The Gibran memorial in Washington DC
Today Gibran is a revered figure in world culture. What was the perception of him during his own life? Has his reputation changed over time?
Western scholarly circles or among the literary avant-garde at a time when the forces of Expressionism, Naturalism, and Realism, in the tradition of Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, were strong in American drama, fiction,
In purely literary terms, Gibran was swimming against the current. Academia, alarmed by the popularity of The Prophet in the 1960s, associated it with the Flower Children. And although his adventurous use of form and language gave Arabic literature a new freshness, his particular brand of Romanticism struggled to find ready acceptance in
and poetry. Additionally, Gibran came to a generation that found itself bereft of first hand moral guidance and completely devastated by the horrors of war. Through the simplicity and sincerity of his message, he was eventually able to revive the eternal values that sustain us as human beings.