What the Press Said of Salma Sayegh

Excerpts from what some of the Beirut papers said of Salma Sayegh upon the news of her death, in the first days of this autumn...

Al-Hayat said:

Salma Sayegh was the first woman who tried to carry the cause of woman out of its limited, traditional feminine circle into the wide horizons of life, so that woman might be a member in the body of the homeland as a human being and a citizen, not merely as a woman.

On this account, the literature of Salma Sayegh was a Lebanese literature, not a purely women's literature; and on this account, too, this woman of letters took part in the affairs of Lebanese thought, from the moment she began her path in literature, in the various fields of Lebanese thought and in its many aspects.

Our departed writer stood out in that she was able to emerge quickly among the leading women and men who wrote in the manner of the “Gibranian” school of literature, and in that she was able to stand on her own feet in the crowd of those influenced by Gibran's school — so much so that she quickly came to possess her own distinct personality, and in those days she was almost alone in commanding a style of her own within that school.

And the newspaper Beirut wrote:

She was the model of the virtuous lady who dissolved herself to give light to the souls of others. She was of the first generation of women whose eyes opened upon the Arab renaissance, Arab independence, and Arab sacrifice; she wept for our great men who were hanged on the gallows (1916), and she took part in many associations whose first aim was the care of woman and child, the destitute and the homeless.

Many young Arab women — above all the Muslim women of Beirut — bow in complete respect before your memory, dear Salma Sayegh.

Al-Jarida said:

The pages of the Arabic papers throughout the lands that speak the tongue of the Dad knew her as the bearer of a message of beneficent building and an advocate of love and brotherhood; they knew her as a soul flowing onto paper, inspired in her raptures, noble in her instincts, and as a heart overflowing with faith in truth and righteousness.

She fought for the Eastern woman in general and the Lebanese woman in particular, and she was true to her pledges, worthy of her stands, unyielding in the combat.

And what al-Nahar said:

She was a soldier of the vanguard in the battle for the emancipation of woman, and she freed the daughters of her sex; she was a pioneer among the pioneers of equality between woman and man, and that equality came to pass; she was war upon injustice, and its shadow shrank. Death has struck her down — but only after she had vanquished the elements that used to paralyze the nation and leave it as good as dead: ignorance, fanaticism, and the complex of weakness...

With the passing of Salma Sayegh, Lebanon loses one of the leaders of its women's renaissance; a modernizing woman of letters with a mission; and a lady of society who made round after round in the fields of charity and beneficence. And if illness kept her, in this last period, away from those fields, still she followed from her bed of pain the events succeeding one another in her country; for she, the mighty wrestler, never let despair enter her, nor did she lose hope in the mercy of God.

And the magazine al-Hikma said:

By the death of Salma Sayegh, Lebanon has lost one of the most brilliant of its women of letters, the most sincere of them in devotion and the finest in character. She vowed herself to the mission of the platform, the pen, and teaching: she was the eloquent orator, the elegant writer, the beloved, tender educator; and she had her “Breezes,” fragrant with the sweet scent and the lofty literature her soul had stored away.

And as we remember her today, and tomorrow, and the day after, we remember, always, the woman who knew how to fill her life, and the writer the glory of whose “Breezes” will never fade.

Sada Lubnan devoted these words to her:

Yesterday we bade farewell to one of the most beautiful faces of Lebanon — a face in which men loved the nobility of woman, the liberation of man, the consciousness of citizenship, and the joy of struggle for what is good... a face from which looked out a great heart beating with love, and a delicate sensibility, shining with that radiance to which the years add only graciousness and majesty.

And Mrs. Salma Sayegh belongs, among our women, to that class — indeed she stands at the head of that noble class — which joined to its social effort and its national struggle deep thought and a delicate, eloquent, creative pen; so that she was, in her “Breezes” and in her “Pictures and Memories,” one of the ladies of the sweet word and the fine

craftsmanship, fragrant with the breath of goodness, truth, and beauty — a lady whose peers among the cultivated women of the age it is hard to find.

Al-Telegraph said:

Salma Sayegh was known as one of the leaders of the women's renaissance, and of the literary renaissance above all. She was distinguished by that easy, limpid prose which carries the truest and noblest human feeling to its readers, strangers and countrymen alike; so that in her speeches, her lectures, the talk of her salons, and her articles, she carried within them poetry in prose, from the delicacy of her feeling, and a white revolution, from the intensity of her compassion and her faith in right and truth, and her call to brotherhood, cooperation, and equality!

And what appeared in al-Amal:

The sweetest of the “Breezes” that ever blew across the desert of letters, refreshing every soul they passed over, vanished yesterday with Salma Sayegh; and a face has gone whose pure features sum up that splendid, unknown history which is lived anew each day:

the struggle of the Lebanese woman — as mother, as citizen, and as creator.

Among that excellent generation of women writers who rose out of Lebanon from the first years of the century and “scattered over the world the fragrance of their perfumes,” Salma Sayegh was the creative writer in whose literature one feels the generous, open-handed womanliness, whatever she spoke of.

And what appeared in al-Jumhur:

Salma Sayegh has not died, and she will not die. She is the singular woman of letters whose going leaves a void that the people of the pen will remember whenever they long for one of her breezes; that women's gatherings will remember whenever they feel the need of the activity of winged spirits; and that the struggling genius of womanhood will remember whenever the affairs of the Lebanese woman stumble on the ascending paths of her progress, her success, and her flourishing.

O Salma — breeze of immortality, breath of perfume, smile of the forenoon: sleep in peace, for you have paid your full share to literature, to goodness, to beauty, and to creation.