The prophet Al-Mustafa who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
Beautifully written in a concise and poetic meter, it presents a beautiful allegory that is interlaced with perfect life lessons. No matter what religion or spiritual practice guides you, this book offers insight into living life as a whole human in the harmonious presence of others. A perfect gift and work of art that should be a part of every library.
(this is Paula's pick)
I cannot believe I had not heard of Kahlil Gibran, or this work, before. So I want to first mention what I liked, and then a quick bit of critical thought.
ReplyDeleteThe three answered questions I found to be most insightful were on Work, on Houses, and on Friendship. Gibran definitely specializes in making creative analogies to get his points across, and these three stuck out for me. "And what is to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear the cloth." "Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast." "For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live." I also loved a line from the question on Laws - "What of the ox who loves his yolk and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?" Awesome stuff.
Reading this, I found myself wrong in my expectation that this work would feel like the Qur'an. So I wondered 1. Did Gibran write this in Arabic or English? and 2. Was Gibran a Christian or a Muslim? It turns out he wrote in English, and that he was a Christian. Also an immigrant, moving from Lebanon (Ottoman Syria then) to Boston in 1895, twenty-ish years before writing The Prophet. Let me clarify why this writing is not Qur'anic. The Meccan suras, that is the earlier parts of the Qur'an, are the shorter chapters (1-4 pages long) that focus on religious beliefs. The Medinan suras are the later longer chapters (10-30 pages per) that focus on a properly functioning society as intended by God. Gibran's work mimics neither, not surprising since he was Christian (although he would have been aware of passages from the Qur'an). For me, the Prophet instead invokes the Psalms, but the connection isn't perfect. I've seen Ecclesiastes mentioned as an influence, but I haven't read it and therefore cannot confirm. Either way, I'd recommend checking out some articles about why this book became popular in the 1960's, which apparently it did.
One last thought, this seems like a nifty book to give as a gift to recent high school graduates or unhappy sinners.