On Giving

Kahlil Gibran 1883 (Bsharri, Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate) – 1931 ( New York City)



Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.
     And he answered:
     You give but little when you give of your possessions.
     It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
     For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
     And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
     And what is fear of need by need itself?
     Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

     There are those who give little of the much which they have—and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
     And there are those who have little and give it all.
     These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
     There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
     And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
     And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
     They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
     Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes. He smiles upon the earth.

     It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding;
     And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
     And is there aught you would withhold?
     All you have shall some day be given;
     Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’.

     You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving.”
     The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
     They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
     Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.
     And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
     And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, or receiving?
   
  And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
     See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
     For in truth it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.
     
     And you receivers—and you are all receivers—assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
     Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
     For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.
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Submitted by halel on July 13, 2020

Modified on May 03, 2023

2:34 min read
158

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXBXXCXD EDCXEFXX AAXXB AGXFEA XAX XXG
Characters 2,887
Words 516
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 5, 6, 3, 3

Kahlil Gibran

Gibran Khalil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران‎, ALA-LC: Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān, pronounced [ʒʊˈbraːn xaˈliːl ʒʊˈbraːn], or Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, pronounced [ʒɪˈbraːn xaˈliːl ʒɪˈbraːn]; January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran (pronounced kah-LEEL ji-BRAHN), was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages. Born in a village of the Ottoman-ruled Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate to a Maronite family, the young Gibran immigrated with his mother and siblings to the United States in 1895. As his mother worked as a seamstress, he was enrolled at a school in Boston, where his creative abilities were quickly noticed by a teacher who presented him to photographer and publisher F. Holland Day. Gibran was sent back to his native land by his family at the age of fifteen to enroll at the Collège de la Sagesse in Beirut. Returning to Boston upon his youngest sister's death in 1902, he lost his older half-brother and his mother the following year, seemingly relying afterwards on his remaining sister's income from her work at a dressmaker's shop for some time. In 1904, Gibran's drawings were displayed for the first time at Day's studio in Boston, and his first book in Arabic was published in 1905 in New York City. With the financial help of a newly met benefactress, Mary Haskell, Gibran studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910. While there, he came in contact with Syrian political thinkers promoting rebellion in the Ottoman Empire after the Young Turk Revolution; some of Gibran's writings, voicing the same ideas as well as anti-clericalism, would eventually be banned by the Ottoman authorities. In 1911, Gibran settled in New York, where his first book in English, The Madman, would be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1918, with writing of The Prophet or The Earth Gods also underway. His visual artwork was shown at Montross Gallery in 1914, and at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co. in 1917. He had also been corresponding remarkably with May Ziadeh since 1912. In 1920, Gibran re-founded the Pen League with fellow Mahjari poets. By the time of his death at the age of 48 from cirrhosis and incipient tuberculosis in one lung, he had achieved literary fame on "both sides of the Atlantic Ocean," and The Prophet had already been translated into German and French. His body was transferred to his birth village of Bsharri (in present-day Lebanon), to which he had bequeathed all future royalties on his books, and where a museum dedicated to his works now stands. As worded by Suheil Bushrui and Joe Jenkins, Gibran's life has been described as one "often caught between Nietzschean rebellion, Blakean pantheism and Sufi mysticism." Gibran discussed different themes in his writings, and explored diverse literary forms. Salma Khadra Jayyusi has called him "the single most important influence on Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of [the twentieth] century," and he is still celebrated as a literary hero in Lebanon. At the same time, "most of Gibran's paintings expressed his personal vision, incorporating spiritual and mythological symbolism," with art critic Alice Raphael recognizing in the painter a classicist, whose work owed "more to the findings of Da Vinci than it [did] to any modern insurgent." His "prodigious body of work" has been described as "an artistic legacy to people of all nations."  more…

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