À la plus belle des femmes du bateau des fleurs

Je t'ai chanté des chansons 
en m'accompagnant de ma flûte d'ébène, 
des chansons où je te racontais ma tristesse ; 
mais tu ne m'as pas écouté.

J'ai composé des vers où je célébrais ta beauté ; 
mais en balançant la tête tu as jeté 
dans l'eau les feuilles glorieuses 
où j'avais tracé des caractères.

Alors je t'ai donné un gros saphir, 
un saphir pareil au ciel nocturne, et, 
en échange du saphir obscur, tu m'as montré 
les petites perles de ta bouche. 

Confirmed with Judith Walter (Judith Gautier), Le Livre de jade, Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, 1867, pages 23-24. The author of the Chinese original is given as Tché-Tsi.

Note: this is a prose text. The line-breaks have been added arbitrarily.

Authorship

• by Judith Gautier (1845 - 1917), "À la plus belle des femmes du bateau des fleurs", appears in Le livre de jade, 1867 edition, in 1. Les amoureux, no. 15, Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, first published 1867 [ author's text checked 1 time]

• a text in Chinese (中文) by Wang Chi (590? - 644) [text unavailable]
• Go to the text.

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

• by Gabriel-André Fabre (1858 - 1921), "À la plus belle des femmes du bateau des fleurs", 1905?, published 1905? [high voice and celesta or harp], from Poèmes de Jade, deuxième cahier, no. 3, Paris, Éd. Au Ménestrel, Heugel [ sung text not yet checked against a primary source]

Text added to the website: 2019-05-07 00:00:00.

Last modified: 2019-05-07 13:56:22

Line count: 12
Word count: 82

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