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Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars.

Edwin Hubbell Chapin, Living Words, 1860; often credited to Gibran

Literature

The story behind the card

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) was a popular American preacher in New York. The sentence appears in Living Words (Boston, 1860), a book of short passages from his sermons and writings, published more than twenty years before Kahlil Gibran was born. In the original it goes on: martyrs put on 'coronation-robes glittering with fire', and the grieving first see the gates of heaven through their tears. Later quotation lists detached the line from Chapin and gave it to Gibran, and a common version also turned his 'seamed with scars', meaning criss-crossed by scar lines, into 'seared with scars'.

Türkçe oku
En güçlü ruhlar acının içinden çıkmıştır; en sağlam karakterlerin her yanı yara izleriyle doludur.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin, Living Words, 1860; çoğu zaman Cibran'a atfedilir

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880), New York'ta vaazlarıyla tanınan Amerikalı bir din adamıydı. Bu cümle, onun vaaz ve yazılarından seçilmiş kısa parçaları toplayan Living Words (Boston, 1860) kitabında geçer; yani Halil Cibran'ın doğumundan yirmi yılı aşkın bir süre önce yayımlanmıştır. Özgün metinde cümle sürer: Şehitler ateşle parıldayan taç giysilerini kuşanır, kederliler cennetin kapılarını ilk kez gözyaşları arasından görür. Sonraki alıntı listeleri sözü Chapin'den koparıp Cibran'a mal etti. Yaygın bir biçimde Chapin'in “yara izleriyle dolu” (seamed with scars) ifadesi de “yaralarla dağlanmış” (seared with scars) hâline geldi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Kahlil Gibran
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