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PHAROS AND PHARILLON
PHAROS AND PHARILLON
PUBLISHED BY LEONARD AND VIRGINIA WOOLF AT THE HOGARTH PRESS HOGARTH HOUSE PARADISE ROAD RICHMOND SURREY Five of the following chapters are reprinted by the courtesy of The Nation and the Athenæum ; the remainder have not been previously published in this country. I am indebted to Mr. C. P. Cavafy for permission to publish his poems, and to Mr. George Valassopoulo for his translation of them....
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Before there was civilization in Egypt, or the delta of the Nile had been formed, the whole country as far south as modern Cairo lay under the sea. The shores of this sea were a limestone desert. The coast line was smooth usually, but at the north-west corner a remarkable spur jutted out from the main mass. It was less than a mile wide, but thirty miles long. Its base is not far from Bahig, Alexandria is built half-way down it, its tip is the headland of Aboukir. On either side of it there was o
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I
I
The career of Menelaus was a series of small mishaps. It was after he had lost Helen, and indeed after he had recovered her and was returning from Troy, that a breeze arose from the north-west and obliged him to take refuge upon a desert island. It was of limestone, close to the African coast, and to the estuary though not to the exit of the Nile, and it was protected from the Mediterranean by an outer barrier of reefs. Here he remained for twenty days, in no danger, but in high discomfort, for
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II
II
A lighthouse was a necessity. The coast of Egypt is, in its western section, both flat and rocky, and ships needed a landmark to show them where Alexandria lay, and a guide through the reefs that block her harbours. Pharos was the obvious site, because it stood in front of the city; and on Pharos the eastern promontory, because it commanded the more important of the two harbours—the Royal. But it is not clear whether a divine madness also seized the builders, whether they deliberately winged eng
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III
III
“I have taken a city,” wrote the Arab conqueror of Alexandria, “of which I can only say that it contains 4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 400 theatres, 12,000 greengrocers, and 40,000 Jews.” It contained a lighthouse, too, for the Pharos was still perfect and functioned for a few years more, lighting the retreating fleets of Europe with its beams. Then a slow dissolution began, and it shrinks, looms through the mists of legend, disappears. The first, and the irreparable, disaster was the fall of the la
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THE RETURN FROM SIWA
THE RETURN FROM SIWA
Alexander the Great founded Alexandria. He came with Dinocrates, his architect, and ordered him to build, between the sea and the lake, a magnificent Greek town. Alexander still conceived of civilization as an extended Greece, and of himself as a Hellene. He had taken over Hellenism with the ardour that only a proselyte knows. A Balkan barbarian by birth, he had pushed himself into the enchanted but enfeebled circle of little city states. He had flattered Athens and spared Thebes, and preached a
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EPIPHANY
EPIPHANY
During the last years of their lives the old King and Queen had seldom left the Palace. They sought seclusion, though for different reasons. The King, who was gay and shy, did not wish his pleasures to be observed. He had gathered a suitable circle of friends round him, and was content. There was Agathocles—who, by the way, was Prime Minister; there was Agathoclea—who, by the way, was the little prince’s nurse; there was Œnanthe, the mother of the two A.’s, an elderly but accomplished woman who
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PHILO’S LITTLE TRIP
PHILO’S LITTLE TRIP
It was nearly a serious tumble—more serious than he anticipated. There were six in his party, all Hebrew gentlemen of position and intelligence, such as may be seen in these days filling a first-class carriage in the Cairo express on their way up to interview the Government. In those days the Government was not at Cairo but at Rome, and the six gentlemen were on their way to interview the Emperor Caligula. Observe them in their well-appointed little yacht, slipping out of the Mohammed Ali Square
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CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
When the assertions that were made at one time and another in the uplands of Palestine descended from their home, and, taking the ancient caravan route, crossed the River of Egypt and approached Alexandria, they entered into a new spiritual atmosphere where they were obliged to transform themselves or to perish. The atmosphere was not hostile to the assertions, indeed it welcomed them, but it insisted that, however unphilosophic they might be, they should wear the philosophic dress, that they sh
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I
I
That afternoon was one of comparative calm for the infant Church. She was three hundred and ten years old. The pagan persecutions had ceased, and disputes about the Nature of Christ, over which blood was more freely to flow, had not yet matured. It still seemed that under her inspired guidance the old world would pass without disaster into the new. What lovely weather! The month was June, and the beacon of smoke that rose from the summit of the Pharos was inclined over Alexandria by a northerly
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II
II
At the other end of the city there lived another clergyman. His name was Arius, and it was a very long time indeed since the Bishop had asked him to lunch. He took duty at St. Mark’s, a small church that stood on the brink of the Mediterranean. The neighbourhood was of the best—palaces, zoological gardens, lecture-rooms, etc.—and over some trees rose the long back of the temple that Cleopatra had built to Antony. That temple would make a seemly cathedral, Arius often thought, and the obelisks in
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TIMOTHY THE CAT AND TIMOTHY WHITEBONNET
TIMOTHY THE CAT AND TIMOTHY WHITEBONNET
“Miaou!” Such was the terrible sound which, half way through the fifth century, disturbed the slumbers of certain Monophysite monks. Their flesh crept. Moved by a common impulse, each stole from his cell, and saw, in the dimly lighted corridor, a figure even more mysterious than pussy’s—something that gibbered and bowed and said, in hollow and sepulchral tones, “Consecrate Timothy.” They stood motionless until the figure disappeared, then ran this way and that in search of it. There was nothing
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THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY
THE GOD ABANDONS ANTONY
1 . For a study of Cavafy’s work see p. 91 ....
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I
I
When the lively and somewhat spiteful Mrs. Eliza Fay landed at Alexandria in the summer of 1779 that city was at her lowest ebb. The glories of the antique had gone, the comforts of the modern had not arrived. Gone were the temples and statues, gone the palace of Cleopatra and the library of Callimachus, the Pharos had fallen and been succeeded by the feeble Pharillon, the Heptastadion had silted up; while the successors to these—the hotels, the clubs, the drainage system, the exquisite Municipa
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II
II
Heedless of the weather, heedless of the rumour of plundered caravans, Eliza removed her husband as soon as possible for the interior, and some account must now be given of their adventures. Her pen is our guide. Through flood and blood it keeps its way, curbed only by her fear of the Turkish Censor, and by her desire to conceal her forebodings from friends at home. As soon as misfortunes have occurred she will describe them. But about the future she is always confident and bright, and this gall
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III
III
The Suez caravan—an immense affair—was formed up in the outskirts of Cairo. In view of the recent murders it included a large guard, and the journey, which took three days, passed off without disaster. Mr. Fay had a horse; Eliza, still panting in her Oriental robes, travelled in a litter insecurely hung between two restive camels. Peeping out through its blinds she could see the sun and the rocks by day, and the stars by night. She notes their beauty, her senses seem sharpened by danger, and she
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IV
IV
The beauty of the Gulf of Suez—and surely it is most beautiful—has never received full appreciation from the traveller. He is in too much of a hurry to arrive or to depart, his eyes are too ardently bent on England or on India for him to enjoy that exquisite corridor of tinted mountains and radiant water. He is too much occupied with his own thoughts to realize that here, here and nowhere else, is the vestibule between the Levant and the Tropics. Nor was it otherwise in the case of Mrs. Fay. As
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I
I
“Oh, Heaven help us! What is that dreadful noise! Run, run! Has somebody been killed?” “Do not distress yourself, kind-hearted sir. It is only the merchants of Alexandria, buying cotton.” “But they are murdering one another surely.” “Not so. They merely gesticulate.” “Does any place exist whence one could view their gestures in safety?” “There is such a place.” “I shall come to no bodily harm there?” “None, none.” “Then conduct me, pray.” And mounting to an upper chamber we looked down into a st
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II
II
My next vision is cloistral in comparison. Vision of a quiet courtyard a mile away (Minet el Bassal), where the cotton was sold on sample. Pieces of fluff sailed through the sunlight and stuck to my clothes. Their source was the backs of Arabs, who were running noiselessly about, carrying packages, and as they passed it seemed to be the proper thing to stretch out one’s hand and to pull out a tuft of cotton, to twiddle it, and to set it sailing. I like to think that the merchant to whom it next
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III
III
In the final stage I was in the thick of it again, though in a very different sort of thickness. Cotton was everywhere. The flakes of Minet el Bassal had become a snowstorm, which hurtled through the air and lay upon the ground in drifts. The cotton was being pressed into bales, and perhaps being cleaned too—it is shocking not to be sure, but the row was tremendous. The noise was made no longer by merchants—who seldom so far remount the sources of their wealth—but by a certain amount of wooden m
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THE DEN
THE DEN
At last I have been to a Den. The attempt was first made many years ago in Lahore City, where my guide was a young Missionary, who wasted all his time in liking people and making them like him. I have often wondered what he found to convert, and what his financial backers—old ladies in America and England—will have to say upon the results of his labours. He had lived in the Lahore bazaars as a poor man, and as he walked through their intricacies he explained how this became comprehensible, and t
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BETWEEN THE SUN AND THE MOON
BETWEEN THE SUN AND THE MOON
Of the three streets that dispute the honour of being Alexandria’s premier thoroughfare the Rue Rosette undoubtedly bears the palm for gentility. The Bond Street (I refer to Rue Chérif Pacha) is too shoppy to be genteel, and the Boulevard de Ramleh competes from this particular aspect not at all. In its length, its cleanliness, and the refined monotony of its architecture, Rue Rosette outdoes either of its rivals. They are tainted with utility: people use them to get something or somewhere. But
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THE SOLITARY PLACE
THE SOLITARY PLACE
Delicate yet august, the country that stretches westward from the expiring waters of Lake Mariout is not easy to describe. Though it contains accredited Oriental ingredients, such as camels, a mirage, and Bedouins, and though it remounts to a high antiquity, yet I cannot imagine our powerful professional novelists getting to work at it, and extracting from its quiet recesses hot tales about mummies and sin. Its basis is a soft limestone, which rises on the seaward side into two well-defined and
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THE POETRY OF C. P. CAVAFY
THE POETRY OF C. P. CAVAFY
Modern Alexandria is scarcely a city of the soul. Founded upon cotton with the concurrence of onions and eggs, ill built, ill planned, ill drained—many hard things can be said against it, and most are said by its inhabitants. Yet to some of them, as they traverse the streets, a delightful experience can occur. They hear their own name proclaimed in firm yet meditative accents—accents that seem not so much to expect an answer as to pay homage to the fact of individuality. They turn and see a Gree
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CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
A serious history of Alexandria has yet to be written, and perhaps the foregoing sketches may have indicated how varied, how impressive, such a history might be. After the fashion of a pageant it might marshal the activities of two thousand two hundred and fifty years. But unlike a pageant it would have to conclude dully. Alas! The modern city calls for no enthusiastic comment. Its material prosperity seems assured, but little progress can be discerned elsewhere, while as for the past such links
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