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
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."
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."
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.