A STORY THAT SUITS MY STYLE
Kahlil Gibran and Fiction Finding Truth by Richard Payment
~~~
“I think I have found a story that suits my style,” Kahlil Gibran
It was not to be the words of Jesus Christ, exactly, but words about Jesus, from those who knew him, saw him, recognized him, even those who misunderstood — his contemporaries, each telling their fragment of an already much-told story.
These people were the neighbours, the followers, as well as the opponents of Jesus.
~~~
We all like a story. Jesus told stories that became known as parables — a simple way to understand and remember a simple truth.
“I propose to have a number of Jesus’ contemporaries speak of him,” Gibran calmly explained, each will speak from their own point of view. “Their views combined will bring out the portrait of Jesus. The scheme will be in perfect harmony with my style.”
Multiple viewpoints. Seventy-eight voices.One author creating a single portrait, a mosaic in words that included everyone from Mary Magdalen to Pontius Pilate.
Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese poet, novelist and artist. He wrote in English as as well as Arabic. He was greatly influenced by William Blake, who he devotedly called a “man-god.”
Gibran’s idea became a book. It was his longest work: Jesus the Son of Man: His Words and Deeds as Told and Recorded by Those Who Knew Him. It was published in 1928 and perhaps contains his finest writing, a more mature and nuanced book than even The Prophet, the volume that later became the perennial gift book, suitable for all.
Kahlil Gibran’s writing is often called inspirational. The Prophet is certainly that. Inspiration is something that points us in the right direction, like a bow directing an arrow. But Jesus the Son of Man is that very arrow that lands us in middle of a conversation. It is oral history imagined.
Be certain: this is a work of fiction, yet it soars closer to the truth than any gospel or history or prayer.
And it works because we like stories that tell us the truth, while reminding us all the time that they are just that and that alone — stories.
~~~
Gibran’s approach is not unique. It has been done many times since and is often today referred to as the “Rashomon Effect” in honour of the masterly 1950 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa. The technique blends multiple narrators, some of them unreliable, some with questionable motives. The truth — that is, the true story — lies in the aggregate, the totality. We’ve seen this in everything from films like The Last Duel and The Handmaiden to comic television series like The Afterparty.
The difference here is that Kahlil Gibran is not dissecting a murder or a crime. He is looking at the unapproachable: Divinity.
How can one ordinary person fully describe Jesus? The solution: they can’t. It is everybody’s story.
~~~
“What do you say of a book on Jesus?” Gibran asked his friend Mischa Naimy. “Jesus has been haunting my heart and my imagination for some time.
“I am sick and tired of people who profess to believe in him, yet always speak of him and paint him as if he were but a sweet lady with a beard. To them he is beautiful, but lowly, humble, weak and poor. I’m also weary of those that deny him, yet present him as a sorcerer or an imposter.”
Gibran, as always, spoke from his heart. “Still more weary am I of ‘the scholars’ who are ever digging into antiquity to produce lengthy and stupid arguments either for or against the historicity of his personality which is the greatest and most real personality in human history.
“To me he was a man of might and will as he was a man of charity and pity. He was far from being lowly and meek.
“I propose to have a number of Jesus’ contemporaries speak of him, each from his own point of view. Their views combined will bring out the portrait of Jesus as I see him. The scheme will be in perfect harmony with my style.”
~~~
In London in 1985, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi read aloud from Jesus the Son of Man. Shri Mataji is the founder of Sahaja Yoga, but also a person who understood the religions of the world, the singularity of human spiritual seeking. She saw the universal in Gibran’s writing.
She read these words for Gibran’s book. He had fashioned them into the voice of Jesus speaking to his disciples:
Have you in truth weighed me in the scale and found me one to lead legions of pygmies, and to direct chariots of the shapeless against an enemy that encamps only in your hatred and marches nowhere but in your fear?
Shri Mataji stopped reading and explained, “This means you have enemies within yourself,” she said, before returning to the book.
My kingdom is not of the Earth. My kingdom shall be where two or three of you shall meet in love, and in wonder at the loveliness of life, and in good cheer, and in remembrance of me.
Shri Mataji looked up to explain. “This is collectivity,” she said. “Just understand: that is Kahlil Gibran. It is tremendous. There are so many things written already to encourage us to be walking the right path of our spirit, we should never get desperate or discouraged. There is so much already said about it.”
Kahlil Gibran’s portrait of Jesus is not one of suffering or misery. He talks of the meeting, not of the suffering. It is about the meeting and the joy.
Shri Mataji described this twentieth century Lebanese writer as a poet who has “reached the state of oneness with God.” What higher praise could there be?
~~~
Jesus the Son of Man is a mosaic. It is a work of fiction, an imagining of voices. The people are witnesses describing Jesus Christ only to the limits that they have known him, never beyond their own understanding. Together these voices create a beautiful symphony, perhaps a truer portrait of Jesus than the world has ever known.
Such is the power of fiction, able to fly closer to the truth than any factual reporting of historical fact.
And such is the power of Kahlil Gibran, a man who Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi called, “a very great realized soul.”
“If you must read,” she said, “read Kahlil Gibran.”
~~~
Reading stories and telling stories are both a form of spiritual seeking.
Those stories speak to us. They call gently, saying, “Dare to dream and you may encounter truth.”
An edition of Jesus the Son of Man, which includes excerpts from Gibran’s letters and interviews concerning the book, as well as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi’s appreciation of the book and its author, can be found here.
Richard Payment
NEXT: Rabindranath Tagore Reads Gitanjali
No comments:
Post a Comment