A night wondrously clear and of a colour unknown to our climate; a
place of dreamlike aspect, fraught with mystery. The moon of a bright
silver, which dazzles by its shining, illumines a world which surely
is no longer ours; for it resembles in nothing what may be seen in
other lands. A world in which everything is suffused with rosy color
beneath the stars of midnight, and where granite symbols rise up,
ghostlike and motionless.
Is that a hill of sand that rises yonder? One can scarcely tell, for
it has as it were no shape, no outline; rather it seems like a great
rosy cloud, or some huge, trembling billow, which once perhaps raised
itself there, forthwith to become motionless for ever. . . . And from
out this kind of mummified wave a colossal human effigy emerges, rose-
coloured too, a nameless, elusive rose; emerges, and stares with fixed
eyes and smiles. It is so huge it seems unreal, as if it were a
reflection cast by some mirror hidden in the moon. . . . And behind
this monster face, far away in the rear, on the top of those undefined
and gently undulating sandhills, three apocalyptic signs rise up
against the sky, those rose-coloured triangles, regular as the figures
of geometry, but so vast in the distance that they inspire you with
fear. They seem to be luminous of themselves, so vividly do they stand
out in their clear rose against the deep blue of the star-spangled
vault. And this apparent radiation from within, by its lack of
likelihood, makes them seem more awful.
And all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of
sand. Nothing else is to be seen anywhere save those three awful
things that stand there upright and still - the human likeness
magnified beyond all measurement, and the three geometric mountains;
things at first sight like exhalations, visionary things, with
nevertheless here and there, and most of all in the features of the
vast mute face, subtleties of shadow which show that /it/ at least
exists, rigid and immovable, fashioned out of imperishable stone.
Even had we not known, we must soon have guessed, for these things are
unique in the world, and pictures of every age have made the knowledge
of them commonplace: the Sphinx and the Pyramids! But what is strange
is that they should be so disquieting. . . . And this pervading colour
of rose, whence comes it, seeing that usually the moon tints with blue
the things it illumines? One would not expect this colour either,
which, nevertheless, is that of all the sands and all the granites of
Egypt and Arabia. And then too, the eyes of the statue, how often have
we not seen them? And did we not know that they were capable only of
their one fixed stare? Why is it then that their motionless regard
surprises and chills us, even while we are obsessed by the smile of
the sealed lips that seem to hold back the answer to the supreme
enigma?
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