The Prophet-Summary

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KAHLIL GIBRAN
Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 in Bsharri, a mountain village in what is now Lebanon. His family emigrated to Boston when he was twelve, which put him in the position of being an outsider almost everywhere he went — too Arab for America, too Americanized when he went back. He spent his life writing in both Arabic and English, which is unusual enough on its own.

He moved to New York in his twenties and became part of a bohemian literary circle, while also corresponding with the poet W.B. Yeats and being deeply influenced by William Blake and the Sufi poets. He was also a painter — not a hobbyist, a serious one. He painted portraits of Yeats, Jung, and Rodin, among others. He spent twelve years writing and rewriting The Prophet, considering it his most important work. He died at forty-eight, in 1931, from cirrhosis and tuberculosis, having never returned to Lebanon after he left. There's something that stays with you about that.

The surprising thing: The Prophet was barely noticed when it first came out in 1923. It took decades to build its readership. Now it's one of the best-selling poetry books in history. I think that tells you something about the kind of book it is. Now let's talk a little bit about the book The Prophet.

The Prophet is not a novel and not quite a poem collection. It's structured as a series of teachings delivered by a man named Almustafa, who has lived in a foreign city for twelve years and is finally going home. Before his ship arrives, the people of the city ask him to speak on different subjects — love, marriage, children, giving, work, joy, sorrow, death. He answers each one. That's the whole book. It's short. But it's the kind of short that takes a long time to finish.

Here are some things I think are worth sharing:

1. The section on children stopped me completely. Gibran writes that your children are not your children — they come through you but not from you. You can give them your love but not your thoughts. This isn't a comforting message. It's actually a little unsettling when you sit with it. I think that's what makes it stay.
2. Almost every chapter has a structure where Gibran sets up what you think you know about something — love, freedom, pain — and then gently dismantles it without making you feel stupid. He doesn't argue. He just opens the other side of the door. That's a very specific skill and most writers don't have it.
3. The section on work is the one I keep coming back to. He writes that work is love made visible. And then he asks: what is it to work with disgust? And answers that it is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your own heart, and to have loathed the loom. I didn't expect a book from 1923 to hit that particular nerve, but here we are.
4. Reading this book straight through is the wrong way to read it. I found that if I read one section and then stopped, it worked much better. Not because the sections are hard, but because they need space around them. There's a certain kind of writing that needs silence on both sides. This is that kind.
5. Gibran's treatment of sorrow and joy is one of the most honest things I've read about either. He says they are inseparable — that the deeper your sorrow carves into you, the more joy you can contain. Most writers say something like this. Very few make you feel that it's actually true rather than just beautiful to hear. Gibran does.
6. The last chapter, on death, is where the book earns everything it built. Almustafa doesn't explain death or make peace with it or turn it into something comforting. He just says that life and death are one, the way the river and the sea are one. That's all. And somehow it's enough.

Here are some lines I really liked from the book:

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."

— The Prophet

"Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."

"Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."

— The Prophet

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

— The Prophet

Buy the book → https://amzn.to/4a3OVYO