The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-09-05
FOOTPRINTS OF THE MOOP.

Relics of Arab Architecture to be Seen
in Many Places in Spain.
The Moors, when they were driven
out Of Spain, left behind them, as if (; /
some stealthy purpose, many Of their
secrets. Whenever you walk in the
South Of Spain you will come upon
mosques, palaces, towers, 6ateways,
which they built to perpetuate them
selves in strange land, and you will
find in ruined fragments upon hills and
Windowless white houses under palm
| trees both actual renalls a nd persistent
followings of their cool, secluded way
of building, meant for even fiarcer skies
and an even more reri3eut indoor he
Often. as in the Giislda by the side
of the Gothic cathedral at Seville, ond
| in the mosque into which Christian
church has been built at Cordove, You
can see at one glance the conflict or the
| contrast Of two religions, OF two theor-
| les Ct the universe. The mosque has
no solemnity, no mystery; 1t Is a place
| of closed In silence, shut in even from
the sky, in a paradise of abstract art.
| | think OF the plumage of tropical birds,
the waving Of palms. darting fugue
on the clavichord. to figure to myself
the particular after all unique, kind of
fascination which the masterpieces of
Arab architecture convey to one. Moth
ing SO brilliant was ever imagined by
Gothic carver, so full of light, so airy,
so serpentne in swiftness A mosque,
it seems to one as one walks among it's
pillars, is not a church at all, but rath-
er city the arcades and alcoves Of
city Of fiery people, in whom strength
runs all to delicacy The Arabs Gid
not build high, they built wide; and
they sent their imagination out like ar
rows, hither and thither, in fight at
once random and mathematical. Sow
singular contrast, is there not, with
Gothic building, whose broad base is set
for q steady heavenward ascension, yet
those caprices, in every entertainment
to which line lends itself, are all SC ma
teral, and of the earth, And 50 1t
seems to me that the architecture of the
mosque Is after all a more immaterlal
worship of the idea of God than any
Christian architecture. Here, there is
Invention of pattern, into which 10
natural object is ever allowed to intrude
the true art for arts sake, pure idea,
mathematics, invention in the abstract;
for 1t Is the work Of an imagination in
toXicated with ITSELF finding beginning
and end in it's own formally beautiful
working out without relation to nature
or humanity
NOT ACCEPTED BY CHRISTIANITY
Christianity has never accepted this
idea, indeed could not: it has always
distrusted pure beauty, when that b.au-
ty has not been visibly chained to
moral. Hence it has built it's Bibles in
stone, the Gothic cathedrals T,ut |
Islam, for which God has never put on
humanity worships an imm aterlal Gud |
in beautiful pattern, which it applies |
equally to it's daily, it's choicar dsi'y !
uses. Is not this more truly the wCr- |
ship of the invisible and the untnagin- |
able, of what is highest in the idea Of |
God, than the Christian worship which |
we see under the same roof, With its d. |
vino IMAGES tortured with sorrow I'M |
gracious with suffering, which do but |
drag down the mind from pure contem-
plation, from the eternal hlea to its |
human manifestation in tima? That
at all events, is one of the scorers of tie
Moors
And they have left other secrets.
You cannot walk through little town |
n the South of Spain without hear ng
1 strange sound, between crying and |
which wanders out OF YOU
rom behind barred windows and from |
among the tinllling bells of the mules.
The Malaguena, they call this kind of
singing; but it has no more TO 10 with
Malaga than the mosque at Cordova
las to do with the soil on which it
stands. 1t is as eastern as the music |
# tomtoms and gongs, and, like East
m music, it is music before rhythm,