La Casa de Antonio Machado

We've all seen it on the entertainment channel, the glamorous lives of celebrities with their 2,000 square foot homes and their Infinity swimming pools to match. Just watching them walk with chihuahuas in their designer purses and expensive shades over their eyes, we can imagine the fairytale life that they lead. Even of our own idols who are famous, we seem to dream up a magnificent portrait of how they might live. And although it might not involve limousines and butlers, to us, it still represents something unreal. My freshman year of college, I took a Spanish course called 2oth Century Peninsular Literature, where I read the works of Spain's most acclaimed poets and prose writers. And because I want to be a writer myself, these distinguished authors seemed to me a different breed of human, and I could only imagine how they lived their lives. Until today.



This afternoon after comida, we went as a group to visit the house of Antonio Machado, a very talented poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98. Although he was born in Sevilla, he moved to Segovia, where he spent twelve years, in 1919 to teach French at the Instituto de Segovia. As we walked in the rain down the hill in a slippery alley, I expected to arrive at a well-maintained mansion, but we arrived instead to a small five-bedroom pension, where the great writer Machado spent twelve years of his writing career.

Maintained in its early twentieth century condition, we started our tour in the kitchen of the house equipped with cast iron appliances so heavy they could kill a man. In the corner sat a smooth brown rock on top of a wooden stand that was used to pound meat. And hanging from the overhang above the stove were thin wedges of newspaper clippings that critiqued and praised republican Spain. On to the kitchen, we saw a simple dining table decorated with velvety purple flowers and a gold campanita, that would sound its shrill ring when the meal was ready. In what used to be other guest rooms rested cases of Machado originals beneath old photographs and paintings of the poet and his lovers. The final room, just as simple as the rest, was the poet's bedroom, in the same state he left it seventy one years ago. A small bed and a nightstand took up the space on the left, while a table of manuscripts that circled an ashtray on the right gave the impression that someone had been diligently working just minutes before.

On our way out we signed a guest book whose blank pages stared me in the face, taunting my inability to come up with the words I wanted to say. There was nothing magnificent in the house, nothing inspirational that caught my eye, and not one thing took my breath away; it was old, but it was normal. And that's when I realized, that no matter what one achieves or how famous one is, in the grand scheme of things, we are all just regular people living regular lives. In order to be a great writer, you don't need a beautiful house or beautiful things, all you need, is a beautiful mind.