Great Books: Glenn Wallis on Gibran's "The Prophet"

New Books in American Studies · Feb 4, 2020 · 1h 6m

Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 The Prophet is book that’s changed people’s lives. It is a deceptively simple book, but it contains a radical insight. “Of what can I speak save of that which is even now moving in your souls?” What can a book teach us that we cannot know ourselves? To detect this thing inside of us we must break through convention: our escape into social habits, religious and political doctrine, the comforting approval of others, and the truisms and clichés we take for wisdom. And even once we realize that something is “moving in our souls,” Gibran warns us, we tend to repress this…