As I Went On Slowly, The Perfection Of The Plan Of The Dead Architects Was Gradually Revealed To Me, When

The darkness gave up its secrets; when I saw not clearly, but dimly, the long way between the columns, the

Noble columns themselves, the gradual, slight upward slope - graduated by genius; there is no other word - which led to the sanctuary, seen at last as a little darkness, in which all the mystery of worship, and of the silent desires of men, was surely concentrated, and kept by the stone for ever. Even the succession of the darknesses, like shadows growing deeper and deeper, seemed planned by some great artist in the management of light, and so of shadow effects. The perfection of form is in Edfu, impossible to describe, impossible not to feel. The tremendous effect it has - an effect upon the soul - is created by a combination of shapes, of proportions, of different levels, of different heights, by consummate graduation. And these shapes, proportions, different levels, and heights, are seen in dimness. Not that jewelled dimness one loves in Gothic cathedrals, but the heavy dimness of windowless, mighty chambers lighted only by a rebuked daylight ever trying to steal in. One is captured by no ornament, seduced by no lovely colors. Better than any ornament, greater than any radiant glory of color, is this massive austerity. It is like the ultimate in an art. Everything has been tried, every strangeness /bizarrerie/, absurdity, every wild scheme of hues, every preposterous subject - to take an extreme instance, a camel, wearing a top-hat, and lighted up by fire-works, which I saw recently in a picture-gallery of Munich. And at the end a genius paints a portrait of a wrinkled old woman's face, and the world regards and worships. Or all discords have been flung together pell-mell, resolution of them has been deferred perpetually, perhaps even denied altogether, chord of B major has been struck with C major, works have closed upon the leading note or the dominant seventh, symphonies have been composed to be played in the dark, or to be accompanied by a magic-lantern's efforts, operas been produced which are merely carnage and a row - and at the end a genius writes a little song, and the world gives the tribute of its breathless silence and its tears. And it knows that though other things may be done, better things can never be done. For no perfection can exceed any other perfection.

And so in Edfu I feel that this untinted austerity is perfect; that whatever may be done in architecture during future ages of the world, Edfu, while it lasts, will remain a thing supreme - supreme in form and, because of this supremacy, supreme in the spell which it casts upon the soul.

The sanctuary is just a small, beautifully proportioned, inmost chamber, with a black roof, containing a sort of altar of granite, and a great polished granite shrine which no doubt once contained the god Horus.

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