Worldly Thoughts. Cercis siliquastrum, Judas-Tree, Washington Irving and Dante Aligieri, Sevilla, Spain
After a fine Paella lunch I noticed in a wall of the Callejón de Agua this plaquette to the memory of Washington Irving (1783-1859). It commemorates his love for things Spanish. He's probably best known for his often macabre stories of Sleepy Hollow, but his Tales of the Alhambra (1832) is a good read, too; and his biography of Christopher Columbus (1828) is remarkable among other reasons for the fact that Irving claims that medievals believed the world to be flat. Thus he can posit Columbus as enlightened for thinking in 1492 that he might sail west to arrive in the east.
But Irving was dead wrong about medieval worldviews. Great Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), for example, author of the Comedia, could not have envisaged his poem without knowing the world was round. And Dante was not alone...
As luck would have it I was walking a bit later in the beautiful María Luisa Park. Among Judas-trees - Cercis siliquastrum - there's a small monument dedicated to Dante. It was a gift of the Dante Alighieri Society of Sevilla in 1969. Sculpted by Juan Abascal Fuentes (1922-2003) it provides for a pleasant, shady place for contemplating the World.
Worldly Thoughts. Cercis siliquastrum, Judas-Tree, Washington Irving and Dante Aligieri, Sevilla, Spain
After a fine Paella lunch I noticed in a wall of the Callejón de Agua this plaquette to the memory of Washington Irving (1783-1859). It commemorates his love for things Spanish. He's probably best known for his often macabre stories of Sleepy Hollow, but his Tales of the Alhambra (1832) is a good read, too; and his biography of Christopher Columbus (1828) is remarkable among other reasons for the fact that Irving claims that medievals believed the world to be flat. Thus he can posit Columbus as enlightened for thinking in 1492 that he might sail west to arrive in the east.
But Irving was dead wrong about medieval worldviews. Great Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), for example, author of the Comedia, could not have envisaged his poem without knowing the world was round. And Dante was not alone...
As luck would have it I was walking a bit later in the beautiful María Luisa Park. Among Judas-trees - Cercis siliquastrum - there's a small monument dedicated to Dante. It was a gift of the Dante Alighieri Society of Sevilla in 1969. Sculpted by Juan Abascal Fuentes (1922-2003) it provides for a pleasant, shady place for contemplating the World.