by Philippe Maryssael, retired translator and terminologist. Arlon, Belgium, October 13, 2020. A rare book by Barbara Young, illustrated with a drawing by Gibran Barbara Young (1878‑1961), the pen name of Henrietta Boughton, née Breckenridge, was a literary critic with the New York Times in the early 20th century. She became Kahlil Gibran’s personal secretary in 1925 and it was she who carried the agonizing Gibran to the Saint Vincent Hospital in New York on April 9, 1931. The next day, April 10, 1931, Gibran passed away, diagnosed having liver cirrhosis and tuberculosis. Barbara Young is best known for her book This Man from Leb...

 ‘What have you to do with me? I am an Italian!’ by Francesco Medici © Francesco Medici - all rights reserved 2020  “Forgive me my curiosity – what country do you hail from?  You look to me like a Frenchman or an Italian.”[1] These appear to have been the first words spoken by Mary Haskell to Kahlil Gibran in the spring of 1904, during their first encounter at an exhibition of his...

Edited by Francesco Medici© Francesco Medici - all rights reserved 2020 The first Arabic-language literary circle in North America, known as al-Rābiṭah al-Qalamiyyah, or simply Arrabitah (literally in English, “The Pen Bond,” or “The Pen League,” or “The Association of the Pen,”), was founded or re-formed (its first official formation was due to Nasib Aridah and Abd al-Masih Haddad and dates back 1916) on 28 April 1920 by a group of Arab immigrant writers in New York led by Kahlil Gibran. The other members of the society were Mikhail Naimy, Elia Abu Madi, ...

by Francesco Medici - Translated into English by Nadine Najem© Francesco Medici & Nadine Najem - all rights reserved 2020 One day, during his youth, the future great French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was asked by his friend Antoinette Faure a series of questions in English language – in fact they were in vogue among the British Victorian families, as a form of parlor games, some questionnaires designed to discover the personal tastes and aspirations of those who answered them. Proust’s answers were published only in 1924, two years after his death. This was the origin of the famous “Proust Questionnaire”, whose success has come down to the present day.