Twenty Drawings

This book reproduces twenty drawings by Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet and painter: dreamlike figures of men and women, mothers and children, centaurs and souls rising towards the sky, drawn in soft, flowing lines that recall William Blake and the sculptor Rodin, whom Gibran admired. An introductory essay discusses his art and his search, in image as in word, for the unity of the human and the divine.

Gibran (1883–1931), who studied art in Paris and lived in New York, published the book in 1919, between The Madman and The Forerunner. Many of his drawings illustrate his own books, above all The Prophet.

Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) was born in Bsharri in Mount Lebanon and emigrated to Boston with his family at twelve. He first wrote in Arabic, including The Broken Wings, an early Arabic novel, then in English, where The Prophet (1923) became one of the most translated books of the century.

With Mikhail Naimy and Elia Abu Madi he founded the Pen League in New York, which renewed Arabic writing in the diaspora.