God’s daisy chain

by Henry Farrell on December 7, 2004

Robert Irwin “gets tough”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n17/irwi01_.html with Kahlil Gibran.

bq. As a thinker, Gibran is easy to liken to Madeleine Basset, characterised by Bertie Wooster as ‘one of those soppy girls riddled from head to foot with whimsy. She holds that the stars are God’s daisy chain, that rabbits are gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen, and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby is born, which, as we know, is not the case. She’s a drooper.’ I cannot imagine Wooster falling for Gibran either, for he, too, was a drooper. Nowhere in his essays, short stories or dramatised dialogues is there any humour, sex or surprise. His writing conjures up fields of grey ectoplasm inhabited by plaintive souls. If Gibran is right about the universe, then we are all living in a banal and sentimental nightmare.

bq. He seems to be a favourite poet of those who don’t like poetry. Similarly, I suspect that Gibranian spirituality suits those who cannot face the more specific demands that a real religion might make. The only thing you have to do as a follower is read more Gibran, plus, of course, ‘see’ more deeply, ‘listen to the language of the heart’ and so on.

Or more succinctly: “Gibranian spirituality seems to be designed to get one out of going to church on Sundays.” Seems about right to me.

{ 36 comments }

1

George 12.07.04 at 10:00 pm

That’s funny, I don’t like most poetry but I do like Gibran. But this is unfair. So what if Gibran is accessible to those who rushed straight from Four Weddings and a Funeral to Borders to buy a bit of Auden? Doesn’t mean he wrote for those people, or only for those people. If dreamy mysticism is ‘drooping,’ what of Rabindranath Tagore or Walt Whitman?

2

cliu 12.07.04 at 10:31 pm

I hate the stuff myself — glad to see I’m not alone in my dislike of Gibran. It’s pre-digested and it actually gives poetry a bad name –when recited at weddings — because everyone comes away with the impression, well that was easy!

3

Walt Pohl 12.07.04 at 10:47 pm

I’m astonished by the revelation that people still read Gibran. I haven’t heard that name since the mid-80s. (I have no idea of that’s good or bad.)

4

fyreflye 12.07.04 at 11:29 pm

“I’m astonished by the revelation that people still read Gibran. I haven’t heard that name since the mid-80s”

Hadn’t you heard that Rumi has taken over Gibran’s old corner office? Rumi may quite possibly be a great poet in his own language, but in English reads like the bastard child of Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama.

5

Hassan 12.07.04 at 11:33 pm

I think Gibran is still relavent, not so much for his poetry but his ability to merge Middle Eastern mysticsm with a Western poetic style. He is still a god in Lebanon and throughout parts of the Middle East.

6

nick 12.08.04 at 12:24 am

If I attend another wedding in which that sappy Gibran piece is one of the readings — you know which one I mean — I swear that I’ll walk out. That’s all. Five is enough, thank you.

7

Walt Pohl 12.08.04 at 2:52 am

I’m apparently very lucky, because I don’t know what piece you’re referring to.

8

nick 12.08.04 at 4:07 am

Yes, you are.

(First google result for ‘gibran wedding’.)

9

Michael Kremer 12.08.04 at 5:19 am

The fact that “the more specific demands that a real religion might make” can be equated by someone as intelligent as Henry with “going to church on Sundays” seems to me to say something highly significant about the state of religion, and of thought about religion, these days.

(Or maybe Kierkegaard was complaining about the same thing, way back when…)

10

Michael Kremer 12.08.04 at 5:20 am

The fact that “the more specific demands that a real religion might make” can be equated by someone as intelligent as Henry with “going to church on Sundays” seems to me to say something highly significant about the state of religion, and of thought about religion, these days.

(Or maybe Kierkegaard was complaining about the same thing, way back when…)

11

Michael Kremer 12.08.04 at 5:21 am

The fact that “the more specific demands that a real religion might make” can be equated by someone as intelligent as Henry with “going to church on Sundays” seems to me to say something highly significant about the state of religion, and of thought about religion, these days.

(Or maybe Kierkegaard was complaining about the same thing, way back when…)

12

Michael Kremer 12.08.04 at 5:24 am

I apologize for the multiple postings. I got an “internal server error” message the first couple of times I posted my comment. So I assumed they hadn’t worked.

13

Walt Pohl 12.08.04 at 5:25 am

An opinion whose pungency is heightened in triplicate.

14

Jim Birch 12.08.04 at 7:37 am

I don’t know much about Gibran but I do know that that kind of stuff isn’t likely to get much of a sympathetic reading with the hairy-chested intellects in the blog-eat-blog world.

15

dsquared 12.08.04 at 7:43 am

Nick is onto something here; I think a lot of the popularity of Gibran is driven by the fact that you’re not allowed to have anything from the Bible at registry office weddings in the UK, and the “merged Middle Eastern mysticsm with a Western poetic style” [good description, Hassan] is a pretty decent facsimile of the King James Version.

I don’t know what all the fuss is about actually; I rather like the Kalil Gibran weddings bit.

16

nick 12.08.04 at 8:03 am

I think a lot of the popularity of Gibran is driven by the fact that you’re not allowed to have anything from the Bible at registry office weddings in the UK

Ah, that’s a thought, though I’ve actually heard it in Anglican and RC church ceremonies where one of the partners isn’t ‘of that ilk’, and it appeared to be a sop (with the consent of a trendy vicar/priest) to the non-devout.

First time I heard it, it was quite affecting. Fifth time? Not so much. Doesn’t bear repetition well. And I can’t help thinking that there’s a viral effect: hear something new and outside the liturgy, and, ooh, you’ve got to have it for your own ceremony.

At least when you get 1 Cor 13, the other mainstay of wedding services, you have the luxury of two or three different versions, and, with luck, someone brave enough to go for the KJV and ‘charity’.

17

David Tiley 12.08.04 at 8:57 am

Could this be that a rigorous training in the philosophic arts provides no protection against sentimentality?

Thank you for a rare, rare chance to feel hairy chested.

18

Matt McGrattan 12.08.04 at 11:30 am

Hadn’t heard the Gibran thing before.

Having just read it, I’m glad I’d never heard it before…

“Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf…. And stand together yet not too near together”

I can’t read it without hearing a Pythonesque-voice (“blessed are the cheesemakers”)

“Share among thee but fully consumeth not the small kumquat or other citrus fruit of desire,
rather, plant the seeds beneath the flowering hyacinth of contentment and harvest thy love, or perhaps a small cheesecake…”

19

wbb 12.08.04 at 12:43 pm

it’s pretty tough having to pick a reading for your ceremony – and the celebrants, who are always bosomy and commanding, hold sway – and of course anything is going to better than some self-penned schmuck – and it’s gotta to appeal to a wide audience on a day and in a context that’s not exactly trend-setting, so I don’t think you can really go past the Gibran – although I’m sure we didn’t have that first really camp stanza at ours. I still remember the hasty swoop into the Romance section at Borders once we’d received the marching orders from said celebrant – picked up “100 Best Ever Love Poems” and it was the only one of the twenty we flicked thru I didn’t retch at on first reading. Kahlil knows the market.

20

David Tiley 12.08.04 at 1:21 pm

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

21

Anna in Cairo 12.08.04 at 2:18 pm

If you think Rumi is like Gibran, you are probably only reading the Coleman Barks translations, which *are* a bit like Gibran. Of course I like both of them, and lots of other poetry as well. Rumi translated by others besides Barks is a much different experience, and other Middle Eastern mystic poets are also not really comparable to Gibran either in style or in content. Gibran is from the Apollo School of early 20th century Arab poets and he was not a Sufi – his stuff is really different, for the discerning person who studies Middle Eastern literature in any depth.

22

trox 12.08.04 at 4:05 pm

A professor of mine back in the day referred to Gibran as “cheap deep”. I still think that pretty much applies.

23

Cryptic Ned 12.08.04 at 4:35 pm

I think a lot of the popularity nowadays might come from faux-rebellious English teachers. I know my 11th grade teacher constantly recommended “Cay-hill Gibran”.

24

Arthur D. Hlavaty 12.08.04 at 6:02 pm

Back in the 60s Paul Krassner said that guys quote Gibran to get laid. I would guess that has not changed.

25

HP 12.08.04 at 6:32 pm

Well, that settles it. If I ever get married again, I’ll have a reading of the classic Deteriorata. No drooper I.

26

Jim Henley 12.08.04 at 8:30 pm

Next on Crooked Timber: Joyce Kilmer – Not All That Good When You Really Think About It!

27

Bucky 12.08.04 at 8:39 pm

Picking on Gibran has got to be the most valiant move yet from the God-franchise holders.
Forget hedonism, forget the toxic lust for steel the automobile industry spews all over the kids daily, forget raw greed as a central thesis in the core curriculum – no, no, we’ll brook no trite simile in our fierce pursuit of truth and metaphysical beauty!
We know what’s important.
To the ramparts, men!
I see another Persian atheist armed with subversive verses! There! In the distance! Behind that Rubiyaat!

28

ProfWombat 12.09.04 at 2:57 am

The Justice of the Peace who married us back in 1978 insisted on Kahlil. Not my choice, but we survived.
We loved each other enough that we probably would have survived Rod McKuen, followed by a solo dance to ‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’ Fortunately, there were things up with which we didn’t have to put.

At least Gibran didn’t claim a consistency with quantum mechanics, or use words like ‘dehydroepiandrostenedione’ to leaven his wit.

29

Shieva 12.09.04 at 5:38 am

“If I attend another wedding in which that sappy Gibran piece is one of the readings . . . I’ll walk out. That’s all. Five is enough, thank you.”

I wish I’d only heard it five times. My dad was really into Gibran, and had a recording of _The Prophet_, which he’d play over and over as I was growing up. That, and a recording of _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_. You know they made a movie of that? The seagulls are actually kinda cute, for the first two minutes.

30

dsquared 12.09.04 at 8:13 am

Next on Crooked Timber: Joyce Kilmer – Not All That Good When You Really Think About It!

I will certainly offer a much less lukewarm defence of “Trees” – Ezra Pound said it was “Blakean” and much better than most of the other crap that Poetry published and he was right.

31

Bucky 12.09.04 at 8:41 am

Richard Bach, who wrote J.Liv. Seagull was working territory in that and subsequent books that was more about getting a particular thing done than outcompeting his competitors for artistic repute. My tastes run more to Pynchon and De Lillo, and Milton, but I’m not comfortable with that dissing-the-accessible business. Treacle may not be your favorite topping, but it exists because people like it, or did once, sometimes because it was all they had.
It’s like the mob picks out certain highly popular artists and rips them to shreds to prove they have discernment. Phil Collins got eaten by that a little. It has nothing much to do with their respective talents, and everything to do with the insecurities of their detractors.
Which is not to say that sentimental mediocre verse should be revered, only that the sins of bad art are sometimes confused with work that illuminates the young and inexperienced. Care must be taken.
Irwin though, he’s got an agenda, he’s a man with a mission, and not a good one.

32

Henry 12.09.04 at 4:10 pm

Bucky, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about here. What’s your evidence that Irwin (or I) are dissing Gibran because of our own insecurities, rather then purely and simply because we think he spews inane, trite crap? Are we not allowed to have tastes on the matter? Irwin clearly prefers another popular writer who doesn’t get much critical kudos (Wodehouse) to Gibran, and I agree with him – Wodehouse, unlike Gibran, writes gloriously well. (and for what it’s worth, I’m with dsquared on “Trees” – a fine little poem).

33

Alan Bostick 12.09.04 at 6:54 pm

The libraries are chock-full of inane, trite crap written from antiquity to the present day. Why pick on Kahlil Gibran? Why now?

I can’t help but notice Robert Irwin’s insistence that the East has nothing to teach the West about spirituality or his coda about pre-Islamic Arabian poets.

It’s getting more and more fashionable to reconfigure the ‘war on terror’ as a war on Islam. It’s fun to bash on Gibran for his sentimental twaddle; enough so that one doesn’t notice the snip of the scissors as one’s conscience is trimmed to meet this year’s fashion.

34

Bucky 12.10.04 at 2:13 am

Henry, meet Alan Bostick.

I was going to praise dsquared’s defense of Kilmer overtly too, but I thought an attempt at standing up for the less easily defensible Bach might serve.
Like I said it’s not my personal cup of tea, though my own literary heirarchies have less to do with erudition and intellectual complexity than human warmth – in fact if you’re offering Wodehouse, I’ll take Jerome K. Jerome every time. And some H.E. Bates if you have any.
Irwin:

“Nevertheless, every element in his thought can alternatively be traced to Western sources, including Blake, Nietzsche, Emerson, Maeterlinck, Whitman and Ouspensky.”

I’m thinking any element in anyone’s thought, especially on metaphysical themes, could be traced to that bunch eventually. That’s an agenda at work. Irwin’s a scholar okay. An expert in his field. Gibran’s a flim-flam artist and treacly. But his popularity isn’t explained by Irwin, just reviled, disdained, dismissed. It needs to be pointed out that the credulous minority who actually read Gibran are symmetrically positioned vis. fundamentalist Christians, at least in the US. That’s pretty important right now.
(I have to say it’s amusing me to be in this position – I’ve simulated nausea using The Prophet as an emetic more than once)
But it’s a strange, trying time for metaphysics generally, and “eastern” metaphysics specifically. Irwin’s either beyond contemporary things entirely, or he’s ellided them in his piece.
Dissing non-Judeo/Christian spirituality at this moment, even lame pseudo-spirituality, is loaded with potential for harm. And a kind of complicity. I think agenda was too strong a word maybe, and maybe Irwin just needed the extra check the review brought him, but it’s a spooky moment as regards mysticism of any kind, again especially the “eastern” kind.
Irwin:

“…a version of science that is no science at all, in which modern physicists are allegedly only just catching up with the precepts of Ancient Wisdom. Equally silly claims are made about Oriental spirituality, as contrasted with Western materialism…”

Agenda, sort of. And wrong.
I’m arguing more from the intuitive here, but I think the people who have espoused Gibran in Irwin’s and your lives and others are mostly responsible for the disdain. It’s the Gibran-o-philes, and their fuzzy optimism, that’s egregious. Gibran takes heat for inspiring it. Without his espousers Gibran’s just another couple of books in the library. Not much of a threat to anyone.

35

Henry 12.10.04 at 2:43 am

Bucky, I don’t think you get where Irwin is coming from. He’s about as far from being a right wing Arab-basher as you could reasonably imagine being. Check out his (imo wonderful) “Arabian Nights Companion,” or his compilation of classic Arab verse, “Night and Horses and the Desert.” If he’s dissing anyone, it’s a particular Western brand of mysticism which tends to latch onto Arab/Sufi/Indian what-have-you because of their exoticism on the one hand, and a particular mode of Arab poetry (which he dislikes in comparison to other Arab poets) on the other. When he disses mystics, they’re of a very particular kind – the wooly minded theosophy-meets-quantum physics-meets whatever you’re having yourself kind. It’s this crowd who he is describing as anti-scientific (and as misunderstanding both Arab and Western culture). I think that you’re going way overboard here – Irwin is very clearly making particular aesthetic judgments about a particular poet (and movements associated/influenced therewith/thereby), not saying anything about Arab culture in general. As I say, read his other work – you’re misreading him here.

36

Bucky 12.10.04 at 5:51 am

Henry – Yes I knee-jerked the anti-Arab bias, which Irwin obviously doesn’t have. Alan Bostick’s point about anti-Islamic bias isn’t addressable, because as he points out, Irwin’s praising the pre-Islamic poets.
It’s the timing. Antonin Scalia really did say this week that the separation of church and state is a mistake. That didn’t create, but it certainly illuminates, a cultural landscape in which paranoia exists now only as an inaccuracy or misapplication, not as whole-cloth fantasy. The US sees a lot of public examples of inexcusable gloating bigotry directed at Arabs and Muslims.
It’s not so much letting that climate of fear and violence intrude into the reading of a book review, as it is, in my case at least, being unable to keep it out. Things are getting mighty parochial ’round here.
I hear you though, and did some looking; and I found some beautiful calligraphy by Al-Shanfara, who Irwin mentions positively.

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