Berbagi Mimpi 2.2 (Writerature)

Let me begin with one question. Is Kahlil Gibran an American author or an Arab author? At one point in my life I heard people say that Gibran was an Arab/Lebanese author. However, one time a friend, an influential author in Yogyakarta, convinced me that Gibran was an English literature author (because he grew up as an author in the United States under the shadow of William Blake, both in his poetry and paintings).

His Life and World has revealed to me a lot about Gibran’s literary identity. Well, Gibran started writing when he was under the patronage of Fred Holland Day and when he was close with poetess Josephine Preston Peabody. It was around the first quarter of his twenties. He then began to write for an Arabic Newspaper in the US called al-Mohajer (“The Emigrant”) that was circulated among Arab Immigrants in the US.

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Tags: Kahlil Gibran

In this submission of Gibran’s Biography review, I’d like to focus on how much the biographers, Jean and Kahlil Gibran, rely on diary materials from people whose life paths have crossed Gibran’s. One thing to notice is how people around Gibran liked to keep diaries. I’m not sure if it is the custom back then to keep a diary.

The first lady that catches Gibran’s attention, as narrated in this biography is Josephine Preston Peabody, a prominent female self-taught poet. A lot of the materials used to write this biography come from Peabody’s journal entries. She puts her emotion in those entries. And she does it regularly. From there, we can see when her relationship with Gibran starts and when it starts waning. Reading those entries, I feel like I am reading a narrative from some sort of novel. The difference is, this one is from a real life person.

The second significant contributor to the material of Gibran’s biography is Mary Haskell’s diary entries. A straightforward educator, Mary is not the kind to put her emotion even into her diary. Jean and Kahlil Gibran don’t fail to highlight Mary’s intention with regards to her diaries. She writes her journal entries to document her life, with the language of newspaper reporting, so that when a need to reconstruct the past (by someone) arises, the diary entries could come in handy. Here we are now, reading a biography that relies a lot on her journal entries.

Tags: Kahlil Gibran

Again, about the biography Kahlil Gibran I started to talk about a few posts ago. FYI, the book is written by Jean Gibran and Kahlil Gibran. Super FYI, the Kahlil Gibran that co-authors this biography is not the Kahlil Gibran we know as “the Poet” or “the Prophet”. This Kahlil Gibran is the son to the Poet Kahlil Gibran’s cousin N’oula Gibran, who happened to bear the Poet’s name (probably because N’oula Gibran was so impressed by Kahlil Gibran the Poet himself). And Jean Gibran, as you might guess, is the biography author Kahlil Gibran’s wife.

OK, one confusion gone, let’s go to another interesting thing about the biography: the authors’ boldness to demystify the Poet Kahlil Gibran (hencetoforth, when I say “Kahlil Gibran” it means Kahlil Gibran the Poet unless stated otherwise). You’ll find a lot of demystification applied when you come to read the book. For the time being, I will only show one of them.

One of Kahlil Gibran’s essays states that as a kid he had an uneventful accident which caused him a broken shoulder blade. Gibran’s said that when he was healed his shoulder was sort of deformed. Following a local medical wisdom, he had to let some medicine man “fixed” his shoulder blade by breaking it again and put it in its right position. To avoid deformation, he had to be tied to a cross for forty days. According to this current biography, actually that “GIBRAN HAD TO BE TIED TO A CROSS FOR FORTY DAYS” is an exaggeration. Kahlil Gibran told the story so to make him look like a Christ figure, who was ON THE CROSS and had to be BURIED FOR FORTY DAYS.

That’s one of the important things about the biography of Kahlil Gibran that I can tell you for now. Expect to hear more.

Tags: Kahlil Gibran

So, for the umpteenth time, here I am, reading yet another biography of the Great Poet Kahlil Gibran. This time, it’s one written by a couple called Jean Gibran and Kahlil Gibran. The second Kahlil here is the Poet’s own niece who goes by the same name.

I just started reading the book and have only read about the possible origins of the Gibrans in a small lonely limestone city of Besharri, under the looming white apparition called Mt. Lebanon and Kahlil’s first months in South End, home to the immigrant community in the city of Boston.

Many years ago I read a biography of Kahlil Gibran by Suheil Bushrui. Thinking about the book in retrospect, I think Bushrui doesn’t have very much to say about the social condition of the South End during Gibran’s childhood. But this current book I’m reading has more to say. It combines information from Gibran’s own accounts (that he wrote years and years later), newspaper bits, and statistical documents kept by the city of Boston. Pretty much, His Life and World aims to re-create the atmosphere of South End that helped the birth of the Poet as a young man.

Well, I’ll see you again soon here when I have anymore to say about the book. As of now, this is what I got to offer.

Tags: Kahlil Gibran