Kahlil Gibran Biography
Khalil Gibran was born as Gibran Khalil Gibran commonly known as Khalil—also “Kahlil”, as he used to sign his name in English Gibran.born on January 6, 1883, and died on April 10, 1931. he was a Lebanese-American writer, poet, and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected this title in his lifetime. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and is one of the best-selling books of all time.
Born in a village of the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate to a Maronite Christian family, the young Gibran immigrated with his mother and siblings to the United States in 1895. As his mother worked as a seamstress, he was enrolled at a school in Boston, where his creative abilities were quickly noticed by a teacher who presented him to Fred Holland Day.
Gibran was sent back to his native land by his family at the age of fifteen to enroll at al-Hikma School in Beirut. Returning to Boston upon his youngest sister’s death in 1902, he lost his older half-brother and his mother the following year, seemingly relying afterward on his remaining sister’s income from her work at a dressmaker’s shop for some time.
In 1904, drawings of Gibran were displayed for the first time at Day’s studio in Boston, and his first book in Arabic was published in 1905 in New York City. With the financial help of a newly-met benefactress, Mary Haskell, Gibran studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910.
While there, he got involved in secret circles promoting rebellion in the Ottoman Empire after the Young Turk Revolution; his books were eventually banned by the Ottoman authorities. In 1911, Gibran settled in New York, where he would start writing The Prophet in 1915, and where his first book in English, The Madman, would be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1918.
His visual artwork was shown at Montross Gallery in 1914, and at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. in 1917. He had also been corresponding remarkably with May Ziade since 1912. In 1920, Gibran founded The Pen League with fellow Mahjari poets. By the time of his death, the Prophet had already been translated in German and in French. His body was transferred to his birth village of Bsharri (in present-day Lebanon), to which he had bequeathed all future royalties on his books, and where a museum dedicated to his works now stands.
As worded by Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Gibran’s life has been described as one “often caught between Nietzschean rebellion, Blakean pantheism, and Sufi mysticism.”Gibran discussed “such themes as religion, justice, free will, science, love, happiness, the soul, the body, and death” in his writings, which were “characterized by innovation breaking with forms of the past, by symbolism, an undying love for his native land, and a sentimental, melancholic yet often oratorical style.
” He explored literary forms as diverse as “poetry, parables, fragments of conversation, short stories, fables, political essays, letters, and aphorisms.” Salma Jayyusi has called him “the single most important influence on Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of [the twentieth] century.”
At the same time, “most of Gibran’s paintings expressed his personal vision, incorporating spiritual and mythological symbolism”, with art critic Alice Raphael recognizing in the painter a classicist, whose work owed “more to the findings of Da Vinci than it [did] to any modern insurgent.” His “prodigious body of work” has been described as “an artistic legacy to people of all nations.”
Kahlil Gibran Age
he died at the age of 48 years on April 10, 1931. born on January 6, 1883.
Khalil Gibran Photo
Khalil Gibran Affairs
During this exhibition, Gibran met 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 but never married because Haskell’s family objected, other evidence suggests that their relationship never was physically consummated. 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. 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. 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.
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.
Kahlil Gibran Early Life
Gibran was born in the town of Bsharri in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire (modern-day Lebanon), to Khalil Gibran and Kamila Gibran (Rahmeh). As a pre-teen Gibran immigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied art and began his literary career, writing in both English and Arabic.
Soon after his arrival to Boston, the young boy was enrolled at the Josiah Quincy School which was situated at 88 Tyler Street and that he attended from 30 September 1895 until 22 September 1898. It was during this period his English teacher called him by his father’s name – “Kahlil” – anglicizing the spelling from ‘Khalil to Kahlil’. She also found it odd that his first name is the same as his surname.» His father’s name was Khalil Saad Jubran (Khalīl Sa‘d Jubrān), and this probably explains why the records of the Quincy School reported the student’s name as «Kahlil Gibran Jr. alias Assad»
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.
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.
Gibran is the third-best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Laozi. The Prophet has been translated into as many as 110 languages His mother, Kamila, daughter of a priest, was thirty when he was born; his father, Khalil, was her third husband. As a result of his family’s poverty, Gibran received no formal schooling during his youth in Lebanon. However, priests visited him regularly and taught him about the Bible and the Arabic language.
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. Around 1891, extensive complaints by angry subjects led to the administrator being removed and his staff being investigated.
Gibran’s father was imprisoned for embezzlement, and his family’s property was confiscated by the authorities. 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 Kahlil, his younger sisters Mariana and Sultana, and his elder half-brother Peter (in Arabic, Butrus).
The Gibran’s settled in Boston’s South End, at the time the second-largest Syrian-Lebanese-American community in the United States. Due to a mistake at school, he was registered as ‘Kahlil Gibran’. His mother began working as a seamstress 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 Denison House, a nearby settlement house. Through his teachers there, he was introduced to the avant-garde Boston artist, photographer, and publisher Fred Holland Day, 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. Thus, at the age of 15, Gibran returned to his homeland to study at a Maronite-run preparatory school and higher-education institute in Beirut, called “al-Hikma” (The Wisdom).
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 (a second time) on May 10. Two weeks before he returned to Boston, his sister Sultana died of tuberculosis at fourteen years old. The year after, Peter died of the same disease and his mother died of cancer. His sister Mariana supported Gibran and herself by working at a dressmaker’s shop.
Kahlil Gibran On 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 the publication of The Prophet. Several years before his death, he locked himself in his apartment, away from visitors, drinking all day. 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. Written next to Gibran’s grave are the words “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.
Kahlil Gibran Books
1. The Prophet (book) 1923
2. Broken Wings (Gibran novel) 1912
3. The Madman 1918
4. Sand and Foam 1926
5. Spirits Rebellious 1908
6. Jesus, The Son of Man Kahlil Gibran 1928
7. The Garden of the Prophet 1933
8. A Tear and a Smile 1914
9. The Earth Gods Kahlil Gibran 1931
10. Gibran’s Little Book of Love
11. Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran 1947
12. The Forerunner Kahlil Gibran
13. The Wisdom of Kahlil Gibran
14. The Collected Works Kahlil Gibran
15. Mirrors of the Soul Kahlil Gibran
16. Twenty Drawings Kahlil Gibran
17. The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart
18. Between Night and Morn Kahlil Gibran
19. Secrets of the Hearts Kahlil Gibran
20. The Wanderer Kahlil Gibran
21. . Between Night and Morn Kahlil Gibran
22. 19. The Eye of the Prophet
23. The Voice of the Master Kahlil Gibran
24. Spirit Brides Kahlil Gibran
25. Love Letters from a Prophet Paulo Coelho
26. The Procession Kahlil Gibran
27. Lazarus and His Beloved
28. Thoughts and Meditations
29. Kahlil Gibran, His Life, and World
30. Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran
31. Greatest Work of Kahlil Gibran
32. The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems Kahlil Gibran
33. The Kahlil Gibran Collection
34. Patterns of Happiness: Thoughts on the Joys of Living Kahlil Gibran
35. The Earth Gods
36. The Prophet and Other Writings
37. The Essential Kahlil Gibran
38. The Wisdom of Gibran: Aphorisms and Maxims
39. Gibran Love Letters: The Love Letters of Kahil Gibran to May Ziadah
40. Prose Poems Kahlil Gibran
41. The Complete Works of Khalil Gibran Kahlil Gibran
42. Al-Bada’i’ waal-Tara’if Kahlil Gibran
43. Prophecies of Love: Reflections from the Heart Kahlil Gibran
44. Spirits Rebellious, a Tear and a Smile, the Madman: His Parables and Poems, the Wanderer Kahlil Gibran
45. Prophecies of Love: Reflections from the Heart Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran The Prophet (book)
The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran. It was originally published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. It is Gibran’s best-known work. The Prophet has been translated into over 100 different languages, making it one of the most translated books in history, and it has never been out of print.
summary of The Prophet (book)
The prophet, Al Mustafa, has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses topics such as life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
Popularity
The Prophet has been translated into more than 100 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history. By 2012, it had sold more than nine million copies in its American edition alone since its original publication in 1923.
Of an ambitious first printing of 2,000 in 1923, Knopf sold 1,159 copies. The demand for The Prophet doubled the following year—and doubled again the year after that. Since then, annual sales have risen steadily: from 12,000 in 1935 to 111,000 in 1961 to 240,000 in 1965. The book sold its one-millionth copy in 1957. At one point, The Prophet sold more than 5,000 copies a week worldwide.
Inspiration
Though born a Maronite, Gibran 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.:p55 Connections and parallels have also been made to William Blake’s work, as well as the theological ideas of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson such as reincarnation and The Over-soul.
Themes of influence in his work were Islamic/Arabic art, European Classicism (particularly Leonardo Da Vinci) and Romanticism (Blake and Auguste Rodin), the pre-Raphelite Brotherhood, and more modern symbolism and surrealism.
Gibran had a number of strong connections to the Bahá’í Faith starting around 1912. One of Gibran’s acquaintances, 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 `Abdu’l-Bahá’s journeys to the West.
Gibran was unable to sleep the night before meeting him in person to draw his portrait in April 1912 on the island of Manhattan.:p253 Gibran later told Thompson that in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá he had “seen the Unseen, and been filled”. Gibran began work on The Prophet in 1912, when “he got the first motif, for his Island God”, whose “Prometheus exile shall be an Island one.”[8]:p165 In 1928, after the death of `Abdu’l-Bahá, at 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 still.
Kahlil Gibran Quotes
♦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. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow♦
♦Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness♦
♦Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars♦
♦One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life♦
♦When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth…… But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself♦
♦But if you love and must needs to have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love, And to bleed willingly and joyfully♦
♦Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart♦
♦My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain forevermore, unperceived, unapproachable♦
♦Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage, You and I shall laugh together with the storm, And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us, and we shall stand in the sun with a will, And we shall be dangerous♦
♦A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again-and he said, “A mouse will do♦
♦For the first time, the sun-kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.” Thus I became a madman ♦
Kahlil Gibran Love Quotes
♦One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life♦
♦If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were♦
♦If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work♦
♦Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love♦
♦I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit♦
♦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♦
♦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♦
♦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♦
♦Everyone has experienced that truth: that love, like a running brook, is disregarded, taken for granted; but when the brook freezes over, then people begin to remember how it was when it ran, and they want it to run again♦
Kahlil Gibran On Love
On Love
BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon
the people, and there fell a stillness upon
them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to
him,
Though the sword hidden among his
pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in
him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he
crucify you. Even as he is for your growth
so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and
caresses your tenderest branches that quiver
in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and
shake them in their clinging to the earth.
•
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto
himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred
fire, that you may become sacred bread for
God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your
heart, and in that knowledge become a
fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only
love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover
your nakedness and pass out of love’s
threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you
shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
•
Love gives naught but itself and takes
naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be
possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say,
“God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am
in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course
of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill
itself.
But if you love and must need have
desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook
that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own under-
standing of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate
love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with grati-
tude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the
beloved in your heart and a song of praise
upon your lips.
Kahlil Gibran On Children
On Children
Kahlil Gibran – 1883-1931
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Kahlil Gibran On Work
On Work
Kahlil Gibran – 1883-1931
Then a ploughman said, Speak to us of Work.
And he answered, saying:
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step our of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
Always you have been told that work is a curse labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.
You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness, you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is an urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”
But I say, not in sleep but in the over wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.
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 and the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
Kahlil Gibran Strfkr Lyrics
Kahlil Gibran Art
Gibran was an accomplished visual artist, especially in drawing and watercolor, having attended the Académie Julian art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910, pursuing a symbolist and romantic style over the then up-and-coming realism. Gibran held the first art exhibition of his drawings in 1904 in Boston at Day’s studio.