Travel and books are a potent combination for the imagination, stirring that layer of the psyche too often anaesthetized by the day-to-day. For a recent trip to the south of Spain my wife’s Aunt Sal, an inveterate reader and world traveler, provided us with a box full of recommended volumes to deepen our experience. Because a night in Grenada for a visit to the Alhambra was to be the centerpiece of our trip we chose from this treasure trove The Alhambra by Robert Irwin, The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal, Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving, and Lorca’s Granada by Ian Gibson. Also tossed in the suitcase, A Moment of War by Laurie Lee, a vivid memoir of an Englishman’s youthful escapades in the Spanish Civil War.

But travel dates and reading choices can rarely be synchronized, so rather than interrupt my enjoyment I carried to read on the tedious flights and lay-overs Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I had begun previously based on the highest recommendations of my son. This fantastical tale explores the values and belief-systems of America’s soul through the lens of a war of the gods. There are the gods of the old countries, brought by immigrants, fragile and forgotten, attempting to squeeze by on handouts. disguised and pushed to the margins. And there are the new gods, wired and slick, gods of the internet and of media, determined to provoke a showdown that will erase the old once and for all. Gaiman wryly plays with our loyalties, ultimately forcing us to see that gods are gods, and that they need us more than we need them, but that even in America, “a bad land for gods”, there is no escaping the themes of sacrifice, conflict, mystery, faith and betrayal that lie at the heart of the religious experience.

Perhaps not such an inappropriate way to start a trip to Spain after all. Gaiman finished his book just months before 9/11/01 but American Gods anticipates the tumult of the past five years. Reading Menocal we explore an earlier chapter in the history of Islam’s intrusion into western culture. For hundreds of years (during what we in our ignorance refer to as the “Dark Ages”) Muslims, Christians and Jews existed side-by-side in a culture of tolerance and mutual benefit in the south of Spain. This interlude of relative tolerance fell prey to (Muslim) fundamentalism and (Christian) imperialism. In-fighting weakened the Umayyad dynasty in Spain while the same fervor that fueled the Crusades sparked Christian resentment of the Iberian Islamic presence. The Alhambra was the original and final seat of culture and power for this dynasty, and remains the best testimony to a time that history has sought to erase from memory. After reading Gaiman’s work Menocal’s description of the demise of this culture seems to confirm that the gods cannot tolerate too much human tranquility or prosperity, as the blood and turmoil on which they depend for their perpetuation are lacking. Although careful not to idealize the period of her study, Menocal makes a compelling case that a unique moment in civilization occurred, flourished, and was lost without our adequate recognition or understanding. Visitors to this area, charmed by nostalgia for a lost past, can ground their emotive intuitions in this well-written and scholarly work.

As mentioned, the political and cultural centerpiece of medieval Spain was the Alhambra, a collection of Palaces in the City of Granada at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains. While Menocal’s historical perspective will enlighten, Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra provides the romantic perspective on a bygone age that feeds the hungry tourist soul. Irving is the embodiment of American story-teller, enjoying the liberties that time and distance afford, and the Spain of yesterday provides a compatible pallet for his craft. The introduction to the Spanish English-language version of this work by Ricardo Villa-Real (1978) includes the observation that “Romanticism is indeed more than a mere literary mode that passed out of favor in the last century. It is the living experience of all who have come to appreciate the dream world behind the landscape, the fantasy that lurks behind form, the eternal mystery couched in a woman’s eyes”. Reading Irving reminds us that we travel not to change the scenery, but to change the way we see.

Moment of War by Laurie Lee describes a modern romantic odyssey (a young English idealist crosses the Pyrenees in winter to join the Spanish Civil War) in a manner that would delight both Washington Irving and Neil Gaiman. The gods who thrive on chaos and bloodshed apparently find Spain to be a preferred venue, as do the idealist and the seeker for whom life without a cause lacks meaning. Lee’s quest is particularly harrowing as he is greeted not as an ally but as a spy, repeatedly escaping incarceration and even execution through luck and serendipity. Lee’s insight is better than his judgment, and he describes not only the devastation of a country at war with itself, but also the practice field for a world war that was brewing. Lee’s futile pilgrimage in fact provides an epitaph to the romantic impulses which motivated him and many of his generation. In place of the romantic world pursued by Irving and Lee the modern world is being born as a depersonalized battlefield of the new gods of long-distance death, gods who manipulate humankind in an age-old fashion, through ideals and ideology.

History, climate, culture, art and bloodshed are all fine fodder for the romantic traveler, as they are for the poet. Islam has always held poetry in high regard, and Granada retains a strong connection to its Islamic past. Perhaps this explains why in Granada, in the third decade of the 20th century, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca was celebrated as an artist and native son. Ian Gibson has studied Lorca’s life and work, and chronicled the tragic death of this poet at the hands of the Fascists in 1936, at the height of his powers. Lorca’s Granada provides a condensation of Gibson’s insights into the relationship of the poet with his city in the form of nine walking tours. Lorca was executed for holding his own strong opinions and for expressing them, and because execution was the preferred means of political suppression. Among his offensive opinions, that the fall of Muslim Granada to the Christians was “a disastrous event…an admirable civilization, and a poetry, astronomy, architecture and sensitivity unique in the world-all were lost…”.

Lost, maybe, but not forgotten. Robert Irwin’s succinct history, The Alhambra, peels back the veneer of restoration to illustrate the culture behind the icon. Irwin is careful to stress that the tourist attraction of today is largely a modern conceit, the result of years of imaginal manipulation. Irwin separates the fact from the fiction and lends a depth to the experience of a visit far beyond that provided by an ordinary guidebook. The Alhambra is a modern carnival camped on an incredibly rich archaeological site. Rivaling the Parthenon or the Capitoline Hill for depth of historical significance, the Alhambra is above all a story, or many stories, as Washington Irving recognized. Incredibly the site was abandoned and neglected until Irving published his collection. The site today is really, therefore, a byproduct of the Romantic era. But the ghosts that Irving chronicles are as real today as they were when he visited in 1829. Irwin sorts through the mythology of the Alhambra and helps us to understand the layers that time has imposed. Rather than explore the fantasy that lurks beyond form, Irwin seeks the original form that lurks beneath our romantic fantasies.

Books and travel, travel and books. Choose the two carefully and savor the immersion. I can’t wait to get home to discover what treasures from Aunt Sal we left behind. But whatever you read or wherever you go, if mayhem and bloodshed are any indication, clearly Spain is a good land for gods.