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.
