Elvis Presley liked it so much that he gave it to friends for their birthdays. The book of poetic essays The Prophet by the Lebanese writer and painter Khalil Gibran was also liked by John Lennon from the Beatles, the Japanese Empress Michiko or the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. 100 years after its publication, it is now commemorated by a museum in the town of Bšarré, the author’s birthplace in the mountains of northern Lebanon.
As the AFP agency writes, since the first edition in 1923, the Prophet, written in English, has sold millions of copies, and this poetic prose has been translated into more than a hundred languages, including Czech.
“He can reach everyone, no matter where they come from, whether they are Christian, Muslim, or Jewish,” says museum director Joseph Geagea. According to him, Gibran’s text touches on “spiritual questions, death, life, friendship, love, children” and other topics.
The Prophet consists of 26 poetic essays. It tells about the “chosen and beloved” life wisdom teacher Almustaf, who waited 12 years in one city for a ship to take him home. Now that he finally sees her coming through the mist, he says goodbye to the locals and before leaving talks to them about the things they ask themselves: from marriage to food and drink and work and clothes to prayers and laws or crime and punishment.
According to AFP, at the time of publication, the book was condemned for oversimplification or moralizing. However, many statements from the Prophet have also become popular and, as widely understandable messages of wisdom or love, are still quoted at baptisms, weddings or funerals all over the world.
“The book is written in a very biblical style,” said the Lebanese writer Alexandre Najjar during a recent author’s reading, who also perceives the influence of a mystical form of Islam called Sufism in the symbolic, suggestive text. Gibran was born into a family of Maronite Christians, which is the Lebanese Catholic Church in origin.
Najjar recalls that although the Prophet was first published 100 years ago, it aroused a new wave of interest in the 1960s. Students and members of the hippie movement at that time identified themselves with sentences like “Your children are not your children, they go through you, but they don’t come out of you.”
Khalil Jibran was born in Bsharra in 1883, when Lebanon was still part of the Ottoman Empire. The writer then spent most of his life in the USA, where he and friends founded the literary association Svaz pera, spreading Arabic literature in the West. He died in 1931 as a result of liver cancer, he was 48 years old.
His legacy is remembered by the museum in Bšarré. Because it is located at an altitude of 1,500 meters, it also offers a view of the Kadisha Valley, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List thanks to the historical monasteries here. The museum contains part of the author’s estate, more than 150 of his paintings or drawings or the first edition of the Prophet in various world languages from the 20s of the last century.
“Djibran left Bšarré when he was twelve years old. But he always wanted to return one day,” says the director of the museum. This was created by the reconstruction of a newer church from the 18th century, which the monks, together with other plots of land, sold to Djibrán’s sister after the writer’s death. Today, around 50,000 people come here every year to remember the popular writer, concludes the AFP agency.
The Prophet first reached Czech readers in 1932, when it was published in a translation by Oldřich Hlaváč. He enjoyed favor again after the Velvet Revolution, when he appeared in the translations of Eliška and Boris Merhautová, Dagmar Steinová, Pavla Piňosová or Jana Žlábková. Especially in the late 1990s, thanks to constantly new editions in the Czech Republic, it ranked among the bestsellers. But there is still interest in it, it was last published last year by Leda and again this year by Karmelitánská nakladatelstvi.
