Kahlil Gibran's Little Book of Love
By Kahlil Gibran and Neil Douglas-Klotz
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About this ebook
Kahlil Gibran’s aphorisms, stories, and poetry on a theme remain among some of those best known to Western readers. His views, however, extend beyond the most-quoted “greeting card” sayings to a wide realm of human emotions and relationships—passion, desire, idealized love, justice, friendship, and the challenges of dealing with strangers, neighbors, and enemies. This little book captures love and life in all of their complexities and nuances.
This little volume includes over 90 selections from Gibran’s writings and is divided into four sections:
- Love’s Initiation
- The Veils of Love
- All of Our Relationships
- A Love Beyond
This book, ideal for all gift-giving occasions, is informative, illuminating, and inspirational.
Whom Do We Love?
When I stood, a clear mirror before you,
you gazed into me and saw your image.
Then you said, “I love you.”
But in truth you loved yourself in me.
Love is the veil between lover and lover.
Kahlil Gibran
Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) was an essayist, novelist, and mystic poet. He wrote The Prophet, a collection of philosophical essays that went on to become one of the bestselling books of the twentieth century. Though he was born in Lebanon, he moved to Boston’s South End as a child and studied art with Auguste Rodin in Paris for two years before launching his literary career. Much of Gibran’s work contains themes of religion and Christianity as well as spiritual love.
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Kahlil Gibran's Little Book of Love - Kahlil Gibran
Copyright © 2018
by Neil Douglas-Klotz
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
Cover design by Jim Warner
Cover photograph Crazy in Love by Rebecca Campbell/Private
Collection/Bridgeman Images
Interior by Deborah Dutton
Typeset in ITC Garamond Std
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Charlottesville, VA 22906
Distributed by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
www.redwheelweiser.com
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ISBN: 978-1-57174-833-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gibran, Kahlil, 1883-1931 author. | Douglas-Klotz, Neil editor author of introduction.
Title: Kahlil Gibran's little book of love / Neil Douglas-Klotz [editor].
Other titles: Little book of love
Description: Charlottesville, VA : Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2018. | In English with some selections originally translated from Arabic.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018565 | ISBN 9781571748331 (5 x 7 pbk. w/ flaps : alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3513.I25 A6 2018 | DDC 818/.5209--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018565
Printed in the United States of America
IBI
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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FOR ALL THE LOVERS SEPARATED BY
ANOTHER’S ILL USION OF THE OTHER
Contents
Introduction
1. Love's Initiation
The Spring of Love
Beauty in the Heart
First Love
Wandering Desire
Singing the Heart
Beauty and Love
If You Have Desires . . .
Describing First Love
Mistaken Identity
Love's Summer
O Love
Desire Is Half
Between Desire and Peace
God Moves in Passion
Voices in Rapture
Your Body Is the Harp of Your Soul
If Your Heart Is a Volcano
Love Across Age
A Desire Unfulfilled
A Passion Unspent
All the Stars of My Night Faded Away
2. The Veils of Love
Love's Gifts
The Caged Heart
Love v. Law
Three Persons Separated
What Lovers Embrace
Two Kinds of Love
Whom Do We Love?
Laughter and Tears
Love Cleansed by Tears
A Woman's Heart
Love Caresses and Threshes
Love's Autumn
Between Heart and Soul
Tears and Dewdrops
Depth
Where Are You Now, My Other Self?
Who Is Crucifying the Sun?
Seasons of Your Heart
Great Longing
Longing Beyond Words
Alone?
Unsealing the Heart
Speaking and Listening to the Heart
Freedom and Slavery
Weep for the Beloved. . . .
Harvesting the Heart's Pain
3. All Our Relationships
Mother
The Song that Lies Silent
Sayings on Children
Lullabies
If Love Were in the Flesh . . .
Hide and Seek
Love Song
Love and Hate
Two Sides
The Hermit, the Beasts, and Love
Working with Love
Wave a Bit Nearer . . .
Sayings on Enemies
Friends and Strangers
Friendship—Hours to Live
Friendship's Sweet Responsibility
Loving the Neighbor
Your Neighbor Is Your Unknown Self
The Neighbor Unbefriended
Your Neighbor Is a Field
Love and Patriotism
Spaces in Your Togetherness
Flame to Flame
Loving the Lost Sheep
The Fingers of One Loving Hand
4. A Love Beyond
Love's Winter
A Rhythm for Lovers
Love Is the Only Freedom
Love Is Justice
Silence Whispers to the Heart
Love Song of the Wave
Seeds of Heart
Song of Love
Love's Light
Love Is Sufficient to Itself
When Love Becomes Vast
Out of My Deeper Heart
Longing for the Heart of the Beloved
Love and Time
Love Created in a Moment
The Gardens of Our Passion
Love's Wild Assault
My Soul Is My Friend
Staying and Going
My Longing Shall Gather
Sources of the Selections
Introduction
Kahlil's Gibran's aphorisms, stories and poetry on the theme of love remain some of those best known to Western readers. The Lebanese-American writer's views, however, extend beyond the most-quoted, greeting card
sayings to a very wide realm of human relationships—passion, desire, idealized love, justice, friendship, and the challenges of dealing with strangers, neighbors and enemies.
These new little book
collections take a fresh look at Gibran's words and wisdom, taking into account the major influences in his life: his Middle Eastern culture, nature mysticism and spirituality. One could easily argue that what the average reader of Gibran in the 1920s found exotic was the way he clearly expressed a region that most regarded as a conundrum. Nearly a hundred years later, understanding the Middle Eastern conundrum—especially regarding human relationships and the treatment of the other
—has moved from the level of a philosophical problem to become a practical matter of everyday survival.
The book before you collects Gibran's words on love and relationships. The first in the series collected his writings on life and nature. The next book will focus on life's paradoxes and the mysteries of the inner path, and the final one on wisdom for daily life, both in solitude and in community.
At first glance, Gibran may seem to be a romantic, a poet of idealized love. Yet he was not a sentimentalist. He understood from his own experience the darker side of relationships— longing, sorrow, loss, lust and passion—and its value in helping the soul's journey through life. Rather than espousing a Platonic love beyond the flesh,
neither soul nor body gets preferential treatment in his writings.
One sees several influences here. First, Gibran's personal love relationships were fraught throughout his short life. As his various biographers relate, no personal testimony, especially his own, can be taken at face value as what happened
(see About the Author
at the back of this book). Even in Gibran's recounting of his first love in The Broken Wings,
we find long dialogues or monologues that stretch credibility in terms of what we might call factual reporting. In his defence, we could say that Gibran was aware that different people can have very different recollections of important incidents or conversations, especially those concerned with love. Such events make an emotional impact on memory that influence us in ways we can often only explain to ourselves much later, or not at all.
Second, Gibran's Middle Eastern language and culture offer very nuanced views of love, which reveal the small emotional corner into which we have painted ourselves through the over-sexualized content found today on the internet, in popular films and in advertising.
Like many languages, Gibran's native Arabic has several different words that can