Kahlil Gibran Collective

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Kahlil Gibran Dead; Noted Syrian Poet, The New York Times, Apr 1, 1931

Kahlil Gibran Dead; Noted Syrian Poet, The New York Times, Apr 1, 1931

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Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" read and performed at St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie (New York), The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York), Oct 13, 1928, p. 5.

Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" read and performed at St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie (New York), The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York), Oct 13, 1928, p. 5.

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Kahlil Gibran, Twenty Drawings, New York: Knopf, 1919.

In 1919 Knopf published a collection of Gibran’s art works as Twenty Drawings, with Alice Raphael’s essay as an introduction. The pictures are not his best work; the book did not draw much attention, and the one review was ambivalent. It is Gibran’s only book published in the West that has gone out of print.

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Letter of Barbara Young to Mr. Isham (and a sketch by Gibran), New York City, 26th April 1931.
Letter of Barbara Young to Mr. Isham (and a sketch by Gibran), New York City, 26th April 1931.
 
Young states 'You have been many times in my thoughts since the hour you spent with the great pictures in the Studio' and continues 'All that is now over. We are sailing May 4th for England, then the continent and eventually Syria. The pictures will go almost intact to Beshari', adding that some will remain in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Young further adds 'I am sending you a sketch which Gibran once sent me in a letter - and was therefore by his own hand. This is my recognition of your beautiful understanding of his work.' 
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Letter of Kahlil Gibran to Juliet Thompson, New York, December 17, 1919
Letter of Kahlil Gibran to Juliet Thompson, New York, December 17, 1919
______________
Dear Juliet, 
I was told just now that the Weirs have decided to keep the studio and that their daughter, also a painter, is to occupy it. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am about it. I was so happy in the thought of having you as a neighbour. In the meanwhile I shall be asking everybody about studios - we may be able to find something just as good. 
I know that you have much to say about Washington and I want to hear every word. I, too, have a great deal to tell you about the Near East. One thing I am certain of is this: the great war enhanced human consciousness but not human justice. 
And may God bless you always. 
Ever yours 
Kahlil 
Dec. 17, 
1919
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Letter of Kahlil Gibran to Marie Louise Watters, New York, Aug. 24, 1929
Letter of Kahlil Gibran to Marie Louise Watters, New York, Aug. 24, 1929
 
Dear Marie Louise, 
I am delighted to hear that you are coming to New York sometime in September. It will be so good to see you again. I have not been well-and I have been out of the world for a long time, and my heart is full of deep silence, unsung songs. And I am extremely restless. All these are signs of old age. Perhaps they are signs of a second youth in that I feel I must express myself in new forms of beauty. Do let me know more about your coming East. With exception of a short visit to this or that place now New York, I shall be free throughout the month of September. Please remember me in kindliness to your mother, and then to other members of your family. 
Ever faithfully, 
Kahlil 
___________ 
Marie Louise Watters was a close friend of Gibran’s, the two met in Greenwich Village at the Arts Student League in 1918 where they both attended a ceramics course and remained friends until Gibran’s death in 1931.
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Mary Haskell Minis, Diary, September 1911-April 1912 [Folder 227]
Records of Haskell's visits to Gibran in New York City. Contains a letter from Arthur Farwell, the president of the American Music Society.
 
Minis Family Papers, 1739-1948, Subseries 2.3. Diaries, 1894-1944 and undated, Minis Family Papers #2725, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Mercedes de Acosta, Here Lies the Heart: A Tale of My Life, New York: Reynal, 1960

Mercedes de Acosta, Here Lies the Heart: A Tale of My Life, New York: Reynal, 1960, pp. 91-93, 105, 140.

Mercedes de Acosta (1892-1968) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. De Acosta wrote almost a dozen plays, only four of which were produced, and she published a novel and three volumes of poetry. She was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian relationships with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period.

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Miss Barbara Young Will Talk on Gibran, "Democrat and Chronicle" (Rochester, New York), 02 Nov 1933, Thu, p. 8.

Miss Barbara Young Will Talk on Gibran, "Democrat and Chronicle" (Rochester, New York), 02 Nov 1933, Thu, p. 8.

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Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, "A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry", New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Muhammad Mustafa Badawi, "A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry", New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

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Ruth Danenhower, Artist Puts Roosevelt, Wilson and Edison in His Temple of Fame, The New York Press, Sunday Morning, June 7, 1914

Ruth Danenhower, Artist Puts Roosevelt, Wilson and Edison in His Temple of Fame, The New York Press, Sunday Morning, June 7, 1914, p. 9.

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The Great Recurrence, New York Herald Tribune Magazine (The Sunday Star), Dec. 23, 1928, p. 19.

The Great Recurrence, New York Herald Tribune Magazine (The Sunday Star), Dec. 23, 1928, p. 19.

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The Prophet, New York: Knopf [1st edition: 1923]

Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, was published in September 1923. The earliest references to a mysterious prophet counseling his people before returning to his island home can be found in Haskell’s journal from 1912. Gibran worked on it from time to time and had finished much of it by 1919. He seems to have written it in Arabic and then translated it into English. As with most of his English books, Haskell acted as his editor, correcting Gibran’s chronically defective spelling and punctuation but also suggesting improvements in the wording. The work begins with the prophet Almustafa preparing to leave the city of Orphalese, where he has lived for twelve years, to return to the island of his birth. The people of the city gather and beg him not to leave, but the seeress Almitra, knowing that his ship has come for him, asks him instead to tell them his truths. The people ask him about the great themes of human life: love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, and many others, concluding with death. Almustafa speaks of each of the themes in sober, sonorous aphorisms grouped into twenty-six short chapters. As in earlier books, Gibran illustrated The Prophet with his own drawings, adding to the power of the work. The Prophet received tepid reviews in Poetry and The Bookman, an enthusiastic review in the Chicago Evening Post, and little else. On the other hand, the public reception was intense. It began with a trickle of grateful letters; the first edition sold out in two months; 13,000 copies a year were sold during the Great Depression, 60,000 in 1944, and 1,000,000 by 1957. Many millions of copies were sold in the following decades, making Gibran the best-selling American poet of the twentieth century. It is clear that the book deeply moved many people. When critics finally noticed it, they were baffled by the public response; they dismissed the work as sentimental, overwritten, artificial, and affected. Neither The Prophet nor Gibran’s work, in general, are mentioned in standard accounts of twentieth-century American literature, though Gibran is universally considered a major figure in Arabic literature. Part of the critical puzzlement stems from a failure to appreciate an Arabic aesthetic: The Prophet is a Middle Eastern work that stands closer to eastern didactic classics such as the Book of Job and the works of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Persian poets Rumi and Sa’di than to anything in the modern American canon. Gibran knew that he would never surpass The Prophet, and for the most part, his later works do not come close to measuring up to it. The book made him a celebrity, and his monastic lifestyle added to his mystique.

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William Norman Guthrie and Gibran, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, 08 Nov 1919, Sat, p. 16; 24 Oct 1931, Sat, p. 11

William Norman Guthrie and Gibran, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, 08 Nov 1919, Sat, p. 16; 24 Oct 1931, Sat, p. 11

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Witter Bynner (Emmanuel Morgan), Pins for Wings, Caricatures by Ivan Opffer and William Saphier, New York: The Sunrise Turn, Inc., 1920

Witter Bynner (Emmanuel Morgan), Pins for Wings, Caricatures by Ivan Opffer and William Saphier, New York: The Sunrise Turn, Inc., 1920, p. 15.

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Witter Bynner, The New World, New York: Knopf, 1922 [Frontispiece portrait of the Author by Kahlil Gibran, 1919].
Witter Bynner, The New World, New York: Knopf, 1922 [Frontispiece portrait of the Author by Kahlil Gibran, 1919].