The Gaudí Key by Esteban Martín and Andreu Carranza (Morrow, 2008; Harper pbk, 2009)
Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo
When Catalan modernist architect Antonio Gaudí died in 1926, not only did he leave his Sagrada Família, a cathedral of vast scope, design and symbolism, unfinished; a labyrinthine trail of imagery, allusions and historical references remains for admirers of his peculiar rendering of neo-gothic style to decipher. Gaudí reviled Renaissance ideals of symmetry and regularity. Gothic religious architecture was conceived to be a mirror of the cosmos, as well as a book of stone meant to be read by the faithful. Messages conveyed in stone directed worshippers to truths too precious to be laid bare before the blind, ignorant or blatantly evil. Elaborate weavings of ancient myth and legend, classical philosophy, medieval theology, zoology, nature and occult mysticism might appear within Christian narratives set in stone. Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece contains all of these and more. Scholars and aesthetic detectives will continue to conjecture, theorize, project and, of course, argue amongst themselves while, ultimately, Gaudí’s work resists definitive interpretation.
Gaudí’s fierce defense of his Catalan heritage and traditional Catalan styles anchors his work. From Moorish and oriental motifs, European art nouveau and ideas promoted by architects at home and abroad (e.g., 19th-century French architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc), Gaudí absorbed a prodigious number of influences. He filtered these through his personal, essentially medieval Christian worldview to construct buildings mirroring God’s creation; his aim, to become God’s architect on earth. Certainly, a lofty goal but this giant of an artist was a simple man. Dressing like a pauper, living in his studio, toiling with few breaks and even fewer conveniences, Gaudí dedicated his life to his work and, in his later years, his work to his God.
For readers eager for an exhilarating (and exhausting) ride through Gaudí’s Barcelona, a good place to start is Esteban Martín and Andreu Carranza hair-raising thriller, The Gaudí Key. The authors have made fiction a cauldron in which they stir a heady mixture of fact, fantasy, history and mystery. Although most reviewers have compared The Gaudí Key to Dan Brown’s 2003 blockbuster, The Da Vinci Code, it seems more accurate to place it with Catalan author Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s work. Like Angel’s Game, Zafón’s follow-up to his outstanding Shadow of the Wind, The Gaudí Key is a bit too ambitious. At times, multiple plots spin off, diverting the pace. Still, fascinating considerations of, for example, the Catalan Renaixença, Zeno’s Paradoxes, the Garden of Hesperides, suiseka (the Japanese art of stones), fractal mathematics, ancient Christian societies and an elusive alchemist known as Fulcanelli provide the novel’s high points. The places at which Gaudí’s life merges with these discourses might cause eyebrows to raise and heart rates to rise; in the instance of Fulcanelli, the alchemist disappeared in 1926, the year Gaudí died, and during her childhood María, the main character, read one of Fulcanelli’s critical works, Le Mystère des Cathédrales (The Mystery of the Cathedrals), published in Paris in–you guessed it–1926.
Adept at layering recurring symbols, Martín and Carranza orchestrate echoes that will leave many readers incredulous at Gaudí’s genius. Numerical symbols include the number seven (knights, Greek letters, riddles, buildings). Other types of imagery pop up time and again: animals (tortoises, pelicans); flowers and plants (sunflowers and mushrooms); shapes (circles, squares, stars, crosses, pentagrams), fairy tales (breadcrumb trails, enchanted houses) and maps (Barcelona, Ursa Major, one on María’s skin). As with Gaudí’s cathedral, this trove of sign and symbol masks a simple idea. Martín and Carranza suggest that, as guardian of Christ’s cornerstone, Gaudí was murdered rather than victim of a streetcar accident. Committed by the Corbel, the name of an evil society (as well as an architectural term), represented on the facade of Sagrada Família by a demon holding a bomb, the murder has been repeated 80 years later with the death of Gaudí’s now elderly apprentice. Next in line is the apprentice’s granddaughter, María. She and her lover, Miguel, have six days (echoing the six directions and six days in which God created the world) to find the place where Gaudí hid the 300-year-old relic. Between gruesome murders, María and Miguel accept their destiny as saviors of Christendom and life partners.
The English-language translation of the original, written in Catalan, lacks Gaudí’s flourish, but competently propels the many narrative threads. More felicitous, descriptions of seven Gaudí projects holding clues for María–Casa Vicens, Parc Güell, Sagrada Família, La Pedrera, Casa Batlló, Casa Calvet and Palacio Güell–have force and clarity. If not entirely successful as a thriller, The Gaudí Key succeeds as a bow to a gifted son of cauldron-makers whose vessels of stone contain mystical worlds yet to be revealed. By suspending disbelief, readers will be enthralled as they are caught in Martín and Carranza’s intricate gothic web.
