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Dubai: As an equally accomplished writer and painter in both disciplines, Gibran is undoubtedly one of the greatest cultural exports of the Middle East. The Lebanese-American artist, writer, and philosopher is best known for his 1923 collection of prose and poetry, The Prophet. While his English writings were popular with the general public, the critical response at the time was less forgiving, perhaps because many of these critics did not yet have the tools to judge a writer of strong Eastern influence fairly.
However, nearly a century after The Prophet was published, Gibran’s fame has been passed down from generation to generation.
“Gibran is the voice of the East, who eventually reaches the West and discovers that the West desires spirituality,” Lebanese-Australian filmmaker and research historian Glen Kalem-Habib, founder of the Kahlil Gibran Collective, told Arab News. “Just look at the time period he was in. There were a lot of great thinkers, poets, writers and artists, and they all came together in New York. So it was a great melting pot and Gibran had the pulse. He knew something big was going to happen. “There’s an industrialized country that’s being born, and all these new technologies are coming out, and there’s such great innovation and thinking. So I think Gibran’s point is, ‘All these great technologies are going to help people. I’m going to write a book to help. People. He did this by using Arabic in his thoughts and processes by using voices from the East because he was part of the incredible history of this region that goes back to the ages. He was aware of it, and Be consistent with that, whether it’s the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Bible and the Qur’an. It’s all happening in his backyard.”
Gibran was born in the village of Bsharri near Mount Lebanon in 1883 to Khalil Sa’ad Gibran and Kamila Rahmeh, both Maronite Christians. While his mother encouraged his sensitivity and artistic nature (she sent him a book featuring Michelangelo’s artwork, which inspired his lifelong love of artists and art), his father was a more sporadic presence.
After years of poverty and uncertainty, Camilla packed up her four children and moved to Boston to live with her relatives, leaving Gibran’s father in Lebanon. Camilla and her children settled in Boston’s South Side, which at the time was the second largest Syrian-Lebanese-American community in the United States.
Gibran, who was in his late teens at the time, attended Josiah Quincy School, where teachers quickly noticed his artistic abilities, and he was soon accepted to nearby art school Denison House, where he was introduced to avant-garde Boston artist F. . Holland Day.
Gibran flourished. He quickly absorbed the works of Shakespeare, William Blake, WB Yeats and TS Eliot. “He’s looking to make his mark. He’s a guy who lives a very secluded life. Boushari is also a long way from Beirut. So imagine, you know, 100+ years ago, there wasn’t much you could read, Right? I’m pretty sure it’s very limited. So one of the early influential books he read was Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He was also inspired by Wagner’s music. He published The first book was a Wagner-inspired treatise on Arabic music,” said Kalem-Habib.
Gibran was also deeply influenced by Arabic literature and art, including The Thousand and One Nights and the ancient epic Laila and Majinu.
“He fused all these influences into[something]in a way that no one had ever done before. He really, really did it,” Kalem-Habib said.
A still from the 2014 animated film “The Prophet of Cali Gibran.” (GKIDS)
Gibran continues to find new audiences. In 2014, Mexican actress Salma Hayek (whose father is of Lebanese descent) made an animated film adaptation of Gibran’s work called The Prophet of Cali Gibran.
While Hayek’s first encounter with Gibran was through her late Lebanese grandfather, she rediscovered the book a few years later as a college student, an experience she told Entertainment Weekly “for me. Very meaningful because I feel like my grandfather was even teaching me about life even though he was gone.”
Discussing the film, Hayek said: “I think it’s important for people to remember that there was an Arab-American author who wrote a book that touched so many people. It sold over 120 million copies worldwide, Impacted the lives of people of all religions, creeds, ages, skin colors and backgrounds. I think it’s important today. I also think it’s important to expose us to materials that remind us of the beauty of our humanity.”
The stage musical “Broken Wings,” based on Gibran’s 1912 autobiographical novel, is a less dramatic but equally important adaptation.
Created by Lebanese-British West End star Nadim Naaman and Qatari composer Dana Al-Fardan, the musical is a love letter to Gibran and the Middle East.
“Dana and I were introduced by mutual friends in 2016. She attended a concert of her own in London while I was performing ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. We found out that we both wanted to write a piece of music with a Middle Eastern heritage drama, which will have a positive impact on the region. Kahlil Gibran immediately stood out as an iconic Middle Eastern figure that transcended borders and was revered in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas,” explained Naaman. “He became our perfect focal point: to pay tribute to him and Lebanon, to introduce him to a wider audience, and to celebrate his contributions to the literary world.
“Ghibran has always resonated strongly with me. As a child, his books were scattered around my house, and his words were recited at weddings, funerals and graduations. Also, as a person of Lebanese descent who has spent his life in the West, I am very interested in Deep sympathy for the fact that Gibran and many other Lebanese spend more time abroad than abroad. As an actor, musician and writer trying to represent Lebanon internationally, there is no better role model than Gibran, ‘ he added.
The Prophet has never gone out of print since it was first published. It has been translated into over 100 languages, making it one of the 10 most translated books in history. Its popularity soared in the 1960s, when the American counterculture was on the rise, and later in the New Age movement.
To celebrate the book’s centennial next year, Kalem-Habib’s team is organizing several events in the U.S. and even the Middle East, and will unveil a new monument in New York, a city where Gibran has spent considerable time and is also Where he took his last breath, 1931, at age 48.
“Gibran is so ahead of its time. He represents many of the philosophical and ethical ideas the world continues to strive towards in 2022,” Naman said. “This is a Middle Eastern immigrant who found a new home in the West and wrote a century ago about gender equality and women’s rights, about harmony and tolerance between religions and nations, about the corruption of politicians and the abuse of the working class, About the ability to build a new home and find a sense of belonging if one has to leave one’s birthplace. Essentially, these are the dominant narratives in the global media.”
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