Al-Mawakib, The Processions: Kahlil Gibran’s Unsung Masterpiece
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 lavishly illustrated of all his works. It also serves, perhaps more than any of his writings, to give a transparent view of his philosophy of life. However, the job is virtually unknown, and one can only wonder why.
The first English translations of Al-Mawakib were published in 1947. One was by George Kheirallah, titled The life of Gibran Khalil Gibran and his processionrepublished in 1958 as simply The procession (singular). The other was by Anthony Rizcallah Ferris, who appears as “The Courtship” in a collection of Gibran’s works entitled The secrets of the heart. Ferris’s translation was republished in 1951 under the title “The Procession” in A treasure of Kahlil Gibran. These translations differ so much from one another that it seems a safe assumption that they were completely independent works. To date, they are the most commonly available English versions of the poem, and yet, to anyone familiar with Gibran’s writings, they differ greatly in 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 very 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 expresses his desire to be a teacher, saying: “I want one day not to write or paint, but simply to live what I would say and talk to people. I want to be a teacher… I want to awaken your conscience 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 great truth that resides within all of us. Each procession concludes with the recurrent and unifying theme of “give me the 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 say the following:
And what is life but a dream
Infused with one’s dreams
who is it addressed to
By the will of the self.
And the secret of self lies hidden by its sorrows,
And when sorrow disappears, it is hidden by its joys,
And the secret of life is obscured by the pleasure of life,
And if pleasure is removed, difficulty will obscure it.
If you rise above joy and sadness, you become a neighbor
In the shadow of the puzzling.
In the woods, there is no sadness.
No, there is no care either.
When a breeze blows,
No poisons come with it.
What is sadness in oneself?
But the shadow of an illusion that does not last,
And the stars appear from the folds of the clouds of self.
Give me the no and sing,
Because the song erases the anguish,
And the moan of does not last
After that time perishes.