The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran Page 0,1

Forerunner (1920), which uses the same form and derivations, celebrate the visionary perception of the prophet/seer. Both look forward to The Prophet in this and other themes, but The Forerunner is a more optimistic work and apt precursor to Gibran’s masterpiece.

The Prophet was a long time in its inception. Barbara Young claims that Gibran wrote a first draft in Lebanon when he was only fifteen, [6] but whether or not this is true, it was certainly three years in revision between 1920 and 1923, during which time the author was becoming famous both as an artist and writer. He had honed his English style to perfection, achieving a purity that was ideally suited to his spiritual concerns. His health, ever delicate, was beginning to fail, which perhaps intensified his purpose. The first edition of The Prophet, which included twelve illustrations by the author, sold all 13,000 copies within a month. Gibran himself was aware of the peculiar importance of the book, calling it ‘the best my soul ever conceived’ and Mary Haskell recognised its worth at once, writing to Kahlil,

This book will be held as one of the treasures of English literature . 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. [7]

The Prophet is an eclectic spiritual guide that has something for everyone. As he is about to leave the city of Orphalese where he has been for twelve years the stranger Almustafa is surrounded by the people and asked for advice. He delivers brief sermons on twenty-six subjects in language that is striking for its simplicity and its majesty, for its brilliant imagery, and for its graceful rhythm. His words, redolent with love and understanding, call for unity and affirm Gibran’s certainty of the correlated nature of all existence, and of re-incarnation. Gibran’s friend and biographer, Mikhail Naimy, has remarked on the extraordinary effectiveness of the title:

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. [8]

Many people, including Mary Haskell, have claimed that Almustafa is Gibran, and there are undoubtedly certain parallels in their circumstances. Almustafa is a stranger in Orphalese, exiled for years from his native land just as Gibran was. Almustafa’s mixed emotions as he contemplates returning to ‘the isle of his birth’ reflect the author’s own feelings, both for America and for Lebanon, and the fondness of the people of Orphalese for Almustafa mirrors the love of Gibran’s many friends and admiring devotees in America. Almitra, the seeress who asks Amustafa to speak to the people, is the one ‘who had first sought and believed in him’, and is widely accepted as a thinly veiled portrait of Mary Haskell. Yet Gibran was careful to deny the prophetic status attributed to him. His words recorded by Barbara Young,

While I was writing The Prophet, The Prophet was writing me, [9]

suggest a degree of divine inspiration, but equally they express the cathartic effect of creation experienced by many authors. His declaration that

this poem . has made me better [10]

reinforces this view. Naimy recalls Gibran’s reference to himself as ‘a false alarm,’ [11] claiming that he could not have considered himself as a prophet, and Gibran’s words to Mary Haskell draw a clear distinction:

The difference between a prophet and a poet is that the prophet lives what he teaches – and the poet does not. He may write wonderfully of love, and yet not be loving. [12]

The prophetic figures in Gibran’s works (Almustafa, Jesus Son of Man, the Madman, etc.) are all isolated, loved, yet set apart from their fellows. This is a traditional perception of such figures, just as it is of an artist. Gibran told May Ziadah,

I am also a stranger among men, entirely on my own, just like those other men who are entirely on their own despite possessing seventy thousand friends of both sexes. [13]

The striking likeness between the form of The Prophet and that of