In My Library: My Friend Gibran Khalil Gibran

"Barbara Young" is an American poet who lived near Gibran in his last years, and to whom that singular personality revealed itself at close hand — the personality of Gibran, rich in colors, shadows, and symbols.

Upon the death of the great genius, "Barbara Young" wrote a small book about her friend Gibran entitled: "This Man from Lebanon."

Before the last war the American poet made a visit to the country in which the poet was born, and sought out the traces of his childhood in the paths and slopes and valleys that accompanied that childhood and enriched it with deep gifts. The American poet returned to her country to write a new book on her friend the poet entitled "My Friend Gibran Khalil Gibran," some translated passages of which are conveyed here to the women readers of "The Woman's Voice."

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It is a strange coincidence that I am setting down these words while the storm's blaze has grown fierce, and the torrents pour down from the heights, turning the earth into rivers and seas, and the trees sway their trunks and toss their branches — as if Gibran's spirit were hovering about me as I write of him. For he was passionately fond of hurricanes and storms, and how often I heard him say that he felt a knot loosen and a freedom given its rein whenever winds blew and rains fell and tempests raged.

We are in the year 1944 — that is, thirteen years after his parting from this world which he loved, and sixty-one years after his coming into it. His life was short if we take the years as its measure. But Gibran did not take time as the measure of his life, nor did he take it as the measure of his thought. He would say constantly: "Eternity is ours." And this was no mere saying, but a firm conviction by which he directed his life. "The spirit is mightier than space, stronger than time, and loftier than the stars" — this was forever on his tongue.

The Western world knows him as a poet and painter, and as the author of that black-covered book, "The Prophet," of which its author said: "While I was writing 'The Prophet,' 'The Prophet' was writing me." And a small number in the Western world know him as Nietzsche and Richard Wagner were known.

But the Gibran whom scarcely any Westerner or Easterner knows is Gibran the draftsman, who left behind a legacy that no money and no price can measure — a legacy whose splendor is scarcely to be believed, whose existence is scarcely to be dreamed of, by more than a few hundred souls on the face of the earth. The pictures his pencil drew upon the pages of his ten English books are but one proof of that precious legacy.

A scrap of paper and a pencil stub were all that Gibran needed to express for you one of the forms of beauty — nothing beyond lines and shadows, yet unsurpassed by colors laid with the brush upon a stretch of canvas. And we do not exaggerate if we say that, when

every plant that grows in it. He held trees sacred, bearing them all veneration and respect, and would say: "If there were in the world but one tree, men would make pilgrimage to it from all nations and come to worship it, bowing and prostrating themselves."

He was fond, too, of touching wood with his hands and admiring it, as he loved small stones and the kinds of pebbles he would gather from the shores of the seas. And when he drew a nude woman he made her whiteness gleaming, and laid two fingers upon her lips, so that she seemed a piece of precious, translucent marble, behind her a mass of rocks; and if you drew near the picture or the figure and studied these rocks closely, they appeared to you like many human faces, bound and interlinked. Then, when he had finished it, he would say: "Let us call it 'Silence.'"

Gibran's passion for art and beauty reached such a point that in the last days of his life he kept repeating: "Beauty is above all things; neither science nor religion takes precedence over it."

I recall in this connection that the course he followed in his relations with women was unique of its kind. There were, in his eyes, two kinds of woman. There was the woman who loved him and was devoted to him and gave herself wholly in her loyalty — for this love was born of the acknowledgment of merit and gratitude for kindness; it was a pure love that demanded of him no effort and no return. And there was the woman whose love for him he described in these words: "I am most grateful for this passion and this tenderness; but you, like many like you, believe that I am better than I truly am. You love me as a poet and painter, and you yearn toward something of me as poet and painter. But me myself you do not know, and do not love."

Once he read to his visitors a chapter of "The Prophet" containing passages on marriage. Some of them began to ask him why he refrained from marrying, and he answered, smiling: "...If I married, and withdrew from my wife for days at a time, absorbed in painting and poetry, it would lead to troubles untold. Rarely can a woman who loves her husband bear such a state for long." One of the lady visitors was not content with this answer, and put to him frankly another question: "Have you never loved in your life?" Whereupon he rose from his place, his features changing with the speed of lightning, and began to address his questioner in a trembling voice, saying:

"I will confide to you something you may not know... The strongest people on the face of the globe, in what concerns the matters of sex, are the creative artists — painters, poets, sculptors, musicians. So it has been since the creation. And these artists and creators believe that in the passion of sex beauty and grandeur are embodied. From of old it has been beautiful — but always bashful, shy."

Memories of his boyhood came back to his mind shortly before his death, and he would speak much of his mother and of the sweet, tender anecdotes that surrounded his childhood. So strong was their effect upon his soul and the souls of his hearers that he would weep, and his tears would stream, and those present would weep and their tears would stream with his; then he would come to himself and laugh at himself and at them. He was right to speak so much of his mother, and often he would burst out suddenly, his eyes fixed upon the infinite, and say: "...Yes, my mother, Kamileh Rahmeh, was wise beyond all wisdom. She understood well that the love of freedom ran deep in my blood, so she gave me free rein and bound me but little.

Often I would spend hours with her in silence, not uttering a word, while she sang to me the beautiful songs of Lebanon in her sweet, tender, enchanting voice, or read to me the tales of Harun al-Rashid and the poems of Abu Nuwas. Yes, Kamileh Rahmeh — her sweet voice was proverbial in Lebanon, and is proverbial still."

Gibran once said of his mother that she "lived all her life in poetry, though she never wrote a single verse; but the poem that lay hidden in the mother's breast became an anthem the son repeats." His words struck the very heart of the truth, for he was forever singing his mother's songs as he sang his own poems. And when she was laid in the earth, he said to his friends: "I do not grieve for her because she was my mother, but because she was my friend."

Gibran was enamored of the soil, loving

History pronounces its judgment down the years and the generations, it will record the name of Gibran among the greatest of artists — those who could create, from a scrap of paper or a stretch of canvas, a drawing that speaks and a picture that talks.

In the last of his days his countrymen pressed him to return to Lebanon, to take the leadership of his country and guide its people to the right path. This desire, expressed by his friends and his admirers, moved him deeply; but he understood well that his return to his country would be an unforgivable error... "I might be able to lead my countrymen, but they do not answer to leadership. They will demand of me that I solve their problems — but how should I do that, when I am a problem in myself? If I go to Lebanon I shall take 'The Prophet' with me and ask the people to seek light with me by its radiance; and the moment I say that to them, they will lose all confidence in me. I am no politician... nor can I ever desire politics. No — in vain do they press me to bow to their will... I shall not go."