And I Too Am My Own Forerunner

Predicated upon the towers of collapse, while T.S. Eliot, the representative modernist, in order to re-construct his culture out of the debris of its imperialist past, concluded his Waste Land (1922) by looking Eastward, into the all-pervading “shantih” of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese American, authored The Prophet (1923) to deconstruct such enterprise and retrieve a culture that was swirling in-between Darwinian metaphors and Nietzschean Nihilism. He who was exterior to the ‘omnipotent definitions’ of the West, saw in “Beauty” the “eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.” So, to him, “you are eternity and you are the mirror.” This book is a reading of Kahlil Gibran's life and works: his life as a text and his works as the terrains of a never-ending journey. It opens up those fissures and ruptures that make Gibran and his writings relevant vis-á-vis the socio-political, cultural and religious urgencies that the world is grappling with today. Often misconstrued as a mystic or an Oriental Wise Man, Gibran dwells in an amorphous placeless-ness within the academic space and outside of it. “Forerunner” in its own way, this book, by unfolding the process of 'reading' as a mode of travelling, subverts such stereotypes and tries to reveal to the readers that 'outlandish' lonely intellectual who, through his works, fashioned a self and a land ‘out of place’, rather in a ‘non-place’, for dismantling and up-setting monolithic cultures and their decadent notions.

Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931) was a Lebanese-American poet, writer, and artist best known as the author of “The Prophet” (1923), which is one of the best-selling books of all time. Gibran's work covers such themes as justice, religion, science, free will, love, happiness, the soul, the body, and death. He is widely considered to have been one of the most important figures in Arabic poetry and literature during the first half of the twentieth century. First published three years before “The Prophet” in 1920, “The Forerunner” is a collection of 24 tales that contain much that is present in his masterpiece and for which he is famous: beautiful prose writing full of wisdom, insight, and deep humanity. Contents include: “God’s Fool”, “Love”, “The King-Hermit”, “The Lion’s Daughter”, “Tyranny”, “The Saint”, “The Plutocrat”, “The Greater Self”, “War and the Small Nations”, “Critics”, “Poets”, “The Weather-cock”, “The King of Aradus”, “Out of My Deeper Heart”, etc. Other notable works by this author include: “Music” (1905), “Rebellious Spirits” (1908), and “Broken Wings” (1912). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems is the second collection of philosophical poetry and short stories by Kahlil Gibran. It consists of 25 poems and parables relating to spirituality, love, and our greater selves. Includes: God's Fool; Love' The King Hermit; The Lion's Daughter; Tyranny; The Saint; Out of my Deeper Heart; Knowledge and Half-Knowledge, and more. With some illustrations by the author.

Published in 1920, The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems is the second collection of philosophical poetry and short stories by Lebanese author Khalil Gibran. A spiritual successor to The Madman, The Forerunner consists of 25 poems and parables relating to spirituality, love, our greater selves.

Elegant but inexpensive, this clothbound volume includes complete texts and drawings of The Madman and The Forerunner, plus 20 additional illustrations and a perceptive essay by art historian Alice Raphael.

This volume contains the complete works (poetry and fiction) of Khalil Gibran. Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected this title in his lifetime. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and is one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages. 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 "such themes as religion, justice, free will, science, love, happiness, the soul, the body, and death" in his writings, which were "characterized by innovation breaking with forms of the past, by symbolism, an undying love for his native land, and a sentimental, melancholic yet often oratorical style." He explored literary forms as diverse as "poetry, parables, fragments of conversation, short stories, fables, political essays, letters, and aphorisms." 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.

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For the first time, all the major works of this beloved writer are gathered together in one hardcover volume. Poet, artist, and mystic, Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 to a poor Christian family in Lebanon and immigrated to the United States as an adolescent. His masterpiece, The Prophet, a book of poetic essays that he began while still a youth in Lebanon, is one of the most cherished books of our time and has sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages since its publication in 1923. But all of Gibran’s works—essays, stories, parables, and prose poems—are imbued with equally powerful simplicity and wisdom, whether they are addressing marriage or children, friendship or grief, work or pleasure. Perhaps no other twentieth-century writer has touched the hearts and minds of so remarkably varied and widespread a readership. Included in this volume are The Prophet, The Wanderer, Jesus the Son of Man, A Tear and a Smile, Spirits Rebellious, Nymphs of the Valley, Prose Poems, The Garden of the Prophet, The Earth Gods, Sand and Foam, The Forerunner, and The Madman.