Part 5
Let us enter this mysterious mosque surrounded by death and the desert. At first it seems dark as night: we have a bewildering sense of fairy-like splendour. A very faint light penetrates the panes, which are famed throughout the Orient and which fill the row of little windows above; we fancy that the light is passing through flowers and arabesques of precious stones regularly arranged, and this is the illusion intended by the inimitable glass-workers of old. Gradually, as our eyes grow accustomed to the dim light, the walls, arches, and vaults seem to be covered with some rich embroidered fabric of raised mother-of-pearl and gold on a foundation of green. Perhaps it is an old brocade of flowers and leaves, perhaps precious leather from Cordova, or perhaps something even more beautiful and rare than either, which we shall recognize presently when our eyes have recovered from the blinding effect of the sun on the flags outside and have adjusted themselves to the dusk of this most holy sanctuary. The mosque, octagonal in form, is supported within by two concentric rows of pillars, the first octagonal, and the second circular, sustaining the magnificent dome.
Each column with its gilded capital is composed of a different and priceless material: one of violet marble veined with white; another of red porphyry; another of that marble, for centuries lost, known as _antique verde_. The entire base of the walls, as high as the line where the green and gold embroideries begin, is cased with marble. Great slabs cut lengthwise are arranged in symmetrical designs like those produced in cabinet-work by inlaid woods.
The little windows placed close to the dome, from which altitude falls the reflected light as though from jewels, are all of different colours and designs; one is shaped like a daisy and composed of ruby glass; another of delicate arabesques of sapphire mingled with the yellow of the topaz; and a third of emerald sprinkled with rose.
What makes the beauty of these, as of all Arabian windows, is that the various colours are not separated, like ours, by lines of lead, but the framework of the window is a plate of thick stucco pierced with an infinite number of little holes, ever changing with the light; the effect is always some new and beautiful design; the pieces of transparent blue, yellow, rose, or green, are inserted deep in the thickness of the setting so that they seem to be surrounded by a kind of nimbus caused by the reflected light along the sides of the thick apertures, and the result is a deep and soft glow over all, and through this light gleam and sparkle the pearl, and precious stones.
Now we begin to distinguish what we supposed was tapestry over the masonry: it consists of marvellous mosaics covering everything and simulating brocades and embroideries, but far more beautiful and durable than any woven tissue, for its lustre and diaper-work have been preserved through long centuries because it is formed of almost imperishable matter,--myriads of fragments of marble, with mother-of-pearl and gold. Throughout the whole, green and gold predominate. The designs are numbers of strange vases holding stiff and symmetrical bouquets: conventional foliage of a bygone period, dream-flowers fashioned in ancient days. Above these are antique vine-branches composed of an infinite variety of green marbles, stems of archaic rigidity bearing grapes of gold and clusters of pearl. Here and there, to break the monotony of the green, twin-petals of great, red flowers, shaded with minute fragments of pink marble and porphyry, are thrown upon a background of gold.
In the glow of colour streaming through the windows all the splendours of Oriental tales seem to be revealed, vibrating through the twilight and silence of this sanctuary which is always open and surrounded by the spacious courtyard in which we stroll alone. Little birds, quite at home in the mosque, fly in and out of the open, bronze doors, and alight on the porphyry cornices and on the pearl and gold, and are benevolently regarded by the two or three venerable and white-bearded officials who are praying in the shadowy recesses. On the marble pavement are spread several antique Persian and Turkish rugs of the most delicate, faded hues.
On entering this circular mosque its vast centre is invisible, as it is surrounded by a double screen. The first is of wood, finely carved in the style of the Mozarabians; the second, of Gothic iron-work, placed there by the Crusaders when they used it temporarily as a Christian fane. Mounting some marble steps, our eyes at last rest upon this jealously-guarded interior.
Considering all the surrounding splendour, we now expect even more marvellous riches to be revealed, but we are awed by an apparition of quite a different nature,--a vague and gloomy shape seems to have its abode amid the shadows of this gorgeous precinct; a mass, as yet undefined, seems to surge through the semi-darkness like a great, black, solidified wave.
This is the summit of Mount Moriah, sacred alike to the Israelites, Mussulmans, and Christians; this is the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, where King David saw the Destroying Angel holding in his hand the destroying sword stretched out over Jerusalem (2 Samuel xxiv. 16; 1 Chronicles xxi. 15).
Here David built an altar of burnt-offering and here his son Solomon raised the Temple, levelling the surroundings at great cost, but preserving the irregularities of this peak because the foot of the angel had touched it. “Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite” (2 Chronicles iii. 1).
We know through what scenes of inconceivable magnificence and desolating fury this mountain of Moriah passed during the ages. The Temple that crowned it, razed by Nebuchadnezzar, rebuilt on the return from the captivity in Babylon, and again destroyed under Antonius IV., was again rebuilt by Herod: it saw Jesus pass by; His voice was heard upon its summit.
Therefore, each of those mighty edifices which cost the ransom of an empire, and whose almost superhuman foundations are still found buried in the earth, confound the imagination of us moderns. After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, a Temple of Jupiter was erected under Hadrian’s reign, replacing the Temple of the Saviour. Later, the early Christians, to spite the Jews, kept this sacred peak covered with _débris_ and dirt, and it was the Caliph Omar who piously caused it to be cleared as soon as he had conquered Palestine; and finally, his successor, the Caliph Abd-el-Melek, about the year 690, enclosed it with the lovely Mosque that is still standing.
With the exception of the dome, restored during the Twelfth and Fourteenth Centuries, the Crusaders found it in its present condition, already ancient and bearing the same relation to them that the Gothic cathedrals do to us, for it was clothed with the same fadeless embroideries of gold and marble and with its glistening brocades which are almost imperishable. Converting it into a church, they placed their marble altar in the centre on David’s rock. On the fall of the Franks, Saladin, after long purifications by sprinklings of rose-water, restored it to the Faith of Allah.
Inscriptions of gold in old Cufic characters above the friezes speak of Christ after the Koran, and their deep wisdom is such as to sow disquietude in Christian souls: “O ye who have received the scriptures, exceed not the just bounds of your religion. Verily Christ Jesus is the son of Mary, the apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed unto Mary. Believe then in God and in his Apostle, but say not there is a Trinity, forbear this, it will be better for you. God is but one. It is not meet that God should have a son. When He decreeth a thing He only saith unto it: ‘Be’; and it is.” (Sura iv. 19.)
A dread Past, crushing to our modern puerility, is evoked by this black rock, this dead and mummified mountain peak, on which the dew of Heaven never falls, which never produces a plant, nor a spray of moss, but which lies like the Pharaohs in their sarcophagi, and which, after two thousand years of troubles, has now been sheltered for thirteen centuries beneath the brooding of this golden dome and these marvellous walls raised for it alone.
_Jérusalem_ (Paris, 1895).
THE CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
Notwithstanding that Burgos was for so long a time the first city of Castile, it is not very Gothic in appearance; with the exception of a street where there are several windows and doors of the Renaissance, ornamented with coats of arms and their supporters, the houses do not date further back than the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, and are exceedingly commonplace; they are old, but not antique. But Burgos has her Cathedral, which is one of the most beautiful in the world; unfortunately, like all the Gothic cathedrals, it is shut in by a number of ignoble buildings which prevent you from appreciating the structure as a whole and grasping the mass at a glance. The principal porch looks upon a square, in the centre of which is a beautiful fountain surmounted by a delightful statue of Christ, the target for all the ruffians of the town who have no better pastime than throwing stones at its sculptures. The magnificent porch, like an intricate and flowered embroidery of lace, has been scraped and rubbed as far as the first frieze by I don’t know what Italian prelates,--some important amateurs in architecture, who were great admirers of plain walls and ornamentation in _good taste_, and who, having pity for those poor barbarian architects who would not follow the Corinthian order and had no appreciation of Attic grace and the triangular fronton, wished to arrange the Cathedral in the Roman style. Many people are still of this opinion in Spain, where the so-called Messidor style flourishes in all its purity, and, exactly as was the case in France before the Romantic School brought the Middle Ages into favour again and caused the beauty and meaning of the cathedrals to be understood, prefer all kinds of abominable edifices, pierced with innumerable windows and ornamented with Pæstumian columns, to the most florid and richly-carved Gothic cathedrals. Two sharp spires cut in saw-teeth and open-worked, as if pierced with a punch, festooned, embroidered, and carved down to the last details like the bezel of a ring, spring towards God with all the ardour of faith and transport of a firm conviction. Our unbelieving campaniles would not dare to venture into the air with only stone-lace and ribs as delicate as gossamer to support them. Another tower, sculptured with an unheard-of wealth, but not so high, marks the spot where the transept intersects the nave, and completes the magnificence of the outline. A multitude of statues of saints, archangels, kings, and monks animates the whole mass of architecture, and this stone population is so numerous, so crowded, and so swarming, that surely it must exceed the population of flesh and blood inhabiting the town....
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS, SPAIN]
The choir, which contains the stalls, called _silleria_, is enclosed by iron grilles of the most wonderful _repoussé_ work; the pavement, according to the Spanish custom, is covered with immense mats of spartium, and each stall has, moreover, its own little mat of dry grass, or rushes. On raising your head you see a kind of dome, formed by the interior of the tower of which we have already spoken; it is a gulf of sculptures, arabesques, statues, little columns, ribs, lancets, and pendentives--enough to give you a vertigo. If you looked at it for two years, you would not see it all. It is as crowded together as the leaves of a cabbage, and fenestrated like a fish-slice; it is as gigantic as a pyramid and as delicate as a woman’s ear-ring, and you cannot understand how such a piece of filigree-work has remained suspended in the air for so many centuries. What kind of men were those who made these marvellous buildings, whose splendours not even fairy palaces can surpass? Is the race extinct? And we, who are always boasting of our civilization, are we not decrepit barbarians in comparison? A deep sadness always oppresses my heart when I visit one of these stupendous edifices of the Past; I am seized with utter discouragement and my one desire is to steal into some corner, to place a stone beneath my head, and, in the immobility of contemplation, to await death, which is immobility itself. What is the use of working? Why should we tire ourselves? The most tremendous human effort will never produce anything equal to this. Ah well! even the names of these divine artists are forgotten, and to find any trace of them you must ransack the dusty archives in the convent!...
The sacristy is surrounded by a panelled wainscot, forming closets with flowered and festooned columns in rich taste; above the wainscot is a row of Venetian mirrors whose use I do not understand; certainly they must only be for ornament as they are too high for any one to see himself in them. Above the mirrors are arranged in chronological order, the oldest nearest the ceiling, the portraits of all the bishops of Burgos, from the first to the one now occupying the episcopal chair. These portraits, although they are oil, look more like pastels, or distemper, which is due to the fact that in Spain pictures are never varnished, and, for this lack of precaution, the dampness has destroyed many masterpieces. Although these portraits are, for the most part, imposing, they are hung too high for one to judge of the merit of the execution. There is an enormous buffet in the centre of the room and enormous baskets of spartium, in which the church ornaments and sacred vessels are kept. Under two glass cases are preserved as curiosities two coral trees, whose branches are much less complicated than the least arabesque in the Cathedral. The door is embellished with the arms of Burgos in relief, sprinkled with little crosses, gules.
Juan Cuchiller’s room, which we next visited, is not at all remarkable in the way of architecture, and we were hastening to leave it when we were asked to raise our eyes and look at a very curious object. This was a great chest fastened to the wall by iron clamps. It would be hard to imagine a box more patched, more worm-eaten, or more dilapidated. It is surely the oldest chest in the world; an inscription in black-letter--_Cofre del Cid_--gives, at once, as you will readily believe, an enormous importance to these four boards of rotting wood. If we may believe the old chronicle, this chest is precisely that of the famous Ruy Diaz de Bivar, better known under the name of the Cid Campeador, who, once lacking money, exactly like a simple author, notwithstanding he was a hero, had this filled with sand and stones and carried to the house of an honest Jewish usurer who lent money on this security, the Cid Campeador forbidding him to open the mysterious coffer until he had reimbursed the borrowed sum....
The need of the real, no matter how revolting, is a characteristic of Spanish Art: idealism and conventionality are not in the genius of these people completely deficient in æsthetic feeling. Sculpture does not suffice for them; they must have their statues coloured, and their madonnas painted and dressed in real clothes. Never, according to their taste, can material illusion be carried too far, and this terrible love of realism makes them often overstep the boundaries which separate sculpture from wax-works.
The celebrated Christ, so revered at Burgos that no one is allowed to see it unless the candles are lighted, is a striking example of this strange taste: it is neither of stone, nor painted wood, it is made of human skin (so the monks say), stuffed with much art and care. The hair is real hair, the eyes have eye-lashes, the thorns of the crown are real thorns, and no detail has been forgotten. Nothing can be more lugubrious and disquieting than this attenuated, crucified phantom with its human appearance and deathlike stillness; the faded and brownish-yellow skin is streaked with long streams of blood, so well imitated that they seem to trickle. It requires no great effort of imagination to give credence to the legend that it bleeds every Friday. In the place of folded, or flying drapery, the Christ of Burgos wears a white skirt embroidered in gold, which falls from the waist to the knees; this costume produces a peculiar effect, especially to us who are not accustomed to see our Lord attired thus. At the foot of the Cross three ostrich eggs are placed, a symbolical ornament of whose meaning I am ignorant, unless they allude to the Trinity, the principle and germ of everything.
We went out of the Cathedral dazzled, overwhelmed, and satiated with _chefs d’œuvre_, powerless to admire any longer, and only with great difficulty we threw a glance upon the arch of Fernan Gonzalez, an attempt in classical architecture made by Philip of Burgundy at the beginning of the Renaissance.
_Voyage en Espagne_ (Paris, new ed., 1865).
THE PYRAMIDS.
GEORG EBERS.
Early in the morning our carriage, drawn by fast horses, rattles across the Nile on the iron bridge which joins Cairo to the beautiful island of Gezirah. The latter, with its castle and the western tributary of the river which ripples by it, are soon left behind. Beneath the shade of acacias and sycamore-trees runs the well-kept and level highway. On our left lie the castle and the high-walled, vice-regal gardens of Gizeh; the dewy green fields, intersected by canals, rejoice the eye, and a tender blue mist veils the west. The air has that clearness and aromatic freshness which is only offered by an Egyptian winter’s morning. For a moment the enveloping curtain of cloud lifts from the horizon, and we see the prodigious Pyramids standing before us with their sharp triangles, and the misty curtain falls; to the right and left we sometimes see buffaloes grazing, sometimes flocks of silvery herons, sometimes a solitary pelican within gunshot of our carriage; then half-naked peasants at their daily labour and pleasing villages some distance from the road. Two large, whitish eagles now soar into the air. The eye follows their flight, and, in glancing upwards, perceives how the mist has gradually disappeared, how brightly dazzling is the blue of the sky, and how the sun is at last giving out the full splendour of his rays....
We stand before the largest of these works of man, which, as we know, the ancients glorified as “wonders of the world.” It is unnecessary to describe their form for everybody knows the stereometrical figure to which their name has been given, and this is not the place to print a numerical estimate of their mass. Only by a comparison with other structures present in our memory can any idea of their immensity be realized; and, consequently, it may be said here that while St. Peter’s in Rome is 131 metres high (430 feet), the Great Pyramid (of Cheops), with its restored apex would be 147 metres (482 feet), and is thus 16 metres (52 feet) taller; therefore, if the Pyramid of Cheops were hollow, the great Cathedral of Rome could be placed within it like a clock under a protecting glass-shade. Neither St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, nor the Münster of Strasburg reaches the height of the highest Pyramid; but the new towers of the Cathedral of Cologne exceed it. In one respect no other building in the world can be compared with the Pyramids, and that is in regard to the mass and weight of the materials used in their construction. If the tomb of Cheops were razed, a wall could be built with its stones all around the frontiers of France. If you fire a good pistol from the top of the great Pyramid into the air, the ball falls halfway down its side. By such comparisons they who have not visited Egypt may form an idea of the dimensions of these amazing structures; he who stands on the sandy ground and raises his eyes to the summit, needs no such aids.
[Illustration: THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH]
We get out of the carriage on the north side of the Pyramid of Cheops. In the sharply-defined triangular shadows women are squatted, offering oranges and various eatables for sale; donkey-boys are waiting with their grey animals; and travellers are resting after having accomplished the ascent. This work now lies before us, and if we were willing to shirk it, there would be many attacks on our indolence, for from the moment we stepped from our carriage, we have been closely followed by a ragged, brown, and sinewy crowd, vehemently offering their services. They call themselves _Bedouin_ with great pride, but they have nothing in common with the true sons of the desert except their faults. Nevertheless, it is not only prudent but necessary to accept their assistance, although the way up can scarcely be mistaken.
We begin the ascent at a place where the outside stone casing of the Pyramid has fallen away, leaving the terrace-like blocks of the interior exposed; but the steps are unequal and sometimes of considerable height; some of them are half as high as a man. Two or three lads accompany me; one jumps up first with his bare feet, holds my hands, and drags me after him; another follows the climber, props his back, and thrusts and pushes him forwards; while a third grabs his side beneath his arm, and lifts him. Thus, one half-scrambles up himself and is half-dragged up, while the nimble lads give the climber no rest, if he wants to stop for breath or to wipe the drops of moisture from his brow. These importunate beggars never cease shouting and clamouring for _baksheesh_, and are so persistently annoying that they seem to want us to forget the gratitude we owe them for their aid.