The People of Orphalese

This year has been, upon recent reflection, a particularly productive period of reading, and I'm hoping to keep the momentum into the new year. Much of it has been non-fiction of the academic sort, which has been enjoyable in its own edifying way, but there was one work of fiction I completed recently that provided a great deal of spiritual satisfaction: The Prophet by Lebanese-American author Khalil Gibran.

A short book, The Prophet is one of poetic prose. My first contact with the poems contained within came from watching the same-titled 2014 animated film many years ago. In order to turn a short book of poetry into a feature film, the filmmakers contrived a simplistic plot where the eponymous prophet Al-Mustafa is not a prophet but a poet and political prisoner in Ottoman-ruled Lebanon^{Gibran was born in Ottoman-ruled Lebanon, which probably inspired that detail.}. Despite the narrative fillers, the film's saving grace is the panoply of visually diverse animations that underlie narrations of the book's poems. A few are in fact sung by featured musicians. To this day I find the duet between Lisa Hannigan and Glen Hansard, in which they perform an arrangement of the poem "On Love", to be a moving piece of music, haunting yet reassuring in tone.

Strong song recommendation aside, the book is meant to be read. I began reading The Prophet soon after finishing a gifted copy of Idries Shah's Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study, a compilation of lectures on Sufism and Sufi practice. Now, it should be noted that Gibran is not Muslim, much less a Sufi—he comes from a Maronite Christian family^{Gibran, it seems to me, had a religious orientation that I'd characterize as interfaith, and he drew inspiration from many religious traditions, including the Baháʼí Faith.}. Still, Shah's book—a scholarly look at the mystical dimension of (a particular) religious practice—in a way primed me to subsequently enjoy the mystical as presented in the poetry of The Prophet. Indeed, just as how indescript accounts of Jesus' physical appearance allowed distant peoples and cultures to project a likeness onto him, similarly is the case that the universal appeal of The Prophet can be attributed to how it is written (at least in my English translation) in a manner largely agnostic to the religious identity of its characters.

The book opens with Al-Mustafa waiting for a ship that will ferry him back to an unnamed homeland. As he waits, the denizens of Orphalese approach and appeal for some parting words. With Al-Mustafa's departure imminent, his poetic sermons possess an almost eulogizing dimension, mourning not so much the city's loss of their beloved prophet, but his loss of the congregation-turned-community that he found there. Before leaving, Al-Mustafa promises a return—a "second coming", reincarnate:

Forget not that I shall come back to you.

A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.

A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.

Twenty-six of the twenty-eight chapters begin with a character—often unnamed and only identified by their vocation—requesting Al-Mustafa to speak on a specific facet of life. As one reads, a parity emerges between the citizens and the sermons. Some of these matchings seem clear enough—it is the teacher who asks about teaching, the lawyer who asks about laws, and the mason who asks about houses. Some give a nod to experiences outside professional work, such as when a youth asks about friendship or when "a woman who held a babe against her bosom" asks about children. Some use a character as a proxy for an idealized theme: the ploughman asks about work; the astronomer, time; the poet, beauty. And some seem to address societal roles and expectations, such as when the rich man asks about giving.

Then there is Al-Mitra, the only other named character. A seeress of the local sanctuary, she is described as the first follower of Al-Mustafa, a believer in his message from day one of his arrival. She is associated with three of the chapters, the only character with more than one: the first two, on love and marriage, and the last, on death. With these appearances, she bookends the whole narrative. One cannot help but ascribe an anticipatory power to her, one in line with her identity as a clairvoyant. She does not cry or otherwise react emotionally as the people of Orphalese do when Al-Mustafa departs, and instead seems to steadfastly wait for the aforementioned return.

The book is flush with dualities. Many of the themes are coupled—buying and selling, good and evil, reason and passion. There are only two named characters. The story itself begins at dawn and ends at dusk. And at a categorical level, I felt compelled to place the themes of The Prophet along two dimensions, as presented in the following table:

The first is of the abstract versus the concrete: Is the theme in question addressing something intangible, like an idea or feeling? Or is it defined more by its particular instances, like an item, ritual, or situation? The second is of the personal versus the relational: Is the theme concerned with introspection, subjectivity, or self-identity? Or is it dealing more with interpersonal matters or systems of human organization?

While I found many of the themes to slot cleanly into a category along either dimension, some were more difficult to adjudicate. Consider the theme of death. It is a concrete event, but also an abstract place—it is a process with itself as the result. Al-Mustafa says:

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Both interpretations can be made, but the striking description of oblivion as a place of activity was a novel take that warranted the abstract categorization. Similarly, on the theme of prayer, there is a view of it as establishing a relationship with the divine but also as a deeply personal act. There is no correct answer, and thus the route of interpretation may be simply to defer to what speaks most clearly to the reader.

Moving on from the inherent faults of strict binaries, there is one substantive insight to gather from this categorization: while the two dimensions are orthogonal, they are tightly correlated. More often than not, what is personally experienced is of an ideal, and what is interpersonally shared is real. And from this statement we may notice an interesting tie-in with the perennial philosophical debate on the nature of reality: Does truth lie in the abstract, as the idealists believe, because its objects are immediately known? Or does truth lie in the concrete, as the realists believe, because its objects are corroborated by the experience of others? And what is there to analyze of the conduit, should it exist, between these two realms? These are hard questions, not able to be fully investigated here.

And so, I'd like to end with sharing my favorite quote from the book:

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows—then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and the thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky—then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."

And since you are the breath in God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

Excerpt from "On Reason and Passion"

May we all rest in reason and move in passion.