The Mediterranean universe of Michel Chiha
Lebanon’s position on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, its role in the Middle East and in the world, the role of the Middle East itself, its past and its future, its physical and moral climate: as much marvellous things, always new, that Michel Chiha never tires of discovering, contemplating, revealing, like a dazzled man who counts treasures.
He tells us and repeats his reasons for joy and confidence, his hopes, his suggestions, in a voice that is each time “neither quite the same, nor quite another”; in a song which, for years, rocked us, but which upsets us now: this song to which death has given even more purity and sweetness, – an infinite resonance.
[…]
For Michel Chiha, the Mediterranean universe which is ours is not only the heart of the old world. It is the place of birth or meeting of the values of civilisations which deserve to spread throughout the entire universe.
[…]
This man who was so dear to us, he had to leave us for us to fully understand him and understand what he was for us. He was really the salt of the earth; he gave this corner of the world all its value, all its dimensions.
[…]
And this is how those of these articles that we reread in this collection, make us dream of the play of light and water which reveal, little by little, to the attentive spectator, the various aspects, the harmony, the radiance of a resplendent landscape.
Charles Helou
In 2012, the Michel Chiha Foundation published the book “Variations sur la Méditerranée” in Arabic. The translation was made by Dr. Nabil Khalifé.