Kahlil Gibran

Gibran was born in 1883 in the village of Bsharri, in modern-day Lebanon, which was at the time part of the Ottoman Empire. His parents were Maronites, an eastern sect of Christianity, and they intentionally set an example of religious tolerance for young Gibran and his siblings. Gibran’s father had a gambling problem, and he was eventually imprisoned for embezzling from his tax-collecting job. Gibran’s mother resolved to take the 12-year-old Gibran and his siblings to the United States, settling in the large Middle Eastern immigrant community in Boston’s South End. Here, he was tutored by noted avant-garde photographer F. Holland Day. At 15, Gibran returned to Lebanon for high school, travelling around Europe upon graduation. Within a year, two siblings and his mother all died of disease, and his longtime girlfriend left him. Around this time, Gibran returned to Boston and began exhibiting his visual art. There, he caught the eye of Mary Haskell, who was to become his lifelong benefactress, though it remains debated whether they shared a romantic relationship as well—they were briefly engaged but called it off. In 1908, Haskell sponsored Gibran’s move to Paris to study art. During his two years there, he became involved with Syrian revolutionaries, and he maintained this political involvement after returning to Boston. In the 1910s, Gibran moved to New York City and was active in both the visual arts and writing (in Arabic and then in English), growing his reputation. In the early 1920s, he was prescribed six months rest and abstention from city life, and in this period he worked on The Prophet, which was publish in 1923 to little notice. He died in New York City in 1931 from liver cirrhosis due to alcoholism, never knowing the posthumous fame he would receive.