Cleopatra, who turned Antony's head
Zenobia the Great
Al-Khansa, poetess of the Arabs
... This charming reportage was prepared for "The Woman's Voice" by the great man of letters Ustad Musa Sulayman, the intimate friend of Dar al-Kitab
and the dearest friend of "The Woman's Voice"... The university girl students' pageant of the most famous women of history was among the most elegant occasions this country has seen, in conception and in staging.
It was centuries ago, in the year one thousand of the Christian era, and the world was plunged in a pitch darkness of ignorance. There, on a jutting rock among the rocks of the Manara, where the American University of Beirut stands today, sat a youth whose heart was filled with the love of learning and knowledge, and he began to dream and to think...
The time was evening, and the sun with its luminous rays was all but sinking into the depths of the sea, while the waves breaking upon the rocks of the shore made a sound most like a sweet and wonderful melody...
Our youth surrendered to a calm, deep sleep and began to swim in the world of visions and dreams. And in a single instant
of imagination — equal to tens of thousands of this world's years — there passed before him magnificent historical scenes, presenting the freshest of the women's faces that have colored history with a thousand and one colors.
Here is Sappho, the Greek poetess who lived in the seventh century before Christ, reciting to the connoisseurs of her verse the truest poetry she ever composed, in a literary and artistic gathering breathing love and imagination...
And here is Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, who made the world's head spin before her own was turned by the love of Antony...
Here we are in Palmyra, in the heart of the fertile desert; the time is the fourth century of our era, and Zenobia, queen of the East, lady of might and main, rages and fumes, threatening and menacing, as she awaits the Roman emperor Aurelian, that she may build him a prison in her palace where he shall die of grief... And nothing softens her sharpness and her fit of anger
Sarah Bernhardt, who shook the stage
