White Wall of Spain

Book excerpt: From the ancient Phoenicians through Maimonides to Pablo Picasso's retrospective exhibit at the Museum of Moden Art in 1980, this fascinating swift trip through the past spans more than three thousand years of Spain's Andalusian civilization, the oldest in the Western world. Allen Josephs focuses on the cultural distinctions that have set Andalucia apart throughout recorded history: its Oriental origins, its ancient commerce and industry, its religious practices, and its varied artistic expression of those practices through music, dance, and the drama of toreo. In a marvel of synthesis, Josephs interweaves the writings of poets, historians, and archaeologists from Strabo and Polybius to Adolph Schulten, Richard Ford, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Federico Garcia Lorca to illuminate the pervasive influence of this ancient culture on all Hispanic peoples. Allen Josephs is University Research Professor and professor of Spanish in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at the University of West Florida, Pensacola. He has published a number of books, as well as articles in scholarly journals and in the Atlantic, Boston Review, New Republic, and New York Times Book Review.