Colors from the Sweet Land of Lebanon

Colors from the Sweet Land of Lebanon

... Six columns... from that great history...

Nothing else remains — standing, with the stance of eagles, in that spot of the land of Lebanon.

Behind them, space without limit... before them, space without limit, and above them, space without limit. As if they too were something great, without limit.

Six columns of mute, massive stone, holding the legend of the great human mind, which labored to fashion a life, and of the soaring imagination that brought heaven down to earth and raised earth up to heaven...

Six columns... how many glories they have witnessed pass over this land, how many brows have been pressed to the ground before them... lovers and believers, come from the ends of the earth to Baalbek, to “the city of the gods”... offering their prayers and their sacrifices. In these six columns is the history of a nation — a great nation, immortal, striving, creative... Here is history: strong, awesome, deep, grave... Here the authentic artistic energy of this ancient people takes body. A wondrous art, drawing man upward; in it is mystery, and in it is repose, and in it are proportion and precision...

How great was man in this corner of my country, building for the generations a Baalbek silent and awesome, a wonder among the wonders of the world, joining massive matter and titanic design — in stone, in angle, in steadfastness — to this elegance, this grace, this far-flung release... a splendor without limit...