The prophet (book)

The profit. Book made by the Lebanese philosopher, painter and writer Gibran Jalil Gibran in 1923 . It is a book that is persistently read , searched for, and discussed. What is it about this short book that attracts so much attention? Mystery, it may be an answer. Beauty, it could be another. However, one seems essential: an attempt to air themes that have occupied the mind of man since his exit from the cave. He speaks to the soul of his listeners, he speaks of the beauty in them, when they enter into communion with the lawsthat by natural are universal, they harmonize. Currently it has successive and massive editions.

Table of Contents

Summary

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1 Foreword
2 Synopsis
- 1 Argument
- 2 Characteristics of the text
3 chapters
4 Author details
5 Related Links
6 Sources

Foreword

Almustafa, the protagonist of the work, maintains the position that is his bet from love . With this, he recalls the Socratic manner, when, at the banquet, the sage suggests that: Loar (to the God Eros , in that case) is to choose among all the truths, by God, the most beautiful.

By his own choice, and as a walker, he lives in solitude, silence, listening, reflection. The traveler chooses, region and people: those of Orphalase, to live his experience. There, initially, he is only accepted, listened to and therefore encouraged, by a woman who performed the office of priestess in the temple : Almitra. The same who will listen, and will stay thoughtful, his last words , before he leaves for the lands of his origin. The villageof Orphalase, despite his initial rejection of the strange traveler, little by little, he is affected by an also strange and unfathomable happiness, which makes him intuit that the foreigner is not only strange but wise, then begins to attract him to himself but, the stranger refuses all invitation, honor, protection. The strange stranger, just walk, listen, reflect, and live.

At the end of Almustafa’s stay in Orfalase, when the ship in which he was to leave, the moment of his departure, the town of Orfalase arrived: gathered, from all the confines of their region, in the square, in front of the temple and its Priestess, asks the now Master to speak, to teach what he has discovered, to give them what has been revealed for them to transmit it to their children and they to theirs. This is how Almustafa, Orfalase and his life in it say goodbye :

Just a moment, after a brief lull in all the winds , another woman will give me birth

Synopsis

In his book “The Prophet”, Gibrán Jalil Gibrán tries to encourage the reader to change their way of life based mainly on leading it in a balanced way with respect to divinity and inner peace. For Gibran, the obstacles and vicissitudes of the world are only tests that allow man to evolve and advance on the path towards purification, thus he shows us that the world will be better when men are able to come closer and live together.

Argument

Eight years before his death , in which a prophet leaves the town where he lived and before leaving the people ask him to talk about certain topics, each of which forms a chapter. These themes are: love , marriage , children, giving, eating and drinking, work , joy and pain , houses , clothing, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws , freedom , reason, passion, knowledge , teaching, friendship , speaking, time , good and bad,prayer pleasure, beauty, religion , and death.

For example, regarding joy and pain, he says: “When you are sad, (…) you will see that you are crying, in truth, for what was your delight”.

Despite the fact that the work is written as a simple dialogue between the prophet and the people of the town, the directives that Gibrán puts in his mouth invite to reconsider the values, concepts, habits and customs of society , towards a less individualistic idea , with a great sense of empathy for all living beings and a greater relevance of a spiritual layer underlying all human actions. His inspiration is probably the wisdom of the great teachers , such as Jesus or Buddha, Eastern religions, and above all currents of spirituality marked by a great sense of the mystical, such as Sufism, without losing similarity in turn with the animistic beliefs of many tribal societies and close to nature .

Characteristics of the text

It is one of those books that can be read with freshness but that must be read carefully. In his reflection on life, he affirms a different way of perceiving everything that surrounds him, advocating the cessation of miseries and misfortunes in pursuit of a full and comprehensive existence. The poet is not unaware of the imperfection, but he rises from a hill that inspires us to follow an edifying and hopeful path. Talk about love , friendship , home, joy , children, pain, in a beautiful form, of deep simplicity and with a dialogic and harmonizing perspective, which does not limit the points of view but stimulates new approaches, it is not only a pleasant but necessary poetry .

Chapters

Gibrán raises twenty-six major themes that he separates by chapters;

Of love
Of marriage
Of the children
Of the gifts
Of food and drink
From work
Of joy and sadness
Of the houses
Of clothing
Of buying and selling
Of crime and punishment
Of the laws
Of freedom
Of reason and passion
From pain
Of self knowledge
Of teaching
Of friendship
From the conversation
Weather
Of good and evil
Of prayer
Of pleasure
Of beauty
Of religion
Of death

Kahlil Gibrán, author of the book

Each chapter tells how to take each aspect of human life in a more positive way, in order to overcome the mediocrity in which society lives and learn to be more supportive and committed.

Author details

Kahlil Gibran was born in 1883 in Bsarri, in Lebanon and died in New York in 1931 . He was a poet , novelist, painter and philosopher, one of the greatest representatives of art in the Arab world , although many of his works were written in English , as he lived in the United States of America for more than twenty years . He wrote poetry and critical novels of manners, such as “Espíritus rebeldes”, of 1908 . In 1911 he published “Broken Wings”, in Arabic. His works have been translated into variouslanguages . And some editions of poetry were published with the illustrations made by the author.