Celine Axelos

Who is Celine Axelos?

Celine Axelos was an Egyptian poet, public speaker, and woman of letters. Her older brother, René Tasso, was also a poet of distinction who, however, died at the young age of twenty-two from consumption.

Mr. Tasso was a middle class functionary of Lebanese extraction. Celine was the eldest of four girls, and lived her entire life in Alexandria, Egypt, leaving only for brief trips to the United States, Lebanon, and France.

At the age of sixteen Celine married George Salm, a wealthy landowner twice her age. They had one child, Joseph. The marriage was unhappy, and the father absconded with the three-year old boy and deposited him in a boarding school in Virginia. A divorce ensued, and the child was raised in a series of boarding schools and orphanages in America. Fifteen years passed before Celine saw her only child again.

Because Mr. Salm had become an American citizen, the Egyptian government sued to expropriate his extensive landholdings. The American government funded Salm's defense, with the signature of President Herbert Hoover. The case, known as the Salem Claim, went to international arbitration in Vienna, Austria in 1931. The American side lost and Salm was dispossessed of all his Egyptian property.