Kahlil Gibran And The Words He Never Said
Hello there everyone, and welcome to this edition of Silver discovers cool things and then decides to share them with random strangers on the internet. I hope you’ve been having a good day so far, and that the weeks before have been equally good. If you’re not, then drop me a line and I’ll have a word with Murphy. And those pesky universe controller idiots who need to be kicked around a bit.
I’m personally feeling a little sombre today, which you may have picked up a little. There’re a few reasons for this, starting with a week that has been less than great . Although it could have been worse so, I suppose I shouldn’t tempt fate.
The weather hasn’t helped with my mood much either. It is winter here in South Africa, and someone has apparently been pissing off the weather gods because I’m currently listening to rain falling outside. And anyone who knows anything about our climate knows that winter rain is not normal for the Highveld where I live.
So, it’s been cold, dreary and miserable the last few days and now it is cold, WET and miserable. But I’ve got a soup going for dinner, I have coffee, and I’m snuggled under the quillow that my gran made for me (if you don’t know what a quillow is — you definitely need to edumacate yourself because they’re heavenly little squares of cosy comfort!).
But you’re not here to hear about my woes, so on with the whole reason I felt the need to share cool stuff. Over the last week or so, one of my favourite quotes of all time has been on my mind a lot. And for the first time ever I actually decided to do a little Googling about it, because maybe it’s about time that I learn a bit more about the person behind the quote that has inspired, motivated, and comforted me for almost as long as I can remember.
I heard it for the first time when Aaron Hotchner (played by Thomas Gibson) says at the end of an episode of Criminal Minds:
Philosopher Kahlil Gibran wrote “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars.”
And it stuck with me for a number of reasons. The main one though, is how the series writers tied the quote into the episode. You see, the quote in this case was referring to the victim. Although the BAU prevented them from being killed, they will always live with the scars of what was done to them before the team managed to save them.
This idea of “what happens to the victim after the team goes home” has always been something I think about, whether it’s after watching a crime show, or reading about a rescue somewhere. In fact, this thought and one of my customers from my days as a bar lady is the inspiration behind a poem I wrote a very long time ago, but only published here on Medium a little while ago, called “Praying for Oblivion”.
But the quote itself is what I never forgot, and the idea that people who have been broken in the past then healed themselves are more beautiful for it. It’s a comforting idea don’t you think? And inspirational enough that you will find the theme of beautifully broken souls in a lot of my poetry and writing.
But enough about me, because I want to talk more about this quote and then about Kahlil Gibran. You may have noticed that I didn’t say this quote by Kahlil Gibran, and I’m going to inform you now that it wasn’t a mistake.
Because Kahlil Gibran is not, in fact, the original author of these words and as far as I can tell — he never said them. Or quoted the quote so to speak. Despite the fact that Google will insist otherwise.
This little journey to discover the truth of who did say this all started innocently enough. I just wanted to know which of Gibran’s poems or writings the quote originally came from so that I could add the link to it in this post.
Only it ended up triggering a pet peeve about random claims and links to non-existent “facts” that has aggravated me for years as a content writer. And sent me down a rabbit hole that made me wonder if this particular quote isn’t the inspiration behind this meme:
I was going to tell you all the whole story of how I finally found out that the true source is an American priest named Edwin Hubbell Chapin but I am trying to be better about staying on track when I tell people about things I find interesting.
So I’ll just tell you that it came from a book called Discourses on the Beatitudes published in 1860, was misquoted in a 681 page book of quotes for every occasion in 1895, was attributed to Gibran via Goodreads by 2007 and was officially linked to a Kahlil Gibran novella called Broken Wings by a NOOK book that Copyright Group published in 2013 (the irony of this just astounds me).
If you have a look at Chapin’s book, you’ll see that he had a rather poetic style of writing. So, I can see how his quote ending up being attributed to one of the bestselling poets of all time. And it turns out that Chapin was a published poet as well as an author, although he is known for exactly one poem. It was written in 1839 and titled Burial at Sea (or The Ocean Burial).
The Ocean Burial
“Oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea,”
These words came low and mournfully
From the pallid lips of a youth who lay
On his cabin couch at the close of day.
He had wasted and pined till o’er his brow
Death’s shades had slowly passed, and now,
When the land of his own loved home drew nigh,
They had gathered round to see him die.
“It matters not, I’ve oft been told,
Where the body lies when the heart is cold,
Yet grant, oh grant this boon to me,
Oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea!“Let my death slumbers be where a mother’s prayer
And a sister’s tear will be mingled there.
‘Twill be sweet ere the heart’s gentle throb is o’er
To know that its fountain will gush no more.
I had even hoped to be laid when I died
In the little churchyard on the green hillside.
By the home of my father my grave should be —
Oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea!And there is another whose tears shall be shed
O’er him who lies low in his ocean bed.
In hours when it grieves me to think of now,
She could wreathe these locks, she could press this brow.
In the hair she twined shall the sea serpents hiss
And the brow she hath pressed shall the cold waves kiss.
For the sake of that loved one that’s waiting for me,
Oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea!“She hath been in my dreams . . .” His voice failed there.
They paid no heed to his dying prayer.
They lowered him low o’er the vessel’s side,
Above him rolled the cold, dark tide.
For to dip their light wings the sea birds rest,
And the blue waves dance o’er the ocean’s crest.
Where the billows bound and the waves sport free,
We buried him there in the cold, deep sea.
It was put to music by George N. Allen in 1850, turning it into a rather catchy and popular sailors’ song despite its mournful message.
And by 1910 it had been adapted into a cowboy folk song called “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie”, among other titles. It would go on to become one of the Top 100 Western Songs Of All Time with covers by country greats such as Tex Ritter, King of the Cowboys Roy Rogers, Johnnie Ray (essentially the grandfather of rock & roll), and the one and only legend himself — Johnny Cash.
So, I suppose if you are going to write just one poem in your life, then let it be one with this kind of legacy right?
But enough about Chapin because I want to talk about Kahlil Gibran. Born in Bsharrī, Lebanon on 6 January 1883, his actual name is Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān. He and his family emigrated to America in 1895, and it is when he entered the public school system there that his name was shortened.
He’d had no formal education before that, but his childhood in the Maronite Christian village of Beshari, surrounded by members of the Moslem and Druze religions led to the mystical philosophy of life that you can see so clearly in his work. Despite this, his artistic skills already shone through and he attracted the attention of Florence Peirce, an art teacher at Denison House in Boston.
He was then introduced to Jessie Fremont Beale, an influential social worker and coordinator of the BCSA (Boston Children’s Services Association) home libraries project. And that in turn led to the meeting with his first mentor, photographer Fred Holland Day. He returned to Beirut to study Arabic literature at the Collège de la Sagesse, then headed to Paris where he studied under French sculptor Auguste Rodin at the famed Écoledes Beaux Arts.
But it was at his first ever art exhibition, hosted by Day in 1904, that his life would change forever. The death of one of his sisters had brought him back to Boston by then and it is believed he was living with and being supported by another sister until a fateful meeting with Mary Elisabeth Haskell, the headmistress of a girl’s school in Boston.
She became his friend, benefactress and patroness — using her influence in society to advance his career as a writer. And in 1905 his first published work appeared in the periodical al-Muhajir (The Immigrant). Written in Arabic, A Profile of the Art of Music is an ode to what Gibran calls the language of the soul.
“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. — Kahlil Gibran”
But what makes Gibran truly remarkable to me, is the fact that he was one of the most outspoken and impassioned champions of basic human rights of his time, even though it was highly unfashionable in that era. And to be honest, could have had dire consequences for his career and even possibly his life. Still he chose to use his writing to wage a war against religious extremism and feudalism in his homeland.
He was also a proud feminist, although the term didn’t really exist in those days. He often wrote about the plight of women in the early 20th century, but the most well-known of these would have to be the novella that the non-quote that started this search apparently came from — Broken Wings. In it he examines the vicious inequalities between men and women, while making his opinion about the trend of tradition standing in the way of love very clear.
First published in Arabic in 1912 and eventually translated into English in 1957, it is a poetic or lyrical novel and tells the Romeo and Juliet like forbidden love story of star-crossed lovers Selma Karamy and the unnamed narrator — who may be modelled after Gibran himself. While Broken Wings was dedicated to Mary Haskell, research suggests that the inspiration for Selma may be a young woman from his hometown named Hala al-Dahir.
In it we find this gem, a recollection of a conversation between the narrator and Selma:
“The poets and writers are trying to understand the reality of woman, but up to this day they have not understood the hidden secrets of her heart, because they look upon her from behind the sexual veil and see nothing but externals; they look upon her through the magnifying glass of hatefulness and find nothing except weakness and submission.”
It’s funny isn’t it, how women today are saying exactly the same thing that another woman in a small village beneath Mt Lebanon was saying over a hundred years ago? You can’t see it right now, but if you were looking at my expression as I write this you would know exactly what my sarcastic face looks like.
Because it is not funny, and it has never been funny and I am so incredibly sick and tired of the fact that feminism is something that ever needed to exist. I don’t know when we decided that patriarchy was the way to go, but I’d like to find whoever started it, take them out behind the shed and have a conversation involving terminal violence.
Then I will go peacefully to my bed, knowing that I’ve saved the world and every gender from the unimaginable harm that a patriarchal society has caused. Anyways. I’ll get down off this soapbox before I really get going with my Opinions on Despicable Things. Back to Kahlil Gibran, feminist icon, and his beautiful poetry.
It was Broken Wings and his earlier works published in his native tongue that earned him widespread recognition in the Arabic world, establishing him as the most well-known of the “Mahjar poets”, or immigrant Arabic writers (I said Arabic a lot of times in that sentence but it was unavoidable I swear!).
But it was The Prophet, written in English and published in 1923, that catapulted him to fame on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Consisting of 26 prose poems, it tells the story of a wise man named Al Mustapha. The man is about to sail back to his homeland after being exiled on a fictional island for 12 years. But before he leaves, the residents of said island ask him to share his wisdom about family, work, love and death.
Critics called it simplistic, naïve and lacking in substance but his dogma free spiritualism appealed to the public. It has never been out of print since it was published in 1923. It has inspired artists, musicians, poets and writers for years, been adapted into movies and audio books, and more.
Speaking of famous adaptations, there is an audio cassette book read by Johnny Cash called The Eye of the Prophet — so maybe he is a little to blame for the mistaken attribution of the quote that started this surprisingly interesting journey of discovery? You may remember that he did a version of Chapin’s cowboy-rised poem (and just in case you’d forgotten — Chapin is the one who actually said the “beautifully scarred” quote)!
Although critical reception has always been mixed, it had sold one thousand copies in just three months and by the time of his death in 1883 (aged 48), had already been translated into both French and German. Today it is one of the best-selling books of all time and has been translated into more than 100 languages.
It entered the public domain on 1 January 2019, so you can download it from the Project Gutenberg catalogue and read it for free. Or listen to the audio that includes the actual book with the original author illustrations linked below. I highly recommend that you do because the wisdom in each poem is as valid today as it was 100 years ago. And it’s also just a truly beautiful piece of writing!
And with that, I shall be off. I hope you enjoyed this little tangent mine that led to learning about two wonderful poets. And that you also realised the value of doing your research then maybe decided an animated Liam Neeson movie was a good idea for an evening's entertainment. Until something else triggers my hyperfixation and I see you again, stay safe and take care!
