Woman's Spring

"The Four Seasons" is a book that has raised a stir in literary circles. It examines the phases through which woman passes in her life — in her spring and her summer, her autumn and her winter. It was written by the French author Madame Marie Fontaine, and it is presented here, in an elegant review, by the great man of letters Ibrahim al-Masri.

Spring is the most beautiful of nature's pictures; so too is woman's spring the most beautiful picture of womankind. A man may love a woman in the fullness of her womanhood, but he will never forget her charms as a maiden; for the world of dreams in which the pure girl lives, who has never known defilement, is the world from which man draws his virtues: serenity and chastity, shyness and delicacy, innocence and purity, quickness of faith and love of gaiety. All these virtues are created by the presence of the virgin woman, and they take form in the spring of her life — that is, in the world of dreams.

It is the being of the pure, unspotted maiden that inspired the virtues in mankind, stripped the instincts of their weapons, tamed the man of the forest, and taught humanity the meaning of chivalry.

The truth is that you love your wife today because yesterday she was a maiden. But for the maiden's virtues that took shape within her soul, your heart would have recoiled from her; you would have turned away from her, and gone off searching for one who could be a woman without losing her spell as a maiden.

Every girl searches for the Charming Prince... She seeks him in the depths of her own soul, in the poems of the poets, in the fancies of girlhood, in the dreams of adolescence, in the ever-smiling future, in her womanhood... But the Charming Prince is a phantom among phantoms, a splendid illusion adorned by the imaginings of youth; and yet the girl never ceases to look toward him and to search for him...

In the earliest ages the girl sought the Charming Prince in the figure of a mighty hero. Today she has come to see him embodied in the stars of the cinema — that is, in elegant appearance, and in a frame of enchanting material luxury.

As for reason, nothing is more hateful to her; and as for wisdom and sobriety, they are two virtues beloved of aging men with narrow imaginations, feeble nerves, and sickly blood.

That is the girl's tragedy: spring says to her, seek the Charming Prince — seek beauty and wealth and strength and security. And society says to her, seek reason and merit and good family — the rich old husband, or the calm, sober man, large of soul and broad of understanding.

But the girl demands the greatest and most precious elements of this world: beauty, and wealth, and strength. And she will not sacrifice one of them for the sake of another. And if she is forced to the sacrifice, she suffers, and life turns its back on her, and she goes on pursuing the search for the beautiful prince in spite of marriage and in spite of old age.

Who, then, can deliver girls from the beautiful prince? From this dream that troubles their sleep and clouds their lives and poisons every girl and every home and every wife?

No one can... For the Charming Prince is the symbol of the all-embracing highest ideal, which we cannot strangle in the human being — least of all in woman: he is the eternal search for happiness. The happiness with a part of which a man may content himself, while woman will accept nothing less than winning the whole of it.

And this is the secret of woman's being stronger than man in the face of life, and more wretched and more miserable. Man builds everything on the foundation of reason and will; she raises her life with her heart and her imagination... Therefore, in the hell of despair, and the bitterness of regret, and the misery of desertion, and the humiliation of old age, she never cuts off hope, and never ceases searching for the beautiful prince.

The Maiden's Song!!

"To whom shall I offer my life? My heart is a jewel upon whose light no creature's eye has ever fallen! Yet I long to give it to you, my beloved.

"Tenderness pours down from my heart like rain.

"Faithfulness floods from my breast like a torrent gone mad.

"Sacrifice whistles in my ears like the wind, and I do not tremble, nor stir, nor fear.

"My blood yearns to perish in your blood.

"My treasure yearns to be scattered at your feet.

"Where, then, are you?

"I have searched for you in every eye and every light and every smile, and I have not found you!!

"I have asked everyone about you, and they answered me: he is not here!

"I have roamed the streets. I have ranged over the ends of the earth. I have crept deep into the caves... I know no despair, and I shall follow you forever.. and I shall force you to stop and gaze at me. But then — will you value me at my worth?

"Will you grasp the glory of the treasure I bring you?

"Ah, how greatly I fear you!

To whom, to whom shall I offer my life!"