A Man from Lebanon Nineteen Centuries Afterward, The Syrian World, 3, 5, November 1928, 21–26 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
Abu al-`Ala Ahmad al-Ma`ari: Kama Yatasawwirahu Jibran Khalil Jibran. Naqlan `an Ahad Dafatirihi al-`Atiqah [Drawing]; Abu al-`Ala Ahmad al-Ma`ari [Article], al-Funun 1, no. 6 (September 1913), pp. 57-58 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
A fourth collection of Gibran’s Arabic stories and prose poems, al-’Awasif (The Storms or The Tempests), came out in Cairo in 1920. The contents dated from 1912 to 1918 and had been published in al-Funun and Mir’at al-gharb (Mirror of the West), an immigrant newspaper. It consists of thirty-one pieces that are generally harsher in tone than the sketches and stories of the three earlier collections. In the title story the narrator is curious about Yusuf al-Fakhri, a hermit who abandoned society in his thirtieth year to live alone on Mount Lebanon. Driven to the hermit’s cell by a storm, he is surprised to find such comforts as cigarettes and wine. The hermit tells the narrator that he did not flee the world to be a contemplative but to escape the corruption of society. In “‘Ala bab al-haykal” (At the Gate of the Temple) a man asks passersby about the nature of love. The powerful “al-’Ubudiya” (Slavery) catalogues the forms of human bondage throughout history. In “al-Shaytan” (Satan) a priest finds the devil dying by the side of the road; Satan persuades the priest that he is necessary to the well-being of the world, and the clergyman takes him home to nurse him back to health. Several other stories deal with the political themes that had concerned Gibran during the war.
Al-'Ubudiyah [Slavery], Mira'at al-Gharb, vol. 13 no. 1420, September 13, 1911, Part II, p. 1 , Part II, p. 1 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
Al-Ajnihah al-Mutakassirah [Broken Wings], New York: Mir'at al-Gharb, 1912 [owned by Mary Elizabeth Haskell; inscribed by the Author]. In 1912 Gibran published al-Ajniha al-mutakassira, which he seems to have written several years earlier. The novella is his only attempt at a sustained narrative. When he was eighteen, the narrator fell in love in Beirut with Salma Karama. Forced by her father to marry an archbishop’s nephew, Salma was able to meet her lover occasionally until they were discovered together. Salma was then confined to her home and eventually died in childbirth. Reviews in the Arabic press were strongly positive, though there were some reservations about the character of Salma and Gibran’s views on the position of Arab women. The book led to a correspondence with the Syrian writer May Ziyada that evolved into an epistolary love affair.
Al-Bada’i’ wa al-tara’if (Best Things and Masterpieces), a collection of thirty-five of Gibran’s pieces, was published in Cairo in 1923. The works had been selected by the publisher, and the collection is uneven and miscellaneous. It includes several short articles on major Arab thinkers, illustrated with portraits drawn from Gibran’s imagination, and prose poems and sketches of the sort familiar from his earlier collections. Two pieces are of more interest than the others. “Safinat al-dubab” (A Ship in the Mist) is a strange romantic short story. A lonely young man dreams of a woman who visits him continually in his sleep and is his wife in spirit. When he is sent to Venice, he finds her; but she has just died. Iram, dhat al-’imad (Iram, City of Lofty Pillars) is a one-act play set in a city mentioned in the Qur’an. A young scholar, Najib Rahma, comes to the mysterious city seeking a prophetess, Amina al-’Alawiya, who is said to have visited there. He first meets her disciple, the dervish Zayn al-’Abidin; then Amina al-’Alawiya appears and expounds a monistic mystical philosophy.
al-Bahr al-A`zam [Short Story], Ughniyat al-Layl [Poem], al-Khansa’ [Drawing], al-Funun 2, no. 10 (March 1917), pp. 885-887; 931-933 [digitized by The American University of Beirut, AUB, Lebanon].
al-Banafsajah al-Tamuhah [Short Story], al-Mu`tamad Ibn `Abbad [Drawing], al-Funun 3, no. 1 (August 1917), pp. 1-6; 73 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
al-Falaki [Short Story], al-Funun 2, no. 8 (January 1917), p. 673 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
al-Hakiman [Short Story], Bayna al-Fasl wa-al-Fasl [Short Story], Ibn al-Muqaffa` [Drawing], al-Funun 3, no. 4 (November 1917), pp. 275-276; 297 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
al-Layl wa-al-Majnun [Short Story], `Umar Ibn al-Farid, al-`Arif bi-Allah Sharaf al-Din [Drawing], al-Farid [Essay], al-Funun 2, no. 2 (July 1916), pp. 97-99; 152; 153-4 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
In 1919 Gibran published 'al-Mawakib.' He had written it during summer vacations in Cohasset, Massachusetts, in 1917 and 1918 but wanted to bring it out in an elegant illustrated edition on heavy stock that was unavailable in wartime. It is a two-hundred-line poem in traditional rhyme and meter comprising a dialogue between an old man and a youth on the edge of a forest. The old man is rooted in the world of civilization and the city; the youth is a creature of the forest and represents nature and wholeness. The old man expresses a gloomy philosophy to which the carefree youth gives optimistic responses. Some critics noted the irregularities in the Arabic; Gibran’s haphazard education meant that his Arabic, like his English, was never perfect. Conservative reviewers objected to the poem’s solecisms, but Mayy Ziyada dismissed them as expressions of the poet’s independence. The work immediately became popular, especially as a piece to be sung. It is one of the great examples of mahjari (immigrant) poetry and pioneered a new form of verse in Arabic.
al-Nabī [The Prophet], Translated into Arabic by Antūniyūs Bashīr, al-Qāirah: al-Maṭbaʻah al-Raḥmānīyah bi-Miṣr, 1926.
al-Namalat al-Thalath [Poem], al-Kalb al-Hakim [Poem], al-Funun 2, no. 9 (February 1917), pp. 781-782 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
al-Samm fi al-Dasim [Short Story], al-Funun 2, no. 6 (November 1916), pp. 481-486 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
al-Sha`ir: Uqaddimuha ilá (M. M.) [Poem], Ilá al-Muslimin min Sha`ir Masihi [Essay], al-Funun 1, no. 8 (November 1913), pp. 1-3; 37-39 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
al-`Asifah [Short Story], al-Ghazzali [Essay and Drawing], al-Funun 3, no. 2 (September 1917), pp. 81-95; 143-144 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
Alá Bab al-Haykil [Short Story], Ya Zaman al-Hubb [Poem], al-Funun 1, no. 3 (June 1913), pp. 17-21; 36-37 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
Alice Raphael, The Art of Kahlil Gibran, The Seven Arts, March, 1917, pp. 531-534
Allah [Short Story], al-Funun 2, no. 11 (April 1917), pp. 989-990 [digitized by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA].
