The music is haunting, as is the place where author, poet, and painter Gibran Khalil Gibran was born and buried, following a 48-year journey meandering from his beloved native Lebanon, to his adopted country America, to stays in Britain and France.
The spirituality one feels in Bsharri, Gibran's village, perched majestically near the indomitable cedars of biblical fame, transports a visitor to a time when life may have seemed simpler, but whose issues have also burdened the generations, and continue to plague the Lebanese.
Cedars of Lebanon (Abu-Fadil)
No visit is complete without a stop at the Gibran Museum http://www.gibrankhalilgibran.org/en/subpage.asp?id=18&sp=en, a one-time monastery bought by Gibran's sister to house his collection of manuscripts, books, paintings, and furniture, and, to serve as his final resting place.
Gibran Museum (Abu-Fadil)
Ironically, five years before his death Gibran had considered purchasing the Mar Sarkis (St. Serge) Carmelite monastery - today's museum - for his retirement and its monks' hermitage for his final repose.
The location inspired many of his works and seems to have contributed to his pining for Lebanon during his periods away from it.
View from Gibran museum (Abu-Fadil)
Walking through the museum and listening to piped choral voices or a lone instrumentalist on an Arabic nay (recorder), one can follow Gibran's bursts of tormented creativity in Arabic and English in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century.
Gibran - a/k/a Kahlil Gibran in the West - wrote, prophetically, in 1920 while residing in the United States:
You have your Lebanon and I have mine. You have your Lebanon with her problems, and I have my Lebanon with her beauty. You have your Lebanon with all her prejudices and struggles, and I have my Lebanon with all her dreams and securities. Your Lebanon is a political knot, a national dilemma, a place of conflict and deception. My Lebanon, is a place of beauty and dreams of enchanting valleys and splendid mountains. Your Lebanon is inhabited by functionaries, officers, politicians, committees, and factions. My Lebanon is for peasants, shepherds, young boys and girls, parents and poets. Your Lebanon is empty and fleeting, whereas My Lebanon will endure forever.
You have your Lebanon and I have mine (Abu-Fadil)
The words ring true today as the country struggles with an identity shaped by history, colonization, internal and external wars, and a geographic location in a rough neighborhood of the world.
Politics and uncertainty notwithstanding, Gibran contributed to Lebanon's rich literary and artistic heritage.
Thanks to efforts by the Gibran National Committee, a non-profit organization that holds exclusive rights to manage the author's copyright, literary and artistic works, as well as manages the museum, visitors can savor his messages through words and images that are as relevant in the 21st Century as when he put ink to paper and brush to canvas.
His masterpiece The Prophet has become required reading for most students of literature, and the 1923 charcoal rendition adorning the cover is just as gripping as the book's contents.
Face of Almustafa, The Prophet (courtesy of Gibran National Committee)
Gibran had a symbiotic relationship with the church and its seemingly oppressive leadership, which was reflected in his writing.
He was put off by sectarian differences, fueled in part by religious authorities, that ripped into the very fabric of his country's society.
His poignant words were a message across the ages:
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking. Pity the nation divided into into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.
Pity the nation (Abu-Fadil)
Gibran's search for depth and beauty translated into a series of canvases featuring nudity, love of nature, and, love and sin, during his temporal period from 1908 to 1914.
Autumn, a 1909 oil painting, combined those themes in the lovely body of a woman exposed to the vagaries of nature and humans.
Autumn (courtesy of Gibran National Committee)
While in Paris to improve his artistic techniques, Gibran met sculptor Auguste Rodin and appeared influenced by the latter's famous statue The Thinker.
Rather than the bronze or marble sculpture of a hunched naked man leaning his chin on a clenched fist, Gibran's Thinker is a somber painting of a clothed bearded man gazing into space in front of a crystal ball, albeit leaning on his clenched fist.
The Thinker (courtesy of Gibran National Committee)
But all was not gloom and doom for Gibran. His hopes came through the words: "Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be."
In 1975 the Gibran National Committee restored the monastery and built a new suite. In 1995 the site was enlarged and in 2003 more extensions were added.
The museum stands 1,500m (4,921 ft.) above sea level, is 120 km (74.5 miles) from the Lebanese capital Beirut and a mere 7 km (4.3 miles) from the Cedars.
Opening hours:
- Winter: 9:00 am - 5:00 pm (Tuesday - Sunday).
- Summer: 10:00 am - 6:00 pm (Monday - Sunday).
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No writer has had more of an influence on me than Gibran.
A trip to Bsharri and the Gibran museum would be a dream come true.