Khalil Gibran, who passed away on 10 April 1931, aged 48, in New York, U.S., was a Lebanese-American philosophical essayist, novelist, poet, and artist.
Having received his primary education in Beirut,
Gibran immigrated with his parents to Boston in 1895. He returned to Lebanon
in 1898 and studied in Beirut, where he excelled in the Arabic language. On
his return to Boston in 1903, he published his first literary essays; in 1907
he met Mary Haskell, who was to be his benefactor all his life and who
made it possible for him to study art in Paris. In 1912 Gibran settled in New
York City and devoted himself to writing literary essays and short
stories, both in Arabic and in English, and to painting.
Gibran’s literary and artistic output is highly romantic in
outlook and was influenced by the Bible, Friedrich Nietzsche, and William
Blake. His writings in both languages, which deal with such themes as love,
death, nature, and a longing for the homeland, are full of lyrical outpourings
and are expressive of Gibran’s deeply religious and mystic nature.
Gibran’s principal works in Arabic are: ʿArāʾis al-Murūj (1910; Nymphs of the Valley); Damʿah wa
Ibtisāmah (1914; A Tear and a
Smile); Al-Arwāḥ
al-Mutamarridah (1920; Spirits
Rebellious); Al-Ajniḥah
al-Mutakassirah (1922; The Broken
Wings); Al-ʿAwāṣif (1923;
“The Storms”); and Al-Mawākib (1923; The Procession), poems. His principal works in English
are The Madman (1918), The
Forerunner (1920), The Prophet (1923;
film 2014), Sand and Foam (1926),
and Jesus, the Son of Man (1928).
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