Consolation ...

By way of passing thoughts ...

The Executive Committee for Women's Rights came back with a failure they have called a relative failure!!! That is an event recorded against the offices of the government; in the circles of high letters, however, the glorification of woman has reached the loftiest ranks — as though those who occupy themselves with "ideal" matters wished, in advance, to come forward and offer woman their share of comfort and consolation..

The First Gesture

It was made by Mr. Michel Asmar, proprietor of the Lebanese Cénacle, who brought us from beyond the border a lady of Lebanese origin, the discerning woman of letters Ughniya al-Dibs. She spoke to us of progressivism in its three stages and of a life the Arab peoples are living, and she reached her summit when she reviewed our shame in the Palestine catastrophe.. She was bold and frank to a degree that made her listeners wish the men would embrace such frankness and treat our political questions with such rare courage. In this issue are passages of this lofty women's literature; they are a second testimonial to the Lebanese woman, for which we thank Mr. Asmar.

Salah Labaki and Woman

And Mr. Asmar carries on his support with tact: eight days later he brings to the Cénacle's platform Mr. Labaki, to speak to the people of the inspiration with which Eve nourishes the souls of poets. And Salah's Eve has a thousand colors and forms and charms... now she is fair, now dark; at times a young girl with lights bursting from the tips of her long lashes, and at times a woman in her later years, to be pitied for the cares of winter... The circles of young women and young men were captivated by this art, the portrayal of women whom this mountain has brought forth, and they cheered the love poetry and the poet as much as their love of women and of verse would have them do...

And Said Akl Comes — with Something to Spare...

The invitation to hear Said, and to enjoy the genius of this happy man of letters, was extended by the president of the Lebanese Women's League, Mrs. Tarcha. Mr. Akl is a dazzling pearl in our spiritual crown. I leave the talk of his literary and political personality to the woman of letters of limpid eloquence, Mrs. Najla Kfoury; here is her word on him, glowing with literature, thought, candor, and fair-mindedness. She said:

Gentlemen, ladies:

Our venerable president, Mrs. Tarcha, has been so kind as to choose me to present to you tonight our distinguished lecturer, Mr. Said Akl. And I believe the motive behind this choice is her keen concern that Mr. Akl be given his due by bringing out his noble person and his abundant letters — and who, in the president's belief, is more entitled than I to carry out this mission to perfection, when Said and I are compatriots, both of us belonging to the neighbor of the valley, the bride of Lebanon! Only she forgot, God keep her, that Said Akl and I have never once met on the same ground: if I turn eastward, he makes for the west; if I say Arabism, he says Phoenicianism; if I sing in classical Arabic, he extols the colloquial; and if I favor realist poetry, he declares for the symbolist. Yet despite all the creeds and doctrines that divide us, we have not lacked a strong bond to unite us, and that bond is love of Lebanon and work for the good of Lebanon, the glory of Lebanon, and the life of Lebanon. We have differed over the road we travel, but we have not strayed from the destination we both seek.

Gentlemen, ladies:

I shall not introduce to you Said Akl the writer, the poet, the man of letters, the author of Bint Yiftah, Cadmus, and Rindala; nor shall I describe him to you as a luminous flame in the sky of Arabic literature — for I find nothing nearer to laboring the obvious than the work of one who strings together a few words and polishes a few phrases in order to introduce to the public a man of letters whose works have spread and whose renown has traveled until his bare name has become better known than any introduction. I should have been within my rights to say to you: he is Said Akl — and no more; that would suffice me, and you, as an introduction.

Still, it falls to me to say that Said Akl has a personality all his own that sets him apart from the men of letters of his age. He is a man of conviction and a seeker after truth; he recoils from imitation and following in others' steps, and is enamored of creation and innovation; he disdains to walk the easy, paved roads and prefers to cut a new path for himself. He has been granted a rare boldness in defying literary and political society, and he holds views of his own over which he has set the world of letters astir, and from which he has never retreated, out of his firm belief that they are the truth; so he has written and spoken, argued and struggled for the soundness of his theory, fearing no criticism and dreading no blame. Said Akl in his letters is as he is in his politics, and he is the very same in his poetry: he renounces the old and wars against it; he believes in the new and calls for it. He tears down the old, revolts against stagnation, and cries out for creation and invention, unconcerned with the approval or disapproval he stirs up around him — in all of this like the idealist who makes the search for truth his constant habit. And search has always been the strongest agent in uncovering unknown truths; sober, disinterested search is what creates for people a scholarly atmosphere in which ideas and pens compete, and from which good and understanding come forth.

Gentlemen, ladies:

Space does not allow me to say more of Said Akl than I have said. Let it suffice me to say to my dear friend: be whom you will, and seek the truth however you wish; argue and struggle and defend your view and your creed among your peers of educated youth in the lofty sporting spirit you have accustomed us to. For our dear Lebanon has never been in greater need of you and of men like you, men of thought and conviction, that it may remain forever and always the cradle of learning and the homeland of knowledge.

Najla Kfoury

Then comes Said's turn. With his great art he brings before us the life of the greatest empress the world has known; he carries us with Elissa the Tyrian aboard a sailing ship and sets about shaking off the dust of tens of hundreds of years, recounting to us the tragedy of this beautiful princess on the day her husband was killed: she left the glory of the palaces to her murdering, criminal brother and plunged into that adventure without peer — the adventure of founding a new kingdom beyond the seas, which afterward became an empire that robbed the caesars of Rome of their sleep.

I shall not tell you, my reader, what Said Akl told us of Elissa's beauty and of her genius, which brought forth armies and fleets, factories and shops, legal constitutions and parliamentary assemblies — "truly and in fact".... Nor can I do justice to her martyrdom and her choosing death as a letter that releases a mighty will — a will that traced for the women and men of the earth, one and all, the law of unassailable liberty in the hour she cried out, throwing herself into the flames:

"If victory has escaped you, then die where you stand!"

O Sitt, Madame Tarcha — we charge you to let us hear Said Akl's lecture a second time!

The Woman's Voice