The Feast of Spring

The first to keep a feast for spring were the Egyptians: on the wall of one of the temples at Luxor there is a great picture representing the celebration of the feast of roses and flowers. In the picture appears a captivating beauty smelling a flower, transported by its fragrance; a second beauty carrying a ripe fruit; a third offering her a fruit; and a youth playing upon his lyre.

The Persians kept the feast in ancient times, for they had the feast of Nowruz — the word means, in Persian, "new day," and perhaps what was meant was a day of fortune and outing — the first day of the solar year. To it they joined the feast of spring, and refined the making of all kinds of sweets... Some of these sweets were once offered to Ali ibn Abi Talib; he found them delicious and asked what they were. They said: this is the sweet of Nowruz. Then he said: make every day a Nowruz for us.

The Indians, the Chinese, and the Greeks have also kept the feast from of old; and the ancient Romans kept it, for with them everything had its god — a god for love, a god for war, a god for spring — and so they would keep feast for the god of spring.

The shortest spring that people enjoy: it is the spring that passes along the equator, for the inhabitants there live in a perpetual summer of blazing heat. But the trees, thick with their green leaves and interlacing boughs, temper the heat of the air. As for the flowers, they bewilder minds with their beauty: their petals are large, their colors exquisite, and their loveliness dazzles the eye — as though nature there compensated the people somewhat for what they lose in coolness of climate and softness of breeze.

The most beautiful of spring's flowers is woman: I do not know who it was that first likened her to a flower among the flowers of society, but I picture a world without women, and I see a world without spring and without flowers... Woman is a flower — on condition that she be a flower in her freshness, a flower in her perfume; otherwise she has no worth. The markets are full of artificial flowers, and a bunch of them sells for the cheapest of prices; the artificial flower has the beauty of the natural flower and has its color — why then do people turn away from it, if not because they are ever seeking the fragrance? In woman they seek her goodness to society, her sacrifice for her homeland, her virtue.

The first to adorn herself with roses, so far as we know, was Cleopatra: she received Marcus Antonius when he first came to Egypt as a junior officer — she was then fourteen years old — wearing on her head a fillet topped by the sacred serpent, and above the serpent a bunch of red roses. Some months later Julius Caesar presented Cleopatra with a wreath of roses, which he set upon her head, saying: I shall set upon your head the crown of Rome.

How has spring inspired, and whom?..: Spring has inspired every genuine artist of delicate feeling, and in the museums of art today are beautiful oil paintings that are the finest of what spring inspired in the painters: Love in Spring, all motherhood and childhood; and The Dance of Spring, all youth and splendor.

Spring has inspired the men of letters: but for it, the treasuries of literature would not have been adorned with the most splendid of their contents. There are the myths of the Greeks and their goddesses, frolicking and sporting in the meadows in springtime; there are the tales of the nightingale and the rose by Oscar Wilde, and Beware of Spring Love by Guy de Maupassant, and others and others — as though every writer must needs write of spring.

And spring has inspired the poets: Browning, Shakespeare, and Thomson in the West; Safi al-Din al-Hilli, al-Baha Zuhayr, al-Sharif al-Radi, Omar Khayyam, Abu Nuwas, Shawqi, al-Akhtal al-Saghir, Fawzi Maalouf, Iliya Abu Madi, and others — all have sung of it.

Those who celebrate spring most are the stars of Hollywood: perhaps it is their financial means, or the spirit of art running deep in their breasts, that makes them dance at spring's coming and rejoice in it — from the flower floats, arranged in the loveliest array, that circle the streets of southern California from morning till evening; to the swimming parties held in the most sumptuous pools of the most sumptuous mansions; to strolls in the stars' gardens, filled with the most wondrous kinds of flowers and the loveliest trees; to bicycle races, when the roads of Hollywood and its outskirts fill with stars breathing the open air; and more besides...

And Lebanon celebrates the feasts of spring: even if it postpones its festivals to summer — some European cities in Italy and Switzerland do the same, and there is no reproach in this for the beautiful Mountain, which lives in an almost perpetual spring. We all remember the festivals of flowers and fruits at Bikfaya and Antelias and elsewhere, and how the people keep the celebrations for days.

The birds celebrate the coming of spring: no sooner does it appear than the swallows and others begin their journeys, in flocks that fill the sky, coming to the warm regions to delight in the joy of spring.

The first to sing of spring: the Torah is counted the oldest book in our hands, and the poet of poets, Solomon the Wise, was the first in it to sing of spring. He speaks of the green bower shaded over with grasses, and then says: For the winter is past, the rain is over and gone... The flowers have appeared on the earth; the time of pruning is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land; the fig tree has put forth her green figs, and the blossoming vines give forth their fragrance.