It is not boasting if I say that I
see, with brave eyes, that Egypt insults herself when she creates
horrors in stone and says, 'This is my idea of art.' And these things
are not human; neither are they beasts--they are grotesques that verge
so near upon a semblance of living things as to be piteous. They
thwart the purpose of sculpture. Why do we carve at all, if not to
show how we appear to the world or the world appears to us? Now for my
rebellion. I would carve as we are made; as we dispose ourselves; aye,
I would display a man's soul in his face and write his history on his
brow. I would people Egypt with a host of beauty, grace and
naturalness--"
"Just as if they were alive?" Ta-meri inquired with interest.
"Even so--of such naturalness that one could guess only by the hue of
the stone that they did not breathe."
The lady shrugged her shoulders and laughed a little.
"But they do not carve that way," she protested. "It is not sculpture.
Thou wouldst fill the land with frozen creatures--ai!" with another
little shrug. "It would be haunted and spectral. Nay, give me the old
forms. They are best."
Kenkenes fairly gasped with his sudden descent from earnest hope to
disappointment.
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