Kahlil Gibran of America
by Dr. Suheil Bushrui
Source: The
Arab American Dialogue, Vol. 7, No. 3 (January/February 1996).
On December 3, 1995, Al-Hewar Center in Vienna, Virginia, presented an evening to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Gibran Kahlil Gibran’s arrival in America. After an introduction by Mariam Qasem El-Saad, Dr. Suheil Bushrui presented an intriguing glimpse into the life of this poet who continues to be loved around the world. The following is Dr. Bushrui’s presentation:
Notwithstanding
the all-important influence of his Arab background and heritage, Kahlil Gibran,
the Lebanese-born poet and philosopher, undoubtedly owed much of his success to
the country which received him as a young immigrant at the turn of the
century. A world of possibilities
was opened up to him by the dynamism and materialism of the American way of
life, giving rise to the unique East-West synthesis which Gibran’s work
represents.
Impressed by the great technological
achievements of America, and mindful of the material well-being of the majority
of its citizens, Gibran viewed his adopted home from the vantage-point of his
own cultural heritage and recognized that the picture was incomplete. Consequently he sought to infuse some
Eastern mysticism into Western materialism, believing that humanity was best served
by a man capable of bestriding the two cultures and acknowledging the virtues
of each.[1]
His
English writings represent the best of both worlds, a richly harmonious blend
of East and West. This is
especially true of The Prophet,
America’s best-selling book of the century after the Bible.
Gibran,
however, was not only a man from the East who brought a much-needed element of
spirituality to the West, he equally became a man of the West, benefiting from
an environment in which freedom, democracy and equality of opportunity opened
doors before him as would have been possible nowhere else in the world. His achievement thus symbolizes the
achievement of America herself, a nation of immigrants which through its
ingenuity and largesse has created a truly international society thriving on
unity in diversity.
America
is in some ways entitled to claim Kahlil Gibran for one of her own sons as much
as his native Lebanon. For he
spent only the first twelve years of his life in Bisharri, the village where he
was born in 1883, before emigrating with his family to the United States. Apart from two brief return visits to
Lebanon and a two-year studentship in Paris, he lived out the last two-thirds
of his life, including virtually all of his adulthood entirely on American
soil. He died in New York at the
age of 48.
It
was in America that the spelling of Khalil was rearranged to suit American
pronunciation. There he learned
and eventually mastered English, the language of The Prophet, Jesus, the Son
of Man, and several other books.
In America he was also exposed to the avant-garde movements in
photography, art, music and literature; his work bears the influence of the
Transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau, and the poetry of Walt Whitman. The American people appreciated
Gibran’s artistic talents as much as his literary achievements. And above all a number of American
individuals helped him to establish himself, among them Jessie Beale of Denison
House, the photographer Fred Holland Day, and the poetess Josephine
Peabody. Much later there was also
Alfred Knopf, in 1918 a young and inexperienced publisher, whose remarkable
faith in a writer unknown to English-speaking readers was to be richly
rewarded.
No
one deserved Gibran’s thanks more, however, than his good friend and
benefactress, Mary Haskell, whose help, financial and otherwise, was unstinting
at crucial moments in his career.
In the latter part of their friendship, Gibran used Mary as a consultant
on his English writings, her role generally being confined to correcting his
punctuation and grammar, and occasionally suggesting an alternative word for
greater felicity of sound.
Beginning in June 1914, he sought her comments on most of his English
output as it was being written and rewritten: first The Madman, then The
Forerunner, and finally, The Prophet,
whose publication in 1923 marked the end of their collaboration. Mary may well have been the inspiration
for Almitra in The Prophet, while the
city of Orphalese is often said to represent America or perhaps just New York.
Gibran
moved to New York from Boston in 1912 at the instigation of his fellow Lebanese
émigré writer, Ameen Rihani. He
found an audience and consciousness far better suited to his aspirations than
stately Boston, where his family had settled when they came to America in
1895. “And what can I tell you of
New York?” he wrote to Mary. “…I
have met many people [with] a saintly respect for art—people who are hungry for
the beautiful and the uncommon.”[2] New York thus became his professional
home, providing him with the studio at 51 West Tenth Street which he dubbed
“The Hermitage,” where he was to produce his finest work.
Gibran’s
attitude towards America was often ambivalent, perhaps not surprisingly in one
who longed for the place of his birth and would himself come to symbolize the
struggle to reconcile East and West.
At one moment he called it the “best place on earth,”[3]
at another he inveighed against “this mechanical and commercial country whose
skies are replete with clamor and noise.”[4] Nevertheless, he recognized that “what
is real and fine in America is hidden to the foreigner…the real splendor of
America is in her ideal of health, her power to organize, her institutions, her
management, her efficiency, her ambition.”[5]
At
times, the enthusiasm of the people of his adopted land almost overwhelmed
Gibran. In 1919 he wrote to May
Ziadah, a Lebanese writer living in Egypt:
The Americans are a mighty people,
indefatigable, persistent, unflagging, sleepless and dreamless. If they hate someone, they kill him
with indifference; if they love someone, they smother him with kindness. He who wishes to live in New York
should keep a sharp sword by him, but in a sheath full of honey; a sword to
punish those who like to kill time, and honey to gratify those who are hungry.[6]
These
words were written a year after the publication of The Madman, which established Gibran’s credentials as a writer to
be taken seriously in America. By
this time he was already a writer of considerable distinction in Arabic, and in
1920 he crowned this by becoming founder-president of a literary society called
Arrabitah (The Pen Bond). The society, made up of leading
Arab-American writers including Mikhail Naimy and Naseeb ‘Arida, was to exert
enormous and lasting influence on the renaissance in Arab letters, both in
America and in other parts of the globe including the Arab world itself. Its members developed a unified
approach to Arabic literature and art, and introduced a much-needed spirit of
avant-garde experiment into a largely fossilized institution. Fired by Romantic ideals of individual
inspiration, pantheism and universal love, they revitalized a great literary
language by bringing it closer to the colloquial. Kahlil Gibran was at the forefront of this revolution.
In
1925, at the height of his success in America, he was invited to become an
officer of the New Orient Society in New York, which was dedicated to the
promotion of East-West understanding.
Among the contributors to its quarterly journal was the American author
Claude Bragdon, who once asked Gibran for his impression of America. His reply was as follows:
Conceive of the world as a rose-bush in
a sky-garden, with races and civilizations for its blooms. Some flourish, from others the petals
are falling, here one is withered, and just beside it, where once was a great
red-hearted blossom, only an empty stalk remains to tell the tale. Now on this rose-bush America
represents the bud just pressing at its sheath, just ready to blossom: still
hard, still green and not yet fragrant, but vigorous and full of life.[7]
It
was in such a land far from the country of his origins that Gibran, like so
many others before and after him, eventually found fame and fortune. But more importantly, inspired by his
experiences in America, he strove to resolve cultural and human conflict, in
the process developing a unique genre of writing, and transcending the barriers
of East and West as few have done before or since.
He
became not only Gibran of Lebanon, but Gibran of America, indeed Gibran, the
voice of global consciousness: a voice which increasingly demands to be heard
in the continuing Age of Anxiety.
The
special place of Kahlil Gibran in the hearts of the American people has
recently received dual confirmation in the academic and public spheres. On the one hand a proposal for a Chair
in his name has been submitted at the University of Maryland, and on the other
hand a memorial garden has been created in his honor in Washington, D.C. The first was an institutional decision
by a major U.S. university; the second was the result of a bill passed by
Congress, followed by a special commemoration ceremony in May 1991. Gibran must surely be the only
immigrant poet ever to have been accorded such academic and national
recognition.
Kahlil
Gibran occupies a unqiue position in the pantheon of the world’s great
writers. His best known work, The Prophet, has been translated into
some forty different languages, enabling it to be read and appreciated in
places as far apart as Tokyo, Delhi, Manila, Nairobi, Rome, Paris, London and
New York. The first annotated
version, with dual Italian-English text, was published by Biblioteca Universale
Rizzoli of Milan in 1992; just one of many indications of a continuing growth
in Gibran’s world-wide readership.
His stature and importance increase as time passes, for although he died
in 1931 and his finest work was published seventy years ago, his message
remains as potent and as meaningful today as when he was writing. With its emphasis on the healing
process, the universal, the natural, the eternal, the timeless, his work
represents a powerful affirmation of faith in the human spirit.
Inspired
poetry, like religion, carries within it the seed of truth. It communicates by inducing recognition
and affirmation: an expression of profound delight at the sheer rightness of
the poet’s words, a joy that makes the soul resonate, like a musical note, with
a sense of shared truth. Almost
involuntarily, from deep inside us, comes the response: “I have always known
this;” and for an instant we are placed directly in touch with something
greater than ourselves. Fine
poetry is the meeting of the human soul with truth. Much of what Gibran wrote achieves this goal while
nevertheless remaining essentially very simple. His work abounds with beautiful aphorisms, such as: “Love is
a word of light, written by a hand of light, upon a page of light.”[8]
Throughout
the world, and especially in America and the Arab world, Gibran enjoys a unique
reputation. Very few authors in
history can match his achievement of writing successfully in two languages,
Arabic and English. Few have
synthesized the best of Christianity and Islam as he does. And perhaps most important of all,
amongst the literature of the twentieth century, with its fashionable emphasis
on cynicism, anxiety and despair, his work stands out like a beacon of hope and
compassion. Gibran’s name,
perhaps more than that of any other modern writer, is synonymous with peace,
spiritual values and international understanding.
Events
around the globe in recent years have underlined all too clearly the continuing
relevance of Kahlil Gibran today.
His passionate belief in the oneness of mankind, and hence the need to
remove man-made barriers, has found a host of reflection in glasnost, the dismantling of the Berlin
Wall, the end of the Cold War, the move towards federalism in Europe, and the
growing effectiveness of the United Nations Organization—to name some of the
more encouraging recent developments.
As
the name of Gibran’s best-known work implies, his writings have a prophetic
quality. He appears, for example,
to have anticipated with uncanny accuracy the dreadful cloud that would pass
over his own country, Lebanon, in our own times. “Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment
deeming itself a nation,”[9]
he warned somberly in the 1920s.
The
need for Gibran’s voice to be heeded remains strong. In the sixty years since he died, the Arab world has been
transformed beyond recognition by the oil riches that have come its way. While this phenomenon has not been
without its benefits, bringing progress in place of stagnation, among some of
the wealthier Arabs it has engendered a materialistic approach that runs
counter to their spiritual heritage.
Religious intolerance, too, thrives in the Middle East as it does
nowhere else in the world. These
are subjects on which Gibran has much of value to say. One of his most powerful Arabic works,
translated into English as Spirits
Rebellious, represents a scathing attack on the abuse of religious
power. But it is as the voice of
reconciliation and consolation that Gibran needs most of all to be heard. His friend and colleague Mikhail Naimy
wrote of him: “It would seem that the all-seeing eye perceived our spiritual
drought and sent us this rain-bearing cloud to drizzle some relief to our
parching souls.”[10]
It
was also Naimy who said of Gibran and The
Prophet: “Such books and such men are our surety that Humanity, despite the
fearful dissipation of its incalculable energies and resources, is not yet
bankrupt.”[11] The
Prophet, this century’s best-selling book after the Bible in America, is
full of practical wisdom and simple moral and spiritual values. Its secret is Gibran’s remarkable
ability to convey profound truths in simple yet incomparably elegant language;
hence his vast international readership, many of whom have shunned other works
of a spiritual nature. Never does
he attempt to bamboozle his readers or sweep them off their feet with
rhetoric. Gibran’s approach
enables him to appeal to people of all ages, races, colors and creeds. For today’s world with its striking
need for balance and reconciliation between heart and mind, between faith and
reason, between spiritual values and the demands of modern technology and
progress, there is perhaps no more important message than that contained in the
sermon on Reason and Passion:
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield,
upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your
appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in
your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into
oneness and melody.
But how shall I, unless you yourselves
be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?...[12]
Kahlil
Gibran was truly a citizen of the world; a man from the East who brought a
much-needed element of spirituality to the West; and eventually a man of the
West as well, benefiting from an environment in which freedom, democracy and
equality of opportunity opened doors for him. His work remains a shining example, on an individual level,
of the inspired results that can be forthcoming when cultures merge in a spirit
of unity and goodwill. That is
surely the watchword for the global society now developing apace as we approach
the third millennium.
_________________________________________
Suheil Bushrui
comes from a similar background to that of Kahlil Gibran having been born and
bred in the Middle East, but having spent much of his life in the West. As a result, he is bilingual with an
authentic bicultural perspective.
Dr. Bushrui is
internationally recognized as the world’s foremost Gibran scholar; he is
Distinguished Professor of World Peace and Director of the Kahlil Gibran
Research and Studies Project at the University of Maryland. He is poet, critic, translator and
broadcaster, known especially for his outstanding work on English Poetry and
Arab Literature in English.
Dr. Bushrui
has received several prizes and honors, and is the author of many books in both
English and Arabic on Kahlil Gibran.
His works on Gibran have appeared in English, Arabic, Italian, German,
French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian.
[1] Suheil Bushrui and Salma al-Kuzbari, trans. and eds., Blue Flame: The Love Letters of Kahlil
Gibran to May Ziadah (Burnt Mill: Longmans, 1983), x.
[2] Annie Salem Otto, ed., The
Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell (Houston, 1967), 76.
[3] Jean Gibran and Kahlil Gibran, Kahlil Gibran: His Life and World (New York Graphic Society, 1974),
154.
[4] Kahlil Gibran, A Self
Portrait, trans. and ed. A.B. Ferris (London: Heinemann, 1960), 10.
[5] Virginia Hilu, ed., Beloved
Prophet: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and Her Private
Journal (London: Quartet Books, 1973), 92-93.
[6] Blue Flame, ix.
[7] Claude Bragdon, “A Modern Prophet from Lebanon,” in Kahlil Gibran: Essays and Introductions,
eds. Suheil Bushrui and John M. Munro (Beirut: Rihani House, 1970), 27.
[8] Kahlil Gibran, Sand
and Foam (London: Heineman & Co., 1974), 26.
[9] Kahil Gibran, The
Garden of the Prophet (London: Heinemann & Co., 1974), 9.
[10] Mikhail Naimy, Kahlil
Gibran: His Life and His Work (Beirut: Khayats, 1965), 264.
[11] Mikhail Naimy, “Gibran at his Peak,” in Gibran of Lebanon: New Papers, eds.
Suheil Bushrui and Paul Gotch (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1975), 9.
[12] Kahlil Gibran, The
Prophet (London, Heinemann & Co., 1974), 23.