Algernon Blackwood

“ The modern mind, no longer terrified by Speed, to which it has grown contemptuously accustomed, yet shrinks a little before this display of titanic and bewildering size. Egypt makes it realise that it has no handy standard of measurement. It listens to words that are meaningless. The vast proportions uplift, then stupefy. The girth of the Pyramids, the height of the Colossi, the cubic content of the granite columns and the visage of the Sphinx expressed in yards⁠—these convey as little truth as the numbered leagues of the frightening desert or the length of that weary and interminable Nile. ”

“ From the first few months in Egypt, saturated maybe with overmuch, the mind recalls with definiteness⁠—nothing. There comes to its summons a colossal medley that half stupefies: vast reaches of yellow sand drenched in a sunlight that stings; dim, solemn aisles of granite silence; stupendous monoliths that stare unblinking at the sun; the shining river, licking softly at the lips of a murderous desert; and an enormous night-sky literally drowned in stars. A score of temples melt down into a single monster; the Nile spreads everywhere; great pyramids float across the sky like clouds ”

“ As though in this coaxing heat of climate, in this rich glory of a past now being unearthed from day to day, and in this brilliant, vivid quality of its present personality, so oddly stimulating, there lies some quality that acts with the effect of a forcing-house upon the character, bringing out latent possibilities, hurrying on events, developing a rush of life too swift for comfort or full understanding. Certainly no one can see Egypt and remain quite what they were before, however much interpretation of its haunting effect may vary for individuals. ”

“ Great winds, great blazing spaces, great days and nights of shining wonder float past from the pavement or the theatre stall, and London, dim-lit England, the whole of modern life indeed, are reduced sharply to a miniature of trifling ugliness that seems the unreality. Egypt rolls through the heart for a second, and is gone. ”

“ Similarly, in Egypt, there is something that continually evades capture in the monstrous details of sheer size, beautiful with majesty, that day and night tower above the shrinking reason. You believe because you see, but though you know you see, you are not sure what you quite believe. Herein lies one letter, at least, of the spell of Egypt. The mind is forever aware of something that haunts from the further side of experience. ”

“ An Arab on his donkey flits in colour across the mind, melting off into tiny perspective. A string of camels stands against the sky, swaying forwards the same moment as though it never ceased. A dozen pyramids cleave the air with monstrous wedges, pointing holes in space. ”

“ Their towering heads, coiffed with zodiacal signs, or grotesque with animal or bird, bend down to watch you everywhere. There is no hurry in them; they move with the leisure of the moon, with the stateliness of the sun, with the slow silence of the constellations. But they move. ”

“ You draw a deep breath of astonishment⁠—then give up the vain attempt to grapple with a thing you cannot readily assimilate. A dizziness of star-distances steals over you; there is a breathlessness of astronomical scale in it that exhilarates while it stuns. ”

“ Out of that flat, undifferentiated landscape which is Egypt, still stand the unconquerable finger-posts of stone, pointing, like symbols of eternity, to the equally unchanging skies. The spell is laid upon you once you have looked into the battered visages those Memnon terrors, which reveal, yet hide, far better than the Sphinx. They have neither eyes nor lips nor nose ”

“ What it would instantly reject in the Midlands, on a Scotch moor, on a Rhine steamer, or on Brighton Pier, it harbours here with semi-acceptance and belief. The land exhales a steam of enchantment that lulls the senses. ”

“ And the monstrosity of it paralyses the mind. Its strident shout deafens the imagination. Memory escapes with difficulty from the insistent, gross advertisement. The postcard and the poster smother sight. ”

“ At a Cairo dance or a Heliopolis gymkhana you may hear a thoughtless woman observe: “But, you know, there is something queer in Egypt, isn’t there? One simply can’t deny it!” while the man, half puzzled and half contemptuous, laughs it off, falling back for explanation upon historical associations, vanished civilisations, mummies, temples, and the rest. ”

“ It pours, it rushes up. It is over you in a moment. All this time it has lain coiled in deep recesses of the inner being⁠—recesses where there is silence because they are inaccessible amid the clamour of daily life. ”

“ What mind can gain by the information that our sun, with all its retinue of planets, sweeps annually thirty-five million miles nearer to a certain star in Hercules⁠—yet that Hercules looks no closer than it did thousands of years ago? ”

“ All moves to a statelier measure. Stern issues of life and death are in the air, and in the grandeur of the tombs and temples there is a solemnity of genuine awe that makes the blood run slow a little. ”

“ An effect is wrought subtly upon the mind that does not pass away. Having once “gone down into Egypt,” you are never quite the same again. Certain values have curiously changed, perspective has altered, emotions have shifted their specific gravity, some attitude to life, in a word, been emphasised, and another, as it were, obliterated. The spell works underground, and, being not properly comprehensible, is nameless. ”

“ A hand of shadow, but with granite grip, may steal forth and draw you away into some region where they dwell among changeless symbols like themselves, a region vast, ancient and undifferentiated as the desert that has produced them. Their effect in the end is weird, difficult to describe, but real. Talk with a mind that has been steeped for years in their atmosphere and presence, and you will appreciate this odd reality. The spell of Egypt is an otherworldly spell. ”

“ Just as in good conversation there is present among the talkers something that is greater than any one of them separately, so, when your mind meets Egypt and communes with it, there rises up this odd otherworldly presence, equally real, equally undecipherable. ”

“ A sound recalls the street cries of the Arabs, with its haunting singsong melody, a breath of air brings back the heated sand, a rustle of the curtain whispers as the palms and acacia whisper⁠—and the truth is realised. Up steals the immense Egyptian glamour. ”

“ The creative instinct fairly strides. “I always expect something unusual to happen when I’m out here,” is a sentence repeatedly heard. “Last time I came out here, there was a disaster. Something unexpected will happen this year, too.” ”

“ You remember resignedly that you have an appointment to play golf tomorrow with Jones, or you are to lunch with Lady X., and that it may probably rain, and you must go in tubes and taxis, be crowded, jostled, pressed upon by ugly details of time and space. Conventions drive you ”