Yes, One Can Forget Even Now In The Hall Of The Temple Of Isis, Where
The Capricious Graces Of Color, Where, Like Old And Delicious Music In
The Golden Strings Of A Harp, Dwells A Something - What Is It?
A
murmur, or a perfume, or a breathing?
- Of old and vanished years when
forsaken gods were worshipped. And one can forget in the chapel of
Hathor, on whose wall little Horus is born, and in the grey hounds'
chapel beside it. One can forget, for one walks in beauty.
Lovely are the doorways in Philae, enticing are the shallow steps that
lead one onward and upward; gracious the yellow towers that seem to
smile a quiet welcome. And there is one chamber that is simply a place
of magic - the hall of the flowers.
It is this chamber which always makes me think of Philae as a lovely
temple of dreams, this silent, retired chamber, where some fabled
princess might well have been touched to a long, long sleep of
enchantment, and lain for years upon years among the magical flowers -
the lotus, and the palm, and the papyrus.
In my youth it made upon me an indelible impression. Through
intervening years, filled with many new impressions, many wanderings,
many visions of beauty in other lands, that retired, painted chamber
had not faded from my mind - or shall I say from my heart? There had
seemed to me within it something that was ineffable, as in a lyric of
Shelley's there is something that is ineffable, or in certain pictures
of Boecklin, such as "The Villa by the Sea." And when at last, almost
afraid and hesitating, I came into it once more, I found in it again
the strange spell of old enchantment.
It seems as if this chamber had been imagined by a poet, who had set
it in the centre of the temple of his dreams. It is such a spontaneous
chamber that one can scarcely imagine it more than a day and a night
in the building. Yet in detail it is lovely; it is finished and
strangely mighty; it is a lyric in stone, the most poetical chamber,
perhaps, in the whole of Egypt. For Philae I count in Egypt, though
really it is in Nubia.
One who has not seen Philae may perhaps wonder how a tall chamber of
solid stone, containing heavy and soaring columns, can be like a lyric
of Shelley's, can be exquisitely spontaneous, and yet hold a something
of mystery that makes one tread softly in it, and fear to disturb
within it some lovely sleeper of Nubia, some Princess of the Nile. He
must continue to wonder. To describe this chamber calmly, as I might,
for instance, describe the temple of Derr, would be simply to destroy
it. For things ineffable cannot be fully explained, or not be fully
felt by those the twilight of whose dreams is fitted to mingle with
their twilight. They who are meant to love with ardor /se passionnent
pour la passion/. And they who are meant to take and to keep the
spirit of a dream, whether it be hidden in a poem, or held in the cup
of a flower, or enfolded in arms of stone, will surely never miss it,
even though they can hear roaring loudly above its elfin voice the cry
of directed waters rushing down to Upper Egypt.
How can one disentangle from their tapestry web the different threads
of a spell? And even if one could, if one could hold them up, and
explain, "The cause of the spell is that this comes in contact with
this, and that this, which I show you, blends with, fades into, this,"
how could it advantage any one? Nothing could be made clearer, nothing
be really explained. The ineffable is, and must ever remain, something
remote and mysterious.
And so one may say many things of this painted chamber of Philae, and
yet never convey, perhaps never really know, the innermost cause of
its charm. In it there is obvious beauty of form, and a seizing beauty
of color, beauty of sunlight and shadow, of antique association. This
turquoise blue is enchanting, and Isis was worshipped here. What has
the one to do with the other? Nothing; and yet how much! For is not
each of these facts a thread in the tapestry web of the spell? The
eyes see the rapture of this very perfect blue. The imagination hears,
as if very far off, the solemn chanting of priests and smells the
smoke of strange perfumes, and sees the long, aquiline nose and the
thin, haughty lips of the goddess. And the color becomes strange to
the eyes as well as very lovely, because, perhaps, it was there - it
almost certainly was there - when from Constantinople went forth the
decree that all Egypt should be Christian; when the priests of the
sacred brotherhood of Isis were driven from their temple.
Isis nursing Horus gave way to the Virgin and the Child. But the
cycles spin away down "the ringing grooves of change." From Egypt has
passed away that decreed Christianity. Now from the minaret the
muezzin cries, and in palm-shaded villages I hear the loud hymns of
earnest pilgrims starting on the journey to Mecca. And ever this
painted chamber shelters its mystery of poetry, its mystery of charm.
And still its marvellous colors are fresh as in the far-off pagan
days, and the opening lotus-flowers, and the closed lotus-buds, and
the palm and the papyrus, are on the perfect columns. And their
intrinsic loveliness, and their freshness, and their age, and the
mysteries they have looked on - all these facts are part of the spell
that governs us to-day. In Edfu one is enclosed in a wonderful
austerity. And one can only worship. In Philae one is wrapped in a
radiance of color and one can only dream. For there is coral-pink, and
there a wonderful green, "like the green light that lingers in the
west," and there is a blue as deep as the blue of a tropical sea; and
there are green-blue and lustrous, ardent red.
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