Gibran
Kahlil Gibran 1883-1931
The Poet of Humanity and Peace
I came to be for all and in all. That which alone I do today shall be proclaimed before the people in days to come. And what I now say with one tongue, tomorrow will say with many. Kahlil Gibran
Amin
Neghavati (2005)
Gibran Kahlil Gibran, the slender, moustachioed Lebanese immigrant, five feet four inches tall, with brown eyes fringed by long lashes, known to the world as the immortal prophet of Lebanon and the Savant of His Age, was born on January 6, 1883, to a Christian family in the village of Bsharri in the North East of Beirut not far from the famous Cedar forests of Biblical times, at an altitude of over 5000 feet which at that time was in a Turkish province that was part of Greater Syria and nowadays is an international spot of tourism and pilgrimage. A lush region with blue sky and pure air, beautiful vineyards, apple and mulberry orchards, with the far sight of the Mediterranean Sea, rugged cliffs and the beauty of the cascading falls which had a dramatic and symbolic influence on his drawi ngs and writings. His mother Camilla Rahmeh, the daughter of Father Estephan Rahmeh, a Maronite Catholic priest, was thirty when she gave birth to Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. The romance between Camilla and Khalil Gibran occurred when he heard her singing in her father’s garden. “He did not rest until he had met her, and was immediately impressed with her beauty and charm. And there was no peace for him or anyone else until he had won her hand.”
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When Gibran was born, his parents baptized him in the Maronite church and named him after his paternal grandfather, Gibran, according to the Lebanese custom at that time. Gibran received his early primary education in his native town with regular visits to a village priest teaching him The Bible and Syriac and Arabic languages. After his father, an alcoholic tax collector, was disgraced in 1891 and the Ottomon authorities confiscated his property and made the family homeless, Gibran, aged 12 by the time, with the family, including his elder half-brother, Peter, two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, and their mother, immigrated to the United States in June, 1895 under the
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Young, Barbara, This Man From Lebanon, New York: A. Knopf, 1970, p. 144.
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leadership of Peter, and settled in the centre of the Syrian district in Boston, where other natives of Bsharri along with other Syrians had comprised a colony in Chinatown. The father had remained behind in Lebanon. The father had hardly any dominant impact on his son; unlike the mother who played an important role in the intellectual maturation of her son. She acquainted her son with the famous Arabian old tales and the Hunting Songs of Abu N’Was.
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Gibran’s English readers have always known him by a modified form of his real name. His full name in Arabic was Gibran Khalil Gibran, the middle name being, conventionally, his father’s. When Gibran started as a student in the Quincy School in Boston in 1895, his English teacher suggested dropping his first name and changing the spelling of “Khalil” to “Kahlil” to suit the American pronunciation which first was a registration mistake! The shortened and misspelled “Kahlil Gibran” remained unchanged throughout the rest of his life despite his repeated attempts at restoring his full name. During the two years of learning in the public school of the district, Gibran scored the highest marks among his U.S. classmates and soon was recognised as a genius. According to Waterfield (1998), his art teacher, Florence Pierce, recognized his burgeoning talents and saw an artistic future for the boy. He had a hand in his acquaintance with Fred Holland Day, a prominent figure of the Boston avant-garde and a leader of a group of artists and poets known as the Visionists. Day, who was a supporter of artists, opened up Gibran’s cultural world and set him on the road to artistic fame and reputation. Day cultivated the young immigrant’s artistic talents; he commented on his sketches, and encouraged the spiritual aspect of his drawings. Under Day’s tutelage, Gibran came also to develop his love of literature. It was then that Gibran felt the joy of literature with some romantic poets and philosophers who later had a considerable impact on his output.
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Otto, Annie Salem, The Parables of Kahlil Gibran, New York: The Citadel Press, 1963, p. 16.
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In 1896 having felt the weakness in his own native language and c ulture, Gibran returned to Lebanon in order to become acquainted with the Arabian erudition along with cultivating his mother tongue. From 1896 to 1901 he studied a great deal of subjects, such as international law, medicine, music and the history of religion, at Madrasat Al-Hikmat (School of Wisdom), today located in Ashrafiet, Beirut. A significant point in his stay in Lebanon was the love experience which marked his life deeply. It was his first romance with Miss Halla Daher whom he later immortalised in his novel ‘The Broken Wings’ (1912) under the name of ‘Selma’.
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However, she was promised
already as a child by her aristocrat parents to the hands of someone else. By this time, the eighteen-year-old Gibran, eager to acquire the art of painting, set foot in Paris where he stayed two years. On his way he also visited Greece, Italy, and Spain. Paris was the city where he wrote ‘Spirits Rebellious’, his well-known criticism of Lebanese high official society and corrupted marriage love. (The Lebanon’s Turkish Government burned his work in the marketplace in Beirut.) The loud outspoken sigh of sadness which is frequently observed in Gibran’s works is derived from the events in 1903 which drastically influenced his life. His sister, Sultana, died when he was in Paris. He got back to Boston, but shortly after his arrival his mother was bedridden in a hospital. The miseries increased in March of the same year when his halfbrother, Peter, died. And three months later his mother passed away. The depressing loss of Camilla inspired Gibran to dedicate some lines to motherhood in ‘The Broken Wings’.
The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word “Mother,” and the most beautiful call is the call of “My mother,” It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the
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Ghougassian, Joseph P., Kahlil Gibran: Wings of Thought, New York: The Philosophical Library, 1973, p.26
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depth of the heart. The mother is everything- she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly. Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heat, it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.
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If Gibran has become a philosopher of human sorrow, and a great psychologist of the finitude of human nature, it is because he immensely experienced the existential anxiety of II
suffering, and the facticities of human predicaments.
In the following years he wrote many short essays in Arabic and he also revised ‘The Prophet’ written in Arabic for the second time. By early 1904 Gibran had his first art exhibition in Boston. From 1908 to 1910 he studied art in Paris with August Rodin. Miss Marry Haskel, a principal of a school, and later an everlasting friend toward whom Gibran had a spiritual and intellectual Platonic love, advised and financed him on his second stay in Paris. Gibran also had the experience of a Freudian love with Emile Michel, a young, beautiful French woman who taught French in Miss Haskell’s school. In Paris Gibran asked her to be his mistress but I II
Kahlil Gibran, Gibran, The Broken Wings, pp. 82-83 Ghougassian, Joseph P., p. 28
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she refused since she wanted to be married to him and marked the end of a second frustrated love. Around 1912 he settled in New York, where he devoted himself to writing and painting till the end of his life. He lived at 51 West Tenth Street, on the third floor of the famous “Studio Building” exclusively built for painters and writers. And from 1918 he published mostly in English. ‘The Madman: His Parables and Poems’ (1918) was his first book originally published in the English language. Writing in English definitely increased Englishspeaking readers’ recognition of Gibran’s abilities as a writer, since they started reading his original work rather than a translated one. Finally, with the publication of ‘The Prophet’ in 1923, Gibran’s reputation spread both in the Middle East and in the United States. After the outbreak of World War I, Gibran’s political activity increased. He worked with the Syrian-Mount Lebanon Volunteer Committee, advising Syrian residents in the United States on how to join the French army involved in the war, and advocating Arab independence from the Ottoman Empire. Kahlil Gibran passed away peacefully at 10.55 p.m., on April 10, 1931, at the age of forty-eight, in St. Vincent’s hospital in New York. Among other people close to Gibran, his sister, Marianna, and his best friend Naimy were by his side. He was buried in his birthplace in his motherland. Gibran left behind a rich literary production and four hundred pieces of paintings and drawings.
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The Prophet is Gibran’s literary and artistic masterpiece. It remained America’s best
selling book after The Bible during the 20th Century. It has been translated into at least twenty languages and has become one of the greatest classics of our time. The book is said to be a testimony to the genius of Gibran. There are signs that Gibran’s mind was obsessed with the spiritual hunger of the world and the desire in his soul to write a book on this need: “The world is hungry, Mary, and I have seen and heard the hunger of the world; and if this thing is bread it will find a place in the heart of the world, and if it is not bread it will at least make the hunger of the world deeper and higher” ( Beloved Prophet , 1972, p. 264). It is a long time that readers have found themselves returning to the glorious pages of the book to reabsorb its wisdom. Its beloved poetry is commonly read at weddings, baptisms, and funerals throughout the world. The Chicago Evening Post Literary Review said of The Prophet :
“Truth is here: truth expressed with all the music and beauty and idealism of a Syrian…The words of Gibran bring to one’s ears the majestic rhythm of Ecclesiastes…For Kahlil Gibran has not feared to be an idealist in an age of cynics. Nor to be concerned with simple truth where others devote themselves to mountebank cleverness…The twenty-eight chapters in the book form a little bible, to be read and loved by those at all ready for truth” (qtd in Young, 1945, p. 61).
The book portrays the journey of a banished man called Almustafa, which in the Arabic language means the chosen one. As he prepares to go back to “the isle of his birth,” he wishes to offer the Orphalese, the people among whom he has been placed, gifts but possesses
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nothing. The people gather around him, and Almitra, the seeress, asks him to “give us of your truth” and the man’s spiritual insights in twenty-six poetic sermons are his gift. As a wise sage and man of great vision, Almustafa tea ches moral values, the mysteries of life, and timeless wisdom about the human experience: marriage, children, friendship, pleasure, death …He, for example, calls for balancing heart and mind, passion and reason, and for giving without recognition because the giver’s joy is his reward. Almustafa describes the yearning of the soul for spiritual regeneration and self-fulfillment. He teaches that man’s purpose in life is a mystic quest towards a Greater Self, towards Godhood and the infinite. He talks about “your larger selves” (p. 91) Then at the end of the book Almustafa closes his farewell address saying: “A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me” (p. 96). This image reflects a romantic vision of eternal rebirth, reincarnation, and continuity of life. It evokes the Unity of Being which Gibran believes in rather than fragmentation. Almustafa’s soul, hence, will return again to its mystical path towards a greater soul. The positive and optimistic teachings of the book are appealing. Almustafa strongly believes in the power of the human soul. Speaking of God and Evil, Almustafa has this to say:
“You are good when you are one with yourself Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house. And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.” (p. 64)
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Gibran also beautifully combines his Romantic thoughts of nature with his teachings. In his sermon on Reason and Passion, for example, he writes:
“Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows – then let your heart say in silence, “God rests in reason.” And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, -- then let your heart say in awe, “God moves in passion” (p. 51).
Critics agree that The Prophet is partly autobiographical. Mary is often said to be the inspiration for Almitra, and America or New York for the city of Orphalese. The twelve-year wait Almustafa experienced before returning home from the land of the Orphalese seems to equal Gibran’s own twelve-year stay in New York City.
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Kahlil Gibran(1883-1931), Ameen Rihani(1876-1940), and Mikhail Naimy(1889-1988), the key figures in the history of modern Arabic literature, became citizens of the U.S. and wrote both in Arabic and in English. As ambassadors of their homeland to the West, they celebrated the glorious past of the Arab world but attacked wha t they considered its backward present. They produced enduring works that were dedicated to modernism and constituted a channel for new ideas, but remained Arab in essence. Ameen Rihani came to be known as the father of Arab American literature and also the father of Arabic prose poetry; Mikhail Naimy’s name is associated with literary criticism that helped revive traditional Arabic literature. As for Kahlil Gibran, his writings penetrate to our emotional and spiritual awareness. In America, they were impressed with values of freedom and democracy in addition to scientific progress, but rejected what they saw as an excessive materialism at the expense of spirituality. Meanwhile a powerful counter-current was flowing in different parts of the world against Materialism. In India there were holy men equal to any teachers of her golden age Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Ramana, Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, and Mahatma Gandhi who eagerly inspired faith in the power of non-violence to change the world. Gibran, re-visioning Christianity in the light of Islamic (Sufi) mysticism, is of this group of inspired teachers of the modern world. All these were persecuted in one way or another: Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned. Yeats, great world-poet as he was, was ridiculed by his contemporaries who were ignorant of the great mainstream of civilization from which he drew his knowledge. Gibran was dismissed for the opposite reason, because of his immense following of ordinary men and women, for he answered to a deep need within the Western world, starved as it wa s, of its spiritual food. Communism and capitalism alike have believed that mankind could be fed on ‘bread alone’ but once again the prophets of the ever-living spirit have shown that the ‘Word of
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God’ is the necessary food of the soul. It is as if one mind had spoken through their several voices, none more eloquent or beautiful than the lonely voice of the Christian Lebanese Arab, Kahlil Gibran. “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” When it comes to expressing our patriotic fervour, many of us would naturally recall the rich statement which John F. Kennedy proudly mentioned on his Inauguration Day in 1961 and attained the highest grade of popularity in many nations, worldwide. But in fact, these two sentences had been published in a non-journalistic, mystic article some fifty years prior to J.F.K.’s speech in a Lebanese newspaper and the writer was the unknown Gibran Kahlil Gibran. The article was targeted to the young people in the Arabian territories, who were under the sovereignty of The Ottomon Emperor, encouraging them to fight for their long-lost independence. By virtue of the phenomenal success of his chef-d’oeuvre “The Prophet”, Kahlil Gibran, a visionary youth, turned out to be the most famous Arab-American ever and one of the world’s great writers. That is to say, Kahlil Gibran is not, as many may think, a one-book legend, as his earlier writings are equally monumental. English-speaking readers will also appreciate Gibran’s ‘A Tear and a Smile’, ‘The Broken Wings’, and ‘The Procession’ among others. His message and images have resonated among peoples of diverse cultures and brought them together in appreciation of his art. In his life and work-which were inspired by his experiences as an immigrant in an adopted land- Gibran resolved cultural and human conflicts and developed in the process a unique consciousness, one that transcended the barriers of East and West. His belief in the unity of being, his awareness of spiritual continuity, his call for universal fellowship and the unification of the human race all retain their potency today, as do the messages of all great poets. Among modern poets it would be
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hard to find one who has toiled and laboured more arduously than Gibran to promote a universal culture of peace, one that unites both East and West. Gibran particularly moved his readers with The Prophet , the words of which eloquently carry deep truths of our human existence. The Prophet , which Gibran considered as his greatest achievement, remains widely popular; another Bible for millions of people around the world, and hence fulfilling Gibran’s desire to be a “poet-prophet”. Yet, despite the degree of self-confirmation and global reputation he reached, he is not yet part of the American literary canon. Many biographical works have been published, but Gibran has not been studied enough and most universities in America do not teach him in their English Departments.
‘People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?’
-laws
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Books by Kahlil Gibran
Gibran, Kahlil. The Broken Wings, trans. Anthony R. Ferris. New York: Citadel Press, 1957. -----------------. A Tear and a Smile, trans. H. M. Nahmad. New York: Knopf, 1972. -----------------. Spirits Rebellious, trans. H.M. Nahmad, New York: Knopf, 1948. -----------------. Nymphs of the Valley, trans. H.M. Nahmad, New York: Knopf, 1948. -----------------. On Music, a Pamphlet , New York: Al-Mohajer, 1905. -----------------. The Madmen: His Parables and Poems, New York: Knopf, 1918. -----------------. “The Procession”, trans. M.F. Kheirallah, New York: Arab-American Press, 1947. -----------------. Twenty Drawings, New York: Knopf, 1919. -----------------. The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems, New York: Knopf, 1920. -----------------. Sand and Foam, New York, New York: Knopf, 1926. -----------------. The Prophet , New York: Knopf, 2000. -----------------. Spiritual Sayings, trans. Anthony R. Ferris, New York: Citadel Press, 1962. -----------------. Jesus, the Son of Man, New York: Knopf, 1928. ------------------. The Earth Gods, New York: Knopf, 1931. -----------------. The Wanderer: His Parables and Sayings , New York: Knopf, 1932. -----------------. The Garden of the Prophet , New York: Knopf, 1933. -----------------. Lazarus and His Beloved and The Blind , Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981.
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The following list is a bouquet of Gibran’s themes which would allow us to explore the different sides of Gibran:
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PHOTOGHRAPHS
One of the last photographs of Gibran (from Robin Waterfield’s The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran ).
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A 1920 photograph of four prominent members of The Pen League (from left to right): Nasib ‘Arida, Kahlil Gibran, ‘Abd al-Masih Haddad, and Mikhail Naimy. (from Robin Waterfield’s The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran ).
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A portrait of Gibran’s mother, Kamila Rahma, pencil on paper (from Suheil Bushrui & Joe Jenkins’ Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet )
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