Did Kahlil Gibran write the poem "Fear"? - 1/3 - "Collected Works"

Vahe H Apelian

You may also have come across the poem titled Fear. I posted two copies of the poem from different sources. One claims that poem is by Khalil Gibran, the other claims that the poem is by Kahlil Gibran

Indeed, the Lebanese born poet Gibran Khalil Gibran’s has its literary works published as Kahlil Gibran.  I have read that it was his teacher noting an unusual latent literary  talent in her student, suggested that he adopts the name Kahlil. But, according to Wikipedia, “. His name was registered using the anglicized spelling 'Kahlil Gibran.”. In any event, Gibran’s name was not Khalil Gibran. I remember an incident in Lebanon when during an interview of an Armenian stage actor on tv, he mentioned the name Khalil Gibran Khalil. You could hear the chuckling in the background of the studio. 

I quote: “Khalil or Khaleel (Arabic: خليل) means friend and is a common male first name in the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central Asia and among Muslims in South Asia and as such is also a common surname.” Khalil is mostly Muslim boys’ name. Gibran was a Maronite Christian and his baptismal name was Gibran Khalil Gibran.

I doubt that the poem is written by Kahlil Gibran. The poem does not make sense to me. It claims that the river is afraid as it flows towards the ocean but, I quote, “the river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then the fear will disappear because that’s when the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean but becoming the ocean.”

What kind of non-sensical metaphor that is! The river flows to the ocean whether it wants or not. There is no element of taking a risk. There is the certainly of pouring into the ocean and] when it enters the ocean, it does not become the ocean, it becomes part of the ocean. Is it meant to say that we should not fear death because we all are in the process of dying? And after we die, how would we know we are part of the bigger, whatever that is? 

As a Diaspora Armenian one can visualize the process of the flowing river onto the ocean to gradual assimilation into a vast something, such as bigger and far-reaching Anglo-Saxon culture. Should we take the risk and fear not because we will become part of that Anglo-Saxon cultural ocean and are no more an Armenian river? This poem does not make sense to me. It cherishes the loss of identity! Yet the framed poem is being sold for hefty price and I have read by many on Armenian social media having been enamored by the poem! 

I doubt that Kahlil Gibran wrote this nonsense. I searched in the internet looking for the poem’s source but I did not come across any that cited that the poem is from such a literary work of Kahlil Gibran. 

The other day I ordered the collected work of Kahlil Gibran in a beautifully bound hard cover book. After a two pages long introduction about Kahlil Gibran, his literary works are cited.  The book is “a collection of some of Gibran’s best loved writings”. Consequently, it is not a complete collection of his literary works. The book is 631 pages long. The content lists 12 books. 

The introduction to the Collected Work of Kahlil Gibran, ends with the expected as to what Kahlil Gibran is mostly known for. It notes that “He is best remembered for the Prophet (1923), a collection of twenty-six fables, which has been translated into more than forty languages and continues to remain a masterpiece.” I bet for most; he is only remembered for his book The Prophet. Our own poet Bedros Tourian who died at the age of twenty-one, wrote 39 poems but he is immortalized not for all the 39 poems he wrote, but for less than 26 of those 39 poems.

Right after I received the book, I started flipping the pages one by one. I did not come across a poem titled Fear. I will go over the book again and again to make sure that I did not miss any of Kahlil Gibran’s poems.

In the meantime, if any of the readers of this blog can cite the source of the poem Fearfrom Kahlil Gibran’s works, I will be grateful. I will grudgingly admit that Kahlil Gibran indeed wrote the poem but my perception of the poem will not change. All I will say is that Kahlil Gibram stumbled in writing that none-sensical poem titled Fear. But that does not mean that he will be less of the writer to me. At times, the greatest among us also stumbles. After all, we all are humans and to err is human.