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Lebanese writer and artist Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) influenced modern Arabic literature and composed inspirational pieces in English, including The Prophet.
Kahlil Gibran, baptized Gibran Khalil Gibran, the oldest child of Khalil Gibran and his wife Kamila Rahme, was born January 6, 1883, in Besharri, Lebanon, then part of Syria and the Ottoman Turkish Empire. His childhood in the isolated village beneath Mt. Lebanon included few material comforts and he had no formal early education. However, he received a strong spiritual heritage.
Surrounded for centuries by members of the Moslem and Druze religions, residents of Maronite Christian villages like Besharri evolved a mystical philosophy of life. His later work was influenced by legends and biblical stories handed down for generations in the scenic region near the ancient Cedars of Lebanon.
Seeking a better future, the family, except for their father, moved to America in 1895. They joined relatives and shared a tenement in South Boston, Massachusetts. Kamila Gibran sold lace to support her four children and opened a small dry goods store. While registering for public school, Gibran's name was shortened and changed.
His life changed when a settlement house art teacher noticed his artistic skill. Florence Peirce with Jessie Fremont Beale, a philanthropist, arranged for Gibran's introduction to Fred Holland Day in December 1896.
A Boston patron of literature and fine arts who was also an "artistic" photographer, Day used Gibran, his younger sisters Marianna and Sultana, half-brother Peter, and Kamila as models. After discovering Gibran's aptitude for literature and art, Day proclaimed him a "natural genius" and became his mentor. Gibran designed book illustrations, sketched portraits, and met Day's friends. He then went to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1898 to attend Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite college where he studied Arabic literature and cofounded a literary magazine.
Returning to Boston in 1902, he experienced family tragedy. During 1902 and 1903 Kamila, Sultana, and Peter died from disease. Marianna, a seamstress, supported both herself and Gibran, who resumed his art work and renewed his friendship with Day.
In 1903 Josephine Preston Peabody, a poetess and friend, arranged for an exhibition of his work at Wellesley College; in 1904 Gibran and another artist exhibited their work at Day's Boston studio. Here, Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, who became his patron and tutor in English for two decades. The owner of Miss Haskell's School for Girls and, later, headmistress of the Cambridge School, she believed he would have an outstanding future. She aided several talented, needy people and was a major factor in Gibran's success as an English writer and artist.
From 1908 to 1910 Haskell provided funds for Gibran to study painting and drawing in Paris. Before going to France, he studied English literature with her and had an essay, "al-Musiqa" (1905), published by the Arabic immigrant press in New York City.
Diverse influences, including Boston's literary world, the English Romantic poets, mystic William Blake, and philosopher Nietzsche, combined with his Besharri experience, shaped Gibran's artistic and literary career. Although his drawings depict idealized, romantic figures, the optimistic philosophy of his later writing resulted from a painful personal evolution. Understanding Gibran's attitude towards authority gives greater insight to his work in English.
Gibran opposed Ottoman Turkish rule and the Maronite Church's strict social control. After "Spirits Rebellious," an Arabic poem, was published in 1908, Gibran was called a reformer and received widespread recognition in the Arabic world. Other Arabic writings, including "Broken Wings" (1912), were published in New York where a large Syrian-Lebanese community flourished. He became the best known of the "Mahjar poets" or immigrant Arabic writers. His most respected Arabic poem is the "The Procession" (1919). He was president of Arrabitah, a literary society founded in New York in 1920 to infuse "a new life in modern Arabic literature."
Gibran sought and won acceptance from New York's artistic and literary world. His first work in English appeared in 1918 when The Madman was published by the American firm of Alfred A. Knopf. The sometimes cynical parables and poems on justice, freedom, and God are illustrated by three of Gibran's drawings. In 1919 Knopf published Gibran's Twenty Drawings; in 1920 The Forerunner appeared. Each book sold a few hundred copies. In October 1923 The Prophet was published; it sold over 1,000 copies in three months.
The slim volume of parables, illustrated with Gibran's drawings, is one of America's all-time best selling books; its fame spreads by word of mouth. Critics call it overly sentimental. By 1986, however, almost eight million copies - all hard-bound editions - had been sold in the United States alone. Several of his other works enjoyed substantial sales. Gibran bequeathed his royalties to Besharri; ironically, the gift caused years of feuding among village families.
Gibran's views on the brotherhood of man and man's unity with nature appeal primarily to young and old readers. The parables present a refreshing, new way of looking at the world that has universal appeal. By 1931 The Prophet had been translated into 20 languages. In the 1960s it reached new heights of popularity with American college students.
Although in failing health, Gibran completed two more books in English - Sand and Foam (1926) and Jesus, The Son of Man (1928) - that illustrate his philosophy. After his death earlier essays were compiled and published, and his Arabic work has been translated into many languages.
Gibran was 48 when he died in New York City on April 10, 1931, of cancer of the liver. The Arabic world eulogized him as a genius and patriot. A grand procession greeted his body upon its return to Besharri for burial in September 1931. Today, Arabic scholars praise Gibran for introducing Western romanticism and a freer style to highly formalized Arabic poetry. "Gibranism," the term used for his approach, attracted many followers.
In America, the West Tenth Street Studio for Artists in Greenwich Village, where he lived after 1911, has been replaced with a modern apartment building. But Gibran's books are in countless libraries and book stores. Five art works, including a portrait sketch of Albert Pinkham Ryder, are at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the gift of his patron Mary Haskell Minis.
The young emigrant from Lebanon who came through Ellis Island in 1895 never became an American citizen: he loved his birthplace too much. But he was able to combine two heritages and achieved lasting fame in widely different cultures. These two aphorisms from Sand and Foam convey Gibran's message:
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.
How can you sing if your mouth be filled with food? How shall your hand be raised in blessing if it is filled with gold?
Further Reading
The definitive biography of Gibran in English by Jean Gibran and Kahlil Gibran, Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World (1974), documents his life through letters, notebooks, and diaries. Beloved Prophet, The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and Her Private Journal (1972), edited by Virginia Hilu, reveals the complex relationship between Gibran and his longtime patron. An early biography, This Man from Lebanon (1945) by Barbara Young, presents an uncritical view. A more realistic but undocumented study is Mikhail Naimah, Kahlil Gibran, A Biography (1950). Khalil S. Hawi, Kahlil Gibran: His Background, Character, and Works (1963) is a detailed study, but the author lacked access to important sources. Studies on Arabic literature that discuss Gibran include: Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry (1977), Vol. I; M. M. Badawi, A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry (1971), Ch. 5, "The Emigrant Poets."
Additional Sources
Gibran, Jean, Kahlil Gibran, his life and world, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974.
Gibran, Jean, Kahlil Gibran, his life and world, New York: Interlink Books, 1991.
Hawi, Khalil S., Kahlil Gibran: his background, character, and works, London: Third World Centre for Research & Publishing, 1982, 1972.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Kahlil Gibran |
Bibliography
See biographies by K. and J. Gibran (rev. ed. 1991), S. Bushrui and J. Jenkins and R. Waterfield (both: 1999).
| Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Khalil Gibran |
1883 - 1931
Lebanese author of prose and poetry.
Gibran (Jubran Khalil Jubran) was born at Bshirri in northern Lebanon and in the late 1880s moved to the United States with his sisters. He is known in the West for his book The Prophet, and in the Arab world for his contributions to the reformation of the modern usage of the Arabic language. He wrote in prose and poetry, and excelled in both. He ignored the rigid, traditional forms and called for free artistic expressions. Gibran was nonconformist: He opposed the dominance of the clerical establishment and called for the modernization of the Middle East without copying Western models.
Gibran's works in Arabic and in English celebrate individual freedoms and warn against sectarianism and class oppression. His attacks on the religious establishment made him enemies among leaders of the Lebanese church. After his death, however, Lebanese revered his memory and treated him as a cultural icon. Gibran never viewed himself as a Lebanese nationalist, however, but wrote as a Syrian Arab. His experience in the United States led him and other Arab writers and poets to form a literary society, Al-Rabita al-Qalamiyya (Pen's League), which played an important role in the cultural revival in the Middle East in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
— AS'AD ABUKHALIL
| Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia: Kahlil Gibran |
Metaphysical poet and philosopher. He was born in the town of Bsharýe, Lebanon, traditionally the area of the forest of the Holy Cedars, which furnished timber for King Solomon's temple in ancient Jerusalem. Gibran was baptized in the Maronite (Eastern Rite) branch of the Roman Catholic Church and named after his paternal grandfather as Gibran Kahlil Gibran, a name he retained in Arabic, although he used the simpler "Kahlil Gibran" in his English writings.
He was educated in Lebanon and emigrated to the United States with his family when he was 12, settling in Boston in 1895. There he attended a public school but he returned to the Middle East for schooling two years later.
In Lebanon he studied at the Madrasat Al-Hikmat (The School of Wisdom), founded by the Maronite bishop Joseph Debs in Beirut. After graduation he traveled in Syria and Lebanon, visiting historic places.
In 1902 he returned to the United States to dedicate himself to painting, and in 1908 went to Paris to study under famous sculptor Auguste Rodin at the Academy of Fine Arts. He then returned to the United States once again, where he continued to paint. Gibran wrote many books of mystical inspiration that dramatize a quest of self-fulfillment, of which The Prophet (1923) is by far the most popular.
Sources:
Gibran, Kahlil. Beloved Prophet: The Love Letters of Kahhil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her Private Journal. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
——. Earth Gods. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931.
——. Gibran: A Self-Portrait. New York: Citadel, 1959.
——. Jesus the Son of Man. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
——. The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923.
——. Sand and Foam. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
——. Wisdom of Kahlil Gibran. New York: Philosophical Library, 1966.
Hawi, Khalil. Kahlil Gibran: His Background, Character, and Works. Beirut, 1963.
Nu'aymah, Mikha'il. Kahlil Gibran: A Biography. New York: Quartet, 1988.
Sherfan, Andrew Dib. Kahlil Gibran: The Nature of Love. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971.
Young, Barbara. This Man from Lebanon: A Study of Kahlil Gibran. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, n.d.
| Quotes By: Kahlil Gibran |
Quotes:
"When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies."
"Seek ye counsel of the aged for their eyes have looked on the faces of the years and their ears have hardened to the voices of Life. Even if their counsel is displeasing to you, pay heed to them."
"The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain."
"March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path."
"One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night."
"Verily the kindness that gazes upon itself in a mirror turns to stone, and a good deed that calls itself by tender names becomes the parent to a curse."
See more famous quotes by
Kahlil Gibran
| Wikipedia: Khalil Gibran |
| Khalil Gibran | |
|---|---|
| Born | Gibrān Khalīl Gibrān bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad January 6, 1883 Bsharri, Ottoman Syria (modern day Lebanon) |
| Died | April 10, 1931 (aged 48) New York City, United States |
| Occupation | Poet, Painter, Sculptor, Writer, Philosopher, Theologian, Visual Artist |
| Nationality | Lebanese-American |
| Genres | Poetry, Parable, Short Story |
| Literary movement | Mahjar, New York Pen League |
| Notable work(s) | The Prophet |
Khalil Gibran (born Gibran Khalil Gibran[1] bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad; Arabic جبران خليل جبران بن ميکائيل بن سعد, January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931[citation needed]) also known as Kahlil Gibran[2], was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose. An early example of Inspirational fiction, the book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in the 1960s counterculture.[3]
Contents |
Gibran was born in the Christian Maronite town of Bsharri (in modern day northern Lebanon) to the daughter of a Maronite priest.[4] His mother Kamila was thirty when he was born; his father, also named Khalil, was her third husband.[5] As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth. However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Arabic and Syriac languages.
Gibran's father initially worked in an apothecary but, with gambling debts he was unable to pay, he went to work for a local Ottoman-appointed administrator[6] or local warlord.[7]
Around 1891, extensive complaints by angry subjects led to the administrator being removed and his staff being investigated.[8] Gibran's father was imprisoned for alleged embezzlement,[3] and his family's property was confiscated by the authorities. With no home, Kamila Gibran decided to follow her brother to the United States. Although Gibran's father was released in 1894, Kamila remained resolved and left for New York on June 25, 1895, taking Khalil, his younger sisters Mariana and Sultana, and his elder half-brother Peter(/Bhutros/Butrus).[6]
The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second largest Syrian/Lebanese-American community[9] in the United States. Due to a mistake at school he was registered as Kahlil Gibran.[2]
His mother began working as a seamstress[8] peddler, selling lace and linens that she carried from door to door. Gibran started school on September 30, 1895. School officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran also enrolled in an art school at a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day,[3] who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898.
Gibran's mother, along with his elder brother Peter, wanted him to absorb more of his own heritage rather than just the Western aesthetic culture he was attracted to,[8] so at the age of fifteen, Gibran returned to his homeland to study at a Maronite-run preparatory school and higher-education institute in Beirut. He started a student literary magazine with a classmate and was elected "college poet". He stayed there for several years before returning to Boston in 1902, coming through Ellis Island on May 10.[10] Two weeks before he got back, his sister Sultana died of tuberculosis at the age of 14. The next year, Peter died of the same disease and his mother died of cancer. His sister Marianna supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker’s shop.[3]
Gibran held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston, at Day’s studio.[3] During this exhibition, Gibran met Mary Elizabeth Haskell, a respected headmistress ten years his senior. The two formed an important friendship that lasted the rest of Gibran’s life. Though publicly discreet, their correspondence reveals an exalted intimacy[citation needed]. Haskell influenced not only Gibran’s personal life, but also his career[citation needed]. In 1908, Gibran went to study art with Auguste Rodin in Paris for two years. While there he met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef Howayek. He later studied art in Boston[citation needed].
Juliet Thompson, one of Gibran's acquaintances, reported several anecdotes relating to Gibran: She recalls Gibran met `Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá’í Faith at the time of his visit to the United States, circa 1911[6]-1912.[11] Barbara Young, in “This Man from Lebanon: A Study of Khalil Gibran”, records Gibran was unable to sleep the night before meeting `Abdu’l-Bahá who sat for a pair of portraits. Thompson reports Gibran saying that all the way through writing of “Jesus, The Son of Man”, he thought of `Abdu’l-Bahá. Years later, after the death of `Abdu’l-Bahá, there was a viewing of the movie recording of `Abdu’l-Bahá - Gibran rose to talk and in tears, proclaimed an exalted station of `Abdu’l-Bahá and left the event weeping.[11]
While most of Gibran's early writings were in Arabic, most of his work published after 1918 was in English. His first book for the publishing company Alfred Knopf, in 1918, was The Madman, a slim volume of aphorisms and parables written in biblical cadence somewhere between poetry and prose. Gibran also took part in the New York Pen League, also known as the "immigrant poets" (al-mahjar), alongside important Lebanese-American authors such as Ameen Rihani, Elia Abu Madi and Mikhail Naimy, a close friend and distinguished master of Arabic literature, whose descendants Gibran declared to be his own children, and whose nephew, Samir, is a godson of Gibran's.
Much of Gibran's writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic of spiritual love. His poetry is notable for its use of formal language, as well as insights on topics of life using spiritual terms. Gibran's best-known work is The Prophet, a book composed of twenty-six poetic essays. The book became especially popular during the 1960s with the American counterculture and New Age movements. Since it was first published in 1923, The Prophet has never been out of print. Having been translated into more than twenty languages, it was one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century in the United States.
One of his most notable lines of poetry in the English-speaking world is from "Sand and Foam" (1926), which reads : “Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you”. This line was used by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song Julia from The Beatles' 1968 album The Beatles (a.k.a. "The White Album").
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Gibran called for the adoption of Arabic as a national language of Syria and the application of Arabic at all school levels. When Gibran met `Abdu'l-Bahá in 1911-12, who traveled to the United States partly to promote peace, Gibran admired the teachings on peace but argued that Syrian lands should be freed from Ottoman control.[6]. Gibran also wrote the famous "Pity The Nation" poem during these years which was posthumously published in The Garden of the Prophet.[12]
When the Ottomans were finally driven out of Syria during World War I, Gibran's exhilaration was manifested in a sketch called "Free Syria" which appeared on the front page of al-Sa'ih's special "victory" edition. Moreover, in a draft of a play, still kept among his papers, Gibran expressed great hope for national independence and progress. This play, according to Khalil Hawi, "defines Gibran's belief in Syrian nationalism with great clarity, distinguishing it from both Lebanese and Arab nationalism, and showing us that nationalism lived in his mind, even at this late stage, side by side with internationalism."[13]
Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931: the cause was determined to be cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis. Before his death, Gibran expressed the wish that he be buried in Lebanon. This wish was fulfilled in 1932, when Mary Haskell and his sister Mariana purchased the Mar Sarkis Monastery in Lebanon, which has since become the Gibran Museum. The words written next to Gibran's grave are "a word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you ...."[citation needed]
Gibran willed the contents of his studio to Mary Haskell. There she discovered her letters to him spanning twenty-three years. She initially agreed to burn them because of their intimacy, but recognizing their historical value she saved them. She gave them, along with his letters to her which she had also saved, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library before she died in 1964. Excerpts of the over six hundred letters were published in "Beloved Prophet" in 1972.
Mary Haskell Minis (she wed Jacob Florance Minis in 1923) donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred original works of art by Gibran to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia in 1950. Haskell had been thinking of placing her collection at the Telfair as early as 1914. In a letter to Gibran, she wrote "I am thinking of other museums ... the unique little Telfair Gallery in Savannah, Ga., that Gari Melchers chooses pictures for. There when I was a visiting child, form burst upon my astonished little soul." Haskell's gift to the Telfair is the largest public collection of Gibran’s visual art in the country, consisting of five oils and numerous works on paper rendered in the artist’s lyrical style, which reflects the influence of symbolism. The future American royalties to his books were willed to his hometown of Bsharri, to be "used for good causes"; but this led to years of controversy and violence over the distribution of the money,[3] and eventually the Lebanese government became the overseer.
In Arabic:
In English, prior to his death:
Posthumous, in English:
Other:
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Michael Corrigan mentions another writer's use of The Prophet in his grief memoir, A Year and a Day, published by the Idaho State University Press, 2008.
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