{"id":"01KG8AKSA0YK6JE12M3KPVE3DN","cid":"bafkreifpyhpzzf6cfnlda2sh7cbuunn7jsc6rwh5rp3nj7jasx2vb377am","type":"section","properties":{"description":"# VI.\n\n## Overview\nSection \"VI.\" is a part of BOOK VII. of the novel Pierre, or, The Ambiguities, published in 1852. This section was extracted from the file `pierre.txt` as part of the Melville Complete Works collection.\n\n## Context\nThis section is situated within BOOK VII., titled \"INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN PIERRE'S TWO INTERVIEWS WITH ISABEL AT THE FARM-HOUSE.\" It follows section \"V.\" and precedes section \"VII.\" The text delves into the symbolic significance of a stone, which the protagonist, Pierre, initially named \"Memnon\" in his youth.\n\n## Contents\nSection \"VI.\" explores the profound meaning Pierre attaches to the stone, which he later reinterprets as a \"Terror Stone.\" The narrative draws parallels between the stone and the ancient Egyptian statue of Memnon, which was said to emit a mournful sound at sunrise. This comparison is used to reflect on themes of grief, fate, and the tragic nature of noble aspirations, linking it to the \"Hamletism\" of the antique world and Shakespearean tragedy. The section laments the loss of poetic expression and emotional resonance in a \"prosaic, heartless age,\" where such profound sentiments are lost amidst the \"drifting sands.\"","description_generated_at":"2026-01-30T20:50:14.195Z","description_model":"gemini-2.5-flash-lite","description_title":"VI.","end_line":6058,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:07.471Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"VI.","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":6010,"text":"VI.\r\n\r\nWhen in his imaginative ruminating moods of early youth, Pierre had\r\nchristened the wonderful stone by the old resounding name of Memnon, he\r\nhad done so merely from certain associative remembrances of that\r\nEgyptian marvel, of which all Eastern travelers speak. And when the\r\nfugitive thought had long ago entered him of desiring that same stone\r\nfor his head-stone, when he should be no more; then he had only yielded\r\nto one of those innumerable fanciful notions, tinged with dreamy\r\npainless melancholy, which are frequently suggested to the mind of a\r\npoetic boy. But in after-times, when placed in far different\r\ncircumstances from those surrounding him at the Meadows, Pierre pondered\r\non the stone, and his young thoughts concerning it, and, later, his\r\ndesperate act in crawling under it; then an immense significance came to\r\nhim, and the long-passed unconscious movements of his then youthful\r\nheart seemed now prophetic to him, and allegorically verified by the\r\nsubsequent events.\r\n\r\nFor, not to speak of the other and subtler meanings which lie crouching\r\nbehind the colossal haunches of this stone, regarded as the menacingly\r\nimpending Terror Stone--hidden to all the simple cottagers, but revealed\r\nto Pierre--consider its aspects as the Memnon Stone. For Memnon was that\r\ndewey, royal boy, son of Aurora, and born King of Egypt, who, with\r\nenthusiastic rashness flinging himself on another's account into a\r\nrightful quarrel, fought hand to hand with his overmatch, and met his\r\nboyish and most dolorous death beneath the walls of Troy. His wailing\r\nsubjects built a monument in Egypt to commemorate his untimely fate.\r\nTouched by the breath of the bereaved Aurora, every sunrise that statue\r\ngave forth a mournful broken sound, as of a harp-string suddenly\r\nsundered, being too harshly wound.\r\n\r\nHerein lies an unsummed world of grief. For in this plaintive fable we\r\nfind embodied the Hamletism of the antique world; the Hamletism of three\r\nthousand years ago: \"The flower of virtue cropped by a too rare\r\nmischance.\" And the English Tragedy is but Egyptian Memnon, Montaignized\r\nand modernized; for being but a mortal man Shakspeare had his fathers\r\ntoo.\r\n\r\nNow as the Memnon Statue survives down to this present day, so does that\r\nnobly-striving but ever-shipwrecked character in some royal youths (for\r\nboth Memnon and Hamlet were the sons of kings), of which that statue is\r\nthe melancholy type. But Memnon's sculptured woes did once melodiously\r\nresound; now all is mute. Fit emblem that of old, poetry was a\r\nconsecration and an obsequy to all hapless modes of human life; but in a\r\nbantering, barren, and prosaic, heartless age, Aurora's music-moan is\r\nlost among our drifting sands which whelm alike the monument and the\r\ndirge.\r\n\r\n\r","title":"VI."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJSNW0PHMW2C72XA4V724","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKRN24AYYQDQMSJNSY0HT","peer_type":"section","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKSA6G141E24E4X4BCAR6","peer_type":"section","predicate":"next"}],"ver":3,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:15.680Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:50:14.407Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF5C36SQEVDHC9CBNZZJH9K"}}