Iberia (93 page)

 

Gritting my teeth, for I had never before entered such a building
except at an amusement park, I followed Dr. Frauenfelder inside,
and at the door he whispered, ‘Remember, let it flow over you.’

 

We entered a large auditorium each square inch of which
seemed to be covered with florid decoration consisting of pillars
covered with broken pieces of ceramic, gigantic sculptural groups
featuring flying horses, and colored stones set at odd angles. The
effect was that of crawling into an overwhelming grotto, but before
I could embarrass Dr. Frauenfelder by laughing, I glanced at the
empty stage and saw that its two side walls were covered with
eighteen of the strangest statues I had ever seen. They were larger
than life size and showed women in medieval costume playing a
variety of unfamiliar instruments. They had been carved in a way
that was new to me: everything from the waist down was painted
flat on the wall in a stylized manner, using pieces of mosaic glass
for effect; everything above the waist was carved in stone
naturalistically and stood out from the wall like an ordinary statue.
The union created an effect that was completely charming, bearing
no relationship to reality but a great deal to art.

 

It was these curious stone women who won me over. They
seemed exactly right for the stage of a music hall, and once they
established the tone, all the other bizarre phenomena fell into
place. Why not have the angle where the proscenium joins the
roof covered by rearing horses flying through space? No other
symphony hall had such horses, and when I looked closer I saw
that Valkyries were riding them. Why not? If this is a place where
you come to hear music, why not have a gigantic bust of
Beethoven on the right of the stage and someone who looked like
Josef Stalin on the left? Dr. Frauenfelder had given me good
advice: ‘Let it flow over you.’ I sat down and did just that, and
slowly the wonderful harmony of the place asserted itself; in Rome
and Chicago and Tel Aviv I had been in dozens of concert halls,
and they’d all been alike and quite uninspiring, but nothing else
on earth was like Barcelona’s Palau de la Música, and when the
chorus of Catalan singers came out and stood on the stage,
surrounded by the eighteen stone maidens playing their antique
instruments, it was astonishing how the living and the dead united
to form one majestic whole.

 

I fell in love with this crazy hall. I went to it night after night,
and no matter what the style of music, the hall seemed to
accommodate itself, and what was the more surprising, the stone
girls adjusted their manner of playing, too. I heard Illinois Jacquet
and Bud Freeman give a jazz concert, and the girls played jazz. I
heard a tenor soloist, and they accompanied him. Best of all, I
heard one of the Madrid symphonies play a Wagner program,
and during the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ not only did the eighteen
girls join in the music, but high on the ceiling I heard stone horses
neighing and warrior maidens shouting, ‘Ho-yo-to-ho.’

 

On the left wall of the stage, as one faces it, the eighth girl plays
a drum and wears a high Chinese-type hat beneath which appear
long Saxon braids. She has a determined face, with distinct ridges
at the corners of her mouth, and her head is twisted in an
enchanting manner. She is completely adorable in a resolute,
stubborn sort of way, and after the Dama de Elche she is my
favorite statue in Spain, for she symbolizes for me the Catalan
temperament, and often as I sat in her palace, listening to music,
I stared at her and thought not of Haydn or Wagner but of
Cataluña.

 

Next morning I had the good luck to meet José Porter, who
runs a bookstore not far from the cathedral and who is a dedicated
Catalan. For some time I had been searching for a book relating
to one of the greatest Spaniards, Ramón Llull, and I asked Señor
Porter to help, but this day he was inflamed over a fact which
exacerbates all Spanish intellectuals: the United States had once
more used Columbus Day as an excuse for honoring Italians.

 

‘My God!’ Porter cried in his jumbled office, his round face
getting red with the indignity he was suffering. ‘Only a fool
believes in the face of modern research that Colón was an Italian.
Don’t Americans ever read books?’

 

I pointed out that the best extant biography of Columbus was
by an American, Samuel Eliot Morison, and that he had accepted
him as an Italian. To this, Porter, whose name was Catalan with
French overtones, exploded, ‘Nonsense. Do you know nothing
of Armand Bernardini-Sjoesedt?’ I shook my head, and he said
with blistering contempt, ‘It’s time his works were known in
America.’

 

Porter was a short man with the pugnacious appearance of a
prize fighter, and now with a jabbing forefinger he proceeded to
give me ten reasons why Columbus was not Italian. ‘First, even
the standard biographies which claim he is Italian admit that he
came to Spain when he was already a middle-aged man, yet not
once do we find even a shred of his writing to be in Italian. Second,
those who claim he was Italian never agree as to where he was
born. Third, some time ago I was invited to address a learned
society in the United States, Cleveland I think it was, and the
chairman, knowing my research, took me aside and said, “Señor
Porter, we’re proud to have you with us, but I must insist that in
your speech you make no mention of the fact that Colón was not
Italian. All of us who are scholars know that to be a fact, but it
would be suicide to say so in this country. The Italian politicians
are too strong and they’d cut off our funds.” So in what you like
to call the freest country in the world, the truth was muzzled.
Fourth, it was a Jew of Barcelona, Luis de Santángel, who put up
the money to finance Colón’s trip of discovery, and we in this
city believe he did so because of reasons which I will develop as
we go along. Fifth, it seems to me significant that when Colón
returned to Spain he reported not to Sevilla or Madrid but to
Barcelona.’ Here I said that this could have been because Fernando
and Isabel were here at the time, but he was already into his sixth
point. ‘When Colón reached this city he handed Luís de Santángel,
a letter of appreciation for his money, and it was written in
Catalan. Seventh, no existe in todo el mundo ninguna carta
firmada Colombo [there does not exist in the entire world one
letter signed Colombo] but only those signed Colón, which is
Catalan for pigeon; in other words, he never wrote in Italian or
signed his name that way, but he did write in Catalan and he used
a Catalan signature. Eighth, the first missionary to accompany
Colón to the New World was a Catalan, Bernard Boyl. Ninth, the
foremost soldier to accompany him was also a Catalan, Pere
Margarit. Tenth, none of his portraits look Italian, but they do
look Catalan.’

 

Triumphantly Señor Porter threw his arms wide, rose from his
desk and ran to stand over me. ‘It seems completely clear to me
that Cristóbal Colón was a Catalan. Look it up in
Bernardini-Sjoesedt.’

 

It was that afternoon when my wife and I discovered the full
flavor of Catalan patriotism. We were taken by subway beneath
the boulevard which runs northwest from the Plaza de Cataluña,
and at the terminus we climbed out to board a dinky little
blue-and-white trolley, which deposited us at the bottom end of
a funicular railway. This lifted us to the top of a very steep hill,
crowned by a Catholic shrine of some importance, which was
surrounded cheek-by-jowl with a rowdy amusement park. ‘This
is El Tibidabo,’ our Catalan guide said, ‘the place where the devil
tempted Jesus.’

 

‘How did it get that name?’

 

‘Tibi, Latin meaning: To thee. Dabo, Latin for: I give. It was to
this spot that the devil brought Jesus when he tempted him with
the pleasures of earth.’

 

‘Wait a minute!’ I protested. ‘The Bible says that…’

 

‘My friend, if the devil had taken Jesus to the top of some arid
hill in Palestine and Jesus had rejected a hunk of desert, would
that have had spiritual significance? But if the devil brought him
here, and if Jesus turned down something as glorious as Cataluña,
wouldn’t that signify? From the top of El Tibidabo he pointed
out the glories of his land. ‘Down there the seacoast, the best in
Spain. Back here the sacred mountain of Cataluña, Montserrat.
There the Llobregat coming out of the hills. And before us at our
feet Barcelona, like a carpet of beauty. This spot…right here on
El Tibidabo…’ He was overcome with emotion, but with his right
hand inscribed a complete circle, encompassing one of the loveliest
views in Spain. Later he said, ‘If Our Lord was not tempted by
what he saw on El Tibidabo, he was beyond temptation.’

 

Succeeding days were filled with trips illustrating many different
aspects of Catalan life, and although it would be instructive to
report the richness we found, it will be wiser to concentrate on
our experiences with the intellectual activity of the region, because
Barcelona specializes in this, and the reader may be surprised to
discover how fine its quality is. That evening Dr. Frauenfelder
arranged a visit to the home of a prominent hostess, where I had
the good luck to sit with a spirited Catalan, José María Poal, a
medical doctor eager to get me started right in his city.
Approvingly he said, ‘Last night I saw you at the Palau de la
Música, listening to Haydn being sung in Catalan. A proper
introduction.’ Dr. Poal was a short man, as most Catalans are,
with very dark hair, a beard but no mustache, and heavy glasses.
Like many men from this region he was a brilliant talker and
commanded three or four languages; ideas were a challenge to
him, and when I asked a question, he would cry, ‘Ah, yes! I was
thinking about that the other day,’ and he took pleasure in
explaining his thought processes, or those of the typical Catalan,
as if I were a student, which indeed I was. ‘Yes! What is a Catalan?
I was pondering this only yesterday and came to the conclusion
that we must be understood as the diametric opposite of the
Hungarian, who came out of Asia and maintained himself as an
enclave in the midst of surrounding European peoples. We’re the
perfect mixture, a fusion of Celt-Iberian, Phoenician, Greek,
Roman, French, Aragonese, Catalan, with a sprinkling of Visigoth,
Mussulman and Jew. Better than any other group in Spain, we’re
able to see the world as a whole…especially Europe.’

 

I asked Dr. Poal to identify the salient characteristics of the
Catalan, and without referring to past contemplation he cried,
‘Not art. Not architecture. Not writing, although we’ve had some
great ones. Music. Pinch a man on the streets of Barcelona and
if he doesn’t cry out in pitch, he’s not a Catalan. Three years ago
the choral group you heard last night was in financial trouble.
Had to have ten million pesetas or go out of business. A group
of us went quietly through the streets of this city. Telling our
friends, “The voice of Cataluña is about to be silenced. The chorus
that inspired your father and mine in the dark days is
broke…busted…the strings on the lute are torn.” Within
twenty-four hours we had the ten million pesetas, for a Catalan
would rather miss a meal than his music.’

 

Dr. Poal reminded me of one fact which Americans tend to
forget. ‘The influence of France on Spain has been considerable,
and usually positive. Much of our best thinking has been inspired
by French precept, and this is particularly true of Cataluña. In
this room tonight I would suppose that better than fifty percent
speak French and more than that read it. At many stages of history
we were part of France, and if one were to carve out a linguistic
Cataluña, much of it would be found over the Pyrenees in France.
A man like myself…I feel a tremendous pull toward the Pyrenees.
They exert a kind of fascination on the Catalan mind. Always
keep your eye out for the French influence in Spain. It’s usually
constructive.’

 

What Dr. Poal overlooked telling me was something I already
knew, that France did not reciprocate the warm feeling of
Spaniards like Poal. Agitation for a separate Catalan state, or for
a separate Basque, arose in northern Spain but involved substantial
areas of southern France, for there were about as many Catalans
and Basques living in France as there were in Spain. Therefore,
this area of Spain was something of a headache to France.
Contemptuously, French thinkers repeated the aphorism ‘Africa
begins just south of the Pyrenees,’ and most Frenchmen dismissed
Spain as something so exotic that no rationalist could comprehend
her. In French regions adjacent to Cataluña the feeling was
exacerbated in 1939, when hundreds of thousands of Spanish
patriots fled through the mountains to take up what they
considered temporary residence in France; they remained for
more than a quarter of a century. Finally, during many periods
of history, Cataluña formed a part of France and was governed
by Frenchmen, so that it can be considered a defected province
but one that France was well rid of.

 

I thought it best not to raise such questions but I did pose two
others. First, what was the future of Cataluña? ‘Ah yes! I’ve been
thinking about this a great deal and I know of no one in my
acquaintance who dreams any longer of Cataluña as a separate
state. At one time it could have been free…like Switzerland…or
maybe a union of Basques and Navarrese of Spain and France…a
rough confederation of some kind…but those days are gone.
Everyone knows it. We must integrate fully with Spain, and
everyone I know is eager to do so. But I would lie if I did not say
that I feel more Catalan than anyone else in this room or perhaps
in all Barcelona. My heart throbs to the rhythm of this land. I
write poetry in Catalan. I should. It was my grandfather who
compiled the Catalan grammar. Montserrat, Vich…these places
are part of me and I would die rather than betray Cataluña. But
politically our future rests in being a creative part of Spain. God,
how the rest of Spain needs us!’