The Prophet

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.

The Prophet reflects Gibran’s diverse religious background, having been raised a Maronite Christian in a largely Islamic land. Influenced by anti-authoritarian and anti-religious movements of the late 19th century as represented in figures like Friedrich Nietzsche, Gibran came to reject organized religion. While rejecting hierarchy, however, he retained a strong sense of the divine, and The Prophet captures his attempts to systemize and convey his spiritual intuitions divorced from any particular creed. The book’s tone of urgent pleading for social and spiritual peace reflects the atmosphere in the aftermath of World War I, when it was written. Almustafa’s painful exile and longing for his homeland likewise reflect Gibran’s experience of emigration and political alienation from the country of his birth. In this regard, Gibran speaks to the same experience that concerned his coterie of Arab-American writer friends in New York City, who formed a club called the Pen League and were all influenced by one another’s work. In its mystical but nonsectarian tone, The Prophet reflects the growth of mysticism and spiritual alternatives to traditional organized religion that were spreading rapidly in the early 20th century, as science increasingly challenged church authority and doctrine.

Gibran’s The Prophet explicitly tackles the fundamental and abiding themes of human existence, and in both its subject matter and its high-flying rhetoric it draws heavily from the sacred books of the world’s great religious traditions—perhaps most heavily from the Bible and the Quran, though it echoes the Bhagavad Gita and Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching as well. Gibran drew more contemporary influence from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly from his 1883 work of philosophical fiction, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Like The Prophet, Zarathustra conveys its author’s sweeping life philosophy by means of wide-ranging poetical speeches from the titular prophet figure. Gibran himself explored existential themes and fabular narration reminiscent of The Prophet in his earlier collections of prose poetry and parables, including The Madman and The Storm. Gibran’s close friend Mikhail Naimy was also a writer of Lebanese origin, and his 1948 work The Book of Mirdad often draws comparison with The Prophet for its philosophical mood and allegorical presentation. Among later writers, Gibran’s influence has been acknowledged by Paulo Coelho, whose 1988 novel The Alchemist explores similarly spiritual themes and has also become one of the world’s bestselling books. Gibran’s influence has been acknowledged outside the field of traditional print literature as well: John Lennon adapted lines of Gibran’s poetry for his song “Julia,” and Elvis Presley was an ardent fan. Gandhi and John F. Kennedy are among the many political leaders reported to have been influenced by Gibran and his message of spiritual unity.