Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran (84 page)

Writing on the subject Gibran said:

“Woe to the nation that receives her conquerors beating the drums. Woe to the nation that hates oppression in her sleep and accepts it in her awakening. Woe to the nation that raises her voice only behind a coffin and prides itself only in the cemetery. Woe to a nation that does not revolt until her neck is placed on the scaffold.”

Gibran wrote and asked May to come to the United States. She refused because she was a woman and custom did not permit her; she asked him to come to Egypt. Part of Gibran's letter said: “What can I say about my economic condition?

“A year or two ago I had some peace and quiet. But now the quietness has turned into tumult and peace into struggle. The people are demanding my days and nights. I am overwhelmed by their demands. Every once in a while I leave this great city to elude the people and to escape from myself. The American public is mighty. It never wearies or gets tired, is never exhausted, never sleeps and never dreams. If it dislikes you it destroys you with neglect and if it likes you it destroys you with its affection and demand.

“The day may yet come when I can escape to the Middle East. If it were not for this cage, whose bars I have wrought with my own hands—I would have taken the first ship going East. What man would desert a building whose stones he had hewn and polished his entire life even though it had become a prison?”

In one of her letters May wrote:

“I do not know what I am doing but I know that I love you. I fear love. I expect too much of love, and I fear that I never will receive all my expectations…. How dare I write this to you …? However, I thank God I am writing it and not saying it. If you were present I would have vanished after such a statement and disappeared until you had forgotten what I said.

“I blame myself for taking even this much liberty. Nevertheless, right or wrong, my heart is with you and the best thing it can do is to hover over you and guard you with compassion.”

May's heart needed to hover only for a short time because Gibran's health was failing. He wrote:

“You know, May, every time I think of departing, that is, in death, I enjoy my thoughts and am contended to leave.”

Gibran departed in 1931 at the age of forty-seven after nearly nineteen years of his love affair, on paper, with MayZiadeh.

Salma Karamy

Gibran was eighteen “when love opened his eyes by its magic rays and Salma was the first woman” to do it.

Gibran wrote a novel in Arabic about his first love. No other author could have narrated the events better than Gibran. However, biographers and Gibran's neighbors insist that Gibran's first girl was called Hala El-daher and that the events of the story took place in Bcherri instead of Beirut.

Gibran intended to buy the monastery of Mar Sarkis where Salma once met him. This monastery was actually carved in a cliff for a safe refuge. To enter it in the old days required either a rope or a ladder. Mariana, Gibran's sister, bought it. A footpath was built later for the convenience of visitors who now bow humbly before the resting place of Gibran, who had wished to retire there in life but reached his refuge only in death.

Among his last letters exists evidence of Gibran's desire to “to go to the Middle East, to Lebanon, to Bcherri, to Mar Sarkis, that hermitage carved in the rock and overlooking the most astonishing sight the eye could ever see of the whole valley.” Gibran was longing for the “new life in the heart of nature; among the golden fields of wheat, the green meadows, the flocks of sheep being led to pasture, the roaring falls and the rising mist reflecting in the rays of the sun.”

Salma is presented to the reader in
The Broken Wings,
Gibran's own love story which has been on the bestseller list in Arabic for more than forty years.

1
. Baalbek was the hometown of the poet being honored.

THE WISDOM
OF KAHLIL GIBRAN

 

 

A

ACTION

A little knowledge that
acts
is worth infinitely more than much knowled1ge that is idle.

WM-ST-63

Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, but their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops, but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns.

SH-T-17

ADOLESCENCE

It is said that unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness makes him carefree. It may be true among those who were born dead and who exist like frozen corpses; but the sensitive boy who feels much and knows little is the most unfortunate creature under the sun, because he is torn by two forces. The first force elevates him and shows him the beauty of existence through a cloud of dreams; the second ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes with dust and overpowers him with fears and darkness.

BW-ST-18

ADVICE

He who does not seek advice is a fool. His folly blinds him to Truth and makes him evil, stubborn, and a danger to his fellow man.

WM-ST-67

AFFECTION

The heart's affections are divided like the branches of the cedar tree; if the tree loses one strong branch, it will suffer but it does not die. It will pour all its vitality into the next branch so that it will grow and fill the empty place.

BW-ST-93

AGE

Seek ye counsel of the aged, for their eyes have looked on the faces of the years and their ears have hearkened to the voices of Life. Even if their counsel is displeasing to you, pay heed to them.

WM-ST-68

AMBITION

What good is there, pray thee tell me,

In jostling through the crowd in life,

‘Mid the argumental tumult,

Protestation, and endless strife;

Mole-like burrowing in darkness,

Grasping for the spider's thread,

Always thwarted in ambition,

Until the living join the dead?

P-73

AMERICANS

The Americans are a mighty people who never give up or get tired or sleep or dream. If these people hate someone, they will kill him by negligence, and if they like or love a person, they will shower him with affection.

SP-ST-82

ANCESTRY

A man is not noble through ancestry;

How many noblemen are descendants of murderers?

   MS-74

ANTHROPOMORPHISM

The mountains, trees, and rivers change their appearance with the vicissitudes of times and seasons, as a man changes with his experiences and emotions. The lofty poplar that resembles a bride in the daytime will look like a column of smoke in the evening; the huge rock that stands impregnable at noon will appear to be a miserable pauper at night, with earth for his bed and the sky for his cover; and the rivulet that we see glittering in the morning and hear singing the hymn of Eternity will, in the evening, turn to a stream of tears wailing like a mother bereft of her child.

BW-ST-78

APPEARANCE

The appearance of things changes according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.

BW-ST-51

The purpose of the spirit in the

Heart is concealed, and by outer

Appearance cannot be judged.

   
T-372

ART

Art must be a direct communication between the artist's imagination and that of the looker. For that reason, I avoid, so much as possible, busying the looker's eye with too many details in order that his imagination may roam wide and far. As to the physical molds, art is forced to create for expressing itself; they must be beautiful molds. Otherwise, art defeats its purpose.

KG-P-102

Is it really God that created Man, or is it the opposite? Imagination is the only creator, its nearest and clearest manifestation is Art; yes, art is life, life is art; all else is trite and empty in comparison.

KG-P-97

Art is one step from the visibly known toward the unknown.

MS-71

ARTIST

I should be a traitor to my art if I were to borrow my sitter's eyes. The face is a marvelous mirror that reflects most faithfully the innermost of the soul; the artist's business is to see that and portray it; otherwise he is not fit to be called an artist.

KG-P-97

AUTHORITY

Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.

The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression—that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.

TL-T-8

B

BARRENNESS

How many flowers

Possess no fragrance from the day

Of their birth! How many clouds

Gather in the sky, barren of rain,

Dropping no pearls!

   
T-373

BEAUTY

Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear—it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination.

TL-T-407

Are you troubled by the many faiths that Mankind professes? Are you lost in the valley of conflicting beliefs? Do you think that the freedom of heresy is less burdensome than the yoke of submission, and the liberty of dissent safer than the stronghold of acquiescence?

If such be the case, then make Beauty your religion, and worship her as your godhead; for she is the visible, manifest and perfect handiwork of God. Cast off those who have toyed with godliness as if it were a sham, joining together greed and arrogance; but believe instead in the divinity of beauty that is at once the beginning of your worship of Life, and the source of your hunger for Happiness.

Do penance before Beauty, and atone for your sins, for Beauty brings your heart closer to the throne of woman, who is the mirror of your affections and the teacher of your heart in the ways of Nature, which is your life's home.

WM-ST-33

Only our spirits can understand beauty, or live and grow with it. It puzzles our minds; we are unable to describe it in words; it is a sensation that our eyes cannot see, derived from both the one who observes and the one who is looked upon. Real beauty is a ray which emanates from the holy of holies of the spirit, and illuminates the body, as life comes from the depths of the earth and gives color and scent to a flower.

BW-ST-34

Beauty is that harmony between joy and sorrow which begins in our holy of holies and ends beyond the scope of our imagination.

KG-P-93

Beauty is not in the face;

Beauty is a light in the heart.

   
MS-75

BEING

It is impossible for the mirror of the soul to reflect in the imagination anything which does not stand before it. It is impossible for the calm lake to show in its depth the figure of any mountain or the picture of any tree or cloud that does not exist close by the lake. It is impossible for the light to throw upon the earth a shadow of an object that has no being. Nothing can be seen, heard, or otherwise sensed unless it has actual
being.

SH-T-149