Distinguished Personlaity interviews

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Kahlil Gibran, a Mystical Poet, Philosopher, Artist, Essayist and Novelist.
" 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.
- Gibran's words on his epitaph.


Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
A Lebonese-American Mystical Poet, philosopher, artist, essayist and novelist, who became known as a man who 'transcended the barriers between East and West' with his Eastern spirituality.

Born in Lebonon in 1883, he was one of the important Arabic language authors of the time. He moved to America in 1895, and went on to become a famous author and artist there as well. His art works have been exhibited around the world. His best known book 'The Prophet', was first published in 1923 and has been translated into over 20 languages, it also became America's best-selling book of the century after the Bible.


Birth and Childhood in Lebanon (1883-1895)
Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon.

Lebanon was a Turkish province part of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) and subjugated to Ottoman dominion, which granted the Mount Lebanon area autonomous rule. The people of Mount Lebanon had struggled for several years to gain independence from the Ottoman rule, a cause Gibran was later to adopt and become an active member in. The Mount Lebanon area was a troubled region, due to the various outside and foreign interferences that fostered religious hatred between the Christian, especially the Maronite sect, and Moslem populations. Later in his life, Gibran was to seek and unite the various religious sects, in a bid to abolish the religious snobbery, persecution and atrocities witnessed at his time. The Maronite sect, formed during the schism in the Byzantine church in the 5th century A.D., was made up of a group of Syrian Christians, who joined the monk St. Marun to lead their own sectarian thought.

His mother Kamila Rahmeh was thirty when she begot Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. Gibran had a half-brother six years older than him called Peter and two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, whom he was deeply attached to throughout his life, along with his mother. Kamila’s family came from a prestigious religious background, which imbued the uneducated mother with a strong will and later on helped her raise up the family on her own in the U.S.

Growing up in the lush region of Bsharri, Gibran proved to be a solitary and pensive child who relished the natural surroundings of the cascading falls, the rugged cliffs and the neighboring green cedars, the beauty of which emerged as a dramatic and symbolic influence to his drawings and writings. Being laden with poverty, he did not receive any formal education or learning, which was limited to regular visits to a village priest who doctrined him with the essentials of religion and the Bible, alongside Syriac and Arabic languages. Recognizing Gibran’s inquisitive and alert nature, the priest began teaching him the rudiments of alphabet and language, opening up to Gibran the world of history, science, and language. At the age of ten, Gibran fell off a cliff, wounding his left shoulder, which remained weak for the rest of his life ever since this incident. To relocate the shoulder, his family strapped it to a cross and wrapped it up for forty days, a symbolic incident reminiscent of Christ’s wanderings in the wilderness and which remained etched in Gibran’s memory.

Immigration to the U.S.
(1895-1898)
At the age of eight, Khalil Gibran, Gibran's father, was accused of tax evasion and was sent to prison as the Ottomon authorities confiscated the Gibrans’ property and left them homeless. The family went to live with relatives for a while; however, the strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., seeking a better life and following in suit to Gibran’s uncle who immigrated earlier. The father was released in 1894, but being an irresponsible head of the family he was undecided about immigration and remained behind in Lebanon.

On June 25, 1895, the Gibrans embarked on a voyage to the American shores of New York.

The Gibrans settled in Boston’s South End, which at the time hosted the second largest Syrian community in the U.S. following New York. The culturally diverse area felt familiar to Kamila, who was comforted by the famil

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nice sharing thanks

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Thanks gr8.

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.........

Back in Lebanon
(1898-1902)
In 1898, Gibran arrived in Beirut speaking poor English and even little Arabic; he could speak Arabic fluently, but not read nor write it. To improve his Arabic, Gibran chose to enroll in the school Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite-founded school which offered a nationalistic curriculum partial to church writings, history and liturgy. Gibran’s strong-willed nature refused to abide by the parochial curriculum, demanding an individual curriculum catering to his educational needs and aimed at a college level, a gesture indicative of Gibran’s rebellious and individualistic nature; his arrogance bordered on heresy. Nonetheless, the school acquiesced to his request, editing course material to Gibran's liking. He chose to immerse himself in the Arabic-language bible, intrigued by its style and writing, features of which echo in his various works. As a student, Gibran left a great impression on his teachers and fellow students, who were impressed with his outlandish and individualistic behavior, self-confidence, and his unconventional long hair. His Arabic teacher saw in him "a loving but controlled heart, an impetuous soul, a rebellious mind, an eye mocking everything it sees". However, the school’s strict and disciplined atmosphere was not to Gibran’s liking, who flagrantly flouted religious duties, skipped classes and drew sketches on books. At the school, Gibran met Joseph Hawaiik, with whom he started a magazine called al-Manarah (the Beacon), both editing while Gibran illustrated.

Meanwhile, Josephine Peabody, the twenty-four year old Bostonian beauty who caught Gibran’s attention during one of Day’s exhibitions, was intrigued by the young Syrian artist who dedicated a sketch to her, and began corresponding with Gibran throughout his stay in Lebanon. Soon, he became romantically involved with Josephine, and they kept exchanging letters until the relationship fell apart, following the rebuffal of Gibran’s marriage proposal and Josephine’s eventual marriage in 1906.

Gibran finished college in 1902, learning Arabic and French and excelling in his studies, especially poetry. Meanwhile, his relationship with his father became strained over Gibran’s advanced erudition, driving him to move in with his cousin and to live an impoverished life he detested and was ashamed of until the rest of his life. The poverty in Lebanon was compounded with news of illness striking his family, with his half-brother's consumption, his sister Sultana’s intestinal trouble and his mother’s developing cancer. Upon receiving news of Sultana’s dire illness, Gibran left Lebanon in March of 1902.

Death in the Family and the Return to the U.S.
(1902-1908)

To his misfortune, Gibran arrived too late; Sultana died at the age of fourteen on April 4th 1902, the first in a series of three family deaths which will fall upon him in the coming months. Gibran was very fond of his sisters and of his family as a whole. At the time of mourning, both Day and Josephine provided distractions for him, in form of artistic shows and meetings at Boston’s artistic circles. Gibran’s artistic talents and unique behavior had captured earlier the interest of the Bostonian society, which welcomed this foreign talent into their artistic circles.

Josephine, who slowly captured Gibran’s heart, became an inflectional person in his life, the Bostonian poet constantly referring to Gibran as ‘her young prophet’. Greatly intrigued by his oriental background, Josephine was charmed by Gibran’s vividly illustrated correspondences and conversations. Josephine’s care and attention were the inspiration behind his book The Prophet, the title of which is based on an eleven-stanza poem Joesphine wrote in December of 1902 describing Gibran’s life in Bsharri as she envisaged it. Later on, when Gibran was to publish The Prophet, he dedicated it to Josephine, whose care and tenderness helped him advance his career.

Illness struck again when his mother underwent an operation in February to remove a cancerous tumor. To compound his misery, Gibran was forced to take on the family business and run the goods store, which was abandoned by his half-brother Peter to pursue his fortune in Cuba. This new burden weighed on Gibran’s spirit, depriving him from dedicating his time to artistic pursuits. During this time, Gibran tried to shy away from the house, to escape the atmosphere of death, poverty and illness. In the following month, Peter returned to Boston from Cuba fatally sick only to die days later on March 12 of consumption. His mother’s cancer continued to spread and she died later that year on June 28, a scene which left Gibran fainting and foaming blood from the mouth.

Following the three family deaths, Gibran sold out the family business and began immersing himself in improving both his Arabic and English writings, a twin task which he was to pursue for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Day and Josephine were helping him launch his debut art exhibition, which was to feature his allegorical and symbolic charcoal drawings that so fascinated Boston’s society. The exhibition opened on May 3, 1904, and proved a success with the critics. However, the exhibition’s significance lay elsewhere. Josephine, through her future husband, invited a schoolmistress called Mary Haskell to examine Gibran’s drawings. This introduction to the schoolmistress was to mark the beginning of a lifetime relationship, which would greatly influence Gibran’s writing career. Gibran had sought Josephine’s opinion about his Arabic writings, translating them into English. With the language barrier, Josephine could only provide criticism over ideas and thoughts, leaving Gibran alone to tackle his linguistic problems. Josephine’s role was to be taken over by Mary Haskell.

Mary Haskell, who was thirty at the time and ten years older than Gibran, will go on to finance Gibran’s artistic development and encourage him to become the artist that he aspired to be. As a school head mistress, Haskell was an educated, strong-willed and independent woman and an active champion of women’s liberation, who was set apart to Josephine Peabody’s romantic nature. Mary was the reason behind Gibran’s decision to explore writing in English, as she persuaded Gibran to refrain from translating his Arabic works to English and concentrate instead on writing in English directly. Mary’s collaboration and editing of his various English works polished Gibran’s work, most of which first underwent Mary’s editing before going to the publishers. She would spend hours with Gibran, going over his wording, correcting his mistakes and suggesting new ideas to his writings. She even attempted learning Arabic to gain a better grasp of Gibran’s language and his thoughts.

The significance of Mary’s relationship with Gibran is revealed through her diaries, in which she recorded Gibran’s artistic development, their personal and intellectual conversations and his innermost thoughts for nearly seventeen years and a half. These recordings have provided critics with valuable insight into Gibran’s personal thoughts and ideas, which he kept away from the public eye.

In 1904, Gibran started to contribute articles to the Arabic-speaking émigré newspaper called Al-Mouhajer (The Emigrant), marking his first published written work. His first publication was called ‘Vision’, a romantic essay that portrayed a caged bird amid an a[censor]ance of symbolism. Despite spending four years in Lebanon learning Arabic, Gibran’s written Arabic left something to be desired. To master Arabic, Gibran relied on his ear for capturing traditional vocabulary, depending heavily on the Arabic stories narrated in his hometown of Bsharri. Hence his Arabic writing had a colloquial feel to it, which was comfortable to his audiences. According to Gibran, rules of language were meant to be broken and he went on to advocate Arab émigré writers to break out of tradition and seek an individual style. Throughout his life, Gibran’s Arabic writings did not receive the critical acclaim his English books had, leading him later on to concentrate on his English writings and abandon the cause of improving his Arabic style.

Gibran’s first Arabic written work came out in 1905 with the publication of Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (Music), a book inspired by his brother’s 'oud playing and Day’s several invitations to the Opera. During that year, Gibran started a column in Al-Mohajer called ‘Tears and Laughter’’, which was to form the basis of his book A Tear and a Smile. While writing in Al-Mohajer, a certain Arabic émigré writer called Ameen Rihani, wrote to the magazine lauding Gibran’s article which attacked contemporary Arab writers for imitating traditional writers and using poetry for financial gain. Rihani was to become an important Arabic writer and a friend of Gibran’s, whom he later left for the life-long friendship of Mikhail Naimy. At the time, Gibran published several Arabic poems and wrote in newspapers, about various subjects relating to love, truth, beauty, death, good and evil. Most of his writings had a romantic edge to them, with bitter and ironic tones.

[hina naz]

yes indeed
nice piece of information
keep it up
regards
hina