Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran

Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran

By calling his second book in English The Forerunner, Gibran appears consciously to have designated it as the precursor of his most important work, The Prophet[1],which followed it into print. The earlier book, published in 1920, certainly appears to anticipate The Prophet in the penultimate line of its final parable, ‘The Last Watch’, which predicts that ‘out of our ashes a mightier love shall rise’. And Gibran himself affirmed that ‘there is a sort of promise of The Prophet in the farewell of The Forerunner’.[2]

Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran. Exactly when Gibran first thought of the idea of The Prophet and when he started writing it have long been subjects of conjecture. According to Mary Haskell, he claimed to have in his possession ‘the Arabic original of it, in elementary form, that I did when I was sixteen years old’,[3] though no such original has ever been traced. In a letter to May Ziadah dated 9 November 1919, he attempted to explain how it evolved:

As for The Prophet – this is a book which I thought of writing a thousand years ago, but I did not get any of its chapters down on paper until the end of last year. What can I tell you about this prophet? He is my rebirth and my first baptism, the only thought in me that will make me worthy to stand in the light of the sun. For this prophet had already ‘written’ me before I attempted to ‘write’ him, had created me before I created him, and had silently set me on a course to follow him for several thousand leagues before he appeared in front of me to dictate his wishes and inclinations.[4]

Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran. After its publication he wrote again to May:

This book is only a small part of what I have seen and of what I see every day, a small part only of the many things yearning for expression in the silent hearts of men and in their souls.[5]

There is no documentary evidence to show that Gibran worked on the book before June 1912, when, according to Mary Haskell, he ‘got the first motif for his Island God’ whose ‘Prometheus exile shall be an Island one’.[6] It therefore took at least eleven years to complete, during which time Gibran regularly broke off to write other works. All the while, however, he was rigorously refining and honing The Prophet, which was demonstrably closer to his heart than any of his other writings, and which he knew instinctively would be his finest work. He effectively completed it in 1922, but he was plagued with ill health and it was another year before it reached the printers.[7]

Gibran used Mary Haskell as a consultant on his English writings from the start, when he began writing The Madman. She tidied up the punctuation and grammar, and suggested alternative words for greater felicity of sound, on occasion. He looked upon her as a trusted and intelligent friend with a native command of his adopted language, and whose comments were therefore invaluable to him. Mary’s testimony indicates that the literary collaboration started in June 1914,[8] and thereafter he consulted her on the majority of the parables and poems in The Madman and The Forerunner, and on many of the sermons in The Prophet. The publication of the latter in 1923 marked the end of their collaboration.

Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran. Mary’s journals contain several references to the ‘Commonwealth’[9] and the ‘Counsels’[10] as the Prophet was provisionally entitled in its early stages; earlier still, Gibran was also referring to it simply as ‘My Book’.[11] There were originally to be twenty-one ‘Counsels’ or sermons, but this was eventually expanded to twenty-six. In March 1918 he read to Mary what she called ‘Passage to Men and Women’, part of which she wrote down in her journal, and which would later be expanded into Almustafa’s sermon on marriage:

Love each other – and

Let your love be as a sea between

The shores of yourselves –

Fill each other’s cup – but drink not from

One cup – Give bread to each other –

But share not from the same loaf –

Be each alone in your togetherness[12]

Gibran began sending Mary the ‘Counsels’ on which he was working, and she returned them annotated with helpful remarks,[13] as well as greatly encouraging him with her appreciative response. In his letter of 11 June 1918 he wrote to her:

In the ‘Counsel’ on houses the verb ‘breed’ was left out in copying. Of course it should read ‘the holy spirit breed (or hide) in cells unvisited by sun and air’. And in that same ‘Counsel’ – how do you like ‘and bees build not their hives on mountain peaks’ in the place of ‘butterflies flutter ... ’?[14]

Gibran finally appears to have begun calling the book The Prophet in November 1919.[15] It was a crucial decision, as Mikhail Naimy observes:

The very name ‘Prophet’ impresses with dignity and inspires reverence. A word said by a man clothed in prophetic majesty carries much more weight and magnitude than when said by a common man. Thus with that one word ‘prophet’ Gibran the artist raised to the dignity and height of prophecy what Gibran the poet had to say, even before he said it.[16]

By May 1920, Gibran had plotted an overall scenario for The Prophet:

In a city between the plains and the sea, where ships come in and where flocks graze in the fields behind the city, there wanders about the fields and somewhat among the people, a man – poet, seer, prophet – who loves them and whom they love – but there is an aloneness after all about him. They are glad to hear him talk, they feel in him a beauty and a sweetness; ... young women who are attracted by his gentleness do not quite venture to fall in love with him. And while the people count him as part of the city, and like it that he is there and that he talks with their children in the fields, there is a consciousness that this is all temporary – that someday he will go. And one day out of the blue horizon a ship comes towards the city and somehow everyone knows, though nothing is told, that the ship is for the hermit poet. And now that they are going to lose him, the feeling of what he is in their life comes to them and they crowd down to the shore, and he stands and talks with them. And one says, ‘Speak to us of Friendship’ – and so on. And he speaks of these things. It is what he says about them that I have been writing. And when he has ended, he enters the ship and the ship sails into the mist.

And at the end one says to the poet, ‘Tell us about God,’ and he says, ‘Of him have I been speaking in everything.’ I am not trying to write poetry. I am trying to express thoughts. I want the rhythm and the words right so that they shan’t be noticed but shall just sink in like water into cloth; and the thought be the thing that registers. But we must always remember too the man who is speaking. It is what that special personality says to the people he knows, and he has to speak in his own way.[17]


Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran. In September Gibran showed Mary the first draft of the prologue, and she wrote down as much as she could recall, some of which is very close to the final version:

Almustafa, the chosen and beloved, he who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of Orphalese, for the ship of purple sails to return and bear him back again to the isle of his birth.

Every day, upon the high hills without the city walls, he stood searching the distances for his ship. But the ship came not; and his heart grew heavy within him, for deep was the land of his memories and the dwelling-place of his greater desires. Then, in the twelfth year, on the seventh day of which is the month of awakening, came the ship of purple sails, and he descended the hills to go. But he could not go without pain, for all the self that he left in the city, and for his heart made sweet there with hunger and thirst. ‘Fain would I take with me all that is here.’ Yet, ‘A voice cannot carry with it the tongue and the life that gave it wings. Alone it must seek the — and alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.’

Now when he had descended from the hill, he turned again towards the sea and saw his ship approaching the harbour. And he beheld her mariners, the men of his own land, upon her bow ... he hails them, riders of the tides, and says, ‘How often have you sailed in my dreams, and now you are come at this awakening, which is my deeper dream. Ready am I to go, and my eagerness, with sails full set, awaits the time ... But another breath will I breathe in this air then shall I go with you, a seafarer, among seafarers.

‘And you, vast sea, sleepless mother, who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream, only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade, and then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.’

These things he said in words. But in his heart more remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper silence.

That much, Kahlil has written, and planned the rest. How Almustafa when he comes down from the hill whence he saw the ship, will find all the city meeting him, for now they know, and they know they love him; and they follow him, and ask him to counsel them, one after another questioning him; and to all of them he delivers his counsel; and then they go with him to the ship; and he speaks his farewell; and it is ended.[18]

A week later there was more:

He brought the third writing on the setting for The Prophet. How, as he walked on, he saw afar the men and women leaving their fields and vineyards and hastening towards the gates of the city. And he heard many voices calling his name, and men shouting one to another from field to field telling of the return of his ship. And he said to himself: ‘Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering and shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn? And what shall I give unto him who has left his plough in mid-furrow, and to him who has stopped the wheel of his winepress. Shall my heart be as a fruitladen tree, that I may — and shall my desires become a fountain, that I may fill their cups? Am I a harp that the hand of the Mighty may touch me, and a flute that His breath may blow through me? A seeker of silences am I. And what treasures have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence? If this is the day of my harvest, in what unknown fields have I sowed the seed, and in what unremembered seasons? If this be indeed the hour in which I shall lift up my lantern, it is not my own flame that shall burn therein. Empty and cold shall I raise my lantern, and the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil, and he shall light it also.’ This he said in words. But more remained in his heart unsaid. For he himself could not speak his innermost silence.

And when he entered into the city, all the people came together to meet him and they cried unto him as with one voice. Then the elders of the city stood forth and said unto him, ‘Go not yet away from us. A noontide have you been in our twilight, and your youth has given us dreams to dream. No stranger have you been among us, and not a guest, but our son and our beloved. Suffer not yet our hearts to hunger for your face.’ And the priests and the priestesses said unto him, ‘Let not the waves of the sea separate us now. You have walked among us, a spirit, and your shadow has been a light upon our faces. Let not the days you have passed in our midst become a memory that feeds upon the heart. Much have we loved you. But speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled. Now does it cry aloud unto you, and would be revealed before you. And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the day of separation.’

And many others came also and entreated him; and he answered not, but bent his head. And those who stood near him beheld his tears falling upon his breast.

‘It was written down in a hurry,’ said Kahlil. As we got to the text, we began at once to condense the connecting phrases. We always have a fine time over a manuscript, because one can talk to Kahlil as to one’s self. There is no pride to guard, and no treasuring of phrases. He likes to work on and on and over and over until the thing is SAID. Sometimes we have to leave a thing to ripen in Kahlil. Never before has he written so systematically on an English book. So we are doing more than usual. Usually, he keeps things to show me, until he has completed them. But this Prophet prologue he brings in its first or second writing down. He says the final form comes quicker than when he prunes it alone. Our method is, first, Kahlil reads it through aloud to me. Then we look together at the text, and if we come to a bit that I question, we stop until the question is settled.

He knows more English than any of us, for he is conscious of the bony structure of the language, its solar system. And he creates English.

‘I have been teaching myself to prune and to try for consciousness of structure. And this consciousness of structure is fundamental.’[19]

At this stage, Gibran appeared confident that the book would be published the following month, October 1920.[20] However, another year went by, and Almustafa’s farewell was first heard by Mary in August 1921.[21] Still not satisfied that the book was complete, early in 1922 Gibran read her another sermon he had written, On Pleasure; together they ‘changed a phrase or two for rhythm and closeness of fit’.[22] In May they worked on the ‘final rhythmic forms’ of The Prophet as well as the spacing,[23] and he thought of another sermon, part of which was incorporated into the one on children:

I think I’m going to write a ‘Counsel’ on receiving – everybody has something he wants to give – and so often no one will take. I may have a house and invite people to it. They will come and accept my house, my food, and my thoughts even, but not my love. And yet love is what most of us most want to give. People often say women want to be loved. But they really want much more. Many women want to bear children; and their very being wants to give children life. She often desires men just as a key to the child that is in her to give life to.[24]

After this, few changes or additions were made, and The Prophet finally went to press. Mary went over the galley proofs in April 1923, and of the corrections she made, Gibran wrote:

Your blessed touch makes every page dear to me. The punctuations, the added spaces, the change of expressions in some places, the changing of ‘Buts’ to ‘Ands’ – all these things are just right. The one thing which I thought a great deal about, and could not see, was the rearrangement of paragraphs in Love, Marriage, Children, Giving and Clothes. I tried to reread them in the new way, and somehow they seemed rather strange to my ear.[25]

At the end of September The Prophet was published. On receiving a copy, Mary was the first to recognize that its appeal would be universal. She was also aware that their association had now reached its climax. Coloured by emotion as her words were, Mary’s ecstatic letter of 2 October 1923 nevertheless forecasts quite accurately the feelings of many among those millions who have been touched by the book since its publication:

Beloved Kahlil, The Prophet came today, and it did more than realize my hopes. For it seemed in its compacted form to open further new doors of desire and imagination in me, and to create about itself the universe in nimbus, so that I read it as the centre of things. The format is excellent, and lets the ideas and the verse flow quite unhampered. The pictures make my heart jump when I see them. They are beautifully done. I like the book altogether in style.

And the text is more beautiful, nearer, more revealing, more marvellous in conveying Reality and in sweetening consciousness – than ever. The English, the style, the wording, the music – is exquisite, Kahlil – just sheerly beautiful ... This book will be held as one of the treasures of English literature. And in our darkness we will open it to find ourselves again and the heaven and earth within ourselves. Generations will not exhaust it, but instead, generation after generation will find in the book what they would fain be – and it will be better loved as men grow riper and riper.

It is the most loving book ever written. And it is because you are the greatest lover, who ever wrote.[26]
 
Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran.

The Prophet

The twelve illustrations in this volume are reproduced from original drawings by the author

A new annotated edition

introduced and edited by

Suheil Bushrui

www. oneworld-publications .com

[1] Mikhail Naimy, ‘A Strange Little Book’, in Bushrui and Munro 1970, p. 90.

[2] Hilu 1972, pp. 386–387.

[3] Ibid., p. 322.

[4] Bushrui and al-Kuzbari 1995, p. 23.

[5] Ibid., p. 73.

[6] Hilu 1972, p. 90.

[7] Ibid., p. 401.

[8] Ibid., pp. 193–195.

[9] Hilu 1973, pp. 312–313.

[10] Hilu 1972, p. 303.

[11] Ibid., p. 90.

[12] Hilu 1973, p. 310.

[13] Hilu 1972, p. 309.

[14] Otto 1963, p. 579.

[15] Hilu 1972, p. 322.

[16] Naimy 1967, p. 186.

[17] Otto 1963, p. 567.

[18] Hilu 1972, pp. 343–344. In Gibran’s final text the word left blank in this section (Mary’s memory presumably failing her for once) is ‘ether’.

[19] Hilu 1973, pp. 347–349. The phrase left incomplete by Mary became ‘that I may gather and give unto them’.

[20] Hilu 1972, p. 250.

[21] Ibid., p. 362.

[22] Ibid., p. 368.

[23] Ibid., pp. 381–384.

[24] Ibid., p. 386.

[25] Otto 1963, pp. 644–645.

[26] Ibid., pp. 648–649.

Writing The Prophet By Kahlil Gibran 2013-06-12T11:49:00+07:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: Kang Hikam