Many enjoy reading Gibran because the lecture carries them to sleep in a beautiful concert of self-complacency; thereby they cease meditating upon the deep philosophical meaning hidden beneath the sound verses.

I hope that this present manuscript will conteract successfully the epidemic of ignorance blurring the intellectual vision of the reader. This is the very reason I am endeavoring here to explicate the most basic concepts that Gibran expounded, although he presented them in a scattering way.

2. Gibran’s Innovation in Modern Arabic Literature

In the contention of the Russian Orientalist, Ignace Kratchovski, the Arab immigrants in America played an important felicitous role in the modernization of Arabic Literature.19

Till the turn of the nineteenth century, Arabic belles-lettres followed faithfully the conventional literary style laid down by the Koran and the Traditions of the Middle Ages. Thus, “in poetry—notes Professor Cachia—by far the commonest form was the panegyric.… In all the sentiment expressed was conventional.… Poetic compositions were overlaid by far-fetched similes, metaphors, and allusions, with elaborate paronomasias and ambilogies.…[On the other hand in] fine prose … the narrative element became no more than a framework on which to hang verbal tours de force.”20 All this amounts to saying with Sir Hamilton Gibb, that “conservatism was too deeply bound up with the entire heritage of Arabic literature to allow any kind of simplification,”21 novelty, and originality in stylistic expressions and content.

However, when Napoleon came to Egypt in 1798, and translations of eminent European thinkers were made available to Middle-East intellectuals, a sort of rejuvenation and improvement was born in Arabic literature. Yet. to a large extent, the immigrants (Mahjar) also concurred in emancipating modern literature from the sterile and decadent literary style of scholasticism. Most particularly. Gibran’s new writing’s form and content inspired his fellow country authors to adopt the “free verse” as their new stanza.

Already as early as 1913, Gibran along with other immigrant writers, Amin Rihani and Nasseeb Arida, began to publish in the New York monthly newspaper al-Funnon, essays, articles, poems that were drastically different from the classical metric schemes (Sadj). The literary style that they employed was Prose Poem (Shir manthur).

Also, on April 20, 1920, the immigrant Arab writers, headed by Gibran as their president, formed a literary circle called “Arrabitah” (Pen-Bond), whose purpose was to update Arabic Literature “from the state of sterility and imitation to the state of beautiful originality in both meaning and style.”22 Soon “Arrabitah” impressed the Arab world. In the words of Muhammad Najm, this new school “characterized by power, modernity and revolt against all that is traditional and rotten, is the strongest school that modern Arabic literature has known until the present day.”23

And precisely, through the society of “Arrabitah” and the literary form of “Prose Poem,” Gibran contributed to the innovation of Modern Arabic literature. During his time he set the example as to how to combine prose with poetry and vice-versa. In depth his writings are poetical, though the verses are proses. The strophes have rhythm and rhyme.

Of course, it is Friedrich Nietzsche, the Psalms, and the Bible filled with parables, that gave a definite literary direction to Gibran’s style of expression. From Nietzsche not only he borrowed Zarathustra’s form of expression which is quite similar to the Christian Gospel, but he also acquired from Nietzsche the flair for mingling emotions and thoughts, sorrow and happiness. As from the Bible he learned the old Semitic literary figure of parables, metaphors, anthropomorphism and cosmomorphism.

In summary, Gibran is hailed today by all the commentators of Modern Arabic belles-lettres as an innovator in Middle Eastern literature; and in my opinion, his writings can teach something to Western authors. To the Arabs he showed them how to break away from classical rhymed poetry (Sadj) and to feel free with the rhythm (prose-poem). To the Westerners, he is a lived example, as to how to make of philosophy a pleasant literature, and not a boring, eyes-tiring lecture of an incomprehensible language.

3. The Foreign Influences

No thinker can totally sever himself from the past and present ideologies. Not even the French philosopher, René Descartes, who planned in breaking the ties with traditional philosophy, did succeed in keeping his system virgin from foreign influences. Well, Gibran too bore some influences in his art work, poetry and philosophy. It is not possible for us to estimate accurately all the influences that shaped his art and thoughts. Nor is it possible for us to draw chronologically the evolution of influences on Gibran. Nevertheless, we do in fact detect a few major currents that attracted him as an artist and a writer.

Thus, Gibran’s paintings reflect the impact of the Paris schools, Academic Julien and Ecoles des Beaux Arts, and most especially, that of his teacher Auguste Rodin under whom he studied in 1908 in France. But also, as the critic of his Twenty Drawings, Miss Alice Raphael noted: “In painting he is a classicist and his work owes more to the findings of Da Vinci than it does to any modern insurgent.”24 Gibran’s interest in Da Vinci dates back when at six years old he was given by his mother a volume of Leonardo’s reproductions.

On the other hand, in his literature, Gibran was impressed by the early-Islamic poet Mutanabbi,25 and the notorious Persian Ibn al-Muqaffa, who is best known for his translations of Pahlavi works into Arabic. Ibn al-Muqaffa employed a lavish rhetorical style for recounting fables which encompassed a moral lesson.26 Gibran in his turn, used the style of fables in order to communicate to his reader a moral teaching. Also, Amin Rihani, Mikhail Naimy, Nasseeb Arida, the Egyptian woman author May Ziadeh, and many other Arab literati left deep imprints on Gibran’s expressionistic literature.

Yet, it seems that his exposure to European culture refined by far his prose-poetry and provided him with philosophic ideas. Lest I repeat the names of those who influenced him in both his literary form and philosophical content, let’s outline in brief the main Eastern and Western ideological movements that gave a special orientation to his philosophy and style of expression.

1. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

This German philosopher (1844-1900) has probably next to the Bible the most influenced Gibran’s thoughts and style of expression. Miss Haskell reports that Gibran had read Nietzsche since “he was twelve or thirteen.”27 Gibran had a high respect for Nietzsche. He would call him: “the loneliest man of the nineteenth century and surely the greatest.”28 At other occasions Gibran depicted him as “a sober Dionysus—a superman who lives in forests and fields—a mighty being who loves music and dancing and all joy.”29

Essentially, Nietzsche’s philosophy denounces society for the despiritualization and demoralization in the world. He blames Christianity and the social institutions for the dehumanization of the individual, and the occurrence of “slave morality.”

Of all the works of Nietzsche, Gibran liked most Thus Spoke Zarathustra. His books, The Madman, The Forerunner, The Prophet and The Tempest were written with a Nietzschean inspiration.