Quotes from The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran)
January 19th 2008 05:46
Last night I had a discussion in which it was pointed out, among other things:
1. The Prophet is very open to interpretation, like anything literary or artistic.
In fact, in a recent New Yorker article (Joan Acocella, "Prophet motive", Monday 7 January 2008) the author notes:
I read this as psychologically insightful -- about instinctive attachment to that on which you've spent effort, or over which you've shed blood and tears -- the task you could never quite complete, the relationship you've invested in, the flag that soldiers have died beneath... Or, more generally, attachment to the rut you're stuck in, or to being depressed, or to whatever cycle or stasis you're stalled in. One factor might be that if you stay anywhere long enough, it'll feel like home.
Gibran perhaps intended more of a spiritual flavour -- attachment to this world when you should be prepared for the next.
I suppose one suggestion I see here is that you can't take it with you -- the places, experiences, even friendships that have brought you here, that have prepared you for some sort of life change.
You'll never be able to stay in touch with everyone who's dear to you; you'll never be able to reread and rewatch all the books and movies that have meant something to you.
I read the second quote as applicable to mourning -- the idea that grief is something you must go through.
I read this as "trust your intuitions" or "trust nature".
To me, these have a pantheistic flavour.
The presenter of the Gibran discussion interpreted this as to do with reincarnation. When I first read it, it seemed to me a sort of evolutionary idea -- that if a society hasn't learned from its mistakes this time, then it will have to sit through the lesson again and again until it does learn.
1. The Prophet is very open to interpretation, like anything literary or artistic.
In fact, in a recent New Yorker article (Joan Acocella, "Prophet motive", Monday 7 January 2008) the author notes:
| "The Prophet" has been recited at countless weddings and funerals. It is quoted in books and articles on training art teachers, determining criminal responsibility, and enduring ectopic pregnancy, sleep disorders, and the news that your son is gay. Its words turn up in advertisements for marriage counsellors, chiropractors, learning-disabilities specialists, and face cream. |
2. Without going into the matter, one of those possible interpretations is that The Prophet should be read less as a book of practical maxims and more as a means whereby to change yourself -- to change your ways of feeling, thinking, experiencing.
So perhaps one needn't try to extract claims to evaluate, or advice -- though these are basically the ways I relate to the book...
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
***
| How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret? Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache. It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands. |
I read this as psychologically insightful -- about instinctive attachment to that on which you've spent effort, or over which you've shed blood and tears -- the task you could never quite complete, the relationship you've invested in, the flag that soldiers have died beneath... Or, more generally, attachment to the rut you're stuck in, or to being depressed, or to whatever cycle or stasis you're stalled in. One factor might be that if you stay anywhere long enough, it'll feel like home.
Gibran perhaps intended more of a spiritual flavour -- attachment to this world when you should be prepared for the next.
***
| Fain would I take with me all that is here. But how shall I?
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sky. |
I suppose one suggestion I see here is that you can't take it with you -- the places, experiences, even friendships that have brought you here, that have prepared you for some sort of life change.
You'll never be able to stay in touch with everyone who's dear to you; you'll never be able to reread and rewatch all the books and movies that have meant something to you.
***
| ... if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. |
| Your joy is your sorrow unmasked...
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain... I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. |
| Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. |
***
| Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls... Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone... Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping... And stand together but not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. |
***
| Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. |
***
| There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the mytle breathes its fragrance into space. |
| You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."...
[W]ho are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed? See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives unto life -- while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness. And you receivers -- and you are all receivers -- assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. |
***
| Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments...
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together... [W]hat have you in these houses?... Have you peace... Have you remembrances... Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?... Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?... You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living... [T]hat which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night. |
***
| [Y]ou can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment. |
***
| And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields. |
| Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding...
[Pain] is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. |
I read the second quote as applicable to mourning -- the idea that grief is something you must go through.
***
| [S]eek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless. Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth." Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path." For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. |
***
| No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faither and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind... The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm, nor the voice that echoes it. |
***
| [W]hat is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. |
***
| You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. |
***
| Pleasure... is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit. |
| ... even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands. |
***
| And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. |
I read this as "trust your intuitions" or "trust nature".
***
| [W]hat is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? |
| That which is you dwells above the mountain and roves with the wind.
It is not a thing that crawls into the sun for warmth or digs holes into darkness for safety, But a thing free, a spirit that envelops the earth and moves in the ether. |
| Whenever you pass by the field where you have laid your ancestors look well thereupon, and you shall see yourselves and your children dancing hand in hand.
Verily you often make merry without knowing. |
To me, these have a pantheistic flavour.
***
| But should my voice fade in your ears, and my love vanish in your memory, then I will come again,
And with a richer heart and lips more yielding to the spirit will I speak... And though death may hide me... yet again will I seek your understanding. And not in vain will I seek. |
The presenter of the Gibran discussion interpreted this as to do with reincarnation. When I first read it, it seemed to me a sort of evolutionary idea -- that if a society hasn't learned from its mistakes this time, then it will have to sit through the lesson again and again until it does learn.
***
| And though heavy-grounded ships await the tide upon your shores, yet, even like an ocean, you cannot hasten your tides. |
***
| Too proud indeed am I to receive wages, but not gifts. |
***
| 106 |
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