Free Mirrors of the Soul by Joseph Sheban Joseph Sheban Kahlil Gibran Page A

dedication I found read thus:
    â€œTo the soul that embraced my soul, to the heart that poured its secrets into my own heart, to the hand that kindled the flame of my emotions, I dedicate this book.”
    In Paris Gibran lived and worked with a close friend, Joseph Hoyek, who wrote a book about their two years together. The two young men did not live in the same apartment; however, they met daily and often shared the cost of a model for the sake of saving money. Hoyek wrote about the girls they met, the restaurants in which they ate. He named Olga, a Russian girl, another named Rosina, and an Italian girl who was the most beautiful model they hired, but Hoyek made no mention of Micheline.
    Therefore, until further evidence is available, I withhold my decision that Micheline ever existed.
    Mary Haskell or Mary Khoury?
    In 1904 Gibran borrowed twenty dollars and arranged for an exhibition of his paintings. One of those who visited that exhibit was a Miss Mary E. Haskell, who became his friend. Later, she paid his way to Paris to further his art studies. One biographer said that Gibran thereafter asked her to check each of his manuscripts before he submitted it to his publisher.
    Gibran’s novel The Broken Wings was dedicated to M. E. H. However, the administrator of Gibran’s estate insists that the woman who helped Gibran financially was a wealthy woman named Mary Khoury. The executor of the estate was the personal physician of Mary Khoury, and had seen in her apartment several of Gibran’s paintings and statues on which Gibran had written in Arabic: “Do not blame a person for drinking lest he is trying to forget something more serious than drinking.” The doctor further reports that she, Mary Khoury, agreed to have her letters from Gibran published. He also claims those letters were given to a friend for editing, and that both the friend and Mary Khoury have since died. Thus the letters and paintings fell into unknown hands.
    According to Mary Khoury, Gibran spent many evenings, in the later days of his life, at her apartment.
    The existence of letters from Gibran to Mary Khoury was verified independently by a reliable Lebanese reporter who explained that he had read some of them and that Mary Khoury had promised to have these letters released after they were edited. When I asked the newsman if the letters were business or love letters, he emphasized that they were love letters.
    Nevertheless, the mystery remains about the benefactress in Kahlil Gibran’s life: Was she Mary Haskell or Mary Khoury — or both?
    Barbara Young
    Barbara Young knew Gibran the last seven years of his life, during which time she became the first of his disciples to shout his praise in a biography, The Man From Lebanon .
    â€œIf he, Gibran, had never written a poem or painted a picture, his signature upon the page of eternal record would still be inerasable. The power of his individual consciousness has penetrated the consciousness of the age, and the indwelling of his spirit is timeless and deathless. “This is Gibran,” wrote Barbara Young.
    In 1923 Barbara heard a reading from The Prophet .
    She wrote to Gibran expressing her admiration. She received “his gracious invitation to come to this studio ‘to talk about poetry’ and to see the pictures.”
    â€œSo I went,” she wrote, “to the old West Tenth Street building, climbed the four flights of stairs and found him there, smiling, welcoming me as though we were old friends indeed.”
    Barbara was taller than Gibran, of light complexion, beautifully built. Her family came from Bideford, in Devon, England. By profession, she was an English teacher, she operated a book store, and she lectured about Gibran the rest of her life after that first climb of the four flights of stairs. After Gibran’s death, she assembled and put together the chapters of his unfinished book, Garden of the Prophet , and arranged for its