Review: The Prophet

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The other day, a student told me he was a poetry fan. Since you don't hear that often from a mathematics student, I asked for more details and learned Kahlil Gibran was at the top of this list. So, I decided to take in the threescore pages of poetic fable myself.

The 26 prose poetry fables written in English by the Lebanese-American poet and writer draw from Maronite Christian, Islam, and Sufi mysticism. Apparently, his knowledge of Lebanon's bloody history, with its destructive factional struggles, strengthened his belief in the fundamental unity of religions, which his parents exemplified by welcoming people of various religions in their home. This polyglot spirituality resulted in a text that like all good religious texts is a moving and enlightening read that can mean anything to anyone.

I can feel a measured support for Epicureanism

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.

and even a Stoicism and the careful, defensive tend-your-own-garden warning from Candide:

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

and calming assurance for those in an existential crisis:

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

Heck, a blame-the-victim law & order extremist will find refuge in:

The murdered is not unaccountable for his own murder,
And the robbed is not blameless in being robbed.

Indeed, there is a recurrent theme of personal responsibility:

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever
springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
...
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.

Why not dream interpretation

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

and reincarnation

‘A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear
me.’

Something for everyone!

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