On preservation.

A few books on the Alhambra recently crossed my desk at the library and I had occasion to page though them for a few hours. My initial pleasure was short-lived, though--I was almost immediately struck by the emptiness of this structure. I mean, physical emptiness: not just cleared of tourists for the sake of the photo shoot, but the simple vacancy of the rooms. This sprawling palace complex, probably the most noble thing ever produced by an autocrat's wealth, is now populated only by the same mass-replicated curule chair. Even the gardens are empty: there aren't any myrtles in the Court of the Myrtles, the only thing left in the Court of the Lions is a solitary shrub; the garden complexes themselves are that unfortunate in-between state of unloveliness that seems to go hand-in-hand with historic preservation, neither left barren nor really cultivated--half ramshackle, half sterile.

Placeholders. That damn chair for the extinguished bustle of a cultural center, one piece of furniture standing in for all the beauty and squalor of inhabited space; boxhedges for myrtles, gardens filled with shrubs and halfhearted perennials, any plant will do because nothing will really do, will it? Meanwhile the golden glory stretches upward into arcaded filigree and yes, the walls are beautiful, yes, the palace is preserved in honey for us to wonder at--but this emptiness, this condition of being a vacant shell, it rankles at me.

Recently I was in Wales with my spouse and had occasion to tour Cardiff castle. Different sky, same story--the library was filled with bound bureaucratic transactions, "Aristotle" and "Bacon" painted in roundels over shelves stuffed with Transactions of the Cardiff Planning Commission. There was an open-air garden in one of the towers with a tiled basin in the middle; under the plastic-sheeted compluvium were three empty bronze flower pots and a dry fountain.

But why put real volumes in a library no one will use? Why endanger the architecture with a troop of gardeners and their watering cans? Why crowd the backpackers touring the Alhambra with roped-in pillows and ersatz orientalism? At least emptiness is honest, points you to the . See or shut your eyes, said reason peevishly.

There's no wrong here, no failure, just the same old unending futility of things.

Cf. "Childe Roland," XI; Kohelet 1 (As always, much nobler in the KJV).