Beautiful thoughts for all occasions

Kahlil Gibran was 40 years old, a short — he was just 5’3” — dapper man with doleful eyes and a Charlie Chaplin moustache, and in the first throes of the alcoholism that would result in his early death, when in 1923 he published The Prophet.

A collection of 26 prose-poems, written in quasi-Biblical language, the book takes the form of sermons by a fictional sage named Al Mustapha, on the big questions of life: family, friendship, love, work and death. These range from the profound to the banal. ‘Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.’ And who could argue with that? But then again. ‘And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.’ A nice enough thought, but is it really true?

Since its publication, The Prophet has sold millions of copies around the world, in dozens of languages. It was particularly popular with hippies in the Sixties, and is a mainstay at weddings and funerals, taking its place alongside, at best, St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and, at worst, Max Ehrmann’s ‘Desiderata’ as a sort of universal balm for the soul, its truths worn thin by repetition and its platitudes drowned in the syrup of the greetings card, tea-towel and fridge-magnet industries.

But oddly, for one of the world’s best-selling authors, little has been written about Kahlil Gibran — just two major biographies in the last 50 years, of which this is one.

Written by the son of Gibran’s cousin and his wife, Beyond Borders was originally published in 1974, and appears now in a considerably revised edition. Beautifully produced and illustrated with photographs and reproductions of Gibran’s drawings and paintings, it provides an exhaustive account of Gibran’s journey from a poverty-stricken childhood in Lebanon, through the bohemian and literary circles of Boston and New York, to international renown.