At this time when there is armed violence in Beirut, Lebanon and the U.N. forces on the Israel-Lebanon frontier have been attacked, it is useful to remind ourselves of a different vision of Lebanon and its culture. For readers of English, this different vision is best served by the poet and painter Kahlil Gibran. Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), the Lebanese poet was a person who saw signs in advance of later events or trends. As he wrote "Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be."
Lebanon is a country rich in legend and Biblical references. It is the traditional birth place of the god Tanmiz and his sister Ishtar. Tammuz is the god who represents the yearly cycle of growth, decay and revival, a forerunner of the symbol of Jesus. For Gibran, Jesus died so that "the Kingdom of Heaven might be preached, that man might attain the consciousness of beauty and goodness within himself. He came to make the human heart a temple, the soul an altar, and the mind a priest." (1)
Ishtar is a goddess who creates the link between earth and heaven. She is the symbol of women. As Gibran wrote "Woman, our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy and forgiveness."
Gibran was at odds with the established conservative institutions of his country and the politicians of his day,- those concerned to preserve their inherited power and privileges. As he wrote " Yesterday, we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today, we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty and obey only love." In his youth, Lebanon and Syria were part of the Ottoman Empire, under Turkish yoke. In 1902, he published the book Spirits Rebellious, which was burned in the market place of Beirut soon after publication. For this writing, he was exiled from his country and excommunicated from the Maronite Catholic Church, the book having been pronounced "dangerous, revolutionary, and poisonous to youth." Thus he lived most of his life outside of Lebanon, in Paris as a student of painting and from 1910 to his death in 1931 in New York City at 51 West Tenth Street, the first studio building to be built in the city for the exclusive use of painters and sculptors.
However, he never lost interest in what was going on in Lebanon. His studio was always filled with Lebanese and Syrians living in the U.S.A. or passing through New York. As he wrote " Pity a nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation."
By 1923, he started writing directly in English, which is the case for his best known book The Prophet. (2) The last book he wrote, published just two weeks before his death in April 1931 was The Earth Gods, still facinated by the images of Tanmuz and Ishtar. As Gibran wrote "We shall pass into the twilight, and let love, human and frail, command the coming day."
At his death in New York City, his body was returned to Lebanon, to his birth place Bsherri in the mountains near the cedar forests for which Lebanon is known. He is buried in the chapel of the Monastery of Mar-Sarkis. Prayers are said there by persons of many faiths who now recognize this man of Lebanon.
Notes
1) See Kahlil Gibran. Jesus. The Son of Man (London, Penguin Books, 1993) This is the longest of Gibran's booksn first published in 1928. He imagins what Jesus' contemporaries thought of him, Jeus as a multi-faceted person.
2) Kahlil Gibran. The Prophet (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1923)
René Wadlow
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