Meditations and variations evoked by my artist's palette that
were written in Paris in November 1993 and in Lebanon 2005

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Bouquet of Anemones

Before me your stand and defy me, and I wonder why. With all your brilliance you challenge me, making show of your charms without fear. None can force you. Only hands that are holy and pure can approach you and mould your embodiments of light, these substances that transform themselves into shining rays and pierce souls to their depths, materials and luminescence, blending like flame on you face and in my heart. All pictorial image, all expressions and all creativity pass over your living surface and flow in melody, song, poetry, bitterness and joy. Long I regard you and see how your pigments are spread out to your borders. I have learnt how to divide these substances, first the yellows, then the reds and then the blues, keeping the whites and the blacks for the ends of the spectrum. Others have chosen other arrangements, with warm colours on one side and cold colours on the other. You are all life and light, and I feel the warmth of your being, the flow of blood that animates you, and you breathe and speak; you are the spring in flower with blossoms of every tint, the rosy almond, pomegranates and almonds. There are soils both arid and verdant, distant mists, sparkling waters, leaping falls and their sparkling reflections. You are this vault of heaven where one plucks the stars, this allegory where the Muses consort with the fairies, where the gods of Olympus sit enthroned, patrons of the fine arts or of war or of science. You are Susanna in her bath, the Pilgrims at Emmaus, the women of Algeria. How many masterpieces there are...and yet all have sprung from you! Great but silent and obedient, you bear with us, you understand, neither contesting nor disputing. You are a Sphinx who observes and inwardly meditates. Edde, 14/09/05

Aramaic Maaloula

Dear palette, you are material object, symbol and myth all at once; when we buy you, you are no more that a piece of wood light as a feather. But when become our very own, then you become a treasure, a veritable quarry of precious stones, an inexhaustable mine whose depths cannot be plumbed. Do we not say that somebody’s palette is rich and talk of its colours and pastes and iridescent oils flowing from it, this palette from which there streams light? My story with you, my palette, began more than sixty long years ago and never will it end. The legend will continue in time and in space and even beyond. On you the most amazing rainbow came down and you have become a universe that is my very own, a fairyland universe, a universe of prayer, of values and of poetry. Without you, all studios are empty, for you are like democracy among the nations, like this liberty that reminds us we are free. O my palette, my pride, pressing you to my heart with this handful of brushes makes me feel in my whole being that for evermore we are united. Edde, 14/09/05

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