Second letter from Europe
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
For
decades, tourism has grown as one of the fashionable ways to shop
abroad or in a different city in your own country. Less than 200
years ago, people thought of travel as a way to enrich education.
Would anyone think of Lord Byron as a tourist in Greece, or Alexis de
Tocqueville as a shopper in the 19th
Century United States?
Sightseeing,
at museums and ruins that tourist packages include, comes replete
with guides who lecture their flock with memorized
facts about paintings and sculptures. The group glimpses “great
paintings” on the way to the Goya or El Greco section in Madrid’s
Prado Museum. Some churches and museums rent head sets where tourists
listen to the same patter in between mass,
of course.
I
marveled at the efficiency of a tape recorded art history lecture I
received in the Santo Tomé Church in Toledo where one can view
El Greco’s 1586 masterpiece, “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.”
One
hour’s drive south of Madrid, I stare from a pew at St. Stephen and
St. Augustine — having descended from Heaven — helping lower the
body of the pious Count into its coffin. I didn’t have to imagine
people five Centuries ago praying from more primitive pews as a
priest explained the miracle of Orgaz’ burial. Like ancient
parishioners, I stared at Greco’s masterpiece of colors, framing
and imagination. El Greco actually painted the mural to fit a wall in
the church, I learned from headphones that played the taped lecture.
The painting shows Orgaz’ soul, represented by a baby in the
center, ascending to heaven with the help of an angel.
El
Greco actually painted a portrait of his own son at the bottom left
part. El Greco also painted himself in the back row of mourners
looking at his supposed audience. Above, we gaze at the wonders of
heaven, angels and cherubs and holy power. Below, the good
townspeople bid adios to their generous benefactor, reportedly a
pious man who left money to enlarge and decorate the Santo Tomé
Church, which was also El Greco’s church.
Each
year, on the day of Orgaz’ death, the Church collects tithes from
the locals. Indeed, the Church, whose U.S. branch complains about how
much money it has had to pay to victims of pedophilic priests, cannot
begin to measure its worldly treasure, including some of the world’s
greatest works of art. The paintings that hang in the Vatican Museum
and many other churches in Italy, Spain and elsewhere bring in steady
revenue.
Guides
and those who rent their voices for recordings, as well as those who
wrote the texts, earn their livings from the many millions who visit
the key attractions — places where Spanish authorities have
preserved buildings (ruins) and works of art. As my companions
beckoned me to see the next masterpiece at Madrid’s Museum of
Contemporary Art, I marveled over how much dry fact could be crammed
into a lecture, from the date and place of birth of the painter, to
the meaning of the details in the painting, to even a few words about
the customs of the times without making any critical judgments, of
course.
Throughout
much of Europe one sees ancient buildings — or parts of them — as
well as great paintings and sculptures. But the monarchies that paid
for them have long since bitten the dust of history. Throughout Italy
and Spain one must acknowledge how clever was the Church
to
contract with great painters who portrayed magnificently its myths on
church walls and ceilings.
Jews
did not adorn their places of worship. Indeed, their myths, simpler
than Christianity (only one Testament, not two), relies largely on
guilt and the awe and wonder of the natural world one must experience
outside the synagogue. A friend showed us a 12th
Century Synagogue in Barcelona located in that city’s ancient
ghetto.
We
paid 2 Euros each and a young woman began to explain in a very
serious lecturing tone how this former place of worship was recently
discovered and how Roman ruins were actually found underneath. She
sounded almost pompous when she declared that under the Hebrew faith
women and men were segregated. She showed us where the leather-bound
torah was located. The room — which couldn’t have held more than
thirty people — now contains a wrought-iron menorah (candelabra),
with spaces for seven candles.
Jews,
the guide explained, had built as many as five synagogues, though
only the Main Synagogue remains. In 1995, the owner of the property
offered it for sale as a bar or café spot, but, the conservers
of the city’s past bought and restored the building.
Impressive,
I thought. I asked the guide, who had a clear Argentine accent, why
she had come to Barcelona.
“To
study.”
What?
“Comunicaciones
de moda.”
Fashion
communications? What does that mean?
“I
don’t know yet. I’m finding out as I study.”
And
the anthropology you had to learn to give this lecture?
“Part
of the job,” she smiled. She showed us the stand where we could buy
postcards and other memorabilia to prove to friends back home that we
had actually visited this shrine.
How
the flashy commercial present clashes with the dull commercial past,
especially in Jewish neighborhoods where vestiges, like the mikves
(Jewish ritual baths), still exist. The men’s baths have been
replaced by a furniture store, but its ceiling still has some
original arches from the ancient period. Look carefully at the
women’s bath doorways and you can still make out the spaces where
mezuzas hung, small metal boxes with tightly rolled prayers inside
them.
A
few indistinct Hebrew inscriptions remain on the old ghetto’s
walls. Some Jews actually returned to Barcelona or emerged from
centuries of underground religious life — especially after Franco’s
death in 1976. I saw a store advertising kosher products. In Rome,
the Jewish sector contains a shop called MC Kosher — where the fast
food derived only from animals whose slaughter was supervised by a
rabbi, which ensured the religious quality of each juicy bite.
Tourists
pour through these “historic” areas that they “must” see,
looking to purchase articles (postcards, prints, doodads) to show
friends and relatives at home that they had seen an old synagogue or
the Vatican itself.
One
anecdote reports an elderly Jewish couple returning from Rome and
telling friends about their great experience in the Holy city.
“Did
you see the Pope?” asks one friend.
“See
him? I had dinner with him.”
“And?”
“Him
I liked. Her I wasn’t crazy about.”
One
unfortunate American couple about to board a cruise ship from
Barcelona to the Caribbean suffered from the lost luggage syndrome.
Yes, lost in or by the friendly skies! I listened throughout Europe
to Americans complaining about delays, lost baggage, insults of
airline staff, cramped seating — as we walked through the ancient
ruins and looked at the places where chariots once raced and where
great masterpieces now hang.
Tourism
has replaced travel, I concluded. It has cleverly extended the domain
of the great spiritual value of shopping. “Wait till I show this
shawl to my friend Cecile,” said one woman, after buying a scarf
from a street vendor in Venice. “She won’t believe you can still
get such bargains here. Real silk and only 10 Euros.”
“Ye,
who have known what ‘tis to dote upon
A
few dear objects, will in sadness feel
Such
partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal”
So
wrote Byron in 1812. (Childe
Harold’s Pilgrammage)
Later,
he observed:
“What
Heaven hath done for this delicious land:
What
fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What
goodly prospects o’er the hills expand!
But
man would mar them with an impious hand”
Byron
sounds a like a premature environmentalist, a traveler seeking the
roots of his English heritage. Today such a man would give tourism a
bad name. Tocqueville saw America before the shopping malls and
Wal-Mart dominated its landscape. He saw “a country where they have
freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.” In 2007, the
American motto seems to be: “Relieve stress and anxiety. Don’t
act politically: Shop. At home and abroad!”
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow whose new book is A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
His new film is WE
DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE,
available on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.com.
