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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.
Selected Works of Kahlil Gibran
This omnibus brings you some of the best-loved
writings of Kahlil Gibran, the twentieth-century
mystic and artist of Lebanese origin. The
selection features four of his English
translations from their Arabic originals: Nymphs
of the Valley (1906), Spirits Rebellious (1908),
The Broken Wings (1912) and Tears and Laughter
(1918). Besides The Prophet (1923), the most
celebrated of all his writings, the book
features the other four works that Gibran wrote
in English: The Madman (1918), The Forerunner
(1920), Sand and Foam (1926) and Jesus, the Son
of Man (1928). Also included here is The
Wanderer (1932), the last and posthumously
published work "of a man but with a cloak and a
staff with a veil of pain upon his face." This
volume also contains some selections of Gibran's
shorter writings and essays, which are as
timeless in their essence – and persuasive in
their immediacy – as are his spiritual musings |
