Introduction Part 1: Poem by Alphonse de Lamartine – Le Désert Sinai! Sinai! what a night upon your peak! What lightning flashes on your flanks dazzle the eyes! The black vapors of the abyss Roll in bloody folds their waves across your skies! The flaming cloud Where your summit is lost Vomits smoke Like green stubble; The sky from which breaks Flash upon flash, And like iron Struck by the hammer, Hurling blow on blow, Night and light, Veils itself or clears, Opens or closes, Like the eyelid Of an angry man! A man, a single man climbs your rumbling flanks, In vain your thousand echoes thunder and answer one another, His steady gaze does not turn away! A whole bewildered people watches him from below; Up to the places where your peak and the sky merge, He ascends, and the tempest wraps his footsteps! The cloud bursts; Its burning bolt Springs forth like a sword Leaping from the scabbard! The thunderbolts carried On its moving folds, Thrown at random By the four winds, Colliding with one another, Scatter in all directions, Like a flock Of seasoned eaglets Whom the noise of a melee Has suddenly startled, Beating their wings, Flying pell-mell Around their nests, And far from their mother, Death in their talons, Springing from the aerie While uttering cries! The cedar bursts into flames, Cries, cracks, crushes Its burning base Beneath its smoking branches! The flame in a column Rises, whirls, Falls back and boils In foaming fires; The lava winds, And from slope to slope Extends its hearth; The burning mountain Seems to undulate; The double firmament Duplicates the fires with which it glows; Every gaze is troubled, Everything dies or flees; And the air that ignites, Folding the flame Around the high place, Goes from place to place Where the wind chases it, Sowing across space Shreds of fire! Beneath this burning veil that hides and illuminates it, Moses alone, alive, has dared to bury himself; What gaze will fathom this terrible mystery? Between man and fire, what is about to be accomplished? Dispel, vain mortals, the terror that overwhelms you! It is Jehovah coming forth! He descends amidst The tempests and the thunder! It is Jehovah choosing His people on earth, It is a kneeling people recognizing their God! The Indian, lifting his soul To the vaults of his azure sky, Worships the eternal flame Taken from his purest hearth; At the first ray of dawn, He bows, he sings, he adores The star from which day pours down; And in the evening, his sad eyelid Upon the tomb of light Weeps with tears of love! On the shores that the Nile floods, The credulous child of the deserts, Scorched by the torch of the world, Worships a softer firmament. Lover of his solitary nights, A friend of mysteries in his worship, He awaits the shadow in the skies, And from the heart of barren sands He raises pyramids To count his gods more closely. Greece adores the fair dreams Invented by her gentle genius; And her mysterious falsehoods...
