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Early Life:Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on 6 January 1883 in the village of Bisharri in what is now northern Lebanon but was then Ottoman Syria.His family were Maronite Christians. In 1891 his father (Khalil Gibran) was convicted of some irregularity, and his property was confiscated. Gibran later described his father as a descendant of cavaliers, a romantic figure, who got into trouble with the law for refusing to compromise with corrupt village authorities.
Immigration to Boston:He immigrated with his mother and siblings to Boston in 1895 - his father remained in Lebanon to address financial matters. Gibran would return to Lebanon three years later to continue his education but returned to America after illness took the life of one of his sisters.
Education:Gibran went to school, while his sisters helped in the shop. The school gave him the American form and spelling of his last name, Gibran. He began in an ungraded class for immigrants who knew no English; he learned the language quickly, though his written English, especially the spelling, remained erratic.
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Gibran The Artist:He claimed that his interest in art was inspired in part by a book of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings that his mother gave him. He painted more than 700 pictures, watercolours and drawings, and absorbed a good deal of Lebanese folk culture that appears in his writings. His sensitivity to natural beauty owed much to the magnificent setting of impoverished Bisharri above the Qadisha Valley on the slopes of Mount Lebanon.
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The Prophet:
Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, was published in September 1923,He 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, Mary Haskell acted as his editor who encouraged his artistic development. As in earlier books, Gibran illustrated The Prophet with his own drawings, adding to the power of the work.
The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again especially in the 1960s counterculture.
The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again especially in the 1960s counterculture.
Gibran's Work:
Music (1905)-Nymphs of the Valley (1906)-Spirits Rebellious (1908)-Broken Wings (1912)-A Tear and a Smile (1914)-The Madman (1918)" First publication of Gibran in English"-The Processions (1919)-Twenty Drawings (1919)-The Tempests (1920)-The Forerunner (1920)-The Prophet (1923)-The New and the Marvelous (1923)-Sand and Foam (1926)-Jesus the Son of Man (1928) -The Earth Gods (1931)-The Wanderer (1932) -The Garden of the Prophet (1933)
Death:
Gibran died on 10 April 1931 of cirrhosis of the liver. He was an alcoholic and had been in poor health since the early 1920s.