The Prophet (book)

The Prophet (original title The Prophet ) is an English-language literary- spiritual text by the Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran .

Gibran's best-known work was published in 1923 by the New York publisher Knopf and has since sold millions of copies. The author worked on the book for 25 years.

From the beginning of the 1960s, the book was received anew in the American beatnik and hippie subculture. The book is still popular today and continues to be published in many languages. In German alone, the work is currently available in at least ten different translations. The original English version is now in the public domain in most countries , as more than seventy years have passed since the author's death.

Reading the book gave a decisive turn to Abbas Khider's life : "I immediately stopped dreaming of becoming an imam. Since then I have wanted to be a writer. Literature instead of religion."

action

The frame story is about the prophet Almustafa , who waited twelve years for his ship, which is now finally supposed to bring him back to his homeland. Before his departure, individual residents of the city of Orphalese ask him to give them one last time his insights on a certain topic ( “Speak to us of ...” ). The following 26 speeches of the Prophet deal with basic questions of human life, beginning with love, through work , and ending with death. In the final chapter there is a farewell speech on the question of meaning .

The posthumously published works The Return of the Prophet or The Homecoming of the Prophet and In The Garden of the Prophet continue the plot and narrative style and place more emphasis on the subjects of nature and faith. Khalil Gibran's great-nephew Hajjar Gibran (* 1950) wrote the sequel The Prophet Returns (2008).

Book editions in German translation

• The prophet . German by Georg-Eduard Freiherr von Stietencron . Hyperion, Munich 1925; Ueberreuter, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-8000-9201-8 .
• The Prophet of Orphalese . German by Claire Malignon. Novalis, Freiburg im Breisgau 1959; New edition as The Prophet : Walter, Olten 1972, ISBN 3-530-26720-1 .
• The prophet . German by Karin Graf . Walter, Olten 1986; Patmos, Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-491-71334-5 .
• The Prophet. German by Ursula Assaf-Nowak. Walter, Düsseldorf and Zurich, 2001, ISBN 3-530-26803-8 and Patmos, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8436-0175-7 .
• The Prophet. German by Giovanni and Ditte Bandini . DTV, Munich 2002; ibid. 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-34523-1 .
• The Prophet. German by Ulrich Schaffer . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2002; ibid. 2011, ISBN 978-3-451-07114-0 .
• The Prophet. German by Barbara Röhl. Piper, Munich 2003; ibid. 2005, ISBN 3-492-24568-4 .
• The Prophet. German by Martin Pfeiffer. Diederichs, Kreuzlingen 2005, ISBN 3-7205-2640-2 .
• The Prophet. German by Elaine Charwat. Schiler, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89930-084-X .
• The Prophet. German by Ingrid Fischer-Schreiber . Diogenes, Zurich 2005; ibid. 2010, ISBN 978-3-257-23960-7 .
• The Prophet. German by Kim Landgraf. Anaconda, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-938484-97-7 .

Web links

Wikiquote: The Prophet  - Original edition from 1926 published by Alfred A. Knopf New York (English)

• The Prophet in two languages ​​in a translation by Bertram Kottmann

Individual evidence

1. ↑ German for everyone. The definitive textbook. Munich 2019. p. 88.