‘The Prophet’ ¹ by Kahlil Gibran was first published.

It has become something of a cliché to rank Shakespeare as the best-selling poet of all time, Lao-tzu second and Kahlil Gibran third. The Lebanese-American’s record is even more impressive given that the reputation of his masterpiece (by popular acclaim) is almost entirely based on word-of-mouth praise. Apart from a brief effort upon its release in the 1920s, The Prophet has never been advertised.

It is a slender book of poetic aphorisms (26 prose poetry fables) delivered as sermons by a wise man named Al Mustapha. He has lived in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and is about to board a ship to carry him home. Before he leaves, the people of the city, saddened by his departure, ask him to share his wisdom on all aspects of the human condition including love, marriage, children, freedom, friendship and death. As its name suggests, the book is thematically religious, strongly influenced by Gibran’s own Maronite Catholicism but also Islam – especially the mysticism of the Sufis. The character template for Gibran’s portrayal of the book’s protagonist was inspired by his meetings in 1912 with the Baha’i leader Abdu-Baha, which left an indelible impression.

Lebanon’s factional struggles strengthened Gibran’s belief in the fundamental unity of faith. Perhaps mercifully, he would not live to witness how destructive religious identification would later prove to be as a basis for political representation in the decades after independence. A triumph of romanticism over realism, the work was strongly influenced by Islamic/Arabic art, European Classicism, Romanticism, American transcendentalism and Lebanese folklore. It is linked to the theological ideas of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as symbolists such as Rodin and the seminal figure in the history of poetry and the visual arts – William Blake.

Inscrutable, yet open to a universality of conjecture, the guidance offered in The Prophet has resonated over the past century with an ever-evolving readership. Its popularity first peaked in the 1930s for those experiencing the Great Depression:

‘When you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born. And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life’ ². Later in the 1960s, it became the bible of the counterculture with every self-respecting hippy owning a copy:

‘Love has no desire but to fulfil itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night’ ³

More recently, it has come into fashion again as part of the New Age movement

‘For self is a sea boundless and measureless’ ⁴

It is a versatile book – words are transmuted into labyrinthine passages that can mean just about anything and nothing. As the journalist Joan Acocella observed⁵ : ‘It is quoted in books and articles on training art teachers, determining criminal responsibility, and enduring ectopic pregnancy, sleep disorders and the news that you son is gay’. Lines from it have inspired song lyrics (including the Beatles’ ‘Julia’)⁶, greeting cards, political speeches and have been read out at weddings and funerals all around the world.

The secret of Gibran’s success was seemingly the ease with which so many different people could identify with the content of his words. By paring down complicated philosophical ideas to their basics and emphasising the importance of human conduct and connections, the author offered a work that could appeal to 20th century readers who longed for the comforts of religion without needing to pledge allegiance to any particular faith or deity in suspended judgment. Al Mustapha’s delivery is one of circular mantra, as Acocella explains: ‘In the manner of horoscopes, the statements are so widely applicable (“your creativity”, “your family problems”) that almost anyone could think that they were addressed to him. At times Al Mustapha’s vagueness is such that you can’t figure out what he means. If you look closely though, you will see that much of the time he is saying something specific. Freedom is slavery, waking is dreaming, belief is doubt, joy is pain, death is life. So, whatever you’re doing, you needn’t worry, because you’re also doing the opposite. Such paradoxes appeal not only by their seeming correction of conventional wisdom but also by their hypnotic power, their negation of rational processes’.

At around the same time in Europe, the French psychologist and pharmacist Émile Coué was enjoying more short-lived success with his best-seller ‘Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion’ ⁷ also based on the repetitive use of mantras: “Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better” to inspire and entrench patterns of positive thought. Clearly a popular contemporary theme.

The Prophet is fundamentally a comforting read, designed to buttress those in doubt or trouble. It is particularly popular in prisons. Although some of the sentences read like commands, Al Mustapha manages to persuade the people to follow his advice as if it were their will and interior motivation. He uses words of wisdom, sublime but not divine. Although practically ignored by the literary establishment in the West, Elvis Presley, John F Kennedy and Indira Gandhi all claimed to have been influenced by its words.

Yet when it was first published in 1923, the Prophet received just a few lukewarm reviews. The book’s themes – idealism, ambiguity and sentimentality – had become passé in the 1920s. The best contemporary writers like Fitzgerald and Hemmingway were exploring much darker and more pugnacious realities in ‘The Great Gatsby’ ⁸ and ‘The Sun Also Rises’ ⁹. A couple of years earlier, James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ ¹⁰ was published, opening up a whole new way of writing fiction that recognized that the moral rules by which we might try to govern our lives are constantly at the mercy of accident, chance encounter and byroads of the mind that could not be so easily or sweetly defined.

Nevertheless, despite or perhaps because of its brevity and simplicity, ‘The Prophet’ has sold tens of millions of copies in more than 50 different languages (making it one of the most translated books in history). Now approaching its 100th anniversary, it has never been out of print. Perhaps no other 20th century writer has connected so intimately to so varied and widespread a readership.