Death by water was closely associated in Humbert's mind with the political and temporal fate of Holland.
Everything indicates that the ocean once held sway over the earth and that, of its own accord, it will reclaim its inevitable rights. Alas, the hand of the Dutch that repulsed the tyranny of the ocean will not forever be able to restrain this raging despot. Oh, disastrous day when the dikes are broken, when that magnificent, vigilant, diligent, wise, and thrifty Republic disappears from the face of the globe, when the waves obliterate the most beautiful monument to courage and industry. Postpone this moment, divine Providence! And if the eternal laws that you have established cannot be avoided without consequence, at least suspend and defer that ravening eruption.[107]
We have already observed how Humbert created herms symbolizing great legislators for the political edifice; this was sculpture functioning as an associative art. As absolute art its task was to fashion a symbolic lion off Katwijk at the mouth of the Rhine. [108] [fig 69 ] The idea for this giant of the coast must have reached final formulation, like the political edifice, at the moment of the Revolution of 1830. Consistent with Humbert's theories on art the image was inspired by a natural monument, the Lion Mountain on the Cape of Good Hope.[109] [fig 70 ]
This modern sphinx, towering above Holland like some colossus extruded by natural forces, was not only the symbol of strength and the traditional emblem of the Dutch nation, the lion of Zeeland, but was associated with the element of water. According to the Egyptians, when the sun entered the sign of Leo, the Nile rose. Thus sacred fountains and water spouts often took the shape of lions.110] Humbert's fascination with the Egyptian lion, maneless and grandiose, caused him to model his creation after one of the basalt Capitoline lions.[111] In this he followed an eighteenth century tradition: Piranesi admired the Egyptian lions on the Aquafelice Fountain in Rome and preferred them to more naturalistic versions: What majesty in the Egyptian ones, what gravity and wisdom! What union and modification of part! [112]
The problem (strictly a theoretical one since the colossus was never erected) of finding a boulder large enough for the statue's vast dimensions, particularly in Holland, was resolved by Humbert, who considered constructing it in layers of basalt or black stone in lieu of making it monolithic. He imagined that the greatness of the lion's dimensions and the distance requisite for viewing it similar to the effect produced by the Memnon would obscure the courses, as is also the case with the Great Sphinx. [fig 71 ] [fig 72 ]But where, Humbert asks, did the Egyptians, surrounded as they are by desert, get the idea for their lions anciently associated with water placed along the avenues of pyramids and temples? He concludes that nothing adequately answers this question concerning the identity of the Sphinx. Perhaps the heart of Africa will one day offer a solution. Maybe it is contained in the Indian legend of a god both man and lion (the fourth avatar of Krishna?) who was the savior and regenerator of a world destroyed and renewed.113] Humbert probably refers here to the Mithraic Kronos, the leontocephalous god Zervan, or Aeon, who symbolizes boundless time.[114] In addition, the Egyptian celestial lion, Shu, is often represented as a lionheaded man holding up the sky. He is son of the sungod, an emanation from the source of the gods, the abyss that preceded the sun.[115] One wonders if the denouement to Humbert's enigma might not be an allusion hidden in all these fables to the healing rays of the sun drying up the waters of the deep after the last great revolution that struck the earth. Thus the Sphinx, now gazing upon an ocean of sand, was once surrounded by a great sea.[116]
The relation between Holland and Humbert's beloved Egypt was not based merely on borrowed imagery. Volney, that keen observer of the East, found that the two countries physically resembled one another. The flatness of Holland reminded him of the Delta: There is no country with a more monotonous view, always a barren plain for as far as you can see, always a flat and unwavering horizon...[117]
The Lion was designed to be a prospective memorial, to be viewed by a future generation of men as an emblem attesting to Holland's past greatness after that nation was destroyed through a Lucretian atomic dissolution. In similar fashion the Sphinx survived the pharaohs and the herms of Easter Island outlived the race that created them. Humbert ends his article with a short excerpt from Seneca: The universe is dissolved God alone remains; God rests in himself and ponders his thoughts.[118] A similar passage, also from Seneca, demonstrates a widely held eighteenth-century belief in a universal cataclysm and regeneration. That Humbert chose to conclude his reflections with the Stoic's musings indicates that he is speaking of more than simply the possibility of political destruction. Holland, like all other nations of the past and present world, is subject to cosmic revolutions.
When the annihilation of the human race has been completed, and the wild beasts into whose way of life men will have already lapsed have likewise been destroyed, the earth will absorb the waters again into itself, and will compel the seas to stand fast . . . and the former order of the world will be restored. Every species of animal will be created afresh, and the earth will once more be inhabited by men, men born under happier auspices, knowing naught of evil. But their innocence will endure only so long as they are new. Wickedness creeps in swiftly.[119]
When all is lost, all shall be restored. A great legislator will again civilize man and the cycle of history will repeat itself.