January 6: On
this day in 1883 the painter-writer-mystic Kahlil Gibran was born in Lebanon.
His best-known work, The Prophet, was
first published in 1923; it remains at or near the top of the all-time bestseller
lists in both the Arab world and the West, apparently providing the comfort and
inspiration intended: "The whole Prophet
is saying one thing," Gibran summarized, "'you are far greater than
you know—and all is well.'" The book was certainly required owning in the
Hippie years, whether for its aphoristic style, back-pocket size, or specific
advice to "Love one another, but make not a bond of love."
Gibran spent most of his life in America, his boyhood in
Boston and then his last two decades in New York City. Life in New York could
put a strain on his mood—"He who wishes to live in New York," he
wrote a friend, "should keep a sharp sword by him, but in a sheath of
honey"—but it did not diminish his lifelong effort to reconcile
Arab/Muslim and Western/Christian cultures. His unrealized dream was to build a
symbol of such reconciliation in Beirut, a structure with both a dome and a
minaret. Some say that the recently opened Kahlil Gibran International Academy
in Brooklyn represents an attempt to keep alive Gibran's dream of religious and
cultural accommodation; some say that KGIA may prove to be a publicly-funded
"jihad school."
Although there are other contenders, some say that it was
Gibran, and not one of JFK's speechwriters who gave the West one of its most
famous parallel structures, found in "The New Frontier," one of
Gibran's more political writings:
There are today, in the Middle East, two men: one of the
past and one of the future. Which one are you? Come close, let me look at you
and let me be assured by your appearance and your conduct if you are one of
those coming into the light or going into the darkness.
Come and tell me who and what are you.
Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you
or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first,
then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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