The Alhambra.

• Author: Robinson, Cynthia
• Position: Book review

The Alhambra. By ROBERT IRWIN. Cambridge, Massachusetts: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. 213. $19.95.

Robert Irwin, following a basic and factual chronology presented in the form of a chart, opens the introductory chapter of his study of the Alhambra with a selection of some of the more lurid "fantasies" which have entered popular discourse concerning the Alhambra. This is followed by a disclaimer, in which the author notes that he has merely culled these bits and pieces from currently available guidebooks to the palace, and that they are offered up, not for indiscriminate consumption, but as a sort of "Exhibit A" ("Not one 'fact' in the preceding two paragraphs is likely to be correct," p. 3). One might say that this juxtaposition of fantastic fiction with historical fact (if such a thing may be said to exist, an issue that would appear to be particularly debatable where the Alhambra is concerned) comes to form the central problem (in addition to objective) of this book. To wit, The Alhambra is both filled with facts and observations non-specialists are very unlikely to come across in the sort of literature on the Alhambra they are likely to read, and at the same time plagued--seemingly irremediably--by a certain group of cliches, largely art-historical ones, which have come to form the slick, silky surface of the discursive "Alhambra" (a much different structure from the monument standing today on Granada's Sabika hill), an exotic and delicate plant fertilized liberally with equal doses of National-, Romantic-, and Oriental-isms.

The author's honorable intention is to set the record straight--at least partially--for visitors to the Alhambra, and he takes on this task first in a brief and general introduction, and then in a series of four chapters. The first of these (one of the longer ones) is entitled, "The Fairy-Tale Palace?" In it, the author walks visitors through the several surviving palaces that compose the complex, pointing up the often unclear or problematic histories of their names and conservation, and concluding with a brief discussion of the palace as it existed and was altered under Christian patrons after 1492. This chapter would appear to succeed in explaining, in succinct fashion, some of the larger doubts and debates surrounding the physical fabric of the Alhambra, allowing the non-specialist access to the educated opinion of a scholar while not burdening him unduly with the intricacies of academic argument.

Despite his honorable intentions, however, Irwin ultimately ends up falling, in chapter two, into some of the romantic traps he avoided in the preceding chapter. The title, "Poisoned Paradise," is somewhat surprising--even shocking--after the measured middle path for the most part successfully trodden in chapter one. The argument gets off to a bad start, departing from, without fully examining, one of the most prevalent commonplaces, both popular and scholarly, surrounding the Nasrid palace: it is, in some way, meant to be "paradise on earth." Irwin, like several scholars recently...