Review of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

I had started reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, thinking I should be able to finish it in a couple of days at the most; after all, it was only a slim book of 90 pages, with generously spaced lines and paragraphs plus a dozen or so full page illustrations.

When I started to read, I had to stop frequently to catch the deeper meanings in those sentences. I read every chapter several times and within that, every sentence a couple of times. And I had to give myself breaks to take in as much as I could. Yes, it is philosophical, spiritual, some of it intensely metaphoric and some basic.

Each sentence is worthy of being quoted, as they indeed have extensively been. Here’s one quote from the chapter on Love: “And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.” Thus go many a memorable line in every chapter.

The book begins with a chapter titled, The Coming of the Ship, where the Prophet is waiting for a ship to come and take him while the whole city gathers around him to bid farewell – A great metaphor for a wise man about to die. Then the folks ask him to share his wisdom before departing and in each chapter he shares his views on many life situations, 26 of them. Indeed each chapter is replete with wisdom spoken in metaphors and it takes some brooding to understand them. It took me some introspection and I am not sure if I got them correctly. The chapters are written as poetic essays or what is known as prose poetry.

Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese who migrated to America in 1895 when he was 12. He wrote both in Arabic and English. The Prophet was written in English and forms the first book of a trilogy of similar discourses on life and man’s relationships with fellowmen, nature and God. It is the most notable of all his works and it took him 11 years to finalize. It has been translated into 40 languages and has sold 30 million copies. Gibran died at an early age of 48, having made his mark in classic literature. He was also a painter and sculptor.

If you are bored with my review, here’s another quote from Gibran on marriage: “Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone, though they quiver with the same music.”

I have seen some not very encouraging reviews of the book. Perhaps, the writing is too didactic for some readers of today; some of us are not comfortable with preachy writings. But we need to give credit to Gibran for writing it some 100 years ago when the majority of the people were not as educated as they are today. Today almost everyone works out a smart quote and flashes it on their facebook, twitter or similar social network pages.

The book ends with a chapter titled, Farewell, which symbolically denotes the death of the Prophet – he boards the ship waiting for him and sails away to the land he came from. According to Gibran death is not something to mourn, it is a new beginning: “For life and death are one, even as the river and the seas are one.”

The final chapter effortlessly takes the reader back to the first chapter, going a full circle of life. The last sentence: “A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

Wow!