Khalil Gibran

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Khalil Gibran

Born Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikhael bin Saâd
January 6, 1883 (1883-01-06)
Bsharri, Lebanon
Died April 10, 1931 (aged 48)
New York City, United States
Occupation Poet, Painter, Sculptor, Writer, Philosopher, Theologian, Visual Artist
Nationality Lebanese
Genres Poetry, Parable, Short Story
Literary movement Mahjar, New York Pen League
Notable work(s) The Prophet

Khalil Gibran (full name Gibran Khalil Gibran bin Mikhael bin Saâd, Arabic: جبران خليل جبران بن ميخائيل بن سعد, Syriac: ܟ݂ܠܝܠ ܔܒܪܢ) (born January 6, 1883 in Bsharri, Lebanon; died April 10, 1931 in New York City, United States) was a Lebanese American artist, poet, writer, philosopher and theologian. He was born in Lebanon (at the time the Mount Lebanon sub-district in the Ottoman province of Syria) and spent most of his life in the United States. He is the third bestselling poet in history after William Shakespeare and Lao Tse.[1]

Contents

[edit] Youth

[edit] In Lebanon

Gibran was born in the Christian Maronite town of Bsharri in today's northern Lebanon - at the time, part of the Ottoman Empire. He grew up in the region of Bsharri. His maternal grandfather was a Maronite Catholic priest[2]. His mother Kamila was thirty when Gibran was born; his father, also named Khalil, was her third husband.[3] As a result of his family's poverty, Gibran did not receive any formal schooling during his youth in Lebanon. However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible, as well as the Syriac and Arabic languages.

After Gibran's father, a tax collector, went to prison for alleged embezzlement,[1] Ottoman authorities confiscated his family's property. Authorities released Gibran's father in 1894, but the family had by then lost their home. Gibran's mother decided to follow her brother, Gibran's uncle, and emigrated to the United States. Gibran's father remained in Lebanon. Gibran's mother, along with Khalil, his younger sisters Mariana and Sultana, and his half-brother Peter left for New York on June 25, 1895.

[edit] In the United States

Khalil Gibran, Photograph by Fred Holland Day, c. 1898
Khalil Gibran, Photograph by Fred Holland Day, c. 1898

The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second largest Lebanese-American community in the United States. His mother began working as a pack peddler, selling lace and linens that she carried from door to door. Gibran started school on September 30, 1895. He had had no formal schooling in Lebanon, and school officials placed him in a special class for immigrants to learn English. Gibran's English teacher suggested that he Anglicise the spelling of his name in order to make it more acceptable to American society. Kahlil Gibran was the result.

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,[1] who encouraged and supported Gibran in his creative endeavors. A publisher used some of Gibran's drawings for book covers in 1898.

At 15, Gibran went back to Lebanon 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. Two weeks before he got back, his sister, Sultana, age 14, died of tuberculosis. The next year, his brother Bhutros died of the same disease, and his mother died of cancer. His sister Marianna then supported Gibran and herself, working at a dressmaker's shop.[1]

[edit] Art and poetry

Gibran held his first art exhibition, of drawings, in 1904 in Boston, at Day's studio.[1] 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. Haskell influenced not only Gibran's personal life, but also his career. In 1908, Gibran went to study art with Auguste Rodin in Paris for two years. This is where he met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef Howayek. He later studied art in Boston.

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 ("the father of Lebanese American literature"), 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.

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 26 poetic essays. This, the author's magnum opus, 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 and remains world-renowned to this day. Having been translated into more than 20 languages, it was the bestselling book of the twentieth century in the United States, second only to the Bible.

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 was taken 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).

Juliet Thompson, one of Khalil Gibran's acquaintances, said that Gibran told her that he thought of `Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá'í Faith in his lifetime, all the way through writing The Prophet. `Abdu'l-Bahá's personage also influenced Jesus, The Son of Man, another book by Gibran. It is certain that Gibran did two portraits of him during this period.[4]

[edit] Political Thought

Gibran was a prominent Syrian nationalist. In a political statement he drafted in 1911,[5] he expresses his loyality to Greater Syria and to the safeguarding of Syria's national territorial integrity. He also calls for the adoption of Arabic as a national language of Syria and the application of Arabic at all school levels.

When the Ottomans were finally driven out of Syria during the first world war, Gibran's exhilaration was manifested in a delightful 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 Kahlil Hawi,[6] "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 with side with internationalism."[7]

[edit] Death and legacy

Khalil Gibran memorial in Washington, D.C.
Khalil Gibran memorial in Washington, D.C.
The Gibran Museum and Gibran's final resting place, located in Bsharri, Lebanon
The Gibran Museum and Gibran's final resting place, located in Bsharri, Lebanon

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.

Gibran willed the contents of his studio to Mary Haskell. There she discovered her letters to him spanning 23 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 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 after moving to Savannah, Georgia in 1923) donated her personal collection of nearly one hundred original works of art by Gibran to the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah in 1950. Haskell had been thinking of placing her collection at the Telfair as early as 1914. In a letter to Gibran, she explained, "...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 extraordinary gift to the Telfair is the largest public collection of Kahlil 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", however, this led to years of controversy and violence over the distribution of the money[8]; eventually, the Lebanese government became the overseer.

[edit] Works

In Arabic:

  • Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (1905)
  • Ara'is al-Muruj (Nymphs of the Valley, also translated as Spirit Brides, 1906)
  • al-Arwah al-Mutamarrida (Spirits Rebellious, 1908)
  • al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira (Broken Wings, 1912)
  • Dam'a wa Ibtisama (A Tear and A Smile, 1914)
  • al-Mawakib (The Processions, 1919)
  • al-‘Awāsif (The Tempests, 1920)
  • al-Bada'i' waal-Tara'if (The New and the Marvellous,1923)

In English, prior to his death:

  • The Madman (1918) (downloadable free version)
  • Twenty Drawings (1919)
  • The Forerunner (1920)
  • The Prophet, (1923)
  • Sand and Foam (1926)
  • Kingdom Of The Imagination (1927)
  • Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
  • The Earth Gods (1931)

Posthumous, in English:

  • The Wanderer (1932)
  • The Garden of the Prophet(1933)
  • Lazarus and his Beloved (1933)
  • Prose and Poems (1934)
  • A Self-Portrait (1959)
  • Thought and Meditations (1960)
  • Spiritual sayings (1962)
  • Voice of the master (1963)
  • Mirrors of the Soul (1965)
  • Death Of The Prophet (1979)
  • The Vision (1994)
  • Eye of the Prophet (1995)

Other:

  • Beloved Prophet, The love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell, and her private journal (1972, edited by Virginia Hilu)

[edit] Memorials and honors

[edit] Mentions in popular culture

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The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
Movies
Music
  • Jazz saxophonist Jackie McLean's "Kahlil the Prophet" is on his album Destination...Out! (1963) (Blue Note BLP 4165)
  • Jason Mraz's song "God moves through you" on the album Selections For Friends features words from the poem "The Prophet"
  • The lyrics to David Bowie's "The Width of a Circle", off his album The Man Who Sold the World (1970), relates a surrealist scene in which the narrator and his doppelgänger seek the help of a blackbird, who just "laughed insane and quipped 'Kahlil Gibran'".
  • Michigan experimental screamo outfit Men As Trees quote Gibran in the liner notes to their 2008 album, Weltschmerz: "We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset has left us."
  • Tyrannosaurus Rex's second album, Prophets, Seers & Sages – The Angels of the Ages, released in October 1968, was dedicated in Gibran's memory.
Other
  • In the popular video game Deus Ex, one of the three possible ending quotes is Gibran's quote: "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth..." The western spelling of his name, Kahlil Gibran, was used to credit him.
  • Khalil Gibran is referenced briefly in the episode Wingmen of the show The Boondocks. When Huey (the central character) is asked by his grandfather to say something "deep", he recites part of the poem "On Pain" from The Prophet.
  • In the hit TV show "One Tree Hill", Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray) quotes Gibran.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e Acocella, Joan. "Prophet Motive", The New Yorker, January 7, 2008
  2. ^ Jagadisan, S. "Called by Life", The Hindu, January 5, 2003, accessed July 11, 2007
  3. ^ "Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)", biography at Cornell University library on-line site, retrieved February 4, 2008
  4. ^ "Khalil Gibran and the Bahá'í Faith", excerpts from World Order, A Baha'i Magazine, Vol. 12, Number 4, Summer, 1978, pages 29-31
  5. ^ Hawi, Kahlil Gibran: His Background, Character and Works, 1972, p155
  6. ^ Hawi, Kahlil Gibran: His Background, Character and Works, 1972, p219
  7. ^ Gibran and the national idea
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ Gibran Memorial in Washington, DC
  10. ^ Elmaz Abinader, Children of Al-Mahjar: Arab American Literature Spans a Century", U.S. Society & Values, February 2000

[edit] External links

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