KAHLIL GIBRAN’S poetry is known not only to the millions who speak Arabic, but since the publication of The Madman, his first work in English, to Europe and America as well. His art has much of the quality of his poetry. Auguste Rodin, his friend, said of him: “I know of no one else in whom drawing and poetry are so linked together as to make him a new Blake.” These pictures represent the human form in attitudes expressing the eternal verities. There is the "Erdgeist"—the spirit of creation; the Transfiguration, expressing the suffering of mankind; there are delightful, delicate pictures of the Centaurs—who but Gibran could portray a delicate Centaur?—in their legendary battles, expressing the struggle of man against his brute nature. Of the twenty drawings one is in full color, the rest in wash with very faint pencil lining. The introductory appreciation is informing and complete. The whole is a representative collection of the best work of one of the most remarkable figures of the day—a man who has brought the mysticism of the Near East to America and has chosen to throw in his lot with the artists of the occident in an endeavor to fuse new bonds of interest between the old world and the new.
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Kahlil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران ) was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of Ottoman Mount Lebanon), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero. He is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again, especially in the 1960s counterculture. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.
