immortal descriptive monuments.
In the “Toccata,” for instance, he describes the manner of the grinding struggle, within a proud soul, between good and evil; and this fascinating psychological portrayal, rare of its kind, shows us in the end the triumph of the good nature over the animal impulses in the human soul. This is among what proves to us Bach's optimism and his soul's contentment with all that comes upon it of anxieties and of joy — as we have observed — among the natural elements in his melodies. While his composition embraces the highest of the summits of joy, Bach feels, like every human soul, the necessity of sorrow, if only a little; for the presence of sorrow in the soul confirms the place of joy within it. So he lets us hear a delicate moan that all but breaks the heart. Very often he attains the depiction of a deeply moving moment without that din and clamor which will be satisfied with nothing less than calling heaven and earth to witness its private sensations and personal emotions, as was the fashion of his age. Thus Bach remained — though he used to say of himself that he was no man of music — one of the singular composers of his age, and almost the only one. We do not exaggerate if we affirm that his sumptuous works, and above all the “Toccata,” are a masterpiece of art, of style, and of psychological analysis, which will endure so long as there remains in the world a taste that relishes the flavor of fine music and yearns to understand its obscure riddles.
Chopin said of him afterward: “He is the nourishment of music,” and we see no reason to contradict this saying. He is more than the nourishment of music: he is its originator, and the inspirer of composition for all the musicians who came after him.
Dik el-Mehdi, July 13, 1947
Humanity contends and struggles amid the currents of systems and the gusts of opinions. Passions erupt and tendencies flare; then the sincere spirit whispers its reforming whisper, and self-interests perish and falsehoods vanish into the abyss of nothingness, that the zeal of reform may remain immortal through the ages, teaching loftiness and perfection to bewildered humanity.
And woman, in her renaissance today, will not forget the gentle voice she heard in her still night, repeating at dawn the whispers of the devoted spirit, to be the comforting chant for the march of woman's caravan through the desert of ignorance, among the phantoms of illusion and the darknesses of error.
The voice of the spirit is an awakener of the spirit. Woman's caravan has journeyed from the wilderness of enslavement to the light of the blessed renaissance.
The credit belongs to the possessors of the awakening voice, and to the sincerity, conviction, faith, and aspiration toward progress and advancement that issue from it.
For this, woman welcomes the arrival of the two great ladies Salma Sayegh and Mari Yanni Ata Allah. She welcomes their return to a country they labored to serve and strove to elevate; they were among those who breathed courage into woman, that she might take the first step on the road of liberation from the yoke of ignorance and the abasement and degradation that follow in its train.
At the dawn of the renaissance they gave the call for the raising of woman's level, and they led her to be man's equal, sharing with him the burden of the greatest responsibilities in serving the homeland and reforming society.
They were absent from the homeland for a stretch of time, but distance could not remove their literary works from us, nor could the miles make us forget the mothers of the women's renaissance in the Arab world.
We have kept watching for their return, that the renaissance might draw from it strength in the national struggle toward the highest ideals of eminence and glory. For we desire that the homeland attain the true liberation we seek: liberation from the sweeping Western currents in beliefs and customs, liberation from selfish personal passions, and liberation from strife and discord, so that we may be — as we hope — a nation banded together, forming a single entity, free, honorable, and noble — noble in its spirit, its method, and its aims. We shall not be bound by greeds, nor draw from the civilization of the West without sifting the values that are in it; for success does not depend on imitation and borrowing without deliberation and scrutiny. Nor does it depend on form, but on manner and substance. We women must not cast off the moral bonds of society which the East has known, and which confer upon the Eastern woman the spirit of modesty and self-guarding.
There is no way to raise a nation from the stumble of weakness and the abasement of defeat except by moral forces and a firm faith in common aims — a faith that drives individuals and groups to useful work and keeps them from crooked inclination, that they may rise in their character to intellectual perfection and spiritual loftiness. No nation will advance until it knows the merit of the reformers among its children, and can discover the latent strong personalities among its citizens, men and women alike, and works to assist them and bring them forward to perform the needed services, and works to exalt and honor them in the near present, before history honors them and the generations acknowledge their merit in the distant future.
The mark of true civilization is the measure of honor its reformers attain.
And the mark of false civilization is the measure of veneration by which the self-seekers exalt themselves over the remains of peoples.