“PHARAOH’S BED”
“Pharaoh’s Bed,” which stands alone close to the Nile on the eastern
side of the island, is not one of those rugged, majestic buildings, full
of grandeur and splendor, which can bear, can “carry off,” as it were,
a cruelly imposed ugliness without being affected as a whole. It is, on
the contrary, a small, almost an airy, and a femininely perfect thing,
in which a singular loveliness of form was combined with a singular
loveliness of color. The spell it threw over you was not so much a spell
woven of details as a spell woven of divine uniformity. To put it in
very practical language, “Pharaoh’s Bed” was “all of a piece.” The form
was married to the color. The color seemed to melt into the form. It was
indeed a bed in which the soul that worships beauty could rest happily
entranced. Nothing jarred. Antiquaries say that apparently this building
was left unfinished. That may be so. But for all that it was one of the
most finished things in Egypt, essentially a thing to inspire within one
the “perfect calm that is Greek.” The blighting touch of the Nile, which
has changed the beautiful pale yellow of the stone of the lower part
of the building to a hideous and dreary grey--which made me think of
a steel knife on which liquid has been spilt and allowed to run--has
destroyed the uniformity, the balance, the faultless melody lifted up by
form and color. And so it is with the temple. It is, as it were, cut in
two by the intrusion into it of this hideous, mottled complexion left by
the receded water. Everywhere one sees disease on the walls and columns,
almost blotting out bas-reliefs, giving to their active figures a
morbid, a sickly look. The effect is specially distressing in the open
court that precedes the temple dedicated to the Lady of Philae. In this
court, which is at the southern end of the island, the Nile at certain
seasons is now forced to rise very nearly as high as the capitals of
many of the columns. The consequence of this is that here the disease
seems making rapid strides. One feels it is drawing near to the heart,
and that the poor, doomed invalid may collapse at any moment.
Yes, there is much to make one sad at Philae. But how much of pure
beauty there is left--of beauty that merely protests against any further
outrage!
As there is something epic in the grandeur of the Lotus Hall at Karnak,
so there is something lyrical in the soft charm of the Philae temple.
Certain things or places, certain things in certain places, always
suggest to my mind certain people in whose genius I take delight--who
have won me, and moved me by their art. Whenever I go to Philae, the
name of Shelley comes to me. I scarcely could tell why. I have no
special reason to connect Shelley with Philae. 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. I
am no antiquarian, and, as a mere lover of beauty, I do not feel this
“spuriousness.” I can see neither two quarrelling strengths nor any
weakness caused by division. I suppose I see only the beauty, as I might
see only the beauty of a women bred of a handsome father and mother
of different races, and who, not typical of either, combined in her
features and figure distinguishing merits of both. It is true that there
is a particular pleasure which is roused in us only by the absolutely
typical--the completely thoroughbred person or thing. It may be a
pleasure not caused by beauty, and it may be very keen, nevertheless.
When it is combined with the joy roused in us by all beauty, it is a
very pure emotion of exceptional delight. Philae does not, perhaps, give
this emotion. But it certainly has a lovableness that attaches the heart
in a quite singular degree. The Philae-lover is the most faithful of
lovers. The hold of his mistress upon him, once it has been felt, is
never relaxed. And in his affection for Philae there is, I think, nearly
always a rainbow strain of romance.
When we love anything, we love to be able to say of the object of our
devotion, “There is nothing like it.” Now, in all Egypt, and I suppose
in all the world there is nothing just like Philae. There are temples,
yes; but where else is there a bouquet of gracious buildings such as
these gathered in such a holder as this tiny, raft-like isle? And
where else are just such delicate and, as I have said, light and almost
feminine elegance and charm set in the midst of such severe sterility?
Once, beyond Philae, the great Cataract roared down from the wastes of
Nubia into the green fertility of Upper Egypt. It roars no longer. But
still the masses of the rocks, and still the amber and the yellow sands,
and still the iron-colored hills, keep guard round Philae. And still,
despite the vulgar desecration that has turned Shellal into a workmen’s
suburb and dowered it with a railway-station, there is a mystery in
Philae, and the sense of isolation that only an island gives. Even now
one can forget in Philae--forget, after a while, and in certain parts of
its buildings, the presence of the grey disease; forget the threatening
of the altruists, who desire to benefit humanity by clearing as much
beauty out of humanity’s abiding-place as possible; forget the fact of
the railway, except when the shriek of the engine floats over the water
to one’s ears; forget economic problems, and the destruction that their
solving brings upon the silent world of things whose “use,” denied,
unrecognized, or laughed at, to man is in their holy beauty, whose
mission lies not upon the broad highways where tramps the hungry body,
but upon the secret, shadowy byways where glides the hungry soul.
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. And the
odd fantasy in the coloring, is not that like the fantasy in the temple
of a dream? For those who painted these capitals for the greater glory
of Isis did not fear to depart from nature, and to their patient worship
a blue palm perhaps seemed a rarely sacred thing. And that palm is part
of the spell, and the reliefs upon the walls and even the Coptic crosses
that are cut into the stone.
But at the end, one can only say that this place is indescribable, and
not because it is complex or terrifically grand, like Karnak. Go to it
on a sunlit morning, or stand in it in late afternoon, and perhaps you
will feel that it “suggests” you, and that it carries you away, out of
familiar regions into a land of dreams, where among hidden ways the soul
is lost in magic. Yes, you are gone.
To the right--for one, alas! cannot live in a dream for ever--is a
lovely doorway through which one sees the river. Facing it is another
doorway, showing a fragment of the poor, vivisected island, some ruined
walls, and still another doorway in which, again, is framed the Nile.
Many people have cut their names upon the walls of Philae. Once, as I
sat alone there, I felt strongly attracted to look upward to a wall, as
if some personality, enshrined within the stone, were watching me, or
calling. I looked, and saw written “Balzac.”
Philae is the last temple that one visits before he gives himself to the
wildness of the solitudes of Nubia. It stands at the very frontier. As
one goes up the Nile, it is like a smiling adieu from the Egypt one
is leaving. As one comes down, it is like a smiling welcome. In its
delicate charm I feel something of the charm of the Egyptian character.
There are moments, indeed, when I identify Egypt with Philae. For in
Philae one must dream; and on the Nile, too, one must dream. And always
the dream is happy, and shot through with radiant light--light that is
as radiant as the colors in Philae’s temple. The pylons of Ptolemy smile
at you as you go up or come down the river. And the people of Egypt
smile as they enter into your dream. A suavity, too, is theirs. I think
of them often as artists, who know their parts in the dream-play, who
know exactly their function, and how to fulfil it rightly. They sing,
while you are dreaming, but it is an under-song, like the murmur of an
Eastern river far off from any sea. It never disturbs, this music, but
it helps you in your dream. And they are softly gay. And in their eyes
there is often the gleam of sunshine, for they are the children--but not
grown men--of the sun. That, indeed, is one of the many strange things
in Egypt--the youthfulness of its age, the childlikeness of its almost
terrible antiquity. One goes there to look at the oldest things in the
world and to feel perpetually young--young as Philae is young, as a
lyric of Shelley’s is young, as all of our day-dreams are young, as the
people of Egypt are young.
Oh, that Egypt could be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philae
could be preserved even as it is now! The spoilers are there,
those blithe modern spirits, so frightfully clever and capable, so
industrious, so determined, so unsparing of themselves and--of others!
Already they are at work “benefiting Egypt.” Tall chimneys begin to
vomit smoke along the Nile. A damnable tram-line for little trolleys
leads one toward the wonderful colossi of Memnon. Close to Kom Ombos
some soul imbued with romance has had the inspiration to set up--a
factory! And Philae--is it to go?
Is beauty then of no value in the world? Is it always to be the prey of
modern progress? Is nothing to be considered sacred; nothing to be left
untouched, unsmirched by the grimy fingers of improvement? I suppose
nothing.
Then let those who still care to dream go now to Philae’s painted
chamber by the long reaches of the Nile; go on, if they will, to the
giant forms of Abu-Simbel among the Nubian sands. And perhaps they will
think with me, that in some dreams there is a value greater than the
value that is entered in any bank-book, and they will say, with me,
however uselessly:
“Leave to the world some dreams, some places in which to dream; for if
it needs dams to make the grain grow in the stretches of land that were
barren, and railways and tram-lines, and factory chimneys that vomit
black smoke in the face of the sun, surely it needs also painted
chambers of Philae and the silence that comes down from Isis.”