论文总字数：32458字

摘 要

本文以纪伯伦《先知》中辩证的爱情及婚姻哲学观为中心，探究其对人类生活细节的影响。文章主体部分分为两部分，辩证的婚姻观和辩证的爱情观。爱情观方面分别从爱情与欲望，爱情与金钱，爱情与距离三个方面分析纪伯伦辩证的哲学观；婚姻观方面分别从婚姻与距离，婚姻与信仰，婚姻与教育三个方面分析他的辩证哲学观。

绪论部分着重介绍纪伯伦的生平背景，从作者出身背景来探讨造成纪伯伦独特写作风格的成因。爱情观方面主要从情人之爱，亲情之爱，最后至泛爱众来介绍三个方面的辩证的爱情观。婚姻观方面主要从两性关系的角度来介绍三个方面的辩证婚姻观。论文运用了纪伯伦写给两个女人的爱情书简，尼采的矛盾哲学和司汤达的作品等材料让人们从纪伯伦的杰作中获得启示，折射出纪伯伦人性理解的独特视角。

关键词：纪伯伦的婚姻爱情哲学；《先知》；独特视角；尼采

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Khalil Gibran’s Dialectical Feeling on Love 3

3.1 Love and Lust 4

3.2 Love and Length 6

3.3 Love and Money 7

4. Khalil Gibran’s Dialectical Philosophy on Marriage 8

4.1 Marriage and Distance 9

4.2 Marriage and Faith 10

4.3 Marriage and Education 11

5. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

Love and marriage are the two eternal issues of mankind. Many celebrities eulogize the eternity of love and marriage. The Prophet is a book of 26 prose poetry which is written in English by the Lebanese philosopher, artist and writer Kahlil Gibran and it came off the press incipiently in 1923. Then it was translated successively into over 50 kinds of languages. The Prophet can be seen as his magnum opus. As a famous east poet, painter, and writer, Gibran sacrifices whole life to art and literature creation, creating much of a stir instantly after publishing The Prophet. The Prophet is thought of as his masterpiece, which is widely read by people and people are intoxicated in his description of love. This paper explores the conception of love and marriage philosophy of Khalil Gibran"s The Prophet and its influence on human beings.

Khalil Gibran, during his transient but glorious lifetime, experienced unsettled destitute life, lost kinsfolk, and underwent love’s twists and turns. Also he was involved in debt and suffered from ailment. Khalil Gibran was born in the Bsharri in the north of modern-day Lebanon. The elegant scene and mountainous hills in his hometown endow him with artistic imagination and inspiration. At the small place, he spent his childhood with his beloved mother and two sisters. The whole family worked for the expense on Gibran’s study. He pursued his study abroad sponsored by two women. Both of two did not marry him. They nevertheless maintained a platonic love with him. During his bachelorhood, however, he didn’t live an abstinent life. He kept a sexual relationship with many women at the same time. The affairs what happened to Gibran made his life so paradoxical.

Gibran loved painting from the very young age and once was cultivated by Rodin, a great sculptor. Apart from Rodin, Khalil Gibran was affected profoundly by a giant English romantic poet—William Blake in painting style and writing style. His debut began with the Spirits Rebellious in 1908 after he was rejected by an aristocratic girl, Hala Daher, during their courtship. The event led him into a different destiny in which traditional writing shackles was broken. Nietzsche, on the other hand, played the role of pathfinder, whose Thus Spoke Zarathustra facilitates Gibran’s prose verse and resonates with the idea of superman philosophy. Gibran applied the new writing skills in works which endowed later generations with priceless treasures both in literature and in intrapsychic purity.

At last one conclusion is always true that one feels purity, calm and relaxation in the bottom of heart after reading The Prophet.

2. Literature Review

In recent years, many researchers have dedicated themselves to the study of Gibran’s works. Many people do research on ecological ethic, thanatopsis and its cause, biotic connotation, and Bahai philosophic influence on Gibran, so that they can conclude the outside reasons embodied in Gibran’s works, from the aspect of culture, environment, religion, as well as biology. A lot of prominent celebrities have made commentary and review of The Prophet. Gibran’s best friend, Mihai, with the close connection to Gibran on literature, recognizing quintessence of The Prophet, “As Zarathustra is the embodiment of Nietzsche, Mustafa is also the embodiment of Khalil Gibran.”(Mihai, 1986: 212) Du Weina explores the conception of Gibran’s love, “Gibran’s love comes from elucidation of relationship between human beings, human and nature, human and society. It can be seen as monolithic, depending on each other but also being independent in some ways.”(Du Weina, 2012:69-71)

They focus on external influence exerting on Gibran, and this thesis will explore the internal changes in the heart. Raise different views on love and marriage based on predecessors’ works. It will talk about, for example, relationship between love and money, marriage and education from the dialectical perspective. Discussion which focuses on proper contrasts is given on desperate love and marriage as well as hints for future research.

3. Khalil Gibran"s Dialectical Feeling on Love

The writer mentions the theme of love in most his works. “Love is life in its fullness like the cup with its wine.” (Tagore, 2011:148) As a man，He had no marriage but Gibran had never lacked of women in his life．He had sexual relationships with many ladies．However in his works，he kept seeking Plato love．Mary Haskwell and May Sedan were two important women in his life．But the love relationships between Gibran and the two women were still in spirit．And at last，he never married any one of them but the very two women exerting great influence on Gibran.

One is Mary Haskell, a doomed charming woman affected his lifetime. Because of her sponsorship and supports, Gibran had chance to enter Pairs Artistic Institution to learn drawing skills so that he could make his gift at his acme. In Pairs he enjoyed himself in artistic ocean so much as to forget to leave, and expanded greatly his horizon. Marry herself had a good knowledge and percipient of literature, which influenced Gibran a lifetime. He made a proposal to her, but failed. In 1991, Marry recorded the reason why she rejected Gibran’s proposition was that she was afraid that their marriage might exert undesirable influence on his talent in the arts. She rejected him on the pretext of 10 years older than him. Later Gibran met another lady.

May Sedan is another lady. Affection between Gibran and May Sedan was based on mutual admiration and appreciation on mutual ideas and talent. Gibran was famous for his deep thoughts and unique style of writing, evoking shock on the Arabic literary arena, as well as on May’s heart. Both of them concentrated on spiritual life, and each took the other as bosom friend and spiritual partner, regarded their mutual contact as greatest pleasure. There are some famous letters that Gibran wrote to May. “Dear my friend, whether you know I get consolation, pleasure and serenity from our intermittent conversions? Do you once know that the east of our world exist a unique girl? Before her birth, she had entered the palace and stood at the sacrosanct Holy Land. She knew the enigma of the cosmos which was guarded by matutinal Orion.”(Xue Guoqing, 2001:33）These letters witness their love case. However things go contrary to one’s wishes when they became divergent in lifestyle and marriage understanding. They finally did not get married and live together.

Through his life experiences and works，we can know that he was ambivalent．In every aspects of his life，including love and marriage，he had conflicts in his mind．“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient onto love. When you love you should not say, ‘god is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God’. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.”(Gibran, 2009:24) According to Gibran, love is the basic instinct of all subsistence and development, to love oneself, to love others, to love all things on earth, so that the significance of existing can realize. Love is not for return but love itself. Whether the soul can be affirmed and adopted by God depends on one’s big love.

Gibran’s ambivalent differentiation on love experience and love comprehension endows with a unique imagination for later generation.

Once involved in love when someone loves, however, ones’ brain may operate in a different way. Helena, a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, once said that, “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath lover’s mind of figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child.” (Shakespeare, 2001:37) The following passage will have a minute and comprehensive explanation on this contrast existed in love area. There are several methods on dividing love. From the perspective of Gibran, love to him means not only the love between the lovers but also the kinship between family members. From the utterly sublime aspects, love means pan-loving masses and self-giving desires.

3.1 Love and Lust

“Love is a kind of sweet pain, and sincere love is never a bumpy road.”(Shakespeare, 1999:384) When love occurs, should it follows with sexual relationship to reinforce the tie? In the story Lady Chatterley’s Lover wrote by D. H. Lawrence, the author explores the relation between love and sex. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the story of Constance Chatterley, who, while trapped in an unhappy marriage to an aristocratic mine owner on whom war wounds leaves him paralyzed and impotent, has an affair with Mellors, the gamekeeper. If one can always understand a very ideal and spiritual love then it may be platonic rather than sexual.

“But in her (Constance) inner conscious she was keeping in touch with the other man. She mustn’t let connection with him go; oh she mustn’t let it go, or she was lost, lost utterly in this world of expensive people and joy-seekers.” (Lawrence, 2007:244) She is trapped into carnal enjoyment and almost loses herself in love affairs. When human beings cannot exactly discriminate the enjoyment brought by lust from the true love derived from heartbeat, they may be lost in transient perplexity and confusion. “Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness.” (Gibran, 2009:24)

When Gibran was 14 years old, he met with beautiful lady in an artist home, and soon afterwards she lured him and became a lover of him. “You tarnish your soul by dissolute falsehood and pseudology. You warm yourself on the bed of desire while he gets a cold in the wind. You lead a pleasant life of lust which is full of sinuosity.”(Mihai, 1986:59) From that time, Gibran lived a self-condemned and compunctious life when considering himself kept a better lifestyle by contrary his family was poverty-stricken. His afternoon of life lived in the shadow of remorse. Love brought not only lust but also love itself; lust brought not only desire but also introspection and thinking about love.

Apart from lover’s love, lust can also be derived from family’s aspect, especially from mother. From the very young age, Gibran was on intimate terms with his mother while he kept an inhospitable relation with his father. Even though he got a celebrated fame, his father still teased him. His mother gave him all her love. He wanted to be successful enough to deserve the love his mother pours into him, to be gorgeous enough to win his father’s attention. These two kind of different love, which even can be seen as adverse love, held him be continued. “God punishing mother is due to the fault of her son; God punishing brothers and sisters is due to the sin of you.”(Mihai, 1986:59)

In the western country, God is sovereign. He creates the universe, truth, and origin of law. Kindheartedness and fair are the two affairs pursued by saint and saint is the personalization of benevolence. Almustafa also plays the role of saint, giving evangel and enlightenment to all ordinary people. When a man is drove by a great desire to be benevolent, he is doing the affair of a saint, loving God and loving human beings. Kindheartedness focuses on mercy, sympathy, care, and kindness. He who is drove by the mission of love performed the way extreme love required. “Too many fragment of spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my loving that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.”(Gibran, 2009:4) All the desire of his love props up his beliefs.

3.2 Love and Length

“Her passion will die like a lamp for want of what the flame should feed upon.”(Stendhal, 2005:204) Passion can be one of the embodiments of love in a sense. Love would wear off because of shortage of energy. Length is a quite troubled problem to distribute energy. Length refers to not unalloyed physical distance but abstract range between two hearts. “I grant I never saw a goddess go; my mistress when she walks treads on the ground.”(Shakespeare, 2011:260) Goddess is far away from us, and only we can feel the love is who comes close to us.

Love links tightly with time, space, and distance, which form a multidimensional aspect, supposedly, that will decide the persistence of love. The conclusion that nothing in particular can demonstrate love unconditionally seems to negate the sentence that love is to be known by its fruits. Although love in its immediacy is hidden and cannot be described in objective terms, this is not to say that it is enclosed in our subjective world. Physically, a fact that lovers separated into two places in a long time would finally breakup for the majority of them. Psychically, if the two get too close from each other, they might feel intranquil and dysphoric; if their hearts get remote, they might feel fishlike and indifferent. “It is a strange thing, to note the excess of this passion, and how it braves the nature, and value of things. Whereas it hath been well said, that the arch-flatterer is a man’s self; certainly the lover is more. That it is impossible to love, and to be wise.”(Bacon, 2005:78) To be close, be aberrant; to be remote, be lost. Keeping a proper distance is especially necessary. “But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you but make not a bond of love. Stand together, yet not too near together.”(Gibran, 2009:28)

Keep an appropriate distance with kins. The big love from family is a free hand. “You may house their bodies but not soul. You are bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”(Gibran, 2009: 36) A child protected excessively by family would never break the shackles and parochialism that the narrow-mind cultivated gradually by family. A new culture value outside was separated from the child. Child who wants to learn more should go out. Parents, in a sense, let him go. This is the love, a big love, a wise love.

Furthermore a big love can ascend to pan-loving public. Jesus Christ who dies for human beings comes from ordinary being. He is god but still an ordinary people. He is intimate with people, sowing the good seeds, preaching salvation. Jesus is a typical representative of pan-loving masses. People who are close to god get a kind of pure love, obtaining salvation; otherwise he keeps far away from love, from epiphany, from luminosity.

In conclusion, love stands dialectical relation with length from the perspective of comprehensive links, besides physical range. Maintaining a balance between love and length is the wisdom for Gibran, for you and me.

3.3 Love and Money

Apart from lust and length, money is another vital part to operate affection. Many works reveals the phenomenon in a direct or subtle way to show the impotence of money. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby pursues his love only when he gets lots of money. Once Daisy leaves him, and the important reason is that Gatsby is a poor man who cannot deserve her status. Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice can also prove the truth: no money, no love. As Chinese old saying goes that the penniless couple goes wrong for daily life. Love may be intangible to the physical eyes; it is not entirely hidden.

Though the divine source of love is concealed, the trail of love leaves behind is undeniable for those who have submitted themselves to the voice of love in their heart. However, others who, in their fear of being deceived, only trust the things that can be seen objectively exclude themselves from this hidden reality. Economic support can be a kind of strong backup force when facing the serious reality. “It is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, and to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.”(Gibran, 2009: 178) The lovers can be seen as giver and receiver while honey the necessary supports to hold love subsisted. The examples happened upon Gibran that his patron, Marry, kept supporting him to help completing his creation. This time Gibran fell in love with Marry with the money as the shield.

Money was not only from lover’s hand but also family’s expense. “All work is empty save when there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself, and to one another, and to God.”(Gibran, 2009:58) Gibran’s family earned money laboriously to support him, and his sister, brother, and sister died one after another because of excessive fatigue. The death of his beloved kins gave a heavy blow to him. Money is a support of love as well as burden of love. People from rich family received an affluent life but not abundant love while people who were born in a poor family lived with uptight tension but not barren love.

“And it controlled special keys to unlock still higher degrees of pleasure, including the mastery of ancient languages as well as those of Christian morality and self-discipline." (Barker-Benfield, 1992:62) Love is a higher degree of happiness with the appropriate dedication and self-restraint. However, a big love should not be measured by money. Chronically once a philanthropist donated money to the people who was in need he was judged by the figure to predicate whether he was benevolent enough. Money at this time was the epitome of love without taking consideration of the amount of money.

4. Khalil Gibran’s Dialectical Philosophy on Marriage

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other"s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf but let each one of you be alone.”(Gibran, 2009:28)

It is a source of blessing to the couple, to their families, and to society which includes the wondrous gift of co-creating human life. The sentences are excerpted from Gibran’s prose poetry, which exerting an obvious dialectical philosophy style, by such words, ‘is’ ‘ but’ ‘but not’, giving us conspicuous ‘behavior’ disciplines and rules to direct how to do in the marriage hall. However Gibran did not marry for the whole life. Obviously literary creation and enthusiasm of painting drove Gibran to give up the idea of marriage. But his great dialectical retrospection on marriage guides people to acquire the comprehensive cognition. The passage following will have a detailed explanation from the perspective of heterosexual relationships. “The creation of men of feeling was the expression of ‘collective wish fulfillment’ and of deep need on the part of women.” (Barker-Benfield, 1992:247) According to the Bible, women are made from the seventh ribs of men. Men and women are entrapped in inseparable and sophisticated relations and marriage becomes a vital linkage between the two. Distance, faith and education are three important factors among multitudinous elements which affect the quality of marriage.

4.1 Marriage and Distance

Once man and woman get married that means responsibilities, however, tolerance. “Having both work and family responsibilities: makes you a better-rounded person, managing work and family responsibilities as well as you do makes you feel competent.” (Marshall, 1993:77) However both the two sides of spouses should keep a moderate distance, neither too far nor too near. Too close it may result in loathing, and too far it may cause frigidity so that a moderate one would bring fresh, amusing and romantic sensations. It would be better for many marriages if the husband and the wife distinctly understand that they are on the same side without suspicion. Gibran’s mother got unfortunate marriage twice, which led in a poor impression on him. Someone likes Gibran is afraid of getting married. The marriage is a jeopardy that is probably better avoided than taken with potentially disastrous results.

For men self-confidence and free independence are two important elements to maintain the balance of bond. Independent space and individual privacy are equal to respect. Many men are afraid of marriage when taking women’s over-extension of space into consideration. Over-extension includes not only the physical distance but also abstract ideology of the world value and cognition. Marriage means the over-extension can be aboveboard in front of you. At this time, a proper range of intervention become a happy experience, especially, that it can upgrade new knowledge you have never heard before so that the positive effects invigorate the new energy on daily life as well as in your career.

By contrast, for women a more fine and smooth concern are vital quality to keep a good marriage. That means a closer interaction with husband. “For where is he so fair whose uneared womb disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will the tomb of his self-love to stop posterity.”(Shakespeare, 2011:6) Women are the heavy emotionality while men tend to rationality. Women are eager to have a conversant understanding of men, tending to keep a shorter distance than men do. If the women, however, know the bottom line of the men, she would refrain from unprincipled invasion on men’s ground.

That’s the great wisdom for men and women to refresh their marriage life within a reasonable distance. Or rather a wise distance is corrosion remover to protect the love.

4.2 Marriage and Faith

In Great Gatsby, Daisy is not a loyal wife. When Gatsby becomes rich, she rushes to anoint him, betraying the marriage and has an extramarital love with him. Even her husband has a lover outside. The marriage can’t tolerate betrayal both for men and women. “His readers are to seek in a husband such qualities as a virtuous disposition, a good understanding, an even temper, an easy fortune, and an agreeable person.”(Stone, 1979:219) A good husband’s quality also includes faith, which is suitable for wife as well. “The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.”(Gibran, 2009:123)

About this question, men are similar to women’s view that cannot stand infidelity and escapade, but there exists a little difference from their emphasis. Women cannot endure emotional infidelity than sexual cheating. But men are opposite, for men, they regard sexual fidelity as important rather than emotional allegiance.

In men’s eyes, faith means sexual fidelity, for which results in a dilemma that he doesn’t take emotional communication seriously which women focus on preciously. He, who works hardly outside, is bound up in social intercourse, having little time to interact with wife mentally only to find his wife has an extramarital love with another man. To that third man the wife confides in her umbrage and dissatisfaction about unhappy marriage but for husband, he is so innocent.

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