Trysilforfatteren Tormod Haugen døde lørdag 18. oktober 2008 etter lang tids sjukeleie, 63 år gammel.
Tormod Haugen har bak seg et omfattende forfatterskap og er oversatt til 24 språk. Han beskrives som en forfatter som nådde alles hjerter.
Priset forfatter
Haugen mottok en lang rekke priser, både norske og utenlandske. Blant annet den prestisjetunge H.C. Andersen-prisen, som deles ut annethvert år til de fremste forfattere i verden. Deutsche Jugendpreis mottok han i 1979 for "Nattfuglene". I 1987fikk han Den europeiske barnebokprisen "Pier Paolo Vergerio" for "Romanen om Merkel Hansen".
Kulturdepartementets pris ble han tildelt hele tre ganger, i 1975, 1976 og 1989.
For "Dagen som forsvant" ble Haugen nominert til Nordisk Råds litteraturpris i 1984.
Haugens siste bok "Doris Day og tordenvær" kom i 2005.
Film og opera
Boka "Zeppelin" ble til film i 1981, og i 1989 satte Stockholmoperaen opp operaversjonen av "Slottet det Hvite".
Tormod Haugen hevdet at han ikke skrev for noen bestemt aldersgruppe, og sjøl om bøkene handlet om barn og barns ensomhet, hadde han et stort voksent publikum. Haugen er født i Nybergsund i Trysil, men har bodd hele sitt voksne liv i Oslo. Han studerte tysk språk og litteratur, kunsthistorie og litteraturvitenskap. Han debuterte som forfatter i 1973 med romanen "Ikke som i fjor".
Kilde: østlendingen.no
fredag 24. oktober 2008
tirsdag 21. oktober 2008
Poems by Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
Beauty XXV
And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty."
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Khalil Gibran
Freedom XIV
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Khalil Gibran
Friendship IXX
And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Khalil Gibran
Joy and Sorrow chapter VIII
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
Khalil Gibran
Peace XVIII
The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.
At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony but she could finally open her lips and say, "Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him."
Quietly a young man entered. His head was wrapped in bandage soaked with escaping life.
He approached he with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. Be not sad, but smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment, for Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty.
"Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace."
Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart; and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.
At dawn the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, "Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun."
Khalil Gibran
Pleasure XXIV
Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."
And he answered, saying:
Pleasure is a freedom song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height,
But it is not the deep nor the high.
It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.
And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul,
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.
Khalil Gibran
And a poet said, "Speak to us of Beauty."
Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle.
Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us."
And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us."
The tired and the weary say, "beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit.
Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow."
But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions."
At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east."
And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset."
In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."
And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair."
All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Khalil Gibran
Freedom XIV
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Khalil Gibran
Friendship IXX
And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Khalil Gibran
Joy and Sorrow chapter VIII
Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
Khalil Gibran
Peace XVIII
The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.
At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony but she could finally open her lips and say, "Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him."
Quietly a young man entered. His head was wrapped in bandage soaked with escaping life.
He approached he with a greeting of tears and laughter, then took her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. Be not sad, but smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment, for Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy. I am your one. Think me not a specter emerging from the House of Death to visit your Home of Beauty.
"Do not be frightened, for I am now Truth, spared from swords and fire to reveal to the people the triumph of Love over War. I am Word uttering introduction to the play of happiness and peace."
Then the young man became speechless and his tears spoke the language of the heart; and the angels of Joy hovered about that dwelling, and the two hearts restored the singleness which had been taken from them.
At dawn the two stood in the middle of the field contemplating the beauty of Nature injured by the tempest. After a deep and comforting silence, the soldier said to his sweetheart, "Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun."
Khalil Gibran
Pleasure XXIV
Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."
And he answered, saying:
Pleasure is a freedom song,
But it is not freedom.
It is the blossoming of your desires,
But it is not their fruit.
It is a depth calling unto a height,
But it is not the deep nor the high.
It is the caged taking wing,
But it is not space encompassed.
Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:
Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.
And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;
And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?
And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.
And your body is the harp of your soul,
And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.
Khalil Gibran
A message to the lovers of poetry....!
Are you hunting poems? Then visit the brilliant homepage www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive (Classic Poetryseries). You're welcome to download E-Books!!! Links to poets, poems, lyrics, quotations, music, forum, search, poetry E-Books and sites. Have a wonderful journey...
Khalil Gibran (1883 - 1931) a beloved poet from Lebanon
Biography of Khalil Gibran
Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon.
Lebanon was a Turkish province part of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) and subjugated to Ottoman dominion, which granted the Mount Lebanon area autonomous rule. The people of Mount Lebanon had struggled for several years to gain independence from the Ottoman rule, a cause Gibran was later to adopt and become an active member in. The Mount Lebanon area was a troubled region, due to the various outside and foreign interferences that fostered religious hatred between the Christian, especially the Maronite sect, and Moslem populations. Later in his life, Gibran was to seek and unite the various religious sects, in a bid to abolish the religious snobbery, persecution and atrocities witnessed at his time. The Maronite sect, formed during the schism in the Byzantine church in the 5th century A.D., was made up of a group of Syrian Christians, who joined the monk St. Marun to lead their own sectarian thought.
His mother Kamila Rahmeh was thirty when she begot Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. Gibran had a half-brother six years older than him called Peter and two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, whom he was deeply attached to throughout his life, along with his mother. Kamila’s family came from a prestigious religious background, which imbued the uneducated mother with a strong will and later on helped her raise up the family on her own in the U.S.
Growing up in the lush region of Bsharri, Gibran proved to be a solitary and pensive child who relished the natural surroundings of the cascading falls, the rugged cliffs and the neighboring green cedars, the beauty of which emerged as a dramatic and symbolic influence to his drawings and writings. Being laden with poverty, he did not receive any formal education or learning, which was limited to regular visits to a village priest who doctrined him with the essentials of religion and the Bible, alongside Syriac and Arabic languages. Recognizing Gibran’s inquisitive and alert nature, the priest began teaching him the rudiments of alphabet and language, opening up to Gibran the world of history, science, and language. At the age of ten, Gibran fell off a cliff, wounding his left shoulder, which remained weak for the rest of his life ever since this incident. To relocate the shoulder, his family strapped it to a cross and wrapped it up for forty days, a symbolic incident reminiscent of Christ’s wanderings in the wilderness and which remained etched in Gibran’s memory.
At the age of eight, Khalil Gibran, Gibran's father, was accused of tax evasion and was sent to prison as the Ottomon authorities confiscated the Gibrans’ property and left them homeless. The family went to live with relatives for a while; however, the strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., seeking a better life and following in suit to Gibran’s uncle who immigrated earlier. The father was released in 1894, but being an irresponsible head of the family he was undecided about immigration and remained behind in Lebanon.
On June 25, 1895, the Gibrans embarked on a voyage to the American shores of New York.
The Gibrans settled in Boston’s South End, which at the time hosted the second largest Syrian community in the U.S. following New York. The culturally diverse area felt familiar to Kamila, who was comforted by the familiar spoken Arabic, and the widespread Arab customs. Kamila, now the bread-earner of the family, began to work as a peddler on the impoverished streets of South End Boston. At the time, peddling was the major source of income for most Syrian immigrants, who were negatively portrayed due to their unconventional Arab ways and their supposed idleness.
Growing up into another impoverished period, Gibran was to recall the pain of the first few years, which left an indelible mark on his life and prompted him to reinvent his childhood memories, dispelling the filth, the poverty and the slurs. However, the work of charity institutions in the poor immigrant areas allowed the children of immigrants to attend public schools and keep them off the street, and Gibran was the only member of his family to pursue scholastic education. His sisters were not allowed to enter school, thwarted by Middle Eastern traditions as well as financial difficulties. Later on in his life, Gibran was to champion the cause of women’s emancipation and education and surround himself with strong-willed, intellectual and independent women.
In the school, a registration mistake altered his name forever by shortening it to Kahlil Gibran, which remained unchanged till the rest of his life despite repeated attempts at restoring his full name. Gibran entered school on September 30, 1895, merely two months after his arrival in the U.S. Having no formal education, he was placed in an ungraded class reserved for immigrant children, who had to learn English from scratch. Gibran caught the eye of his teachers with his sketches and drawings, a hobby he had started during his childhood in Lebanon.
With Kamila’s hard work, the family’s financial standing improved as her savings allowed Peter to set up a goods store, in which both of Gibran's sisters worked. The financial strains of the family and the distance from home brought the family together, with Kamila providing both financial and emotional support to her children, especially to her introverted son Gibran. During this difficult period, Gibran's remoteness from social life and his pensive nature were deepened, and Kamila was there to help him overcome his reservedness. The mother’s independence allowed him to mingle with Boston’s social life and explore its thriving world of art and literature.
Gibran's curiosity led him to the cultural side of Boston, which exposed him to the rich world of the theatre, Opera and artistic Galleries. Prodded by the cultural scenes around him and through his artistic drawings, Gibran caught the attention of his teachers at the public school, who saw an artistic future for the Syrian boy. They contacted Fred Holland Day, an artist and a supporter of artists who opened up Gibran’s cultural world and set him on the road to artistic fame.
Gibran met Fred Holland Day in 1896, and from then his road to recognition was reached through Day’s artistic unconventionality and his contacts in Boston’s artistic circles. Day introduced Gibran to Greek mythology, world literature, contemporary writings and photography, ever prodding the inquisitive Syrian to seek self-expression. Day’s liberal education and unconventional artistic exploration influenced Gibran, who was to follow Day’s unfettered adoption of the unusual for the sake of originality and self-actualization. Other than working on Gibran’s education, Day was instrumental in lifting his self-esteem, which had suffered under the immigrant treatment and poverty of the times. Not surprisingly, Gibran emerged as a fast learner, devouring everything handed over by Day, despite weak Arabic and English. Under Day’s tutelage, Gibran uttered his first religious beliefs, when he declared "I am no longer a Catholic: I am a pagan," after reading one book given by Day.
During one of Fred Holland Day’s art exhibitions, Gibran drew a sketch of a certain Miss Josephine Peabody, an unknown poet and writer who was to later become one of his failed love experiences; later on, Gibran was to propose marriage and be met with refusal, the first blow in a series of heartaches dealt to Gibran by the women he loved.
Continually encouraging Gibran to improve his drawings and sketches, Day was instrumental in getting Gibran’s images printed as cover designs for books in 1898. At the time, Gibran began to develop his own technique and style, encouraged by Day’s enthusiasm and support. Gradually, Gibran entered the Bostonian circles and his artistic talents brought him fame at an early age. However, his family decided that early success could cause him future problems, and with Gibran’s approval, the young artist went back to Lebanon to finish his education and learn Arabic.
In 1898, Gibran arrived in Beirut speaking poor English and even little Arabic; he could speak Arabic fluently, but not read nor write it. To improve his Arabic, Gibran chose to enroll in the school Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite-founded school which offered a nationalistic curriculum partial to church writings, history and liturgy. Gibran’s strong-willed nature refused to abide by the parochial curriculum, demanding an individual curriculum catering to his educational needs and aimed at a college level, a gesture indicative of Gibran’s rebellious and individualistic nature; his arrogance bordered on heresy. Nonetheless, the school acquiesced to his request, editing course material to Gibran's liking. He chose to immerse himself in the Arabic-language bible, intrigued by its style and writing, features of which echo in his various works. As a student, Gibran left a great impression on his teachers and fellow students, who were impressed with his outlandish and individualistic behavior, self-confidence, and his unconventional long hair. His Arabic teacher saw in him "a loving but controlled heart, an impetuous soul, a rebellious mind, an eye mocking everything it sees". However, the school’s strict and disciplined atmosphere was not to Gibran’s liking, who flagrantly flouted religious duties, skipped classes and drew sketches on books. At the school, Gibran met Joseph Hawaiik, with whom he started a magazine called al-Manarah (the Beacon), both editing while Gibran illustrated.
Meanwhile, Josephine Peabody, the twenty-four year old Bostonian beauty who caught Gibran’s attention during one of Day’s exhibitions, was intrigued by the young Syrian artist who dedicated a sketch to her, and began corresponding with Gibran throughout his stay in Lebanon. Soon, he became romantically involved with Josephine, and they kept exchanging letters until the relationship fell apart, following the rebuffal of Gibran’s marriage proposal and Josephine’s eventual marriage in 1906.
Gibran finished college in 1902, learning Arabic and French and excelling in his studies, especially poetry. Meanwhile, his relationship with his father became strained over Gibran’s advanced erudition, driving him to move in with his cousin and to live an impoverished life he detested and was ashamed of until the rest of his life. The poverty in Lebanon was compounded with news of illness striking his family, with his half-brother's consumption, his sister Sultana’s intestinal trouble and his mother’s developing cancer. Upon receiving news of Sultana’s dire illness, Gibran left Lebanon in March of 1902.
To his misfortune, Gibran arrived too late; Sultana died at the age of fourteen on April 4th 1902, the first in a series of three family deaths which will fall upon him in the coming months. Gibran was very fond of his sisters and of his family as a whole. At the time of mourning, both Day and Josephine provided distractions for him, in form of artistic shows and meetings at Boston’s artistic circles. Gibran’s artistic talents and unique behavior had captured earlier the interest of the Bostonian society, which welcomed this foreign talent into their artistic circles.
Josephine, who slowly captured Gibran’s heart, became an inflectional person in his life, the Bostonian poet constantly referring to Gibran as ‘her young prophet’. Greatly intrigued by his oriental background, Josephine was charmed by Gibran’s vividly illustrated correspondences and conversations. Josephine’s care and attention were the inspiration behind his book The Prophet, the title of which is based on an eleven-stanza poem Joesphine wrote in December of 1902 describing Gibran’s life in Bsharri as she envisaged it. Later on, when Gibran was to publish The Prophet, he dedicated it to Josephine, whose care and tenderness helped him advance his career.
Illness struck again when his mother underwent an operation in February to remove a cancerous tumor. To compound his misery, Gibran was forced to take on the family business and run the goods store, which was abandoned by his half-brother Peter to pursue his fortune in Cuba. This new burden weighed on Gibran’s spirit, depriving him from dedicating his time to artistic pursuits. During this time, Gibran tried to shy away from the house, to escape the atmosphere of death, poverty and illness. In the following month, Peter returned to Boston from Cuba fatally sick only to die days later on March 12 of consumption. His mother’s cancer continued to spread and she died later that year on June 28, a scene which left Gibran fainting and foaming blood from the mouth.
Following the three family deaths, Gibran sold out the family business and began immersing himself in improving both his Arabic and English writings, a twin task which he was to pursue for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Day and Josephine were helping him launch his debut art exhibition, which was to feature his allegorical and symbolic charcoal drawings that so fascinated Boston’s society. The exhibition opened on May 3, 1904, and proved a success with the critics. However, the exhibition’s significance lay elsewhere. Josephine, through her future husband, invited a schoolmistress called Mary Haskell to examine Gibran’s drawings. This introduction to the schoolmistress was to mark the beginning of a lifetime relationship, which would greatly influence Gibran’s writing career. Gibran had sought Josephine’s opinion about his Arabic writings, translating them into English. With the language barrier, Josephine could only provide criticism over ideas and thoughts, leaving Gibran alone to tackle his linguistic problems. Josephine’s role was to be taken over by Mary Haskell.
Mary Haskell, who was thirty at the time and ten years older than Gibran, will go on to finance Gibran’s artistic development and encourage him to become the artist that he aspired to be. As a school head mistress, Haskell was an educated, strong-willed and independent woman and an active champion of women’s liberation, who was set apart to Josephine Peabody’s romantic nature. Mary was the reason behind Gibran’s decision to explore writing in English, as she persuaded Gibran to refrain from translating his Arabic works to English and concentrate instead on writing in English directly. Mary’s collaboration and editing of his various English works polished Gibran’s work, most of which first underwent Mary’s editing before going to the publishers. She would spend hours with Gibran, going over his wording, correcting his mistakes and suggesting new ideas to his writings. She even attempted learning Arabic to gain a better grasp of Gibran’s language and his thoughts.
The significance of Mary’s relationship with Gibran is revealed through her diaries, in which she recorded Gibran’s artistic development, their personal and intellectual conversations and his innermost thoughts for nearly seventeen years and a half. These recordings have provided critics with valuable insight into Gibran’s personal thoughts and ideas, which he kept away from the public eye.
In 1904, Gibran started to contribute articles to the Arabic-speaking émigré newspaper called Al-Mouhajer (The Emigrant), marking his first published written work. His first publication was called ‘Vision’, a romantic essay that portrayed a caged bird amid an abundance of symbolism. Despite spending four years in Lebanon learning Arabic, Gibran’s written Arabic left something to be desired. To master Arabic, Gibran relied on his ear for capturing traditional vocabulary, depending heavily on the Arabic stories narrated in his hometown of Bsharri. Hence his Arabic writing had a colloquial feel to it, which was comfortable to his audiences. According to Gibran, rules of language were meant to be broken and he went on to advocate Arab émigré writers to break out of tradition and seek an individual style. Throughout his life, Gibran’s Arabic writings did not receive the critical acclaim his English books had, leading him later on to concentrate on his English writings and abandon the cause of improving his Arabic style.
Gibran’s first Arabic written work came out in 1905 with the publication of Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (Music), a book inspired by his brother’s 'oud playing and Day’s several invitations to the Opera. During that year, Gibran started a column in Al-Mohajer called ‘Tears and Laughter’’, which was to form the basis of his book A Tear and a Smile. While writing in Al-Mohajer, a certain Arabic émigré writer called Ameen Rihani, wrote to the magazine lauding Gibran’s article which attacked contemporary Arab writers for imitating traditional writers and using poetry for financial gain. Rihani was to become an important Arabic writer and a friend of Gibran’s, whom he later left for the life-long friendship of Mikhail Naimy. At the time, Gibran published several Arabic poems and wrote in newspapers, about various subjects relating to love, truth, beauty, death, good and evil. Most of his writings had a romantic edge to them, with bitter and ironic tones.
In 1906, Gibran published his second Arabic book called Arayis Al- Muruj (The Nymphs of the Valley), a collection of three allegories which take place in Northern Lebanon. The allegories- ‘Martha’, ‘Yuhanna the Mad’, and ‘Dust of Ages and the Eternal Fire’- dealt with issues relating to prostitution, religious persecution, reincarnation and pre-ordained love. The allegories were heavily influenced by the stories he heard back in Bsharri and his own fascination with the Bible, the mystical, and the nature of love. Gibran was to return to the subject of madness in his English book ‘The Madman,’ whose beginnings can be traced to Gibran’s early Arabic writings. What characterized Gibran’s early Arabic publications was the use of the ironic, the realism of the stories, the portrayal of second-class citizens and the anti-religious tone, all of which contrasted with the formalistic and traditional Arabic writings.
Gibran published his third Arabic book Al-Arwah Al-Mutamarridah (Spirits Rebellious) in March of 1908, a collection of four narrative writings based on his writing in Al-Mouhajer. The book dealt with social issues in Lebanon, portraying a married woman’s emancipation from her husband, a heretic’s call for freedom, a bride’s escape from an unwanted marriage through death and the brutal injustices of 19th century Lebanese feudal lords. These writings received strong criticism from the clergy for their bold ideas, their negative portrayal of clergymen and their encouragement of women’s liberation. Gibran was to later recall to Mary the dark period in which Spirits Rebellious was written, during a time when he was haunted by death, illness and loss of love. The anti-clerical content of the book threatened Gibran with excommunication from the church, with the book being censored by the Syrian government.
During one of Gibran's art exhibitions in 1914, an American architect, Albert Pinkam Ryder, paid an unexpected visit to the exhibition, leaving an impression on Gibran who decided to write an English poem in his honor. The poem, which was first edited by Mary, became Gibran’s first English publication, when it went out into print in January 1915.
Meanwhile, Gibran became more actively involved in the politics of the day, especially with the onset of World War I. To Gibran, the war suggested hope of liberating Ottoman-ruled Syria, through a united Arab military front, aided by a general Allied attack. He called on both Muslim and Christian sides to unite their forces against the oppressive Ottoman hegemony. In fact, Gibran fantasized about becoming a fighter and a romantic political hero, who is able to lead his country to liberation. When he actually suggested to Mary going over to Lebanon to fill a post of fighter, she adamantly refused.
In 1915, the pain he had suffered in his shoulder when he was young began to come back, and he underwent electrical treatment on his left shoulder, which had remained weak and in quasi-paralyzed state following the childhood accident. During the war years, Gibran went into a depression that distracted his thoughts and debilitated his health. Despite his active and widespread writings about the Arab uprising against the Ottomans, Giban felt helpless, contributing whatever money he spared to his starving Syria. To distract himself from war thoughts, Gibran tried to seek further recognition in New York, boosting his social life and joining in 1916 the literary magazine The Seven Arts. Gibran prided himself in being the first immigrant to join the board of this magazine, which reflected Gibran’s literary style. At the time, Gibran’s presence began to be demanded in literary circles, who craved to hear recitations from his books and writings.
By 1918, Gibran began to tell Mary of an Arabic work he had been working on which he called ‘my island man,’ the seeds of his most famous book The Prophet. Based on a Promethean man’s exile to an island, The Prophet evoked the journey of the banished man called Al Mustafa, or the Chosen One. In her diary, Mary recounted Gibran’s musings about the book, which he later called ‘the first book in my career –my first real book, my ripened fruit." Soon Gibran added to the work the title of the Commonwealth, a separate work he had attached to the story of Al Mustafa. Gibran was to later link the seeds of The Prophet to an Arabic work he did when he was sixteen years old, where a man at an inn discusses with the rest of the attendants various subjects. However, Gibran still worried about his English writing and he sought Mary’s advice constantly. Gibran had always been fascinated by the language of the Syriac Bible, which reflected Gibran’s views on the creation of ‘an absolute language’, a task he tried to achieve through his various English writings, through the creation of a unified universal style.
Mary was crucial to the development of The Prophet, for she advised Gibran to adopt the English language for this book. Gibran was further encouraged to pursue writing in English following the attention given to his soon-to-be-published book The Madman. The conversation Gibran had with Mary over the issues of marriage, life, death, love…infiltrated his chapters in The Prophet and various other works. However, Mary was against the title of The Prophet, which Gibran came up with in 1919, preferring the title ‘The Counsels,’ the name which she continued to use after the publication of the book. By the fall of 1918, Gibran was preparing to publish his first English book, and another Arabic poem called ‘Al-Mawakib’ (The Processions), his first serious attempt at writing a traditional Arabic poem with rhyme and meter.
Gibran's first English book The Madman came out in 1918 and received good reviews from the local press, who compared him to the Indian writer Tagore, famous for bridging the gap between East and West, and the English poet William Blake. The Madman, a collection of parables which was illustrated by Gibran, revealed the influence of Nietzsche, Jung and Tagore. Following the success of The Madman, Gibran’s popularity began to soar and gradually Gibran started losing touch with his old acquaintances, Day, Josephine, and now he dissolved his relationship with Rihani. Gibran relished the aura of mystery which he evoked among people, given his undisclosed accounts of his oriental background and his personal reserve.
In 1919, Gibran published his Arabic poem ‘Al-Mawakib’, which received little success from the Arab press. During the same year, Gibran joined the board of yet another local magazine Fatat Boston, to which he contributed several Arabic articles. Throughout his life, Gibran joined societies and magazines such as Al-Mouhajer, Al-Funnon, The Golden Links Society and Fatat-Boston, in order to create a mouthpiece for avant-garde Arabic writing and unite Arabic literature abroad. However, Gibran’s success as an Arabic writer remained limited. Ironically, his Arabic language was still not up to standards and received little success in the Arabic press.
In Fatat-Boston, Gibran developed a close relationship with an Arab immigrant writer Mikhail Naimy, whom he had met earlier in 1914. Naimy, a critical thinker at the time, was among the first Arab writers to acknowledge Gibran’s efforts at advancing the Arab language, and correctly making use of Arab customs and background. He treated Gibran’s The Broken Wings as an example of the universal language of literature, pointing out that Selma Karameh could have easily come from a Russian, English or Italian background. However, following Gibran’s death, Naimy immortalized Gibran, replacing the man with a godly image.
With Naimy, Gibran formed in April of 1911 a ten-member Arab émigré organization called Arrabitah Al-Qalamyiah, which promoted the publication of Arab writings and the transmission of world literature. Throughout its life, Arrabitah was led by Gibran’s call for greater artistic freedom, ever encouraging writers to break the rules and seek individual styles. During the time, Gibran’s involvement in his Arabic writings distracted him from completing The Prophet for a while. Moreover, Gibran vacillated between resuming work on The Prophet or embarking on a lecture tour, as his spreading popularity demanded more artistic presence from him. However, he continued to view himself as a spokesman of both the Arab and English worlds, a role whose difficulty he admitted.
Meanwhile, Gibran's political ideas were incensing local politicians in Syria, who reacted against his article which stated ‘You have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon.’ Gibran disapproved of the way the Syrian territories were being managed, and he wrote extensively on the identity of the emerging Arab countries, as the Greater Syria region began to be divided into Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. On the makeup of emerging countries, Gibran called on politicians to adopt the positive aspects of the Western culture and refrain from importing the surface values of guns and clothes. His political thought sooner gave way to a general view on the cultural makeup of countries and the way citizens ought to lead their lives.
By 1920, nearly three-quarters of The Prophet was done while Gibran’s Arab writings continued to occupy his time. In a poignant letter written to Mary, Gibran confessed that he has resolved the identity problem and has balanced the East and West influences, admitting that "I know now that I am a part of the whole -- a fragment of a jar.… Now I've found out where I fit, and in a way I am the jar -- and the jar is I."
In 1922, Gibran started to complain about heart trouble, which was later attributed to his nervous psychological state, and he personally admitted: "But my greatest pain is not physical. There’s something big in me…. I've always known it and I can’t get it out. It’s a silent greater self, sitting watching a smaller somebody in me do all sorts of things.’’ With the near compellation of work on The Prophet, Mary and Gibran acknowledged Nietzsche’s great influence on the book, which is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Mary had advised Gibran about the style of The Prophet, covering issues such as the use of capitalization, the use of punctuation marks and the form of paragraphs. Gibran had insisted that he wanted his paragraphs to remain short, almost becoming one lines. Mary had always pointed out that Gibran was a man of few words, who limited his letters to a minimum of words.
A few months before the publication of The Prophet, Gibran summarizeed the book to Mary: "The whole Prophet is saying one thing: ‘you are far far greater than you know -- and all is well.'
By 1923, Gibran had a well-established reputation in the Arab world through his Arabic articles, which he contributed to the various local and émigré Arabic newspapers. During this time, Gibran was gradually depending less on Mary as a financier and editor. He had agreed earlier with Mary to pay off his loans by sending her several of his paintings, an agreement which settled down their quarrels over money. And as Gibran's confidence in his English writings grew, his reliance on Mary's opinion dwindled. However, Mary’s face remained an inspiration in his illustrations, for soon Gibran will decide to restrict his paintings to book illustrations. The Prophet finally came into print in October of 1923, with a modest success in the U.S.
By 1923, Gibran had developed a close correspondence with an Arab writer, May Ziadeh. Their acceptance began in 1912, when she wrote to Gibran recalling to him how moved she was with the story of Selma Karameh in The Broken Wings.
May, an intellectual writer and an active proponent of women’s emancipation, was born in Palestine where she received classical education in a convent school. In 1908she had moved to Cairo where her father started a newspaper. Similar to Gibran, May was fluent in English, Arabic and French, and in 1911 she published her poems under the pseudonym Isis Copia. May found The Broken Wings too liberal for her own tastes, but the subject of women’s rights occupied her until the rest of her life and was a common passion between her and Gibran. Later on, May became a champion of Gibran’s writings and came to replace Mary’s role as an editor and conversant over the coming years. By 1921, Gibran had received her picture and they were to continue corresponding until the end of his life.
During the twenties, Gibran continued to be active in the political arena, writing extensively on the issue of culture and society and the need of the emerging Arab countries to transport the positive sides of Western culture. Gibran’s writings had remained controversial in his home country, especially with his liberal views on the Church and clergy. As a writer, Gibran relished controversy, and his writings reflected this spirit. His limited success in the Arab world drove Gibran to abandon the cause of gaining acceptance as an Arabic writer and he concentrated his efforts instead on writing in English. Slowly, Gibran was getting to grips with his writing, creating a style of language, as he revealed to Mary that he wished to write small unified books, which could be read in one sitting and carried in one’s pocket.
Mary's role in Gibran's writing career was gradually dwindling, but she came to his rescue when he made some bad investments. Mary had always handled Gibran’s financial affairs, ever present to extricate him from his bad financial keeping. However, Mary was about to make her life decision in 1923 by deciding to move into the house of a Southern landowner, to become his future wife in May of 1926. Gibran helped her reach this decision, which slightly clouded their relationship. However, Gibran continued to confide in Mary, and he told her about the second and third parts of The Prophet which he intended to write. The second part was to be called The Garden of the Prophet and it would recount the time the prophet spent in the garden on the island talking to his followers. The third part would be called The Death of the Prophet and it would describe the prophet’s return from the island and how he is imprisoned and freed only to be stoned to death in the market place. Gibran’s project was never to be completed, due to the deterioration of his health and his preoccupation with writing his longest English book, Jesus, The Son of Man.
As Mary slipped slowly out of his life, Gibran hired a new assistant Henrietta Breckenridge, who later played an important role following his death. She organized his works, helped him edit his writings and managed his studio for him. By 1926, Gibran had become a well-known international figure, a stance which was to his liking. Seeking a greater cosmopolitan exposure, Gibran began in 1926 to contribute articles to the quarterly journal The New Orient, which had an international approach encouraging the East and West to meet. At the time, he had started working on a new English work, Lazarus and His Beloved, which was based on an earlier Arabic work. This book was a dramatic collection of four poems recounting the Bible story of Lazarus, his quest for his soul and his eventual meeting of his soul mate.
In May of 1926, Mary married the Southern Landowner Florance Minis. At the time, Mary’s journals reveal Gibran’s perception with the writing of Jesus, The Son of Man. Writing the story of Jesus had been a lifetime ambition, especially the attempt at portraying Jesus as no one else has done before. Gibran had traced Jesus’ life from Syria to Palestine, never sparing a book that recounted his life journey. To Gibran, Jesus appeared as human acting in natural surroundings and he often had dreams about meeting his ideal character in the natural scenery of Bsharri. Gibran’s imagination was further fueled by the native stories he had heard in Lebanon about Jesus’ life and acts. Soon, by January of 1927 Mary was editing the book, for Gibran still relied on Mary’s editing before sending his works to print.
By 1928, Gibran’s health began to deteriorate, and the pain in his body due to his nervous state was on the increase, driving Gibran to seek relief in alcohol. Soon Gibran’s excess drinking turned him into an alcoholic at the height of the prohibition period in the U.S. That same year, Gibran was already thinking of the post-life and he began inquiring about purchasing a monastery in Bsharri, which was owned by Christian Carmelites. In November of 1928, Jesus, Son of Man was published and received good reviews from the local press, who delighted in Gibran’s treatment of Jesus, the Son of Man. By that time, the artistic circles thought it was high time Gibran was honored; by 1929 every possible society sought to give him a tribute. In honor of his literary success, a special anthology of Gibran’s early works was issued by Arrabitah under the title As-Sanabil.
Gibran’s mental health, however, and his alcohol addiction drove him in one evening to burst out crying, lamenting the weakness of his mature works. ‘I have lost my original creative power,’ he lamented to an audience during a reading of one of his mature works. By 1929, doctors were able to trace Gibran’s physical ailment to the enlargement of his livers. To avoid the issue of illness, Gibran ignored all medical care, relying instead on heavy drinking. To distract himself, Gibran turned to an old work about three Earth gods written in 1911. This new book recounts the story of three earth gods who watch the drama of a couple falling in love. Mary edited the book which went into print in mid-March of 1930.
By 1930, Gibran’s excessive drinking to escape the pain in his liver aggravated his disease, and hopes of finishing the second part of The Prophet, The Garden of the Prophet, dwindled. Gibran revealed to Mary his plans of building a library in Bsharri and soon he drew the last copy of his will. To his pen-pal May Ziadeh, Gibran revealed the fear of death as he admitted, ‘I am, May, a small volcano whose opening has been closed.'
On April 10th 1931, Gibran died at the age of forty-eight in a New York hospital, as the spreading cancer in his liver left him unconscious. The New York streets staged a two-day vigil for Gibran’s honor, whose death was mourned in the U.S. and Lebanon. His will left large amounts of money to his country, since he wanted his Syrian citizens to remain in their country and develop it rather than immigrate. Mary, Mariana and Henrietta all attended to Gibran’s studio, organizing his works, sorting out books, illustrations and drawings. To fulfill Gibran’s dream, Marianna and Mary travelled in July of 1931 to Lebanon to bury Gibran in his hometown of Bsharri. The citizens of Lebanon received his coffin with celebration rather than mourning, rejoicing his homecoming, for in death Gibran’s popularity increased. Upon Gibran’s return, The Lebanese Minister of Arts opened the coffins and honored his body with a decoration of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, Marianna and Mary started negotiating the purchase of the Carmelite monastery Gibran wished to obtain. By January of 1932, the Mar Sarkis monastery was bought and Gibran moved to his final resting-place. Upon Mary’s suggestion, his belongings, the books he read, and some of his works and illustrations were later shipped to provide a local collection in the monastery, which turned into a Gibran museum. ..
Kilde (which I hearty recommend ): www.PoemHunter.com
Gibran Khalil Gibran was born on January 6, 1883, to the Maronite family of Gibran in Bsharri, a mountainous area in Northern Lebanon.
Lebanon was a Turkish province part of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) and subjugated to Ottoman dominion, which granted the Mount Lebanon area autonomous rule. The people of Mount Lebanon had struggled for several years to gain independence from the Ottoman rule, a cause Gibran was later to adopt and become an active member in. The Mount Lebanon area was a troubled region, due to the various outside and foreign interferences that fostered religious hatred between the Christian, especially the Maronite sect, and Moslem populations. Later in his life, Gibran was to seek and unite the various religious sects, in a bid to abolish the religious snobbery, persecution and atrocities witnessed at his time. The Maronite sect, formed during the schism in the Byzantine church in the 5th century A.D., was made up of a group of Syrian Christians, who joined the monk St. Marun to lead their own sectarian thought.
His mother Kamila Rahmeh was thirty when she begot Gibran from her third husband Khalil Gibran, who proved to be an irresponsible husband leading the family to poverty. Gibran had a half-brother six years older than him called Peter and two younger sisters, Mariana and Sultana, whom he was deeply attached to throughout his life, along with his mother. Kamila’s family came from a prestigious religious background, which imbued the uneducated mother with a strong will and later on helped her raise up the family on her own in the U.S.
Growing up in the lush region of Bsharri, Gibran proved to be a solitary and pensive child who relished the natural surroundings of the cascading falls, the rugged cliffs and the neighboring green cedars, the beauty of which emerged as a dramatic and symbolic influence to his drawings and writings. Being laden with poverty, he did not receive any formal education or learning, which was limited to regular visits to a village priest who doctrined him with the essentials of religion and the Bible, alongside Syriac and Arabic languages. Recognizing Gibran’s inquisitive and alert nature, the priest began teaching him the rudiments of alphabet and language, opening up to Gibran the world of history, science, and language. At the age of ten, Gibran fell off a cliff, wounding his left shoulder, which remained weak for the rest of his life ever since this incident. To relocate the shoulder, his family strapped it to a cross and wrapped it up for forty days, a symbolic incident reminiscent of Christ’s wanderings in the wilderness and which remained etched in Gibran’s memory.
At the age of eight, Khalil Gibran, Gibran's father, was accused of tax evasion and was sent to prison as the Ottomon authorities confiscated the Gibrans’ property and left them homeless. The family went to live with relatives for a while; however, the strong-willed mother decided that the family should immigrate to the U.S., seeking a better life and following in suit to Gibran’s uncle who immigrated earlier. The father was released in 1894, but being an irresponsible head of the family he was undecided about immigration and remained behind in Lebanon.
On June 25, 1895, the Gibrans embarked on a voyage to the American shores of New York.
The Gibrans settled in Boston’s South End, which at the time hosted the second largest Syrian community in the U.S. following New York. The culturally diverse area felt familiar to Kamila, who was comforted by the familiar spoken Arabic, and the widespread Arab customs. Kamila, now the bread-earner of the family, began to work as a peddler on the impoverished streets of South End Boston. At the time, peddling was the major source of income for most Syrian immigrants, who were negatively portrayed due to their unconventional Arab ways and their supposed idleness.
Growing up into another impoverished period, Gibran was to recall the pain of the first few years, which left an indelible mark on his life and prompted him to reinvent his childhood memories, dispelling the filth, the poverty and the slurs. However, the work of charity institutions in the poor immigrant areas allowed the children of immigrants to attend public schools and keep them off the street, and Gibran was the only member of his family to pursue scholastic education. His sisters were not allowed to enter school, thwarted by Middle Eastern traditions as well as financial difficulties. Later on in his life, Gibran was to champion the cause of women’s emancipation and education and surround himself with strong-willed, intellectual and independent women.
In the school, a registration mistake altered his name forever by shortening it to Kahlil Gibran, which remained unchanged till the rest of his life despite repeated attempts at restoring his full name. Gibran entered school on September 30, 1895, merely two months after his arrival in the U.S. Having no formal education, he was placed in an ungraded class reserved for immigrant children, who had to learn English from scratch. Gibran caught the eye of his teachers with his sketches and drawings, a hobby he had started during his childhood in Lebanon.
With Kamila’s hard work, the family’s financial standing improved as her savings allowed Peter to set up a goods store, in which both of Gibran's sisters worked. The financial strains of the family and the distance from home brought the family together, with Kamila providing both financial and emotional support to her children, especially to her introverted son Gibran. During this difficult period, Gibran's remoteness from social life and his pensive nature were deepened, and Kamila was there to help him overcome his reservedness. The mother’s independence allowed him to mingle with Boston’s social life and explore its thriving world of art and literature.
Gibran's curiosity led him to the cultural side of Boston, which exposed him to the rich world of the theatre, Opera and artistic Galleries. Prodded by the cultural scenes around him and through his artistic drawings, Gibran caught the attention of his teachers at the public school, who saw an artistic future for the Syrian boy. They contacted Fred Holland Day, an artist and a supporter of artists who opened up Gibran’s cultural world and set him on the road to artistic fame.
Gibran met Fred Holland Day in 1896, and from then his road to recognition was reached through Day’s artistic unconventionality and his contacts in Boston’s artistic circles. Day introduced Gibran to Greek mythology, world literature, contemporary writings and photography, ever prodding the inquisitive Syrian to seek self-expression. Day’s liberal education and unconventional artistic exploration influenced Gibran, who was to follow Day’s unfettered adoption of the unusual for the sake of originality and self-actualization. Other than working on Gibran’s education, Day was instrumental in lifting his self-esteem, which had suffered under the immigrant treatment and poverty of the times. Not surprisingly, Gibran emerged as a fast learner, devouring everything handed over by Day, despite weak Arabic and English. Under Day’s tutelage, Gibran uttered his first religious beliefs, when he declared "I am no longer a Catholic: I am a pagan," after reading one book given by Day.
During one of Fred Holland Day’s art exhibitions, Gibran drew a sketch of a certain Miss Josephine Peabody, an unknown poet and writer who was to later become one of his failed love experiences; later on, Gibran was to propose marriage and be met with refusal, the first blow in a series of heartaches dealt to Gibran by the women he loved.
Continually encouraging Gibran to improve his drawings and sketches, Day was instrumental in getting Gibran’s images printed as cover designs for books in 1898. At the time, Gibran began to develop his own technique and style, encouraged by Day’s enthusiasm and support. Gradually, Gibran entered the Bostonian circles and his artistic talents brought him fame at an early age. However, his family decided that early success could cause him future problems, and with Gibran’s approval, the young artist went back to Lebanon to finish his education and learn Arabic.
In 1898, Gibran arrived in Beirut speaking poor English and even little Arabic; he could speak Arabic fluently, but not read nor write it. To improve his Arabic, Gibran chose to enroll in the school Madrasat-al-Hikmah, a Maronite-founded school which offered a nationalistic curriculum partial to church writings, history and liturgy. Gibran’s strong-willed nature refused to abide by the parochial curriculum, demanding an individual curriculum catering to his educational needs and aimed at a college level, a gesture indicative of Gibran’s rebellious and individualistic nature; his arrogance bordered on heresy. Nonetheless, the school acquiesced to his request, editing course material to Gibran's liking. He chose to immerse himself in the Arabic-language bible, intrigued by its style and writing, features of which echo in his various works. As a student, Gibran left a great impression on his teachers and fellow students, who were impressed with his outlandish and individualistic behavior, self-confidence, and his unconventional long hair. His Arabic teacher saw in him "a loving but controlled heart, an impetuous soul, a rebellious mind, an eye mocking everything it sees". However, the school’s strict and disciplined atmosphere was not to Gibran’s liking, who flagrantly flouted religious duties, skipped classes and drew sketches on books. At the school, Gibran met Joseph Hawaiik, with whom he started a magazine called al-Manarah (the Beacon), both editing while Gibran illustrated.
Meanwhile, Josephine Peabody, the twenty-four year old Bostonian beauty who caught Gibran’s attention during one of Day’s exhibitions, was intrigued by the young Syrian artist who dedicated a sketch to her, and began corresponding with Gibran throughout his stay in Lebanon. Soon, he became romantically involved with Josephine, and they kept exchanging letters until the relationship fell apart, following the rebuffal of Gibran’s marriage proposal and Josephine’s eventual marriage in 1906.
Gibran finished college in 1902, learning Arabic and French and excelling in his studies, especially poetry. Meanwhile, his relationship with his father became strained over Gibran’s advanced erudition, driving him to move in with his cousin and to live an impoverished life he detested and was ashamed of until the rest of his life. The poverty in Lebanon was compounded with news of illness striking his family, with his half-brother's consumption, his sister Sultana’s intestinal trouble and his mother’s developing cancer. Upon receiving news of Sultana’s dire illness, Gibran left Lebanon in March of 1902.
To his misfortune, Gibran arrived too late; Sultana died at the age of fourteen on April 4th 1902, the first in a series of three family deaths which will fall upon him in the coming months. Gibran was very fond of his sisters and of his family as a whole. At the time of mourning, both Day and Josephine provided distractions for him, in form of artistic shows and meetings at Boston’s artistic circles. Gibran’s artistic talents and unique behavior had captured earlier the interest of the Bostonian society, which welcomed this foreign talent into their artistic circles.
Josephine, who slowly captured Gibran’s heart, became an inflectional person in his life, the Bostonian poet constantly referring to Gibran as ‘her young prophet’. Greatly intrigued by his oriental background, Josephine was charmed by Gibran’s vividly illustrated correspondences and conversations. Josephine’s care and attention were the inspiration behind his book The Prophet, the title of which is based on an eleven-stanza poem Joesphine wrote in December of 1902 describing Gibran’s life in Bsharri as she envisaged it. Later on, when Gibran was to publish The Prophet, he dedicated it to Josephine, whose care and tenderness helped him advance his career.
Illness struck again when his mother underwent an operation in February to remove a cancerous tumor. To compound his misery, Gibran was forced to take on the family business and run the goods store, which was abandoned by his half-brother Peter to pursue his fortune in Cuba. This new burden weighed on Gibran’s spirit, depriving him from dedicating his time to artistic pursuits. During this time, Gibran tried to shy away from the house, to escape the atmosphere of death, poverty and illness. In the following month, Peter returned to Boston from Cuba fatally sick only to die days later on March 12 of consumption. His mother’s cancer continued to spread and she died later that year on June 28, a scene which left Gibran fainting and foaming blood from the mouth.
Following the three family deaths, Gibran sold out the family business and began immersing himself in improving both his Arabic and English writings, a twin task which he was to pursue for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Day and Josephine were helping him launch his debut art exhibition, which was to feature his allegorical and symbolic charcoal drawings that so fascinated Boston’s society. The exhibition opened on May 3, 1904, and proved a success with the critics. However, the exhibition’s significance lay elsewhere. Josephine, through her future husband, invited a schoolmistress called Mary Haskell to examine Gibran’s drawings. This introduction to the schoolmistress was to mark the beginning of a lifetime relationship, which would greatly influence Gibran’s writing career. Gibran had sought Josephine’s opinion about his Arabic writings, translating them into English. With the language barrier, Josephine could only provide criticism over ideas and thoughts, leaving Gibran alone to tackle his linguistic problems. Josephine’s role was to be taken over by Mary Haskell.
Mary Haskell, who was thirty at the time and ten years older than Gibran, will go on to finance Gibran’s artistic development and encourage him to become the artist that he aspired to be. As a school head mistress, Haskell was an educated, strong-willed and independent woman and an active champion of women’s liberation, who was set apart to Josephine Peabody’s romantic nature. Mary was the reason behind Gibran’s decision to explore writing in English, as she persuaded Gibran to refrain from translating his Arabic works to English and concentrate instead on writing in English directly. Mary’s collaboration and editing of his various English works polished Gibran’s work, most of which first underwent Mary’s editing before going to the publishers. She would spend hours with Gibran, going over his wording, correcting his mistakes and suggesting new ideas to his writings. She even attempted learning Arabic to gain a better grasp of Gibran’s language and his thoughts.
The significance of Mary’s relationship with Gibran is revealed through her diaries, in which she recorded Gibran’s artistic development, their personal and intellectual conversations and his innermost thoughts for nearly seventeen years and a half. These recordings have provided critics with valuable insight into Gibran’s personal thoughts and ideas, which he kept away from the public eye.
In 1904, Gibran started to contribute articles to the Arabic-speaking émigré newspaper called Al-Mouhajer (The Emigrant), marking his first published written work. His first publication was called ‘Vision’, a romantic essay that portrayed a caged bird amid an abundance of symbolism. Despite spending four years in Lebanon learning Arabic, Gibran’s written Arabic left something to be desired. To master Arabic, Gibran relied on his ear for capturing traditional vocabulary, depending heavily on the Arabic stories narrated in his hometown of Bsharri. Hence his Arabic writing had a colloquial feel to it, which was comfortable to his audiences. According to Gibran, rules of language were meant to be broken and he went on to advocate Arab émigré writers to break out of tradition and seek an individual style. Throughout his life, Gibran’s Arabic writings did not receive the critical acclaim his English books had, leading him later on to concentrate on his English writings and abandon the cause of improving his Arabic style.
Gibran’s first Arabic written work came out in 1905 with the publication of Nubthah fi Fan Al-Musiqa (Music), a book inspired by his brother’s 'oud playing and Day’s several invitations to the Opera. During that year, Gibran started a column in Al-Mohajer called ‘Tears and Laughter’’, which was to form the basis of his book A Tear and a Smile. While writing in Al-Mohajer, a certain Arabic émigré writer called Ameen Rihani, wrote to the magazine lauding Gibran’s article which attacked contemporary Arab writers for imitating traditional writers and using poetry for financial gain. Rihani was to become an important Arabic writer and a friend of Gibran’s, whom he later left for the life-long friendship of Mikhail Naimy. At the time, Gibran published several Arabic poems and wrote in newspapers, about various subjects relating to love, truth, beauty, death, good and evil. Most of his writings had a romantic edge to them, with bitter and ironic tones.
In 1906, Gibran published his second Arabic book called Arayis Al- Muruj (The Nymphs of the Valley), a collection of three allegories which take place in Northern Lebanon. The allegories- ‘Martha’, ‘Yuhanna the Mad’, and ‘Dust of Ages and the Eternal Fire’- dealt with issues relating to prostitution, religious persecution, reincarnation and pre-ordained love. The allegories were heavily influenced by the stories he heard back in Bsharri and his own fascination with the Bible, the mystical, and the nature of love. Gibran was to return to the subject of madness in his English book ‘The Madman,’ whose beginnings can be traced to Gibran’s early Arabic writings. What characterized Gibran’s early Arabic publications was the use of the ironic, the realism of the stories, the portrayal of second-class citizens and the anti-religious tone, all of which contrasted with the formalistic and traditional Arabic writings.
Gibran published his third Arabic book Al-Arwah Al-Mutamarridah (Spirits Rebellious) in March of 1908, a collection of four narrative writings based on his writing in Al-Mouhajer. The book dealt with social issues in Lebanon, portraying a married woman’s emancipation from her husband, a heretic’s call for freedom, a bride’s escape from an unwanted marriage through death and the brutal injustices of 19th century Lebanese feudal lords. These writings received strong criticism from the clergy for their bold ideas, their negative portrayal of clergymen and their encouragement of women’s liberation. Gibran was to later recall to Mary the dark period in which Spirits Rebellious was written, during a time when he was haunted by death, illness and loss of love. The anti-clerical content of the book threatened Gibran with excommunication from the church, with the book being censored by the Syrian government.
During one of Gibran's art exhibitions in 1914, an American architect, Albert Pinkam Ryder, paid an unexpected visit to the exhibition, leaving an impression on Gibran who decided to write an English poem in his honor. The poem, which was first edited by Mary, became Gibran’s first English publication, when it went out into print in January 1915.
Meanwhile, Gibran became more actively involved in the politics of the day, especially with the onset of World War I. To Gibran, the war suggested hope of liberating Ottoman-ruled Syria, through a united Arab military front, aided by a general Allied attack. He called on both Muslim and Christian sides to unite their forces against the oppressive Ottoman hegemony. In fact, Gibran fantasized about becoming a fighter and a romantic political hero, who is able to lead his country to liberation. When he actually suggested to Mary going over to Lebanon to fill a post of fighter, she adamantly refused.
In 1915, the pain he had suffered in his shoulder when he was young began to come back, and he underwent electrical treatment on his left shoulder, which had remained weak and in quasi-paralyzed state following the childhood accident. During the war years, Gibran went into a depression that distracted his thoughts and debilitated his health. Despite his active and widespread writings about the Arab uprising against the Ottomans, Giban felt helpless, contributing whatever money he spared to his starving Syria. To distract himself from war thoughts, Gibran tried to seek further recognition in New York, boosting his social life and joining in 1916 the literary magazine The Seven Arts. Gibran prided himself in being the first immigrant to join the board of this magazine, which reflected Gibran’s literary style. At the time, Gibran’s presence began to be demanded in literary circles, who craved to hear recitations from his books and writings.
By 1918, Gibran began to tell Mary of an Arabic work he had been working on which he called ‘my island man,’ the seeds of his most famous book The Prophet. Based on a Promethean man’s exile to an island, The Prophet evoked the journey of the banished man called Al Mustafa, or the Chosen One. In her diary, Mary recounted Gibran’s musings about the book, which he later called ‘the first book in my career –my first real book, my ripened fruit." Soon Gibran added to the work the title of the Commonwealth, a separate work he had attached to the story of Al Mustafa. Gibran was to later link the seeds of The Prophet to an Arabic work he did when he was sixteen years old, where a man at an inn discusses with the rest of the attendants various subjects. However, Gibran still worried about his English writing and he sought Mary’s advice constantly. Gibran had always been fascinated by the language of the Syriac Bible, which reflected Gibran’s views on the creation of ‘an absolute language’, a task he tried to achieve through his various English writings, through the creation of a unified universal style.
Mary was crucial to the development of The Prophet, for she advised Gibran to adopt the English language for this book. Gibran was further encouraged to pursue writing in English following the attention given to his soon-to-be-published book The Madman. The conversation Gibran had with Mary over the issues of marriage, life, death, love…infiltrated his chapters in The Prophet and various other works. However, Mary was against the title of The Prophet, which Gibran came up with in 1919, preferring the title ‘The Counsels,’ the name which she continued to use after the publication of the book. By the fall of 1918, Gibran was preparing to publish his first English book, and another Arabic poem called ‘Al-Mawakib’ (The Processions), his first serious attempt at writing a traditional Arabic poem with rhyme and meter.
Gibran's first English book The Madman came out in 1918 and received good reviews from the local press, who compared him to the Indian writer Tagore, famous for bridging the gap between East and West, and the English poet William Blake. The Madman, a collection of parables which was illustrated by Gibran, revealed the influence of Nietzsche, Jung and Tagore. Following the success of The Madman, Gibran’s popularity began to soar and gradually Gibran started losing touch with his old acquaintances, Day, Josephine, and now he dissolved his relationship with Rihani. Gibran relished the aura of mystery which he evoked among people, given his undisclosed accounts of his oriental background and his personal reserve.
In 1919, Gibran published his Arabic poem ‘Al-Mawakib’, which received little success from the Arab press. During the same year, Gibran joined the board of yet another local magazine Fatat Boston, to which he contributed several Arabic articles. Throughout his life, Gibran joined societies and magazines such as Al-Mouhajer, Al-Funnon, The Golden Links Society and Fatat-Boston, in order to create a mouthpiece for avant-garde Arabic writing and unite Arabic literature abroad. However, Gibran’s success as an Arabic writer remained limited. Ironically, his Arabic language was still not up to standards and received little success in the Arabic press.
In Fatat-Boston, Gibran developed a close relationship with an Arab immigrant writer Mikhail Naimy, whom he had met earlier in 1914. Naimy, a critical thinker at the time, was among the first Arab writers to acknowledge Gibran’s efforts at advancing the Arab language, and correctly making use of Arab customs and background. He treated Gibran’s The Broken Wings as an example of the universal language of literature, pointing out that Selma Karameh could have easily come from a Russian, English or Italian background. However, following Gibran’s death, Naimy immortalized Gibran, replacing the man with a godly image.
With Naimy, Gibran formed in April of 1911 a ten-member Arab émigré organization called Arrabitah Al-Qalamyiah, which promoted the publication of Arab writings and the transmission of world literature. Throughout its life, Arrabitah was led by Gibran’s call for greater artistic freedom, ever encouraging writers to break the rules and seek individual styles. During the time, Gibran’s involvement in his Arabic writings distracted him from completing The Prophet for a while. Moreover, Gibran vacillated between resuming work on The Prophet or embarking on a lecture tour, as his spreading popularity demanded more artistic presence from him. However, he continued to view himself as a spokesman of both the Arab and English worlds, a role whose difficulty he admitted.
Meanwhile, Gibran's political ideas were incensing local politicians in Syria, who reacted against his article which stated ‘You have your Lebanon and I have my Lebanon.’ Gibran disapproved of the way the Syrian territories were being managed, and he wrote extensively on the identity of the emerging Arab countries, as the Greater Syria region began to be divided into Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. On the makeup of emerging countries, Gibran called on politicians to adopt the positive aspects of the Western culture and refrain from importing the surface values of guns and clothes. His political thought sooner gave way to a general view on the cultural makeup of countries and the way citizens ought to lead their lives.
By 1920, nearly three-quarters of The Prophet was done while Gibran’s Arab writings continued to occupy his time. In a poignant letter written to Mary, Gibran confessed that he has resolved the identity problem and has balanced the East and West influences, admitting that "I know now that I am a part of the whole -- a fragment of a jar.… Now I've found out where I fit, and in a way I am the jar -- and the jar is I."
In 1922, Gibran started to complain about heart trouble, which was later attributed to his nervous psychological state, and he personally admitted: "But my greatest pain is not physical. There’s something big in me…. I've always known it and I can’t get it out. It’s a silent greater self, sitting watching a smaller somebody in me do all sorts of things.’’ With the near compellation of work on The Prophet, Mary and Gibran acknowledged Nietzsche’s great influence on the book, which is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Mary had advised Gibran about the style of The Prophet, covering issues such as the use of capitalization, the use of punctuation marks and the form of paragraphs. Gibran had insisted that he wanted his paragraphs to remain short, almost becoming one lines. Mary had always pointed out that Gibran was a man of few words, who limited his letters to a minimum of words.
A few months before the publication of The Prophet, Gibran summarizeed the book to Mary: "The whole Prophet is saying one thing: ‘you are far far greater than you know -- and all is well.'
By 1923, Gibran had a well-established reputation in the Arab world through his Arabic articles, which he contributed to the various local and émigré Arabic newspapers. During this time, Gibran was gradually depending less on Mary as a financier and editor. He had agreed earlier with Mary to pay off his loans by sending her several of his paintings, an agreement which settled down their quarrels over money. And as Gibran's confidence in his English writings grew, his reliance on Mary's opinion dwindled. However, Mary’s face remained an inspiration in his illustrations, for soon Gibran will decide to restrict his paintings to book illustrations. The Prophet finally came into print in October of 1923, with a modest success in the U.S.
By 1923, Gibran had developed a close correspondence with an Arab writer, May Ziadeh. Their acceptance began in 1912, when she wrote to Gibran recalling to him how moved she was with the story of Selma Karameh in The Broken Wings.
May, an intellectual writer and an active proponent of women’s emancipation, was born in Palestine where she received classical education in a convent school. In 1908she had moved to Cairo where her father started a newspaper. Similar to Gibran, May was fluent in English, Arabic and French, and in 1911 she published her poems under the pseudonym Isis Copia. May found The Broken Wings too liberal for her own tastes, but the subject of women’s rights occupied her until the rest of her life and was a common passion between her and Gibran. Later on, May became a champion of Gibran’s writings and came to replace Mary’s role as an editor and conversant over the coming years. By 1921, Gibran had received her picture and they were to continue corresponding until the end of his life.
During the twenties, Gibran continued to be active in the political arena, writing extensively on the issue of culture and society and the need of the emerging Arab countries to transport the positive sides of Western culture. Gibran’s writings had remained controversial in his home country, especially with his liberal views on the Church and clergy. As a writer, Gibran relished controversy, and his writings reflected this spirit. His limited success in the Arab world drove Gibran to abandon the cause of gaining acceptance as an Arabic writer and he concentrated his efforts instead on writing in English. Slowly, Gibran was getting to grips with his writing, creating a style of language, as he revealed to Mary that he wished to write small unified books, which could be read in one sitting and carried in one’s pocket.
Mary's role in Gibran's writing career was gradually dwindling, but she came to his rescue when he made some bad investments. Mary had always handled Gibran’s financial affairs, ever present to extricate him from his bad financial keeping. However, Mary was about to make her life decision in 1923 by deciding to move into the house of a Southern landowner, to become his future wife in May of 1926. Gibran helped her reach this decision, which slightly clouded their relationship. However, Gibran continued to confide in Mary, and he told her about the second and third parts of The Prophet which he intended to write. The second part was to be called The Garden of the Prophet and it would recount the time the prophet spent in the garden on the island talking to his followers. The third part would be called The Death of the Prophet and it would describe the prophet’s return from the island and how he is imprisoned and freed only to be stoned to death in the market place. Gibran’s project was never to be completed, due to the deterioration of his health and his preoccupation with writing his longest English book, Jesus, The Son of Man.
As Mary slipped slowly out of his life, Gibran hired a new assistant Henrietta Breckenridge, who later played an important role following his death. She organized his works, helped him edit his writings and managed his studio for him. By 1926, Gibran had become a well-known international figure, a stance which was to his liking. Seeking a greater cosmopolitan exposure, Gibran began in 1926 to contribute articles to the quarterly journal The New Orient, which had an international approach encouraging the East and West to meet. At the time, he had started working on a new English work, Lazarus and His Beloved, which was based on an earlier Arabic work. This book was a dramatic collection of four poems recounting the Bible story of Lazarus, his quest for his soul and his eventual meeting of his soul mate.
In May of 1926, Mary married the Southern Landowner Florance Minis. At the time, Mary’s journals reveal Gibran’s perception with the writing of Jesus, The Son of Man. Writing the story of Jesus had been a lifetime ambition, especially the attempt at portraying Jesus as no one else has done before. Gibran had traced Jesus’ life from Syria to Palestine, never sparing a book that recounted his life journey. To Gibran, Jesus appeared as human acting in natural surroundings and he often had dreams about meeting his ideal character in the natural scenery of Bsharri. Gibran’s imagination was further fueled by the native stories he had heard in Lebanon about Jesus’ life and acts. Soon, by January of 1927 Mary was editing the book, for Gibran still relied on Mary’s editing before sending his works to print.
By 1928, Gibran’s health began to deteriorate, and the pain in his body due to his nervous state was on the increase, driving Gibran to seek relief in alcohol. Soon Gibran’s excess drinking turned him into an alcoholic at the height of the prohibition period in the U.S. That same year, Gibran was already thinking of the post-life and he began inquiring about purchasing a monastery in Bsharri, which was owned by Christian Carmelites. In November of 1928, Jesus, Son of Man was published and received good reviews from the local press, who delighted in Gibran’s treatment of Jesus, the Son of Man. By that time, the artistic circles thought it was high time Gibran was honored; by 1929 every possible society sought to give him a tribute. In honor of his literary success, a special anthology of Gibran’s early works was issued by Arrabitah under the title As-Sanabil.
Gibran’s mental health, however, and his alcohol addiction drove him in one evening to burst out crying, lamenting the weakness of his mature works. ‘I have lost my original creative power,’ he lamented to an audience during a reading of one of his mature works. By 1929, doctors were able to trace Gibran’s physical ailment to the enlargement of his livers. To avoid the issue of illness, Gibran ignored all medical care, relying instead on heavy drinking. To distract himself, Gibran turned to an old work about three Earth gods written in 1911. This new book recounts the story of three earth gods who watch the drama of a couple falling in love. Mary edited the book which went into print in mid-March of 1930.
By 1930, Gibran’s excessive drinking to escape the pain in his liver aggravated his disease, and hopes of finishing the second part of The Prophet, The Garden of the Prophet, dwindled. Gibran revealed to Mary his plans of building a library in Bsharri and soon he drew the last copy of his will. To his pen-pal May Ziadeh, Gibran revealed the fear of death as he admitted, ‘I am, May, a small volcano whose opening has been closed.'
On April 10th 1931, Gibran died at the age of forty-eight in a New York hospital, as the spreading cancer in his liver left him unconscious. The New York streets staged a two-day vigil for Gibran’s honor, whose death was mourned in the U.S. and Lebanon. His will left large amounts of money to his country, since he wanted his Syrian citizens to remain in their country and develop it rather than immigrate. Mary, Mariana and Henrietta all attended to Gibran’s studio, organizing his works, sorting out books, illustrations and drawings. To fulfill Gibran’s dream, Marianna and Mary travelled in July of 1931 to Lebanon to bury Gibran in his hometown of Bsharri. The citizens of Lebanon received his coffin with celebration rather than mourning, rejoicing his homecoming, for in death Gibran’s popularity increased. Upon Gibran’s return, The Lebanese Minister of Arts opened the coffins and honored his body with a decoration of Fine Arts. Meanwhile, Marianna and Mary started negotiating the purchase of the Carmelite monastery Gibran wished to obtain. By January of 1932, the Mar Sarkis monastery was bought and Gibran moved to his final resting-place. Upon Mary’s suggestion, his belongings, the books he read, and some of his works and illustrations were later shipped to provide a local collection in the monastery, which turned into a Gibran museum. ..
Kilde (which I hearty recommend ): www.PoemHunter.com
søndag 19. oktober 2008
For the immortal spirit of Marija Gimbutas - "Old Europe" by Cyndi Dawson
Old Europe by Cyndi Dawson
I dreamed of an earth quake
That opened the ground
Unearthed a civilization
Laid bare before our eyes
Illustrious statues of fertile
Untouched
Completely preserved
Soft rains rinsing ash
Revealed
From the closing
Of the last eyes
To mine opening…
I dreamed
The pregnant spring
Sustaining a life of
Peace & prosperity
I dreamed the altar
A – flame
I saw their faces
A – glow
I felt their art
I felt their heart
What drove us to abandon our Selves?
To the call of unequal Gods and war?
Surrendering the rich soil
To the burial of bones & artefacts
To springs of dying crops
To fields of crosses scattered
Like black crows pecking at rotted flesh?
What drove us to abandon our potential?
For this turning history of man?
There was a fertile spring once
I dreamed mounds of clay that drenched primitive hands
Rose up from the crevice formed
Revealed itself in iconic pottery & relics
Revealed itself symbolically
Read openly to those who would care to listen closely
Who understood the handing down
There was a Civilization etched upon mind’s eye
We lived in peace
We lived in peace
An animation of the words of "Old Europe" - an epic poem by Cyndi Dawson. Her poem was in turn inspired by the documentary "Signs Out of Time" which was based on the life and work of Marija Gimbutas.
Music by Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and Tommy Aboussleman
Guitar: Tommy Aboussleman
Words/Vocals: Cyndi Dawson - "Nor' Easter"
Motherless City (By Cyndi Dawson)
Whip smart aren't we all at eighteen
Right out of school the only rule is free to be
No house to sneak back to no mother to fight with
Bodies to dance with friends to get high with
Turn the corner, here we are
Rent split four ways and four bodies in
Three beds who ate my friggin rice cakes,
Borrowed my leg warmers without asking...
I'm an angry girl, angry angry angry
Watch me peel my way past the big muscled
Bouncers watch me lead the way to the stage
Watch my body undulate it is the biggest weapon
I have watch me drink for free boys are so stupid
Boys are so beautiful watch me watch the boys
Whip smart aren't we all clutching our pillows,
Drowning out noise of a cavernous loft where a
Guitar sits against the wall, tired after seduction.
If I rise out of this self claimed spot in this
Lumpy bed I will have to walk past the spot where
You are holding a strange girl in your arms.
I miss my mothers house. One I left at fifteen.
I knew it all, then, as well. I knew it all. I needed no one.
I needed nothing. The umbilical cord officially severed.
Angry girl packs her bag and off she goes seeks fame and
Fortune, maybe cappuchinos. cappuchinos are cool, cool
Is essential in this city with no mother.
This is a motherless frenetic machine that spits the weak
Onto streets and I'm too angry for streets. Don't even try.
Watch me double dutch my strut watch me, watch me
There is nothing I need there is nothing I want that I cannot
Get for myself. I need no one. Watch me press the boy
Against the wall, slam shazaam watch me flip his
Switch look whose got the moves whip smart stupid girl
Girls are so stupid. Girls are so beautiful. I don't
Need no one or nothing. I just want to be eighteen and left the
Hell alone.
This is a motherless city.
I dreamed of an earth quake
That opened the ground
Unearthed a civilization
Laid bare before our eyes
Illustrious statues of fertile
Untouched
Completely preserved
Soft rains rinsing ash
Revealed
From the closing
Of the last eyes
To mine opening…
I dreamed
The pregnant spring
Sustaining a life of
Peace & prosperity
I dreamed the altar
A – flame
I saw their faces
A – glow
I felt their art
I felt their heart
What drove us to abandon our Selves?
To the call of unequal Gods and war?
Surrendering the rich soil
To the burial of bones & artefacts
To springs of dying crops
To fields of crosses scattered
Like black crows pecking at rotted flesh?
What drove us to abandon our potential?
For this turning history of man?
There was a fertile spring once
I dreamed mounds of clay that drenched primitive hands
Rose up from the crevice formed
Revealed itself in iconic pottery & relics
Revealed itself symbolically
Read openly to those who would care to listen closely
Who understood the handing down
There was a Civilization etched upon mind’s eye
We lived in peace
We lived in peace
An animation of the words of "Old Europe" - an epic poem by Cyndi Dawson. Her poem was in turn inspired by the documentary "Signs Out of Time" which was based on the life and work of Marija Gimbutas.
Music by Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and Tommy Aboussleman
Guitar: Tommy Aboussleman
Words/Vocals: Cyndi Dawson - "Nor' Easter"
Motherless City (By Cyndi Dawson)
Whip smart aren't we all at eighteen
Right out of school the only rule is free to be
No house to sneak back to no mother to fight with
Bodies to dance with friends to get high with
Turn the corner, here we are
Rent split four ways and four bodies in
Three beds who ate my friggin rice cakes,
Borrowed my leg warmers without asking...
I'm an angry girl, angry angry angry
Watch me peel my way past the big muscled
Bouncers watch me lead the way to the stage
Watch my body undulate it is the biggest weapon
I have watch me drink for free boys are so stupid
Boys are so beautiful watch me watch the boys
Whip smart aren't we all clutching our pillows,
Drowning out noise of a cavernous loft where a
Guitar sits against the wall, tired after seduction.
If I rise out of this self claimed spot in this
Lumpy bed I will have to walk past the spot where
You are holding a strange girl in your arms.
I miss my mothers house. One I left at fifteen.
I knew it all, then, as well. I knew it all. I needed no one.
I needed nothing. The umbilical cord officially severed.
Angry girl packs her bag and off she goes seeks fame and
Fortune, maybe cappuchinos. cappuchinos are cool, cool
Is essential in this city with no mother.
This is a motherless frenetic machine that spits the weak
Onto streets and I'm too angry for streets. Don't even try.
Watch me double dutch my strut watch me, watch me
There is nothing I need there is nothing I want that I cannot
Get for myself. I need no one. Watch me press the boy
Against the wall, slam shazaam watch me flip his
Switch look whose got the moves whip smart stupid girl
Girls are so stupid. Girls are so beautiful. I don't
Need no one or nothing. I just want to be eighteen and left the
Hell alone.
This is a motherless city.
Signs out of time is based on the life and work of archeologist Marija Gimbutas
A documentary on archeologist Marija Gimbutas, who found that Europe's origins lay in a cooperative, peaceful, neolitihic Goddess culture. Her theories challenge conventional archaeology, spirituality, theology, and religious studies, while inspiring artists, feminists, environmentalists and activists. Watch and become inspired. But you have to be patient!!!
I still have a dream... Martin Luther King 1963
The March on Washington August 28, 1963. Listen to the full version of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech.
Martin Luther King's last speech. Prophetic words. He was assassinated the next day!
mandag 13. oktober 2008
Women in art
A collection of some of the most beautiful women and romantic art through history. Music by Jimmy Gelhaar.
Music:
Beethoven: "Moonlight Sonata"
Bach: "Air On The G String"
Debussy: "Clair de Lune"
Dvorak: "The New World" [from Symphony number 9]
søndag 12. oktober 2008
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotskij Tribute (1938 - 1980)
VARGJAKTEN oversatt til svensk av Ola og Carsten Palmær
Strupen brinner. Jag springer, springer
men idag är allt som igår.
De har oss i fällan, de har oss i fällan.
Vi springer i cirkel, i blodiga spår.
De lyfter bössorna, de skrattar och siktar
och luften stinker av blod och bly.
Vargarna snavar. Vargarna stupar.
Vi kan inte hugga. Vi kan inte fly.
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna,
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
Kampen är ojämn. De skjuter ur bakhåll
och ingen darrar på handen idag.
De stänger vår frihet med röda flaggor
de känner vargarna och vargarnas lag
de vet att vi alltid följer flocken
att när vi var ungar och mor gav oss di
så fick vi i oss med modersmjölken
att röda flaggor går ingen förbi!
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
Våra ben är snabba. Och käftarna starka
så svara mig, ledarvarg, svara mig du,
varför låter vi oss hetsas och slaktas
varför lyder vi flockens tabu?
Vi kan inte, får inte bryta mot lagen.
Min stund är inne. Jag blundar
när han som ska bli mitt öde
ler och lyfter sitt blanka gevär.
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
Jag vägrade lyda. Jag sprang igenom.
Jag trotsade flaggorna och bröt mig ut.
Min livstörst var starkare än flockens lagar,
nu hör jag jägarns förvånade tjut
och strupen brinner, jag springer, jag springer
men allt är inte idag som igår
I jag var i fällan, men bröt mig ur den
och utan byte får jägarna stå.
De skjuter vargar, ohoj, de skjuter vargar!
Nu ropar jägarna, nu ylar hundarna,
de skjuter honorna, de skjuter ungarna
och snön är röd som deras flaggor av vårt blod.
WOLF HUNT by Kathryn and Bruce Hamilton
In my flight, sinews bursting, I hurtle,
But as yesterday - so now today,
They've cornered me! Driven me, encircled,
Towards the huntsmen that wait for their prey!
From the fir-trees the rifle-shots quicken -
In the shadows the huntsmen lie low.
As they fire, the wives somersault, stricken,
Living targets brought down on the snow.
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
In the fight heavy odds have opposed us,
But the merciless huntsmen keep ranks.
With the flags on their ropes they've enclosed us.
They take aim and they fire at point blank.
For a wolf cannot break with tradition.
With milk sucked from the she-wolfs dugs
The blind cubs learn the stern prohibition
Never, never to cross the red flags!
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
We are swift and our jaws are rapacious.
Why then, chief, like a tribe that's oppressed,
Must we rush towards the weapons that face us
And that precept be never transgressed?
For a wolf cannot change the old story
The end looms and my time's, almost done.
Now the huntsman who's made me his quarry
Gives a smile as he raises his gun.
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
But revolt and the life-force are stronger
Than the fear that the red flags instil
From behind come dismayed cries of anger
As I cheat them, with joy, of their kill.
In my flight, sinews bursting I hurtle,
But the outcome is different today!
I was cornered! They trapped me encircled!
But the huntsmen were foiled of their prey!
They're hunting wolves! The hunt is on, pursuing
The wily predators, the she-wolf and her brood.
The beaters shout, the dogs bay, almost spewing.
The flags on the snow are red, as red as the blood.
A HUNT ON WOLVES by Nellie Tkach
I strain myself out of all my might and sinew,
But today, just like yesterday,
I am close rounded.
They've cornered me, for God's sake!
They are keeping after, joyfully driving me at all speeds!
The rifles behind the fir-trees are keeping themselves busy -
There, the hunters hide in the shadows -
The wolves are frolicking on the snow,
Turned into a live target.
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
It's not a fair game they are playing,
But no hand trembles, -
Our freedom blocked by flags,
They strike safely, for sure!
A wolf can't fail his customs, -
Long time ago-blind puppies,
We, little ones, sucked our mother,
And sucked in: don't go outside of flags!
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
Our feet and jaws are swift,
Tell us, our leader, - why do we then
Rush onward, into the shots,
And not through the restraint?!
A wolf can not, must not do otherwise.
Now my time has ended:
The one I am intended for,
Smiled and raised his rifle.
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
I came out of the obedience trance -
Beyond the flags - my thirst for life is stronger,
Behind me I heard triumphantly
Their bewildered cries.
I strain myself out of all my might and sinew,
But today, not like yesterday,
I was close rounded.
They've cornered me, for God's sake!
But the hunters were left with nothing!
The hunt is on! The hunt on wolves,
On gray beasts, full-grown and puppies!
The beaters shout and the hounds bark until they're retching,
There is blood on snow and red spots of flags.
Here is a song "Chuzhoj Dom" - "The Foreign House", typical of the style of the great Russian singer and poet Vladimir Vysotskij. Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotskij, in Russian Влади́мир Семёнович Высо́цкий (1938 - 1980), was perhaps the brightest artistic mind in the former Soviet Union. A highly anti-establishemnt song-writer and singer, and became somewhat of a folk hero. His main occupation was as a lead actor at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow, where he became particularly famous for playing Hamlet in an off-stream performance of Shakespeare's play. Vysotskij appeared in several movies. He also wrote songs and soundracks for many movies and often sang them himself. Being in a constant conflict with Soviet authorities resulted in periodic bans of his songs. He became known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which incorporated social and political commentary into often humorous street vocabulary. His lyrics resonated with millions of Soviet people in every corner of the country; his songs were sung at house parties and amateur concerts. He died at age 42 in a hospital in Moscow during the 1980 Olympic Games. It was estimated that over one million people attended Vysotskij's funeral, almost as many as that of Pope John Paul II in 2005. Soon after his death an asteroid was named Vladvysotskij in his honor. Cosmonauts took his music on tape cassette into orbit. Vysotskij was married to the French actress (of Russian descent) Marina Vlady. Vysotskij's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Bob Dylan in America. In his last years, he managed to perform outside the USSR and held concerts in Paris, Toronto and New York City. Vysotskij composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar.
Listen to his intense voice and enjoy!
Video of Vladimir Vysotsky performing Cupola. It is his last recorded performance before his death.
I recommend:
- "Sånger av Vysotskij" by Dan Fägerquist & eldsjäl
- "Fägerquist sjunger sånger av Vysotskij live på mosebacke"
- www.myspace.com/fagerquist
- "Bortom Vett och Förnuft". Jon Denman from Sweden singing Vladimir Vysotskij.
- "Den sentimentale bokser - Vysotskij på dansk (1999)". Per Warming from Denmark.
- "Russlands Hus - Vladimir Vysotskij (1996)" by Jørn Simen Øverli from Norway
- " Vysotskij, Vladimir: Vargjakten. 48 sånger i tolkning av Carsten och Ola Palmær"
lørdag 11. oktober 2008
A tribute to Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)
Self Portraits Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)
The song "Vincent" (Starry, Starry Night) by Don McLean is a tribute to Vincent van Gogh, famous Painter from Holland who was only recognized as a genius after his death.
Please forgive them Vincent... They would not listen - They're not listening still - Perhaps they never will. Rest in peace!
Vincent - Don McLean
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now
For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you
Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn on a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow
Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will
Sad, Mad Vincent, how we both wandered, never really going home
Everywhere I look
Oh I see the magic
And I somehow
Try to capture it
It's been the only way
To turn from lonely
Even though
I'm losing grip
Oh I just
can't
I just can't stay
It's really hard to sleep
With these paintings everywhere
It's sad to see this beauty
When I'm dieing of despair
I can't sleep
And I can't go on
Been so lonely here today
Been so lonely -
so lonely
for so long
Oh I
I just can't stay
Oh really
I can't stay
Day in day out something drives me and I
stop to paint
all these miracles of color
Don't want to listen to all these
voices in my head
telling me that this ain't life
that I should choose another...
Arles, a town in the South of France
When the sun bursts from the clouds, bursts from behind and beyond doubt -
if you're lucky
Vincent
All you'll remember seeing are the rooftops
A town of rooftops
Not a town painted in pain
It ain't funny.
What a difference,
a day don't make.
It's kind of frightening?
How you let yourself,
get this way?
You had time.
That was back when you had it made.
But you sold out time
Like you had so much time,
left to save.
Gonna take an earthquake
To hit you
Right between the eyes
Gonna take an earthquake
Just to get you,
to read between the lines
Man it ain't funny……
Sad mad Vincent
you can hear the children laughing
they've made you part of their children's game
You stumble through the dusty street
wondering if even the whores
will right away forget your name
It's getting harder to believe
any more
that anything is true
You never set out to
hurt no one
you could never be that cruel
There's voices in your head
today
the voices you can't drink away
They're taunting you
like the children's game
Telling you "Don't put that gun away."
If only they would let you sleep
If only Paul had stayed
if only there could be some rest
not just the kind you'll find in death
Sad mad Vincent
the gypsies dance in Avignon
They mutilate their children
So they'll beg better - bring a lot of money home
How could you have ever known?
You'd feel this sad until you finally had to go?
Sad mad Vincent
I also stared all night at a gun
held it in my hand like a lover
but i threw it down in shame and prayed that i'd see tomorrow come
Sad mad Vincent
I also wandered midnight streets alone
But i prayed that there'd be someone somewhere
who would take me in before i choose to let it all go
Hey Vincent, remember the gypsies
in Aix en Province?
Do you remember the punk from Chicago
he was back from Marseilles after sleeping in the park by the train station with
his guitar chained to his arm?
The drunks gave him wide berth because he was "sick and dirty
more dead than alive?"(Lou Reed)
Or did i see you?
Mad sad Vincent in all the hallow eyes of all the
rag-tags and hopeful hopeless ones who hadn't much of anything to carry with them and eyed my guitar with careful strategy and in fact that morning on the beach in Brindisi, I awoke with a start, inhaling the foul stink of decayed fish and then the fetid breath, wine - stale garlic coming from the mouth of that skinny Italian hood who was trying to cut the guitar case away from my hand and who could have had it - the hand, the guitar, but i sneered and mouthed "Musica - man you're taking my life - Lavida - life!!! and he left with reluctance while i dug up the bottle of wine I'd buried the night before when the kids from the boat left me after warning that the beach was not safe and was i fucking insane to think i could sleep there without getting robbed - sliced up like a loaf of warm bread but i didn't pay them any heed and woke up with the hood's knees pressing into my gasping chest and
Sad mad Vincent -
i was heading to see where you'd painted and loved and drank and smoked and died in the town of roof-tops - Arles and then i'd lay back in that beat hotel room with windows open - calling out at all the whores in Avignon
but me too
i
as well
as you must have known as we must have passed each other by, a million times on that troubled trip through France and the world and always
i can't wipe away the slander from my sore and tired red eyes
could never, Vincent, ease enough pure joy into my heart to stop feeling so fucking sad -
you'd of had to know that you couldn't stay so sad so all alone for ever that there would be other's and that's always
how you'd pass me by
two forever unknowns - hipsters bent on deciding that what's worth it rarely is
so then must be
ain't gonna
or will never
we pass each other by
infinitely sad we could barely hold back tears when all around us there is always laughter and it is often emanating from the words and expressions we have lauded - have thrown as sacrifice or payment of passage
it's laughter we have brought to all those others, and eternal goofs-
we clown and sometimes in no particular hurry,
we die.
Passing through Paris and hating being hated to the point it all was funny enough to
dash madly through the rain and the crowds and jump over the turn-styles to make the famous elevated - high speed trains filled with workers and stuffy going nowhere Parisians who have loafs of bread under their arms
and Vincent I also passed you by on the Island in Greece where I know you hardly had time to rest before they were throwing me out of hotel after hotel for sexual fiasco's and broken beds after the slow boat left with my heart broken as i sat with the itinerant dog - another Iggy.
We watched that boat it took a hundred years to drift off with her still leaning on the back rail, our eyes locked and she had given me what money she had left and was on her way back to London and her blue eyes were gifts of magic she lent to me
before i was sure that like you Vincent - sad and mad, i was sure that i was going to love her for ever and the whole village was jealous that in only one day i had taken away from their Latin macho sensitivities, the most beautiful of all tourists to come to the Island that year and half that village hated me more than hatred while the other half laughed and applauded as i fell out of their hotels and finally had to sleep in the unfinished construction project i had been working on with George the pirate -
Vincent - you have gone and done all these historical moments before i had even been born but each step of the way
i saw you
and you sadly shook your head when
you knew all too well that i would one day
find it all too much and you could only pass me by
And…
Vincent, my sad, mad Vincent
you talked about that special radiant sunshine and
what it could do to color and how the wind moved so your lines also
moved , I wonder how often you talked of living when each day you were dying in the coldest atmosphere – an atmosphere of indifference.
Your brother Leo,
sometimes it was all one big party and
he always helped but he couldn't believe – he
didn't believe and that was dieing too Vincent. Yeah that was dieing too.
You never sold a painting.
You gave them away for your heart breaks were also breaking from the kindness of the street.
I passed you by, huddled in a doorway in Florence, you, called to me
You passed me a bottle and I drank like I had done in all the worlds' doorways and alleys and early morning mist.
When Tinkers, bleeding and foul in that alley behind the bar in Sligo Bay, Ireland, when I was sixteen and they had me go by that cheap cider and we smoked and drank and I thought that I was finally living but you Vincent, you could already see that I was dieing all the time and had started a
fantastic slide to so many depths of alone and outcast, and knew that I would have to be
bold and would have to be strong if I were to continue dieing each day and
cared to feel - to see, all and everything that was out there in one mad glance and wanted more – always more, like the Tinkers in the alley wanted more Hard Cider
and later Vincent you must have
smiled to see me worried when the Tinker on the horse-cart, whipped his animal and guide hard
upon its sweating flanks and the horse just took the cart around and around in front of that fancy restaurant and
unsure what exactly the man was screaming about and making such a fuss, the horse continued moving in circles.
I was also moving in circles Vincent, unsure and still looking steady and straight ahead so that sometimes I fooled everyone into believing I was their leader. But I guess you knew – you knew all along.
Sad, mad Vincent Van Gogh
You had to know that we could only just
Only just almost make it – look as if we belonged, look as if we were strong, looked as if we were happening.
it turns out
fallin apart took me to pieces
and i wandered today
afraid this time
for the sun to go away
feeling like
there just won't be a reason
strong
enough
except maybe just a hug
Sad, mad Vincent all through my journey I had hoped that I'd emulate surpass are just find heroes. You falling apart watching me fall apart like I had been this forgotten fighter in the ring of chance pugilistic, chin tucked into my only reserve, throwing aside caution to live and you who had paid also so dearly to live in a cold atmosphere where we have sat and gazed blank eyed into the distance where memories have been stored forever for the day when you could just not make me understand that I had better stay down, or I'd eventually get…..
No one believed.
That it could turn out this way.
So beaten and dragged.
In so too much pain.
Each breath's a struggle.
Like a to be or not to be
day.
Could i have missed it?
That I may not last?
Can't plan the future -
when there's so much
that's been lost still, in the past.
Weak, dragged and I'm
asking why it still
matters that much?
To keep on swinging,
long after, there ain't
no more punch?
'Cause from the corner,
softer,
each time.
Like Sirens singing.
Man it'll drive me
outta my mind.
They're saying - stay down boy
stay down boy,
stay down.
Aw no one's that tough.
So for your own good
stay down
But you know
that you'll never get up
Still they're steady saying
stay down boy, stay down boy.
stay down.
Kilde: Unknown
Oh I see the magic
And I somehow
Try to capture it
It's been the only way
To turn from lonely
Even though
I'm losing grip
Oh I just
can't
I just can't stay
It's really hard to sleep
With these paintings everywhere
It's sad to see this beauty
When I'm dieing of despair
I can't sleep
And I can't go on
Been so lonely here today
Been so lonely -
so lonely
for so long
Oh I
I just can't stay
Oh really
I can't stay
Day in day out something drives me and I
stop to paint
all these miracles of color
Don't want to listen to all these
voices in my head
telling me that this ain't life
that I should choose another...
Arles, a town in the South of France
When the sun bursts from the clouds, bursts from behind and beyond doubt -
if you're lucky
Vincent
All you'll remember seeing are the rooftops
A town of rooftops
Not a town painted in pain
It ain't funny.
What a difference,
a day don't make.
It's kind of frightening?
How you let yourself,
get this way?
You had time.
That was back when you had it made.
But you sold out time
Like you had so much time,
left to save.
Gonna take an earthquake
To hit you
Right between the eyes
Gonna take an earthquake
Just to get you,
to read between the lines
Man it ain't funny……
Sad mad Vincent
you can hear the children laughing
they've made you part of their children's game
You stumble through the dusty street
wondering if even the whores
will right away forget your name
It's getting harder to believe
any more
that anything is true
You never set out to
hurt no one
you could never be that cruel
There's voices in your head
today
the voices you can't drink away
They're taunting you
like the children's game
Telling you "Don't put that gun away."
If only they would let you sleep
If only Paul had stayed
if only there could be some rest
not just the kind you'll find in death
Sad mad Vincent
the gypsies dance in Avignon
They mutilate their children
So they'll beg better - bring a lot of money home
How could you have ever known?
You'd feel this sad until you finally had to go?
Sad mad Vincent
I also stared all night at a gun
held it in my hand like a lover
but i threw it down in shame and prayed that i'd see tomorrow come
Sad mad Vincent
I also wandered midnight streets alone
But i prayed that there'd be someone somewhere
who would take me in before i choose to let it all go
Hey Vincent, remember the gypsies
in Aix en Province?
Do you remember the punk from Chicago
he was back from Marseilles after sleeping in the park by the train station with
his guitar chained to his arm?
The drunks gave him wide berth because he was "sick and dirty
more dead than alive?"(Lou Reed)
Or did i see you?
Mad sad Vincent in all the hallow eyes of all the
rag-tags and hopeful hopeless ones who hadn't much of anything to carry with them and eyed my guitar with careful strategy and in fact that morning on the beach in Brindisi, I awoke with a start, inhaling the foul stink of decayed fish and then the fetid breath, wine - stale garlic coming from the mouth of that skinny Italian hood who was trying to cut the guitar case away from my hand and who could have had it - the hand, the guitar, but i sneered and mouthed "Musica - man you're taking my life - Lavida - life!!! and he left with reluctance while i dug up the bottle of wine I'd buried the night before when the kids from the boat left me after warning that the beach was not safe and was i fucking insane to think i could sleep there without getting robbed - sliced up like a loaf of warm bread but i didn't pay them any heed and woke up with the hood's knees pressing into my gasping chest and
Sad mad Vincent -
i was heading to see where you'd painted and loved and drank and smoked and died in the town of roof-tops - Arles and then i'd lay back in that beat hotel room with windows open - calling out at all the whores in Avignon
but me too
i
as well
as you must have known as we must have passed each other by, a million times on that troubled trip through France and the world and always
i can't wipe away the slander from my sore and tired red eyes
could never, Vincent, ease enough pure joy into my heart to stop feeling so fucking sad -
you'd of had to know that you couldn't stay so sad so all alone for ever that there would be other's and that's always
how you'd pass me by
two forever unknowns - hipsters bent on deciding that what's worth it rarely is
so then must be
ain't gonna
or will never
we pass each other by
infinitely sad we could barely hold back tears when all around us there is always laughter and it is often emanating from the words and expressions we have lauded - have thrown as sacrifice or payment of passage
it's laughter we have brought to all those others, and eternal goofs-
we clown and sometimes in no particular hurry,
we die.
Passing through Paris and hating being hated to the point it all was funny enough to
dash madly through the rain and the crowds and jump over the turn-styles to make the famous elevated - high speed trains filled with workers and stuffy going nowhere Parisians who have loafs of bread under their arms
and Vincent I also passed you by on the Island in Greece where I know you hardly had time to rest before they were throwing me out of hotel after hotel for sexual fiasco's and broken beds after the slow boat left with my heart broken as i sat with the itinerant dog - another Iggy.
We watched that boat it took a hundred years to drift off with her still leaning on the back rail, our eyes locked and she had given me what money she had left and was on her way back to London and her blue eyes were gifts of magic she lent to me
before i was sure that like you Vincent - sad and mad, i was sure that i was going to love her for ever and the whole village was jealous that in only one day i had taken away from their Latin macho sensitivities, the most beautiful of all tourists to come to the Island that year and half that village hated me more than hatred while the other half laughed and applauded as i fell out of their hotels and finally had to sleep in the unfinished construction project i had been working on with George the pirate -
Vincent - you have gone and done all these historical moments before i had even been born but each step of the way
i saw you
and you sadly shook your head when
you knew all too well that i would one day
find it all too much and you could only pass me by
And…
Vincent, my sad, mad Vincent
you talked about that special radiant sunshine and
what it could do to color and how the wind moved so your lines also
moved , I wonder how often you talked of living when each day you were dying in the coldest atmosphere – an atmosphere of indifference.
Your brother Leo,
sometimes it was all one big party and
he always helped but he couldn't believe – he
didn't believe and that was dieing too Vincent. Yeah that was dieing too.
You never sold a painting.
You gave them away for your heart breaks were also breaking from the kindness of the street.
I passed you by, huddled in a doorway in Florence, you, called to me
You passed me a bottle and I drank like I had done in all the worlds' doorways and alleys and early morning mist.
When Tinkers, bleeding and foul in that alley behind the bar in Sligo Bay, Ireland, when I was sixteen and they had me go by that cheap cider and we smoked and drank and I thought that I was finally living but you Vincent, you could already see that I was dieing all the time and had started a
fantastic slide to so many depths of alone and outcast, and knew that I would have to be
bold and would have to be strong if I were to continue dieing each day and
cared to feel - to see, all and everything that was out there in one mad glance and wanted more – always more, like the Tinkers in the alley wanted more Hard Cider
and later Vincent you must have
smiled to see me worried when the Tinker on the horse-cart, whipped his animal and guide hard
upon its sweating flanks and the horse just took the cart around and around in front of that fancy restaurant and
unsure what exactly the man was screaming about and making such a fuss, the horse continued moving in circles.
I was also moving in circles Vincent, unsure and still looking steady and straight ahead so that sometimes I fooled everyone into believing I was their leader. But I guess you knew – you knew all along.
Sad, mad Vincent Van Gogh
You had to know that we could only just
Only just almost make it – look as if we belonged, look as if we were strong, looked as if we were happening.
it turns out
fallin apart took me to pieces
and i wandered today
afraid this time
for the sun to go away
feeling like
there just won't be a reason
strong
enough
except maybe just a hug
Sad, mad Vincent all through my journey I had hoped that I'd emulate surpass are just find heroes. You falling apart watching me fall apart like I had been this forgotten fighter in the ring of chance pugilistic, chin tucked into my only reserve, throwing aside caution to live and you who had paid also so dearly to live in a cold atmosphere where we have sat and gazed blank eyed into the distance where memories have been stored forever for the day when you could just not make me understand that I had better stay down, or I'd eventually get…..
No one believed.
That it could turn out this way.
So beaten and dragged.
In so too much pain.
Each breath's a struggle.
Like a to be or not to be
day.
Could i have missed it?
That I may not last?
Can't plan the future -
when there's so much
that's been lost still, in the past.
Weak, dragged and I'm
asking why it still
matters that much?
To keep on swinging,
long after, there ain't
no more punch?
'Cause from the corner,
softer,
each time.
Like Sirens singing.
Man it'll drive me
outta my mind.
They're saying - stay down boy
stay down boy,
stay down.
Aw no one's that tough.
So for your own good
stay down
But you know
that you'll never get up
Still they're steady saying
stay down boy, stay down boy.
stay down.
Kilde: Unknown
The Troubled Life Of Vincent Van Gogh by Bonnie Butterfield
The 19th century European society of Van Gogh's day was not ready to accept his truthful and emotionally morbid way of depicting his art subjects. His internal turbulence is clearly seen in most of his paintings, which set the stage for the direction of a new style of painting called Expressionism. It is characterized by the use of symbols and a style that expresses the artist's inner feelings about his subject.
Therefore, an understanding of the paintings by Van Gogh requires insight into his turbulent life, because his style of painting is exemplified by a projection of the painter's inner experience onto the canvas he paints. In Vincent Van Gogh's own words, he said, "What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter, and then the painting." To understand an artist of Expressionism we must first explore their biography.
Many of us can identify with the roadblocks that Vincent Van Gogh experienced in his many career and romantic pursuits, all ending in failure. His reaction to these experiences however, demonstrates a biological and psychological abnormality, causing behaviors that alienated those around him. As he became more isolated from society and began to pour all of his energies into painting, his eccentricities and outbursts developed pathological traits, which caused him first, to be institutionalized, and second, it led to his suicidal death at the young age of 37.
During his short and turbulent life, he sold only 1 painting for 400 francs, just 4 months before his death. It is titled. Nonetheless, he produced an incredible number of masterpieces that will continue "living" for the rest of human history.
Most casual art lovers see Van Gogh as a troubled, but successful artist. This is far from the actual truth of his turbulent life, which was fraught with failure in every occupational pursuit he attempted including painting, and was marked by intermittent episodes of depression, violence and acting out behaviors.
Thanks to the preservation of 1000's of letters Van Gogh had written to friends and family, especially to his brother Theo, we have a nearly complete understanding of his feelings, experiences, and views on every aspect of his life. Surprisingly, his incredible artistic talent went undeveloped and unrecognized until he was 27 years old, after he had already failed at two other career choices, as an art dealer and a Protestant minister. Under the shroud of family shame when he was found incompetent to follow in his father's ministerial foot steps, he began to study art. He obsessively poured himself into this newly found talent and completed thousands of sketches and oil paintings before he shot himself to death at the age of 37 years old.
Many observers of Van Gogh's life justifiably believe that his eccentricities, which were visible from early childhood, compounded to create many distressing experiences that directly impacted the development of Expressionism. Painting was no longer the medium used primarily to capture photographic images. It became a crucible that could hold all of the artist's passions, conflicts, and unrealized dreams. Thus, a look into his childhood will give us an understanding of Van Gogh's creative expression, as well as an understanding of the origins of Expressionism.
Vincent's sister, Elizabeth Van Gogh, described his demeanor as a child. He was "intensely serious and uncommunicative, and walked around clumsily and in a daze, with his head hung low." She continued by saying, "Not only were his little sisters and brothers (he was the oldest of 8) like strangers to him, but he was a stranger to himself."
A servant who worked for the Van Gogh family when Vincent was a child described him as an, "odd, aloof child who had queer manners and seemed more like an old man," than the child he was. Vincent was a disappointment to his mother, and eventually to his entire family, even his beloved brother Theo Van Gogh who supported him financially for the 10 years that he worked as a painter.
In Vincent's own words, he says of Theo, that he was the one "who comforts his mother and is worthy to be comforted by his mother." On the other hand, Vincent was rejecting and obstinate, making himself inaccessible to all family members, except for Theo. Vincent later described his childhood as "gloomy and cold and sterile."
Unaware of his own artistic genius, Vincent Van Gogh first tried to learn the art of selling the works of other artists. As a young man of 16, he became apprenticed to an art dealer at the firm of Goupil & Co. located at The Hague, in Belgium, and later transferred to the London and Paris galleries. He quickly learned all the painters and their respective styles and what constitutes a valuable piece of artwork. In fact, he actually learned too well! If a customer became interested in purchasing a poorly done painting, Van Gogh would provide a long discourse on why it was a piece of junk. He was even known to become argumentative with many of the art patrons.
Following his failure as an art dealer, Vincent Van Gogh later wrote to his sister Wilhelmina Van Gogh that the galleries and art firms "are in the clutches of fellows who intercept all the money," and that only "one-tenth of all the business that is transacted…is really done out of belief in art."
Vincent Van Gogh did not understand the mechanics of interpersonal diplomacy, or the principles of salesmanship. During this period he fell in love for the first time, and openly professed his love for Eugenia, a respectable upper class woman. Eugenia was insulted by his unwanted advances, and she harshly rebuffed him. Van Gogh's inability to read the intent and emotions of others, caused him to fail to see that she had never expressed any interest in him. Failing in his first romantic experience, he also blundered miserably in his first job as an art dealer. He was dismissed by the art firm, and with a relatives help, he temporarily took a position as an assistant teacher and curate.
Following a short stint as a teacher, he returned home to Holland for a visit with his parents and decided to stay. He took a job in a bookshop. While working as a clerk for the bookseller, he rented a room with a family named Rijken. Mrs. Rijken said that she had to scold numerous youngsters for taunting Vincent Van Gogh and calling him "a queer freak." He was only 24 years old.
Vincent soon realized that he was also inadequate as a teacher and a bookseller, and he was becoming desparate to find work. His parents were reluctant to continue supporting their oldest son, who was a failure in their eyes. This drew him to finally attempt to satisfy his father's greatest wish that he become a minister. In Amsterdam, he began studying for the University entrance exams in theology, but soon found that he did not have the ability to learn the required math and foreign languages. With a relative's help he entered an evangelical school in Brussels and subsequently became a missionary preacher in the Borinage, a mining district in Belgium.
Van Gogh found his personal calling working among the downtrodden miners and their families, and was known to give away his clothing and money to help the poor living in shacks on the blackened earth of the coal fields. Nonetheless, he could not convincingly communicate his religious feelings to his flock, and while viewing the pride that they could maintain in spite of their miserable living conditions, they influenced Vincent to take on their lower class beliefs. His own religious convictions began slipping away, no longer seeming adequate or relevant. Living in the same filth and poverty that his brethren were forced to experience, he lost religion but gained a new fascination in his charcoal drawings of the peasant class living around him.
Vincent returned home for an extended visit and fell deeply in love with his first cousin Kee Vos, who had also been staying with his family. However, for someone to merely contemplate marriage with one's own cousin was a serious breach of an important taboo strongly held in 19th century Holland. Interestingly, Kee, like Eugenia his first love, had no interest in Vincent.
Undaunted by her obvious disinterest in him, Vincent attempted to visit her at her family's home, but was refused entry. Kee's father repeatedly told him that she was not at home. Vincent thought that her family was keeping her away from him against her will, and that she was actually at home. Forcing a dramatic encounter with Kee's father, Vincent impulsively attempted to demonstrate the intensity of his affections for Kee. He held his hand in the flame of a kerosene lamp and said to Kee's father, "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame!" After blowing the flame out, Kee's father took Vincent to a nearby saloon to get him intoxicated and to reduce his extreme agitation. Then he convinced Vincent that Kee could not see him, and that their relationship had no future.
When Van Gogh's father, a devoted Christian minister, discovered that Vincent had fallen in love with Kee, his first cousin, and that he had also strayed from his religious beliefs, a bitter quarrel caused a life-long break in the father/son relationship.
Cast from the family home, Vincent Van Gogh threw himself into his artwork and began a relationship with a low class prostitute named "Sien." She moved in with him and he became deeply empathetic with her own personal suffering. Van Gogh not only lovingly sketched her image, but because she was in poor health, he also took care of all her needs. However, because she was a prostitute, the Van Gogh family was scandalized by her presence in Vincent's living quarters, which further caused friction in Vincent's relationship with them.
Van Gogh's eccentric behavior increased as his contempt for middle-class proprieties soon alienated all who tried to help him. He began wearing ragged, unwashed clothing, did not respond to acquaintances on the street, and lived an isolated existence. His only activity was to draw and paint in ways that conveyed his sympathies for the hard lives of peasants. His greatest painting, "The Potato Eaters" was the result of his deep empathy with the peasant class.
An old man reported that when he was ten years old he knew Vincent Van Gogh, who he frequently saw painting landscapes in Nuenen, Belgium. From the viewpoint of children in the neighborhood, Vincent Van Gogh was a curious sight indeed. He would sit on a stool alongside a roadway painting scenery for hours at a time. The witness describes Van Gogh as a "funny, red-bearded man with a straw hat, smoking a pipe and painting intently, and not responding to anyone's attempts to communicate with him."
In his many letters, it is clear that Van Gogh was aware of his depressive tendencies, and that he had experienced them most of his life. After one of his mental crises he wrote "Well, even in that deep misery I felt my energy revive, and I said to myself: in spite of everything I shall rise again, I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing, and from that moment everything has seemed transformed in me." Van Gogh seemed to utilize the incredible high spirits, which always followed his severe depressions, as a source of his creative energy.
In 1886, at the age of 33, Van Gogh went to Paris and mingled with Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Seurat, and other painters who were later considered among the best. His painting techniques were influenced by these impressionists, and their use of bright colors and their choice of less sentimental subject matter altered the direction his style of painting would take. Unless depression overcame him, he carefully avoided his tendency to paint dark canvases and subjects who were weighted down with the drudgeries of life.
However, after two years of working among the Parisian artistic community, Van Gogh's delicate nervous system began to collapse. His friendship with Paul Gauguin was in Van Gogh's own words, "electric," but like all of his other relationships it was doomed by Van Gogh's inability to comprehend normal social relationships. On December 24, 1888, an argument ensued between them. Van Gogh unsuccessfully attacked Gauguin, then mutilated himself by cutting a large piece off of his ear (See his famous painting below in which he depicts the injury), he wrapped the severed ear in paper, and gave it to a startled prostitute whom he had befriended. When his brother learned of this incident, he had Vincent institutionalized for two weeks in Arles, France in 1888. This was followed by several more breakdowns in 1890.
Psychologists studying Van Gogh's history of mental breakdowns have theorized that each mental crisis was preceded by a perceived threat to the deep attachment he felt for a loved one. His first collapse occurred shortly after his beloved brother Theo Van Gogh, had announced his engagement to his future wife Johanna. Vincent's second mental breakdown came a few days after a violent argument and the hasty departure of his close friend, fellow painter Paul Gauguin. His third mental crisis occurred shortly before the wedding of his brother Theo. Apparently, Vincent perceived the romantic relationship between Theo and Johanna, and their subsequent marriage, as a loosening of the bonds he held with his brother. In May 1890, he stayed for three days with Theo, his wife and new baby. Theo's lung condition had grown worse, and Vincent was clearly concerned with his brother's health. Selfishly, he was also worried about Theo's deteriorating financial prospects, which had already reduced the living allowance that was sent to Vincent each month.
Reflecting his plunging mood Vincent painted "The Undergrowth With Two Figures" in June 1890, 1 month before his suicide death. It has a lonely and depressive style and coloration (See painting above). In one of his last letters dated July 1890, he sadly wrote to his brother Theo, "I feel...a failure. That's it as far as I'm concerned...I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change."
In contrast, one of his last paintings which he completed in late July 1890 titled "Wheat Field With Crows," reflects an ambivalence of optimism and hopelessness with the dark clouds of depression slowly lifting up from the skyline. It is common knowledge among clinical psychologists that a person with bi-polar disorder (known as manic depression during Van Gogh's time), invariably attempt suicide while rising up from the depression towards the manic phase. A few days after he finished this painting, Vincent Van Gogh, on July 27, 1890, killed himself with a gunshot to the chest. His brother Theo died of lung disease 6 months after the death of Vincent.
Although he only sold one painting during his life-time, he is considered the most powerful Expressionist, and his paintings each sell for millions of dollars. Ironically, Vincent Van Gogh is deemed by society to be one of our greatest and most successful artists.
Conclusion
I personally believe that the intense interest that today's society has for Van Gogh lies not in the quality of his paintings, but in his ability to project his turbulent emotional experience onto the canvas. Because he was an Expressionist, we know more about his mental state than we do ANY other great painter in history.
For example, his painting "Starry Night Over The Rhine" gives us the sense that he was just beginning to plunge into a state of depression. This painting was created in Arles, France in September, 1888, and it remains housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Van Gogh's state of mind at the time he painted it can only be speculated about. It is suspected that he was probably on the verge of going into a deep depressive state. The very dark colors, with glimpses of light are typical of his style during the early phase of his depressive episodes. So to, is the appearance of the shadowy figures of a man and woman in the far right-hand corner of the painting, widely believed to be suggestive of his dependent, yet ambivalent relationship with his brother and sister-in-law.
In general, Van Gogh's mood had began to sour while he was in France, surrounded by many great painters of the day. His awkwardness in social relationships began to take a toll. He was plagued by frequent extreme shifts in his emotional state. Mania and feelings of grandiosity were always followed by self-loathing, and the despair of deep depressions.
It appears likely that just after he completed the painting above, he sunk further into the depths of depression. We know that two months later, on December 24, 1888, his mood began to revert back to the manic state, when his violent argument with Gauguin occurred. It resulted in self-mutilation, which is a common behavior in mental patients during manic excitement. Without access to modern medicine, the frequency of these self-destructive episodes increased until Van Gogh's suicide in 1890.
From a behavioral standpoint, Van Gogh's ability to express his internal state of mind in his artwork, provides us with a vivid record of the see-saw activity of his brain's chemistry. When he began to slip into depression, his paintings would take on a deep, dark feeling of doom, with only hints of light optimism remaining. However, as the depression deepened, his canvases become dark vessels of hopelessness.
Amazingly, a complete reversal would always occur, catapulting him into a frenzy of grandiose feelings and creative activity as the mania took hold. His paintings would become electric with brilliant colors, and the canvas textures jumped to life with jittery strokes of paint, brilliantly mirroring his manic state of mind.
Because Van Gogh was an Expressionistic painter, we know more about his internal life than we do about any of civilization's other Master painters. He alone has allowed us to peer into his mind, while he was in the act of creating his art. This is truly the unique and lasting contribution that Vincent Van Gogh has given to us in the study of our great Masterpieces.
Therefore, an understanding of the paintings by Van Gogh requires insight into his turbulent life, because his style of painting is exemplified by a projection of the painter's inner experience onto the canvas he paints. In Vincent Van Gogh's own words, he said, "What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter, and then the painting." To understand an artist of Expressionism we must first explore their biography.
Many of us can identify with the roadblocks that Vincent Van Gogh experienced in his many career and romantic pursuits, all ending in failure. His reaction to these experiences however, demonstrates a biological and psychological abnormality, causing behaviors that alienated those around him. As he became more isolated from society and began to pour all of his energies into painting, his eccentricities and outbursts developed pathological traits, which caused him first, to be institutionalized, and second, it led to his suicidal death at the young age of 37.
During his short and turbulent life, he sold only 1 painting for 400 francs, just 4 months before his death. It is titled. Nonetheless, he produced an incredible number of masterpieces that will continue "living" for the rest of human history.
Most casual art lovers see Van Gogh as a troubled, but successful artist. This is far from the actual truth of his turbulent life, which was fraught with failure in every occupational pursuit he attempted including painting, and was marked by intermittent episodes of depression, violence and acting out behaviors.
Thanks to the preservation of 1000's of letters Van Gogh had written to friends and family, especially to his brother Theo, we have a nearly complete understanding of his feelings, experiences, and views on every aspect of his life. Surprisingly, his incredible artistic talent went undeveloped and unrecognized until he was 27 years old, after he had already failed at two other career choices, as an art dealer and a Protestant minister. Under the shroud of family shame when he was found incompetent to follow in his father's ministerial foot steps, he began to study art. He obsessively poured himself into this newly found talent and completed thousands of sketches and oil paintings before he shot himself to death at the age of 37 years old.
Many observers of Van Gogh's life justifiably believe that his eccentricities, which were visible from early childhood, compounded to create many distressing experiences that directly impacted the development of Expressionism. Painting was no longer the medium used primarily to capture photographic images. It became a crucible that could hold all of the artist's passions, conflicts, and unrealized dreams. Thus, a look into his childhood will give us an understanding of Van Gogh's creative expression, as well as an understanding of the origins of Expressionism.
Vincent's sister, Elizabeth Van Gogh, described his demeanor as a child. He was "intensely serious and uncommunicative, and walked around clumsily and in a daze, with his head hung low." She continued by saying, "Not only were his little sisters and brothers (he was the oldest of 8) like strangers to him, but he was a stranger to himself."
A servant who worked for the Van Gogh family when Vincent was a child described him as an, "odd, aloof child who had queer manners and seemed more like an old man," than the child he was. Vincent was a disappointment to his mother, and eventually to his entire family, even his beloved brother Theo Van Gogh who supported him financially for the 10 years that he worked as a painter.
In Vincent's own words, he says of Theo, that he was the one "who comforts his mother and is worthy to be comforted by his mother." On the other hand, Vincent was rejecting and obstinate, making himself inaccessible to all family members, except for Theo. Vincent later described his childhood as "gloomy and cold and sterile."
Unaware of his own artistic genius, Vincent Van Gogh first tried to learn the art of selling the works of other artists. As a young man of 16, he became apprenticed to an art dealer at the firm of Goupil & Co. located at The Hague, in Belgium, and later transferred to the London and Paris galleries. He quickly learned all the painters and their respective styles and what constitutes a valuable piece of artwork. In fact, he actually learned too well! If a customer became interested in purchasing a poorly done painting, Van Gogh would provide a long discourse on why it was a piece of junk. He was even known to become argumentative with many of the art patrons.
Following his failure as an art dealer, Vincent Van Gogh later wrote to his sister Wilhelmina Van Gogh that the galleries and art firms "are in the clutches of fellows who intercept all the money," and that only "one-tenth of all the business that is transacted…is really done out of belief in art."
Vincent Van Gogh did not understand the mechanics of interpersonal diplomacy, or the principles of salesmanship. During this period he fell in love for the first time, and openly professed his love for Eugenia, a respectable upper class woman. Eugenia was insulted by his unwanted advances, and she harshly rebuffed him. Van Gogh's inability to read the intent and emotions of others, caused him to fail to see that she had never expressed any interest in him. Failing in his first romantic experience, he also blundered miserably in his first job as an art dealer. He was dismissed by the art firm, and with a relatives help, he temporarily took a position as an assistant teacher and curate.
Following a short stint as a teacher, he returned home to Holland for a visit with his parents and decided to stay. He took a job in a bookshop. While working as a clerk for the bookseller, he rented a room with a family named Rijken. Mrs. Rijken said that she had to scold numerous youngsters for taunting Vincent Van Gogh and calling him "a queer freak." He was only 24 years old.
Vincent soon realized that he was also inadequate as a teacher and a bookseller, and he was becoming desparate to find work. His parents were reluctant to continue supporting their oldest son, who was a failure in their eyes. This drew him to finally attempt to satisfy his father's greatest wish that he become a minister. In Amsterdam, he began studying for the University entrance exams in theology, but soon found that he did not have the ability to learn the required math and foreign languages. With a relative's help he entered an evangelical school in Brussels and subsequently became a missionary preacher in the Borinage, a mining district in Belgium.
Van Gogh found his personal calling working among the downtrodden miners and their families, and was known to give away his clothing and money to help the poor living in shacks on the blackened earth of the coal fields. Nonetheless, he could not convincingly communicate his religious feelings to his flock, and while viewing the pride that they could maintain in spite of their miserable living conditions, they influenced Vincent to take on their lower class beliefs. His own religious convictions began slipping away, no longer seeming adequate or relevant. Living in the same filth and poverty that his brethren were forced to experience, he lost religion but gained a new fascination in his charcoal drawings of the peasant class living around him.
Vincent returned home for an extended visit and fell deeply in love with his first cousin Kee Vos, who had also been staying with his family. However, for someone to merely contemplate marriage with one's own cousin was a serious breach of an important taboo strongly held in 19th century Holland. Interestingly, Kee, like Eugenia his first love, had no interest in Vincent.
Undaunted by her obvious disinterest in him, Vincent attempted to visit her at her family's home, but was refused entry. Kee's father repeatedly told him that she was not at home. Vincent thought that her family was keeping her away from him against her will, and that she was actually at home. Forcing a dramatic encounter with Kee's father, Vincent impulsively attempted to demonstrate the intensity of his affections for Kee. He held his hand in the flame of a kerosene lamp and said to Kee's father, "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame!" After blowing the flame out, Kee's father took Vincent to a nearby saloon to get him intoxicated and to reduce his extreme agitation. Then he convinced Vincent that Kee could not see him, and that their relationship had no future.
When Van Gogh's father, a devoted Christian minister, discovered that Vincent had fallen in love with Kee, his first cousin, and that he had also strayed from his religious beliefs, a bitter quarrel caused a life-long break in the father/son relationship.
Cast from the family home, Vincent Van Gogh threw himself into his artwork and began a relationship with a low class prostitute named "Sien." She moved in with him and he became deeply empathetic with her own personal suffering. Van Gogh not only lovingly sketched her image, but because she was in poor health, he also took care of all her needs. However, because she was a prostitute, the Van Gogh family was scandalized by her presence in Vincent's living quarters, which further caused friction in Vincent's relationship with them.
Van Gogh's eccentric behavior increased as his contempt for middle-class proprieties soon alienated all who tried to help him. He began wearing ragged, unwashed clothing, did not respond to acquaintances on the street, and lived an isolated existence. His only activity was to draw and paint in ways that conveyed his sympathies for the hard lives of peasants. His greatest painting, "The Potato Eaters" was the result of his deep empathy with the peasant class.
An old man reported that when he was ten years old he knew Vincent Van Gogh, who he frequently saw painting landscapes in Nuenen, Belgium. From the viewpoint of children in the neighborhood, Vincent Van Gogh was a curious sight indeed. He would sit on a stool alongside a roadway painting scenery for hours at a time. The witness describes Van Gogh as a "funny, red-bearded man with a straw hat, smoking a pipe and painting intently, and not responding to anyone's attempts to communicate with him."
In his many letters, it is clear that Van Gogh was aware of his depressive tendencies, and that he had experienced them most of his life. After one of his mental crises he wrote "Well, even in that deep misery I felt my energy revive, and I said to myself: in spite of everything I shall rise again, I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing, and from that moment everything has seemed transformed in me." Van Gogh seemed to utilize the incredible high spirits, which always followed his severe depressions, as a source of his creative energy.
In 1886, at the age of 33, Van Gogh went to Paris and mingled with Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Seurat, and other painters who were later considered among the best. His painting techniques were influenced by these impressionists, and their use of bright colors and their choice of less sentimental subject matter altered the direction his style of painting would take. Unless depression overcame him, he carefully avoided his tendency to paint dark canvases and subjects who were weighted down with the drudgeries of life.
However, after two years of working among the Parisian artistic community, Van Gogh's delicate nervous system began to collapse. His friendship with Paul Gauguin was in Van Gogh's own words, "electric," but like all of his other relationships it was doomed by Van Gogh's inability to comprehend normal social relationships. On December 24, 1888, an argument ensued between them. Van Gogh unsuccessfully attacked Gauguin, then mutilated himself by cutting a large piece off of his ear (See his famous painting below in which he depicts the injury), he wrapped the severed ear in paper, and gave it to a startled prostitute whom he had befriended. When his brother learned of this incident, he had Vincent institutionalized for two weeks in Arles, France in 1888. This was followed by several more breakdowns in 1890.
Psychologists studying Van Gogh's history of mental breakdowns have theorized that each mental crisis was preceded by a perceived threat to the deep attachment he felt for a loved one. His first collapse occurred shortly after his beloved brother Theo Van Gogh, had announced his engagement to his future wife Johanna. Vincent's second mental breakdown came a few days after a violent argument and the hasty departure of his close friend, fellow painter Paul Gauguin. His third mental crisis occurred shortly before the wedding of his brother Theo. Apparently, Vincent perceived the romantic relationship between Theo and Johanna, and their subsequent marriage, as a loosening of the bonds he held with his brother. In May 1890, he stayed for three days with Theo, his wife and new baby. Theo's lung condition had grown worse, and Vincent was clearly concerned with his brother's health. Selfishly, he was also worried about Theo's deteriorating financial prospects, which had already reduced the living allowance that was sent to Vincent each month.
Reflecting his plunging mood Vincent painted "The Undergrowth With Two Figures" in June 1890, 1 month before his suicide death. It has a lonely and depressive style and coloration (See painting above). In one of his last letters dated July 1890, he sadly wrote to his brother Theo, "I feel...a failure. That's it as far as I'm concerned...I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change."
In contrast, one of his last paintings which he completed in late July 1890 titled "Wheat Field With Crows," reflects an ambivalence of optimism and hopelessness with the dark clouds of depression slowly lifting up from the skyline. It is common knowledge among clinical psychologists that a person with bi-polar disorder (known as manic depression during Van Gogh's time), invariably attempt suicide while rising up from the depression towards the manic phase. A few days after he finished this painting, Vincent Van Gogh, on July 27, 1890, killed himself with a gunshot to the chest. His brother Theo died of lung disease 6 months after the death of Vincent.
Although he only sold one painting during his life-time, he is considered the most powerful Expressionist, and his paintings each sell for millions of dollars. Ironically, Vincent Van Gogh is deemed by society to be one of our greatest and most successful artists.
Conclusion
I personally believe that the intense interest that today's society has for Van Gogh lies not in the quality of his paintings, but in his ability to project his turbulent emotional experience onto the canvas. Because he was an Expressionist, we know more about his mental state than we do ANY other great painter in history.
For example, his painting "Starry Night Over The Rhine" gives us the sense that he was just beginning to plunge into a state of depression. This painting was created in Arles, France in September, 1888, and it remains housed in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Van Gogh's state of mind at the time he painted it can only be speculated about. It is suspected that he was probably on the verge of going into a deep depressive state. The very dark colors, with glimpses of light are typical of his style during the early phase of his depressive episodes. So to, is the appearance of the shadowy figures of a man and woman in the far right-hand corner of the painting, widely believed to be suggestive of his dependent, yet ambivalent relationship with his brother and sister-in-law.
In general, Van Gogh's mood had began to sour while he was in France, surrounded by many great painters of the day. His awkwardness in social relationships began to take a toll. He was plagued by frequent extreme shifts in his emotional state. Mania and feelings of grandiosity were always followed by self-loathing, and the despair of deep depressions.
It appears likely that just after he completed the painting above, he sunk further into the depths of depression. We know that two months later, on December 24, 1888, his mood began to revert back to the manic state, when his violent argument with Gauguin occurred. It resulted in self-mutilation, which is a common behavior in mental patients during manic excitement. Without access to modern medicine, the frequency of these self-destructive episodes increased until Van Gogh's suicide in 1890.
From a behavioral standpoint, Van Gogh's ability to express his internal state of mind in his artwork, provides us with a vivid record of the see-saw activity of his brain's chemistry. When he began to slip into depression, his paintings would take on a deep, dark feeling of doom, with only hints of light optimism remaining. However, as the depression deepened, his canvases become dark vessels of hopelessness.
Amazingly, a complete reversal would always occur, catapulting him into a frenzy of grandiose feelings and creative activity as the mania took hold. His paintings would become electric with brilliant colors, and the canvas textures jumped to life with jittery strokes of paint, brilliantly mirroring his manic state of mind.
Because Van Gogh was an Expressionistic painter, we know more about his internal life than we do about any of civilization's other Master painters. He alone has allowed us to peer into his mind, while he was in the act of creating his art. This is truly the unique and lasting contribution that Vincent Van Gogh has given to us in the study of our great Masterpieces.
Abonner på:
Innlegg (Atom)