Welcome to the International Festivals

The Woman's Word

With the close of the month of July, the Baalbek road teems with hundreds of automobiles coming and going, and the City of the Sun wakes after long slumber, her eyes dazzled by hundreds of floodlights trained upon the sanctity of her holy temples.

People conclude that the appointed dates of the international festivals have arrived, and that the preparations the committee began nine months ago are now being carried out... And the newspapers begin to bless or to curse, to praise or to revile — glory be to Him who created His servants in every shape and hue!..

As for us, we are among the blessers, those who understand the festivals in their broad, far-reaching sense and see in them an opening onto the world and a completion of Lebanon's intellectual mission — in its aspiration toward true artistic values on the high classical plane, and in its drawing from the wellspring as it climbs its upward path, however great the toil and weariness.

We see the festivals as a positive, beneficent step, because they are the way to gather a certain class of our women and men in organized cooperative work. And this very class — the class of the pampered and indulged, I say it with reservation — has never before in the history of Lebanon striven and lost sleep for the sake of the public good...

We have accompanied the festivals from the beginning with a sincere, watchful eye, and we see in them a spur to the creation of what is better and worthier, and a mover of the talents latent within us... For had it not been for the love of emulation and the challenge that stirred the nerves of our countrymen of artistic capability, we should have had nothing of what we shall see this summer of folkloric masterpieces — dance, song, and acting — which are purely Lebanese products... If the festivals had no virtue but this one, it would suffice...

They hold it against the festivals that they are a burden falling upon the state treasury, and that they are not within everyone's reach... But when and where have theaters not been a kind of luxury?? When and where have they opened their doors to any but the few? In Paris, London, and New York, where hundreds of theaters work without interruption, at prices that rarely fall below ours during a short period of the year not exceeding five weeks? I assure you that if we were to see the “Old Vic” company in London, or the “Renaud-Barrault” company in Paris, or the “Santa Cecilia” company in Rome, it would cost us many times what it costs us here, and Lebanon would be deprived of the chance of direct contact with these international artists, and of looking upward with ambition and whetting the creative powers to reach their lofty summits.. And who knows when the day may come when our folklore troupes will go out to the world, exporting authentic popular art?!

A salute of reverence to the temples of Baalbek, radiant with lights..

A salute of homage and welcome to the guests of Lebanon — the members of the international artistic companies.

And a salute of appreciation and thanks to the festival committee..