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Born in Lebanon in 1883, Kahlil Gibran spent
most of his life in America. Besides attaining
success as an artist in the symbolist tradition,
it was here that Gibran found his calling “to
write for the soul,” an enthusiastic patron in
Mary Haskell and, soon after, recognition as a
modern-day mystic. The lucidity of his worldview
endeared him to his readers the world over, in
America particularly where he influenced the
popular culture in the sixties.
While his representative work, The Prophet
contains the quintessence of Gibran’s philosophy
of life, his repudiation of feudal oppression,
male chauvinism and religious hypocrisy rings
through all his works – whether one reads his
short-story anthologies (Nymphs of the Valley
and Spirits Rebellious), prose poems (Tears and
Laughter), parables (The Madman, The Forerunner
and The Wanderer), aphorisms (Sand and Foam) or
the only novelette he ever wrote, The Broken
Wings. The theme of exile finds recurrent
expression in his work. Nostalgia about the
Lebanese mountains echoes loud and clear
throughout; a deep sense of being uprooted from
his native land stirred Gibran in his later life
to write for journals published by the Lebanese
and Arab communities in America.
In the years following his death in 1931, at the
age of forty-eight, Gibran came to be regarded
as the Prophet himself.
Kahlil Gibran - The Book
Probably the most widely read and discussed
mystic poet-philosopher of the last century,
Kahlil Gibran, born in Lebanon in 1883, spent
most of his life in America. Besides attaining
success as an artist in the symbolist tradition,
it was here that Gibran found his calling "to
write for the soul," an enthusiastic patron in
Mary Haskell and, soon after, recognition as a
modern-day mystic. The lucidity of his worldview
endeared him to a wide range of readers the
world over, but particularly in America, where
he influenced the popular culture in the
sixties. His writings have not only inspired and
influenced generations together but also have
made the entire realm of high philosophy much
simpler and graspable for the common reader.
Gibran's philosophy of life, his repudiation of
feudal oppression, male chauvinism and religious
hypocrisy rings through all his works. This
selection features an anthology of four short
stories published originally in Arabic as
Spirits Rebellious (1908), and two collections
of parables - The Forerunner (1920) and The
Madman (1932). |
