This week, for the first time in a long time, I re-read On Work. And for the first time ever, I read the poem (and listened to it be read aloud) in a group as part of a broader discussion about work and labour and care and careers.

I first encountered Kahlil Gibran and The Prophet in Besançon, France, in 2003. It was the first place I lived that wasn’t Trinidad. I’d walked into a book store — exceptionally on-brand for me — and into a signing for a just-released beautifully illustrated edition by the calligrapher Lassaâd Métoui.

I bought the book, got it signed, and not for the first time happened upon a work of art and literature exactly when I needed it.

Votre joie est votre chagrin démasqué (your joy is your sorrow unmasked, from On Joy and Sorrow, is a line that I have kept close to my heart since. But I had not much thought about On Work until this weekend.

My contribution to the group discussion was to offer up a reflection by Toni Cade Bambara, which I paraphrased as the work of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.

The full context, including the actual quote, is from an interview between Bambara and Kay Bonetti in 1982:

“The task of the artist is determined always by the status and process and agenda of the community that it already serves. If you’re an artist who identifies with, who springs from, who is serviced by or drafted by a bourgeois capitalist class then that’s the kind of writing you do. Then your job is to maintain status quo, to celebrate exploitation or to guise it in some lovely, romantic way. That’s your job.

If you’re a writer in Cuba, postrevolutionary Cuba, your job is to celebrate the triumph of the national will. If you’re a writer coming out of Kenya, the postindependent era in Kenya, your job is relaly to critique the failure of class struggle in Kenya and to tell the truth and to try and share a vision of what that society should be like if they’re gonna really liberate themselves.

Attribution

     You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
     And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
     And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
     And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
     And all work is empty save when there is love;
     And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.
— from On Work by Kahlil Gibran