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Music in The Prophet represents the cosmic harmony that can only be heard and channeled by cultivating silence and passive receptivity within oneself. Throughout The Prophet, Almustafa repeatedly uses musical imagery in his analogies, always emphasizing the passive, receptive character of true musical expression. At the beginning, Almustafa wonders how he will impart his knowledge to the townspeople, asking, “Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me?” On the autonomy of marital partners, he says, “Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.” On work, he says, “When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.” These recurring analogies suggest that Almustafa sees music as an example of what it might look like to achieve harmony with others. The “music” he means is not a mere diversion, indeed not something within human agency at all, but something that comes from the divine, which one can simply do one’s best to become a medium for. Almustafa thus brings together silence and music, suggesting that seeking silence and stillness will make one a medium for a more profound music than one could generate on one’s own: a music of divine truth. At one point, Almustafa summarizes this unexpected dependency of music on silence: “Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.”
Music Quotes in The Prophet
The The Prophet quotes below all refer to the symbol of Music. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 9-26 Quotes
Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?
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The Prophet opens on Almustafa, “the chosen and the beloved,” climbing the hills outside the walls of Orphalese—the city where he has spent the last 12 years—and spotting a ship of his countrymen approaching to take him home to his native land. As he joyfully goes down to meet them, however, he sees a crowd of local townspeople approaching to waylay him. Almustafa (correctly) assumes that they will want him to enlighten them about life, and in this quote he privately wonders whether he is up to the task. The quote establishes several motifs that will recur throughout Almustafa’s answers Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nis
Pages 27-44 Quotes
When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music. Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
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After Almustafa delivers his thoughts on charitable giving and then on eating and drinking, a ploughman asks him to speak about work. The topic naturally connects with and completes the two before it, just as the topic of children completed a thematic trinity with love and marriage. In this passage, Almustafa once again employs a surprising musical metaphor to flesh out the poetic vision of work that he presents. As he implied in his initial self-questioning of whether he was a “harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendi
Pages 44-59 Quotes
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?
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After Almustafa’s surprising and socially subversive discourse on crime and punishment, a lawyer in the crowd asks him about the city’s laws. Almustafa continues in the vein of his crime and punishment speech, denouncing laws as the efforts by bitter and small-souled people to impose their own limitations on others. In this passage, Almustafa again employs a musical metaphor, likening those who break the law with irrepressible singing skylarks. This musical metaphor stands out from the others in relying on the trope of music as an explosive personal, individual expression. Elsewhere, he undermined this idea with his vision of music Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaqu
Pages 59-75 Quotes
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape. And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand. And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words. In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
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Almustafa follows his discourse on self-knowledge with a thematically related speech on teaching, in which he characterizes true teaching as leading the pupil to their own discovery of knowledge somehow already present in themselves. After a brief speech on friendship, a scholar asks the prophet to speak about talking. In this passage, Almustafa again connects talking to the idea of self-knowledge discussed in recent speeches. Whereas before he validated the popular desire for verbalized self-knowledge, he here characterizes talking on the whole as an active flight from self-knowledge, saying, “The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat.
Pages 75-90 Quotes
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being. Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow? Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived. And your body is the harp of your soul, And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
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Following his speech on good and evil, Almustafa speaks briefly on the topic of prayer, and then a hermit, “who visited the city once a year,” asks the prophet about pleasure. Almustafa’s teaching here is in line with the general thrust of his speeches throughout the day: calcified social conventions, he suggests, have cut humans off from the natural sources of fulfillment that they would enjoy without guilt in an ideal society, and pleasure (implicitly physical pleasure, though this is never directly stated) is among those natural sources. He once again employs the musical metaphor wherein a man is an Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Pos
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one […] Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
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After Almustafa concludes his discourse on religion, the priestess Almitra who initiated the afternoon’s question and answer session reemerges to ask its final question, on the topic of death. The prophet’s responses throughout the day have taken a number of surprising turns, generally maintaining a coherent thematic thrust but occasionally lapsing into inconsistency and contradiction. In this final topic, perhaps the most encompassing of them all and certainly the most difficult to speak of, the prophet returns to form with his classic strategy of uniting opposite elements of a pair. This passage shows Almustafa using this strategy, but with an Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore labor
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Music Symbol Timeline in The Prophet
The timeline below shows where the symbol Music appears in The Prophet. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 27-44
...earth.” Idleness alienates man from earth’s rhythms, whereas work makes him a channel for earth’s music. Almustafa disputes the claim that work is a burden, saying that labor is a form...
(full context)
