Word: gibran
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Kahlil Gibran's mother was the daughter of a Maronite priest.* His father was the son of a wealthy landowner of Lebanon. He was born in Bsherri, a 4,000-year-old village high in the Lebanon Mountains, on Jan. 6, 1883. On Christmas Eve every human being in the village walked through the snow to church, carrying a lighted lantern. At midnight the bells began, and children and old men sang an ancient Galilean chant. They spoke in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Kahlil said later that on three different occasions he had seen...
When he was 20, Kahlil Gibran returned to Boston. His paintings won him a reputation. His prose poems, written in Arabic and translated by himself, brought him readers who became disciples. By 1910 Gibran was settled in a large fourth-floor studio in Manhattan. Short but powerful, he wore robes, painted allegorical pictures, strongly influenced by William Blake's, in which vague, shapely nudes emerged from misty backgrounds. He spoke in solemnly portentous phrases: "We have eternity. . . ." "The soul is mightier than space...." "Silence is one of the mysteries of love. . . ." He was also a practical Lebanese patriot...
...Gibran preached a diffuse Christianity without creed or ritual. He organized no church, held no services. Small groups of admirers formed in different cities; Lebanese exiles circulated around him; circles of twelve poets each, appointed for life and acknowledging Gibran as master, were organized in New York, Damascus, Beirut. His poetry in Arabic was apparently more striking than his vague, formless lines in English would suggest...
...would be news, I feel pretty sure, to the author of your article that our biggest seller in 1944, after A Bell for Adano, was Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, which will have sold over 60,000 copies in 1944 alone, although it was first published 21 years ago. He points out as remarkable, and rightly so, total printings of 30,000 copies for Russell Daven port's My Country. I wonder if he has heard of Walter Benton's This Is My Beloved, which was published in February 1943 and has sold in 1944 approximately...