A Wiser Man

Kahlil Gibran’s madman

The Madman by Kahlil Gibran

Thematically, this short book is pulled together tight. It’s a selection, very much like The Forerunner, of parables and poems, but it’s wound with more torsion; it’s got a stronger core. Sometimes, books of this kind have little substance; they have a framing narrative, written in fix-up style, that gives a very loose covering to events. I enjoyed Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, in which our narrator finds himself talking to a stranger in the evening time; and every one of the terrible living tattoos on this former carnival freak represents the beginning of a story. But some critics found it meretricious.

This book is different; it’s briefer and more to the point, and it’s written by Kahlil Gibran.

A madman exults in his own madness; he spends time with, and falls in love with and mourns, his sorrow. He buries his past selves. When he sleeps, seven selves within him complain and talk about their sufferings. They each claim that they — the self that exemplifies anger, say, or euphoria or tenderness — has it worse. And a final self — the self that looks solely into the void — tells the other selves that they have nothing to worry about compared to it. And when those selves sleep again inside the madman’s skull, the self that spoke last looks beyond time and into nothingness.

At another time, the madman goes forth to a strange place and asks that he be crucified. The inhabitants demur. Why should your blood be on our heads? For what are you sacrificing yourself? And what do you wish to atone for? they ask. But eventually they accept his request and suspend him ‘twixt heaven and earth. The madman tells them that he does not sacrifice himself; that he has no cause; and that he asks to be crucified and fed only on his own blood because being watered like that is the only diet fit for a madman. He says that he and his kind are not weary of crucifixion. They demand to be crucified by ever greater men, suspended between greater earths and greater heavens.

My favourite story from this collection is ‘The Wise King.’ A city with only one clear and crystalline well is governed by a powerful and competent sovereign and his lord chamberlain. But a wicked wielder of magic steals into the city at night and adds drops of a potion to the well. A poison that will make whoever drinks of its water go mad. The people drink of the well and, as the day progresses, more and more of them become mad. But what they say is that the king and the lord chamberlain have gone crazy; the two of them seem increasingly deranged. And so the wise king calls for his golden cup and has it filled from the well, and drinks of it, and commands his lord chamberlain to do so, too. And the whole city rejoices that both have recovered their reason.

Two more stories of unreason, quickly. One is ‘The Two Hermits.’ Two holy men who have lived in companionable solitude for many years, their only possession a single earthenware bowl, until a wicked spirit enters one of their minds and he demands they part. The hermit who is going wishes that they split the bowl; he won’t have charity, and he refuses to cast lots for it, as that would be foolish — not to mention impious.

So you would rather destroy the bowl? the other hermit asks. And upon being told that’s so, he consents to break it. And the other hermit has contempt for him in his heart, for the other man gives up what he once had so meekly, and does not think of fighting.

And one final example of unreason: in ‘The Eye,’ the senses of a man are in conflict. The eye claims that it has seen a mountain, but the nose says it cannot smell it; the tongue says it cannot taste anything like a mountain; and the hands say that they cannot reach out and touch one. Thus the mountain cannot be there — all except the eye agree. And after, the other senses meet in private and confer, because something has clearly gone very wrong with their friend the eye, their friend who must be losing his sanity.

I admire the story of ‘The Blessed City,’ a place which was said to be especially virtuous and favoured by the divine. But when the traveller visits this great city, and seeks to learn its wisdom, he finds the whole city a mass of deformity — every resident a cripple. Some missing eyes, some missing hands. And when he asks who did this to the people (which loathsome conqueror laid them waste, which terrible god meted out such punishment?), they tell him that they did it to themselves.

For was it not written in their holy texts that it would be better to put out an eye that had sinned than to be denied a place in heaven because of its transgressions? And if a hand offendeth you, strike it off. Better that, surely, than be denied a place in heaven? The inhabitants of the city show him the great vessels where hands and eyes that have been amputated and put out sit and rot and wilt; and the traveller leaves the sad, sick city a wiser man.