Thread: The Prophet by Kahil Gibran

This little book (cannot really call it a novel) is filled with wisdom and thoughts on everything likely to come up in daily life. Have any of you read it? It's beautiful, I really cannot say anything else.

Most definitely, Walkio.

My favourite quote from the book is:

"And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course."

Here is another of Gibran's quotes that I don't think could be found in The Prophet. Just for you:

"How ignorant are those who think love is born from long assosiation or unbroken companionship. True love is the daughter of spiritual understanding and if that understanding is not achieved in a single moment, then it will never be atteined, not in a year, not in a whole century."

After reading a fine biography of Gibran by Bushrui and Jenkins I wrote the following prose-poem-just last night:
_______________________________
STUPENDOUS

Kahlil Gibran once wrote that Bahá'u'lláh’s Arabic writings were the most stupendous literature that ever was written. Of ‘Abdu’l-Baha he wrote that “for the first time I saw form noble enough to be a receptacle for the Holy Spirit.” This Lebanese writer who has sold more books than all the American poets from Auden to Whitman died in 1931. But he possesses a spectacular durability and a burgeoning reputation. In my early years as a teacher, back in 1968, a film was made about Gibran. It was called “The Broken Wings.” When I retired from teaching thirty years later in 1999 I was given one of the latest biographies on Gibran, one of the two that had come out in 1998. Gibran had hung around in the popular marketplace all my adult life. From my earliest years in which books became important, somewhere in about 1962, Gibran’s soulful, doleful portrait stared at me from desks when I studied history and philosophy; it followed me into primary and high schools and would pop up in the most unpredictable places from Baffin island to Zeehan Tasmania. Gibran was, it seemed, an institution and a phenomenon and the author of the most widely-read book of the 20th century.1-Ron Price with thanks to Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Kahlil Gibran: Man and Poet, Oneworld, Oxford, 1998.

You seem to have followed me
like a shadow, like some second-
cousin in my religious life, out
there in the book shops, a copy
with a friend kept in their bag
or on a home-shelf. You died
just when we were getting our
organization together around
the finest writing in Arabic ever
created by the pen of a human.

You had the cadences of the King
James Version in tantalizing paradox,
eternal pronunciamentos, some said
a patented blend of emptiness and
pretension from a man who craved
tranquillity and obscurity back home.

But the age was becoming more complex
and your simple solutions would not do,
would not be enough for our troubled age.
Ours was an age for falcons and eagles
not the simple, sweet flying birds,
aphorisms for the unpredictable tempest
that was shaking our world apart.
Still, you were eloquent and beautiful
and your lonely voice reached millions,
for you had touched the world of the
Imagination that would save us all,
the world of that stupendous writing
from the greatest Being to have lived.

Ron Price
June 2nd 2006

Just came across this (guests are useful, I come across old interesting threads ).

Any other Khalil Gibran fans? The Prophet is simply a beautiful book.

It sent me to sleep....

You know, after the Ox, it's you who amuses me or puts a smile on my face.

Now, the Fitzgerald translation of the Rubyatt....

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

Originally Posted by Bloggsworth

It sent me to sleep....

it can't be that bad then..peace and hamony...what more do you need?
think of all those poor souls who can't sleep.. hehe,,

One of my favourite books, his advice on children, that they are as arrows, that once they have left the bow the marksman cannot alter his aim, has always struck me as particularly profound. The people I see having most trouble with their children are those who wish to choose the target in retrospect.

Most of his lines were profound. I found the style of writing beautifully poetic.
And Olly, you had suggested the book to me. Thanks for that.

Originally Posted by Bloggsworth

Now, the Fitzgerald translation of the Rubyatt....

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

what does this piece mean?