Edvick Jureidini Shayboub Lectures at the Lebanese Cénacle

Among last month's lecturers:

1: Edvick Jureidini Shayboub
2: Dr. Kamal al-Hajj
3: Anbara Salam Khalidi
4: Mr. Philippe Takla.

"The Woman of Today Face to Face with Life." We took up the invitation cards sent out by the Lebanese Cénacle and went to hear our friend Edvick lecture.

I settled into one of the seats of the spacious hall, crowded with listeners, asking myself: would Edvick the woman fall in with sentiment and give us a talk to feed our vanity as women, allowing our shadows to stretch out before the men in the audience — or would Edvick hold to the side of reality, which may fail on the scales of sentiment but triumphs in the logic of truth?

Edvick chose to be logical where logic is due, and sentimental where sentiment is due. She spoke of woman face to face with politics, woman face to face with culture, woman in the fields of work, woman face to face with love...

In her talk of woman and politics, Edvick courageously declared that the victory of political rights was not the child of an organized struggle by woman, but came thanks to the awareness of the Lebanese man — and I do not think that in declaring this Edvick denied woman any truth.

As for woman face to face with culture, Edvick chose to be fair: she acknowledged those firm stands the Lebanese woman teacher has taken in spreading the glad tidings of the letter; yet she asked after the secret of woman's holding back from the fields of scientific specialization, so that the number of girl students in these fields is not commensurate with the women's renaissance as a whole...

In Edvick's word on woman face to face with love, the talk turned on the feminine response to the literary, social, and moral currents that blow upon us from every quarter. Edvick upheld her confidence in woman, and affirmed with it that woman will come out of all this by making for herself a personality all her own — holding of the spirit of tradition enough to preserve for her her authentic qualities, and of the imported enough to guarantee her keeping step with an age whose distances have drawn so close that approximation and relative harmony have become a necessity for the running of this world...

The woman of today face to face with reality — that was Edvick in her lecture. A woman deserving of esteem, deserving of tribute, and deserving of that confidence which the lecturer so generously placed in her.