Salim Sarkis: Gibran’s Matchmaker Friend by Bob Goodhouse © all rights reserved 2020 Salim S. Sarkis (1867-1926), born in Beirut, lived at 76 Broad St in the Syrian New York Colony from 1899-1904, and published the Al Musheer (“The Counselor”) weekly newspaper at 38 Broad St. Like many Syrian-Lebanese of the time, he left Beirut for Egypt, and ultimately the United States. Unlike many of his compatriots, he decided to return to Egypt after a few years in America.Al Musheer had been a popular Egyptian weekly in Cairo from 1894-1899, famous for being one of the first journals to use political cartoons to editorialize what Sar...
By Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem-Habib © all rights reserved 2020 The Kahlil Gibran Collective has revealed the discovery of an unpublished letter of Kahlil Gibran to an unknown recipient, talking about his newfound appreciation for Philology. Though I am not a linguist, philology has been, and is now, one of the most interesting subjects to me. Medici and Kalem-Habib's research was unable to place a date to the letter, nor who its recipient was. Looking at content and subject matter, the researchers estimate it was written in-between 1925-1930. Gibran, "a man of (many) letters" took so much pride and care in writing them and this letter reveals much of that pride and care when he says; ...
By The Kahlil Gibran Collective, all rights reserved © The Kahlil Gibran Collective 2020 In April 2017, during the third international conference on Kahlil Gibran held at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Kahlil Gibran scholars Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem-Habib shared their findings on the official number of first edition language translations of The Prophet. The number they registered in the year-long study was 104 titles. This study has been an ongoing one, and sure enough just over a year later they further announced another
by Philippe Maryssael, retired translator and terminologist. Arlon, Belgium, 2 November 2019. Abstract “And you, vast sea, sleeping mother”: a short, six-word sentence at the top of page 10 of the first edition of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, published in 1923, was later changed to “And you, vast sea, sleepless mother.” The aim of this paper is to try and provide answers to the following questions: when did the change occur?, why did Kahlil Gibran ask his publisher, Alfred Knopf, to change his text?, and who could have influenced Gibran to change it? Also considered in this paper is the question of the versions of the text that were used by the men and w...
Research on the Spread and Influence of Gibran in China The Contrast between Translation and Research and its Reflection By Lijuan Gan, Professor, Tianjin Normal University Xuehua Miao, Associate Professor, Harbin Normal University Wei Liang, Instructor, Hunan-First Normal University Edited by Glen Kalem-Habib In November 2013, I had the pleasure of being invited to attend a three-day Middle Eastern literature conference at Peking...
By Todd Fine Originally Published on HuffPost 06/15/2017 The field of Arab American studies is being revolutionized by a movement of independent scholars that is leveraging the new accessibility of genealogical information and newspapers in digital databases. Important topics like the history of the “Syrian quarter” in Lower Manhattan and the biographies of key Arab American political and literary figures are being finally written by scholars like Linda Jacobs, Jean Gibran, Charles Malouf Samaha, Francesco Medici, Mary Ann DiNapoli, Gregory J. Shibley, and Robert Goodhouse.
Mercedes de Acosta: “Gibran Was a Great Spiritual Teacher” edited by Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem-Habib Mercedes de Acosta (1892-1968) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. She was professionally unsuccessful but is known for her many lesbian relationships with famous Broadway and Hollywood personalities and numerous friendships with prominent artists of the period.
edited by Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem Kahlil Gibran tried out his early poetry on Josephine Peabody (1874-1922), a fine American poet and dramatist, and instructor in English at Wellesley College from 1901 to 1903. He attempted to explain what he was up to in his Arabic poems to his friend, and took with her his first tottering steps in English composition. One of those immature prose poems remains, dating probably from 1904, among Josephine’s papers in Harvard University Library: The way seemed long and rough The path lost among hills. Loneline...
by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2019 The Arab-American literary monthly review Al-Funoon (“The Arts”) began publication in April 1913 in New York City by editor and publisher Nasib Aridah,[1] already founder there in 1912 of the “Al-Atlantic Publishing Co.” After 29 issues it ceased publication in August 1918 due to several factors, such as paper supply, lack of subscription payment, manpower availability and World War I.[2]
Gibran’s Letters to Antony Bashir by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2019 As a young clergyman, the Lebanese-born Antony (Antonious) Bashir (1898-1966), future Orthodox Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of All North American archdiocese of the Church of Antioch from 1936 to 1966, was adept at translating from English into Arabic. It was Gibran who chose to entrust Bashir with the Arabic translation of all his English works published by Knopf in New York: The Madman (1918), The Forerunner (1920), The Prophet (1923), Sand and Foam (1926), Jesus, the Son of Man (1928), The Earth Gods (1931). ...
by Tania June Sammons © Copyright Tania June Sammons All Rights Reserved 2019 In October 1923, educator, philanthropist, and traveler Mary Haskell prophesized the success of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran after receiving a copy of the book she helped bring to fruition. This book will be held as one of the treasures of English literature. And in our darkness we will open it to find ourselves again and the heaven and earth within ourselves. Generations will not exhaust it, but instead, generation after generation will find in the book what they would fain be—and it will be better loved as we grow riper and riper. Nearly one hundred years later The Prophet has sold millions of copies worldwide, never gone ...
by Joseph Nahas edited by Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem One day, instead of eating our lunch at the restaurant, Gibran and I prepared our own sandwiches and walked over to Battery Park. There we saw a blind man sitting on a bench, running his fingers over a white page covered with dots protruding through embossing. The man’s lips moved as if he were whispering to himself, as his fingers moved over the white sheet. As we passed by the blind man, Gibran remarked, “Let’s sit on the adjoining bench, eat our sandwiches quietly while watching this man with ‘seeing fingers.’” We sat down eating, while our eyes were fixed on the blind man, watching the expressions on his face, smiling now, frowning then, as his fingers deftly moved over one line after another, page after page. ...
by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2019 On the night of 11 November 1904, a devastating fire completely gutted the Harcourt Studios, located on 23 Irvington Street, Boston. The building was shared by many of the city’s most notable artists, including Edmund C. Tarbell (1862-1938), Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), William P. Burpee (1846-1940), Joseph DeCamp (1858-1923), William Macgregor Paxton (1869-1941) and Fred Holland Day (1864-1933). [1] Unfortunately Gibran’s whole portfolio, that was in the st...
NEWS: Kahlil Gibran’s, The Prophet has been published by the Folio Society with colour illustrations of his original drawings for the first time. The Prophet entered the public domain at the beginning of this year fostering in a new era of publications that are keeping the books remarkable legacy alive. The Arts and Collectables International website has captured its re-birth in this article: https://www.artsandcollections.com/kahlil-gibrans-best-seller-the-prophet-issued-in-folio-society-illustrated-edition/ https://www.foliosociety.com/au/the-prophet.html
Gibran and Julia Ellsworth Ford: Two Rare Photographs by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2019 “Mrs. Ford is one of the powerful women of New York […]. Last Sunday she took me in her car to her great country house in Rye, N.Y.” wrote Gibran to Mary Haskell in 1913. And again, one year after: “We had a dinner with the Fords. I enjoyed the evening very much – such rare people.”[1]
Gibran on His Excommunication by Joseph Nahas edited by Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem It was one evening when I happened to be at the office of His Eminence Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, titular head of the Russian Orthodox Catholic Church in North America and its islands, discussing an article written by me on the separation of that church from the Antioch Patriarchate with headquarters at Damascus, Syria. A coterie of writers – Gibran, Naseeb Arida, Abdul-Maseeh Haddad, Nadra Haddad (Abdul-Maseeh’s elder brother), Mikhail Takla, and Mikhail Naimy – arrived. Naseeb Arida was the publisher of an Arabic language magazine, Al-Akhlak, “The Character”; Abdul-Maseeh Haddad was the publisher of an Arabic language newspaper, As-Sayeh, “The Traveler”; Nadra Haddad was an officer in the Bank o...
by Francesco Medici Naoum Antoun Mokarzel (Freike, 1864-Paris, 1932) was a Lebanese political activist, influential intellectual and publisher, who immigrated to the United States where he established ‘Al-Hoda’ (The Guidance, 1898-1971), the largest Arabic daily in North America. In 1923, on the occasion ...
by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2019 Indeed, as of today, Gibran’s literary works both in Arabic and English have all but been published, apart from maybe some fragments and other minor contributions. To find unpublished material we have to look above all at his many letters.[1] For example, his extensive correspondence with Mary Haskell Minis (between 1904 and the time of his death in 1931) and her private journal and diaries about him are still waiting to be published in their entirety. Said documents are part of the Minis Family Papers, 1739-1948, held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, which also contains Mary’s correspondence and various materials about Gibran, manuscrip...
by Glen Kalem In 2014 The Kahlil Gibran Collective announced the discovery of an
NEWS: Contributing writers for the Kahlil Gibran Collective, Francesco Medici and Glen Kalem have had their study on the translations of 'The Prophet' inspire an academic paper prepared by Professor Maya El-Hajj. We are proud to announce it has been published in 'Academy Publication' - Theory and Practice in Language Studies ISSN 1799-2591 Volume 9, Number 4, April 2019 under the title of "Aporias in Literary Translation: A Case Study of The Prophet and Its Translations." Links to the full article below. Medici and Kalem were...
