In his small studio in Achrafieh I sat with him — and there is nothing like the studio's atmosphere to loosen an artist's tongue and lay his thought bare. I listened to his story with a longing that had stayed with me for nearly a year, ever since the young sculptor Michel Basbous won the Camille Chamoun Prize at last autumn's exhibition.

Basbous came to know art from the moment he opened his eyes to the light. He found himself cast into an artistic atmosphere, surrounded by statues and drawings, pens and papers... for his father, a priest, was an artist by nature, though his circumstances had not afforded his art refinement and polish.

In the church, then, little Michel grew up, serving Mass for his father, his delicate blue eyes gazing at the burning, drowsy candles, their tears rolling down their slender white forms into shape after shape that never ceased to astonish and delight the boy; he would remove them carefully and set about making ones like them, keeping the collection for himself... And in his village, Rachana in the Batroun, he would

meet the woodcutters returning at sunset and pick out from their loads tree stumps with pleasing geometric shapes; in his room he would copy them or draw them, or simply display them among his collection.

Michel Basbous received his elementary schooling, and part of his secondary schooling, in Wadi Chahrour, where his father was pastor of the church. At fifteen he left school for good, feeling a heavy material responsibility toward his younger brothers and sisters, and plunged into the struggle of life — but his eye remained on the arts, and his heart with them, until he was able to enter the Lebanese Academy in 1945. There he stayed four years, training his fingers and feeding his senses as far as the institute's limited means allowed, and he passed from the primitive natural state to a guided impressionism. His gifts drew the attention of those in charge, and he showed such excellence in the examination that he won a scholarship to study the arts, specializing in sculpture, in France.

In his second year at the "Higher School of Fine Arts" in Paris, Basbous became conscious of his artistic personality, and felt that he had not been true to himself as an artist, and that his works were not of a kind in which he could rest easy. So he left the art institute and turned his face toward the museums, haunting them night and day, searching, studying, exploring... In the Louvre he discovered his artistic personality in the relics of prehistory... He felt that these