Dear Pietpiraat,
One year ago I was looking for a novel, these sort novels -short stories- for reading while traveling, you know, waiting bus, relaxing on the sun and the like. Finally I chose Edgar Allan Poe and one of these booklets including short and shocked stories. The first one, titled Morella, was a dark romanticism one around the scene of the horror genre. Publication year was in 1835. I do not know the reason however I did follow an idea up: was there any place called Morella? What happened in this year?. And I found it out!!!
Maestrex Experience
Where in the world? So I am here in Spain out of the Spanish stereotype world of sun, sand and sangria. A stone-built town Morella lies at crossroads between the Ebro Valley and the Mediterranean. It is a shimmering castle sprawling out of centuries of history that makes you catch your breath in wonderment.
Though other places get much of the fairytale glory, for the intrepid traveller Morellas’s romanticism offers the set for hundred tales capturing the spirit of the country’s epic historical past: one of the main was The Carlist war and the Tiger of Maestrazgo in 1835. And now I am lost in tales and streets and my steps diverge and converge like labyrinth spiral.
Poe explores the idea of what happens to identity after death, suggesting that if identity survived death it could exist outside the human body and return to new bodies. When the tour guides desappear and I sit down alone at the San Miguel doorway, the gate’s ghost guard whispers in my ear names of died people: Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar – El Cid, The King James I, Francesc of Vinatea, Baron de Herbers, and the called
goldsmiths, falconers, silversmiths, sculptors, weavers, merchants, warriors. Have they returned to new bodies?
Maestrex Experience
My gaze is drawn upward to the castle, dominating a rocky outcrop. Its quiet streets rise steeply from the wall, snaking along the contours of its narrow perch and rising to a summit where castle and church stand sentinel like icons, and I see a man over there, taking notes. Maybe he is the new body of Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Younger -his uncle Pliny The Elder died attempting to rescue victims of the Vesuvius eruption- and he is now recording, again, the settlement as centuries ago.
Maestrex Experience
A walk through Morella’s romantic shadows offers so much more than a pleasant trip of shopping. It is a bastion of delicate pleasures and devil’s whispers while the isolated backcountry of El Maestrazgo is truly one of Spain’s most delightfully forgotten corners.
interesting web site about Morella
Ignacio Terés (Maestrex Experience)
