William Blake
and Kahlil Gibran 'Poets of Prophetic Vision'
by
George Nicolas El-Hage
 |
Notre
Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon
Book size: 24 x 17 cm - 171 pages
Table
of contents
Foreword - Dr. Boulos A. Sarru
Acknowledgments
>>Author's
Introduction (Read the Introduction)<<
Chapter I - "A Mental Prince" or " A Child
of Light"
Chapter II - The Buds that will Blossom
Chapter III - New Vision
Chapter IV - A More Fertile and Daring Creator.
Chapter V - The God-man and the Antichrist
Selected Biography |
Foreword:
We
are all prophets by instinct, either in the way of proclaiming
a prophecy or in accepting it; there is something intriguing in
it that lures our pride to play God, and, when tempered by modesty,
or fear, to harbor it in our holy of holies. From Adam to tomorrow
the prophetic will always inform our thoughts, sentiments, and
actions. Are we not beings in the making hurling ourselves into
a status we wish to have? Even when we cower before the challenge
of becoming and retreat into the false safety of fixism, our escape
underlies our failure to grasp the prophetic.
The present study William Blake and Gibran K. Gibran: Poets of
Prophetic Vision by Professor George Nicholas el-Hage is a vocal
proclamation of the nature and role of prophecy. A poet in his
own right. Dr Hage focuses his study on two renowned poets: the
first, William Blake, is a forerunner of the Romantic Movement
in England; the second, the Lebanese Gibran K. Gibran, is, by
all critical acclaim, the author laureate of Oriental romanticism.
What the two men shared is not to be resolved or determined in
a study of influence or literary indebtedness, but to be assessed
in terms of the acute prophetic vision which they both had. Though
Dr. Hage, as a scholar and critic, addresses the issue of influence
which Blake might have had on Gibran, he does not allow his argument
to be overshadowed by critical opinion and historical data of
similarities and contrast; he, very effectively, plays the role
of a medium between the two poets to have a clairvoyant's knowledge
of three concerns: first, the nature of prophecy in each poet;
second, the scope of the prophetic common grounds; and third,
the realization of the prophetic vision.
Steering away from a conventional critical summary of the work
at hand, I see that the prophetic vision is more possible in romanticism
than in classicism; the first is vibrant, rebellious, and ambitious,
the second is contained, measured, and decorously conservative.
Whether the prophecy projects the future of the present, or a
future opposite to the present, it is imperative that it begins
in the real present and works its way to that which will be. The
impact of the prophecy will be either to carry the recipients
into its own realm, thus effecting its fulfillment, or to fail
its purpose. The success or failure of the prophecy has no bearing
on its essence; it is the failure of the recipient, and inadvertedly
of the herald.
William Blake envisioned a world of the ingredients of four zoas
of body and spirit to outbalance the four elements of matter constituting
the visible world of experience. And thought the paradox of innocence
and experience seems inviting, Blake did not fall for the simplicity
of the obvious frame of reference. In a sense, he acknowledges
the materiality of the world - which is the tangible real of the
vision - to go from it to the transcendent.
Gibran, in turn, was neither alien to Blake's vision nor, most
importantly, to his own. The Lebanese Brahmin was frustrated with
a world of "hypocrisy, corruption, and falsehood''; but he
was not intimidated by it. Even in the thunderous storms of the
early works - gracefully analyzed by Dr. Hage - the serenity of
the prophetic vision is clearly manifest. The ugliness of priest
craft is undermined by the beauty of God's beautiful world; the
suppression of the tyrant is foiled by divine mercy and compassion.
This positive vision is imperative, hence prophetic.
The vision is by necessity transcendent, but not necessarily an
immediate transformation of the base into noble, or a mere bestowing
of an "above" value on a "below" obect as
initial transcendentalism is. The transcendent value is entrenched
in the base real and rendered positive and accessible via imagination.
Imagination is the alembic of the prophetic vision as it provides
this vision with the tools and catalysts of formation and transformation.
More so, the imagination is an accessible venue for the knowing
soul to express herself through the mediums of image, color, and
myth. The active soul, envisioning a world seen only by her, communicates
this vision through imagination. Through this communication of
prophecy, the imagination is the artist's tool hopeful of awakening
the receiving souls to the vision. Once these receiving souls
become "in vision" of "the vision" the prophecy
is realized.
Gibran read Blake and discovered his affinities with the English
bard, discovered that he had already had his vision. And he had
confessed: his second reading and real understanding of Blake
made him more aware of this vision. This awareness, unshared by
the multitudes and unreached by the skeptics and the "realists,"
placed the two men, like many others who tread the path of vision,
on a plane different, unorthodox, and "mad." And if
the two men were labeled mad, it is to their credit then otherwise.
After all, are not "all great things touched with madness,"
to use Herman Melville's assertion? Or is not madness in art and
act of creation? I hail Blake's and Gibran's prophetic vision,
and Dr. Hage's controlled madness.
Boulos A Sarru', PhD
Professor of English and American Studies, Dean of Humanities,
Notre-Dame University, Lebanon, July 10, 2002
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