Kahlil Gibran

Khalil Gibran ( January 6, 1883 * 'm as Khalil Gibran Mikhā'īl am Sa'ad Arab جبران خليل جبران, DMG Ǧibrān Halil Ǧibrān Bsharri, Ottoman Empire, today Lebanon, † April 10, 1931 in New York City ) was a Lebanese- American painter, philosopher and poet.

Life

Gibran emigrated in 1895 with his mother, sisters and half-brother to Boston in the United States. Kamileh Gibran, his mother, was the daughter of the priest Istiphan Rahmeh. The misspelling Kahlil Gibran goes to the Anglicization of his name in the Boston primary school, which he attended, back. In his youth, Gibran was a protégé of the photographer and publicist F. Holland Day. Gibran studied in 1897 after returning to Lebanon Art, French and Arabic and Arabic literature. In 1899 he returned to Boston back again over Paris. 1903 his mother died, his half-brother Butrus (* 1877) and his younger sister Sultanah (* 1887) from tuberculosis. In 1904 he had his first success as a painter. From 1908 he studied art in Paris and European literature. In 1912 he moved to New York. Has the short novel Broken Wings Broken Wings ( ), the autobiographical and where it comes to an unhappy love story between a boy and his beloved, who is unhappily married, appeared in the same year. Appeared in 1918 the Fool ( The Madman ), the first book he had written in English. He was founding president of the literary society Arrabitah. He belonged to the Christian Church of the Maronites. On April 10, 1931, he died in New York of liver cancer and was buried at his birthplace in Lebanon.

Work and thought

The central motifs of his poetry and his philosophical thought revolve around the idea that life, love and the death of the essentials to be human for us. His work is seen as a link between the philosophies of the East, such as Sufism, and the Western, influenced by Christianity philosophies.

The Prophet, published in 1923 (English edition 1925), considered the main work and at the same time as Gibran's best-known work. It was, like many other of his writings, illustrated by himself.

Most of his early works written in Arabic, Gibran, from 1918 on, however, mainly in English. Here are primarily distinguished his poetic and linguistically picturesque images. In his spiritual aphorisms and maxims he was doing always a matter of touching the hearts of his listeners.

Many of his poems were set to music. Particularly well known are the interpretations of al - Mahabba, an excerpt from The Prophet and Give me the flute and sing from the dance by the Lebanese singer Fairuz.