Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran (2 page)

Millions of people know
The Prophet
, Gibran's uplifting work that is the best-selling book of poetry of the 20
^th
century. It is still quoted in wedding ceremonies, Alcoholics Anonymous writings, and other moments of high emotion. The quote that AA uses is wonderful: "You pray in your distress and in your need: would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy."

This wide-ranging volume
The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran
is more varied and comprehensive than
The Prophet
and thus gives us a multi-faceted view of this gifted, spiritual, free-thinking, tortured and generous man. Letters to his friends and loved ones reveal personal details that infuse the legend with humanity: his excitement about going to Paris for a year to be among great artists, "the beginning of a new chapter in the story of my life"; the exhaustion of keeping up his necessary pace of writing and painting when his health was suffering; his humility as he asks a friend to forget and forgive an unmentioned transgression; the shy sweetness of his asking May Ziadeh, a Lebanese girl whom Gibran knew only through correspondence, "if you would like to talk to this man in the tongue he speaks, which you can understand better than anyone else." He confesses not to know how to ask her for her picture!

In another letter to May in 1925, soon after the publication of
The Prophet
, Gibran describes a very modern dilemma for a famous person who has lost the peace of anonymity:

A year ago I was living in peace and tranquility, but today my tranquility has turned into clamor and my peace into strife. The people devour my days and my nights and submerge my life in their conflicts and desires. Many a time I have fled from this awful city [New York] to a remote place to be away from the people and from the shadow of myself.

With this in mind, one of my favorite examples of his paradoxically practical and poetic sayings is this gem: "In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath."

Another favorite of mine reveals his quest for personal honesty. He humbly writes, "I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of a weapon."

Gibran's inspirational message in
The Prohpet
is relevant here. If he had not suffered poverty and dislocation as a child, we would not have his profound writings.
The Prohpet
has helped millions of readers gain peace of mind because, as Gibran explained, the book teaches that we are greater than we know, and things are a lot better than we think.

Not that the world isn't filled with injustice, and Gibran's lyrical words especially soar when he writes about cruelty and injustice. In "The Cry of the Graves" we see the courtroom of the Emir as he passes deadly final judgment on three people accused and immediately convicted as a murderer, an adulteress and a thief. The narrator contemplates what he has seen, and further, goes to the place where the executed bodies have been thrown, wondering:

Three human beings, who yesterday were in the lap of Life, today fell as victims to Death because they broke the rules of human society. When a man kills another man, the people say he is a murderer, but when the Emir kills him, the Emir is just. When a man robs a monastery, they say he is a thief, but when the Emir robs him of his life, the Emir is honourable. ... Shedding of blood is forbidden, but who made it lawful for the Emir? ... What is Law? Who saw it coming with the sun from the depths of heaven? What human saw the heart of God and found its will or purpose?

The narrator learns the truth about each of the three victims as their loved ones come to mourn them: the murderer killed an attempted rapist in self-defense; the adulteress was a young girl married against her will by her father, whose husband found her during an innocent meeting with the boy she loved since childhood; the thief was a poor farmer whose five starving children cried for food, driving him to steal a bushel of wheat from the monastery where he had worked the fields until they dismissed him. And as the narrator considers the graves before him, he feels "as if the earth that enfolded the victims of oppression in that lonely place were filling my ears with sorrowful tunes of suffering souls, and inspiring me to talk."

Gibran proceeded to talk, to paint, to write, to represent the truth and fight for justice—inspiring his readers, generation after generation, to change. Most amazing is how much he moves us still. Gibran wrote that you can find in one drop of water all the secrets of all the oceans; it follows that in every person there can be found all aspects of existence. There is no place for injustice in that world.

Susan Braudy
New York, New York 2011

TIMELINE

1883
Gibran is born on January 6th to a poor Maronite family in Besharri, a town in what is now northern Lebanon near the famed "Cedars of Lebanon." At the time, Lebanon was a Turkish province under Ottoman rule.

 

1885
Birth of sister Marianna.

 

1887
Birth of sister Sultana.

 

1895
Gibran's father is jailed on charges of graft and his family is left homeless; Gibran, mother Kamila, half-brother Butros, and two sisters emigrate to Boston in the US, leaving his father behind. Kamila makes a living as a peddlar until Butros opens a small shop and supports the family while Kahlil goes to school.

 

1896
Gibran shows talent in drawing classes. Meets Boston art photographer Fred Holland Day, who has a significant artistic impact on Gibran.

 

1897
Gibran returns to Lebanon to continue his Arabic-language education; attends
Madrasat-al-Hikmah
high school in Beirut, including classes in religion, ethics, Arabic and French languages and literature.

 

1902
Gibran returns to Boston. He loses his sister Sultana and brother Butros to tuberculosis, and his mother Kamila to cancer in the same year.

 

1904
Holds a picture exhibit at Fred Holland Day's studio. Meets Mary Haskell, an American school head mistress who begins to support Gibran financially and with his writing in English: she will spend hours with Gibran going over his wording, correcting his mistakes and suggesting new ideas to his writings; their friendship will endure for Gibran's lifetime.

 

1905
Gibran publishes in Arabic a small pamphlet on "Music" and begins to publish his prose poems in the
al-Muhajir
("The Emigrant") newspaper.

 

1906
Publishes
Spirit Brides
in New York in Arabic. This collection of three short stories reflects his fascination with the Bible, the mystical, the injustice of religious persecution and the nature of love. Begins to get the attention of expatriate Arab intellectuals.

 

1908
Publishes a second book of short stories,
Spirits Rebellious
. Goes to Paris to study art through the generosity of Mary Haskell; is influenced by the Symbolist movement.

 

1910
Returns to Boston. Publishes a book of prose poems,
Beyond the Imagination
, in Cairo.

 

1911
Rents a small studio apartment in New York. Begins his manuscript for The Madman in English. Meets and draws Yeats.

 

1912
Settles in New York City. His novel, Broken Wings, dedicated to Mary Haskell, is published in New York in Arabic. Meets and draws Abdu'l-Baha, then leader of the Baha'i faith.

 

1913
Meets and draws Carl Jung.

 

1914
A Tear and a Smile, a collection of prose poems, is published in Arabic in New York. Exhibit of Gibran's paintings takes place at Montross Gallery in New York.

 

1916
Publishes several prose poems in English in the new literary journal, "Seven Arts."

 

1917
Exhibit of his work by M. Knoedler & Co., New York.

 

1918
Turning point in Gibran's literary career comes with the publication of
The Madman
in English. He becomes more outspoken in his political views: on the makeup of the emerging countries Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, Gibran calls on politicians to adopt the positive aspects of the Western culture--even as he was introducing Western culture to the mysticism of the East.

 

1920
Founding of the Arab literary group "Pen League" in New York. Gibran publishes
The Forerunner
, a collection of parables and sayings, his second book in English.

 

1923
Publishes his magnum opus,
The Prophet
, in New York to instant success and fame; the title has never been out of print since. Mary Haskell moves to Georgia and marries.

 

1926
Publishes Sand and Foam in New York. Gibran begins to contribute articles to the quarterly journal "The New Orient," which took an international approach encouraging the East and West to meet.

 

1928
Publication of
Jesus, Son of Man
, which presents portraits of Jesus through the eyes of His contemporaries.

 

1931
The Earth Gods
, a long prose poem, is published in March. Gibran dies on April 10th at a New York hospital. His body is sent back to Lebanon, where his coffin is carried in a long celebratory procession from Beirut to Besharri. The Mar Sarkis monastery in Besharri was purchased according to Gibran's wishes and he was eventually moved to his final resting-place there. His belongings, the books he read, and some of his works and illustrations were later shipped to provide a local collection in the monastery, which turned into the Gibran Museum.

 

SELECTED QUOTES

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

 

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

 

A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world.

 

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

 

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

 

Love that is washed by tears will remain eternally pure and faithful.

 

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

 

Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets.

 

An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.

 

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?
Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

 

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

 

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

 

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

 

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

 

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

 

The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.

 

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

 

As a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.

 

Do not limp before the lame, deeming it a kindness.

 

One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night.

 

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

 

Cast aside those who liken godliness to whimsy and who try to combine their greed for wealth with their desire for a happy afterlife.

 

Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

 

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

 

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

 

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

 

Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.

 

Those who give you a serpent when you ask for a fish, may have nothing but serpents to give. It is then generosity on their part.

 

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

 

To be able to look back upon one's life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

 

He who listens to truth is not less than he who utters truth.

 

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

 

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

 

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

 

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

 

To belittle, you have to be little.

 

Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.

 

You have your ideology and I have mine.

 

He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy.

 

Hearts united in pain and sorrow will not be separated by joy and happiness. Bonds that are woven in sadness are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure.

 

God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.