Best known for his epic book, The profit, Kahlil Gibran is one of the most widely read poets in history. In 1919, he published a relatively short work in Arabic entitled Al-Mawakib, or in English Processions. It is his only work written in rhyme and meter and, relative to its number of pages, it is the most profusely illustrated of all his works. It also serves, perhaps more than any of his writings, to give a transparent vision of his philosophy of life. However, the work is practically unknown and one can only wonder why.
The first English translations of Al-Mawakib were published in 1947. One was by George Kheirallah, entitled The life of Gibran Khalil Gibran and his procession, reissued in 1958 as simply The procession (singular). The other was by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris, listed as “The Cortège” in a collection of Gibran’s works titled The secrets of the heart. Ferris’s translation was republished in 1951 under the title “The Procession” in A Kahlil Gibran treasure. These translations differ so much from each other that it seems safe to assume that they were completely independent works. To date, they are the most commonly available English versions of the poem and yet, for anyone familiar with Gibran’s writing, they stand out for their style. More importantly, in his efforts to preserve the rhyme, meter, and poetic character of Arabic, much of Gibran’s original wording and meaning was inevitably lost.
This loss of precision, however, is more than just nuances of style and nuances of meaning. The precision of the wording is, in this case, the key to Gibran’s message and philosophy of life. In fact, Gibran saw himself not only as a writer. In a letter dated 1920, he expressed his desire to be a teacher, saying, “I want to one day not write or paint, but just live what I would say and talk to people. I want to be a teacher … I want to awaken their consciousness to what I know you can know. “
Al-Mawakib It contains seventeen “processions”, each of which serves to contrast an aspect of our life on earth with our eternal and greater life “in the woods” of our spiritual identity. The implicit exhortation is to remember who we really are and to seek and express this greater truth that resides within all of us. Each procession concludes with the recurring and unifying theme of “give me no and sing”, in which the sound of the ancient reed flute symbolizes the primordial vibration of all creation. As a brief example, if Gibran’s masterpiece were translated correctly, one of the processions would read the following:
And what is life but lethargy?
Infused with the dreams of the one
Who is it addressed to?
By the will of the self.
And the secret of the self is hidden by its pain,
And when the pain disappears, it hides behind its joys,
And the secret of life is obscured by the pleasure of life,
And if the pleasure disappears, the difficulties will obscure it.
If you rise above joy and sadness, you become a neighbor.
In the shadow of the bewildering.
In the woods there is no pain.
No, there are no cares either.
When a breeze blows
It does not come with poisons.
What is sadness in the self?
But the shadow of an illusion that does not last,
And the stars appear from the folds of the clouds of the self.
Give me the no and sing
Because singing erases the anguish,
And the moan of does not last
After time dies.