I remember why I first picked up the Prophet. I had heard nothing about it, not a word, but I saw that the authors name sounded Middle Eastern, and the title… well… it sounded like it might be about Islam, which I’m fairly curious about. And anyway it was either that or the Epic of Gilgamesh, and at 10.30 at night I wasn’t feeling up to anything epic, especially epic by Arab standards, as you generally already have to divide anything an Arab man says by about 10.
As it turns out, The Prophet is not about Islam, and is not divisible by any number I know.
Now let me tell you what it is about.
The prophet begins with Almustafa, the chosen one, who was a dawn unto his own day, seeing a ship in the distance. This ship has come for Almustafa, to return him to the isle of his birth, after 12 years of exile in the town of Orphalese. The people of the town all notice his ship and know what it signifies, they all drop what they were doing, and hasten to see Almustafa with a sudden sadness and pain. “Suffer not yet our eyes to hunger for your face”. They beg that he not leave and put an ocean between them, to make only memories of their years together, but Almitra, a seeress, a woman of strength and wisdom, steps in and asserts that “their love would not bind him, nor their needs hold him” from returning to his true home. But she asks, before he leaves them, to tell the people of Orphalese what he has learned from them, to tell of their truth, to tell of that which is between birth and death.
And so he does, at their request he speaks to them on topics from love to death to beauty and freedom, and the manifesto which results, is intended to emancipate the people of Orphalese.
Now, before continuing I shall read to you from this book, and you should also know that it was first published in 1923, in English, the language it was written in.
AND one of the elders of the city said, “Speak to us of Good and Evil.”And he answered:Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters.You are good when you are one with yourself.Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.You are good when you strive to give of yourself.Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, “Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.”For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,Yet you are not evil when you sleep while your tongue staggers without purpose.And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.Even those who limp go not backward.But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,You are only loitering and sluggard.Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, “Wherefore are you slow and halting?”For the truly good ask not the naked, “Where is your garment?” nor the houseless, “What has befallen your house?”
Kahlil was born on the 6 January 1883 in the town of Bsharri, a lush region in Lebanon situated near Wadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley) and the forest of Holy Cedars on Mount Lebanon. Humans already have the tendency to idealise our youths, and the deep tradition and cultural potency of Bsharri would serve as an Eden for the rest of Kahlil’s life. His childhood however was less than idyllic, with an abusive alcoholic and corrupt tax collector for a father. His mother Kamileh was his saving grace. She was the daughter of the village priest and a woman of fierce strength and conviction.
Kahlil developed a taste for solitude young to escape his parent’s rows, finding solace in the hidden monasteries of the mountains, often with his drawing pencils in hand. They were a poor family, too poor to afford an education, but the local priests, seeing Kahlil’s natural intelligence, took it upon themselves to nurture his mind with knowledge of history, science, and language.
One event in his childhood which struck me as significant occurred when Kahlil was 10 years old and fell off a cliff, badly injuring his shoulder. In order for the bone to set straight, his arm and shoulders were bound to a wooden cross-like contraption for a period of forty days. Considering Kahlil’s character and the strong interest he developed with Jesus of Nazareth, this incident is said to have left a definite mark on his psyche.
In 1895, when he was 12 years old, Kahlil’s mother packed up her four children and left for New York, leaving behind her debt ridden husband, who was also fresh out of prison. The time in New York was one of healing for their family, Kahlil studied hard, and returned to Lebanon to a college aged 15 for a short time where he excelled in subjects which consumed him- Arabic literature, art, and especially poetry. On returning back to America, Gibran’s talent for drawing was soon spotted by eccentric philanthropist Fred Holland Day, who launched his career as an artist, and also introduced him to a headmistress named Mary Haskell, a woman who then supported Kahlil financially and in many other ways, for most of his life. He studied art in Paris with Rodin, and began writing poems and stories. The most important thing to know about Gibran’s life occurred between 1902 and 1903. His sister Sultana and his brother Peter succumbed to tuberculosis, and his beloved mother to cancer, all within a period of just 18 months.
The philosophy expounded in the Prophet, and in all of Gibran’s work for that matter, is what he and many have called “the philosophy of the heart”, which I will have to defend to you in a moment.
Gibran intends to capture the human condition, in its fundamental nature, he takes humanity and strips away the placidity and knowledge which we use to rationalise our world, and he sees it in a single pure moment. In that moment we are beings of overwhelming light, and terrifying darkness.
In understanding the philosophy of poetry we can understand Kahlil’s writing. Etymologically and operationally academic philosophy comprehends bits of reality, whilst poetic thinking seeks to understand “the whole”. Of course neither is superior. Poetry, and one might add specifically, ‘good’ poetry, transfers information to us through empathy, by being guided to feel through this information to then be able to establish some intellectual understanding of it. Critics tend to label this as sentimentalism, but this may be a viewpoint which thinks that it understands more about life than it actually does. In a way poetic text is a humble acceptance of the vague notion of reality and of language.
In defence of sentimentalism, one could argue that you can pick up a book of for example Kant, and throughout it you will find a treasury of ideas that will bend and stretch your perception. But they don’t always reach you, their importance can be lost within a tangle of words.
Where our intellect can conquer ideas until they become fused into our pool of understanding, our emotion is another way of receiving information, and one which has a residual effect. Gibran is extraordinary, because first and foremost he was a poet of immense ability. We hear his poetry and it moves us, and though we might not completely understand some of its metaphors, or take it as a simple cliché, the idea will have permeated us somehow, waiting for a relevant circumstance at which to be recalled from our subconscious, and reinterpreted alongside our own experience.
This philosophy of the heart in many ways is highly appropriate when dealing with matters such as the human condition. Where Descartes looks at thinking to assert his existence, Gibran would tell you that the overwhelming melancholy of life is what asserts his. This melancholy was most definitely a formative element for Kahlil.
The thing is that one of the most or maybe the most major issue in life, is learning how to cope with it. Coping with the loneliness, with our painful attachments to other people or things, the struggle to know how to give and when, how to be a good person, as well as the ever present knowledge of our certain demise of which we understand nothing.
It is typically human to distract ourselves from the discomfort of such inner conflict, but Kahlil faced this struggle as an artist, and in the most honest way he knew.
His manifesto approaches all the subjects just mentioned, and more.
Of giving he declared to the people:
“You often say, I would give, but only to the deserving.The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.” Of joy and sorrow he says:“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.And how else can it be?The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Of marriage or relationships he states that we should
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” Kahlil’s philosophies are many and varied, but they all encompass an idea of identity, of remaining whole with oneself, and remaining aware within ones existence, in all its shades and ambiguities, and not to condemn one element as good and another as evil. To speak with the voice within our voice, an honest speech, to seek out our friends with time to live, not time to kill, to work with love, to eat with a conscious knowledge of our place within nature, to marry but remain singular, to move with passion, and rest in reason, to strive to be like our children, but seek not to make them like ourselves, for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. I could go on, but I’m already by no means doing these ideas justice, it would be better for you to read it yourselves.
As in many books, the author’s persona resides within his protagonist, so too does Kahlil Gibran transport himself within the prophet Almustafa. In fact it is said that the 12 years spent in exile is the 12 years Kahlil spent in New York before beginning to write the prophet (at a time when he had formulated a plan to return to Bsharre indefinitely). Orphalese is New York, Bsharre is the Isle of his birth, and Mary Haskell is Almitra. In acknowledging the personal nature of the book, an understanding of its ideas must be accompanied with an understanding of its author.
Kahlil was very solitary by nature, and coupled with his significant losses and his sensitivity, we can see why and how he came up with his thoughts on life. It was in a way a coping mechanism. I’ve heard of many people turning to religion when they have faced some horrific circumstance in their life, and I think to some degree, Kahlil did this. He was engrossed with the teachings of Jesus and Mohammed, even publishing whole books on the subject, especially Jesus of whom he once said a wonderful thing: “Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.”
But all the while Kahlil had somewhat of a disdain for all organised religion which he felt was loaded with hypocrisy but more importantly, lacked love and connection with people. Kahlil felt that, to be closer to God, one should be closer to people. He hated what he called the “Ineffective traditions and the unnatural laws that hurt the innate laws of human nature” and he wanted to help heal the social woes caused by these. Let me read to you what he says on religion.
And an old priest said, “Speak to us of Religion.” And he said: Have I spoken this day of aught else? Is not religion all deeds and all reflection, And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom? Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? Who can spread his hours before him, saying, “This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?” All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self. He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin. And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage. The freest song comes not through bars and wires. And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn. Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all. And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
Can I just say that I’m not here to put down religion, and I think it would incredibly hypocritical if I did. The idea is not to abolish anything, what Kahlil disliked was the idea that people believed that all religion consists of is a church attendance, and an application of a few moral guidelines, often encompassing things they can’t do, and things they should disapprove of. The qualms Kahlil Gibran has with organised religion, is the element of it which is not of the spirit, and not of love, and that it can lead people to believe they are spiritual without even knowing true compassion.
Organised religion was paired with authoritarian governments in Kahlil’s books, in their part in the prevention of growth of the individual to develop a self identity. The chapter on laws truly embodies his ideas on the matter.
Then a lawyer said, “But what of our Laws, master?” And he answered: You delight in laying down laws, Yet you delight more in breaking them. Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter. But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore, And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you. Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent. But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers, But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness? What of the cripple who hates dancers? What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things? What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless? What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws. And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows? And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth? But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man’s prison door? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man’s path? People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
Something that I can see prominently in the Prophet, is this idea of accepting our humanity. This is why he has a problem with strict rules and regulations, or any form of oppression, because they condemn the shadows of our humanity, and in doing so, will never allow the citizens they govern to embrace themselves. Only in embracing every aspect of humanity can a person love themselves, and relinquish their shame and fear.
This is why the prominent message is an introspective one. The prophet states, “You are the way, and the wayfarers”. We have landed on this journey in life, and the direction we should take is within us.
The prophet also says- “In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness, and that longing is in all of you.”
In such as we are connected to the power of everything we exist within, humans contain within them innate emotional and spiritual reservoirs that enable us to grow and develop into what he called our “giant self” or “vast self”. This giant self does not oppress impulses which others have said are wrong, but has an intuitive sense of good and evil, and is the basis of a society that would reach its utmost potential. This giant self is a changing entity also, and in accepting its changeable nature, it allows the world around it to grow and adapt.
In some way, Kahlil has replaced conventional religion with this idea of the Giant Self. The giant self, is the ideal, it is the perfect version of our humanity. It is good, kind, compassionate, strong, and full of love. And it is not deified; this is just a human we are talking about, and it not so far away that we must look to the heavens to glimpse it, only to then return back to the reality of our inadequate human flaws. It is a dimension of humans, and something that every person has within them.
This giant self is also our comfort, because it is a worthy aim, and justification for all that we suffer. In every struggle, our self is shifting, and the more we face it, the more we embrace it, of course, the greater our power becomes, the more we become vast and giant.
Surely there is no greater gift to man than that which turns all his aims into parching lips and all life into a fountain.” Kahlil’s message is a resoundingly positive one. In accepting that true knowledge of life is within our hearts, and not our intellect, one feels more able to access a greater wisdom. In accepting that a key undercurrent to life, is to become more and more vast, in ones own way, using ones own intuition, and that no entity can judge this, a person might feel perhaps a little emancipated.
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