Pages from the Life of Gibran and Howayek in Paris (11) – In the Louvre Museum

Pages from the Life of Gibran and Howayek in Paris

Memoirs — Jureidini Shayboub

... Admission to the Louvre Museum is free every Sunday, and so it is natural that the Sundays in the lives of budding artists and art students — above all the hard-up among them — should be set aside for visiting the Louvre, the richest of the museums of Paris and of the world. Gibran and I used to distribute the rest of our days, in much confusion and bohemian disorder, among all manner of activities and concerns, public and private; and we might disagree over some matter, and each would go his own way, heedless and holding no account. But there was one thing we never once disagreed about: meeting at the Louvre every Sunday. We would make our way there in agreement, in utter longing and desire, as devout pilgrims make their way to their holy places, moving for long hours through its spacious halls filled with immortal masterpieces. Here are relics of the ancient civilization that grew and flourished in the lands of Egypt, Sumer, Assyria, Iran, Greece, and Rome; and there, the works of the "Renaissance" down to the opening of the twentieth century...

One day, at the very height of our passion and absorption, we stood a while among the Egyptian antiquities, voicing our admiration for the statue of "the Scribe," seated with pen in hand... Then we moved on to a group of "Greek" antiquities and pointed with amazement at the statue of the goddess of victory, "of Samothrace," and the statue of the beloved "Venus de Milo"; and among the pictures of the Renaissance we stood a moment, taken by the picture of "Mona Lisa, La Gioconda," and others and still others of the statues and canvases... And after we had grown intoxicated to the point of drunkenness with gazing at the wonders and masterpieces of the arts — each of us wishing he could keep to them night and day, asking for no other desire — I turned to Gibran, my eyes gleaming with such fierce fervor that they grew wet with tears, and I said to him: "Shall we throw all this great artistic heritage into the refuse bin... because certain charlatans fell short of climbing the summits of art and preferred to change their road, in hopes of discovering something new... with the result that they brought us strange, deformed works that would make bereaved mothers laugh!"

Gibran started up, pleased by my sudden plunge into the heart of our chief subject, the one we had so often circled around without daring to storm it! He laughed aloud — those around us in the hall heard him — and then said: "Your pulse is strong today, Youssef... You please me! But unfortunately your argument is not strong!... Don't you think there must be 'something' behind the uproar now raging? We must first try to understand this 'something.' Then we have full freedom to follow the style we find congenial, the one that suits our feelings and our temperaments. I have begun to believe that the 'type' (the painting or the statue or any other work of art) which the eye understands easily, whose lines and colors and meanings it finds familiar, is more often than not banal and cold, bringing drowsiness to the eyelids, so that the one looking at it almost yawns... Unlike the 'type' that resists the eye's easy understanding — for that one stirs the imagination... and in the stirring, and in understanding after labor, there is a supreme rapture!! Don't you see with me, Youssef, how this type is an attempt to go deep in thought? It is creation... and in creation there is a pleasure surpassing all pleasures!!"

Here I took up the talk, feeling that Gibran had said what he wished to say, and that it remained for me to give my own view of the matter. So I said:
— "Yes... these are fine words, passed around by the art magazines and papers and repeated after them by every tongue in these days... But I am certain that beauty bears an eternal stamp, and that the artist who cares nothing for beauty or perfection, who relishes nothing but the deformed and the 'defiled' among forms, and who deviates from natural lines of absolute splendor and loveliness — that artist — permit me, Gibran, to tell you frankly — is not worthy of my admiration, and there will be no room in these halls, in the future, for his production... And then, are not works of art the artist's own impressions of the milieu in which he lives?! Here I am looking about me, in every Parisian setting that speaks of genuine beauty, and I see no trace of these flagrant 'hideousnesses' which the 'modern' artists race one another, without shame, to record in material form?! Am I blind, or what?

— "Perhaps these impressions are drawn in their minds, Youssef!" Gibran interrupted me, then added, raising his finger in my face:
— "That is a curious subject, worthy of deep study... I shall think about it tonight..."

And I went back to finishing what I was saying to Gibran with the same fervor: "Look, I beg you, through this window at that open expanse above the Tuileries garden, where the river Seine flows... and at how the drowsy, dust-laden light slips off like a transparent veil over the face of Paris... I have long noticed that every great city in the world has its own atmosphere, its magical color, its own touch of beauty... exactly like the faces of maidens... each face has its own shade of charm, or of purity, and the like..."

I was speaking while Gibran listened with all his senses, his dreamy eyes gazing into the distance, and when I had finished this comparison he said:
— "Speaking of great cities... ah, how I long to see the face of Athens and to sit upon the ruins of the Acropolis!! I always feel that something will be lacking in me if I do not pray, one day, in the temple of 'Minerva'... and if my feet never tread the soil of Rome and Florence and Venice... Yes!... it will remain a regret in my heart!... How fortunate you are, Youssef — you have visited these cities and lived in them. How could we manage to visit them? Do you think that if we economized on our spending we could save enough for a journey of that kind? You understand the language, so we have already saved the guide's fee!" ... And we laughed together...

Then I said: "Travel to these cities would cost us a great deal of money... Isn't Susan right... the Malulu from China?!" ... Gibran shook his head and repeated his famous phrase, with which he always ended his talk whenever circumstances grew tight: "God curse money — how it stands as a stumbling block between a man and his desires!"

We came out of the Louvre Museum and walked along the banks of the Seine, looking at the old books and the art prints and rounding out our conversations.

The melancholy evening was casting its warm, enchanting colors over Paris... and Gibran seemed a part of the evening, restless and melancholy; then he turned to me and said:

— "Benjamin Franklin resolved, at the age of twenty-five, to attain the summit of knowledge and wisdom, and he achieved what he wanted... And here we are at twenty-seven, with great ambitions — what have we accomplished of them?... Tell me, for heaven's sake, Youssef, do you notice in me any shortcoming that I could set right?..."

And I would turn to him with the same innocence:
"And I ask you the very same question!..."

Exactly so was our state of mind at that time — I remember it well, as if it had happened yesterday!!