by Philippe Maryssael, retired translator and terminologist. Arlon, Belgium, October 13, 2020. A rare book by Barbara Young, illustrated with a drawing by Gibran Barbara Young (1878‑1961), the pen name of Henrietta Boughton, née Breckenridge, was a literary critic with the New York Times in the early 20th century. She became Kahlil Gibran’s personal secretary in 1925 and it was she who carried the agonizing Gibran to the Saint Vincent Hospital in New York on April 9, 1931. The next day, April 10, 1931, Gibran passed away, diagnosed having liver cirrhosis and tuberculosis. Barbara Young is best known for her book This Man from Leb...
Edited by Francesco Medici© Francesco Medici - all rights reserved 2020 The first Arabic-language literary circle in North America, known as al-Rābiṭah al-Qalamiyyah, or simply Arrabitah (literally in English, “The Pen Bond,” or “The Pen League,” or “The Association of the Pen,”), was founded or re-formed (its first official formation was due to Nasib Aridah and Abd al-Masih Haddad and dates back 1916) on 28 April 1920 by a group of Arab immigrant writers in New York led by Kahlil Gibran. The other members of the society were Mikhail Naimy, Elia Abu Madi, ...
‘What have you to do with me? I am an Italian!’ by Francesco Medici © Francesco Medici - all rights reserved 2020 “Forgive me my curiosity – what country do you hail from? You look to me like a Frenchman or an Italian.”[1] These appear to have been the first words spoken by Mary Haskell to Kahlil Gibran in the spring of 1904, during their first encounter at an exhibition of his...
by Francesco Medici - Translated into English by Nadine Najem© Francesco Medici & Nadine Najem - all rights reserved 2020 One day, during his youth, the future great French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was asked by his friend Antoinette Faure a series of questions in English language – in fact they were in vogue among the British Victorian families, as a form of parlor games, some questionnaires designed to discover the personal tastes and aspirations of those who answered them. Proust’s answers were published only in 1924, two years after his death. This was the origin of the famous “Proust Questionnaire”, whose success has come down to the present day.
by Charles Malouf Samaha Copyright © 2020 by Charles Malouf Samaha. All rights reserved. Faris Saleem Malouf (1892-1958) emigrated from Lebanon to the United States in 1907. Like many Lebanese immigrants, he started peddling, but
Xianzhi: Gibran’s The Prophet in Chinese (1931) by Francesco Medici© Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2020 The first to translate a selection of Gibran’s works into Chinese was Mao Dun (Máo Dùn, 1896-1981), known by the pen name of Shen Dehong (Shěn Déhóng), a much-famed and respected novelist, cultural critic and future Minister of Culture of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to 1965. Between June and September 1923, he published in some literature weeklies his translations of eight prose poems from The Forerunner: “Poet...
Kahlil Gibran and the Armenians by Francesco Medici - Translated into English and Arabic by Nadine Najem. © Francesco Medici - all rights reserved 2020 Introduction by: Glen Kalem-Habib The 24th of April (today) in 1916 for many Armenians around the world commemorate the tragic events of what is now recognized as the Armenian Genocide (or Holocaust). The atrocities committed by the Turkish-Ottoman forces between 1914 and 1923 are estimated to have killed 1.5 million Armenians, in what is widely accepted as the “first modern day genocide”. Second only to the Holocaust, many studies have been made and continue to be made, about these horror killings which occurred during the WWI period. Around the same time, main...
Der Novi: Gibran’s The Prophet in Yiddish (1929) by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2020 On May 4, 2017, Swann Galleries, a well-known New York auction house specializing in rare and antiquarian books, sold for $13,000 a two-page autograph letter by Kahlil Gibran to a Mr. Horowitz (Sale 2446, Lot 360). In his letter, the poet praises Horowitz’s essay introducing The Prophet and suggests that the latter tell Knopf of his translation of the book. These are the (almost complete) contents of the letter: Boston, 10 July 1928 My dear Mr. Horowitz, Thank you […] for se...
The Prophet’s first Dutch translation (The Hague, 1927) by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2020 De Profeet, The Prophet’s first Dutch translation, came out in 1927 in The Hague, Netherlands, by the
The Prophet’s Earliest European Translations: German (1925) and French (1926) by Francesco Medici © Copyright Francesco Medici All Rights Reserved 2020 Baron Georg-Eduard Freiherr von Stietencron (Crissier, Switzerland, 1888-Stuttgart, Germany, 1974), from an ancient noble family of Swedish origins, was an author, translator, inventor and film merchant. His translation of The Prophet from the original English into German was probably the first-ever to be published. It was released in 1925 in Munich, Germany, with the title Der Prophet, in 800 numbered pieces printed on special paper. https://softwarecheapmall.com - Student Discounts & Deals. Buy cheap school software. Academic discount on Adobe, Microsoft, Autodesk a...
"Portrait of Ameen Rihani through his handwriting" by Mary Haskell Introduction: Glen Kalem-Habib Researcher: Francesco Medici Transcriptions: Philippe Marysael Graphology by definition is summed up as "the analysis of the physical characteristics and patterns of handwriting claiming to be able to identify the writer, indicating the psychological state at the time of writing, or evaluating personality characteristics" It is not quite known when Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873-1964) developed a strong interest in the pseudoscience of graphology, but upon the recent discovery of a French article translated by Fouad Sader for the Lebanese-French Magazine "La Revue du Liban" on the 12th of November 1944, we now have a glimpse of what those skills were li...
Le Sable et l'Écume : Recueil d'Aphorismes By Philippe Maryssael In 1926, the fourth book that Kahlil Gibran wrote in English was published in New York: Sand and Foam (A Book of Aphorisms). It contains 322 short aphorisms that were compiled with the help of Barbara Young, Gibran's secretary between 1925 and 1931. They are ideas that Gibran jotted down in his notebook or on odd pieces of paper in English or in Arabic. Gibran and his benefactress Mary Haskell went through the collection and decided they were worth publishing... The book forms the most intimate and personal of his writings...
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...
