“I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.” — Khalil Gibran
Sometimes extreme poverty and human loss at a young age can transform the soul which survives into a remarkable talent. The very fire that melts the butter makes the iron hard.
Jubran Khalil Jubran was born January 6, 1883 in Bsharri, Lebanon. His father’s misdeeds led the family into such poverty that the mother and children emigrated and settled in Boston’s South End. His mother found work as a seamstress and peddler, selling lace and linens door to door.
Gibran was placed in a special class for immigrants to learn English. He took art classes at Denison House which was a nearby settlement house. At age 15 he returned to his homeland to study at a preparatory school in Beirut. He began a student literary magazine with a friend and was elected college poet. He left Beirut in 1901 and wandered around Europe.
While studying at the Academie Julian in Paris he met luminaries such as Auguste Rodin, Claude DeBussy, and William Butler Yeats. In Paris he decided to start his “Temple of the Arts” series in which he drew portraits of leading figures of modern art and culture. It was work he continued for the rest of his life
His early works were sketches, short stories, poems and prose poems written in simple language for Arabic newspapers in the United States.
Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time following Shakespeare and Laozi. The Prophet (1923) has been translated into 110 languages. Such was the acclaim that Gibran was catapulted on to the global stage. His passing at age 48 April 10, 1931 in New York was front-page news around the globe. The cause was cirrhosis of the liver and tuberculosis due to prolonged serious alcoholism.
This recognition had come at a personal cost. Gibran was an alcoholic who could not form close romantic relationships throughout his short life. He was involved with a number of older women, some of whom became patrons and helped further his career. He had said that he would lock himself in his apartment and drink. The New York Herald Tribune wrote that, “Kahlil Gibran was to some 60 Million persons whose tongue is Arabic the genius of the age.”
One of his relationships was with Mary Haskell, headmistress of a private girls school in Boston who was 10 years older than Gibran. They had a 27-year relationship and she became his most important patron, muse, confidant, and advisor. When he began writing in English in 1918, she edited his manuscripts and wrote about The Prophet that, “This book will be held as one of the treasures of the English language and in the darkness we will open it to find ourselves again.”
January 5, 1929 hundreds of guests gathered at The Hotel McAlpin in New York to honor Gibran at a dinner organized by The Pen League. Philip K. Hitti of Princeton University said, “Gibran unfailingly produces gems of thought and is always natural and sublime.” The dinner was held at the pinnacle of the writer’s career. He died two years later.
Per his request he was taken back to Lebanon in 1932 to be buried at the Mar Sarkis Monastery which since has become the Gibran Museum. Written at his grave are his words “I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around and you will see me in front of you.”
Gibran willed the contents of his studio to Mary Haskell. She donated his letters to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She died in 1964 and excerpts of his more than 600 letters to her were published in “Beloved Prophet” in 1972.