Journal Entry 1 by cordelia-anne from Decatur, Georgia USA on Saturday, September 24, 2011

I think my parents forbade me to read this book. It was for them a symbol of the detested hippie counter-culture. Recently, reading a book of essays by Atlanta writer Pearl Cleage, I found that when she decided to be a protesting hippie back in the 1960s, one of the texts she claimed was The Prophet. She then went on to say absolutely nothing about it. It was simply a cultural reference point. The counter-culture happened. It is now the predominant culture. Still, this book has been taboo to me for many years as someone much too young to have been a hippie. Also, as a graduate of expensive schools, I've somehow adopted the attitude of laughing at The Prophet in my heart. (That phrase comes from my reading of Gibran I guess.) I heard nothing about it at school, though I knew my parents did not think it fit to read. Finally, I've opened this used copy, recently aquired, with a neutral attitude. I'm recognizing thoughts that have seemed poetic over the years: "to wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving." I confess, I like that phrase. It's prayerful. I wish that I could be thankful and loving with a winged heart every day...Here's another I have heard and like: "Work is love made visible." Yes, good work is indeed love.

... I continue to travel through the book. It had a calm, lulling effect until page 50 when "the Prophet" holds a discourse on "crime and punishment." What prophet do you mean by "God-self" and "a shapeless pigmy that walks asleep in the mist searching for its own awakening?????" After the undefined terms "god-self" and "shapless pigmy," I was cast out of the spell of this book. It seems to endorse a new-agey blame the victim take on crime and misfortune. I disagree!

...After a few other matters of my day, I came back and find the book seems giberish as it describes freedom: "And thus your freedom when it looses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom."

...The span of The Prophet is a day. Almustafa, "the chosen and the beloved" declaims to the people of Orphalese and answers their questions in aphoristic prose poems as he prepares to set sail to "the isle of his birth." And it took me about a day to go through this 124 page book. Though, for those able to read this continuously, I'm sure it would only demand two hours. Anyway, there were parts of the book where Gilbran's aphorisms were again charming as in the Prophet's famous declaimations on love, marriage and children earlier in the book. His warmly sentimental view of friendship fell into that category for me. But when he got into the subject of good and evil, I had the reaction that I expressed earlier here for his sayings on crime and punishment. What? Finally as the time of the prophet's departure draws near, he aims to clear things up for the people of Orphalese : "If these be vague words, then seek not to clear them. Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end, And I fain would have you remember me as a beginning." It's as if Gibran has gotten tired of it all himself. The previous reader of the book, who outlined passages in the beginning, seemed to have gotten lost around midsection as I did as there were no underlinings after the passage on children. That person did stop before the vague and nebulous passage toward the end to note some sayings on prayer. I did not find these notable. For me, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this taboo book ended not with a bang but with a whimper. I was underwhelmed. Still, this is a notable book of our modern culture. Kahlil Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Lao-tzu and Shakespeare, according to a 2008 New Yorker article by Joan Acocella. And this, she says, is due to the popularity of The Prophet, which first appeared in 1923. Its American incarnations have sold more than 9 million copies and there are more than 20 translations into languages other than English. According to Acocella, the first printing of The Prophet in 1923 promptly sold out and The Prophet has continued to enjoy brisk sales in all of the years since. People love it! Acocella notes that sales in the 1960s made it "the Bible of that decade" as its sales regularly reached five thousand copies a week. So millions of readers have found this book much more worthy than I. I read it for their sakes and now I have a valid opinion. I see the aphoristic comforts here but bewail the weakness and weirdness. Most bookcrossers have classified The Prophet as a philosophy book. I say it is poetry because the prophet's addresses do seem to be prose poems. So now I know about THE PROPHET. And you can too Dear Reader, because I intend to send this previously owned book, read by millions, on a bookcrossing journey. There is absolutely no reason for it to have the distinction of being taboo.
 

Journal Entry 2 by cordelia-anne at Sandpoint, Idaho USA on Thursday, October 06, 2011

Released 7 mos ago (10/6/2011 UTC) at Sandpoint, Idaho USA

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

This goes out in the morning to fulfill a bookcrossing wish. Happy reading Matt! 

Journal Entry 3 by Matt at Sandpoint, Idaho USA on Friday, October 28, 2011

Thanks cordelia-anne, great surprise from my wish list!!!! Loved this book, I've already read it twice and have a feeling no matter how many times I pick it up it will always contain something new.