Get your own Free Home PageWorkshop Report 1
Granada
July 1, 1995
Few days ago I remembered Granada. Why and how? I don't know. Suddenly, I discovered that this name has always haunted me. After years of frequent but quiet perception of what Granada means, it starts now to capture my attention.
I want to write a poem about Granada. Why? Arabs in Spain? Maybe. Al-Andalus, as Arabs used to call Spain, had always some special meaning for us. Granada is not only the symbol for the end of Arab rule in Spain in 1492. It is the symbol of the tragic human history. Also, the fall of Granada marked the end of a unique experiment in religious and ideological dialogue and tolerance which started in Tulaitila (Toledo). It is also not a coincidence that Christopher Columbus would "discover" America in that same year 1492 which marked the start of two processes: the triumph of orthodoxy in Spain and genocide against the indigenous peoples of America. What are my sources about Granada? First, that slim elegant book in Spanish I once bought for Munira and Manuel, "La huella arabe en espana"(1988), a Spanish publication in cooperation with the Unesco. There are photos and short texts about several historic monuments from the eight centuries of Arab rule in Spain. Grenada is among them, also Al-Hamra Palace.
There is another Spanish publication I discovered the other day in a bookstore near the University campus, "Granada de los Nazaries " (1992) by Antonio Gala. The author is a well-known Spanish writer. He is indeed an expert on the subject. But the book has a disturbing feature. Gala presents Granada as a person, perhaps a woman, relating his/her story, history and destiny. That's unbearable and clumsy. There are color and b/w photos, not of good quality, and a lot of text. I bought the book, an expensive one, almost 5000 Colones ($28). Back home I read in it. Not bad. In the other volume, the slim one, I discovered that Washington Irving has written stories about Al-Hamra.
The day before yesterday was a holiday here. I asked Manuel if he would like to accompany me to Book Traders in downtown San Jose. He agreed. We went there. This is a Bookstore owned by an American and deals with second hand books imported from USA. Once there was another such bookstore, owned by a sympathetic old American, Mr. Casey. But alas! Mr. Casey died two years ago at the age of eighty-five. The bookstore was closed. Just with one blow a whole history disappeared, decades of Mr. Casey's history. He was for a very long time the only one dealing in English second hand books in San Jose. I was a frequent customer. Manuel and Munira used to accompany me in my searches for books there. Oh, and Mr. Casey with his cigar, playing cards with fellow retired Americans. No, no, leave this story now. You know you will write more on that, sometime in the future, later.
Ok, in Book Traders the owner greets us and asks where I have been all these months, I have missed some very good books. He is right. While screening the books I find, almost one beside the other, a Ladder Edition of a selection of stories by Washington Irving, among them "Legend of The Rose of Alhambra", and, to my surprise, a volume of three plays by Dryden. In addition to "Marriage A La Mode" and "Aureng-Zebe" the volume includes a play in two parts, "Almanzor and Almahide or, the Conquest of Granada."
What a hell of coincidence is this? Just one day ago I had a vague idea about writing a poem on Al-Hamra, and now I possess at least four books I can use as sources. There are more, for example that old book "Poemas Arabigoandaluces" by the Spanish author Emilio Garcia Gomez, printed in 1959 by Calpe, Madrid (first published in 1940) It also covers the period of Al-Hamra. A wonderful commented collection of poems translated from Arabic, a huge number of poets from all the periods of Arab rule in Spain. Then you have Lessing's play "Nathan, The Wise"... no, I'll stop here.
I will not look for more literature about Al-Hamra (another possible source for recent photos and texts about Al-Hamra is, for instance, the Mexican travel magazine "Geomundo"). So, first I'll read what I have accumulated, and then see if I can write the poem. When? I'll never know for sure. For me, in poetry, I am only sure of the past.
But, what am I doing? Am I preparing for writing a poem or for a scholarly research? It seems to me that there is no rule in this. Before writing "Agatha Christie in Mesopotamia" (1992) I read two of her novels on Iraq, her autobiography, and another autobiographic report. The result, a poem of ca. six pages. On the other hand, in the long poem "Iraq" of more than one hundred pages (1993), I condensed the results of half a year of study and research about Iraq, past and present. But for "Envisions of Bulgaria: Kavarna" I only needed a glance at a photo of Cape Kaliakra, mentioned in the poem in relation with the myth of the forty virgins, the rest came from memory. Again, while "Nocturnal Trip" is entirely from memory, the short poem "Landscape":
Attuning the rocks,
freezing the sounds,
your fear is deleted.
The trees cannot shun
the fire and the feller,
they settle in a haven,
within you.
was the result of direct instantaneous observation while travelling in a bus in the Pacific region of Costa Rica.
Strange, even weird is this flexibility of poetry. I mean, the diversity of forms and procedures for producing the content of knowledge of a poem. Of course, knowledge and good preparation are important. There are poems you can not write without thorough preparation. There are others you would spoil by any preparation whatsoever, let alone overpreparation. I have experienced the total collapse of such poems and the impossibility of writing others, in spite of thorough preparation. Definitely, the quality of a poem is the function of the quality of emotion put in it. This is the major rule, other rules are secondary. Well, perhaps we should soften this by uttering a meaningless expression such as: it depends.
Would I be able to write a poem about Al-Hamra? I don't know. I hope so. Up to now, I have only some crude, futile, prose lines I wrote down while reading in the books, lines like these:
One matter disguised in another
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Once the tools are put down, the stone starts its own new history, near
its geological source
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Matter wants to be free so it can produce the dream, extending not horizontally
over earth and plants (change this awful word "dream"), a humble
vertical dream(?), ornaments in bricks, the minaret, the architects' main
concern was aesthetical
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It is in the darkness of the day that you are remembered
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"The Door in The Wall" (remember: H.G. Wells), behind the door,
the garden, the lions, the fountain (remember: my uncle's fountain), and
behind the fountain again the passages and the garden, and behind that
the sighs.
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Red almond mouths, the caring eyes...etc.
For me, poetry writing is easier. I mean, I find prose difficult...
Anwar Al-Ghassani
alghassa@cariari.ucr.ac.cr
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