A New Look at Khalil Gibran: an article by Peter Ryan

A New Look
at Khalil
Gibran
by Peter Ryan
Prepared by:
Dani Joey Llamasares
BAPS 4
Ryan, Peter. The Middle East Window.com: A new Templates
Free Powerpoint Look at Khalil Gibran. 2008. Page 1
Retreived from: http://www.middleeastwindow.com/?q=node/36

"Prophet: the Life and Times of
Khalil Gibran,"

• Robin Waterfield, offers
a fresh perspective on
the famed Lebanese-
American poet-one that
may surprise both
Gibran's fans and his
critics.


Khalil Gibran
• man torn between two
realities:

• MAN OF HIS POETRY

• MAN OF HIS LIFE


Waterfield's lens
• two realities:
1.the man of his poetry, full of ideals and praise
for the virtue of nature and romantic love;
2.and the man of his life, a charismatic and
self-indulgent egotist who spent most of his
years trapped in the confines of the city and
whose own love life was more mundane than
those of the heroic romantics he depicted in
poetry.


Accounts of the Poet’s Life
• Gibran is portrayed as a compulsive liar, who
fabricates stories about his own life to impress
his friends and acquaintances.
• He also occasionally comes across as heartless.
• Towards the end of his life, Gibran begins to
struggle with alcoholism.
• Gibran was a man who did not practice what
he preached and lived his life torn between
the ideals of his poetry and the realities of his
life.

Gibran’s importance as a
literary figure
• intellectual bridge between the cultures
and civilizations of the Middle East and
the Western world.
• outspoken about Syrian and Lebanese
politics.
• revolutionary perspective on religion
and gender.

Lebanon

• During World War I, when the Ottoman
empire was basically starving out the peoples
of Lebanon by cutting off their access to
supply lines, Gibran wrote a poem lamenting
what he considered to be a genocide of his
people—a genocide largely ignored by the
Western world.

Syria

• He also encouraged the peoples living in the
Syrian province of the Ottoman empire to rise
up against their oppressors; to seek liberation
and independence.


Although he may have
lacked the pragmatism of a
politician, Gibran clearly
had a political agenda for
much of his work.

On Religion and Gender
• Gibran believed that the rigid institutional
orthodoxy of the church was at odds with the
figure of Jesus
• “In Gibran’s eyes, the church… was co-
operating with the worldly power of
governments to oppress the poor” but “the
person of Christ, and his original teachings as
expounded in the gospels, remained strong
sources of inspiration for Gibran throughout
his life.”

CONCLUSION
• Waterfield:
“not a bad man… He was simply a
troubled man,”
Ryan:
It is impossible to dismiss Gibran, but
it is equally impossible to view him
as a Saint.

Source:

• Ryan, Peter. The Middle East Window.com: A
new Look at Khalil Gibran. 2008. Retreived
from:
http://www.middleeastwindow.com/?q=node/
36

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A New Look at Khalil Gibran: an article by Peter Ryan

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A New Look at Khalil Gibran: an article by Peter Ryan