»My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal« William Shakespeare, As You Like It    "Cape Cinetico, dipped in starry light, rises to proud heights. Wealthy Europe's outermost point heaves itself up from the salty waters of an ocean populated by monsters", is how Rufius Festus Avienus in the 4th century describes this promontorium sanctum, the "holy promontory" of the world. Onto this nocturnal resting place of the gods of antiquity, in a small boat guided by two ravens, the corpse of Vincent of Saragossa is washed ashore and henceforth, gives a new name to this ancient sanctuary: Cabo de Sao Vicente. The body is taken to Lisbon where he is made the patron saint of Portugal. The ravens remain. "Tarf el Gorab", "Cape of the Ravens" was the name Arabs also called the westernmost tip of the continent - the rock-finger battered by two oceans, stretched out into nothing but infinity. And no divine finger counterpointing as in the Sistine Chapel. Then, towards the south, the "Bay of Portugal", and then the rocky tongue of Sarges - the ancient sanctuary of the titanic god Saturn, father of Zeus: "Sacra Saturni". From this myth to the word "Sarges" is, at least language-wise, only a tiny step. A fortress since the days of the Infante Dom Henrique (Henry the Navigator), who founds a city here in the first half of the 15th century and gathers around him scientists, astronomers and navigators so that he is able to reach out, with their help, into the unknown. Nothing left of that, everything destroyed by Francis Drake in 1587 and by the great earthquake of 1755. A few walls, some houses in a row, a chapel, a sun-dial, and that Wind-rose, 43m in diameter: an enigma still today because it is divided into 42 rather than the usual 32 segments. What sort of net was cast from here out of the known world into the unknown? And who calculated the density of the meshes? How? Was this place the all-determining point of reference: the workshop for the astrolabe with which, as a blind man's stick, they dared to venture forth into the doubted Nothingness, and whose secret they jealously and anxiously protected under the oath of the Christian Knights, those descendents of the Knights Templar, the Order to which they all belonged and whose grand master Dom Henrique was. Nothing left of that, but the land is there - the location, the place, the "Porta de Sarges", the "bridge of the sanctuary", better, the bridgehead jutting out over the edge of a world. Shaped like an open fissured right hand whose fingers piece by piece, joint by joint, were gnawed away by storms and seas until only the palm remained - still licked and fed upon by the waters, insatiable, as if all land and with it all that was put, thought, and created on it should be devoured - erased by rhythm - by the great breath of nature. Surrounded in varying shades of blues melting upwards, downwards. There is no above, no below under this sun on this outstretched fingerless hand, the underside of which had long been hollowed out with innumerable grottoes; through which the sea screams, moans, roars, wails - darkly calling - and, now and then, in the shifting of tides, shoots fountains towards the sky as if a thousand whales were groaning under far too heavy a load. But the bare white stone! Walking along this plate's rim, as though nothing else ever existed but the constantly changing play of colours from light and water, sky. Suddenly rainbows, two - three, in the direction of Africa. Sea-air and wind. There where the thumb was of the open rock-hand, the eye now follows the ravens to their Cape where Europe's lighthouse rises out of the former altar place of St. Vincent's monastery to scratch the night with its lamplight - 90.000 meters deep. In between, that "Bay of Portugal", whose "unknown bottom" Shakespeare's Rosalind turns into a metaphor for her love. How fascinating Francis Drake's report on this holy place must have been to find its way as the image of love into the work of the greatest poet who was a contemporary of the ravager. Now, fishermen like spiders cling to the high walls of the rocks and when, with their threads that stand like long silver needles over the water, they snatch up their catch out of the surf, it seems to fly towards the sun flickering, like distant shimmering planets. Franz Winter « zurück