Ph. Luigi Fieni
>Gallery ‘Gardamanti’s travel : Alhambra’ by Luigi Fieni
I am Alhambra. I am the Garden. The Giardamanti, the Gardenlovers, are my lovers.
Alhambra. Winter 2017.
I am awake. I am always awake.
The Andalusian dawn is sweet.
It has the colour of shining petroleum blue because the white snow of Sierra Nevada mirrors the night in the cold and dark sky.
I never rest because time does not exist in my world.
I am Alhambra, the Palaces, the Garden, the sound of Granada.
These words are engraved in my name: “Come in, wisdom, express your knowledge, be a man of few words and take your leave in peace”. They are engraved on stuccoes of galleries, on tesserae of mosaics, in every gush of the water.
I stop to watch those who come and pass, walking away. I am still for a long time. In the fountain in the Court of Lions, the water flows.
Tourists are speaking, are whispering while the sky and the light disclose Andalusian beauty.
Andalusia is my home.
The land where the ground meets the sky and its impetuous wind, where the light of dawn flows through every single one of my stones, where the water illuminates every room with her song and her movement.
The water never rests here, but the light is immobile. My palace speaks about the strength of man, my gardens are a glimpse of the strength of Cosmo, which was bequeathed upon man in the history of my land.
The same men who carved me, humiliated me, nurtured me to succeed.
My dear, it is the story of the world. The story of mankind is dear to me.
They carved me, humiliated me, nurtured me to consecrate me.
It is sacred: the fallen blood on my stones. It is sacred, the blood, because of sweat and spit. They made me fertile after all. I’m been carved in every single stone. I have been consecrated by their graving my stones and my soil.
I have been humiliated, broken like a plain-Andalusia’s horse, graved and crushed, bended to the power, as an example of the power of the Power.
They did it with stamina and will.
Sometimes They did with brutality, sometimes slowly, as a long torture, as a plethora of every day minuscule wounds to make my soil and my heart immortal, well-known to men dependent on me for food, for love, for space for soul.
They carved me, humiliated me, nurtured me to consecrate me.
They nurtured me slowly. I nurtured dreams and my culture slowly, not in the time of men. My groundwork hasn’t a beginning because I’ve always been. Before men, before my water has been canalised, the creation of my culture started. I have been nurtured since the sky was divided from ground to create space for light. First swords, then plows have nurtured me. I have been got wet by blood sooner than by water. Tears filled my fountains sooner than the water have been gushed.
They carved me, humiliated me, nurtured me to consecrate me.
They nursed me and poured me to make me fertile, to make me mother and father of this land, of these people, of this Garden.
They nursed me to make me father of men, to make men gardeners and mature.
They carved me, humiliated me, nurtured me to consecrate me, to make me a sacred Garden, to succeed, to become gardeners, therefore free. I became sacred because their heart, their soul could have space. I haven’t been sacred to men by their work, by their strong arms, by their hands so experienced.
Their hands, small and fast while they cut and engrave and carve. Those hands don’t know how shape men, they don’t know how cut and pour. They don’t know cut and pour as water and wind do. They do fast. Only slowly water and impetuous wind know how shape my structure, my figure.
They carved me and they are crying, swearing, begging, while they were carving: they were imploring men and God to make my stones undying, sacred, to make them free.
Others have been here. Sometimes for days, sometimes they have lived one life among these walls: slaves and servants of the power, subjugated by it and empties, idiots because of it or because of lack of it.
What will become of men who are not nurturing their own inner garden?
What will become of their own soul if they don’t know how take care of me?
The Giardamanti came this morning.
I heard from afar.
Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain, they came from.
Moises said to me when I came and met me. He confided to me on the tower where flags are whipping by the wind, the sky and the light disclose Andalusian beauty. I want to know, I want to know about the Garden.
The Giardamanti were invited by Fernando who is familiar with my land, he knows who carved me, how they humiliated me and why men nurtured me.
Fernando knows how much they make me get wet by blood and water, by tears and spits till I became sacred to men.
The Giardamanti were invited by Fernando, they are friends sharing my same fascination.
They are gardeners, but first of all humans, as knights and their warrior horses that have beat my land, my stone with their hoofs, irony footprint.
Giardamanti : they are beauty-seekers because they consist of beauty, are suited to recognise stories behind my leaves, are made for listen the waters of my Garden. They were born to get their eyes wet with the light come in to the world when the sky was separated from my land.
Moises also met Fernando this morning.
They met at Generalife, where the love is everywhere.
They met and immediately became garden lovers of my land and of my Garden.
It seems they recognised one another, as if they could find out the same glimpse of light, the same object of love, one inside the eyes of another. Men search the love for a woman as they search the sound of soul inside others they met.
They came, the Giardamanti .
They came and saw my wounds. They lead their fingers where my stone was humiliated to consecrate me. Gardenlovers joined my wounds.
They walked on my stones, going deep within the garden to fill their mind with my story. They watched my nurtured culture and my being nurtured, sometimes they didn’t understand them. They didn’t see the fecund blood and playful water flowing from the beginning within and over me. They didn’t see tears, songs and laments that have always been lived with me. They didn’t see but they understood, they understood what my Garden is and saw the consecration of my land through the beauty of my landscape and through the work of the men. They left their souls gliding inside my wounds.
They, the Giardamanti, are so good at gardens.
They know how rest and observe the reality. They know how to be in silence to listen the sound of the garden who I am.
They know how change their pace when they came inside my wounds with their fingers and inside my light with their eyes. They know, the Giardamanti, the power of beauty nursing. The Beauty is a prey.
They walked on my stones and saw the soil wet because of the Andalusian winter.
They felt freezing air and power of light and decided to change their pace.
Some of them observed the details, every crease, our leaves.
Some else, as Fernando, left my essence fill up them from eyes to mind.
Only one doubted about my existence. One of the Giardamanti cried, within me, feeling on him the disproportion between his mortal skin and my immortal stone.