by Philippe Maryssael, retired translator and terminologist.
Arlon, Belgium, October 28, 2020.
On April 1, 2020, while COVID-19 was hitting hard on all of us, a book was published, a book that reproduced Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, which was first published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf in September 1923. Yet again, you might say… Yet another edition of Gibran’s The Prophet…
Yes and no. Yes, because indeed the book contains the nth + 1 version of The Prophet. And no, because, in addition to the nth + 1 version of The Prophet in print, it also contains newly discovered poems, aphorisms, and other writings by Kahlil Gibran.
and The Prophet said… (book)
The author of this new book is no other than Dalton Hilu Einhorn, the very son of Virginia Hilu who, in 1972, published Beloved Prophet, the Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her Private Journal, the one Virginia Hilu without whom Kahlil Gibran’s intimate relationship with Mary Haskell probably would not have been known, without whom we probably would not have had a thorough understanding of Kahlil Gibran’s life, without whom the Kahlil Gibran Collective probably would not have seen the light of day through the joint efforts of its contributors, without whom a worldwide interest in Kahlil Gibran and his works probably would not have existed in the way it exists today.
Beloved Prophet (US and UK editions, 1972)
On July 1, 2020, the audio CD companion to Dalton Hilu Einhorn’s book came out, with Kevin Kenerly reading it from start to end.
and The Prophet said…, by Dalton Hilu Einhorn (foreword by Daniel Ladinsky), Hampton Roads Publishing, April 1, 2020, 176 pages, ISBN 978-1-6429-7016-6
and The Prophet said…, by Dalton Hilu Einhorn (foreword by Daniel Ladinsky, reading by Kevin Kenerly), Hampton Roads Publishing and Black Stone Publishing, July 1, 2020, ISBN 978-1-0941-2529-9
Beloved Prophet, the Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her Private Journal, by Virginia Hilu, Alfred A. Knopf (US) and Barrie & Jenkins (UK), 1972, 450 pages, ISBN 0-394-43298-3 (US) and 0-214-65423-7 (UK)
Philippe Maryssael was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1962. He studied translation in Brussels in the early 1980s. He later studied terminology and terminotics, the set of techniques involving the use of computer software in conducting terminology research on vast text corpora and deploying terminology database and translation memory solutions in support of the translation business.
His first job was as a bank clerk in Brussels. After a couple of years, he became a professional translator and terminology pioneer in the insurance and financial sectors before he moved to Luxembourg and joined a European financial institution as a translator-reviser, terminologist, and computer-aided translation and terminology tools specialist. There, after a decade, he changed the course of his career and became a business process manager involved in paving the way to the institution-wide dissemination of business process optimisation and re-engineering practices.
In July 2017, he decided to retire. The time was right for him to indulge in his life-long interest in the writings of Kahlil Gibran. He started collecting first editions of the books that Gibran wrote in English. He also started comparing the numerous French translations of his works. The natural next step was his intention to provide personal translations of Gibran’s English books into French and to have them published. His first published work came out at the end of 2018: The Fol, a bilingual presentation of the text of The Madman and his new translation, with an in-depth analysis of Gibran’s use of the English language and a study of several themes across his entire body of books.
In February 2020, Philippe Maryssael published his second book by Gibran, Le Sable et l’Écume, translated into French from Sand and Foam (1926). In a couple of weeks, by the end of November, his third book, Le Prophète, from Gibran’s masterpiece The Prophet, should be available.
More information on Philippe Maryssael and his translation projects can be found on his personal website at http://www.maryssael.eu/en/.
