The Prophet: "You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts."
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The Prophet is a book of prose poetry published in 1923 by the renowned Lebanese philosopher and writer Kahlil Gibran who has been a member of a group of Lebanese intellectuals and writers expatriated in the United States. Having been translated from English into most languages of the world and sold by millions of copies, The Prophet is about goodness, humanism and universal spirituality. It displays the influence of great world religious traditions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. The protagonist is the eponymous prophet Almustafa (an Arabic word meaning “the chosen one”) who is pictured in the very first pages of the book as a man of wisdom and experience who is about to leave the city in which he seems to have spent quite a long time. On his way to the ship that is supposed to take him to his homeland, he meets a group of denizens who start to ask him questions about different issues related to life and existence. Thus, the rest of the book is divided into a number of short poetic essays, each focusing on one aspect of life such as love, marriage, work, food, friendship, religion and death.
Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet, and a philosopher best known for his, The Prophet. Born to a Maronite-Christian family in a village occupied by Ottoman rule, Gibran and his family immigrated to the United States in 1895 in search of a better life. Studying art and literature, and inevitably ensconced in the world of political activism as a young man dealing with the ramifications of having to leave his home-land, Gibran hoped to make his living as an artist. With the weight of political and religious upheaval on his shoulders, Gibran's work aimed to inspire a revolution of free though and artistic expression. Gibran's, The Prophet has become one of the best-selling books of all time, leaving behind a legacy of accolades and establishing him as both a literary rebel and hero in his country of Lebanon. Gibran is considered to be the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao Tzu.
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The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
The Prophet is a book of prose poetry published in 1923 by the renowned Lebanese philosopher and writer Kahlil Gibran who has been a member of a group of Lebanese intellectuals and writers expatriated in the United States. Having been translated from English into most languages of the world and sold by millions of copies, The Prophet is about goodness, humanism and universal spirituality. It displays the influence of great world religious traditions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. The protagonist is the eponymous prophet Almustafa (an Arabic word meaning the chosen one
) who is pictured in the very first pages of the book as a man of wisdom and experience who is about to leave the city in which he seems to have spent quite a long time. On his way to the ship that is supposed to take him to his homeland, he meets a group of denizens who start to ask him questions about different issues related to life and existence. Thus, the rest of the book is divided into a number of short poetic essays, each focusing on one aspect of life such as love, marriage, work, food, friendship, religion and death.
Index of Contents
The Coming of the Ship
Love
Marriage
Children
Giving
Eating and Drinking
Work
Joy and Sorrow
Houses
Clothes
Buying and Selling
Crime and Punishment
Laws
Freedom
Reason and Passion
Pain
Self-Knowledge
Teaching
Friendship
Talking
Time
Good and Evil
Prayer
Pleasure
Beauty
Religion
Death
The Farewell
Khalil Gibran - A Short Biography
The Coming of the Ship
Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.
And in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of Ielool, the month of reaping, he climbed the hill without the city walls and looked seaward; and he beheld the ship coming with the mist.
Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.
But he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart: How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?
Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.
It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands. Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.
Yet I cannot tarry longer. The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark. For to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould.
Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that give it wings. Alone must it seek the ether.
And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.
Now when he reached the foot of the hill, he turned again towards the sea, and he saw his ship approaching the harbour, and upon her prow the mariners, the men of his own land.
And his soul cried out to them, and he said:
Sons of my ancient mother, you riders of the tides,
How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.
Ready am I to go, and my eagerness with sails full set awaits the wind.
Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,