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. 
"His power came from some great reservoir of
spiritual life
else it could not have been so universal and
so potent,
but the majesty and beauty of the language
with which he
clothed it were all his own." ---
Claude Bragdon
(I purposely did not put midi music on
these pages in
the
hopes that as you read you can get in touch with your own
thoughts.)
(Excerpts from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran)
On Children
On
Death
On
Friendship
On
Giving
On
Love
On
Marriage
On
Prayer
On Self
Knowledge
A self
Portrait
The life of Gibran &His
Production
Born in 1883 in Bsharri, Gibran Kahlil Gibran immigrated to Boston
with his mother, his two sisters Mariana and Sultaneh and his half
brother Boutros.
In 1898 , he returns to Lebanon where he spends his summer with
his father in his native town in Bsharri and in Winter at the
Sagesse College in Beirut where he learns arabic and french.
In 1902, Gibran returns to Boston. Between 1902 and 1904 his
sister Sultaneh
(16 years old) dies and his brother Boutros died of tuberculosis
and his mother was carried away by a cancer.
In 1908, he went to Paris where he improved his artistic
techniques and there he meets Rodin.
In 1910, he left Paris for London where he stayed for a month,
before returning to Boston.
In 1911, he leaves for New York where he will stay until his death
on April 10, 1931.
In 1931, Gibran's body reaches Bsharri on August 22, and was later
buried in the hermitage of Mar Sarkis.
In 1933 , the Youth of Bsharri, Mary Haskell and the Lebanese
residing in Boston succeeded in fulfilling Gibran's will and
shipped all his belongings to his hometown in Bsharri.
Gibran's
portrait of
Mary
Haskell, his life long friend.
The photograph shows
Gibran in 1909, when he was in Paris among some artists and
friends in the studio of the sophist artist Pierre Marcel
Berenneau.
Gibran draws faces
that become the reflection of an inside world. He aims to paint
numerous faces that illustrate the climax of consciousness of his
epoch and of all times. His creative imagination will help him to
prepare their psychological aspects; drawing sometimes a double
painting style where the known self and the unknown self face each
other in the same portrait.
Between 1902 and 1904,
Death sweeps away most of
his family members. Their spirit haunt him; he will
experience suffering until the darkness of graves and their
spiritual presence in its great revelation.
His Art
Transfiguration,
Spirit and Ether, Ascending from
the world toward Cosmic Motherhood and descent of the
Cosmic Mother towards the world, the communication
between two worlds... Joy of the spirit.
Joy of the spirit.
Family
Cosmic
His Dream
One of
the Italian monks there was a great friend of my grandfather,
Bishop
Michael. They always talked Latin together as you and I
speak English.
Everyone
in town knew the monk and loved him.
He was
very venerable - stout and short, with white hair and bright
colour
and
large bright blue eyes. I remember him perfectly but I had not
thought
of
him for years. And it was he that I was talking with in my dream.
We were
walking towards the old Phoenician tomb - and he motioned me
to
notice an ax that was lying by one of the big walnut trees. It was
the
biggest ax I ever saw. The old monk picked it up and swung it with
a smile
and than he began to hit the big walnut tree with it.
The
blows made a tremendous sound that filled all the valley. I
remarked
to
myself with surprise that they sounded not like steel on wood -
but like
a great bell - as if the tree was made of metal. I walked
on
slowly and rapidly the sound grew less. With each step it was so
much
less
that I was very much interested - and in a moment I was saying to
myself,
"I am
only fifteen yards away, and near at hand those blows
sounded
through this whole valley.
Now I
can hardly hear them." And in a step or two more I did not
hear
them at all. Then I saw Jesus coming towards me down the road.
The
walnuts and weeping willows arched over the road, and I could see
the
patches of sunlight falling through on his face. It was the same
face
as
always - an Arabic type of face, aquiline nose, black eyes,
deep-set
and large, yet not weak as large eyes are apt to be,
but as
masculine as anything could be, with his straight black brows.
His skin was brown and healthy, with that beautiful flush of red
showing
through." - (Mary: Was he bearded?), "Yes, with a thin beard like
the Arabs
-
and his hair was abundant and black but not well kept, head bare,
as always.
He had
on the same brown robe, loose, with a cord
round
the waist and a little torn at the bottom - and the
same
rough, heavy, common kind large sandal on his feet - they were as
usual a little dusty.
But he
was not walking as usual. His staff high, and with his bosom
projecting" -
and
here K. stood up and faced me with the royal mien he indicated.
Staff
held in front - eyes piercing - and he walked like a peasant who
deliberately
"walks
like a king. When we met he turned and walked back with me toward
the Phoenician tomb. There is a large, large rectangular stone in
front of the tomb
carved
with inscriptions. We sat down on it and talked.
There
is no noting of time in dreams of course - but when I waked I had
the
sense
that we had talked a long time. And wet I can't remember what we
talked about.
Only the
same old thing. Mary, as we sat he took his staff and
marked
in the sand with it just as any of us would do and often do.
And
one thing I remember that he said, in Arabic: "Yes, it does sound
like copper."
And when
he said this, though for some time I had not been hearing the monk
chopping the walnut tree - I now heard him again - and it did
sound like copper.
But
there was nothing striking about the conversation. We simply
talked.
"Today I
was unusually aware of him. It is my joy of joys that he never
hides from me.
"With
you, Mary", he said today, "I want to be just like a blade of
grass,
that
moves as the air moves it - to talk just according to the impulse
of the moment.
And
I do." I told him my delight in that - and how it seems to me the
highest
honour one can do another - to be free and himself with her.
To be
this, is to treat one's friend as one's equal.
H I S P R O D U C
T I O N
Arabic
1905: Music
1906: Nymphs of the Valley
1908: Spirits Rebellious
1912: Broken Wings
1914: A Tear and a Smile
1919: Al Mawakeb
1920: The Tempest
1923: Creations and Originalities English
1918: The Madman
1920: The Forerunner
1923: The Prophet
1926: Sand and Foam
1928: Jesus, the son of God
1931: The Earth Gods
1932: The Wanderer
1933: The Garden of the
Prophet
1919: Publication of a collection
of Twenty Drawings.
Literature and music,
essential elements of Arab life and culture, have flowered in New
York's Arab-American communities. In the early days of settlement,
the City was home to dozens of Arabic-language newspapers and
magazines. They played an important role in assimilating the
newcomers and promoting the work of the immigrant writers, most
notably artist and poet Kahlil Gibran. The Syrian community in New
York City maintained Arab musical traditions and served for more
than half a century as a distribution point for both imported and
domestic records. Today, writers, musicians, artists, and
filmmakers, young and old, have contributed to a revival of Arab
New York cultural life that saw its greatest expression in
Mahrajan al-Fan (Festival of the Arts) in the 1990s.
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