Seiobo There Below (31 page)

surfaces
of the walls, the arches, the window-frames, the moldings, the columns and their capitals, the pavements, the wells and the cupolas, the
surfaces
: accordingly, the profound depth of the Alhambra, which starting from below, from the level of the flooring up to chest height, is written onto tiles of varying color, and from that point upward onto the plaster-work, or respectively the stucco, because yes, the entire Alhambra has been written into here, completely, in a faultless alphabet telling a faultless narrative; here, as if with inhuman detail and nearly terrifying solicitude, as if in one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand forms something was being written, continuously, until the end, on the material of these tiles and stuccos; one does not think of the actual verses inscribed onto the Islamic buildings, which have aroused much attention on the part of researchers — whether they are quotations from the Quran in various rooms of the Alhambra, or the mediocre hymns originating from the work of a certain Ibn Zamraq, or other poetic excerpts of similar value taken from the work of an early poet known as Ibn al-Yayyab — no, it is not at all a question of these specific writings but of a language, arranged out of the so-called girih motif based upon the pentagon, but in any event, an inaccessible language rendered from a geometry sacredly conceived; which at first one experiences as pure decoration and considers as a form of ornamentation assembled from tiles or engraved or pressed into the stucco, and at the beginning it really is possible to be satisfied with the impression that this is decoration and ornament, because the dizzying symmetries, the suggestive colors — not only the plentiful but simply immeasurable glittering form-ideas — do not leave behind themselves any questions or uncertainty; yet few are those who have entered, proceeded through all of the rooms, towers, and courtyards of the Alhambra in whom the realization arose that these decorations aren’t even decorations but the infinities of a language; few, but there are some, and they all wander between the rooms, the towers, and the courtyards, and they have absolutely no idea of where they are and why they are exactly there and not somewhere else, there are those for whom, after a while, their attention begins to turn to these enchanting surfaces, they stand still ever more frequently to examine the patterns, ever more frequently are they utterly absorbed by this or that crazed symmetry on the wall, it happens to them ever more frequently that underneath one cupola or another, for instance in the Torre de las Infantas, they simply become incapable of movement, there is a spasm in their necks, as their heads are fully tilted back to look, they look into the heights and they try to rationally comprehend how all of this is somehow possible, well, just who could those people have been — the thought flashes through those numbed heads — who were capable of such wondrous efforts, maybe angels? but there isn’t even a Heaven, let alone angels! these heads are thinking, or maybe two of them are thinking this, in any event one is, and really we don’t know about angels, yet we do know about stonemasons, so that it is nearly certain — inasmuch as one can speak of such coarse certainty in this divine or infernal complex — that there were stonemasons, and it’s interesting — it flashes through the benumbed head atop the neck that is already demanding a massage, through the head of at least that one person, as he looks again and again into the heights of the cupola — how peculiar that we have no, but in the entire God-given world, absolutely no knowledge as to who they could have been, these stonemasons, these geniuses of carving, these genius tile-setters, these pattern-makers and arch-constructors and well-builders and water-engineers, how many hundreds of them could have been here, and from where? from Granada? from Fez? from Al-Karaouine? from the Heavens? — which don’t exist?! — it is truly astonishing what unbelievable skill, experience, knowledge, and technical ability were alloyed here across the decades, and yet something else too, one thinks, as he returns to the close examination of the surfaces of the walls, these innumerable figures, these innumerable formations, these innumerable outlines . . . as if there weren’t even so many, as if there were merely a few figures, a few formations, and a few sinuous outlines on the walls’ surfaces, just repeated, repeated a hundred and a thousand times, but how? here the question needs to be posed, in wonderment, but it is not possible to answer, that is to say as these figures, formations and lines repeat, occurring and recurring, it is so terribly complicated, like the entire Alhambra, they do nonetheless repeat, the person leans closer to this or that pattern in the wall, it really is so complicated, he steps back a bit to look at it from the requisite distance; but, now, is it simple or complicated, he asks himself, well, it is just that, exactly that which is difficult to decide, although it isn’t even difficult, but actually it’s
impossible
to decide, namely the question has occupied every serious geometrician, in particular from the beginning of the eighties of the last century, when in 1982, in an article in the journal Science entitled “Decagonal and Quasi-Crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture,” written by a certain Peter J. Lu and his colleague Paul J. Steinhardt, the two researchers discovered that five hundred years ago Islamic architecture, inspired by the Arab geometricians, was already familiar (how could they not have been?) with that peculiar — because forbidden — instance in symmetry that the rest of humanity, apart from the medieval Arabs, discovered only in the twentieth century, sometime in the seventies, through the findings of the researcher Penrose, the essence of which is that there is a certain geometrical and thus mathematical pattern in five-fold rotational symmetry, which, however, in crystallography, is not possible; we can transform each point of a pattern, that is we can shift, reverse, reflect it countless times, as with a crystal, but not the pattern as a whole; to explain it differently, there exists in the
mathematical
crystal such a divergent, just a minutely divergent case, where, as opposed to a real crystal, it is not possible to transform any point at all into any other point, so as for attaining the given pattern, we do not attain it, we do not call such a figure a crystal, but, since the discovery by Roger Penrose, a quasi-crystal, well, these forbidden symmetries appear in Arab architecture, said this Lu from Harvard and this Steinhardt from Princeton, then others also confirmed that in this Islamic architectural art, the basic figure is what is known as the Persian girih, which is comprised altogether of five different geometric forms: a regular decagon where every angle is 144 degrees; a regular pentagon, where every angle is 108 degrees; an irregular hexagon with angles of either 72 or 144 degrees; then a rhombus where the angles are 72 and 108 degrees; and finally an irregular hexagon where the angles are 72 and 216 degrees; well, and with these five forms any sort of surface plane can be put together, that is it can be assembled faultlessly, without any sort of gap, this would accordingly be the girih, and it is this geometry as well as the mathematical knowledge that pertains to it that we discover, if we lean in closer — in imagination or reality — to the surfaces of the walls and arches and pavements and ceilings and columns and parapets of the Alhambra, and we see these peculiarly behaving formations pressed into the fresh plaster-work or engraved into solidified material, carved into the marble columns, arched vaulting, cupolas, laid out or drawn onto the floors, the ceilings, and the tile walls — to put it more precisely, as this is the case here — growing dizzy inside the labyrinth of the Alhambra; much more significantly, we discover these peculiar symmetries, we recognize them and immediately we are lost in them, because this quasi-symmetrical space is on every ornamented surface of the Alhambra, here every, but every single square millimeter is ornamented, it fixes our gaze in the face of the infinite; our gaze is not used to this coercion into the infinite, not used to looking into this infinity; and it is not just that this gaze looks into the infinite but it looks into two infinities simultaneously: not just a monumental, expansive infinite perceived by this gaze, as, for example, in the case of the already mentioned Torre de las Infantas, but also, there are its completely tiny elements, a miniature infinity as well, if, for example, one turns back toward the Sala de los Banos and in the proximity of one of the stairs leading this way next to a gallery, one tries to find underneath the left-hand capital, the bordering-elements of one of the patterns, where one narrow, parallel motif follows the path of a line leading upward until it loses itself entirely; again he just grows dizzy and doesn’t understand how these lines, constructed from star-shaped points, can lead into infinity, the entire space allotted to them is so tiny, and it is this that leads to the thought that in the Alhambra, a truth never before manifested reveals itself, that is to say that something infinite can exist in a finite, demarcated space; well but this, how can this be? because it is as if here all these little infinities are independent of all the others and at the same time are connected, just the individual rooms were at the beginning, as was his first impression, this can be determined; but then it is better, if he stops and seeks out a spot where, given the circumstances, he can gain a moment of relative rest, his legs, his back, his neck are hurting, his head is buzzing, his eyelids, especially the right one, are twitching — really this is the moment for a bit of transitory peace, otherwise the time originally apportioned with the
scandalously
expensive ticket to one or another visitor for the viewing of the Alhambra has most likely run out, it is better if he lingers a little in the Alhambra in a place suitable for this; all the same it is not possible to sit; to touch any space here that could be used for such a purpose is clearly an insolent desecration, but stopping for a little bit and closing one’s eyes, and trying to breathe with regularity, inasmuch as this is possible, to be tranquil, already even just the intention is healing, such a behemoth weighs upon one by now, and this behemoth is the Alhambra; at least inside him there is a need for a little silence, an inner slackening, so that the thoughts and the suppositions and reflexes and conclusions and the recognitions and images — the images! — would not vibrate so dreadfully beneath his trembling eyelids, and after a while it is already clear that this intention really was beneficial, but not enough; it is necessary to withdraw, gradually, from here, a few steps yet to those rooms that draw one back with particular strength, back one more time to the Mirados de la Daraxa, and with that, it is enough; yet one feels that a bad decision brought him here, for he will remain and not gradually withdraw: he looks at the rooms’ stalactites swimming in gold, preparing to break off, but never breaking off, he grows blinded from the radiance of the vaulted fenestration as the light streams from without, he allows once again for this unearthly ornament of the patterns of the walls and the ceiling to descend upon him, and the thought is already there, too, in his head that ah, the essence of Islamic pattern is not to be found in what it seems at the beginning, not in the genial application of geometry, but rather in how it is used as an instrument: this glittering, delicately-lived pattern points to the unity of the nature of various experiences, the unity holding all as one in a net, because the geometrical composition used by that Arab spirit, across the Greek and Hindu and Chinese and Persian cultures, actualizes a concept, namely that in place of the evil chaos of a world falling apart, let us select a higher one in which everything holds together, a gigantic unity, it is that we may select, and the Alhambra represents this unity equally in its tiniest as well as its most monumental elements, yet the Alhambra does not make this comprehensible, even just this once, it does not demand comprehension but rather continuously demands that it be comprehended, but then one is already standing sadly in the magnificence of the Mirador de la Daraxa, and really will begin, slowly, to leave; he stands in not-knowing, a garden yet awaits him, the celestial Generalife, which is not far from here, the hill known as el Sol will admit him, enchanting the visitor with its heavenly panoramas — he stands in not-knowing, and despite all of this dazzledness there is something of disillusionment within him, it is as if a mild, unwished-for gentle breeze of recognition strikes him as he departs, it is as if he already suspects that the Alhambra does not offer the knowledge that we know nothing of the Alhambra, that it itself knows nothing of this not-knowing, because not-knowing does not even exist. Because not to know something is a complicated process, the story of which takes place beneath the shadow of the truth. For there is truth. There is the Alhambra. That is the truth.

144

SOMETHING
IS BURNING OUTSIDE

Lacul Sfânta Ana is a dead lake formed inside a crater lying at an elevation of around 950 meters, and of a nearly astonishingly regular circular form. It is filled with rainwater: the only fish living in it is the bullhead catfish. The bears, if they come to drink, use different paths than the humans when they saunter down from the pine-clad forests. There is a section on the further side, less frequently visited, which consists of a flat, swampy marsh, known as the Mossland: today, a path of wooden planks meanders across the marsh. As for the water, rumor has it that it never freezes over; in the middle, it is always warm. The crater has been dead for millennia, as has the lake. For the most part, a great silence weighs upon the land.

It is ideal, as one of the organizers remarked to the first-day arrivals as he showed them around — ideal for reflection, as well as for refreshing strolls, which no one forgot, taking advantage of the proximity of the camp to the highest mountain, supposedly one thousand meters high; thus in both directions — up to the peak, down from the peak! — the foot traffic was fairly dense: dense, but in no way did that signify that even more feverish efforts weren’t taking place simultaneously in the camp below; time, as was its wont, wore on, and ever more feverishly, so did too the creative ideas, originally conceived for this site, they took shape, and in imagination reached their final form; everyone by then had already settled into their allotted space, which they fixed up and organized themselves, most obtaining a private room in the main building, although there were also those who withdrew into a log hut or a disused shed; three moved up into the enormous attic of the main house that served as the camp’s focal point, each one partitioning off separate spaces for themselves — and this, by the way, was the one great necessity for all: to be alone while working; everyone demanded tranquility, undisturbed and untroubled, and that was how they set to their work, and that was just how the days passed, largely in work, with a smaller share allotted to walks, a pleasant dip in the lake, the meals, and singing, fueled by fruit brandy, in the evenings around the glowing campfire.