Jubran Khalil Jubran was born on January 6th, 1883, in the village of Bisharri, which was part of the Ottoman Empire back then but is now in modern-day Lebanon.
After his father got into legal trouble, his mother took Khalil and his siblings to the united states in 1895, where they settled in the South End of Boston. Kahlil's mother became a peddler and seamstress, and she opened a shop with her oldest son and her two young daughters. Kahlil, however, went to school and quickly understood English, even changing his name to the Americanized "Gibran," though his writing of it remained erratic.
To help his writing, one of his teachers recommended drawing classes at the nearby settlement house. In 1896, Kahlil met Fred Holland Day, the eccentric leader of the Boston Avant-garde group known as the Visionists. The Visionists were responsible for two of the first poetry and art magazines in the united states, and Khalil soon became a model for Day's artistic photographs.
In 1898, Kahlil met Josephine Prescott Peabody, a poet from Cambridge, and the two exchanged letters until Kahlil's mother sent him back to Lebanon to further his education.
During that time, Kahlil devoured French and Arabic literature, established a school-wide poetry magazine, and won a poetry contest. He then left school in 1901 and traveled Europe, but returned to the United States in 1902 upon the death of his sister.
While there, he reconnected with Peabody, and she encouraged his writing and art. In May of 1903, Peabody arranged for Kahlil's work to be part of an art exhibition at Wellesley College. However, Kahlil had little time to celebrate his success due to the untimely deaths of his mother and older brother.
In 1904, however, Khalil met Mary Haskill, who became his patron and one of the most influential people in his life. Under her encouragement and financial support, Khalil published his first book, On Music, in 1905. That, along with a job writing for a local Arabic magazine, led to a lengthy writing career.
Khalil Gibran ended up publishing around fifteen books and plays in English, with more than that in his native tongue of Arabic.
Kahlil Gibran died on April 10th, 1931, at the young age of 48, and his body was sent home to Lebanon, where it rests in the Gibran Museum. He also willed all future Royalties from his American books to his hometown of Bsharri for "civic betterment."
We are reading from The Prophet, a poetry collection published in 1923 and widely regarded as his most influential work.
To learn more about this author, click the link above or check out his Wikipedia page!
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