Mirrors of the Soul Read Online Free PDF

in love and with faith.
    It is to produce by labor and only by labor, and to spend less than you have produced that your children may not be dependent upon the state for support when you are no more.
    It is to stand before the towers of New York and Washington, Chicago and San Francisco saying in your heart, “I am the descendant of a people that builded Damascus and Byblos, and Tyre and Sidon and Antioch, and now I am here to build with you, and with a will.”
    You should be proud of being an American, but you should also be proud that your fathers and mothers came from a land upon which God laid His gracious hand and raised His messengers.
    Young Americans of Syrian origin, I believe in you.
    [Gibran did not live long enough to enjoy the realization of his hopes and dreams. The Lebanon of Gibran succeeded finally in becoming an independent nation.
    In the summer of 1964, the Lebanese Government dedicated a four-lane boulevard stretching from Beirut to the gracious International Airport, the name of the avenue being Jadat Al Mogtaribeen (Lebanese Overseas). This boulevard is the path Gibran walked to meet his first love, and it encompasses the dreams toward which Gibran prodded his beloved homeland: the graceful resorts, modern skyscrapers and luxurious hotels of Beirut and the jet-age accommodations at the airfield. Each day, the emigrants born here in poverty travel Gibran’s path. “The young trees, rooted in the hills of Lebanon, transplanted to various parts of the world, return, and they are fruitful.”
    In my mind’s eye, I see Gibran watching this new, passing parade. For did he not write:
    â€œA little while, a moment to rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”]
    * Sections in brackets are editor’s interpolations within Gibran’s text.

6. GIBRAN’S PAINTING AND POETRY
    The religion of Islam prohibited the use of images and idols, even the image of Mohammed. In the Christian countries it conquered, Islam converted many of the churches into mosques. Statues and paintings were easily removed; mosaic walls were covered with plaster. Hence the art of painting and carving vanished from the Islamic world. To enhance the appearance of new buildings, architects and decorators resorted to lines, geometrical designs and scenery.
    As a young student in Lebanon, Gibran was not influenced by the art of one particular man or school of painters. Studying the work of the Arab philosophers, Gibran imagined their appearances and for the first time etched likenesses of these men appeared in books. Gibran created these at the age of seventeen. In the early days of his career as a painter, he exhibited his work in a studio in Boston. A fire destroyed the building and the entire collection of drawings and paintings. This was a great shock to a young man who needed to sell his work for a living. In later years he remarked that it was just as well that they were destroyed because he was not fully mature when he painted them. The paintings and drawings of Gibran are now scattered all over the Middle East, Europe and America.
    Early in his career, Gibran wrote books, poetry and articles in Arabic. He created a new era in style, influenced by Western thought, and a revolution in the minds of the younger generation of his country. But all this did not give him a living income; therefore in his art he concentrated on portraits of famous or rich people. The illustrations for his books consisted basically of naked bodies, shadows drawn in gray and black. Their movements and the settings were a clear attempt to relate the known to the unknown, to depict love, sorrow, and life in their relation to man and God. He used no clothes, no trees, no buildings, no churches, and nothing to identify the scene with any section of the earth or any religious denomination. What is revealed is Gibran and his own connection with the handiwork of God. Gibran’s ancestors conceived of God as an ancient