Khalil Gibran

Khalil Gibran
Born Gibrān Khalīl Gibrān bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad
January 6, 1883(1883-01-06)
Bsharri, Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Syria (modern day Lebanon)
Died April 10, 1931(1931-04-10) (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 Gubran Khalil Gubran[1] bin Mikhā'īl bin Sa'ad; Arabic جبران خليل جبران بن ميخائيل بن سعد, January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) 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] Gibran is considered to be the third most widely read poet in history, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.[4]

Contents

Youth

In Lebanon

Gibran was born in the Christian Maronite town of Bsharri (in modern day northern Lebanon) to the son of a Maronite priest.[5] His mother Kamila was thirty when he was born; his father, also named Khalil, was her third husband.[6] 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.[7][8]

Around 1891, extensive complaints by angry subjects led to the administrator being removed and his staff being investigated.[9] 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).[7]

In the United States

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

The Gibrans settled in Boston's South End, at the time the second largest Syrian/Lebanese-American community[10] in the United States. Due to a mistake at school he was registered as Kahlil Gibran.[2]

His mother began working as a seamstress[9] 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,[9] 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.[11] 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]

Art and poetry

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 . 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. While there he met his art study partner and lifelong friend Youssef Howayek. He later studied art in Boston .

Abu Nuwas, Drawing by Kahlil Gibran, al-Funun 2, no. 1 (June 1916)

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[7]-1912.[12] 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.[12]

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 A. 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 forty[13] 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").

Political thought

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.[7] Gibran also wrote the famous "Pity The Nation" poem during these years which was posthumously published in The Garden of the Prophet.[14]

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."[15]

Death and legacy

Khalil Gibran memorial in Washington, D.C.
Khalil Gibran memorial in Boston, Massachusetts.
Khalil Gibran memorial in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Gibran Museum and Gibran's final resting place, 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, 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 ...."

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.

Works

In Arabic:

In English, prior to his death:

Posthumous, in English:

Collections:

Other:

Memorials and honors

Statue of Gibran in Belo Horizonte.

Mentions in popular culture

Movies

Music

Other

References

  1. ↑ Gibran 1998: 12
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Gibran 1998: 29
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Acocella, Joan (January 7, 2008). "Prophet Motive". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
  4. ↑ http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/01/07/080107crbo_books_acocella
  5. ↑ Jagadisan, S. "Called by Life", The Hindu, January 5, 2003, accessed July 11, 2007
  6. ↑ "Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)", biography at Cornell University library on-line site, retrieved February 4, 2008
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Cole, Juan. "Chronology of his Life". Juan Cole's Khalil Gibran Page - Writings, Paintings, Hotlinks, New Translations. Professor Juan R.I. Cole. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/gibran/chrono.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-02. 
  8. ↑ Walbridge, John. "Gibran, his Aesthetic, and his Moral Universe". Juan Cole's Khalil Gibran Page - Writings, Paintings, Hotlinks, New Translations. Professor Juan R.I. Cole. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/gibran/papers/gibwal1.htm. Retrieved 2009-01-02. 
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Mcharek, Sana (2006-03-03) (pdf). Khalil Gibran and other Arab American Prophets. approved thesis. Florida State University. http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04102006-114344/unrestricted/Mcharek2006.pdf. Retrieved 2009-01-02. 
  10. ↑ Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) Cornell University Library
  11. ↑ "Passenger Record". Records of Ellis Island. The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. http://www.ellisisland.org/search/passRecord.asp?MID=19582761730245745888&LNM=GIBRAN&PLNM=GIBRAN&bSYR=1878&bEYR=1888&first_kind=1&last_kind=0&TOWN=null&SHIP=null&RF=8&pID=102754150222. Retrieved 2009-01-02. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Thompson, Juliet (Summer 1978). "Juliet Remembers Gibran as told to Marzieh Gail". World Order, A Baha'i Magazine 12 (04): pp. 29–31. http://bahai-library.com/file.php?file=gail_thompson_remembers_gibran. 
  13. ↑ http://www.alhewar.com/Gibran.html
  14. ↑ "Pity The Nation..." by Khalil Gibran
  15. ↑ Hawi, Khalil Gibran: His Background, Character and Works, 1972, p219
  16. ↑ Gibran Memorial in Washington, DC
  17. ↑ Elmaz Abinader, Children of Al-Mahjar: Arab American Literature Spans a Century", U.S. Society & Values, February 2000
  18. ↑ [1]
  19. ↑ Young, William P. The Shack, Windblown Media, 2007, p. 43.

External links