Jibran Jalil Jibran

Jibran Khalil Jibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران بن ميخائل بن سعد‎, Ŷibrān Jalīl Ŷibrān ibn Mijā'īl ibn SaꞫd; Bisharri, January 6, 1883-New York, April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese poet, painter, novelist and essayist; he is known as the poet of exile.

Transliteration of the name

The best-known spelling of his name comes from the English transliteration Khalil Gibran of the original Arabic جبران خليل. The transcription usually used in Spanish in editions of this author's work is Gibrán Jalil Gibrán, although the Fundéu's romanization recommendations lead to the transcriptions Yibrán Jalil Yibrán > or Yubrán Jalil Yubrán.

Biography

Gibran Khalil Gibran Rahme.

He was born in 1883 in the Lebanese village of Bisharri, into a humble Maronite family. As for his first school education, it begins at the Bisharri Elementary School. The second of four siblings: Boutros, Marianna and Sultana, he lived with them until he was eleven years old, when much of his family emigrated to the United States in search of new opportunities to work and live. Before that trip, he learned from other people, including his maternal grandfather, the knowledge of art and universal knowledge, which were the basis for literature and painting, since he was little he revealed himself as an artist, both in the literary field and in the pictorial.

She settled with her family in Boston, Massachusetts; Over time he learned and devotedly cultivated English, a language that would make his novels famous, although he did not forget Arabic, which he perfected after his return to Lebanon in 1898 until 1902. In Beirut he frequented the Maronite and national religious center, Bayt Aljicma. He learned French and began to forge a subtle, elegant and fine literary style. During that stay in his native country, he stands out for his ability in drawing and the idea of writing a book, The Prophet , was born in him, which in time would be his masterpiece.. He returned to Boston and began to publish works in Arabic that revealed his peculiar style. His ability to draw and paint led him to create works so important that they were exhibited in various parts of the world and were compared to works by Auguste Rodin or William Blake.

Eager to broaden his styles, he went to Paris in 1904, where he settled in Vaugirard until 1910. He got to know and experience the cultural and artistic environment of Paris at the time. In 1910 he returned to Boston again. In 1911 he founded a kind of political-social group that intends to fight against tyranny and oppression in the East. He moves to New York City. In 1912 the book Broken Wings , which he had begun in 1906, was published. Yibrán himself, along with Youssef Howayek. At that time, he also began a series of trips through Europe that would enrich his cultural baggage.

He works for Alfunun magazine and, after its disappearance, for Alsaih. It was precisely around this magazine that the most important literary group in all of mahyar literature was formed, the “Literary League”, founded as such on April 4, 1920 and in which, among its members: Yubran, Nuayma, Nasib Arida, Rasid Ayyub. Yubrán, conscious and in the midst of a fruitful heyday, began to publish in English. It will be a period that will give him worldwide fame. Gibrán works on the preparation of The Prophet , which finally manages to be published in 1923, with total success and images of his own authorship. He had previously published The Fool and later The Precursor . At that time, bad feelings invade his soul and he wants to return to his homeland. His health then steadily declines until the end of his life. He married the woman of her dreams and always loved her until she died. He will get some social recognition from 1925 which will improve his living conditions.

He died in 1931 in New York, at the age of forty-eight.

Literary aspects

Style and recurring themes

Yibrán was a great admirer of the poet Francis Marrash, whose work he had studied in Beirut. According to orientalist Shmuel Moreh, Jibrán's own work is reminiscent of Marrash's style, many of his ideas, and sometimes even the structure of some of his books. For Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, the concept of universal love, in particular, left a "deep impression" on Gibran. Our author's poetry often uses formal language and spiritual terms, as one of his poems reveals: «But may there be spaces in your unity and may the winds of heaven dance between you. Love one another, but do not form a bond of love: let it be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."

Much of Jibrán's writing touches on Christianity, especially regarding spiritual love. But his mysticism is a convergence of several different influences: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Theosophy. He writes: “You are my brothers and I love you. I love you when you prostrate yourself in your mosques, kneel in your churches, and pray in your synagogues. You and I are children of one faith: the Spirit.

Reception and influence

Yibrán's best-known book is The Prophet, made up of twenty-six poetic essays. His popularity increased markedly during the 1960s with the American counterculture and later with the flowering of the New Age movements. Since its first publication, in 1923, it has never been out of print. Having been translated into more than forty languages, it was one of the best-sellers of the 20th century in the U.S.

Elvis Presley was deeply impressed by The Prophet after receiving his first copy in 1956. He reportedly read passages to his mother and over the years gave away copies of The Prophet to your friends and colleagues. Photographs of his handwritten notes under certain passages throughout his exemplar are available on various museum websites. One of his most remarkable phrases is taken from Sand and Foam (1926): "Half of what I say does not make sense, but I say it so that the other half can reach them." This phrase was borrowed by John Lennon and used, albeit slightly modified, in The Beatles' song "Julia". David Bowie mentions Gibran in the song "The Width Of a Circle", from his album The Man Who Sold the World (1970). Bowie used the author as a "hippie reference" because Gibran's book Tears and Smiles became popular in the hippie counterculture of the 1960s. In 2016 Gibran's fable On Death was composed in Hebrew by Gilad Hochman for soprano, turbo and percussion, and premiered in France under the title River of Silence.

Religious Views

Gibran was born into a Maronite Christian family and educated in Maronite schools. He was influenced not only by his own religion but also by Islam, and especially by Sufi mysticism. His knowledge of Lebanon's bloody history, with its destructive factional fighting, strengthened his belief in the fundamental unity of religions, which his parents instilled in him by welcoming people of different religions into his home.. His work was also influenced by themes such as Islamic / Arabic art, European classicism and romanticism (William Blake and Auguste Rodin), the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and, more modern, symbolism and surrealism. Gibran's great personal influences include Fred Holland Day, Josephine Preston Peabody—who called the author a "prophet"—and Mary Haskell, his patron.

Gibran had a series of encounters with Baha'is. Juliet Thompson, who knew the poet personally, recounted several anecdotes related to him. She recalled that Gibran had met Abdul-Bahá, the leader of the religion at the time of his visit to the United States, around 1911-1912. Gibran couldn't sleep the night before meeting him in person to draw his portrait. According to Thompson, throughout his writing of "Jesus, the Son of Man," Gibran thought of Abdul-Bahá. Years later, after Abdul-Bahá's death, Gibran gave a talk on religion with the Baha'is, and at another event, seeing a film about Abdul-Bahá, tearfully proclaimed exalted praise of Bahá, and left the event. crying. A well-known Gibran scholar, Lebanese Suheil Bushrui, also a Baha'i, published more than one volume on him and held the Khalil Gibran Chair for Values and Peace at the University of Maryland, and won the Juliet Hollister Temple of Understanding Award..

Political Thought

Gibran was by no means a politician. He used to say: "I am not a politician nor do I wish to be" and "I stay away from political events and power struggles, because the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my compatriots."

Nonetheless, he vindicated Arabic as the national language of Syria, considering Syria from a geographical, not a political point of view. When Gibran met Abdul-Bahá, who had traveled to the United States in part to promote peace, he admired his teachings on peace, but warned that "young nations like yours" must be freed from Ottoman control. In addition, in these years he wrote his famous poem "Poor of the Nation", published posthumously in The Garden of the Prophet .

When the Ottomans were finally driven out of Syria during World War I, Gibran sketched a euphoric drawing titled "Free Syria," which was later printed on the front page of the special edition of the Lebanese newspaper al-Sa'ih. In a draft of a play, Gibran expressed his wish for Lebanon's independence and progress. This work, according to Khalil Hawi, "defines Gibran's belief in Syrian nationalism with great clarity, distinguishing it from Lebanese and Arab nationalism, and showing us that nationalism lived in his mind, even at this later stage, alongside internationalism."

Notable chronology

1883, January 6: The Lebanese writer, artist and poet Gibran Kahlil Gibran is born in the city of Bisharri, north of Beirut, into a modest Maronite Christian family, in the one that highlighted an affectionate mother whose affection and memory she kept until the end of her days. The most marked characteristics of his personality as a child were his calmness, sensitivity and his fondness for drawing.

1895 He emigrated to the United States with his mother, Kamile Rahme (died 1903). In Boston, where the family lives in a miserable neighborhood, Gibran studies in public school.

1898 Returns to Beirut with a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic. He spends 3 years at Dar al-Hikma (college of science) learning Arabic and French.

1901 Returns to Washington, passing through Paris.

1902 He travels back to his homeland accompanied by an American family as a guide. But the illness of some relatives and the death of his brother determine his return to Washington. He then works designing book covers and begins to sell his drawings and attract attention as an artist.

1904 He unsuccessfully exhibits his drawings and works as a correspondent for the newspaper Al-Muhayir, published in New York. It is then that his almost philanthropic relationship with Mary Haskell is born.

1905 He publishes his book La música, composed of mystical poems in prose and considered his first literary work in the Arabic language.

1906 Publishes Las Ninfas de los Valles, also in Arabic. This work is essentially an attack on the then-existing ecclesiastical institutions, with which he earned a reputation among the Arabs as a revolutionary writer who rejected tradition and the corrupt reality he lived.

1908 He publishes Rebel Spirits, a work in which he advocates a spirituality, but attacks the Church and clergy.

1908-1910 Stays studying in Paris. Although in these years he was breathing the cubist current that worried him so much and was discussed in the European avant-garde media, it did not influence him in the slightest. It was then that he met Auguste Rodin and read a lot of European literature in general, particularly romantic poets like William Blake, who had a great influence on him. He also studied German philosophy, specifically Nietzsche, who deeply impressed him, albeit temporarily.

1910 At the end of the Arab Conference in Paris, he returned to Boston and founded the al-Halaga al-Dahabiyya (The Golden Link) society, a political society whose objective was to liberate the Arabs from ottoman rule.

1912 His father dies in Lebanon. He publishes his autobiographical story Broken Wings and begins with the famous Arabic writer May Ziyadah, a correspondence that lasted 20 years and ended with Gibran's death.

1914-1917 Holds three exhibitions.

1918 Publishes his book of philosophical poems Los cortejos and his first book in English The Madman (El loco), which does not prevent me from continuing to publish in Arabic.

1919 He published a collection of drawings in a book entitled Twenty Drawings, in a symbolist style with romantic features.

1920 The literary society Al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyah (The Literary League) is founded under his presidency, whose influence on Arabic literature was decisive.

1921 He published his first mystical work with a dramatic tendency: “Iram La de las Columnas”.

1923 He publishes Wonders and novelties, a book of figurative portraits of some Arab philosophers and poets. That same year he published “ The Prophet ”, his best-known work, which caused and continues to cause a great impact.

1926 He publishes “Sand and Foam”, a set of maxims and exhortations, some of which are reminiscent of Blake both in form and content. Around this time he embarks on a financial adventure in which he loses all of his money. He stops writing and dedicates himself to painting to cancel his debts. Despite the financial hardships that caused a breakdown in his health, he continued to write.

1928 He publishes Jesus Son of Man, an imaginary creation of the life of the Messiah, whom he conceives as a great miracle of the man who taught him to love those who hated him, that brought you peace. This book is a materialization of the love that unifies all of creation. His correspondence from this time reveals great exhaustion due to the illness that struck him, as well as a great homesickness for his homeland, although he believed that he could carry out more creative activity in New York than in the Lebanon. Although he knew that he was going to die young he did not fear death, but considered it as a liberation from this pain-laden world.

1931, April 10: Died in New York after publishing The Gods of Earth”. On August 21 of the same year, his body is transferred to Beirut and buried in Mar-Sarkis (Bisharri).

Literary characterization

Diverse are the currents both in the philosophical and in the most purely artistic and religious, which come together in our creator. His original and genuinely oriental spirit will soak up everything seen, felt and heard, trying to learn at all times to reach the cornerstone of all his work: the human being.

Different tendencies will emerge in his writings, but his own experiences will play a leading role when it comes to forging his own philosophy. In the Lebanese stage, his rebellious character must be framed, as well as the manifest social criticism that pervades his writings. The American stage supposes a cultural extension, through the discovery of English and North American artists. Finally, Europe, his stay in the French capital broadened his horizons, both cultural and vital. Along with Nietzsche, Buddha will be one of his great teachers, like Spinoza. We must also take into account the Sufi or mystical line that permeates all of his work.

Broadly speaking, it is possible to refer to two stages: a first one of greater externalization and the next one of a more intense internalization, of a deepening in one's own world, in truth both principles, externalization and internalization, will occur simultaneously: "I am not but you."

Works

Khalil Gibran Memorial in Washington D.C.

His works have been translated into more than twenty languages:

• Rebel spirits (1903)
• The music (1905)
• Broken wings (1912)
• tears and smiles (1914)
• The procession (1918)
• Crazy. (1918)
• The cutters (1919)
• The precursor (1920)
• Tempest (between night and day) (1920)
• Wonders and curiosities (1923)
• The prophet (1923)
• Lazarus and his beloved (1925)
• Sand and foam (1926)
• Jesus, the Son of Man (1928)
• The gods of the earth (1931)
• The tramp (1932)
• Between night and day
• The Garden of the Prophet
• The teacher
• The voice of the teacher

Posthumous works

• The tramp (1932)
• Ninfas del valle (1948)
• The voice of the teacher (1959)
• Thoughts and meditations (1961)
• Spiritual statements (1963)
• Authorport (1960)

Honors

• Espacio Gibrán Khalil Gibrán in the Municipality Chacao, Caracas, Venezuela. Opened on 2 February 2013.
• Monument to Khalil Gibran in the spa town of Viña del Mar (Chile). Located in front of the Miramar Beach (now called Los Artists) and facing Ross Castle on the central side of Marina Avenue. The Arab colony residing in Chile ordered and installed in the 1980s the statue of the Lebanese poet Kalil Gibran, the work of the Chilean sculptor Ricardo Santander Batalla.
• Stair Khalil Gibran in Atha Ka'i, Concepción, Antioquia (Colombia) with beautiful fragments of the book "The Prophet".