this ruined all other poetry books for me.

this is the best poem book you'll ever read.

in times like these the world needs to be reminded of its essential aspects to realise and reflect on their preponderance in our lives. Our duties towards the surrounding- its animate and inanimate segments, their innocent actions and reactions at certain stages of this mortal life.

this book has helped me keep my sanity. reading it any number of times will be less in a lifetime.
--
“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”
—Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
No words can do justice to this beautiful book. The poetic prose had me so captivated that I started to read it out loud. Seldom does it happen that the words feel like music themselves. There are parts of this book that I’ll keep going back to time and again only to find a deeper meaning to them. Learnt and contemplated a great deal through the majestic words of Gibran. In all honesty I haven’t felt more satisfied after reading a book ever. But also at the same time I’ll have to admit it gets overwhelming since a few essays aren’t unanimous and some are difficult to comprehend. One ought to read it multiple times to devour this novella on spiritual and philosophical ideas on life. It was published about a century ago but doesn’t fail to resonate with us even today.

1.5*
Sure there are a few beautiful passages in this, but on the whole, this book irritated me on so many levels.

Not for me.

The Prophet, Al Mustafa, is about to board a ship after his exile of 12 years in Orphalese, to return to his home. Before he embarks, he is stopped by the towns people to impart some last wisdom.



This is a collection of 26 poetic essays that vary in subject from love, pain, friendship, giving and many more.

Growing up, our house was filled with Kahlil Gibran books. My parents have a huge collection of his works and have always encouraged me to give them a try. However I've always been a bit daunted and never knew exactly where to start. My mother suggested The Prophet.

I was so overjoyed when I received this copy, which came to me as a surprise.

My edition (the Alma Classics edition, published 2020) included illustrations by Gibran himself. I loved looking at them and they were such a great addiction to the poetry itself.

My heart felt full while reading this spiritual classic. The wisdom imparted spoke to me. And I feel like even if poetry isn't your thing you'd still find something in this book that speaks to you.

I highly recommend taking your time, savour it in small increments and reflect on each essay.


« Thank you to Jonathan Ball publishers for gifting me a copy »

The Prophet made me feel profoundly spiritual when I was nineteen. It was a great way to experience spirituality and romance as a teenager, but as I got older, its lusty descriptions of the true meaning of love, marriage, and life just seem like pretty, but shallow, wordplay.

Now, don't write to me and prove me wrong on this, because I like the idea very much. I believe that Khalil Gibran was quite the player. The Prophet has a seductive tone that avoids making any concrete statements, which is the strategy used by career players (see SNL's The Ladies' Man).

Nonetheless, I still recommend everyone read The Prophet. Whether you take the prose as deep advice or empty rhetoric, it is beautiful wordplay.

ليس هناك فرصة أفضل لإعادة كتابة هذه المراجعة من هذه الأيام حيث يثور الجميع من حولي على اكليشيه "خليك زي حماده", و "be like Bill"
فنبي جبران, مثل مدير أحد تلك الصفحات, يقوم بوضع أنماط محددة لحياتنا, عن طريق نصائح مباشرة مبتذلة. ومُقتي لهذا الشكل من النصائح مهما كان محتواها ومهما كان قائلها يفوق مُقت سام هاريس لنعوم تشومسكي, أو حتى مُقت كريستوفر هيتشنز للأم تريزا. وهذا لا يعني أن نصائح جبران كانت جيدة بأي حال.

الكتاب هو محاولة لمحاكاة نبي نيتشة المسمى زرادشت في كتاب "هكذا تكلم زرادشت", لكن عدد قراء كتاب جبران على الجودريدز تقريباً ضعفي قراءة كتاب نيشته.
خليط من هراء التنمية البشرية مع سجع الكهان تحت عنوان المدرسة الرومانسية لخليل جبران..
ولأجل الرومانسية باع الكتاب مبيعات هائلة؛ حيث كان مصدراً جيداً لاقتطاع عبارات عميقة بما يكفي لإرفاقها بجواب رومانسي للقرين المختار

لا تكن مثل أحد, واحظَ بتجربتك الخاصة؛ فذلك أكثر مرحاً.

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”

Beautiful language and inspiring messages.

“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

You must be in a certain mindset to accept this as the poetry as it is intended. Gibran’s prose is sincere and his direction is to create a philosophical work of lasting beauty but this 1923 publication can be dated.

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”

Πόσο ανάγκη έχει η ανθρωπότητα από τέτοιους φωτισμένους λογοτέχνες. Υπέροχο!!

Kahlil Gibran is a name that's been revolving around the fringes of my to-read possibilities. As one of the most widely read writers in the world, how could he not?

The Prophet combines faith and philosophy in a series of questions and answers on life and death and all the big topics in between, all delivered in a style similar to the Socratic Method...except that it's not really promoting any kind of critical thinking. Yes, there are some fundamental truths to be gleaned herein, same as you'd find in the Bible for example. But then there are passages that essentially say: don't bother learning, you know it all already. I guess you just have to coax it out of yourself by yourself. Or just listen to God. Have faith and you'll know all you need to know. Oh, and don't bother talking. Gibran says talking murders thought. Certainly it's tough to get any thinking done while someone is talking to you, but is really does help your thoughts to evolve when you talk things over with others with experience and wisdom.

Poetry isn't my thing anymore, so I was hesitant to read The Prophet. Luckily it's not poetry. Well, it's "prose poetry". But to me this sort of writing has very little resemblance to poetry...which is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. However, many of the lines do have a certain poetic flair. There is a melodic flow and it is a pleasure to read, especially when one of Gibran's philosophical tidbits rings true.

I'm not surprised this saw a resurgence in popularity with the counterculture of the 1960s. This offers up the sort of loose philosophy that would attract those in search of something to believe in outside of organized religion. There was some good to be found within the pages of The Prophet. There was also some good within The Bible. I'd rather read this again though. It's a lot shorter.

4,25/5 ... 4 estrellas y he aquí mi reseña.

"El profeta" es una obra que suele considerarse como "poesía en prosa" de corte espiritual, escrita en 1923, por el americano de origen libanés Kahlil Gibran. Desde entonces, se ha traducido a más de 100 idiomas y es continuamente reeditada, siendo una de las obras más leídas desde su publicación. Ya en el primer capítulo, la profetisa Almitra, en nombre de todo el pueblo, le dice al profeta Almustafá:

"Profeta de Dios, en la busca de lo más remoto, hace tiempo que oteas la distancia aguardando la llegada de tu barco. Y ahora tu barco ha llegado y tú has de partir...
Sin embargo, te pedimos, antes de que nos abandones, que nos hables y nos concedas participar de tu verdad. Y nosotros la transmitiremos a nuestros hijos, y nuestros hijos a sus hijos y ella no perecerá ...
Ahora, por todo ello, descúbrete a nosotros y háblanos de todo cuanto te ha sido mostrado sobre la vida y la existencia desde el nacimiento a la muerte.
Y él contestó: Gentes de Orfalese, de qué puedo hablaros sino de aquello que se agita en vuestro espíritu y desgarra vuestra conciencia a cada momento".

Y esto es precisamente lo que marca la estructura del libro, que se divide en 26 capítulos o fábulas, en las que el profeta reflexiona sobre diversos aspectos de la existencia, como la vida, la muerte, la belleza, el amor o los hijos. De esta manera, las consideraciones del profeta sirven para reconsiderar valores, conceptos y costumbres, poniendo énfasis en la empatía entre los seres vivos y en el amor como fuerza motriz de todo.

Con esta idea general, el profeta despliega pasajes de gran belleza y profundidad, que mueven a la reflexión. Por ello, mi consejo es leer unos pocos capítulos cada día, para facilitar que se produzca esta introspección, y meditar sobre ellos. Algunos de los pasajes más conocidos son:

-"Sois vosotros arco y vuestros hijos flecha. Y, desde el arco, la Vida lanzará su flecha sin dilación" (De los hijos).
-"Así pues, el deseo de comodidad estrangula la auténtica pasión del alma, y después camina sonriente en el funeral" (De las casas)
-"La razón y la pasión son el timón y las velas de vuestra alma marinera" (De la razón y la pasión).
-"¿Es que el tiempo no es como el amor, sin límite ni espacio que lo divida?" (Del tiempo).
-" Y si verdaderamente queréis contemplar el espíritu de la muerte, abrid vuestro gran corazón a la vida. Pues la vida y la muerte son una misma cosa, así como el río y el mar son uno" (De la muerte).

Se trata pues de una obra para leer con sosiego y sin prisas, para que puedan meditarse las ideas e imágenes que sugiere. Sin embargo, desde hace ya bastante años, vivimos inmersos en una gran profusión de literatura de autoayuda y de espiritualidad que, en mi modesta opinión, afectan notablemente a esta obra en la actualidad. Esto es lo que explica mis 4 estrellas: reconozco su belleza y su profundidad, pero no me ha impactado notablemente. Quizás podría ser un buen candidato para ser releído pasado un tiempo. Para terminar la reseña, la despido tal y como hace el profeta en la obra:

"Si en el crepúsculo del recuerdo, volviéramos a encontrarnos una vez más, de nuevo conversaríamos y cantaríais para mí una profunda canción. Y si nuestras manos volvieran a encontrarse en un nuevo sueño, construiríamos una nueva torre sobre el cielo".

Sin duda, este es un libro especialmente recomendable para aquellos amantes de los libros que incitan a la espiritualidad y a la meditación.

The Prophet is a timeless book, a book for those who want to get to know Humanity, beyond the fashions and trends of the moment. It was given to me on the eve of my departure for mandatory military service, so now decades ago, yet it is still a very current book, because it touches on the eternal themes of Man, those values and feelings that are transversal in Humanity, independent from the places of birth, from the eras, from the different educations. Anyone can recognize himself in it, whether he was born in the East or the West, in this century or in the last century, whether he is male or female, whether he is young or old. It is a very difficult book to define, since it is not a book of poetry, nor an essay, nor a novel, nor an autobiography. More than anything, it looks like a collection of speeches on various themes of everyone's daily life. It does not take place in a context defined in space and time, we only know that everything happens in the city of Orphalese, just before the Prophet Almustafa leaves it after living there for more than ten years. Before the Prophet leaves the city, the visionary Almitra asks him to leave his truths to the population as a gift, so that they can remain for the young people to come. And so the Prophet, starting from Love, and questioned by various characters, begins to talk about a series of issues that affect the lives of all men. The Prophet then speaks of friendship, gift, marriage, good, evil, work, joy, pain, life, death. A timeless wisdom, written in a simple language, but rich in symbols and metaphors; a religious and spiritual flavor, without this becoming predominant and therefore annoying. A real source for ideas for thought, reflection on one's beliefs and general questions about Humanity. A book that is part of that category of books that one can really like or don't like at all, because it is a book that leaves no one indifferent: either it touches certain points of ours in a way that we like, and then we also like the book, or it touches them in a way that confronts us with certain weaknesses of ours, and then we don't like the book also .... It is a book that can be interpreted in many ways and that is certainly full of teachings: a pocket treasure of wisdom, to always keep at hand for all times when you feel the need or desire.

a book for anyone willing to step outside of the insitutionalized perspective of life that most of America and the world finds itself in. Every line is an intuitive and insightful proclamation of the gut feelings we all have about the way life can be lived and should be lived. I have heard the quote on marriage being like two trees standing near each other with a little space between them so the wind (God) can come between them. it's an extremely popular and inspirational book!