.
Editions
X-Ray
“Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.””
— Washington Irving
“No hay nadie en el mundo que atienda mejor que la pobretería en España el arte de no hacer nada y de vivir de nada; el clima del país contribuye con la mitad , el temperamento de las gentes aporta la otra mitad. Dad, en efecto, a un español la sombra en verano, el sol en invierno, un trozo de pan, ajos, aceite, garbanzos, una vieja capa y una guitarra, aunque no sea propia, los sones de la guitarra, ¡y que ruede el mundo como quiera! Hablarle de estreches! Para él no hay desgracia; la soportan sus hombros sin encogerse, lo mismo que cuando cuelga de ellos la raída capa. El español es siempre un hidalgo, aun en hambre y en harapos.””
— Washington Irving
“In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.””
— Washington Irving
“My object is merely to give the reader a general introduction into an abode where, if so disposed, he may linger and loiter with me day by day until we gradually become familiar with all its localities.””
— Washington Irving
“Éste fue el teatro de su transitoria alegría y hermosura, y allí estaban las huellas de su elegancia y regocijo. ¿Que ha sido de ellos y dónde están? ¡Polvo y cenizas!... ¡Habitantes de las tumbas!... ¡Fantasmas del recuerdo!...””
— Washington Irving
“It could not be denied, however, that he set a high value upon justice, for he sold it at its weight in gold.””
— Washington Irving
“Such were our minor preparations for the journey, but above all we laid in an ample stock of good-humour, and a genuine disposition to be pleased; determining to travel in true contrabandista style; taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship. It is the true way to travel in Spain.””
— Washington Irving
“it is added, that some of them retain the ancient maps and deeds of the estates and gardens of their ancestors at Granada, and even the keys of the houses, holding them as evidences of their hereditary claims, to be produced at the anticipated day of restoration.””
— Washington Irving
“la ternura de su naturaleza estaba en efervescencia, y que sólo necesitaba un objeto.””
— Washington Irving
