Mirrors of the Soul
The Prophet from Lebanon
KAHLIL GIBRAN
MIRRORS
OF
THE SOUL
Translated and with
biographical notes by
JOSEPH SHEBAN
Philosophical Library
“My soul is my counsel and has taught me to give ear to the voices which are created neither by tongues nor uttered by throats.
“Before my soul became my counsel, I was dull, and weak of hearing, reflecting only upon the tumult and the cry. But, now, I can listen to silence with serenity and can hear in the silence the hymns of ages chanting exaltation to the sky and revealing the secrets of eternity.”
KAHLIL GIBRAN
“Mother is everything in this life; she is consolation in time of sorrowing and hope in the time of grieving, and power in the moments of weakness. She is the fountainhead of compassion, forbearance and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a bosom upon which he can rest his head, the hand that blesses, and eyes which watch over him.”
From The Broken Wings
“People are saying that I am the enemy of just laws, of family ties and old tradition. Those people are telling the truth. I do not love man-made laws … I love the sacred and spiritual kindness which should be the source of every law upon the earth, for kindness is the shadow of God in man.”
From a letter by Kahlil Gibran to a cousin
TRANSLATOR’S DEDICATION
To my dear and beloved wife,
Florence, I dedicate this work.
CONTENTS
1. Is It All Possible?
2. The Environment That Created Gibran
3. The Birthplace of Gibran
4. Words of Caution
5. Gibran’s Dual Personality
6. Gibran’s Painting and Poetry
7. The Philosophy of Gibran
8. “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You”
9. Solitude and Seclusion by Gibran
10. The Sea by Gibran
11. Handful of Beach Sand by Gibran
12. The Sayings of the Brook by Gibran
13. For Heaven’s Sake, My Heart! by Gibran
14. The Robin by Gibran
15. The Great Sea by Gibran
16. Seven Reprimands by Gibran
17. During a Year Not Registered in History by Gibran
18. The Women in the Life of Gibran
1. IS IT ALL POSSIBLE?
Kahlil Gibran, was born in the shadow of the holy Cedars of Lebanon but spent the mature years of his life within the shadows of the skyscrapers of New York. Gibran has been described as The Mystic, The Philosopher, The Religious, The Heretic, The Serene, The Rebellious and The Ageless. Is it possible to accumulate all these contradictory characteristics in one man?
Is it possible for some to burn his books because they are “dangerous, revolutionary and poisonous to youth,” while others, at the same moment, are writing: “Gibran, at times, achieves Biblical majesty of phrase. There are echoes of Jesus and echoes of the Old Testament in his words.”
One of Gibran’s books, The Prophet, alone has been on the international best-seller lists for forty years; it has sold more than a million and a half copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages.
The Prophet is Gibran’s best work in English, but The Broken Wings, his first novel, is considered his best in Arabic. It has been on the international bestseller list longer than The Prophet.
Biographers of Gibran, to date, have been his personal friends and acquaintances; they have thus been unable to separate his work from his personal life. They have written only of what they had seen of the Gibran with whom they lived; they were concerned only with the frailties of his life.
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