Biography of Kahlil Gibran & His contribution
to the enrichment of Arabic literature
Khalil Gibran; [1] sometimes spelled Kahlil; [a] full Arabic name Gibran
Khalil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران / ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān or Jibrān
Khalīl Jibrān) (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese-American
writer, poet, and visual artist.
Gibran was born in the town of Bsharri[7] in the Mount Lebanon
Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire (modern day Lebanon), to Khalil Gibran and Kamila
Gibran (Rahmeh). As a young man Gibran immigrated with his family to the United
States, where he studied art and began his literary career, writing in both
English and Arabic. In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and
political rebel. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern
Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical
school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero. [8]
A member of the New York Pen League, he is chiefly known in the English-speaking
world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction
including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The
book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the
1930s and again especially in the 1960s counterculture. [8][9] Gibran is the
third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi.[9]
Childhood & Early Years
Gibran was born into a Maronite Catholic family from the historical town of
Bsharri in northern Mount Lebanon, then a semi-autonomous part of the Ottoman
Empire.[10] His mother, Kamila, daughter of a priest, was thirty when he was
born; his father, Khalil, was her third husband.[11][12] As a result of his
family's poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth in
Lebanon.[13] However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the
Bible and the Arabic language.
Khalil Gibran, christened as Gibran Khalil Gibran, was born on January 6,
1883 in the ancient town of Bsharri, in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate located
in the Kadisha Valley in northern Lebanon, into a family of Maronite
Christians. At the time of his birth, it was a semi-autonomous part of the
Ottoman Empire.
Khalil’s father, Khalil Gibran Saad Youssef Gibran, was initially a clerk
in his uncle’s apothecary shop, but before long he accumulated a huge debt from
gambling and lost his job. Later he was appointed a strong man by a local
administrator, Raji Bey. He was rough and bad tempered.
Khalil’s mother, Kamila nee Jubran/Rahme, was married twice before and
Khalil’s father was her third husband. She had a son named Peter (Butros) from
her first marriage. Six years senior to Khalil, he was very industrious and
devoted to the family.
Apart from his step-brother Peter, Khalil had two younger sisters, Mariana
and Sultana. Their life in the isolated village in Kadisha Valley was devoid of
earthly comforts. Khalil never went to school, but was taught Arabic and Bible
by the priests who visited their house.
In 1891, Khalil’s father was jailed on charges of graft and their property
was confiscated by the authorities. Left homeless, they initially lived in the
homes of their relatives, before deciding to follow Kamila’s brother to the
USA.
Their father’s irresponsible behavior had already alienated the family,
especially Peter. Therefore, even though he was released from prison in 1894
his family refused to change their plan and leaving him alone in Lebanon, they
left for the USA on June 25, 1895.
In the USA, the family joined their relatives, sharing their tenement in
South Boston, Massachusetts. While Peter took charge of the family, to augment
the family’s income, Kamila began to peddle laces and linens from door to door.
Later she opened a dry goods store.
It was in Boston that twelve-year-old Khalil Gibran started going to school
for the first time and was enrolled at Quincy School on September 30, 1895.
Till then known as Gibran Khalil Gibran, his name was shortened at the time of
registration to Khalil Gibran.
At the school, he was placed in a special class with other immigrant
children, where emphasis was placed on teaching them English language.
Concurrently, he also started going to Denison House Social Center, an art
school located in a nearby settlement house.
His teachers, noticing his artistic skill, introduced young Gibran to the
noted photographer and publisher Fred Holland Day. On discovering his aptitude
for literature and art, Day began to mentor him, calling him a ‘natural
genius’.
Under Day’s mentorship, Gibran started illustrating books and drawing
portraits. Eventually Day started introducing him to his friends. In 1898, one
of his paintings was used as a book cover.
Watching him getting attracted to western culture, Gibran’s mother and
brother decided to send him back to Lebanon so that he could first learn about
his own heritage. Accordingly in 1898 he returned to Beirut, where he gained
admission at the Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite-run preparatory school and
higher-education institute.
After the completion of his education at Beirut, Gibran returned to Boston
on May 10, 1902. By then, his younger sister Sultana had died of tuberculosis.
In 1903, Peter died from the same disease and his mother from cancer. With the
support of Mariana, now a seamstress, Gibran resumed his art work.
Debuts, growing fame, and personal life
Gibran was an accomplished artist, especially in drawing and watercolor,
having attended the Academic Julian [19] art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910,
pursuing a symbolist and romantic style over the then up-and-coming realism.
[Citation needed] Gibran held his first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904
in Boston at Day's studio. [9] 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. Haskell
spent large sums of money to support Gibran and edited all his English
writings.
The nature of their romantic relationship remains obscure; while some
biographers assert the two were lovers[20] but never married because Haskell's
family objected,[8] other evidence suggests that their relationship never was
physically consummated.[9] Gibran and Haskell were engaged briefly but Gibran
called it off. Gibran didn't intend to marry her while he had affairs with
other women. Haskell later married another man, but then she continued to
support Gibran financially and to use her influence to advance his career. [21]
She became his editor, and introduced him to Charlotte Teller, a journalist,
and Emilie Michel (Micheline), a French teacher, who accepted to pose for him
as a model and became close friends. [22] In 1908, Gibran went to study art in
Paris for two years. While there he met his art study partner and lifelong
friend Youssef Howayek.[23] 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.
Death
Gibran died in New York City on April 10, 1931, at the age of 48. The
causes were cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis due to prolonged serious
alcoholism. Gibran started drinking seriously during or after publication of
The Prophet
Writings
Gibran was a great admirer of poet and writer Francis Marrash,[25][26]
whose works he had studied at al-Hikma school in Beirut.[27] According to
orientalist Shmuel Moreh, Gibran's own works echo Marrash's style, many of his
ideas, and at times even the structure of some of his works;[28] Suheil Bushrui
and Joe Jenkins have mentioned Marrash's concept of universal love, in
particular, in having left a "profound impression" on Gibran.[27] The
poetry of Gibran often uses formal language and spiritual terms; as one of his
poems reveals: "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."
[29]
Many of Gibran's writings deal with Christianity, especially on the topic
of spiritual love. But his mysticism is a convergence of several different
influences: Christianity, Islam, Judaism and theosophy. He wrote: "You are
my brother and I love you. I love you when you prostrate yourself in your
mosque, and kneel in your church and pray in your synagogue. You and I are sons
of one faith—the Spirit."[30]
Visual art
His more than seven hundred images include
portraits of his friends W.B. Yeats, Carl Jung and Auguste Rodin. [8] A
possible Gibran painting was the subject of a September 2008 episode of the PBS
TV series History Detectives. His drawings were collected by Mathaf: Arab
Museum of Modern Art in Doha.
Religious views
Gibran was born into a Maronite Christian family and raised in Maronite
schools. He was influenced not only by his own religion but also by Islam, and
especially by the mysticism of the Sufis. His knowledge of Lebanon's bloody
history, with its destructive factional struggles, strengthened his belief in
the fundamental unity of religions, which his parents exemplified by welcoming
people of various religions in their home.[27] Themes of influence in his work
were Islamic/Arabic art, European Classicism and Romanticism (William Blake and
Auguste Rodin), pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and more modern symbolism and
surrealism.[35] Major personal influences on Gibran include Fred Holland Day,
Josephine Preston Peabody[36] who called Gibran himself a "prophet",
and Mary Haskell who was his patron. Gibran also worked with St. Mark's Church
in-the-Bowery on a number of occasions[37] both in terms of art like his
drawings and readings of his work,[38][39] and in religious matters.[40]
Gibran had a number of strong connections to the Bahá'í Faith. One of
Gibran's acquaintances later in life, Juliet Thompson, reported several
anecdotes relating to Gibran. She recalled Gibran had met 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the
leader of the religion at the time of his visit to the United States, c. 1911 –
c. 1912.[14][41] Gibran was unable to sleep the night before meeting him in
person to draw his portrait.[27][42] Thompson reported Gibran later saying that
all the way through writing Jesus, the Son of Man, he thought of `Abdu'l-Bahá.
Years later, after the death of `Abdu'l-Bahá, Gibran gave a talk on religion
with Bahá'ís[40] and at another event with a viewing of a movie of `Abdu'l-Bahá,
Gibran rose to talk and proclaimed in tears an exalted station of `Abdu'l-Bahá
and left the event weeping.[41] A noted scholar on Gibran is Suheil Bushrui
from Gibran's native Lebanon, also a Bahá'í,[43] published more than one volume
about him[27][44] and served as the Kahlil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at
the University of Maryland[8][45] and winner of the Juliet Hollister Awards
from the Temple of Understanding.[46]
Political thought
Gibran was by no means a politician. He used to say: "I am not a
politician, nor do I wish to become one" and "Spare me the political
events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are
my fellow countrymen."[47]
Nevertheless, Gibran called for the adoption of Arabic as a national
language of Syria, considered from a geographic point of view, not as a
political entity.[48] 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 "young nations like his own" be freed from
Ottoman control.[14] Gibran also wrote the famous "Pity the Nation"
poem during these years, posthumously published in The Garden of the
Prophet.[49]
When the Ottomans were eventually driven from Syria during World War I,
Gibran sketched a euphoric drawing "Free Syria" which was then
printed on the special edition cover of the Lebanese paper al-Sa'ih; and in a
draft of a play, Gibran expressed his desire for Lebanese independence and
progress.[50] 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."[51]
His contribution to the enrichment of Arabic literature
Jibran's creative Boston - At the beginning of life, an intersection
suddenly collapses. In order to learn pure Arabic, he returned to Beirut,
Lebanon, in 1898 when he was 15 years old and was admitted to 'Madrasatul
Hikma'. There, with the help of a few friends, they started editing a literary
magazine in Arabic.
At an early age, he became an immigrant in the United States with his
family. Here he studied art and started his literary career. He used to write
both English and Arabic. In the early period of his writings, all his writings
in Arabic are in Arabic.
Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (Music, 1905)
Ara'is al-Muruj (Nymphs of the Valley, also translated as Spirit Brides and
Brides of the Prairie, 1906)
Al-Arwah al-Mutamarrida (Rebellious Spirits, 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, before his death:
Illustration from The madman, his parables and poems
The Madman (1918) (transcriptions: wikisource)[52]
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, completed by Barbara Young)
Lazarus and His Beloved (Play, 1933)
Collections:
Prose Poems (1934)
Secrets of the Heart (1947)
A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran (1951)
A Self-Portrait (1959)
Thoughts and Meditations (1960)
A Second Treasury of Kahlil Gibran (1962)
Spiritual Sayings (1962)
Voice of the Master (1963)
Mirrors of the Soul (1965)
Between Night & Morn (1972)
A Third Treasury of Kahlil Gibran (1975)
The Storm (1994)
The Beloved (1994)
The Vision (1994)
Eye of the Prophet (1995)
The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran (1995)
Major Works
Khalil Gibran is best remembered for his 1923 publication ‘The Prophet’. In
this book, the poet talks about twenty-six different subjects such as love,
marriage, children, work, death, self-knowledge, eating and drinking, joy and
sorrow, buying and selling, crime and punishment, reason and passion through
Prophet Almustafa’s conversation with a group of people. The first edition of
the book, written in English, was sold out within two years and until 2012, it
had sold nine million copies in its American edition alone. It has been
translated into forty languages.
Memorials and honors
Bust of Gibran in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (left) and Yerevan, Armenia
(right).
Lebanese Ministry of Post and Telecommunications published a stamp in his
honor in 1971.
Gibran Museum in Bsharri, Lebanon
Gibran Khalil Gibran Garden, Beirut, Lebanon
Gibran Khalil Gibran collection, Museo Soumaya, Mexico
Kahlil Gibran Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada inaugurated on September 27,
2008 on occasion of the 125th anniversary of his birth
Gibran Kahlil Gibran Skiing Piste, the Cedars Ski Resort, Lebanon
Kahlil Gibran Memorial Garden in Washington, D.C., [53] dedicated in 1990
Elmaz Abinader, Children of Al-Mahjar: Arab American Literature Spans a Century
[54]
Gibran Memorial Plaque in Copley Square, Boston, Massachusetts
Kahlil Gibran Bust, Yerevan, Armenia (2005) [55] [56]
Khalil Gibran School Rabat, Moroccan and British international school in
Rabat, Morocco
Pavilion K. Gibran at École Pasteur in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Khalil Gibran Park (Parcul Khalil Gibran) in Bucharest, Romania
Gibran Kalil Gibran sculpture on a marble pedestal indoors at Arab Memorial
building at Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil
Gibran Khalil Gibran Memorial, in front of Plaza de las Naciones, Buenos
Aires
Bust in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Gibran Khalil Gibran Cultural Space in northern Caracas, Venezuela
Viña del Mar, Chile. Monument located on Marina Av. and sculpted by Ricardo
Santander Batalla
References
"Gibran". Random House
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
Gibran 1998: 29
Starkey, Paul (2006). Modern Arabic
Literature. The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press. p. 217. ISBN 0-7486-1291-2.
Allen, Roger (2000). An Introduction
to Arabic Literature. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 255. ISBN
0-521-77230-3.
Badawi, M. M., ed. (1992). Modern
Arabic Literature. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press. p. 559. ISBN 978-0-521-33197-5.
Cachia, Pierre (2002). Arabic Literature—an
Overview. Culture and Civilization in the Middle East. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
p. 189. ISBN 0-7007-1725-0.
Freeth, Becky (27 April 2015).
"Salma Hayek is sophisticated in florals as she visits Lebanon
museum". Daily Mail Online.
Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet: Why is
it so loved? BBC News, May 12, 2012, Retrieved May 12, 2012.
Acocella, Joan (January 7, 2008).
"Profit Motive". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 9, 2009.
Jagadisan, S."Called by
Life" Archived August 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine., The Hindu,
January 5, 2003, accessed July 11, 2007
"Khalil Gibran
(1883–1931)", biography at Cornell University library on-line site,
retrieved February 4, 2008
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