May Sedan is another lady. Affection between Gibran and May Sedan was based on mutual admiration and appreciation on mutual ideas and talent. Gibran was famous for his deep thoughts and unique style of writing, evoking shock on the Arabic literary arena, as well as on May’s heart. Both of them concentrated on spiritual life, and each took the other as bosom friend and spiritual partner, regarded their mutual contact as greatest pleasure. There are some famous letters that Gibran wrote to May. “Dear my friend, whether you know I get consolation, pleasure and serenity from our intermittent conversions? Do you once know that the east of our world exist a unique girl? Before her birth, she had entered the palace and stood at the sacrosanct Holy Land. She knew the enigma of the cosmos which was guarded by matutinal Orion.”(Xue Guoqing, 2001:33）These letters witness their love case. However things go contrary to one’s wishes when they became pergent in lifestyle and marriage understanding. They finally did not get married and live together.
Through his life experiences and works，we can know that he was ambivalent．In every aspects of his life，including love and marriage，he had conflicts in his mind．“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient onto love. When you love you should not say, ‘god is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God’. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.”(Gibran, 2009:24) According to Gibran, love is the basic instinct of all subsistence and development, to love oneself, to love others, to love all things on earth, so that the significance of existing can realize. Love is not for return but love itself. Whether the soul can be affirmed and adopted by God depends on one’s big love. 源'自:优尔]'论-文'网"]www.youerw.com
Gibran’s ambivalent differentiation on love experience and love comprehension endows with a unique imagination for later generation.
Once involved in love when someone loves, however, ones’ brain may operate in a different way. Helena, a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, once said that, “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath lover’s mind of figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child.” (Shakespeare, 2001:37) The following passage will have a minute and comprehensive explanation on this contrast existed in love area. There are several methods on piding love. From the perspective of Gibran, love to him means not only the love between the lovers but also the kinship between family members. From the utterly sublime aspects, love means pan-loving masses and self-giving desires.
3.1 Love and Lust
“Love is a kind of sweet pain, and sincere love is never a bumpy road.”(Shakespeare, 1999:384) When love occurs, should it follows with sexual relationship to reinforce the tie? In the story Lady Chatterley’s Lover wrote by D. H. Lawrence, the author explores the relation between love and sex. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the story of Constance Chatterley, who, while trapped in an unhappy marriage to an aristocratic mine owner on whom war wounds leaves him paralyzed and impotent, has an affair with Mellors, the gamekeeper. If one can always understand a very ideal and spiritual love then it may be platonic rather than sexual.
“But in her (Constance) inner conscious she was keeping in touch with the other man. She mustn’t let connection with him go; oh she mustn’t let it go, or she was lost, lost utterly in this world of expensive people and joy-seekers.” (Lawrence, 2007:244) She is trapped into carnal enjoyment and almost loses herself in love affairs. When human beings cannot exactly discriminate the enjoyment brought by lust from the true love derived from heartbeat, they may be lost in transient perplexity and confusion. “Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness.” (Gibran, 2009:24) 纪伯伦《先知》中辩证的婚姻观及爱情观(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_57816.html