His early education was sporadic, although he received informal lessons from a local doctor. Gibran's temperamental father worked as a tax collector, but he was charged with embezzlement and his property was seized.
Seeking a better life, Gibran's mother in moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts, where they settled in the immigrant South End neighborhood. Receiving his first formal schooling, where he was registered under his now-commonly known name of Kahlil Gibran, the year-old stood out with his artistic ability.
He was steered to photographer and publisher Fred Holland Day, who nurtured Gibran's talents and introduced him to a wider artistic community.
At 15, Gibran returned to his home country to attend a Maronite school in Beirut, where he displayed an interest in poetry and founded a student magazine. He returned to Boston in shortly after the death of one of his sisters from tuberculosis; the following year, his brother and mother passed away as well.
Financially supported by his surviving sister, a seamstress, Gibran continued to work on his art. In , he enjoyed an exhibition of his drawings at Day's studio, and he began writing a weekly column for the Arabic newspaper al-Mohajer. Gibran drew a following for his "prose poems," which were more accessible than traditional Arabic works and explored themes of loneliness and a loss of connection to nature.
He published a pamphlet on his love for music in , and followed with two collections of short stories. Meanwhile, Gibran grew close to Mary Haskell, a progressive school headmistress who became the writer's benefactor and literary collaborator. Establishing himself in New York's artistic circles, Gibran in published the novella al-Ajniha al-mutakassira Broken Wings. He had an exhibition of his paintings in late , although by then his Symbolist-influenced style was becoming outdated in the art world.
Gibran began writing for the Arabic newspaper al-Funun , and with the outbreak of World War I he expressed more nationalistic leanings. In , Gibran published what became his most famous work, The Prophet.
The following year, Bhutros died, also of t. Waterfield says that there is no evidence that Gibran mourned any of them for long. It is hard to escape the thought that this ambitious young man was not inconvenienced by the loss of his slum-dwelling family.
One member remained, however: his sister Marianna. Gibran still took no job; art was his job. Soon, he had something to show. Often, in the foreground, one saw a sort of pileup of faceless humanity, while in the background there hovered a Greater Power—an angel, perhaps, or just a sort of milky miasma, suggestive of mystery and the soul.
Gibran began publishing his writings as well: collections of stories and poems, parables and aphorisms. Anger over this, and also pity—whether for Lebanese peasants or, quite often, for himself—were the main themes of his early writings.
They were published in Arabic, and they won him great admiration in the Arab-American community. He enjoyed this, but he wanted a larger audience, and soon he found the person who would make that possible. She believed in long hikes, cold showers, and progressive politics.
Her school disdained Latin and Greek; it taught anatomy and current events instead. Before Gibran became close to Haskell, in , he had a history of befriending older women who could be useful to him. Haskell, too, was older, by nine years.
She was also taller. Gibran was five feet three, a source of grief to him all his life. Then she met Gibran, who would be her most expensive project.
In the beginning, her major benefaction to him was simply financial—she gave him money, she paid his rent. In , she sent him to Paris for a year, to study painting. It was apparently agreed, though, that they would not marry until he felt he had established himself, and somehow this moment never came.
Finally, Haskell offered to be his mistress. In a painful passage in her diary, Haskell records how, one night, he said that she was looking thin. On the pretext of showing him that she was actually well fleshed, she took off her clothes and stood before him naked.
He kissed one of her breasts, and that was all. She got dressed again. When they were apart, he said, they were together. Amen to that. He was of noble birth, he said. He was sure that a great destiny awaited him. She believed this even more than he, and in the beginning her adulation was probably as important to him as her money.
She recorded the extraordinary experiences he told her he had had. Furthermore, however godlike she found him, she was a schoolmistress, and she tried to educate him. On the pretext of their having a nice literary evening together, she would get him to read to her from the classic authors, exactly as Fred Holland Day had done, and for the same reason—to improve his English.
Boston was a backwater. New York was where the action was. Clearly, he had another purpose as well: to get away from Haskell. He also needed to unload Marianna. If he was to become a major artist, how was he going to explain that he lived with this illiterate woman who followed him around the house with a dust rag?
And so, in , throwing off the two women who had supported him through his early period, Gibran moved to New York, and to his middle period. Haskell paid the rent, of course. After a few years in New York, during which he published two more books in Arabic, Gibran made a serious decision: he was going to begin writing in English.
When they were apart, he sent her his manuscripts, and she sent back corrections. When they were together—she visited him often sleeping elsewhere —he dictated his work to her. She probably made substantial changes in his later work as well. Proud of this responsible role in his life, she gave up hoping for more. In , with no objections from Gibran, she married a rich relative.
Until he died, she edited all his English-language books. At the opening of the book, we are told that Almustafa, a holy man, has been living in exile, in a city called Orphalese, for twelve years.
A ship is now coming to take him back to the island of his birth. Saddened by his departure, people gather around and ask him for his final words of wisdom—on love, on work, on joy and sorrow, and so forth.
He obliges, and his lucubrations on these matters occupy most of the book. Who, these days, would say otherwise? One wonders whether Gibran was able to find any solace in his own words in his final days of frailty.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity … For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. Gibran has been criticised for his style of playing confoundingly but reassuringly on opposites, which, some argue, can mean anything.
One must note, however, that this unsettling of binary structures is a feature of enduring wisdom texts such as the Tao Te Ching, as well as recalling writings of Sufism and other traditions. The fact is that millions of people have found momentary respite in his shifting, evocative words.
We need not badger readers of this work who included, incidentally, the likes of John Lennon and David Bowie who might use it to express their love, notate their grief, or ease their existential terrors. The Prophet has worked as a widespread balm, as effectively as anything quick and concise can.
It says the kinds of things that we sometimes wish a trusted other might say to us, to calm us down. In these aggravated times, perhaps we can appreciate its sheer benignity and leave its boggling success be. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom.
Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in.
0コメント