What Does It All Matter When You Are Alone In Edfu?
Let The Antiquarian Go With His Anxious Nose Almost Touching The
Stone; Let The Egyptologist Peer Through His Glasses At Hieroglyphs
And Puzzle Out The Meaning Of Cartouches:
But let us wander at ease,
and worship and regard the exquisite form, and drink in the mystical
spirit, of this very wonderful temple.
Do you care about form? Here you will find it in absolute perfection.
Edfu is the consecration of form. In proportion it is supreme above
all other Egyptian temples. Its beauty of form is like the chiselled
loveliness of a perfect sonnet. While the world lasts, no architect
can arise to create a building more satisfying, more calm with the
calm of faultlessness, more serene with a just serenity. Or so it
seems to me. I think of the most lovely buildings I know in Europe - of
the Alhambra at Granada, of the Cappella Palatina in the palace at
Palermo. And Edfu I place with them - Edfu utterly different from them,
more different, perhaps, even than they are from each other, but akin
to them, as all great beauty is mysteriously akin. I have spent
morning after morning in the Alhambra, and many and many an hour in
the Cappella Palatina; and never have I been weary of either, or
longed to go away. And this same sweet desire to stay came over me in
Edfu. The /Loulia/ was tied up by the high bank of the Nile. The
sailors were glad to rest. There was no steamer sounding its hideous
siren to call me to its crowded deck. So I yielded to my desire, and
for long I stayed in Edfu. And when at last I left it I said to
myself, "This is a supreme thing," and I knew that within me had
suddenly developed the curious passion for buildings that some people
never feel, and that others feel ever growing and growing.
Yes, Edfu is supreme. No alteration could improve it. Any change made
in it, however slight, could only be harmful to it. Pure and perfect
is its design - broad propylon, great open courtyard with pillared
galleries, halls, chambers, sanctuary. Its dignity and its sobriety
are matchless. I know they must be, because they touched me so
strangely, with a kind of reticent enchantment, and I am not by nature
enamored of sobriety, of reticence and calm, but am inclined to
delight in almost violent force, in brilliance, and, especially, in
combinations of color. In the Alhambra one finds both force and
fairylike lightness, delicious proportions, delicate fantasy, a spell
as of subtle magicians; in the Cappella Palatina, a jeweled splendor,
combined with a small perfection of form which simply captivates the
whole spirit and leads it to adoration. In Edfu you are face to face
with hugeness and with grandeur; but soon you are scarcely aware of
either - in the sense, at least, that connects these qualities with a
certain overwhelming, almost striking down, of the spirit and the
faculties. What you are aware of is your own immense and beautiful
calm of utter satisfaction - a calm which has quietly inundated you,
like a waveless tide of the sea. How rare it is to feel this absolute
satisfaction, this praising serenity! The critical spirit goes, like a
bird from an opened window. The excited, laudatory, voluble spirit
goes. And this splendid calm is left. If you stay here, you, as this
temple has been, will be molded into a beautiful sobriety. From the
top of the pylon you have received this still and glorious impression
from the matchless design of the whole building, which you see best
from there. When you descend the shallow staircase, when you stand in
the great court, when you go into the shadowy halls, then it is that
the utter satisfaction within you deepens. Then it is that you feel
the need to worship in this place created for worship.
The ancient Egyptians made most of their temples in conformity with a
single type. The sanctuary was at the heart, the core, of each temple
- the sanctuary surrounded by the chambers in which were laid up the
precious objects connected with ceremonies and sacrifices. Leading to
this core of the temple, which was sometimes called "the divine
house," were various halls the roofs of which were supported by
columns - those hypostyle halls which one sees perpetually in Egypt.
Before the first of these halls was a courtyard surrounded by a
colonnade. In the courtyard the priests of the temple assembled. The
people were allowed to enter the colonnade. A gateway with towers gave
entrance to the courtyard. If one visits many of the Egyptian temples,
one soon becomes aware of the subtlety, combined with a sort of high
simplicity and sense of mystery and poetry, of these builders of the
past. As a great writer leads one on, with a concealed but beautiful
art, from the first words to which all the other words are ministering
servants; as the great musician - Wagner in his "Meistersinger," for
instance - leads one from the first notes of his score to those final
notes which magnificently reveal to the listeners the real meaning of
those first notes, and of all the notes which follow them: so the
Egyptian builders lead the spirit gently, mysteriously forward from
the gateway between the towers to the distant house divine. When one
enters the outer court, one feels the far-off sanctuary. Almost
unconsciously one is aware that for that sanctuary all the rest of the
temple was created; that to that sanctuary everything tends. And in
spirit one is drawn softly onward to that very holy place. Slowly,
perhaps, the body moves from courtyard to hypostyle hall, and from one
hall to another. Hieroglyphs are examined, cartouches puzzled out,
paintings of processions, or bas-reliefs of pastimes and of
sacrifices, looked at with care and interest; but all the time one has
the sense of waiting, of a want unsatisfied.
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