Category: Book Excerpt

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Mother by Kahlil Gibran

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This is an excerpt from The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran, discovered in the anthology of his work called The Voice of Kahlil Gibran, translated by A.R. Ferris.

The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word ‘Mother’, and the most beautiful call is the call of ‘My mother’. It is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is everything – she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.

Everything in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of heat; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love…The word mother is hidden in our hearts, and it comes upon our lips in hours of sorrow and happiness as the perfume comes from the heart of the rose and mingles with clear and cloudy air.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

Book Summary

Here are the book summaries from Goodreads, for both The Broken Wings and The Voice of Kahlil Gibran:

Millions all over the world have responded to the message of Kahlil Gibrana as recorded in his masterpiece, “The Prophet”. In the style that gave Gibran the title of “Dante of the Twentieth Century”, “The Voice of the Master” speaks stirringly of the victory of faith over grief, and love over loneliness. “Of Marriage”, “Of the Divinity of Man”, “Of Reason and Knowledge”, “Of Love and Equality”, –these are some of the themes Gibran searches in this volume, offering fresh insight into many of life’s most perplexing riddles.

This selection and introduction copyright © Robin Waterfield 1995.

More details on Goodreads can be found here.

This is the exquisitely tender story of love that beats desperately against the taboos of Oriental tradition. With great sensitivity, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man. Portraying the happiness and infinite sorrow of his relationship with Selma, Gibran at the same time probes the spiritual meaning of human existence with profound compassion. 

Copyright © 1912 by Kahlil Gibran.

Translated by A.R. Ferris.

More details on Goodreads can be found here.

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Conversation with Telemachus

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This is an excerpt from the book Circe by Madeline Miller.

‘And your mother? What did she think?’

’I do not claim to know what my mother thinks.’ His voices had stiffened. They had not spoken to each other all night, I remembered.

’She brought you up herself. You must have some idea.’

’There is no one who can guess what my mother is doing until it is done.’ There was not just stiffness in his voice now but bitterness. I waited. I had begun to see that silence prompted him better than words.

’There was a time we shared every confidence,’ he said. ‘We plotted each night’s strategy against the suitors together, if she should come down or not, speak haughtily or conciliate, if I should bring out the good wine, if we should stage for them some confrontation. When I was a child we were together every day. She would take me swimming, and afterwards we would sit beneath a tree and watch the people of Ithaca go about their business. Each man or woman who passed, she knew their history and would tell it to me, for she said that you must understand people if you would rule them.’

Telemachus’ gaze was fixed upon the air. The firelight picked out a crook in his nose I had not noticed before. An old break.

’Whenever I fretted for my father’s safety, she would shake her head. “Never fear for him. He is too clever to be killed, for he knows all the tricks of men’s hearts, and how to turn them to his advantage. He will survive the war and return home again.” And I was comforted, for what my mother said always came to pass.’

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

Circe – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child – not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

Copyright © 2018 by Madeline Miller.

More details on Goodreads can be found here.

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Meridian by Alice Walker

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This is an excerpt from the book Meridian by Alice Walker.

She could never forgive her community, her family, his family, the whole world, for not warning her against children. For a year she had seen some increase in her happiness: She enjoyed joining her body to her husband’s in sex, and enjoyed having someone with whom to share the minute occurrences of her day. But in her first pregnancy she became distracted from who she was. As divided in her mind as her body was divided, between what part was herself and what part was not. Her frail independence gave way to the pressures of motherhood and she learned – much to her horror and amazement – that she was not even allowed to be resentful that she was “caught.” That her personal life was over. There was no one she could cry out to and say “It’s not fair!” And in understanding this, she understood a look she saw in the other women’s eyes. The mysterious inner life that she had imagined gave them a secret joy was simply a full knowledge of the fact that they were dead, living just enough for their children. They, too, had found no one to whom to shout “It’s not fair!” The women who now had eight, twelve, fifteen children: People made jokes about them, but she could feel now that such jokes were obscene; it was like laughing at a person who is being buried alive, walled away from her own life, brick by brick.

That was the beginning of her abstraction. When her children were older and not so burdensome – and they were burdens to her always – she wanted to teach again but could not pass the new exams and did not like the new generation of students. In fact, she discovered she had no interest in children, until they were adults; then she would pretend to those she met that she remembered them. She learned to make paper flowers and prayer pillows from tiny scraps of cloth, because she needed to feel something in her hands. She never learned to cook well, she never learned to braid hair prettily or to be in any other way creative in her home. She could have done so, if she had wanted to. Creativity was in her, but it was refused expression. It was all deliberate. A war against those to whom she could not express her anger or shout, “It’s not fair!”

With her own daughter she certainly said things she herself did not believe. She refused help and seemed, to Meridian, never to understand. But all along she understood perfectly.

It was for stealing her mother’s serenity, for shattering her mother’s emerging self, that Meridian felt guilty from the very first, though she was unable to understand how this could possibly be her fault.

When her mother asked, without glancing at her, “Have you stolen anything?” a stillness fell over Meridian and for seconds she could not move. The question literally stopped her in her tracks.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

Meridian – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

“The second novel written by Alice Walker, preceding The Color Purple is a heartfelt and moving story about one woman’s personal revolution as she joins the Civil Rights Movement. Set in the American South in the 1960s it follows Meridian Hill, a courageous young woman who dedicates herself heart and soul to her civil rights work, touching the lives of those around her even as her own health begins to deteriorate. Hers is a lonely battle, but it is one she will not abandon, whatever the costs. This is classic Alice Walker, beautifully written, intense and passionate.”

Copyright © 1976 by Alice Walker.

More details can be found on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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This is an excerpt from the book Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot.

Her mind was made up. Or, more accurately, a stubborn resolve had taken root.

Kazu just stood there impassively. Fumiko could imagine that if she had instead told her, Sorry, I can’t go through with this, her reaction would have been the same. She briefly closed her eyes, placed her clenched fists on her lap, and drew in a deep breath through her nostrils as if trying to centre herself.

‘I’m ready,’ she announced. She looked Kazu in the eye. ‘Please pour the coffee.’

Giving a small nod, Kazu picked up the silver kettle from the tray with her right hand. She looked at Fumiko demurely. ‘Just remember. Drink the coffee before it goes cold,’ she whispered.

Kazu began to pour the coffee into the cup. She gave off an air of nonchalance, but her fluid and graceful movements made Fumiko feel like she was observing an ancient ceremony.

Just as Fumiko noticed the shimmering steam rising from the coffee that filled the cup, everything around the table also began to curl up and become indistinguishable from the swirling vapour. She began to feel fear and closed her eyes. The sensation that she was shimmering and becoming distorted, like the rising steam, became even more powerful. She clenched her fists tighter. If this continues, I won’t find myself in the present or past; I’ll simply vanish in a wisp of smoke. As this anxiety engulfed her, she brought to mind the first time she met Goro.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

Book Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

Copyright © Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Translation copyright © Picador 2019.

Translated by: Geoffrey Trousselot

More details can be found on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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Poets by Kahlil Gibran

Photo by Aaron Burden | Accessed on Unsplash.com

This is an excerpt from The Forerunner by Kahlil Gibran, discovered in the anthology of his work called The Voice of Kahlil Gibran.

Four poets were sitting around a bowl of punch that stood on a table.

Said the first poet, ‘Methinks I see with my third eye the fragrance of this wine hovering in space like a cloud of birds in an enchanted forest.’

The second poet raised his head and said, ‘With my inner ear I can hear those mist-birds singing. And the melody holds my heart as the white rose imprisons the bee within her petals.’

The third poet closed his eyes and stretched his arm upwards, and said, ‘I touch them with my hand. I feel their wings, like the breath of a sleeping fairy, brushing against my fingers.’

Then the fourth poet rose and lifted up the bowl, and he said, ‘Alas, friends! I am too dull of sight and of hearing and of touch. I cannot see the fragrance of this wine, nor hear its song, nor feel the beating of its wings. I perceive but the wine itself. Now therefore must I drink it, that it may sharpen my senses and raise me to your blissful heights.’

And putting the bowl to his lips, he drank the punch to the very last drop.

The three poets, with their mouths open, looked at him aghast, and there was a thirsty, yet unlyrical hatred in their eyes.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

Book Summary

Here are the book summaries from Goodreads, for both The Forerunner and The Voice of Kahlil Gibran:

Millions all over the world have responded to the message of Kahlil Gibrana as recorded in his masterpiece, “The Prophet”. In the style that gave Gibran the title of “Dante of the Twentieth Century”, “The Voice of the Master” speaks stirringly of the victory of faith over grief, and love over loneliness. “Of Marriage”, “Of the Divinity of Man”, “Of Reason and Knowledge”, “Of Love and Equality”, –these are some of the themes Gibran searches in this volume, offering fresh insight into many of life’s most perplexing riddles.

This selection and introduction copyright © Robin Waterfield 1995.

More details on Goodreads can be found here.

“I do not think the East has spoken with so beautiful a voice since the Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore …”
– G. W. Russell

“Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese poet, philosopher and painter, occupies a unique position in today’s world. His name is synonymous with peace, spiritual values and international understanding.”

Copyright © 1900 by Kahlil Gibran.

More details on Goodreads can be found here.

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