Mantles of Purple

...And in the Gospel itself woman traced an immortal line whose light still shines in the conscience of every sinning woman

...Never once has the phantom of a woman draped in mantles of purple fluttered through the mind of history but that the phantom of one of the earth's poets fluttered with it.

And never once has the world listened to one of the earth's poets — his heart slipping loose in sweet song upon the night, or plucking itself apart in red pieces — without his feeling the phantom of a divine virgin letting down the rays of her spirit into his spirit, or of a lost woman laboring to cleanse that heart.

A beautiful woman of the daughters of Israel, the wife of Uriah the Hittite: the poet-prophet David saw her bathing, and his prophecy bowed down at her feet, and his prophecy slept in her embrace. And the Psalms were the most wondrous anthems of the crushed human heart... But for her, David would have died and vanished as a thousand of the men of Israel died. And she, for all her beauty, would have died and vanished as every daughter of Zion died. What share of immortality, I wonder, would Mona Lisa have had, had the eyes of Leonardo da Vinci not beheld her, so that the flame of his genius melted upon her mouth and made her a smile upon the mouth of the world?

And would Leonardo da Vinci himself have had all that heavenly glory, had Mona Lisa not been in the world?

Would the Gospel itself have had all that divine splendor, had the Nazarene not met Mary Magdalene, ward of the seven devils — so that the light of divinity routed the darkness of weak flesh, and the purity of the god's eyes slaughtered the beast that lay in the depths of the adulterous woman who had sold herself to Satan?

And woman traced, in the Gospel itself, a great immortal line whose light still shines in the conscience of every woman who sells herself to Satan and then takes herself back, to sell herself to God...

Since the world began, these two creatures, the poet and the woman, have walked together. His heart beats in her heart, and his anthems rise from his heart... and his heart is in hunger, and his soul in burning... and the woman is an illusion...

The poet opens his eyes, and the woman he loves is an illusion — an illusion that his fertile fancy pleases itself to deck out in the colors of imagination and the colors of spring; so he sings to her all the love that is in his heart, and lavishes on her all the freshness that is in his fancy, and colors her mouth with the colors of dawn, and drapes over her a mantle of light.

And he wakes... from the swoon of imagination, to a violent blow upon his heart: for the woman on whom he draped the light is a woman of the common run, ordinary, chattering, living upon the dust.

He is like the eagle roaming the expanses of the sky; she like the hen that cannot live but in the dust. He wants a heaven for the god within him, a lyre for all the songs in his heart, an altar on which to offer up his sacrifices — and the world of reality strikes against him with its rock and its oak, its quarries and its thorns. The woman he took for a god is no god; so he thrusts her from his path to go searching for a heaven for his heart. And he goes on searching, and the world of reality goes on striking him; and every day he builds a temple, and every day he tears his temple down.

The truth is that the poet cannot be faithful to one woman, nor love one woman, because he feels all women — in other words, he loves the beautiful life, and would fain gather to his breast all the secrets of life and beauty... He loves in woman a "something," and he searches for this "something" in the eyes of the virgin while he sings her the song of pure love, and in the arms of the lost woman while he sings his green youth into her body and lashes his genius aflame with the whip of deadly lust; and from here and from there he comes back with a bitter disappointment: neither in this one nor in that has he found his "something."

Both are for the fire. Both are for Iblis.

Only, the poet loves in woman love alone; the woman, not so. He loves because he is in need of love, in need of a whip to set the coldness of his nights aflame. He loves in woman the inspiration that woman's beauty stirs; but the woman herself frightens him, and the duties of love disquiet him, and the obligations of obedience rouse his pride.

And he suffers, and he makes the woman he loves suffer, and poisons her life, and kindles her as firewood to warm himself at her fire.

And from here springs the secret of the greatness of this love between the woman and the poet.

And hence he is in perpetual need of setting his genius ablaze with a new fire — in need of a violent, bitter, clamorous love, in need of many voices to break in upon his stillness. For ashes burn no heart, and tunes of a single strain stir no feeling, and a cold air warms no soul; in short, one woman cannot satisfy the hunger of this rare creature, who would roam the expanses of the sky and the depths of the darknesses.

And the poet may be faithful — and his faithfulness alone frees him from the bondage of self-love and selfishness and savagery. He believes then that love is a sacred feeling which must stand above the desires of flesh and blood; and then it matters nothing to him whether the woman has been faithful or not.

...And the woman — is she faithful in her love for the poet? It is of woman's nature to have little faith in men, of whatever sort they be. She knows them selfish and greedy, lusting after her flesh and her blood; but her faith in the geniuses among them is little to the point of zero. She knows that these men draw inspiration from her beauty for a season, and when her beauty withers her mission is ended — like the cup when it is emptied...

And though the woman knows that the poet's feeling is quick to turn and easy to extinguish, she offers him her heart as a gift apart... She listens to him with delight as he sings her the anthems of love fragrant with glory, while something within her says to her: Do not believe him!

But she loves to believe, because what he whispers in her ear stirs in her the feeling of pride; and she goes on setting his genius ablaze with a thousand colors of soul and body, while within her a feeling wavers between hatred and love and admiration for this greedy, lukewarm, fickle creature. And she would fain possess him for a whole lifetime, but she knows she never can — for even if he pours his soul into her soul and melts his youth upon her mouth, it is because he believes he has poured his soul into the soul of Life; whereas she, the woman, compounded of flesh and blood and iron and dust — no.

And the woman may be faithful in her love. And when she is faithful, she teaches mankind the most wondrous tragedy of sacrifice. She is then a woman in whom all the beasts of the body have died, a woman who rises in her love to the degree of perfection: no earthly desire brands her body, and no lust holds her frame in check...

Thus did Mary Haskell, that divine woman, love Gibran Khalil Gibran.