Now I will focus on Kahlil Gibran (1863--1931). He came through Elis Island twice, the first time, very young. At school his teacher changed the spelling of his name from Khalil to Kahlil, and he liked it and used it as an adult. When he was 15, he went back to Lebanon (still part of the Ottoman Empire when he was born) for further schooling (hence twice through Ellis Island). He is best known for his book The Prophet (1923) and he is one of the best-selling poets in the world, behind Shakespeare and Laozi. This is all thanks to Wikipedia. I never knew any of this until this week.

The Times Literary Supplement offers a review of a "reverent biography" by a cousin who was named after him, and another relative, Jean Gibran (probably male). The TLS reviewer (Phil Baker) describes Gibran's writing as "sententious pseudo-wisdom (running) the gamut from the spurious...to the totally meaningless." He concludes that most of Gibran's writing "remains a touchstone of hokiness", while conceding that "it is still possible that Gibran was a woeful stylist but a good and sincere man".

I was 17 when I picked up The Prophet in a friend's house where her parents were having a coffee party for her, or something - certainly not wine. I started reading casually and then went back and began at the beginning, and loved it. It wasn't on any college courses I was taking. In any case, that wouldn't have taught me much more than the attention I was giving it. Academia was going through a phase then of studying the work, not the writer. The New Criticism was enthusiastic about William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity. (You can look it up.) I was half way through my research on my Master's thesis subject, W.H. Auden, before I learned that he was gay. Homosexuality was still against the law, of course, but my thesis advisor was probably too embarrassed to mention it to his tender young student. I was still only 20. He never did mention it. I was invited to give a preliminary report on my progress to the English Club and it came up in the course of discussion that my hero was queer. For that matter,I didn't learn until I read his obituary that Auden and I shared the same birth date - not the year but the day.

For us in those days, it was the creation, not the creator. I didn't know anything about Aldous Huxley until I read a "definitive" biography last year, but I had read all his novels. i guess it has made me a very attentive reader.

But not that attentive. I really liked Gibran, that is, The Prophet. I still do. I've quoted him several times in my blogs. Well, we go on learning. I still like The Prophet, but I'll be more discrete (sic, in case you didn't know).

REFUGEE BLUES

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,

"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":

But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;

Asked me politely to return next year:

But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;

"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;

It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":

O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,

Saw a door opened and a cat let in:

But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand windows and a thousand doors:

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

W.H. Auden

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.