But When I See
That Almost Airy Loveliness Of Stone, So Simply Elegant, So, Somehow,
Spring-Like In Its Pale-Colored Beauty, Its Happy, Daffodil Charm,
With Its Touch Of The Greek - The Sensitive Hand From Attica Stretched
Out Over Nubia - I Always Think Of Shelley.
I think of Shelley the
youth who dived down into the pool so deep that it seemed he was lost
for ever to the sun.
I think of Shelley the poet, full of a lyric
ecstasy, who was himself like an embodied
"Longing for something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow."
Lyrical Philae is like a temple of dreams, and of all poets Shelley
might have dreamed the dream and have told it to the world in a song.
For all its solidity, there are a strange lightness and grace in the
temple of Philae; there is an elegance you will not find in the other
temples of Egypt. But it is an elegance quite undefiled by weakness,
by any sentimentality. (Even a building, like a love-lorn maid, can be
sentimental.) Edward FitzGerald once defined taste as the feminine of
genius. Taste prevails in Philae, a certain delicious femininity that
seduces the eyes and the heart of man. Shall we call it the spirit of
Isis?
I have heard a clever critic and antiquarian declare that he is not
very fond of Philae; that he feels a certain "spuriousness" in the
temple due to the mingling of Greek with Egyptian influences. He may
be right.
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