The group was presided by Khalil himself and was baptized Arrabitah, or “The League.” Generally, the Arabic literature of the beginning of the twentieth century was marked by the revolutionary ideas advanced by Arrabitah members as well as by other Arab intellectuals and literary men who felt the urgent need to revolutionize classic Arabic verse and prose. It was a growing urge to innovate and to break with old literary traditions and conventions. The current eventually helped to open new horizons such as the flourishing, in the second half of the twentieth century, of Arabic prose poetry and free verse. The Arrabitah experience was, actually, fundamental in the life of Khalil Gibran who was regarded as a literary rebel and a leading figure of the Arabic literary Renaissance in addition to his Oriental contributions to Western poetry and thought. Here we publish ‘The Broken Wings’. INDEX OF CONTENTS FOREWORD SILENT SORROW THE HAND OF DESTINY ENTRANCE TO THE SHRINE THE WHITE TORCH THE TEMPEST THE LAKE OF FIRE BEFORE THE THRONE OF DEATH BETWEEN CHRIST AND ISHTAR THE SACRIFICE THE RESCUER KAHLIL GIBRAN – A SHORT BIOGRAPHY FOREWORD I was eighteen years of age when love opened my eyes with its magic rays and touched my spirit for the first time with its fiery fingers, and Selma Karamy was the first woman who awakened my spirit with her beauty and led me into the garden of high affection, where days pass like dreams and nights like weddings.
