“He is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, as is the great ocean.” (Samyutta-Nikaya).34

Later on, in Chapter Seven, I will come back to this issue.

4. WILLIAM BLAKE

Among the Anglo-Saxon authors, Blake (1757-1827) played a special role in Gibran’s life. Most particularly Gibran agreed with Blake’s apocalyptic vision of the world as the latter expressed it in his poetry and art. Also, Gibran followed the path of Blake in becoming a “poet of the Bible.” Blake who was deeply touched by the life and teachings of Jesus, believed that in this world we could perceive the direct manifestation of the Divine presence, if we took away the scale of our eyes. Accordingly, the Divine is incarnated in everything. And the material world of our sense perceptions corresponds to the spiritual world. This correspondence is not a Platonic copy of a shadow to its light, but real for Blake, as it became for Gibran. The reason we lack this vision or enlightenment for seeing the unity between the material and the spiritual, is because, concluded Blake, as would later say Gibran, the vision of modern civilization is encrusting; symbolically speaking, we are caught up in the old Jerusalem and fail to see the new Jerusalem.35 The man of the world creates polarities, social class differences, moral disparities, and speaks in a double language logic. Blake stresses this point in his two well-known metaphysical poems “The Little Black Boy,” and “The Tyger.”36 But to the man of vision the polarities come together in the unity of God, who indwells in the tiniest matter as in the superior intelligences. Jesus, for Blake and Gibran, is a lived exemplar who realized the Christian enlightenment, by perfecting through self-discipline and inner struggle his human and divine nature. But also, the poet—considered Blake and Gibran—is a man who has an apocalyptic vision of the world, seeks the correspondence between the transcendence and immanence of God, and who has a messianic mission in leading the people back to Truth.

No wonder that Gibran spoke favorably of Blake. “Blake is the God-man,” he wrote. “His drawings are so far the profoundest things done in English—and his vision, putting aside his drawings and poems, is the most godly.”37 On the other hand, I find it true what Miss Haskell wrote in January 25, 1918 to Gibran: “Blake is mighty. The voice of God and the finger of God are in what he does … He really feels closer to you, Kahlil, than all the rest.”38 This closeness in thinking and painting even Auguste Rodin noticed; that is why he called Gibran “The twentieth century Blake.”

Finally, let me add, that Nietzsche, the Bible, Buddhism, and Blake were not the only foreign influences on Gibran. I think that Rousseau, Hugo, Lamartine, Voltaire, Bergson, Freud and many others, have provided Gibran with some insights. Since the scope of my research is to bring to light both the meaning of Gibranism and its place in history, I will then, when needed, cross-examine our author’s idea with those who influenced his trend of thought. However, it is important to keep in mind, that an influence is always partial and temporary. Gibranism is a Weltanschauung of its own.

 

FOOTNOTES

1 S.P., p. 34.

2 See “Chapter Five”.

3 S.P., p. 14.

4 Barbara Young, This Man From Lebanon, New York: A. Knopf, 1970, p. 186.

5 S.P., p. 20.

6 I am in complete disagreement with Andrew Dib Sherfan who considers that the kind of love Gibran displays in this narration is Freudian. (Kahlil Gibran: The Nature of Love, New York: Philosophical Library, 1971, p. 26). Freudian love is a far more intricate and unconscious type than the love Gibran describes in The Broken Wings. Sublimation, cathexis, and sex are the unconscious processes that underline Freudian love; a love which by the way substitutes the pleasure principle with the reality principle. Whatever were the carnal desires of Gibran in The Broken Wings—and they are not non-existent—express merely romanticism, youth and idealism, but hardly Freudism. In Chapter Six I will come back on this issue.

7 Accordingly, Gibran once confessed to Miss Haskell that the experiences and the personages reported in The Broken Wings were not his own. (B.P., pp. 50-51) Now, to us historians, Miss Haskell’s information sheds confusion on the biographical credibility of the novel.