Glossary entry for
Gibran, Kahlil
The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), was a true '60s bestseller. According to
composite figures at the end of the decade, it continued to rank in sales
popularity between Catch-22 and The Catcher in the Rye.
Philip D. Beidler, in his book Scriptures for a Generation: What we were reading
in the '60s Beidler sees The Prophet as:
The ultimate '60s curio, the archetype of counterculture kitsch. People seduced each other by it. People got married to it. [...] The outside of the volume is slim, spare, well-crafted. Inside it beckons from the outset as dense with meanings. The table of contents is portentous, beginning with "The Coming of the Ship", moving through a twenty-six other pregnant chapter headings (On Love, On Marriage, On Children, On Self-Knowledge, On Pleasure, On Beauty, On Religion, On Death), and ending in "The Farewell" (Beidler, p. 76)
In mode or genre, it is a vague and deliberately obscure allegory. Published first by the author, a Lebanese Christian mystic, in 1924, it is literally about a prophet, a young visionary named "Almustafa, the chosen and beloved", come to speak to the people of a mystical city before his departure on a waiting ship for a voyage of going and return.
Contributed by Bent Sorensen
More information at:
- the Wikipedia page on Kahlil Gibran
Van references in:
Part of the van-the-man.info unofficial website