On the stage step forth two figures: the lamp-glare sharpens and deforms them. A man, stout and short, clad in black broadcloth with a wide purple sash and linen that is green in the electric glare: he carries a guitar. A woman, slender and tall: her black _mantón_ is like a subtle fur over the angular brightness of her shoulders. She wears a large _sombrero ancho_, black as the two black eyes in her white face. They stand within the night, within the crowd. The man takes a chair: the woman remains isolate beside him. The man’s hands brush the strings of his guitar. The woman’s mouth opens, and her breast rises. Under the laced clamor of the crowd she sings unheard--under the silent night.... A note, hard like silver, high and sharp as an arrow, rises above the clamor and is heard. Far up, it soars, surrounded by the stars. It falls. And as it falls, reaching the crowd, it links itself within the vast confusion. This rough-hewn Spain falls along with the note: is drawn by it down to the naked stage, down to the red mouth of the singing woman. The crowd is transfigured. The woman’s voice fades into rest, within an utter silence. The hand of the guitarist is not lean: yet his fingers make a murmur like a breeze: clear in the silence is the music’s breathing. The music has conquered: it is the night’s silence, speaking; the night’s quiet, moving. The woman’s body stands rigid, her heels beat a tattoo of subtle restraining: her voice is confident and exultant. Burden heavy with ages of flesh, bright with ages of dream. Plaint of spirit, rush of blood miraculously woven. A body in dance, rigid as a column; a voice in song, light and swift as a bird. Many Orients are here. In the form, a slender mystic draughtsmanship--Byzantine; a clamor of soul, a submissiveness of body with all its sweetness and its joys merged in the ecstasy of an ideal--Jewish; an intensive thrust, lean, fierce, hunting--Arab. Rising like revelation from the Córdoban Plaza, this Andalusian song of many wills becomes the drama of Spain. The woman’s body scarcely moves. Even as she circles the stage, her arms slowly rising and falling, her heels in periodic showers of sharp strokes, it is as if she did not move: rather the stage, rather the Ring and the crowd move than this plastic fixity of dance. Torment, passion, vision, ruthlessly compress in a thin body.